America, in Graphite

I have abnormally high self-esteem. This is for a lot of reasons, most of which all lead back to the epiphany I had one day that I am pretty all-around amazing. Like, really really impressive. Not at any one thing in particular, but at SO MANY things in particular that it adds up to a generalized aura of achievement, manifesting in pseudo-magnetic field warping the social space within 3 to 15 feet of my body, all but guaranteeing people take an almost instantaneous dislike to me. It makes me sad, but not because it affects my image of myself, but because I realize their pre-emptive defensive shunning of me will only deprive them of the awesomeness of my company. I weep not out of loneliness, but out of pity. I'd like more friends, sure, but I have a credit card, a webcam and a variable sense of personal shame. Human connections of extreme-even uncomfortable-intimacy are never farther away than a trawl through my browser history.

If I'm honest with myself, my place in the world is a middling-to-modest one, so I am open to the idea that my sense of who I am is slightly out of proportion to what it is I've been able to do in these scant, barely-sub-40 years on this scrappy little can-do planet we call Earth. But I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, subject to all the entertainment and public service announcements fighting the hysterically identified destruction of self-esteem among America's youth. It was the cause of everything, including teen pregnancy, crime rates, lack of manners, the declining state of American education, voter apathy, ozone depletion and the high, high cost of basketball shoes. Nobody with any kind of developed sense of self-worth is going to stand in line overnight for the privilege of spending $250 to show off the hardest part of your body to work into a conversation.*

Thanks to Nancy Reagan, the D.A.R.E. program and every episode of Saved by the Bell, I took it to heart that, not only was it OK to "just be myself," it was totally fucking amazing. And worse, if I chose ever not to "just be myself" I would be shunned by my peers, fail at all my endeavors and probably die of an overdose of caffeine pills. So what other people now take for bravado or borderline Asperger's syndrome is really a complicate crystalline mesh of intricate but fragile defenses I've built as a prophylactic against the total implosion of the super-ego into the anchorless, unsteerable id. Doubt myself? That way lies despair. And probably crack-whoredom.

So I was disturbed to find out that all the violence going on in the 1980s wasn't caused by social injustice, economic inequality or people who felt kinda down on themselves, it was probably actually caused by atmospheric lead. That's right, New Jack City was made possible not by a novel and deadly drug epidemic but because your uncle drove that 1971 Mercury Cougar a few years longer than was good for him. Or for you. Or for any of us.

On the one hand it's kind of a relief. I feel like I can try to exhale a little bit,** maybe try letting go of this frankly exhausting regime of "believing in myself"all the time. Maybe I can still be awesome without having to shout it at passers by on public transportation?

On the other hand, what difference does it make? Atmospheric lead, self-esteem crisis... we're living in an era where most of us are as safe or safer than any American has ever been. So long as the people living near us are adequately medicated and don't have access to fully automatic weapons.

On another, frankly surprising third hand,*** all that fucked-up unearned aggression made for some really good cinema. All the early Scorsese pictures were, in retrospect, an exaltation of a nation whacked out on car exhaust. No lead in the air? No Mean Streets. No Taxi Driver. Those aren't worth the occasional race riot or home invasion?




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*I know what you're thinking, but evaluate, and be honest: what have you mentioned to another person more recently, your shoes or your genitals?

**Because it's way safer to inhale again than it used to be.

***I blame the lead again.