Anger Management
Eater X's door opened slowly and the stench of an unshowered body that had spent 2 days in a poorly ventilated car slipped out. Eater X looked like shit: deeply set wrinkles and stains on his t-shirt and shorts; baggy, bloodshot eyes; and greasy, matted, hat-head hairs that couldn't seem to agree upon a direction.
"Damn, man! What happened to you?" I asked, a bit taken aback by his appearance.
"I just got back from Myrtle Beach a few minutes ago. Drove all through the night with Bob in a rented Chevy Malibu. I haven't slept more than a few hours since Thursday. I wouldn't call this one of my better days."
"Good trip?" I asked.
"So-so," he said. "Now what are you talking about? What is this letter?"
I walked over to his computer, cued up the world's greatest competitive eating website, beautifulbrian.com, and clicked on a picture of Larry "The Legend" McNeil, the IFOCE's 19th-ranked eater. A page bearing the headline, "THE LEGEND SMELLS A RAT!" popped up, and underneath it appeared the text of an email that Larry had apparently sent to Beautiful Brian.
"Read it." I said.
Eater X sat down and began to read.
It was a short, cuss-filled tirade slamming Eater X, his friend and fellow eater Bob Shoudt, and the IFOCE for a host of alleged moral and ethical breaches. It was angry and threatening and, well, here, you can read it right here. I'll just copy it for you.
Hey brian i am writing this as it comes to me so sorry, but i just got a call from loren and he said he got an email from Humble "B.S." bob saying him and janus/eater x/ whaler /mr virtue/ love of the sport my ass, just got confirmations and are headed to myrtle beach, this to sounds like a fu-ing fix to me, loren talked to bob earlier in the week and he said he wasnt going, appearently there wasnt enough "star power" so these 2 got the call, is it really worth the travel for them to come down here to spilit 500, i guess so, i am so pissed right now you cannot even imagine, one the IFOCE would pull some fu--ing bulls--t like this and two these "fellow eaters" are willing to go for it, print this word for fu--ing word for all i care the, I hope that some how some way i can pull a rabbit out of my ass tomorrow and kick the living sh-- out of both of them, i can tell you one thing i will never be so motivated as i will be tomorrow, i wish we could line it up right now, comrades huh DEAD 2 me from now on, these 2 would do well to stay far far away from me, I guess i have fuel for my fire from here on, this is some rambling b-llshi-- and i am sorry gfro that, i hope tomorrow "The Legend" will truly be born!!!!!
Eater X finished reading the email, and he exhaled dramatically and then smiled. "Do you know what I think about anger?" he asked. I didn't respond because I didn't know the answer, so he continued. "It's my least favorite emotion. It rarely does anything to help a situation or to prevent a similar one in the future. It's a tangent. And when you explore it when you have better things to do, you get lost and you lose, at the very least, time. Now sadness," and he raised his finger to signal that a point was to be made. "Now sadness I get. Sadness makes sense. Whether something unfortunate happens by chance or whether someone does something to bring it about, I can be sad that the situation occurred or that a chain of events was set into motion that brought about my frustration. And sadness doesn't hurt other people. But anger? Come on! Anger's never much impressed me, except as a reason to laugh. At least on the level at which I operate, there's something funny about watching someone simmer."
"I know what you mean," I answered. "It is pretty funny."
"It's fantastic!"
Eater X fixed his eyes on the computer screen again and reread Larry's email, and then without prompting offered, "I wish Larry'd run this by Bob or me first. He's not right about any of it. Bob and I weren't summoned to South Carolina by the IFOCE. I approached them on Wednesday, and then on Thursday I approached Bob. He agreed to it on Friday. It was my idea because I was bored and thought Bob or I might win a title. Bob didn't even really want to go. I put him up to it. And the IFOCE didn't pay for us to go. We paid for our own trip, rented a car, slept in shifts on the highway. Larry can hate me if he wants--it's his right even if I don't get it--but he shouldn't be shitting on Bob and Kate and George and Rich and Dave."
"Well, so what do you do now?" I asked, thinking that he'd want to email his side of the story to the best moderator in the history of all websites, pickle champ Beautiful Brian Seiken.
"You know what I usually do," he asked me, "when I receive angry letters or even stupid ones that don't seem well worth my time? I take the letter and edit it, correct all of the punctuation and spelling and grammar, and then I return the proofread copy to the sender. It's a jerk move." I nodded, and Eater X completed his thought. "I had a Spanish pen pal once who wrote me a letter and then, two months later, a second letter wondering why I hadn't yet responded to his first letter. I didn't care for the fact that some kid I'd never met had the nerve to criticize me for being slow and lazy, so I corrected his shitty English, changed the date at the top of the page, crossed out his signature and signed mine in its place, and then I sent it back to him. I never got another letter from him. I did the same thing to a guy who took exception to a story I'd written for the school paper back in college, and to a girl who kept writing crazy letters to me long after we'd broken up. It worked very well in communicating my message, which was always the same: I don't care about you!"
I laughed. "Will you do that today? With Larry's letter I mean?"
Eater X thought for a moment, not so much it seemed to figure out his course, but more so to choose the right words and to justify his tack. "No. I won't. I'm not mad at Larry for his email, and I don't even know if he's mad at me still. And he was writing a letter to a friend, a casual letter. I doubt he even proofread it. And even if he did, correcting someone's grammar is petty and mean and completely irrelevant. True intelligence is measured better by the thoughts someone produces than by the dumb little symbols he uses to express them. Grammar, spelling, punctuation--they say nothing deep about a person. We could pick the world apart if we chose to focus on the superficial. Hey, you're better looking! Oh, she makes more money! Fuck that."
"So then what will you do?" I asked, expecting that he'd plan something.
"Nothing," he said. "You know I only shoot when shot at it, and even then I won't always shoot back. It depends if I've lost, what I've lost, if I care, what I hope to recover, and if I hope to gain. I don't think any harm was done today, and I don't think I have anything to prove by firing back. I'm gonna let this one fade. I won't say a word, except what I've already said to you."
It was almost 10:30 now, and Eater X still smelled bad. It wasn't a matter of his clothes and body needing to air out a little bit. It was a matter of soap and water and washcloth needing to come together heroically. As I backed away to excuse myself from his apartment so that he could sleep and--pray--shower, I asked what he thought of the state of South Carolina.
"It's okay, I guess. It's a little too flat, and I wish were a few more deciduous trees. But the thing that really stood out to me was how many of their stores sell fireworks. If this country were to ban fireworks, South Carolina's entire economy would crumble."
"No shit! Right," I said, agreeing. And I closed the door behind me and Aaaaaah! breathed in fresh air.
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