Let me start by saying I am generally a very patient and tolerant person. I can accept most people at face value, and for the most part can find something to like about most everybody. But…
A friend of Aunt Squeegee stayed with us for a couple nights on her way out of the country (let’s call her Peggy). She’s a New Yorker, a Buddhist, often travels internationally, and is involved in the art world; all impressive or interesting. But she’s an egotist, clueless, rude, and hypercompetitive; ugh.
Peggy hadn’t seen the house we moved into recently. While giving her a tour, and telling her what we’d done since moving in and what we planned to do in the future, she had to top every story. I know that exchanging stories is normal, but when we talked about electrical work, Peggy had to tell us how the power to her house was cut (physically) while she was out of the country, which triggered her tenants to stop paying rent, and how when she got back (after a temporary fix which she was able to arrange from halfway across the world), as the new power cable was being installed by a guy who said he knew what he was doing but didn’t causing her to have to find someone else at the last minute, who discovered a main junction box next to the shower which wasn’t to code so it had to be moved (it went on for a while longer but I suddenly found the a spot on the very interesting). Mention of some plumbing work brought a similarly long and perilous story involving replacing all the plumbing in her house. Mention drywall, another story involving how Peggy discovered the walls of her house were made of ornately carved wood that were used to print giant posters for a Broadway show, and no one had ever heard of such a thing but she finally found an obscure expert who validated what they were, and had never seen such fine craftsmanship and he’d be willing to pay a lot of money for them but she’d never part with them.
One night we went out for a pre-dinner drink. First Peggy was astounded that a small bar in the hinterlands so far from New York (the backwoods of Seattle) could produce such sophisticated drinks (they make their own (excellent) aquavit); she then proceeded to use the word “sophisticated” a dozen or more times over the next couple hours (to describe her tastes, her experiences, her travels, or herself). After getting over her amazement, Peggy began lecturing us about how in touch she was with herself and how she was able to take advantage of whatever the world sent her way due to training she’d had. As an example she said she walked into the studio of a Russian artist during an open studio night; during the conversation the woman told her she should go to Kiev, her inner voice agreed so she did and a lot of wonderful things happened (no detail though (thankfully)). Aunt Squeegee brought up a woman they both know (let’s call her Joanne) who was once traveling and felt compelled to stop her car and walk into the nearby woods. She stopped but then left in fear. As that part of the conversation was winding down I said (half in jest) that the difference between Peggy and the Joanne is that if Joanne had gone to the artist studio, she wouldn’t have gone to Kiev. You’d think that someone claiming to be in touch with the world would see that comment for what it was. But sent Peggy off on a spiel about how she could never know what Joanne would do because she had no visibility into her thoughts, then explained how her 12 years of Buddhist study with the most revered masters IN THE WORLD and her 7 years of ninja training with the most skilled teachers IN THE WORLD (in which her final was defending herself against seven black belts (and Colin Powell’s bodyguard was in the same class and he had to remove the glock from his ankle holster before he could begin his final (and during one exercise she had to be blindfolded and defend herself against 4 black belts (I was going to comment how that was like Luke Skywalker but I was afraid she’d spend another 30 minutes educating me on how her ninja training was nothing like a silly movie and how I must be demeaning her accomplishments for me to even think of a comparison like that))))) made her what she is, and since Joanne wasn’t trained like she was she couldn’t be able to take advantage of opportunities the way she could. I tried twice to tell her that I was kidding, but she rehashed her previous statements, until I finally gave up in frustration.
At dinner we heard about how she defended herself against a pack of wild dogs in a Tibetan monastery with nothing but her camera tripod and how if she had gotten bit it would have been an arduous two-day journey to a hospital for a rabies shot (possibly on the back of a yak, but I’m not sure because I started tuning out again).
On the way home she regaled us with a yarn about a friend whose mother was involved in the art world (specifically the abstract expressionists) in the 1950s and when they visited the mother in The Hamptons (I always imagine it being pronounced with a Thurston Howell accent) they went to the cemetery where Jackson Pollack was buried and to the liquor store where he bought the booze he was drinking when he crashed his car and died and to the tree he crashed into and on and on and on.
I don’t doubt that she’s been involved with the events she mentions (though I am sure there is a lot of exaggeration), but (a) she rarely stops talking, (b) 90% of what she says is either bragging or name dropping, and © whatever someone else did, she did it too but better, or it was much more difficult, or it was unique in some way.
Thankfully we dropped her off at the airport last night. I’m not alone in my assessment, Aunt Squeegee agreed with my thoughts, and heartily apologized for inviting her to stay. And it won’t happen again.
Thus ends my rant. My spleen is vented and I feel much better.
