Good Person part 1
Tackling the age old question: "What is a Good Person?" First, through a powerful dialogue that I submit for the "Most 2021 LA Conversation" award.
What is a Good Person™?
The question that has haunted, titillated, fascinated, and frustrated me for most of my waking life.
(BTW, I use the trademark symbol because I think of “good people” as a sort of coalition, corporation, not-so-secret society thing. Or like an “organic” sticker, or Better Business Bureau certification.)
I’m sure it’s come up on many occasions for most of you, as well. And maybe more specifically/importantly, the real question under the question: “Am I a Good Person™?”
There was a whole TV show about it called The Good Place, and they punted the question so many times I just stopped watching after three seasons. Not a very Good Person™ (GP, for short) thing to do.
I’m sure there have been hundreds if not thousands of research papers written on the topic by people far more educated than I. I’m also sure some form of this question is what has, at least in part, driven countless people mad.
Fuck it, though. I’ll take a stab at it.
This is quite a large topic, but we must begin somewhere. Let’s start where all worthwhile philosophical conversations start: in 2021, with a girl I met on Bumble1.
She was a fairly successful TV actress, (4th lead in one of those high school shows that feels like it’s mostly written using predictive text) living in the nice part of Los Feliz. She came from money. White girl, slight Cuban background, the kind that got their slaves taken away in the 50s and hate when people wear Che Guevarra t-shirts.
We connected very quickly. Because I was recovering from a circumcision (medically necessary, NOT selective surgery, I don’t care what the paperwork said 😤), I was forced to talk to her on the phone for weeks before we actually got to hang out.2 Upon our first link, my dick was still pretty sore and I (it) was still pretty scared. The last couple of weeks had been hell, and I was all out of painkillers.
It was honestly pretty funny. I went over there with zero intention of fucking. I thought I had set that boundary in my head. I didn’t bring condoms– lol who am I kidding– and I made peace with the fact that we were just gonna hang out. I had no idea she wanted to fuck. But when it came down to it, I told her I wasn’t sure if I was ready and that I was worried about the stitches. She asked what my doctor said. I confessed that he said it would be fine.3 She looked at me like “Well, what are we even talking about then?” Very hard to argue with that! After a few G & T’s and American Spirit Gold’s, we ended up making love.
Fast forward to our third date– we have a conversation about the state of current media. We both agree that it sucks. Lacking originality, writing not up to par, tech companies getting in the way and saturating the market. It feels like we’re really connecting, flowing, and speaking the same language. Maybe this is the modern LA romance that could change the world, or at least define a generation: “(Inciting incident) Boy gets circumcision and is so down bad on weed and painkillers and not being able to leave the house he makes a Bumble… Girl messages boy… boy can’t move so he has nothing but time to talk to the girl… girl wants to hang out, but boy can’t…Girl encourages boy’s healing ‘Oh, but Remington, (that’s my name in this story) you must heal your mangled penis, I’m all alone in my two-story apartment in Los Feliz, and I’m scared of the Delta Variant!” When they finally meet up, girl inspires boy to overcome fear of stitches coming out of his dick…It works. Science be damned! Boy and girl fall in love bonding over a shared passion of storytelling… Boy’s penis fully heals, regains his swag, and writes a tv show so good girl can quit bullshit Dawson’s Creek rip off.”
Alas, something stranger happened.
We’re sitting there, at her surprisingly nice for a 21-year-old’s dining room table, drinking bee’s knees (plural) and she says something that I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around. Something about how, “We, as storytellers, have a responsibility to ‘bear witness to suffering’4 and also, “it’s our job to teach the public right from wrong in our stories.”
I forget exactly how she said it because my blood was already starting to boil, but I know she brought up World War II and how there was a bunch of anti-Nazi propaganda and that’s basically what we should do again. Because, you know, Trump and the Jan. 6 and Roe V Wade and shit.
I tread lightly for a bit, asking her soft questions to try and better understand where she was coming from. No dice. This is not one of my strong suits. She’s on to me. She can feel me calling her a midwit in my head.
I was not prepared for her next question in the slightest.
She takes a pause, fixes her head ever so slightly to her left, my right and says, “I’m a good person, right?”
I said, “I don’t think there is such a thing.”
She wasn’t having that. I was a few drinks in, pretty mentally lubricated, and thought we were going to have a philosophical/worldview-type convo. You know, 3rd date, let’s really peel back the onion, see what we’re working with. In hindsight, I can see she just wanted (needed) me to confirm that yes, she’s an excellent person, so we could go fuck by the fireplace.5 It was a leading question for God’s sake! She gave me the answer. It could have all been so simple.
She asked me again. One more shot, “No, really though, do you think I’m a Good Person ™? Let’s go, dumbass! Say the thing.
I said, “Again, I don’t really believe in that, but yeah sure, from what I can tell you seem very nice.”
Seeing I wasn’t going to give in, even to have sex, she asked me if I thought I was a GP. Mind you, I’m coming off a circumcision due to various sexual mishaps and just finished three weeks of sitting in pain with myself. To put it another way, I had just lived through a morality play. I was like Icarus. Only instead of dying a fiery death in the sun I was back home at my parents' house bloody, bandaged, and reckoning with who/where I had been. If I didn’t already know it before, I sure as shit knew it then.
“I know I’m not a Good Person.”
She said she thought I seemed like a good person.
I said thanks.
She went on to reason that maybe just by virtue of thinking about being a good person and asking the question, that pretty much meant she was a good person.
I said perhaps that’s true.
We never saw each other again.
I haven’t been able to shake it, though. What is a Good Person? It’s a good question. Ancient and timeless. I want– no, I need– to know the ingredients. I won’t even buy a protein shake without confirming it’s free of Xanthan/guar gum. How am I supposed to crown someone a Good Person™ without holding that label up to the light?
Subscribe for Part II
Far and away the funniest dating app. They’re all terrible and soul-sucking, but there’s something so quaint about having a girl (forced by tech) to open the conversation with just “Hiii.”
Under most circumstances, I would’ve passed on any FaceTime or Zoom request pre-meet. My thinking was “We’re already humiliating ourselves enough by being on this app, no need to make it professional or formal. We’re two spiritually/emotionally malnourished 20-somethings. Let’s please not pretend otherwise.”
My urologist was such an asshole. He thought I was a big pussy. We did not get along. Not good to have a bad relationship with the guy taking a scalpel to your penis!
I have to be honest, I still don’t know exactly know what she meant by this. It’s been seared into my brain for the past 3 years. I understand the words, but within the context of the broader conversation, I’m a little lost, and I’m not sure I want to be found.
Isn’t it interesting that a conversation about “Good People” can be more intimate and confronting than sex on the first date with a swollen penis? So the next time you’re letting the algorithm determine who you enter (or enters you, or both or whatever), maybe just ask them if they think they’re a Good Person™.
I know a Bad Man. He is 85 and has lived a Bad Life.
He would never, no matter how swollen someone’s penis was, ask anyone if they think he is a Good Person. He isn’t and he knows it.
And no one, no matter how swollen they were, would ever say to this guy, “Well, you’re not so bad. You’re a GP™.” He isn’t and everyone knows it.
This guy is dying now. It’s St. Patrick’s Day and he’s probably looking at his last summer.
He recently told someone he believes he will have a painful death. He’s also refusing pain medication. We’ll see how long that lasts.
But here is the thing.
In the end, distractions fall away. There is almost nothing left for this guy. Nothing to be selfish about. Nothing left to be cruel about. Or neglectful. There is no one left who cares what he thinks. Or says. Or does.
He can’t withhold anything because he doesn’t have anything anyone wants or needs. There is no one to neglect or abandon because no one is relying on him anymore. He doesn’t have anything, not even a future.
There he is with, essentially, nothing but a body fully of sickness.
Of course, his body is also full of life: his life. His cells are stuffed with it. His deeds. Memories. Ghosts. His cells are jam packed with his past.
There you go. Robbed of distractions. Saddled with the past. Basking in clarity.
In this quiet and clarity, he knows.
He knows with a level of clarity that has previously not been available to him, or rather, that he has previously been able to elude, that throughout his life, he chose to do things that benefitted himself. He could have done otherwise -- not even necessarily to the exclusion of his own benefit. Just, hey, include others in the good stuff once in a while. Don’t hog the cash, the praise, the car, the house, the travel, the experiences, the kindness, the joy. And you know what? Don’t hog the fucking snacks. Everyone loves snacks.
He knows he built systems into his personality which made selfish choices routine, easy, ongoing. He built in rationalizations to keep the system running.
Lying there with clarity and death, as poets say, “his only companions,” there is no more (no pun intended) lying. No more prevaricating. He knows. And he knows that he knows.
His response is to welcome, more or less, a painful death. Many people, men for sure, think pain is cleansing.
I don’t know this empirically, but I’m sure nevertheless, when he goes he wants to leave as many of his misdeeds here as he can. He was too clever for his own good, but he was never stupid. In the end, knowing is a bitch. Everyone wants to leave clean.
My de facto definition this morning of a Good Person™, is someone who is willing to include other people in the good stuff, go a little bit out of his way for the well-being of friends.
Maybe build some systems into a personality that make actions that benefit someone else easier to choose, even routine.
I’m leery of formulas, I don’t like tips and God save us from tropes and clichés. Yet, the impulse toward what feels good is surely itself good. One such impulse, common and authentic, I believe is, “try not to be selfish.”
Lean into kind.
Kindness survives anything, and shines in moments of clarity.
It’s also – a moment of kindness – a great hedge against the impulse to have to ask someone on the way into bed, “You think I’m a, you know…”
👏🏽👏🏽