Why Don't They Seem Guilty of Pretension?

On a park bench, Nina and Harold discussed an issue they both felt was disturbing. It was about manipulators who seemed to view themselves as attractive even though they weren't what – anyone, probably – wanted.

“As if,” he said, “they don't have to deal with that they are manipulators.”

“yeah, it's weird.” She looked downwards for a second before adding: “Is it really true, that no one would believe their story about them?”

“Hardly,” he answered.

“So how can they get away with it?”

“If you mean Peter, then it's because when he intimidates, they fall for the illusion of his power being an absolute notion of threat against their integrity. Probably they feel they can't oppose him without him being able to seem real about himself, in a sense that doesn't make him feel small. ... Of course some feel threatened simply because he's a macho guy. But that can hardly be the most important aspect of it!”

She looked thoughtful. “That dude! Well he isn't really a nuisance until one finds out that what he really wants is to seem worthy of everyone's sexual interests!”

“No! I know! I could have been wrong about him, for a while, also.”

“Hm. When such people pretend to be worthy of one's attention, they mask sometimes themselves behind that one can make a mistake, occasionally, about one or two others, who don't really want to fake that stuff – but about whom one might imagine it. When he for example pretended I was a someone who didn't know my own interests if I didn't respond they way he wanted, then he also suggested that his kid brother who actually would be there and fake it even worse! But that kid brother of his, ah, he isn't really that much of a fake. He's sort of about it, wants it, but he isn't into enforcing himself upon someone, I think. At least not very easily, that is.”

“Hm, no, I agree. He cares about humility as a virtue, I guess.”

“Who wouldn't with such a big bro?” She giggled.

He looked thoughtful. “How about those two whom you were intimidated by for being callow, Steve and Jenny? They both are siblings of Dan. Ehm, you know, Dan, that tough guy who seems fond of pretending his religion is a call for saying he's innocent even when he can't be. i think they both are younger than he is.”

“That's different! They feel they are secure, probably, with him about and protesting about whatever goes against them as well as himself.”

“I guess being that way is something that makes him feel that he has a right to pretend everyone else is mediocre, and thereby that he should get his dick into anyone who perhaps is into anything of that kind.”

“That's why I feel that these types of fellows are all about trying to be into sex although they shouldn't have it!”

“Exactly that is what either of them could have as the target of their insinuations about themselves as those fellow victims of being unjustly accused!”

She sat and stared for a while. “You know, I would like to cry about this, but I can't because those guys have had it my tears are about me being especially sensitive about not being able to admit that I want them.”

“Have both of them done that?”

“Yeah!”

“Exactly those two, then?”

“One more guy has, and then one woman has done it too, actually.”

He thought for himself, for a while. Then he stood up and proclaimed: “I don't feel any woman is about that trick. If you have it that woman – who is it by the way? – had it in her, then you probably can see it in the way she manipulates for seeming real about love. ...”

“It's old Beatrice. ... She does pretend it!”

“Oh ... her. Yeah, OK!”

“You see! There is one.”

“Hm. Yeah, OK, that's one! ... Strange for me that I didn't realize it! She has actually almost done it to me as well. But, you know what? She simply pretends there's no point in seeming uninterested in her. It's not she, but guys who can seem like they're worthy of it without seeming to pretend they're appreciating themselves for no reason!”

The Blackmail

As Gina saw her twin brother for the first time for about since childhood, she felt surprised and troubled about what his attitude seemed to be nowadays. Because he was into stating that associates of his were unreliable, and self-centeredly he spoke about them as foolish and unreasonable. Thereby she felt that he had probably grown out of his character and sufficed, somehow, to become awkwardly into indecorous and improper criticism.

The parlour they sat in was dimly lit. They had met here in order to talk about the fifteen years that had passed since he and she separated when their parents divorced. He had lived with his father and she her mother, and those two had been too antagonistic against each other to even let their two children meet. But a few days ago Gina contacted her brother and he agreed to meet her.

“But Harold,” she asked, “do you really mean to tell me they're all into such pretences and stuff? That is, I don't believe they could all be into it without that having to mean you should change your workplace!”

“That's because,” Harold answered, “if I move to another workplace, those who are nasty to me at my present one will have it seem that they had reason enough for treating me that way. That is they wold sooner or later have the new people also treat me that way!”

Gina seemed concerned when she said: “I bet that it isn't about what there could be to that danger of oddities that you don't want to realize aren't actually too weird to accept. ...”

“It's about those oddities seeming normal and there hardly being any occasions of security against that they can be trusted as normal - not for them, that is. But for me there has been!”

“And what are they?”

“One of them is that my colleague has pretended that I am inane, and that she has everyone thinking about me that way. Also, she pretends I'm artfully into pretending everyone else is immature in the ways she pretends I am. Thereby, also, the rest of my colleagues are into viewing me as such.”

“Really? What can be the reason for them taking her part and believing her all that much?”

He sighed. “As far as I can tell it's because she seemingly isn't too stuck up to be trusted.”

She looked at him. “Do you mean she isn't trying to pretend she's really something but still trying to pretend you are such a low person that you should be seen that way?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “She really does seem to be into that.,and she is quite artful in her pretensions.”

“Oh! And at the same time she pretends that you are the artful one?”

“Yeah, that's what she is to me.” a bit gloomily.

“How come then you don't go out and tell everybody that you are not artful, and that she's just pretending that you are?”

“I've tried that. But they have still believed her rather than me!”

“It's not true that you've come the right way about it if they don't apprehend that you aren't quite into anything like that, and it's not true that she shouldn't be the one whom you could have seem to be the one who's artful and fake!”

He sighed again. “It's easy to say that, Gina. Bit there's no way to stop her from having them believe her just the same!”

“Then there should be another solution. Why don't you go talk to her about it and say to her that she's wrong about you?”

“When I speak to her she's into believing her own stories about me, and treats me as though I was being artful about her. ...”

His sister looked thoughtful. “What then can make her seem so believable? Isn't it she who aught to seem as it is to view you that way?”

Looking at her he answered. “Gina, it's not I who can decide that about her. I can't have seem to be what she really is. It's not I who can stop that process of them trusting her and not me.”

“Oh, and then I have to pretend she isn't to be seen as that fake whom they should ostracized rather than you? Aren't they into any form of realizing what is really truthful and what isn't?”

“They seem to be into that, but only for reasons that aren't applicable in my case.”

She looked chocked. “Oh, so that woman gets away with her blackmail and you just can't do anything! Then I should go speak to them! Perhaps I can set things straight around there.”

“I hope so. If you can do that, then perhaps things will become alright for me again.”

“Good. Then I will go there and straighten things out tomorrow, and I will do it so that they'll actually will realize that it isn't you who are stuck-up nor artful!”

“Great! Thereby we can work together and perhaps even come to terms with those colleagues of mine. Do you know the address of my workplace?”

“No. Perhaps you can scribble it down for me?”

He did. Handing her the note he stated: “Now see to it that she isn't there when you start talking to them. Because she is a very sly and cunning woman. Thereby you can perhaps have the upper hand against her.”

A few days later, after Gina had spoken to Harold's colleagues, his partner said to him: “I see that you and your sister have formed an alliance against me. How come you think we should think you are what you say just because you have a sister backing you up? Isn't it you who should behave in a certain way without having to involve a someone to pretend you do it?”

He looked at her. “There's no reason for me to be talking to you! It's not you who should ever have been at my work place to begin with! Because I have suffered a lot of blackmail from you, and I ain't willing to seem applicable for it again!”

The Womanizer

There was a sensual feeling about him, that womanizer, of whom Thelma had heard that she'd better watch out. To her it seemed that he wouldn't ever try to be as bad as they had said. Somehow he seemed to figure it out about her, why she felt a yearning desire at this very moment. While she was thinking about it he showed himself to her as smart at cultivating emotions of affection, by saying to her that she was all that he could want for the sake of regarding her husband as the type of man who could make a girl seem fortunate in her marriage.

As she thought about it, she heard a bird sing, and she wondered if he even got nature to tell her that she should be his. She looked at him and felt that he might mean to her what she guessed that at least tens of other females had felt about him: the he might call for there to be a prediction about her that she be viewed as innocent, even if she did those nasty things that men and women should not do but could occasionally be wanting to do with each other – as lovers and perhaps also as partners in some smart business of ... of dealing with care for anyone else as too mediocre to be seen as for real, somehow, she felt.

In the air of his essence, Thelma moreover found it hard to resist the thought of actually having it she somehow had the right to interpret herself as being actually supreme, which she hardly ever had felt before. But in another sense,she felt that she should say to herself that she aught to leave this situation immediately. Then she suddenly noticed that she was also sexually aroused by him, which made her feel nauseous about the fact that she had interpreted him as a guy so elope from. ...

Then she saw another woman coming near them. She looked at her and recognized her a little, as someone who seemed to go to much of the same boutiques as she herself did. It was a woman whom she had never thought of as being more promiscuous than most. But even as she was thinking this, she saw her begin to cling to vulgarly the man. Fairly soon she was kind of all over him.

To her astonishment watching this made her feel more aroused. It was as if she had it in her inner circles to feel that he was bad, and therefore she aught to desire him. Seemingly the desire grew and she felt all the more excited when she tried to think about that he was a bad man – which she felt he was, both for herself and for that other woman.

As she was thinking about it, and trying to control her emotions, she saw it in her, the other woman  -  that she was trying to pretend Thelma was evil just for staring at them! Then she looked at him. Now it seemed he regarded himself as the man of choice for any woman who claimed herself to have a good inclination for creating love affairs or fun with belief in oneself as suitable for them.

Thelma thereby felt trapped. How should she now interpret herself as a good enough woman to be a housewife and also a lover, for the husband she had? If she didn't find a way to avoid feeling that she had a right to be like the woman that she saw clinging all over that man, then how could she possibly continue being respectable, she asked herself.

Then she saw that other woman alluringly try to pretend to consent to Thelma's apparent interest in the man. At the same, though, she vulgarly exposed her own interest in him as something she, Thelma, must appreciate to the extent she wanted to share him with her.

Even so, Thelma thought about her husband, and the way they had been trying for seven years to build a life together. Now she risked betraying him. Thereby she decided to try to feel that her emotions about the man in front of her were wrong in the way that they made her disregard the feelings she had been having for her husband.

She looked at the two of them one last time, then she finally decided to go to the buss stop, and then pretend as if this never happened. ... Thereby she felt relieved, and when she came home she made love to her husband as if she never would fall for a womanizer!

What Some Do for Conviviality

This story is about a girl being a bit humiliated in a locker room. Like all stories I write, it's far from excellent, but is a bit too realistic to actually be an absurdity and also has a theme that is somewhat interesting.

How They Feel about School ...

“I feel that it's you guys who are of hypocrisy!” Peter declared. “Fred is!” he continued. “And so are you! Because Fred is the one who pissed in your flower pot, and you just don't want to accept it as a fact that there's no way I could've done it - nor has my sister! It's not us! It's Fred! Or else it's one of the Russians!”

“Oh I saw you and your sis in the area at a time near then!” the custodian he was speaking to answered. “And there seems to be no trace of whatever Fred you mean ... and hardly of any Russians either!”

Peter smiled smugly and let his pale face say that it wasn't he who could have seemed to be innocent unless he really was it.

Sally, who was there with the custodian looked at him. Thoughtfully she said: “Peter, we know that you and your sis both enjoy compromising against people's decency! Isn't that she who was in that toilet the other day?! The one who didn't flush, left the door to the hall open and then also seemingly had pissed on the floor next to that door?! We're not quite sure if that pee just ran out into the corridor, or if whoever it was dared to pee on the floor outside that door.”

Peter held back a laughter. After a short while he responded: “I guess it's not she who would try to be arrogant against you since there was a penalty issued against her for participating in her friends' orgy at Lado's place.”

Sally and the custodian looked at him, then at each other. They both realized the boy was a liar. And his sister, they knew, was too. But their lies were only half-alike. She was sort of even more innocent-looking than he, but he was more able than she to intimidate those who discovered him (or for example her or so) to be lying. Together the two of them very often fooled even the police.

Looking fairly troubled, the custodian said: “We seem to have an issue, again, of that they won't admit anything!”

Sally looked at him. “Yeah! It seems, thereby, that we have no choice but to ask some people to analyze the pee and compare it with blood tests from the two of them! ... Perhaps we should also take blood samples from a few others. ... We could, you know, Peter, if you even let us know more exactly. ...”

“Yeah! That's right!” the custodian muttered.

Peter's voice seemed to indicate keenness on being expeditious when he answered: “The Russians are over there!” he said and pointed. “At least some of them live there. But they don't care for me more than that they seem to be whatever the Russians can be! As for Fred I can not say that he seems to be the one to trust except for being a menace by seeming to be where he's not, and he can there be seem not to be wherever he was when he's been there!”

The custodian bent over towards Sally and whispered: “He's trying to seem accountable and sane, and thus trustworthy, I think.”

Sally nodded back. Then turned her head towards the guy they were interrogating, again. “I guess you're into that I should believe that they are more than you and she into being naughty in that kind of dirty sense! Right?!”

Peter's bland face gave off a faint smug. “It's she! It's that Russian girl with blond-red braids!” he said.

“Why she?!” the custodian asked, trying to cross-examine him.

He smiled a bit more broadly and stated: “She's very much into sex with pee and such! I've even seen her in the porn movies!”

“Okay, it might be her, I guess! Do you know what her name is?”

“No, I'm not sure about it!”

While they were talking Peter's sister had arrived. “Yeah, it's she! I know what class she goes to! .. or at least almost! That is we had to share some gym classes with them. Let's see. It's one of the East house's classes! I bet you can check the schedule about exactly which one; we shared the gym last Thursday.”

Sally looked at the two of them. “I know, however, that the two of you are often innocent looking even when you're guilty. Even so, I'm willing to admit that it's possibly she who did it this once! But I feel, thereby, that the police should test her as well as you, and perhaps there are some others who should be tested as well?!”

After a while Peter's sister responded: “So what?! It's not I who has to fret! Because it's I who usually don't feel like committing myself to having it police should not be investigating such stuff!” She smiled politely.

The custodian looked at her. “Do they Jeanette,” he asked, “seem to feel differently about that?”

Jeanette looked back at him. “No, I mean yes! They seem to feel differently about it!”

Peter nodded his head. After a while he added this to her statement: “It's not she or I who should be punished just because they don't know how to follow the law! It's we who are law-abiding enough not to interfere when the policemen try to do their work! It's they, and not us, who try to disturb the police from being into what there actually is to investigate. I, for one, know they have been selling drugs to people in our school!”

The custodian looked at Sally and replied: “How about that pee next to the to the door towards the corridor should be checked also for potential drug contents?!”

Jeannette looked at Peter. “Yeah! It should! And as they check it, they should look very much into how I feel about those drugs! In fact they can even be found in the classroom, and they are there among my friends! I feel they are very very disturbing! And I feel they should be abolished from school unless we should all be aloud to piss everywhere!”

Sally and the custodian exchanged a glance. Then they looked at the two kids before them. “how about,” Sally asked, “the two of you go to the Russians and say that to them?! Because it's not we who can ban their drugs much more than you can!”

“Then how come we should all have to endure your authority over us?!”

Again Sally and the custodian exchanged a glance. “It's because,” they both started at once, then glanced at each other again - and it so happen they both continued: “... we can't really trust you!”

Peter looked at Sally with some intensity, while Jeanette looked with mock naïvety at the custodian. After a while Jeanette said: “How come, then, do you trust us to be in school, even?!”

Peter's smug smile returned to his face, and he added: “Exactly! Thereby we are exactly the ones you should be trusting! And thereby, also, we should be let go off about this small stuff, like that pee at the bathroom door.”

“And what about that pee in a flower pot?!”

“I said it was Fred!”

“We don't know of any Fred that it could have been, except a few kids in the school, none of which fits the description you usually have of him!”

Jeannette gave a sound which seemed almost like a grunt, but was too discreet to be seen as such. Immediately after she stated: “There has been a Fred! There was one, who was here in the neighbourhood many times last fall, and I think the whole summer too!” She looked at her brother. “Isn't that right, Peter?!”

He grunted. “Yeah. That's correct!” he answered.

“We know of no such person! And even if there was one, why would there be his pee in that flower pot?! And if perchance you're telling the truth about him, how come, then, you don't let us - or the police - in on some good details about how to trace him?!”

“It's because, “Peter answered, “he's sort of only here in a weird notion of himself! ... And that's not a kind of notion that one be describing!”

Again the custodian and Sally looked at each other. In this the custodian found a notion of a wisdom - or perhaps only sort of, he thought for himself, and said: “Do you know what, kids?! There's no chance that that Fred could have been here without there being any sort, even trace that the police could follow about him! Thereby I think you're just into child's play, and the insinuation that we should both participate in your game of it! Thereby, I think it's time you skip this Fred nonsense and start making actual sense! That goes for the two of you!”

The two kids looked at one another, and then at the custodian. “If we do that, why don't you let us off this case already?!”

“We can't!” Sally responded. “Because it's the two of you who are responsible for doing too much of it already for us to get off your case!”

“Because it's not true,” the custodian added, “that what the two of you have done is small enough an issue to be easily forgotten. It really does seem that if we let you off the hook, then there will seem, we think, to be too big a lack of authority in us. I mean we can't challenge all the drug dealers in town, because we don't have enough authority for it. But you children really should let us keep the little authority we have!”

Peter looked at him rather slyly and said: “Perhaps we don't have to put up with your authority just as long as you are not good enough even to stop them from having us seem like imbeciles, by giving us drugs and stuff!”

Sally sighed. “We certainly can't accept all your filth just because we can't do very much to stop those drug dealers! We really don't have to put up with the two of you, and thereby I will recommend that both of you go to a special class!”

“But when we're in that special class we'll be victims of the bad influence of those other kids in it!”

“I can't help that!” Sally answered. “And once you're there, you'll be held responsible for all your actions, and any wrongdoing can fairly easily get you expelled from the school as a whole!”

“Hm!” the custodian responded. “I wonder why you haven't put them there a long time ago!”

“That's because there seemed to be a fairly good chance to look at them as innocent enough for being in ordinary class!”

He shook his head. “That seems to be a naive standpoint about them!”

“Yes it was,” she answered. “But now I'm gonna take care of things about them!” and the two kids were at last moved to the special class she had neglected to move them to for almost two years for one of them for the other. Neither of them managed to stay out of trouble there, and both of them were expelled from school within three months from having been put in special class.

Why Evil Prevails

“No! God isn't about that! Rather ... he's about totally putting evil at stake as too dangerous for us not to distrust, I think!”

Jenny looked at Phillip. “Do you mean,” she asked him, “that God is about evil in the sense that he sees to it that it's there for us to be warned about?!”

“Well, I guess he's about that evil shouldn't be prevailing by doing that itself!”

“What do you mean?!”

“That evil is perhaps capable of prevailing, otherwise, by having itself seem as interesting as all that! By that capacity it will prevail no what God does! It is always there as an example of itself - either with or without God there - and that why God sees to it that it's he, and not the devil or his demons that does the presentation of evil for us!”

“I guess you don't find evil to be thing to be seen as below taking care of itself! Do you find there to be meaning to evil, then, or is it just that we never can get away from it since it is to sly at presenting itself as there were, or something?!”

“I suppose you don't find evil to be prevalent, then, since you imply that it shouldn't be seen as being capable of presenting itself as what there is to be dealt with?!”

Jenny looked at him. “I guess I feel that evil is too low to be seen like that! And I guess that if you feel that it isn't, then it's people like you who make it prevail!”

“No! I don't make it prevail! I feel that there shouldn't be any evil if we could help it! But I also feel I have to be into that evil does exist - and that it has to be dealt with it!”

Jenny sighed and pretended as if nothing about Philip for a while. She also didn't look at him again, but stared into the ground, when she answered: “Do you really believe evil is that good - as to present itself as the evil it is itself?! Or do you think God has proposed for us that evil is to be seen as the might that we have to be dealing with for the sake of it presenting itself as such?!”

“No, I mean evil is the might that has to be dealt with whether or not it presents itself, but that it can be into some good, for example the truth of presenting itself as what it is. ...”

“Then what is there about evil that can be good?! For example, can the Devil be into care for the child that is Jesus, and still be into destroying the world that is around Him?!”

“I guess he can't, but there still has to be some good in him for being able to make us believe that there isn't to much bad about him!”

“Then how come the Devil doesn't come to terms with God, and then the two of them can reverse the trend of that evil always prevails - supposedly by presenting itself, right?!”

“That's because evil has no chance of surviving in eternal goodness! The Devil thereby also is not capable of enduring goodness forever!”

Jenny looked at him. “To be evil is not to be too weak for enduring goodness! It's about being too strong for the sake of being good for goodness!”

“Oh, I suppose that's what they say that it's supposed to be! But for the sake of evil, one doesn't have to make it prevail! That is one doesn't have to view goodness as a something that will benefit those that are weak enough not to withstand it! It is evil that shall not be seen as more than too weak for it!”

“Why do you think evil isn't bad enough to be mean even when it's not threatened by that it cannot survive good?!”

“I think it cannot be surviving when were into good in the sense that it shall not be into that evil is sense! And that's why goodness makes sense, and evil doesn't!”

A bit startled by this statement Jenny looked a bit intensely at the man who spoke it. “Why do you think it isn't bad to say evil isn't there and survives even in God's circumstances?!”

“It's not true that evil cannot prevail even with God and His goodness around! But it is true that it cannot prevail as if there wasn't a parasitic tendency to it when it does! And thereby God, in His divine authority, sees to it that it doesn't survive, if we have that kind of ideal circumstances. But evil will survive just by being into that it cannot be good enough to survive without ignoring that God cares for evil to be vanquished. It cannot survive without that pretension, I think.”

Again Jenny looked at him. “Now you don't have to propose that evil is at all that kind of weak! It is God who is there to save us from that evil is strong! We have to care for Him and Jesus in order to withstand although evil prevails! So how come it's said that evil can pretend to be good, and that even without seeming good enough for us to say to ourselves that we have to respect it?! How come you say it, for example?!”

“Evil is evil even when it seems good. Thereby it's weak to the extent there is goodness around it, even when it seems good! Thereby some people are superficial!”

She looked at him again, and figured he must be into that weakness even in a Godly person should perhaps be despised as probable evil. She knew her father to be frightened sometimes when moralizing authorities seemed to be hiding things by their moralization. Now, she herself also felt frightened.

After a few days she had spread the word to very many people that Philip was an evil enough man to support the Devil as a Demon that is necessary - at least for the sake of presenting evil, to begin with, and then also for making it real enough to kill the weak. This she described to be what he called God; the Devil in his power of presenting evil for the sake of crushing weakness - and those people who have it!

What those Bullies Can and Can't do When

This story is written in Swedish, and can be found here.