Meghan Rowland - The Misanthropes Guide to Life: (Go Away!)

For curmudgeons, we had a surprising amount of support during the writing of our book. The authors would like to thank their parents, Richard Rowland, Diane Rowland, Cameron Neal, and Kay Turner for being incredibly supportive. Thank you to Becca and Geoff Grubbs for providing Meghan with a place to stay and an occasional nutritious meal, and Andie King for her continued love and support. Thank you to our friends, who have been very patient with our nocturnal lifestyles and occasional shouts of Go away, dammit! Im writing! Thank you to Caitlin Pratt for introducing the authors to one another; forgive her, she knew not what she did. Thank you to Grandmother, Mr. von Rosenberg, and the Camel for being exceptions to the everybody sucks rule. Our sincerest thanks to everyone at Adams Media who worked on this projectespecially Matt Glazer, who was gentle with us since it was our first time (it didnt hurt at all), and Wendy Simard, who cut the suicide jokes but otherwise let our voices shine through. Finally, as always, our deepest thanks to the luminous Jessica Walter. You are the wind beneath our wings.

Misanthrope(noun):

1. One who hates mankind; a curmudgeon; a loner.
2. The guy in your office who responded to your e-mail of baby photos with, D. Passing, but not college material.
3. A realist.

Once upon a time in a small town in Texas, there was a little boy with hair as ginger as the effervescent ale of which his mother did not approve, who did not fit in. One thousand miles away in a suburb of our nations capitol, there was a little girl whose peg was equally square. While their peers were playing Kick the Can and Seven Minutes in Heaven, they were watching Murder, She Wrote and rooting for the killer (played this week by Jessica Walter). As the little boy and little girl got older, not a whole lot changed. Middle school brought with it a lot of therapy, which probably would have been more useful had our heroes not started every session with, Why dont youm go first. In high school they finally got their driver licenses, giving them the freedom to skip class and take a Privacy Power Hour parked behind the Walgreens listening to Garbage and smoking stolen menthols.

It was in college when the boy and girl, now not so little, finally met. The boys dorm was having a getting to know you shirts versus skins ultimate Frisbee game, while the girls dorm held a mocktails and date-rape awareness happy hour. Desperate to avoid participating, both slipped into the campus drug store, eager to buy some vomit-inducing syrup of ipecac. As if guided by a wise-ass guardian angel, their hands simultaneously closed around the same bottle. Startled and annoyed, they locked eyes among the Pop-Tarts and Tampax.

You look like a nice girl, but Im facing shirts versus skins here, the boy said.

Ill see your pasty torso and raise you, add a splash of seltzer for a kick! the girl replied.

Halvsies?

Done.

That night as they retched into their souvenir Freshman Orientation 98 cups, each got a glimpse of the moon and felt for the first time it was shining down on someone who could understand them.

The next day as classes began, they both found themselves in Race, Class, Gender: Examining Otherness. As the professor outlined the class, a girl in a torn Bikini Kill T-shirt and hemp cargo shorts raised a trembling hand, weak from a diet of soy and outrage.

Um, excuse me, sir or madam, if were problematizing gender, shouldnt we acknowledge the rich tradition of Herstory?

Ugh, earnestness, our heroes muttered under their breath in unison. As they heard the echo, the same thought darted through each of their minds: Im not alone. They looked up, hesitantly turned, and were shocked to recognize each other from the night before. After class was dismissed, the boy took the girl aside, stared intently into her dark, brown eyes and said, You got hives at Day Care too, didnt you?

Plinko! The girl responded. That night, amid a sea of empty Bartles & Jaymes bottles and stubbed-out Marlboro Reds, the two swapped stories about hiding in privacy bushes at summer camp, field triprelated panic attacks, and years of spending recess with the nurse, listening to the latest details of her messy divorce. Feeling more and more like they were in the presence of a like-minded equal, they held each other, gently rocked, and cast their eyes toward the heavens. As tears rolled down their cheeks, they cried, Who are we?! Who made us?! like two confused, just-mutated superheroes, hot off the uranium presses.

Fueled by their Blue Hawaiian liquid courage, they sat down at the computer and started doing research, desperate for a better explanation than a nasty case of the Fuck Yous. After a failed string of dud searchesgo away; dont touch me; people suck; no I dont want to come to your quinceaerathey stumbled upon an intriguing and provocative term: Misanthrope.

Misanthrope. MIS-anthrope. Mis-ANTHROPE. They repeated the word over and over again, exploring the unfamiliar sound and letting it all just wash over them.

The next day they went out and made T-shirts. Several years later they wrote a book, so that Misanthropes everywhere would know how to cope with their natural enemy: people.

People are everywhere. Even if youve taken to squatting in an abandoned Cold Warera bomb shelter, youll still have to leave from time to time to pick up some fresh rat traps and Mountain Dew. Weve gathered together a quick primer in Misanthrope history, a couple of quizzes so you can determine if youre really a Misanthrope or just a-raggin, and 101 common interaction scenarios with multiple solutions for each. With this book in hand, you should have no trouble reducing your social circle to a single dot.

Adam and Eve may have gotten along fine, but Cain beat Abel with a rock for being a show-off. Youre not the first Misanthrope in history; as long as there have been groups, there have been people avoiding them. So that you can appreciate our proud and ancient traditions, we present you with a brief misanthro-centric view of history:

• Ca. 60,000 years ago: The first aborigines arrive in Australia, finding deserts and the worlds most poisonous animalsa small price to pay for dozens of millennia of privacy.
• 220206 B.C.: The Qin Emperor builds the Great Wall of China to avoid having to wave at the neighbors.
• 2nd century A.D.: Early Christians establish the first monastic communities, giving spiritually minded Misanthropes an excuse to hide in the desert.
• Ca. 1000: The Maori arrive in New Zealand, the last major landmass to be settled by man. There is now nowhere left to hide except Antarctica.
• 13471353: The Black Death kills millions in Europe. Survivors revel in free clothes and their own rooms.
• 1492: Spaniards arrive in the New World and wont leave, no matter how many times the natives yawn and mention having to go to work in the morning.
• 1666: Molieres The Misanthrope opens in Paris. World in shock by apparent collaboration between Misanthropes and Theater People.