Not so amiable.

Years ago, I played regularly in the most casual pick-up game in town. It was one of the highlights of my week; I did not often miss Sunday pick-up. There was a guy who also loved Sunday pick-up, and friends, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that he was fucking annoying.

My primary grievance is that he was a dangerplayer, which is a term I made up by myself. He’d go all out for everything, and he didn’t have the coordination to avoid collisions*. There are people I’ll contest with every time, because I know that they’ll do amazing contortions and grab the disc from over my head but never land on me. But this guy, you’d pull up if you even saw him in your peripheral vision, because he’d run smack into you. He blindsided me once, and I remember this amazing sensation of being bodily displaced, feeling all the momentum transfer. He knocked the breath from me, but at least I wasn’t injured. I saw him in two separate collisions that ended the other person’s knee. He never meant it. He felt terrible. But he constantly caused collisions.

If I’d liked the guy, I would have gone with his intentions and forgiven him what were always accidental collisions. But I couldn’t stand him. He was smarmy, with a scraggly mustache. He hit on new woman players their first day at pick-up, and who knows how many we lost that way. He rode his motorcycle onto the field and always referred to it as his BMW. He would invite the ladies over to hot tub. He was a caricature; only, not funny. My skin crawled when I was near him. I cringed when he showed up, gave the briefest of answers when he talked to me, walked away if he was near. I was always civil, never badmouthed him, didn’t discourage people from inviting him to group events. But when I hosted, he was not invited.

Another woman played with us in those days. I’ve written before about how I watched her do sneaky, self-centered shit until I came to the conclusion that she was without empathy or a belief that rules apply to her. That combination, I decided, made her too unpredictable to spend time with. I stayed away from her after that. But here’s the thing. This woman, whom I assessed to be too dangerous to be around, was well socialized. Mostly pleasant demeanor, good at conversation. I didn’t care if she showed up at parties, never thought I had to supervise or save people from her. But the guy, who never had anything but the sincerest good intentions, who was genuinely nice but all the way tacky, he annoyed me just by existing. I wanted him the fuck out of any space I was in.

It is not fair that I was more willing to be around a woman I thought could be evil** than a nice but profoundly annoying man. It is true though. Annoying people are truly a test of my decency and beliefs. I do not want to live up to my ideals with annoying people. I want them to stop being annoying.














*I think I especially hate dangerplayers because they’re a type, and when I was a kid, my tkd master would always match me against them. He did that because I was coordinated and I didn't get mad when I fought. But they scared the shit out of me, because they mean destroyed joints and broken ribs. Their enthusiasm is sky-high, and they don’t have the control for that. They don’t even realize they’re a hazard. I hated fighting them. Incidentally, if you get to choose, always, always fight someone better than you. A better fighter will beat you, but a worse fighter will injure you.

**Please understand that I never thought she was motivated by malice. But I thought that if malice occurred to her, she had no internal limits.