Continued from Part II.

I opened my eyes back up when my own beer arrived, the frothy liquid sloshing back and forth in the glass.  “I’d be pretty upset,” I replied.  “I mean, I’ve been playing for years!  If someone thinks that I sound like I’ve only been playing for a few months, they’re basically telling me that I suck at bass.”

Gerry pointed one finger at me triumphantly.  “Exactly!  And yet, they meant the comment very earnestly, so good luck trying to keep your anger focused on them!  Here’s another one.  Let’s say that, at work, you’ve been polishing a proposal for months, editing and trying to make it as perfect as possible.  You go in and present it to your coworker, and he tells you that it’s a really good first draft.  What’s your response?”

“Well, I suppose that my first instinct would be to get upset at him, and yell at him that I’ve been working on it for months,” I said.

“At which point, he apologizes, says that he didn’t realize, and then, after a pause that’s just a half-second too long, he says that it’s still really good.”  Gerry grinned as I shifted back and forth in my seat, trying to cover my frustration.  “Now, you really can’t be upset at your coworker.  He’s being honest, and really working to stay nice.  So you’ve got all this anger, this frustration, and nowhere to direct it!”

I was finally starting to see what my new acquaintance was getting at.  “So the longer he goes on, the more insulted I get, even though he’s saying nothing but kind things,” I summed up.  “God, that’s just evil!”

“Ah, but it works!” Gerry rightly pointed out.  “And best of all, it’s both immediately stinging, but also long-lasting, coming back to eat away at your self-confidence hours later, when you’re trying to fall asleep at night!  It’s really the best way to cause some psychological damage.”

Gerry nodded once again at Ned, still sitting at the other end of the bar.  “Now, say that you wanted to insult that fine gentleman again,” he went on.  “What might you say?”

I turned and studied my target, sizing him up.  “Compliments, right?”

“Compliments.”

“I suppose I’d tell him that I was envious of him, being able to spend all day in here drinking,” I hypothesized.  “Not having any family members to nag at him, free to do whatever he wanted instead of having to please anyone else.”

“Hah, not bad!” Gerry complimented me with a grin.  “What else?”

I considered the challenge for another minute.  “Maybe I’d ask him about the history of the bar?  Comment how he must have been here when it first opened, and ask how it’s changed?  Make a dig at his age?”

Gerry was smiling widely.  “I think you’ve got the hang of this, now!” he said.  “Unintentional insults.  Trust me, my boy, that’s the key.”

I picked up my drink, taking a long pull.  This time, there was no choking as the cool liquid filled my mouth.  Despite my initial black mood, my outlook had lightened as I talked with Gerry, and I didn’t feel quite as bad about my situation.  Sure, I was out of a job, but I had unemployment benefits, a decent resume, and there were certain to be plenty of other places hiring.  I would find a way to land on my feet.  And for now, I did have the freedom to do nothing but sit, drink, and relax.

“A toast!” my friend sitting on the opposite side of the table from me cried, raising her glass.

Obligingly, my buddy and I both paused in our intense scrutiny of our phones and reached for our glasses. My buddy had a complaint, however. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We can’t toast with water, can we?  Isn’t that bad luck?”

I looked down at the table. As we had decided to go out for brunch, there wasn’t exactly an abundance of alcohol. “What about coffee?” I offered.

“I thought it had to contain booze,” my buddy insisted.

Across the table, my friend waved away the strands of this discussion impatiently. “We can toast just fine with water!” she snorted.

“Ideally,” I snuck in, “we should be toasting with some toast.”

My friend bathed me with her blank stare, and I could tell that she was trying her hardest to vaporize me with her mind. My buddy next to me chuckled after a second, however, so I considered it a success.

We all lifted our glasses of water. “What are we toasting to?” my buddy asked. He paused for a moment, considering his upraised glass. “Where did toasting come from, anyway?”

“Ugh!” my friend groaned, but I had an answer ready.

“As I understood it, toasting was a way for the nobility to compete over status,” I offered.

They turned to me, cups still upraised. “What?” they asked en masse.

“Well, when you toast, you all slam your cups together, right?  And the goal is to spill your opponents’ drinks, not your own!  Like jousting!”

Across the table, my friend shook her head a little. “I don’t think that’s right,” she interjected.

“Sure it is!  That’s why they all drank out of big jewel-encrusted goblets!  Those cups gave them a lot of mass, to better topple their opponents!”

My friend was still shaking her head, but my buddy next me then spoke up.  “No, dude, you’re all wrong,” he broke in. “I think the grape growers made it up, to help sell more wine and subsidize the wine industry.”

My friend on the other side of the table lowered her glass. “Never mind,” she said, her tones ringing with disappointment. “Our food’s here anyway.”

Continued from Part I.

“Listen,” Gerry began, “there are two ways to insult someone.  Intentionally, and unintentionally.  Here, I’ll show you.  Insult me.”

I raised my eyebrows at the bald fellow, but he seemed serious enough.  “Uh… you’re old and bald,” I offered.  I wasn’t sure exactly how harsh I should go.

Gerry didn’t seem phased by this terrible, incredibly offensive attack, however; he merely nodded, as if accepting that I was right.  “Yep, sure am,” he confirmed, still nodding.  “Now, if you had said something that was actually hurtful, like telling me that I had a tiny dick and I deserved to go die in a fire, well, I would have been a bit hot and bothered.  But insults like that?  Easily shrugged off, and most of the time they really don’t stick with a fellow.  They’re temporary.”

I’m confused.  I took another swig of my drink to cover up the blank look on my face, but Gerry still spotted it.  “Those, you see, are just intentional insults,” he went on.  “And although they make us feel better when we yell them at someone else, they don’t mesh with what we believe about ourselves.”

My face must still have showed my confusion.  “Like this,” Gerry continued.  “You’re an imbecile.  You are.  Now, how’s that make you feel?”

I shrugged.  “Honestly, it doesn’t really bother me,” I said.

“Exactly!” he replied.  “Because in your head, you know that you aren’t an imbecile.  Your internal image of yourself is that you’re a pretty smart guy.  So when I call you something that doesn’t match your internal view, your brain rejects it, brushes it off.”

This actually made some sense.  “Isn’t there some psychological theory about that?” I asked.  I could vaguely remember reading about something like this, what seemed to be a million years ago in college.

Gerry shrugged.  “Probably.  But this means that, if you really want to hurt someone with an insult, you have to take an entirely different approach.”

“Do you have to get something that they actually believe, inside their heads?” I guessed.  “Strike at their inner weakness?”

“If you do, sure, that’ll land a knockout punch,” Gerry acceded.  He paused to raise a finger to our bartender, who nodded and busied himself pouring a beer from one of the taps.  “But good luck spotting someone’s weakness like that – especially on a stranger, like Ned over there.”  He nodded across the bar at the gray-haired man, who cackled as he lifted his glass in a mock toast.  “No, there’a much easier method, one that won’t rely on guesswork.”

I was leaning forward a bit in my seat, and I had finished the rest of my drink without noticing – Gerry could tell that I was interested, hanging on his words.  He grinned, obviously enjoying being the center of attention.  “You gotta insult them unintentionally,” he imparted, as if sharing a great secret.

I sat back a little.  “You’ve got me confused again,” I confessed.

Gerry waved one hand in the air in a vague and meaningless gesture.  “Let’s go back to that internal picture of yourself,” he said.  “Now, you don’t believe that you’re an idiot, but nobody, on the inside, is really, truly, confident in themselves.  Like you.  What’s something that you’re good at?”

At first, I thought of mentioning my job, but that idea was quickly squashed – if I was truly good at it, I wouldn’t have been kicked to the curb.  “I can play a pretty decent bass guitar,” I offered, my head filled briefly with visions of my garage band from college.

“Sure, that works.  Now, imagine that you were at a party, you picked up a bass guitar, you played a couple songs.  You’re enjoying yourself, and then one of the other party guests walks up and comments that your playing sounds great!  Before you can thank him, however, he guesses that you must have been playing for three or four months.  Now, how are you feeling?”

I closed my eyes for a minute as I envisioned this scenario.  A clink next to me signaled the arrival of Gerry’s beer.  “And one for this gentleman, too,” he commented.

To be continued…

Rubbing my forehead with the back of one hand, I hauled open the heavy wooden door and stepped into the bar.  I had always enjoyed the throwback atmosphere of the bar, just down the street from where I worked.  Had used to work, I mentally reminded myself.  Had to get used to using the right script.

After my eyes had adjusted to the internal gloom of the bar, I sidled up to the counter, finding a spot equally between the few grizzled old men that seemed to be permanent fixtures around the counter.  I didn’t make eye contact with any of them, but a gray-haired fellow on my left still began grunting as he slid closer to me.  “Bit early for yeh to be drinking, doncha think?” he wheezed out through the bent bars of his remaining teeth.

The old-timer was right; I usually didn’t show my face in the bar for another few hours, when work let out and happy hour began.  Today, of course, I didn’t have to wait that long.  Another advantage of being unemployed, I suppose.

I ignored the man, instead raising a finger to catch the bartender’s attention.  “Whiskey, double,” I requested, when the man sauntered over.  He nodded without speaking a word, turning and ambling off, taking his sweet time to prepare my beverage.

Fortunately, as there were no other placed orders to compete with mine, my drink arrived in front of me in short order.  I traded the bartender my credit card for the drink and took a long pull.  I was still on edge, however, overwhelmed by the stress of the day, and some of the fiery liquid went down the wrong tube.  I choked, coughing as I slammed the glass back down on the bar.

The gray-haired man, now sitting next to me, let out another wheezing bray.  “Di’nt your dad ever teach yeh houw to drink?” he got out between laughs.  “First rule is that you’re sposed to swallow!”

I glared at this annoying boil of a man.  “Screw you,” I told him, taking another pull of my drink.  This time, it went down properly.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the man on my other side, this fellow nearly completely bald, also scooting closer to me across the bolted-down bar stools.  “What?” I snapped, turning to him.  My anger was fully raging by this point, helped along by the heat rising from my belly.  “You got something to say as well?”

Instead of sneering at me, however, this fellow merely put on a slightly self-satisfied looking grin.  “Actually, I was going to correct you,” he said, and I was forced to slightly alter my opinion of him.  Despite his wrinkles, this man still had all of his teeth, and was currently giving me a million-watt smile.  His voice was also slightly clipped, giving him a barely perceptible cultured accent.  “You’re doing it wrong.”

“Doing what wrong?”

“Insulting,” the bald man replied.  He had by now reached the stool next to mine, and he offered his hand to me.  “Gerry,” he said.

“Arthur,” I replied, taking the proffered hand.  Gerry gave it a single brisk pump, and then released – the kind of handshake I had grown accustomed to at my old job in finance.  “You’re saying that I’m insulting him wrong?  Is there a right way?”

Gerry kept up his smile.  “Perhaps not a right way or a wrong way,” he said, “but there is definitely a better way and a worse way.  And you, my new friend, are using the worse way, I’m afraid.”

On my other side, I saw the gray-haired man roll his eyes and begin shuffling back to his original spot, where he had abandoned his drink, but I was interested.  Gerry sounded as though he was slipping into a lecture, as if speaking in front of a class.  I might be a class of one, but I gave him my full attention.

To be continued!