In defense of my bad self

I went out last night with a friend of mine who likes to refer to me as Evil Robyn- to differentiate me from another Robyn he knows (oddly, I think I have the more complimentary name, but that is beside the point). He claims that I have no sense of morality.

Au contraire! See, I admit that I am a bad person- freely- but when I say this, I say it with my toungue firmly in my cheek. It's not that I'm bad, it's just that I am very, very honest. With myself. I don't mean to say that I've never lied, because of course I have, everyone has. But I could never be accused of "being-in-itself" or "being-for-others"- or of having bad faith.

If I am not concerned with convincing others that I am in fact a good person or a nice person, I am more free to be a good person than I would otherwise be. Does that make sense? I like to be on solid ground. I would rather know that someone has a problem with me, and start from there, rather than have them pretend to like me so we all get to be in happy happy land where no one is a jerk. And the thing is- I have the worlds most well-developed bullshit detector. I know when someone is blowing smoke up my ass. And I would rather they did not. For instance- I would vastly prefer it if a guy coming on to me at a bar said "Hey! I have absolutely no interest in your aesthetic opinions! However, you have got a swell rack there and I'd sure like to do ya" rather than feigning interest in anything I have to say (ie: "being-for-others"- acting in the way he thinks I want him to act). Because then we start from solid ground. I am allowed the privilege of making my choices based on facts rather than bullshit.

I don't believe in "niceness"- I believe in "kindness" and I believe that there is a difference.

This, I guess, is where my weird feelings about committed relationships come into play- which, I believe, is the primary reason for my friend thinking I'm evil. Because basically, I've always been irritated by the idea of people being in relationships just to not be alone, rather than because the idea of being with another person makes you nearly physically ill and you do not personally want to do it. Like, I get what people are trying to say when they say that, well, in order to feel that way about someone you have to commit yourself to them first. I don't feel like I do. I am like, awesome at multi-tasking. Like, I've never been able to wrap my head around the concept of cheating, because... well... if I wanted to get with other people, I wouldn't be in a committed relationship in the first place. But then again, I am an especially entertaining person and thus have no issue about being alone. Unfortunately, in order to get anyone to go along with me on this trip, I pretty much have to make them read "Being and Nothingness." Which, you know- is honestly not that great of a time.

I don't feel like I owe people things. I really don't. Maybe I'm deficient in that way. Maybe we just all assume people sort of think like we do- you know- like how if you don't lie, you don't expect other people to? I don't want people to ever feel like they owe me anything. That makes me uncomfortable in the worst way. It's like, I would rather people be decent to me because that's their personal choice, rather than something they feel they have to do.

(Full disclosure- am PMSing and have taken codeine... so this may not make nearly as much sense as I want it to.)