On Matters of Public Adoration and Celebrity Status
“I want to sniff the world’s backside just before I give it a mighty kick. Get a nice waft of shit to prove that we’re the Universe’s official latrine. The sinkhole where you dump your gravest secrets and nastiest mistakes because you think, it’s already dirty, why not add more?” Vermillio intoned with a jagged quality to his smile. As he spoke, his expressions see-sawed between complete contentment and elation, his eyelashes partially lowered conspiratorially, thick, probing, intense. The crowd rose as one and roared, pounding on their seats and stomping their feet to let it be known that they understood and appreciated his words.
“Me, the prodigal son, stapled to causes not his to mend and avoiding responsibility of what is mine, at every turn.” He spoke jokingly, not faltering or asking for a pardon. The crowd hushed and leaned in with curious stares and breaths suspending mid-exhalation. He noticed this and made them wait longer for his next line.
“To make up for my disappointments, I run towards perfection.” The crowds slunk back to their seats in jubilation to complete their breaths. Their hearts did cartwheels, and they were all terribly overjoyed that their cheeks practically bled from all the suppressed smiles and gum chewing they were doing to contain their happiness.
“What object is there in life that has taught us that perfection exists? Probably none because life is an intermingling of order and chaos, and there lies no perfect formation without the question of what is perfection, and what tools can be used to measure it.” There were loud murmurs of assent, people jostling one another in wonder and waiting to see who would clap first so they could promptly follow. Women were prepared to name children after Vermillio. Men would incite and then enroll in wars for him. Those who fit into neither category of man nor women were willing to be shepherded into the sanctified privilege of name hood by Vermillio. There was a public outpouring of love for him that surpassed ordinary definitions of love. It was wholehearted adoration and deference that begged to be acknowledged, nothing more. At acknowledgement, Vermillio was the best. With both hands raised above his heart, he’d smile at the masses with a rakish smile, sincere, wicked, with a twinkle to imply a secret being shared.
“It’s unattainable and yet we still strive it. From my experience, perfectionism is a futile and obsessive need — not want — to control some portion of life. That helplessness that we feel as babies doesn’t ever fully leave us. It decreases in time and rears its head occasionally in those moments where we’re brutally confronted with the chaos that governs our lives on a wider scale. Imagine this, on any given day you could get hit by a car, suddenly have a heart attack, find yourself stuck in an elevator before an important job interview. The chances of these things happening varies depending on who you are, but they still could. That’s scary. When you’re a perfectionist, you aim to alleviate doubt and the probability of unfavorable outcomes taking place within your narrow focus, i.e., work, family, your art. Somehow that’s meant to make up for the lack of control you have for everything else that floats, burps, farts, crunches, squeals, and reveals itself in measured ringlets over the span of your lifetime at random bursts, and often at the most inopportune times.” His laughter was involuntary. Prompted by an inside joke that he had with himself. There was pliability to his demeanor that he tried to hide behind long, threatening silhouettes, and self-assured angling. If you knew what to look for, his charade blew away in moments. Frankly, he was an abominable fraud who’d not once believed a word of his own unlike the thousands who rode in droves to listen to him speak.
Vermillio’s perfectionism was matched only by his drive for success. He was handsome. He was charming. He was white. And he had enough brains to use those things to his advantage. Many would praise him for his resourcefulness.
“If I’m myself, will people still like me?”
“If they see that I’m broken, will they cease to come to me to mend them? The human soul, now more than ever, is starved or increasingly aware of its emptiness. We are a society defined by want and waste, and we counter that with more ladders lined up, so everyone has a chance to climb, rather than eliminating the ladders to conclude early on that there is nowhere to climb to. Heaven is not a physical destination. Happiness is meant to be ephemeral so we can appreciate it more and work harder at cultivating enough of it. People listen to me because I tell them what they want to hear. I give hope that that feeling of hollowness has an ending. That we can feel full. These people wouldn’t listen to me if I simply documented my miseries. They have enough of their own without getting a front seat view of mine. Hence, I give them what they want, and they love me. I can continue feeding them indefinitely and they won’t tire of me until another new face enters our ranks and finds a slightly different way of telling them what I’ve been saying for years.”
Vermillio knew what to do to maintain relevancy. On the hour that he was expected to lose the majority of his public ratings, he donned a new suit and put a cardboard box over his head. On that cardboard box was a single smile painted at its center. It was genius. Within minutes of his first broadcast as Vero the vacuous vacationer, this new persona, he’d reached millions of people. Not nearly as many as he was used to, but he wasn’t going to complain. The cardboard box had worked. Thousands of people poured to him their love in unmeasured acts of gratitude and piety for their newly found source of knowledge and salvation. Watching him through the screen as he entertained was like a new-age trek within the comforts of your own homes to the promised land to bathe in a pool made from God’s sweat. Vermellio was going to bottle that water and sell it for a fortune.
