Spread Mercy
And grab a hot slice of mortal ass while you're at it.
Subject: Lifelong jealousy and feeling like a failure for not being good enough for the guys I’m interested in
I wanted to get that out of the way with the subject line so this won’t be so long and boring. I saw your column and you seem both empathetic and creative. Funny, too. I can relate to so much of what those women go through. I gave up on men years ago and have chosen for various reasons to take on lovers from other dimensions. Not incubus, but spirit lovers. They’re hit and miss, too, but that’s not the main point of my letter. My problem was mostly attracting men I hated and not the types I wanted. Most of the time. Sometimes I’d get a hot long-haired goth/alt guy and we would have an intense fling where we would have sex once a week for a couple months before he tired of me and moved on. I would always go out seething and trying to get a compromise. I’ve never had a boyfriend or been married, I’ve only been a booty call or a live-in sugar mama who had to put up with my male friend with benefits lusting and sleeping with other women so I was a once-every-month afterthought, if I was lucky. I was criticized, insulted, ignored, deprived of sex and respect, all while providing a roof over their ungrateful heads and playing taxi. I was usually 10 to 15 years older and looked down on for it. I hate middle-aged and old men. Most are ugly as fuck and disgusting and boring. I go for specific types and will NOT lower my standards, but this is past tense. I don’t date anymore because I’m too old to pass off as 20-35 anymore and have made the decision to cut that off. But, I still struggle with raging jealousy. I hate my age, my features, gaining 30 lbs I can’t seem to lose no matter what I do, can’t make a witty remark or joke to save my life, always awkward and inarticulate, ugly and boring. I’ve been told I’m nobody because at that time I had a dead-end pizza job and lived alone with two cats. I hate that I’m not 20 something, in high demand, smart or popular. I’ve had two men tell me I’m no Katy Perry so I hate her, too. I hate my family for giving me my ugly genes and weird features. I’ve cut myself to punish my body for not being what they want. I’m glad immortals aren’t as fickle and selfish as humans. Still, I can’t wait to die so I can be out of this pathetic meat sack that’s never lived up to the picky entitled men’s standards.
Lifelong 54 Year-Old Loser
Dear L54YOL,
You should listen to your immortal lovers, because they know much more about your worth than you do. When they tell you that you’re beautiful and sexy and powerful, when they tell you that you own the sun and the moon and the stars, they aren’t lying. They can see the divinity sparkling inside your chromosomes. They want you to see it, too.
The only difference between you and Katy Perry is that Katy Perry understands that there are bright worlds underneath her skin. She also has the giant stacks of cold, hard cash to hire the best professionals to polish her outer shell so that it’s a more accurate reflection of the FIREWORK (singular!) exploding inside of her. I would also mention that she’s a very talented writer of snappy pop songs, but talent is just a realization of your own divinity. Every single living, breathing human being you or I know is wildly talented. They just have no fucking idea of the sublime genius percolating deep inside their pathetic meat sacks.
“Pathetic meat sack” is pretty sparkly in and of itself. Whose brains invented that one? Oh yes, your unattractive dead-end loser brain somehow managed it. A Christmas miracle!
It’s time to listen a little more closely to your spirit lovers. Because the only person who is sure that your age and your weight and your circumstances cleave you irreparably from some imaginary mob of twenty-something sweethearts triumphantly parading their perky assets all over town is you. You have carved your fate in stone. I know it’s tempting to do that, since everyone else is more than happy to jump right in and back up the sad story that you’ve already written, but you have to resist that temptation. Just because everybody loves a story about a woman who is losing her power (or better yet, never had power to begin with), that doesn’t mean it’s true. Beloved stories shared by all are sometimes the least true things in this vast sparkling universe. You need to scrape these shitty fables of dried up old whores out of your head and start telling new, more accurate tales.
Your immortal lovers came into your life because they could see that you are hardening yourself against the world and turning away from your own brilliance in a permanent way now. Your immortal lovers don’t want to be the only ones supping on your ultra fine and tasty resources and wild mind. They want you to share yourself with the mortals around you, but they want you to do it in a way that models the respect for your own divinity that echoes through your dalliances with the spirits.
So focus on these spirit affairs you’re having. Think about what’s in the mix with the best of them: Sensual appreciation. Compassion. Showing up in the moment with an open heart. Forgiveness. Respect. And every single minute, you can slow down the reel and take in what’s happening, because you’re the powerful one. You aren’t just servicing some ghost of a real-life goth bro who’s comparing you to his dream woman, Katy Perry, inside the empty recesses of his mind (he doesn’t recognize his own divinity either, sniff!). You’re being worshipped and savored with the infinite reverence and also delicate experimentation that you deserve. Every bite is an amuse bouche.
Yow! Now I want a spirit lover, too!
Let go of your sad meat-sack story and listen to the odd melody singing inside your cells. What the ignorant demeaning dickwads of the world and our ignorant demeaning dickwad culture don’t want you to know is this: Every year a woman grows more powerful. Every minute you imagine yourself to be less powerful, you are engaging with a delusion that keeps the entire female world in chains, from the moment they are born. Even little children hear that a girl is juicy and fruitful for about a millisecond before she rots, falls off the tree, and starts decomposing pathetically into the ground. What the immortals know, and what you already know inside your heart, is that this story is a man’s projection of how he feels about himself, deep inside. Not only can’t men make babies and food using only their bodies (Like gods, motherfucker! Like gods who walk the earth!) but men expire much more quickly than women do. Men grow feeble and confused and doubt themselves at a very youngish age. And the biggest secret of all is that men care about this much, much more than women do. A man who can’t think or move or fuck is worse than a dried-up old whore, in a man’s mind. Don’t blame me, guys, I didn’t invent this shit. I just happen to know what’s rattling around in your sad little skulls.
The Courtship by Gertrude Abercrombie (1949).
Ohhhhhh men men men. Why do we still love such hapless beasts? Because you told us stories about ourselves that were created in order to make us understand who you are. That’s just what a clever god does. He projects his weaknesses onto the groveling whores and beggar-hags at the foot of Mount Olympus. As your supplicants, we are here to embody and manifest your shame, your deepest fears and anxieties, your fever dreams. Your stories formed us into your perfect, rapidly-expiring lovers, always doubting ourselves in an echo of your own doubts, always diminishing and destroying ourselves in an echo of your fixation on diminishing and destroying this vibrant world.
Oh, men. —> Omen. —> Amen!
This is where compassion enters the picture. We know how it feels to be you because you taught us, in your stories, how it feels. If we buy your stories, we become a shadow of what you already are. So we know how much it hurts you to live here, in this hopeless, flaccid, fruitless place.
Luckily, women bring love to a hopeless, flaccid, fruitless place all the damn time or this world would already be a heap of ash. (Yes, I realize this tale is hopelessly, flaccidly heteronormative, just let me do this old-fashioned shit for a minute, because we’re getting somewhere.)
But what’s really happening with women? As a middle-aged woman, I look around and I see luscious creatures rising from the ashes of very old, deeply stupid stories. I see women feeling how much their power grows, every single day. I see women owning that power and using it for good -- and evil! Sure, of course, who wouldn’t? And what are these women meant to do with their time? Are they meant to limit their taste to chumpy goth boys who can’t see them clearly and will echo their ingested insecurities like sad little Trent Reznor-shaped parrots? Are they meant to limit their bodies to being ravaged by immortals?
Ask your immortal lovers what they think. I’ll bet they’ll say that your first job is to wake up to the divinity inside of you. Your second job is to cultivate that divinity in your outer shell – growing stronger and more alive, visibly, to everyone around you, like a seed that waits half a century to grow and then blossoms into the most mesmerizing, gorgeous bloom the world has ever known. Your third job is to take that dirty blossom out on the town and share it with angry, self-hating middle-aged and old men.
Ha ha hahahahaha. Right. Why in the living fuck would you do that? How could this advice be worse? Stay with me. Because this is what you want. This is what your hatred is telling you that you could love with a white-hot passion: not a boy but a mature man. Remember that you are a woman, capable of mystical overnight growth through one tiny epiphany. You are also capable of infinite compassion. Shower these old toads with your compassion until they warm up and see you clearly. These cranky old bitches need you. Open your eyes and at least recognize that. Then live and breathe and speak like they already know how powerful you are, even if they don’t. Pretend that they already get it. Pretend that you already get it, and eventually you WILL get it.
And once you do get it? Once you know how much power you have, and how much it grows every single day? Only the ignorant and the closed-hearted and the closed-minded won’t be able to see your kaleidoscope of colors blasting in their sad faces. When they can’t see you? Forgive them and move forward, knowing that there are more of them, so many more, and some who aren’t too far gone to see. There is no need to compromise and no reason to become an afterthought. Once you truly know your power, you won’t have to remind yourself to protect that power.
And when you feel disappointed in these men and your shame kicks up? Forgive yourself. You’ve been bathing in bad stories for a long time. It takes a while to shake that filth off completely.
Cultivate your compassion for yourself and share it. That’s what those sexy undead freak lovers are trying to say to you, when they lick your red hot glorious perfect body with their hungry immortal tongues. They want to pump you full of mercy so you can spread that shit around to the ones who really need it.
I mean, it’s just an idea. Maybe that’s my idea because that’s what sounds hot to me. I’m not an immortal, what do I know -- besides a billion brilliant fucking things, thanks to my deep connection to the infinite psychotic glorious perfect wonderland inside all of us? *drum kick snare* I’m not omnipotent – yet. But obviously I’m rocketing in that direction. #notmyfault
Your burgeoning power is waiting for you, too. Your immortal lovers led you here. When your heart feels open, trust some of the instincts that spring from that. When your heart feels angry and closed, protect yourself and be a good mother to yourself. When you feel compassion for old men, share it without losing yourself. Get to know them very slowly, with preemptive forgiveness in your heart. Your hatred and disgust with crusty dudes is an echo of your own self-hatred – not to mention an echo of the angry rotting-fruit fables you’ve ingested for decades now. Don’t partake of that delusional mess, unless you really do want to be a pathetic meat sack waiting to die. But I think you want more than that. Forgive yourself for wanting more.
Then go get it.
Molly
Molly’s going on vacation soon, so she wants to pump you full of red-hot mercy before she leaves. Yeah, you know you love it. Savor it while you can, because it’ll be a long cold lonely winter without your favorite evil twin to keep you warm. You can always write her a letter (askmolly at protonmail.com) while you wait for her return. Just try to remember as you write — or do anything else over the holidays — that paradise is pulsing through your veins. Let your words and your mind and your heart honor that paradise.