An American who lives in Spain stopped me on the street. He says he often reads me here, and although he likes some of my articles, he complains that I always speak ill of others and never of myself. Maybe he doesn’t read me as much as he claims. Still, he was a nice guy, and today I’m going to satisfy his perverse demand.
My biggest flaw — yes, Mom — is disorganization. I am pathologically messy.
I’m a bag of flaws. I could end the column right here, but I know I have to add more if I’m going to quench our friend’s thirst for a self-shredded columnist.
Over the years, I’ve become less tolerant of stupidity. I don’t mean natural stupidity — we don’t get to choose the size of our brains. I’m talking about the canned stupidity they sell by the pallet at mainstream supermarkets.
I’m no longer capable of participating in certain postmodern debates because, for example, I simply don’t have the patience — Kirk was a saint! — to reason with people who think they were born in the wrong body and believe their problem should be solved in the operating room rather than on a psychiatrist’s couch.
More? I hate crowds. When I see a bunch of people together sharing the same opinions, my first instinct is to oppose them. I can’t stand choral militancy, collective lynchings, mass aesthetic trends, and I recoil from watching, listening to, or reading the same movies, albums, and books as everyone else.
My biggest flaw — yes, Mom — is disorganization. I am pathologically messy. And although I’ve tried to improve, anyone who peeked at the scribbles in my planner, the way I organize my clothes, or the way I file important papers in my office would have an anxiety attack.
The writer’s lifestyle has made me strangely introverted at a later age. When I’m deep into a novel, as I am now, I tend to isolate myself from the world even in crowded situations, to the point that people often ask if I’m okay. Yes, of course, my friend, I feel fantastic. And in two more drinks, I’ll be in heaven.
Over the years, I’ve also become elitist — not individually (I have friends you wouldn’t believe are still being manufactured) but sociologically — and that’s a natural consequence of my defense of prejudice. The Left had me convinced when I was young with all that chatter about tolerance and prejudice, perhaps because it fit well with my Christianity. But over time, I’ve concluded that prejudice, far from being a lack of charity, can save your life.
I’m a disaster at math. If Saint Thomas Aquinas had ever met me, he would have affirmed without hesitation that the main proof of God’s existence is that I passed my math, economics, and statistics courses in college. Nobody knows how. It’s true I had a professor who liked experimenting with drugs and who, before he died, said he couldn’t remember a single day when he wasn’t high on some exotic substance. He gave me a summa cum laude — but that wasn’t in math, it was in philosophy, where I probably would have gotten top grades anyway. Now that I think about it, maybe my economics and math professors were also into recreational chemistry. That would explain everything.
I love my country and Western culture in the most unapologetically supremacist way possible. I mean, I’m not remotely seduced by those Instagram stories my friends post about trekking up some godforsaken mountain and pretending to pray in Buddhist temples. I like Spain (what’s left of it with this damn government), and I like Western civilization — and I think it’s superior to all the others. And I love the United States of America because it represents everything that’s right in the world I belong to.
I despise contemporary travel: people travel more than ever but aren’t really in the places they visit. Today’s mass tourism is downright vulgar.
I’m not moved by violent criminals, murderers, tyrants, or terrorists. They don’t move me at all. And I don’t believe these are people “pushed” by life into what they became. The Left thinks I’m evil for that. In that case, yes, I’m very evil.
I’m deeply biased toward my friends, and I don’t care. I’m the kind of jerk who, when a friend releases a book — even a terrible one — writes a column saying it’s the best book in the world.
I’d need six more pages to keep cataloging my flaws. I haven’t yet mentioned my inconsistency, my poor health, my fondness for nightlife (is that a flaw or just normal Spanish DNA?), my swollen “cursed writer” ego, how I lose myself in bohemianism like an opium addict, my radical intolerance in sports matters when it comes to the soccer team I love (Real Madrid), or my utter contempt for those who grovel for promotions at work. Nor have I mentioned that, if a woman is attractive enough, I tend to overlook her ideological flaws; or that I’m incapable of keeping my houseplants alive; or that I practically need to bleed out several liters before I dare go to the doctor.
I am, in short, a sinful Christian who trusts in the mercy that comes from divine sonship. And, as a bonus track: I play guitar and sing in a way that would make a kitten commit suicide — and yet I do it several times a week at full volume. My neighbors adore me.
I hope this long confession has satisfied the reader. And that next week I can go back to insulting everyone else as usual.
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