As someone who has read Ulysses I can safely say with some authority Jaime is worse than Blazes Boylan and is the New Worst Man in Dublin. It’s almost unreal how bad he is and how that group put up with him. Imagine being that much of a meninist with that amount of body fat and passing off that as courageous? Imagine existing that easily when you’re the weakest in any given room at any time. Wearing Randy River polo shirts on vacation and beside a taller girlfriend who always makes an effort he’ll never consider.
Many figures in my history cobble together to make up Jaime. Some vague types. Some dudes I can put faces on (some I’m not afraid of and some I can’t speak of fully). All subconsciously admiring Deacon Frost from Blade and all living with the mantra of being those motherfuckers who try to skate uphill. Somewhat implausible this would be a guy Marianne met in class when he maintains the low bar of being someone she met at the gym but also clearly being of a character who brags about a lack of principle when denying to help lift a toilet into a car. Having a bizarro bravery in the worst opinions at barbecues. A kind of “fella” who happens with South Park, maybe a sport out in the fringes of the classical ones because of a steady racial hatred (in the mountainous suburbs), a relationship to video games in the same way but maybe that lets him be more homophobic in a living room over a headset, a weirdly American kind of father (as a Canadian here) whose candour is cardboard and a mom who was maybe too nice as she’s always in awe or having to cling to someone now. Well equipped when it comes to whatever the nuclear family mutated into because he’ll get a job at some Halliburton shingle but also someone who poorly conceals his weaselness unweathered on his face.
Maybe this is coming from a “Nice guy” but I also have to play Mario Kart with these clowns at parties. Made to be the jerk when I open this trap. These are dudes of an ilk who either go away or never surprise you. There was this one guy—I can’t remember the occasion—that was someone’s boyfriend. I’m in the living room with him and other people and we’re watching the Matthew McConaughey-Steve “you know who is good in that” Zahn vehicle Sahara. This dude—in my memory one of those jocks with too buggy eyes—just keeps riffing on how there was a person of colour in this movie. How that was inherently funny to him; a dude in a stranger’s house who just keeps going as his voice echoes off the walls. And I’m making a face you can see right now. A face that only enhanced with my ability to grow a beard in six days. My thoughts bouncing in my skull as a feedback loop that turns to chamber music. Who is this clown?
I never saw that dude again but I’ve seen patched versions and even then—as this quarter-memory made an impression—I’m still happening in a world where I didn’t punch that guy. An effort not taken even when these guys still manage to make it through with whatever “persistence” they thought they had. You find that dude everywhere. Youtube maybe made that personality more empowering to have even without endearment. Wormed their way into something lasting but you still wouldn’t trust them with a jar of peanut butter or a half eaten hot dog. And we’re always made aware of them as weasels. Not even the Albert Brooks’ definition of a William Hurt who lowers our standards but…taught to be that kind of salesman as recruits of a diminished quality. Those dudes who complain about safe spaces who eat chicken strips all their lives. And they’re only warm or friendly in a feasible way. Only bragging about teamwork if you’re doing most of it because they read about that in a social mirroring text disguised as a business guru compilation of bad sentences that only make sense if you take a lead baseball bat between the eyes not enough times. But this becomes the guy at the table. What’s in the pool to choose from. Coming to realize that Steve Zahn wouldn’t just “be good in that” but be good right now. These fucking guys who you don’t have to dye and x-ray to see through. Yeah dating ladies who you know can do better but all the ramifications reaching out and closing in when you have to trust this bozo in a Mario Party mini game where you have to jump rope at the same time. That’s Jaime. That’s Jaime for everybody.