I’ve been thinking a bit lately about empathy, both as a broad concept and how it manifests specifically in my own life. Empathy comes easily to me (in much the way patience does not) and I’ve always been drawn to the empathetic sort, the kind of person who sweats great big drops of empathy after an intense workout that includes one-armed emotional pushups. See, I think that the tendency to comprehend someone else’s feelings and then adopt those same emotions as a way to connect on a deeper level is, in many ways, just an offshoot of being logical. Think about it: someone you know feels hurt or lost and you can see pain written across her face like a story that doesn’t have an ending – or one filled with far too many endings – and you take a second to trace back what it is that might have caused her to currently be curled up in a trembling fetal position on your living room floor. You know enough about her to realize it’s probably heartbreak and betrayal that’s been mixed into a sh*tty cocktail she drank through a straw without using a chaser. You understand that she feels momentarily broken. And you know full well that feeling broken is frightening, even if it’s been a good long time since you have been broken – even if you have sworn to yourself that, f*ck no, you will never allow yourself to be broken like that ever again.
But maybe that’s the stumbling block for people who are unable to be empathetic – and yes, those people exist and they walk amongst us. Part of empathy requires sorting through your own personal storage shed of emotions and experiences to locate the one that will allow you to relate to the person sitting before you. Unfortunately, mentally stumbling back through experiences you thought you had successfully buried can be akin to taking a spiky garden rake to the face. (I was into my shed analogy, hence the rake. Please go with it.)
Relating profoundly to someone else’s emotions can result in you feeling sh*ttier than you did before. Empathy is messy; it’s crushing to try to decipher and then share someone else’s pain, but I think ultimately it would probably be even more crushing to feel nothing. Still, there are definitely some perks to being emotionally barren. Without pesky sh*t like sentiment pulling my focus, I could maybe benefit all of humankind by solving cold cases or building sterilization chambers meant to stop much of the cast of Vanderpump Rules from ever breeding.
Yeah. So it seems that empathy might only get a girl like me so far when it comes to relating to the participants of a reality show. On the one hand, I totally understand the desire for exposure, for wanting to present a talent you think you have to the world and for believing that reality television is a viable option in your quest – even though it rarely works out that way. But on the other hand, when you have happily committed to impersonating a morally-bereft piece of hardened dogsh*t just so people know your name, I can’t even allow myself to slip my on empathy cloak (it’s black and very stylish) in an attempt to muddle through the trenches of f*cking nonsense to locate a shard of what might be real. In fact, I refuse to even try to comprehend the level of pain these people inflict upon themselves and one another all in the name of narcissism. My empathy nerve – usually pulsating – goes numb and stagnant when I watch this show and I’m pretty certain it’s because so many of the people on it actively strive to be dead inside.
And speaking of one of my favorite lifeless souls, Jax is starting the celebration for Gay Pride early by not wearing a tie and instead unbuttoning his shirt halfway down his chest because that’s such a good look. Lisa’s hope is high that this year both of her parties for the big day will be successful. The party at SUR is for a charity and Lisa patiently explains to Jax that the party is to support the LGBT community and then has him repeat the letters of who he’s supporting back to her in much the way I learned how to conjugate the verb “to suck” in Spanish class when I was in the seventh grade. (Jax chupa, mis amigos.)
Later in the kitchen, Jax waxes philosophical. He’s been watching a show about a woman left with only five days to live and he’s since been plagued by the age-old existential question: If a douchebag explodes in a forest, will anyone hear it? Oh, wait – that’s not the question. No, he’s wondering what he’d do if he knew his time was running out. Scheana’s response is that she’d travel to Paris or Egypt and I think her music would sound excellent if performed atop a Pyramid. Jax’s plan involves far less travel time. He’d choose to murder a great deal of people who have wronged him and that’s a totally healthy way to spend your last hours on Earth and you’re the crazy one if you think any differently. As for the order of the hit list that I’m sure he carved into the crusty sock that sits by his bedside, James has snagged the top spot. Now listen, I am all about hating James. James is a ridiculous person. James sucks. (James chupa tambien!) James has, what I’m hoping, is an inferiority complex that has ballooned into a curious superiority complex that makes absolutely no sense given the person he presents himself to be. I might be snarky and all, but I’ve never seen it as a requirement that I verbally eviscerate anyone in my recaps and I certainly never reached into a hat and pulled out his name – which should only be written in lowercase because he is just that pathetic. I’m not stuck saying sh*t about some DJ because his is the slip of paper I grabbed. No, James has gleefully chosen to exhibit the most repulsive of all traits a somewhat evolved mammal can pull off and so I’ll go ahead and comment on all of it. Still, if I were going to off anyone in the world, James would not be first on my list. James would probably not even make it on my list, and that’s only partially because normal f*cking people do not have mental hit lists.
As for Jax’s stinging vitriol against James, a lot of it is Lala-based – as are quite a few viruses, or so I’ve heard. Scheana understands his stance; it’s bizarre to her too that girls are chasing after a scrawny DJ who dresses like he lost a bet. Jax is not used to losing girls (saddest sentence ever), and he’s really unaccustomed to losing them to an assh*le who’s an even larger and more leaky assh*le than he is. However, the coupling of Lala and James shouldn’t be bothering Jax. He’s sort-of-kind-of-maybe-but-only-when-she’s-in-spitting-distance-of-LA seeing Kentucky Brittany and we get a sweet (or terrifying – it’s really about perception and I will surely have nightmares) flashback of the two of them kissing. He has a huge gash running across his forehead and sh*t shoved into his ear and she hasn’t run fleeing into the dark abyss for her life so maybe this is the girl for him. Jax likes Brittany and all, but he thinks Lala is beautiful and special enough to compare her to that car you don’t want to buy but you do want to barrel down the street. The guy is romance personified and he kind of nods when Scheana tells him he should just get Lala really drunk at Gay Pride and make his move, but this is Jax we’re talking about. He’s only bangs morons so he knows he won’t really need to get her that drunk.