Your friend, 26-year-old Marvin Monroe of Humboldt Park, Chicago, is a nice guy who means well — but three people at this party have already heard about his alcoholic mother, his straggling relationship doubts, and his overthought creative barriers. Nobody had said anything to him to invite any confessional information, but dammit if they didn’t get it anyway! All you can tell them is “that’s just his personality.”
While most people view their shames and humiliations as appropriately shameful and humiliating, Monroe’s are the lifeblood of his character. Everyone in his life knows about his neurotic missteps and most recent romantic misjudgments, his crummy jobs along with the good ones he was fired from, and the overall middling state of his life, which honestly wouldn’t seem so disappointing if he didn’t volunteer its sordid interior.
Monroe gets along best with others who are quick to divulge and identify with DSM diagnoses they’ve received over the years. But when it comes to — you hate to use this language, but really there’s no other way of putting it — normal people, there’s always some explanation required. They must be reassured that no, he’s not in emotional crisis. “It’s just his way of relating,” you say to a guest who just heard about how Google-searching medical symptoms made Monroe think he was at risk of rectal bleeding, and not of being a pain in everyone else’s ass.
“He’s an acquired taste,” you say. “He spends a lot of time on the parts of social media where they say things like ‘radical vulnerability’ and, ironically, ‘emotional labor.’ Eventually he’ll burn out on it, hit the gym, and try Joe Rogan. They always do.”