Dear Will Fargo,
I have always been someone who plays by the rules. I’m honest, hardworking, and law abiding. The problem is I have no way to de-stress and friends tell me I’m dull. Therefore, I think I need a vice.
I’ve tried drinking, but I fall asleep after one drink, so it’d be difficult for me to become a drunkard. Gambling is out as I need every penny of my paycheck to pay the rent (plus I like to eat).
Smoking looks sexy, but it smells, plus there’s that annoying little thing called cancer. I want a vice that’s legal as I don’t want to complicate my life, so taking drugs is out.
What do you recommend to make me a more well-rounded individual?
Signed,
Perfect Stranger… in Monterey
Dear Perfect Stranger… in Monterey,
I think the answer to your question can be found in the way you sign your letter. The fact that you use the word “perfect” to describe your strangeness… this speaks volumes to me.
So my first inclination is to suggest the obvious as far as what vice you should adopt.
Monterey, I think you should become a professional weirdo. You should trust me on this one because I know a little something about this.
For starters, you could hang out downtown in the street all day wearing some really weird clothes with maybe a pair of diving flippers or something, and also have a bunch of accessories hanging off of you including lots of head jewelry.
Believe me, Monterey, if you try this for a few weeks, I guarantee that eventually you’ll become addicted to all the attention it’ll get you. And then there you’ll have it; the perfect vice for the perfect stranger.
And like most vices, eventually, over time it should interfere very nicely with you ever having whatever it is you really want out of life. Because you see, this is what a vice is all about, Monterey.
It’s sort of a scapegoat device whose primary function is to assist you in avoiding doing whatever it is that you intuitively know you’re supposed to be doing but aren’t.
But you never really acknowledge this intuition about yourself because the stress that is created in knowing that you’re not really perfect is too overwhelming.
It’s sort of a cold civil war of the soul that begins in most people during adolescent years. And it’s definitely a conflict much better off being relegated to the battleground of the unconscious rather than dealing with it.
Because not only does keeping it safely repressed liberate a person from reality, so they can eventually stand a chance at finding true happiness, but it also serves as inspiration for interesting art.
Because you see, a simple conflict in a person’s conscious thoughts and feelings can really take off and spawn a whole universe of colorful crap once it is locked away in the funhouse dungeon called the subconscious mind.
And then it bubbles up in all sorts of quirky ways from the collective unconscious when all those other professional weirdoes called artists, writers, and musicians do their thing.
Now of course you’ll have to incorporate a little pseudo existential philosophy into your new vice so you can convince yourself that somehow it embodies some sort of here-and-now enlightenment energy.
That’s very important for a vice in order for it to have any sort of decent lifespan. If you don’t have some sort of durability built into your vice, you could end up giving it up.
But that’s very dangerous, Monterey. Don’t mess with it.
So, what kind of lofty crap could you attach to the professional weirdo act? How about this: You’re sort of like a clown in the circus who is actually doing a service to mankind.
You’ll be allowing the citizens passing by marveling at you to either:
a. Validate their own weirdness vicariously, or
b. Experience for a moment what creeps they really are when they feel revulsion and disgust at what a weirdo you are.
So I’m quite certain this will go a long way in making you more interesting to your friends, Monterey. And all without ever having to use cigarettes for currency to buy pruno while on vacation in county jail for doing drugs in a gambling casino.
Plus, once you have your vice down, you can then use it for the rest of your life to keep your two very best friends, denial and avoidance, forever happy and in control, just as they should be.
Will…I Will Go Far!!!… Fargo
