My mom comes from what psychologists would call a 'dysfunctional' family, but most normal people would refer to it as 'hella screwed up'. Given this, i've never met most of her extended family. until this week when her brother came down from sacramento to stay with us for the weekend.
Marc. with a "c". about 6'2", dark hair, stylish with his CK jeans, vonzipper sunglasses and soulpatch, marc really thought he had it going on. Exuding faux-intellegentsia with his blue like jazz/velvet elvis pop psychology and self-help book cliches strung together like red macaroni on a third-grade necklace, marc had the answer to every one of your problems.
That's because he was connected to the energy.
"People's personalities don't make for tense or awkward situations," he would say, "it's their energy."
"as soon as i walk out of this room, even outside this door, it feels different. You know why that is?" marc would ask, his voice getting higher as he became more and more excited with the sound of his own voice.
Not really wanting to get into this conversation because he probably wouldn't shut up, i weighed the repercussions. It couldn't last forever.
"because you're gone?" I replied.
"No! It's because my energy is gone!" He continued, "I knew this girl, horribly negative girl. Never had a good thing to say about her office. everyone else was dumb and she was the only smart one. So I asked her, 'you think your office is like this when you're gone? Cause it's not.' She didn't recognize the negative energy she was bringing to the office that was throwing off the harmony of the building."
He also saw God in everything and everybody. As long as he didn't really know them. Cause once he got to know them, they had the chance to diagree. When you hand a bum on the street five dollars cause you see God in them, it's not all that hard. They think you're amazing, not gonna turn you down. When you've actually got to build some sort of relationship with a person, they're gonna see you're flaws. And marc hated that. no one he actually knew was godly. no one else was getting anything right, just him.
it made for a tense weekend. in the words of my very own mother. "The only word i can think of to describe marc is ASS, in all caps."