Book club debacle
I had such a terrible experience at the book club tonight. I think it might be my 1st real negative experience since I moved to Grand Forks.
To be honest, I was somewhat trepidacious about going, thinking they weren't really gonna be my people. They certainly weren't. All younger than me, as I expected. I didn't feel uncomfortable talking about the book, but I didn't really feel a part of the conversation either, though I loved the book, Tommy Orange's There There.
They were making some interesting comments about the book, but they didn't seem to know anything about it. It was a very buzzy book when it came out a couple years ago.
Then I was trying to explain how I liked the book partly because it was so confrontational and I said I like a book that punches you in the face and doesn't care if you don't like it. And this woman, Shannon, the obvious Queen of the Club, interrupted me to scold me about not understanding violence and "if I just turned it around and saw it from someone else's perspective"...as if I was talking literally about violence. So I said "I meant rhetorically not literally" and she continued to scold me. She said something about if I'd just read more books I'd understand (like her I suppose) or something like that. This after I introduced myself as a librarian. I mean, this bitch has known me for 45 minutes and she's perfectly comfortable attacking my worldview and making assumptions about me, including that I don't read enough, even though I'm 25 years older than her and she knows absolutely nothing about me.
I was telling my friend Sandy about it later and I realized it was eerily similar to a weird argument I had with Liz on Facebook, where she misunderstood something I said to be denying the existence of domestic violence, which was even more obnoxious than this bitch tonight because she knew me quite well and she should have known I would never believe that.
Maybe the thing tonight was just Millennials versus Boomers. I don't think of myself as a Boomer so I'm always surprised when I get that reaction, like I got from Rachel's daughter Jamie about student loan debt (I couldn't possibly understand what it's like, though I myself have a student loan in my 50s).
Or maybe I just piss some people off. I mean, I do just piss some people off and I suppose I was overdue to piss someone off in North Dakota. If Shannon the Queen was a guy, I would have said she was dick swinging, but regardless, she was making sure I knew she was King Shit Super Reader. Which I did and I do and I really can't be bothered to unpack or address this because fuck her, she's welcome to be the Queen of her little club and I'll go find "my people" who are out there (I know because I found, and left, a bunch of them in Syracuse) who aren't intimidated by someone who is a "person of information" and actually comprehends shit and speaks coherently about them and doesn't cede the Smartest Person in the Room ground to you.
I was particularly disappointed tonight because the facilitator just let her scold me and didn't say anything to try and dissipate the tension. When I got up and left a few minutes later, she said something about "hope you come back," which is hilarious because of course I would never and they wouldn't want me to.
And on top of the shitty company, there's nothing for me to eat or drink at the local brew pubs! Get a gluten free roll for your sandwiches, you lazy fucks! And stock some decent hard cider. It's not that difficult!
ADDENDUM
I decided to write an email to the usual facilitator of the group, who was not there. And she very kindly wrote back and apologized and ask me to share the deets if I was willing, so I did:
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