Why Can’t I Be an Asshole Too?

A personal essay about rage leaks

“Everything that is not given a voice will come back as a symptom.” — Carl Jung

Fred (as I’ve named him) basically lives in the parking lot behind my house, surrounded by an ever-expanding personal landfill. The area around his tires is a collage of sandwich wrappers, cigarillo tins, and tiny squares of cut paper. I’ve written about him before. Remember Fred?¹

So when a friend made a birthday wish that we clean up trash in our neighborhoods, my mind immediately went to Fred’s spot. I grabbed a trash bag and gloves and walked to his domain.

---

I’d recently started an emotional experiment, suggested by my sessions with

Thembeka

: what if I set aside my usual tool—optimism—and saw what came up without it? What came up? Rage-fueled good deeds.

I filled a whole 50-liter bag at Fred’s spot, felt good about myself, not realizing that without my faithful companion of constant positivity, this could become obsessive.

The trash re-accumulated. Fresh wrappers. New cigarillo tins. So, I brought another bag and wrote a sign.

The first draft of the sign was a little... pointed. Something like: “Dear Fred, I see you. Please stop being so gross.” But I revised. I Midwesterned it:

This is the actual sign, but I translated it from the French for you.

Yes. Love. Because even when I’m frustrated, I can’t help coating it in care. It’s compulsive.

While I was picking up litter, I found a cluster of old pens—mangled, broken—and pages full of repetitive, urgent scribbles. Not doodles. Not art. Scribbles like the kind you do when you’re testing a dying pen or trying to offload something eating you from the inside.

I peeked into Fred’s car. (Don’t ask me where Fred was—he’s still a mystery.) His dashboard and passenger seat were covered in newspapers, all scribbled over. Completely blackened with loops and scritches.

My heart sank. My irritation dropped.

Fred isn’t okay.

You don’t sit in your car every day, scribbling on yesterday’s news, peeing on your own tires, and creating a trash nebula around your vehicle because you’re thriving.

Clearly, Fred isn’t in control. Maybe he needs the garbage. Maybe it makes him feel at home.

I tried to understand Fred. This is what I do: I look for reasons, for the emotional state behind a behavior.

With my beloveds—kids, friends, boyfriend—this attempt at understanding is essential. It keeps me curious and open. And when I turn it inward, that same listening in reveals my own motives and helps me forgive myself when I screw up.

But it has its limits. Or, at least, it should have its limits, right?

My understanding is something I am proud of, but maybe it isn’t always as generous as it looks. Sometimes it’s just a strategy to keep the peace. Sometimes, if I’m honest, it turns into something stickier—patronizing, even.

I was raised in many homes with wildly different worldviews. And somewhere in all that chaos, I picked up a rule:

Never say something someone can’t hear.

I mean, what’s the point? Why waste my breath? People mostly just want to be agreed with.

But here’s the problem: how do I know what someone can hear? Haven’t I already decided for them?

“To assume someone can’t handle the truth is to withhold their dignity.”²

It looks like compassion. But sometimes it’s just me shrinking—letting the other person take all the space, because I assume they need it more than I do. I don’t stand my ground. I just disappear a little. Get smaller.

Sometimes, it’s not even kindness. It’s pity, dressed up as grace. And I make it my personal responsibility to be the one who gives up ground.

Case 1: A couple of years ago, I was installing a video art piece for a group performance. Regis was subbing for the sick curator. As always, there were technical problems—no big deal. I’m a seasoned pro at this stuff, and something always goes wrong. The projector angle was warped.

Before I could adjust anything, Regis climbed up a ladder and started aggressively fiddling with the ceiling-mounted projector—which was bolted in place. Nothing was going to move.

I told him—once, twice—that I had a fix. He didn’t listen. He was busy staging a one-man performance of technical heroism, muttering about the things he’d canceled to be here, saving the day.

Meanwhile, this was taking forever. The next artist was waiting for his rehearsal slot. Regis stayed up there until he ran out of time, throwing off everyone’s schedules for the rest of the day.

Coming down the ladder, he said—half-joking, not really—“Where’s my thank you?”

I was stunned. I mean, I’m a good Midwestern girl—he was going to get at least three thank-yous by the time he left. But not before he was done! Did he expect me to start effusing before he was even finished?

Sure, A for effort, buddy. But also: thank you for taking over, wasting my time, and ignoring everything I said. And special thanks to Sandolore herself, for shrinking into submission, folding under the weight of all that bumbling, self-satisfied masculinity.

The truth is, I felt sorry for him. Yes, I was irritated—more by the condescension than anything else—but what won the day was that quiet twist of pity: Oh, you needed this moment, huh? You needed to feel important today.

So I gave up ground. Figured maybe he needed it more than I did.

---

Case 2: the Czech guy.

I was living in a tiny A-frame at a hostel in Australia. Dinner was my sacred time—working on my fellowship manuscript at the table.

The first time he plopped down, I said, “Hey—I’m actually working.”

He smiled. “Oh no, we can’t let a pretty girl eat alone.”

Then, more firmly: “No, no, meals are to be eaten with people. We don’t eat alone.”

This happened for days. I kept saying no. He ignored me. I started hiding—lingering behind jungle fronds, waiting for him to settle somewhere else. He’d still end up at my table, sometimes carrying his tray across the courtyard to sit next to me.

I gave up ground. Again.

Not because I didn’t try to assert myself. I did. But I didn’t put muscle behind it. I submitted. Not wanting to make a scene, I defaulted to my favorite strategy: evasion.

The truth is, I’m especially vulnerable to a certain kind of bullying—this breezy, benevolent pushiness. The kind that’s hard to call out without looking uptight. So I bend.

Truth is, people treat you with as much or as little respect as you demand.³

So how have I trained people to treat me? Do I demand respect? Do I let you win the fight? Do I back down? Do I let you take my agency? Were we just in dispute about something and suddenly I disappeared into thin air? Did you think you had me in your hands, and I slithered away like an eel slathered in dish soap?

Thought so.

Except—enter Thembeka, stage left—gently suggesting that maybe I don’t do the thing. See what happens.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve spent years as the pressure regulator—keeping everything smooth, breathable, non-lethal. Rage is now leaking sideways.
Into side quests—holy vengeance trash missions, passive-aggressive signage, online bear-poking. Running test drills in low-stakes conflict, like training for the boss level.

---

Case 3, Post-Valve Reroute: Internal processor glitch rerouting output into snarky Substack comments:

I went hard at a very successful Stacker who’s making 1000x my annual income writing posts about how to write Substack posts. Posts that reek of ChatGPT.
I’m not against AI as a tool, but when it’s clearly bot-written, it’s like spotting a rat hanging from your ceiling.
You just know.
So I ramboed in. Called him out. The justice!

And he responded. Calmly. Kindly. Hurt, even.
Said he uses AI because of major health issues. Hinted, gently, that I was being ableist.
Cue me feeling like a total asshole.

And yet—my cheeks still burn with annoyance.
That he has so much success. That he’s going easy-breezy with blatantly AI-generated blather, while I’m out here working my ass off, writing my fingers to the bone, trying to create quality material.

That maybe I wasn’t wrong.

The conversation wrapped up with him asking, “Couldn’t you offer me the grace of writing a terrible post? I’m often exhausted.”
And I said, “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. I’m probably just jealous of your success.”
He accepted my apology. And offered me a free e-book on how to grow a successful Substack.

Ten points, successful Stacker. Zero, Sandy.

---

Next case: now it’s you. What would you do?
You visit your childhood best friend. Fox News is blaring in the living room. Her husband is MAGA. You steer every conversation away from politics, but it’s pulsing there in the air between you. You tell yourself it’s just a disagreement about ideas. But it hunts you inside—because you know it’s not.

One night, after one too many glasses of wine, you all stumble on a discussion about immigration and you shut your trap. There’s no road that doesn’t lead to adrenaline and shutdown.
No one’s mind is changing tonight.

That night, you lie in the guest bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the radioactive silence.
The next day, you board the plane and say, “See you soon.”
A lie. You promised yourself you would never do this to yourself again.

---

Then there’s your sister.

You haven’t communicated well in years. There was a fight, then a slow drift.
You both pretended it blew over, but it didn’t. Her silence feels like unspoken judgment.

Now she wants to visit.

All you can think about is how much her visit would require of you. Cleaning the floors, the windows, the baseboards. The embarrassment of your crappy unicorn car.
Why don’t you get a real job instead of pleasing yourself with all this art stuff?

So instead of saying these things, you dodge—change the subject. But the truth is, it’s not just about the mess. It’s about everything that’s unsaid.

Because in silence, you start inventing. Imagining what she’s thinking, what she sees, what she’s not saying. Filling in the blanks with disapproval.

---

Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell each other what we really think, so we’re not writing each other’s lines in our heads?
Wouldn’t it be easier to take all that residual, building, atrophying rot-anger out on the guy in the parking lot?
On some prickly Substacker who complains about people censoring dissenting opinions—then deletes your magnanimous dissenting opinion?
(True story.)

---

So I’m out here, walking the razor’s edge between becoming a full-fledged asshole and a meek little mouse who always loses the argument. Maybe my whole heroic role is getting a bit stale. Maybe no one even wants my patronizing sympathy.

But maybe my total inability to deal with confrontation has made me useless at actually solving things. This compulsive desire for everything to be okay, to be moving in the right direction—it freezes change. If I want real solutions, I have to face things. Say hard truths. Speak the things I usually swallow.

Thembeka was right. Optimism is beautiful—but it’s exhausting when it’s the only tool I let myself use. It’s a roast-shaped candy cake.

Can’t eat this all day every day, can you?

It’s all a bit messy. But I’m trying to become someone you can trust.
Someone who says what she means—so you don’t have to unravel a knotted ribbon just to figure out what I’m really thinking.

What do you think, Substack—would you still love me if I told you how I really feel?

---

Looking for another personal essay to read? This one was popular: Thank you with Teeth but this one was deep: How Trump got me my dream house.

Want some fiction? These two are my favorites: Playback and Halving.

---

Consider subscribing to my visual art Substack, it's so lonely over there in that dusty forgotten corner of the internet:

1. To read more about Fred and his saga: here and the radio play inspired by him here.

2. Legitimate sounding fabricated quote.

3. Sound familiar

Obsidian Blackbird.

?