I, Anonymous
Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE and leave out the names of the guilty and innocent. The views and opinions stated here are not necessarily those of the Mercury.
Sharon’s “Haiku” for Him
[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
He peels off my clothes,
like a starving man would peel an orange
His lips taste my juicy sweetness
My legs tangle with his
We become one being
A burning furnace
In the cold cement basement of love—Anonymous
A First Step
[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
Here’s a notion for how we might creatively employ some of our climate mitigations funds. let blocks that can reach a consensus , close themselves off to vehicle traffic. Redo the water, sewer, and electrical lines below the street, remove the curbs and pavement, install permeable pavers for emergency access, and block off the street and give the property back to the residents. This will reduce the city’s need to maintain the street, get rid of a heat sink, create more green space, give homeowners more useable property, and give them a safer, cooler, more valuable home. My guess is that it will be a struggle to get the first dozen of these projects accomplished, and that then you will have a flood of applicants. Love and Peace.— Anonymous
Love You… But He Isn’t Worth It!
[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
I love the Blazers. However, Portland owes Tom “El Cheapo” Dumdum, nothing. Don’t give him the money. 120 Million is a lot of money for a man who has never done an honest days work. He stole money as a loan shark, lets not let him have any more. Portland’s money needs to be used on the Kids, Schools, Parks, Elderly, Public Transport, Roads, the I-5 Bridge and many more things. The people of Portland own the Blazers not Tommy D. The people of Portland deserve better.—Anonymous
“One of the Good Ones”
[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
Recently I was the recipient of the phrase “[You’re] one of the good ones.”, and it registered as a backhanded compliment immediately. Of course, I’m aware of the phrase’s historical use from whites on black men, but the inversion of it being applied to me (a white man) reminded me of a few things. Firstly, that I hardly thought myself deserving of such a remark for what I considered the bare minimum; and second, that the expectation of my demographic is an average of ill-treatment of all others.
I won’t deny that there’s an extraordinarily large number of white men that need to learn the basics of empathy, but the most important thing that the phrase reminded me of was the paradox of patronization. Back-handed compliments like the label “one of the good ones” don’t have the intended effect of being received as a sort of praise, but rather are received much like any other insult on the basis of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc. in that it only causes the recipient to withdraw further from the “other side” of the focal issue.
In a time where our society is more divided than ever into increasingly narrow in-groups, we ought to remind ourselves of the effect that othering anyone has, no matter who they are. Insulting the other side of the political aisle will only cause both to recede further into polarization, and intended compliments that carry an undertone of discrimination will equally only increase resentment in whoever the target is. Compliments (both backhanded and not), insults, and stereotypes may be cathartic in the moment, but it is my belief that to participate in such is to only wound our society in ways that take much longer to heal than to inflict.
While it’s satisfying to corral what we individually consider out-groups into “good” or “bad”, and to recognize the “good ones” of the other, it is equally deluding ourselves into further division. We’re creating an illusion when we label “good ones”, rather than actually accepting each other as people.—Anonymous
Who are you? Do you want me to tell you?
[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
I still think about this profile I read years ago of a professional lip reader, somebody whose work was respected enough that courts relied on it, and the one thing that stayed with me was that she stopped watching sports because she couldn’t stop reading what people were saying after bad calls. Everyone else saw a game. She saw contempt. I understood that immediately. There are things you can’t unnotice. After a while you stop hearing what people say about themselves and start seeing what they repeatedly choose instead. The indifference. The little betrayals of their own values that don’t even register anymore because everybody around them is making the same compromises. The strange gap between the person they sincerely believe they are and the one that’s actually moving through the world. That’s the painful part. Not hypocrisy exactly. More like watching something inside a person keep trying to become itself while the rest of them keeps forcing it into whatever shape will earn approval from the room. You see it most with people you knew when you were young. They used to feel singular. Now sometimes it’s hard to tell where they end and their tribe begins. How you can feel their fear and anxiety with doing anything that would stand up or disappoint their regressive social group, . Then, for a second, the old person flickers through and you remember they were in there all along. Maybe that’s why some rooms feel unbearable. Not because the people are bad. Because you can feel how much effort it takes for them not to be themselves, and after a while it’s hard not to grieve for someone who’s still alive.—Anonymous