A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #137 When people stop being polite
And start getting real
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice of life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Dear Internet,
The issue I’ve been working on all week talks about the book cleansing, spirituality, and soon to be sportsball. (Six Nations this week!)
But then I started reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, a love letter to late 20th C pop culture, at lunch on Friday and the original issue plans went out the window.
(I might do 137.5 on Wednesday as to not waste words.)
Trying to describe Klosterman can be difficult. He critiques pop culture while writing for sportsball outlets like Grantland and ESPN. He’s written for other outlets (NY Times, WashPo, Esquire, etc. etc.) but his true love, if his catalog is to be believed, is pop culture.
Chuck is the same age as me (50) and he graduated from college the same year I would have if I hadn’t gone in other directions. Generationally, I get him. I get his refrencesand his thoughts. His references, especially in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, illuminate my soul since the book came out in 2003 and the time he is writing is the time that I most believe I should have never left.
While Klosterman is unique (at least in the subject matter and writing style), I wanted to be his female counterpart really, really badly. (Jessica Hopper’s The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic is probably the closest to being his counterpart. I have not read Hopper’s book yet, but it is on my wish list from one of my libraries.) I don’t know what happened as to why I didn’t make this a trueism; I can barely remember time these days so remembering late 20th C / early 21st C is really fucking difficult. I smoked a lot, fucked around a lot, drank a lot, and occasionally read a lot. That was my 20s.
But I talked about Klosterman endlessly for years, but I also forgot him. I have several of his books at the cabin but I don’t remember if I have read them? (Probably not.) But I must have read some, at least, because how can I be a proper stalker and enthuse about him so religiously if I have not read his work? (I follow him on Twitter but since I’m barely there and he barely tweets, it seems moot.)
I forgot him in the way I forget I have my teddy bear with me still from when I got him at age 5. I know teddy exists, and he is in a chair in our condo I look at all the time, but once I leave the condo, I no longer remember. J would talk about Klosterman on occasion since he was a writer (and possible one of the founders?) of Grantland and he was allegedly on podcasts as well relating to sportsball and there would be an a-ha moment for me and I would remember, “Oh yes, Chuck is a future husband.” (For someone who follows hockey, soccer (football) and rugby, I care not for opinions and analysis. This is how I roll.)
I got through his essays on love (bullshit and fabricated as most women want John Cusack), that Coldplay is a shitty band (yes), his obsession of The Real World (how in the fuck can you describe RW?) and how Big Brother failed because there were no musical interludes to set the scene. (BB has just ended its 24th season so Klosterman isn’t right on everything.)
Reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs was a look into my soul. I don’t know why I have a hard on for the ‘90s and early ‘00s. I was in my 20s, I was unmedicated, and I was bouncing around the U.S. Was I having fun? Maybe? Possibly? I made a few (few-ish) questionable choices, lived with even more questionable people, and kind of winged it. I was incredibly naïve on life and expected things to just work out. 50-year-old Lisa sometimes panics about those decisions because there is no fucking way I would do those few-ish things I did in my early 20s.
But I digress.
I felt all these opinions the more I read. Yes, most women tend to want the Harry Met Sally interlude, but he says it’s fake and why do we want such fake things because it’s pointless and serves no purpose? (He also posits the whole “men and women can be friends” is garbage because it is then always spun that one of the platonic couple wants the other but just doesn’t know it yet.) Grunge was going strong, despite his argument it wasn’t, in the early ‘90s. It defined the whole decade for fuck’s sake. I didn’t love Cusack as Lloyd Dobbler, as Klosterman claims Gen X women do, but as Rob Gordon in High Fidelity (movie, not the book by Nick Hornby.(I read the book but Cusack makes the character. Fuck you, Chuck!)) The Real World inspired 90 Day Fiancé, and a fuck ton of other reality shows, in a whole host of ways which makes RW so groundbreaking. (And so, so innocent by comparison.)
I’m eating my beef stew and reading Friday and I feel—safe? Understood? Seen? This is shocking to me because I literally had my therapy appointment that morning and we talked about my fear of being seen the more I lose weight and how I grew up made me want to curl up into a ball. I spent so much time hiding that being thin(ner) is going to open a whole new world and I’m not comfortable with that. (Yet. Talk to me after a few more therapy sessions.)
I’m not dismissing that others do not see me. J sees me. Best Kate sees me. Kristin sees me. And so on and so forth but with Klosterman, it’s different. It’s comforting and I have my a-ha moment the more I read. 20 years on, the book was published in 2003, and someone gets me? Where the fuck was I all those years ago?
People read me because they can relate and understand. A lot of people I never thought would reach out have to talk about getting the fat girl surgery. Some write to me after an issue how they feel seen from my experiences. I don’t want to get rid of that, I truly don’t, but at the same time I want to write more and feel more. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time; this in ability to form an opinion that isn’t self-absorbed. It’s funny, right? The point of this newsletter was confessional, and I want those opinions to be a part of that. To be more than that. I don’t want to be a single sided person and I often feel at times that I am.
But I don’t think I can or have hold those opinions. I sprout bullshit on social media because it’s bullshit and serves no purpose. Social media, nay the internet, has gone in ways I never thought in a million years it would go and I don’t feel connected anymore. I don’t feel like I’ve met my digital kin. I just feel lonely and lost but I’m addicted because there is nowhere else to go.
So, I don’t form those opinions. I don’t think about the world around me because I see no value in it and that makes me incredibly sad. I don’t feel like I have the pulse on what’s happening anymore and it’s frustrating. I have become what I never wanted to become and that is so isolated and singular that I have built my bubble and fuck it, I’m not leaving.
Self-care evangelists will argue that you need to do what you need to do to protect yourself because the world is a scary place, and we need to keep ourselves sane. If doing that means creating a bubble that removes toxic things, then so be it.
I think they are wrong. I think we’ve spent so much time isolating ourselves we seem to forget that the world is not always a dangerous and scary place. There is so much out there that it is overwhelming more than anything. I’m tired of living in my bubble and I want to go out and feel things, think things, and make things happen.
I don’t know what this looks like. To be sure the issues will come regularly (mostly) on Sundays, and I’ll probably still talk about fat girl surgery, trips, being crazy, and all the other stuff that makes up my world, but I think I’m going to venture outside of that safe space and live a little.
(J often tries to have an educated discussion on a topic I should know about and I sit there mute and dumb because I have no opinion and I don’t care. I wonder why he is with me if the extent of my intelligence is watching reality TV and reading to create an alternate reality for my brain. It’s exhausting in a host of many ways and again, I’m just tired of this kind of blank stillness.)
I’m made up more than what I present so why am I not presenting it?
(Also, is this what a mid-life crisis is?)
Things I Recently Wrote
If you read #97.5, you’ll recall I’ve ditched the We’ll Read Anything Once (Twice If We Like it) book review blog for a newsletter of the same name.
What I’m Reading
This year I’ve committed to read 75 books via the GoodReads Reading Challenge.
Total: 17/75
Glenarvon Byron’s ex-lover was so distraught about their breakup; she wrote a roman à clef about their relationship
Pride and Prejudice Read this a zillion times but doing a read-a-long for Austen Mondays
Amor Actually Anthology of interconnected romance stories from top Latinx authors
If Walls Could Talk Lucy Worsley walks you through the history of the home
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs Chuck Klosterman’s seminal essays on pop culture
Dare to Love a Duke (The London Underground #3) “For a dashing duke and the proprietress of a secret, sensual club in the London Underground, passion could lead to love… if they dare”
Cartographers Nell Young’s father is found dead and she must investigate why
Check out the media I’ve consumed for 2023!
Wonderful Thing
eBay
Part of the great cleansing of 2023, we’re going through the condo and either selling stuff on eBay or donating to Goodwiill (and of course selling books to whoever will take them).
Right now, I’ve got computer equipment and handbags on the site. I’ll be adding more handbags (Kate Spade, Portland Leather, and Coach), computer equipment (Mac and PC), and Funko Pops in the next few weeks. EVERYTHING MUST GO!
I’m undercutting other sellers so I can get rid of the stuff (and hopefully start a bidding war). Who knew I could get over $100 for my working 3DS?
You can check out my listings here.
lisa x
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
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