The Revelation of Self

Pretty Lady has occasionally been accused of being a tad self-involved; and it is true that she does have a tendency to maunder on a bit. But there is a reason for Pretty Lady's self-involvement which extends beyond the self, as dear Cary so eloquently puts it:

It may be presumptuous of me to mention it, but there is a class system in America, and there is a system of brutal power relations, and a system of repression and of hateful discourse, and this system is not benign, but has a purpose, which is to make sure that no one sits in the owner's booth but the owner and his friends. Lack of self-knowledge is truly a luxury of the self-absorbed, and the truly self-absorbed are not those who reveal themselves in publication but those who hold all the cards and yet reveal nothing. It is a luxury of power to avoid introspection, to merrily skip out on the self-interrogation that leads to humility.

This, Pretty Lady thinks, nails it. It is why she so injudiciously reveals herself, in streams and streams of profligate verbiage, on the World Wide Web for everyone, even ex-boyfriends, to read. It is why she gets the heeby-jeebies when smug, complacent individuals grunt the exact same intonation of 'Hey, how's it goin?' every time they see her, even if they see her three times a day; it is why she will first say increasingly provocative things to these people, to find out if anybody is home, and then duck into doorways to avoid them, when she finds there isn't.

It is why she rails against the purveyors of platitudes. It is why she seeks out and befriends the freaks, the damaged and the inconveniently brilliant. It is why she avoids suburbs.

And in case you wonder, sometimes, in the dim recesses of your pedestrian brains, what Pretty Lady thinks of you--all you discreet, laconic persons who look upon her with suprise, bewilderment and more than a tinge of disdain--well, confidentially, she thinks you're dull as dirt.