Who Stole Me and Made Me Cooler?
Feb 16th, 2009 | By Bernard Bygott | Category: Unhealthy Living
There has to be more than this. I’m certain that I saw in some movie somewhere that life is much more exciting. Where’s the part where I discover the lost arc of the covenant, or pose as a psychic while solving murders with superpowers of observation, or find a breathtakingly beautiful woman that appreciates all my genuinely deplorable quirks? (Okay, the second one was from TV, but you get my point.) Life cannot possibly be this boring, dull, and superpowerless; there is fictional evidence that I have observed on a daily basis that tells me differently. Yet, here I sit in front of my stone-age computer, doing my very best to type with four fingers in my mom’s basement. This sounds suspiciously like I’m being ripped off. I request a refund… no, wait, somebody else might cash that check!
I’m the victim of identity fraud. A very clever person has acquired my social security number, an old address, and (apparently) some form of fake picture ID, a combination that gives them total control of my life. While all of that stealing and forgery should upset me, the real issue that concerns me at the moment is how much better this person is at being me than I am at being myself. I think the largest sum of money I ever spent in one day involved a large pizza with toppings. Other-Guy-Me spent two thousand dollars on electronics from three different stores in just his first day on the job! I can’t even imagine how nice that shit must be or how much better it is than any of the stuff that I actually own. Why don’t I spend two thousand dollars a day as me? That sounds… really fun! Me: been me for thirty years– pizza. Other-Guy-Me: been me for one day– super-cool electronics. Clearly Other-Guy-Me is the brains of this operation; clearly Other-Guy-Me is living my TV/Movie life; clearly Other-Guy-Me is awesome!
This got me thinking about what else Other-Guy-Me might be doing better than me as me. Has he discovered my cryptic superpowers? Does he wear cool hats? Did he let the dogs out? You see, when you realize that someone else is much better than you at being you, suddenly your own potential for awesomeness seems boundless. I already know that I can’t pick up women in a bar, or even afford to go out to one, but Other-Guy-Me doesn’t know that. Other-Guy-Me might be the strong but silent, chiseled, tatted-up bouncer at Coyote Ugly who all the hot bartenders go home with after they’re finished doing body-shots/entertaining-the-less-cool-dudes-who-actually-pay for-their-drinks. Or maybe Other-Guy-Me runs his own comic book store that refuses to stock anything involving characters created in the last twenty years or stuff categorized as “graphic novels” (no, wait, that’s not cool at all, that’s my actual fantasy). The point is, in Other-Guy-Me’s hands, my life is amazing, one string of sensationally Hollywoodesque life-orgasms after another. To top it all off, in the event of failure, Other-Guy-Me always has someone else to blame; he’s got the ultimate backup plan! His sugar momma gets tired of giving him all those free meals without a ring; send the bill to me. His investment broker makes some unwise venture choices (Uh oh… the sugar momma is his wife); send the bill to me. In fact, any bill at all… send the bill to me. There’s an irrefutable beauty, even elegance to Other-Guy-Me’s unfettered lack of personal responsibility, almost as if he’s the main character in his own sitcom where bad stuff can happen, even bad stuff that he deserves, but not so bad where it can’t be resolved by the end of the episode, because inventing a whole new main character and hiring a whole new main actor would cause thoughts of real life, and nobody ever wants that; that would defeat the purpose of entertainment and… life.
It was either a great man or a mediocre blogger who once said, “Identity fraud is a blessing in disguise.” (It couldn’t have been both.) We all need heroes in our lives, real heroes that don’t just exist in moving picture boxes. Admiring the tenacity of Jack Bauer or the apathy of Homer Simpson only gets us so far in life. Mind you, it gets us pretty damn far, but there are some upper limits! For real guidance and inspiration, we need to look to real people who exist in the real world who have managed to escape real problems. Crusaders who buck the system, laugh at the rules, and send us the bill; role models who can teach us just how lame we are as they max out our credit and pilfer our savings. It doesn’t take a village of these bastards, or even any army of moderately despicable half-lives, just one or two soulless debauchers to show us how great our lives already are with a little creative defrauding.
Other-Guy-Me, thank you… and God bless!
-Me
OMG! This is brilliant!
Please send it to the New Yorker.
Maybe you’ve uncovered EXACTLY what happened with the big banks. They were all busy being US until they couldn’t be US any more.
It’s all becoming clear…
Seriously, send this to The New Yorker.
Please.
The New Yorker has a porn section?! I’m so there!
But how do we know that you’re not really this other guy, or this other guy isn’t you? Or that neither of you are you? This is just the sort of postmodern identity politics that have caused today’s schools to fail and brought on the bankruptcies of banks.
I can just hear all those liberal whiners. “Oh, I can’t go into debt! I need someone else to do it for me!” I can go into debt easily enough by myself without needing anyone’s help, thank you! And by doing so, I’m helping the economy!
People have to spend all their money–and everybody else’s–before someone does it for them!
@Gary Indiana
There is only one way to find out if I am, in fact, who I say I am: If I float… I’m a witch.
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