Dandywatch - Hermenaut, Issue #11

Wednesday, cigarette #3
Outside Bass Library, 3:45pm

Award for Most McSweeney-esqe Piece in Hermenaut #11 (The "Camp" Issue): "The Art of Being Uncomfortable."

. . .one can only live so long on coffee, gin and tonics, romance, dressing up, philosophy, and insomnia (for the truly glamorous are very smart people who tend to stay up too late) before descending into a suicidal depression. That's why, from time to time, I've stealthily crept at dawn to the health club down the street to become one with a dozen other ladies whose sweat soon blossoms into perfect circles 'round their purple lycra-ensconced crotches.

Aerobics is not glamorous, for glamour always involves appreciation by and contrast with the opposite and more craggy sex—you know, the one that commits all the murders. Aerobics is merely a respite in the valley of pure femaleness, a sweet balm for the ravages of the luxurious life. (Don't get me wrong—I like ravages. However, you gotta take a break sometimes.) But beware. Behind the girlish, dance-like trappings of aerobics lurks exercise, and exercise is a man. Like every good bad man, exercise is seductive, dangerous, and absolutely nothing like what it appears to be. And just like that bad man, exercise will start making you do things that you would never think of doing were your mind only clear. (Don't forget—endorphins are drugs.) If you're not careful, you'll find yourself wearing a ponytail every day, suddenly believing that yellow and turquoise compliment your complexion, and buying shoes that support your arches.

Award for Most Parentheses in a Single Paragraph: "Hermenaut of the Month: Oscar Wilde."

But it's interesting to note that one of Wilde's dandies, Lord Goring (Wilde supposedly remarked that An Ideal Husband "contains a great deal of the real Oscar"), does wind up happy. Although Goring, "the first well-dressed philosopher in the history of thought," presents himself as shallow, selfish, and easily bored, it's clear that this is merely a stylish way of being almost religiously unsentimental and detached. As a result, Goring is able to articulate what Wilde calls "the philosophy that underlies the dandy": Pleading for tolerance on behalf of sinners, Goring urges his friends (who are tormented by the need to maintain their moral respectability) to recognize that life cannot be lived according to absolute ideals, that we must be flexible and willing to change. His idle detachment allows him to be the model of the ethical aesthete, loving and generous without being sympathetic or "kind." Goring's qualities are those of the true critic, who, according to Gilbert, is "cosmopolitan" (free of prejudices), "detached" (free from vulgar emotions), "intellectual" (contemplative and serene), and "insincere" (recognizing no position as final).

That passage, incidentally, also wins the award for Most Immediately Evocative of the Senior Essay I Should Be Writing Instead of Reading Back Issues of Hermenaut.