Psychos have more fun.
Seriously, though, I’ve noticed that to have any real fun — any proper, big fun — you have to be a little psychotic, don’t you?
Because all real fun is had at the expense of somebody else. Even if that somebody else is, in fact, yourself.
Even semi-innocuous stuff tends to have a small element of karmic balance in it. Whatever I enjoy causes someone, somewhere, pain. That’s just the way the universe keeps itself balanced. One, huge, self-regulating puddle of mashed-up karma.
So, really, it only makes sense that a psycho can’t actually, technically, enjoy all the fun that they can so easily have.
By the same token, it makes perfect sense that empathic people, with maybe slightly more balanced emotions, have no talent for having fun.
I feel like empathy gets in the way of having fun, you know? Because, like, what do people do for fun, really?
And when I say fun, I mean the real, proper type of amnesia-inducing “fun” that we all keep hearing about, in all those urban legends. None of this pussyfooting around kind of having a cup of tea on a chilly day kinds of fun. I mean proper, the evening’s not an evening without commemorative citations and visits from the authorities kind of fun.
Okay, maybe that’s TOO much fun.
If that’s the sliding scale of fun, though, then I think that a modicum of psychotic tendency is needed in order to have proper Fun.
Just to be clear, I am using “psychotic” in the technical sense, not the popular one — i.e., emotionally garbled enough to disconnect from what’s real.
Psychosis is a fascinating superpower because with it people can easily meet other people. Which is what a lot of us want to do, I think. People are not frightening to the psychotic, so the psychotic person can easily meet people. Which is why they can have proper fun. As far as I can tell, the goal of most fun is to meet people. And because the psychotic person doesn’t care about people, they can meet people more easily.
I think that, when you get down to it, the main reason for our interest in all this proper fun is to build relationships.
I knew some people who thought a large weekend amounted to going out with the same five dudes, every weekend, and having fun. And they could tell that they had a good time because of the bruises and the smell of vomit that still lingered about their trousers the next morning.
But the biggest clue, they said, that they knew they had a good time was that they could not remember most of what happened.
I asked them. What’s the point, then? How is that fun?
They answered me that, well, it was fun to sit around the next day and try and figure out what happened by talking about it. They said that between the five of them they could usually piece together the evening from the night before.
For them, the enjoyment came from the shared experience. From the communal experience.
Even though the shared experience was one of getting blackout drunk and then getting into fights and then forgetting about it. Real, proper fun. You know?
I guess I can understand that.
Which may be indicative of the problem I’m having, because I can, in fact, understand it. Which doesn’t mean I get it. I can’t get it because I’m too sympathetic. I’ll never have any proper fun because I’m not psychotic, you see? In order to truly get out there and let loose, you need to have a mild psychotic break from reality.
Because karma’s a bitch. All pleasure balances itself out in this wobbly, melting jelly of a universe. Stands to reason.
I’ve never had any real, proper fun. Because people make me anxious, because I am not psychotic.
Which I think of as a service, to all of you having-fun psychotic people out there. In a melting-jelly universe way, where karma all balances out, my inability to have fun makes your fun possible.
Honestly, I find it pretty satisfying. Because even though I never have any proper fun, with the vomiting and the contusions and the attention from the police or whatever, I do end up remembering almost all of my evenings. It’s a trade-off, certainly, but I find it suits my personality.
