Pat Taub
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN
Imagine you’ve had a visible medical scare: a dermatologist has carved a chunk out of your forehead, or perhaps you are using crutches. But you have a lunch date with your best friend, and as you approach their table, they ask, politely horrified, “What happened to you?”
You get three sentences out before they interrupt, “That’s awful! When ________ (a vaguely related malady) happened to me, I . . . ” You think silently, ”I didn’t have to drive here. I could have made a salad for myself at home,” because you no longer exist.
From decades of college teaching, I contracted a bad case of narcissism-PTSD. Given captive audiences, professors can lose all restraint. At times I would hide in the mailroom to avoid a colleague who would tell me at length how their weekend had been. It made me work hard to be modest, to be curious about others.
I used to visit a musician who was certain he had had an exciting life. Everything reminded him of him. Once, I had listened to the end of my endurance, and when he paused for breath, I asked him, calmly, “X, would you do something for me? Say these five words: ‘And how are YOU, Michael?” He grew pale but he had a moment of realization. I admit that was savage, but the alternative was standing up, walking out of the restaurant, never to return.
Reacting to a narcissist who talks nonstop about himself
My years in the online dating rodeo (my saddle, alas, under the horse) were dense with others’ self-advertisement. I would answer the predictable question, “Tell me about yourself,” briefly, because I knew my own stories and wanted to hear hers.
Many of the accomplished women across the table seemed to see this opportunity as if they were Ruby Keeler in FORTY-SECOND STREET. They would avidly grasp their fifteen minutes of fame, and another fifteen, and several more. On my train ride home, my head would be vibrating with the deluge of facts and stories. (My wife, I should add, is the glorious exception to this. She doesn’t feign interest. She is interested.)
I have several theories about the source of this generously offered verbal self-love, ranging from optimistic to bleak. Some of these oblivious people may have been adored children in families where every stick drawing was worthy of the Prado. Maybe they were praised excessively by elementary school teachers for knowing the answer quicker than their peers.
Or the reverse: at some time in their lives, they were ignored and became the people standing by themselves at parties. I would hate to think that we are all secretly dying for attention.
I dream of a flexible strip that could be adhered to the foreheads of listeners, like a gas gauge on the dashboard, letting the speaker know that the word-tank is filling up dangerously and it’s past time to stop talking. But until that invention comes, we need to know that people can truly be “bored to death.” Ask your physician. Or your nearest funeral home.
Some vaudevillian said, “Always leave them wanting more.” Good advice.
There’s a convention in spy movies. The villains hold someone’s head under water, bringing them up only to shout, “Who gave you the codes?” or “Where are the jewels?” half-drowning the helpless person over and over until they give up and answer.
I’d like to see a new version of the Narcissus story where the exasperated townspeople give him a “swirly.” (You could look it up.) Gasping, choking, he forswears his own reflection in the pool and vows to ask everyone he meets, “What’s up with YOU today?” and to listen closely to the answer.
Two women enjoying a mutually satisfying conversation without a narcissist in sight
Michael Steinman is a writer and retired English professor, who thinks his real work is his jazz blog (JAZZ LIVES), where, through videos of live performances worldwide, he “sends out love in a swinging 4/4.” Michael proudly proclaims, “I am married to the best person on the planet.”
