Pineapple (Patreon)

I love bullies.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no respect for bullies. I have no admiration for them. The act of bullying somebody is (and I don’t think this is the Merriam-Webster definition) a cheap attempt to make some other human feel awful for no particular reason. There’s nothing constructive about bullying: that’s what criticism is for; there’s nothing virtuous about bullying: that belongs more in the realm of finding the thin line between niceness and kindness; there’s nothing transformative about bullying: the bully gets instant gratification with the nutritional value of cotton candy; the person being bullied just feels like shit. So maybe I should clarify: I don't love bullies. They're just... fascinating. Odd, considering that bullying just doesn’t have a place.

Which isn’t necessarily the message you get if you look at the world. I confess that I’ve had to consciously take breaks from the Twitter-sphere. Doom-scrolling can lock you in after a while. Even if you’re just a casual observer, we all have that instant gratification gland that gets tickled. (On a side note: between rocket ships, Tesla Roadsters, flamethrowers, his marriages, and now Twitter, it seems that Elon has a particular affinity for surrounding himself with endeavors that have a tendency to just kinda… catastrophically ignite in ways they were likely not intended to.)

Oh, shit… was I being a bully just then? Hmm… He’s a public figure, and we give a bit more leeway for those folks… It was a mildly witty observation, so there’s an Oscar Wilde bonus point or two in there for me, I’m sure. Can I use the “He has it coming!” defense? Proooobably not: I don’t know the man, so I can’t vouch for his character; he lost $200 billion dollars this year, and while I think that we should just cap people at one billion and give them a trophy that says “You won capitalism,” it’s his money, and he can use it as he pleases. Just because I don’t identify with the guy doesn’t mean he necessarily deserves my revulsion. Not the lifestyle I’d choose…

There’s this line in the first episode of “Poker Face,” where Charlie is responding to the idea of being rich. “Better than being broke; not as good as ‘doing just fine.’” I like that. I wouldn’t want to wear Elon’s pants.

Now that I’ve made myself feel better… bullying. I find it fascinating. If you’re a normal kid growing up, you build up a defense mechanism or two. “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me, and sticks to you!” It’s a clunky rhyme. But not without its nugget of truth. I confess that I used that line once or twice when I was 8.

At some point, hopefully, most people find out that the answer to “why is so-and-so so mean,” is “because they’re insecure, and make other people feel bad makes them feel better.” It’s damned fine advice. But on a younger mind, it falls on deaf ears. Context makes that little idea make a LOT more sense, and there’s just not a lot of context you get by the time middle school rolls around. Again, hopefully — kids should have their childhoods.

(Or, you find that middle ground where you just never mentally mature. Pretty sure I was thinking about fart jokes here, because that's what I usually think about.)

Hopefully, that idea builds on itself as the years go by. “Kids will be kids, and kids suck” is just an excuse. But by the time high school rolls around, you’re starting to get a pretty good idea of how people work, and why they do what they do. There are a million movies about how jocks can be assholes, and about how girls can be just sooo mean, but the reality is that most people are osmotic, and gravitate toward people they identify with more closely. Doesn’t mean that there won’t be disagreements, fights, and fallings out, but if you play your cards right, the best way to avoid bullying is to not really associate with bullies. God knows it doesn’t always work, but it’s better than trying to shoehorn yourself into a relationship dynamic that’s doomed from the start.

Know what I mean? The trope about the nerdy kid who gets taken advantage of by the bro who pretends to be his friend so he can get some test answers; the girl who doesn’t fit it, but desperately wants to, and the girls talk about her behind her back, because it’s entertainment; relationships where someone pretends to be someone they’re not, just to come across as more attractive to the other person, even though it hasn’t hit them that there are plenty of perfectly fine relationships out there that don’t involve the emotional stress of always having to pretend to be somebody else. Even if these relationships don’t end in bullying, per se, they weaken the constitution, and calcify the bad parts.

So then, you get out into the world, and in most cases, you have to interact with a bunch of other folks. That shitty boss. You’re stuck with that fucker. And there’s no way you’re going to change them. So, you endure. And it stresses you out, and pumps up the cortisol levels. Kinda blinds you to the other bullies you have to put up with. Like, that guy who starts towing your car, even though you’ve only been in that parking space for 10 minutes longer than you’re supposed to. This is a motherfucker who knows that he’s gonna cause you a lot of problems, money, inconvenience, and especially because of all that — he’s just not gonna cut you a break. He’s a guy with the power.

That happened to me once. Same scenario. Good friend of mine said something really cool: “That sucks. But it’ll be ok, you’ll get your car back. In the meantime, you had to deal with that guy for only about 20 minutes — he has to deal with himself every god-damned day.”

That clicked for me. Brought in all the other context I’d scraped together over the previous years. And over time, it made me feel… fascinated by bullies. “What happened in your life to make you this way?” “Were you born like this, or did life throw you some truly shitty turns, early on?” “Do you ever take the opportunity for any sort of self-improvement or personal evolution? Heck, would you even know what that would look like?” “Why is happiness the default state for you? I mean, I have depression and anxiety, but at least I know I do, and I get sad, and I’m trying to work on that… Do you even know that you’re sad?” “What’s your future going to look like, what kind of people do you hang around, do you consider yourself to be a person with any real friendships, if you’re in a relationship with another person, what does that look like, do people turn to you when life gets hard, how do you respond to bullies in your own life?” Things like that.

It’s got to be the saddest, saddest, fucking saddest thing in the world to be a bully. For the emptiness of that wellspring to be what feeds you. God, I feel sorry for folks like that, on a deep, visceral level.

I’ve dealt with my fair share. Before the boobs, and after the boobs for sure. Every now and then, some variation of the question, “how do you deal with people when you have boobs like that” comes up, usually for the reasons you would imagine. The answer? You don’t get used to it. Not really. It still stings when somebody treats you like shit based on your physical appearance. (There’s SO much other stuff to make fun of me for, if only they’d take the time to get to know me!)

(Like how, if the light hits just right, I apparently look like early American tapdancer and former New York City firefighter Steve Buscemi.)

The guy who’s hitting on you, and upon being rebuffed, calls you a cow as you walk away; the casual acquaintance you just met who snidely remarks that ‘you wouldn’t understand’ her relationship problems, because everyone must just loooove me; the guy at Starbucks who comes up to you and asks if he can borrow some milk (and like, as a pickup line); conversely from the woman before, the cattiness of comparison: “you’d love to wear such-and-such… it’s just too bad they don’t make it anywhere near your size…”

(In case you can’t tell, women are much more convert in their bullying. Just as bad.)

But… there’s a bit of a superpower in it. Nat and Olga aren’t just a fuck ton of subcutaneous adipose tissue: they’re built-in human filtration devices. I’ve talked about this before, but I really don’t care when people acknowledge the girls, and we just move on. Those are the folks who are much more likely to have their shit together, and who are happy to build relationships that are based on more than the occasional absurdity of physical appearance. Even if you’re not a bully per se, insecurity does end up being a dominant personality trait. And when we’re insecure, we become uncertain of anything that’s outside of our comfort zone. That eventually causes us to fear it, and in some way, we present that fear to the world. And that usually turns into nastier stuff. Take it away, Yoda. Better to hang out with the cool folks.

Social media has been a crash course in that, too…. I knew what I was getting into back in 2018, when I started this whole “look at me, world!” campaign, but… damn. People are fucking horrid sometimes. Early on, I would let each negative remark just ruin my freakin’, night, dude. It got better. Especially once I figured out how to use the “block” button (that led me to relishing the block button. “We’ll, fuck… you… [press] too,” and move on with the day. Still, people do say something that digs in under the ribs from time to time. It’s not as bad anymore, by far. And, I’ve learned a lot — especially about getting some context on that most basic of human behaviors: to not let one negative remark outweigh the 100 other good things.

I imagine Pineapple got bullied a lot in its life. Probably by Orange, and Apple, those cunts. “Hey, Pineapple! Yeah, you! You’re fucking stupid, you know that? I mean, look at you. Lookin’ all sharp and shit, but you’re not. Pussy. And what’s that fucking haircut all about? Just all spiky and green, like who are you trying to impress? Need a knife to eat you. And nobody can even eat the center of you, because it’s too hard! And your sour! And yellow, and chunks of you get stuck in people’s teeth! And hey, wait… Oh my God, you guys — it doesn’t even have any seeds! You need to plant that STUPID haircut in the ground to get another one! That’s like, a one-one ratio of new pineapples! PINEAPPLE SUCKS! PINEAPPLE SUCKS! PINEAPPLE SUCKS!”

(Away with you, fraud! Though you are colloquially known as a fruit, you are technically nothing more than a cluster of berries!)

Sucked for pineapple there, for a little while. But pineapple grew up, and got more comfortable with itself. Surrounded itself with other fruits that had been through their own fair share of shit. Dragonfruit, Kiwi, Pomegranate… those eccentrics became good friends — the types to throw the best kind of party where everyone’s invited. Even Durian. As for Apple and Orange? Nah. Hope they’re doing well, but we haven’t thought about those guys for years. They wouldn’t want to come over, anyway.

Pineapple probably got laid. Had a trust with Horned Mellon. They had a lot in common. And Horned Mellon told Pineapple a lot of stuff about itself that even it didn’t know: about how it can be blended up with rum, and how everyone at the beach loves it; about how it’s loaded with vitamin C, manganese, B6, copper, folate, potassium, and that sexy, sexy iron; about how, not too long about, people used to pay a fortune for a single Pineapple, and Pineapples of the past got so FAMOUS that people in the South would make sculptures of them to use as decorations; about the wars that got waged over its place on pizza; about how it makes semen taste better. But be careful, pineapple, because it's not all great: some people really don’t like you… you can be too much for them. You could even kill them! So don’t worry about it if someone just doesn’t like you. Plenty of others do.

Over time, Pineapple got really sure of itself. It didn’t change all that much, and sure, it still made mistakes. For the most part, it was still the same fruit as it always was. It knew what it felt like to feel like shit for no reason, just because somebody else said so. It was never afraid to be nice to all the other fruits, but never to a fault. It was done with taking shit from anybody. It even got to the point where it made some great friends with other Apples or Oranges (not all Apples and Oranges are bad).

But, it wasn’t afraid to be a little cautious, either: when you’re different, but are actually cool with it, a lot of other fruits will come out of the pantry who would have never given you the time of day, before. The other side of the insecurity coin — fakeness.

But mostly, Pineapple just preferred to hang around and do its thing. Not a lot of things better than doing “just fine.”

(Yes, you’re allowed — feel free to make a joke about “melons” to match the metaphor. I won’t think you’re a bully.)