DocHeart
12-10-2012, 04:04 PM
So you wanna be hard-boiled?
You don't even know what hard-boiled is. You think hard-boiled is wearing a brown coat and a hat and walking slowly along a poorly lit street during a winter night. Anyone can do that.
Drinking heavily, smoking constantly, and swearing regularly don't make you hard-boiled. Nor does occupying the stool at the far end of the bar every night, looking morose. Women who want someone to mother might show some interest in you and walk up to you and say "do you always drink alone" or something to that effect, but guess what -- that doesn't make you hard-boiled. It just means you look so miserable she thinks you need a pity fukc.
Wasting your time and money on horses and dogs doesn't make you hard-boiled, either. You might think that you've approached this state when you've just blown your last twenty on a dubious tip from some bearded guy, but I'm sorry, it's just not it. I won't even discuss the scenario of gambling and winning: that's positively soft-boiled.
The amount of women you nail has absolutely nothing to do with being hard-boiled. If you think the hard-boiled guy always gets the girl, you've misread: the girl actually gets him. She runs to him in despair, begs his protection, offers him her body and cooks him breakfast. But it won't be long before she leaves him, and that's the best-case scenario. More often she will betray him, give him away, turn him in, crush him. If it's pussy you're after, you don't want to look for it by being hard-boiled. Go to regular parties instead, and always steer clear of the half-drunk redhead smoking those long cigarettes.
Hard-boiled is not about beating people up. It's about getting beat-up yourself. If you are some karate-kid type who can pulverize any number of thugs who try to steal his wallet in a dark alley, you're not hard-boiled. You would be if you gave as good as you got and still ended up with a broken arm and no wallet, and you weren't afraid to walk through the same dark alley the following night. And hard-boiled isn't sizing up your opposition, weighing your options, thinking through your plan of attack and all that siht. Hard-boiled is entering the fray without caring how many times you'll get hit before you land one yourself.
If, by any chance, you associate hard-boiled with having enough money to take your chosen femme to a fancy restaurant and show her how large you are by ordering the best champagne and sending back your steak because it wasn't bloody enough, please leave now. You are unworthy of my words.
Hard-boiled isn't really about looks, but you do need some scars. No scars means you never got beat-up, so you can't be hard-boiled. Not too much, though: a sizeable cut on your forehead or a discoloured circle from a bullet on your left shoulder is enough. If you've ended up in a wheelchair, you might have been hard-boiled once, for which you are certainly owed some respect. But you're a retiree; you're burnt toast.
But most of all, hard-boiled is about character. If you tell that bald fukc of a barman to refill my glass I'll let you in on it.
Character, I tell you. Your parents didn't shape it, and you didn't learn it at school: that's not hard-boiled, that's just doing as you're told. No, the hard-boiled character is shaped by feeding on the filth, experiencing the excrement, breathing in the disgusting froth of man's unending unfairness to his fellow man. You can't always be the victim here, don't get me wrong: if you allow people to walk all over you, you're far from hard-boiled. But you've seen what the strong have done to the weak; what bosses do to workers; what bigger kids do to smaller kids; what bankers do to borrowers; what drunken, violent husbands do to their wives. You were there when the dealer pressed a blade against the boy's carotid, demanding his overdue pay, and you were there when the boy snatched the gold-plated crucifix from the chest of the old woman who was feeding the cats.
When I say you've seen those things, I mean you've really seen them. Nobody else saw the state hospital doctor who demanded a grand from the wife of the guy who was waiting for an operation to move him up the list, but you did. The kid from the northern suburbs with the fancy leather jacket who raped the fast-food waitress in the back of his dad's Mercedes? Yes, you saw that, too. And you saw one government after the other deliberately neglecting the west-end until people who were once house-proud and honest had no choice but to work for the drug lords, and you saw the place turn into a hive of thieves and dealers and prostitutes and pimps. You have a good memory: you remember how it was when you were growing up there, and you compare it to what it's all become, and it chokes you.
You don't care that you are just one person and -- what the fukc? How much difference are you really going to make? It doesn't matter. You know you won't change the world. You know bosses will keep fukcing workers, you know husbands will still cheat on their wives and give them a black eye when they find them too bothersome, you know dealers will bully junkie boys into attacking old ladies, you know the waitress has been raped and there's no undoing that, and more will be raped, and some of them will even be killed and left in dump to have their skins pecked off by seagulls. You know the next government aren't going to clean up your old neighbourhood, 'cause frankly it's beyond cleaning up. But you don't give a damn. You'll still do your bit.
You don't necessarily need to be a cop or a private eye or a journalist to be hard-boiled, but you've got to be active in a field where you can do something about everything that's making you want to be hard-boiled. Know what I mean? Can you imagine a hard-boiled postman? A hard-boiled marketing consultant? A hard-boiled fashion designer? These are concepts that make us laugh. But you can certainly be a hard-boiled doctor, lawyer, graphic designer, film maker, musician, poet, computer engineer. And in the end, to call a spade a spade: whatever your job, if it doesn't allow you to be hard-boiled and you want to become hard-boiled, you'll leave it, no matter what the consequences. Otherwise you're just a wannabe.
You know what? I'm not the first person to think of all these things. It'd do you good to do some reading. That old dog Raymond Chandler said it all, and in better-chosen words, too, in some essay he wrote back when you and I had no idea that we would be born in this sihthole of a world. Yes, you can google stuff and still be hard-boiled, as long as googling is done with education in mind, for the hard-boiled man is a cultivated man, a man of the world, one who knows his onions as my father used to say.
Hard-boiled is about intelligence. You won't always need to solve great mysteries, and whodunit is always going to be left to the real cops (who will often fukc it up); but you will need to know when you're being led up the garden path. And people will attempt to do this. If you've got any doubt that people will try to screw you, then you're not cut out for this. Hard-boiled means that you trust people who have gained your trust over a solid period of time. It isn’t about never trusting anybody, by the way; that's being paranoid. But if you have a tendency to trust too easily, you're not hard-boiled. You're in another place. You're sunshine and apple-pie, and you're heading for a fall.
Strength, yes. I told you before. You need to give as good as you get. You'll get beat-up, but that doesn't mean you can be a flabby bastard. Look at this -- you call this a stomach? No more drink for you. Get me another one. You have to be fit. You'll be running for your life often enough, oh yes. Better have a good pair of legs on you. And you've got to know how to land a decent punch. Mind you, if you really mean it, and you really wanna be hard-boiled, you'll learn soon enough. Be prepared, son: you've got this big bright white fukcing Colgate smile -- that's not gonna last if you become hard-boiled. Someone will break your teeth sooner or later. But if your incisor is lost, you can, and must replace it. Dentistry has come a long way. A hard-boiled guy missing a front tooth? You sihtting me?
The hardest ingredients to come by, however, are honesty and integrity. Hard-boiled is about stepping up to take the heat, son. It's about being close buddies with the truth, no matter how much it hurts you or how much it hurts people you love. Did I say you should be careful who you trust? Well, I'll give you this: you can trust a hard-boiled guy to come up trumps. A hard-boiled guy doesn't lie, for others' lies is what made him hard-boiled in the first place. If he starts chewing his words, he's stopped being hard-boiled and his shell is about to crack and his yolk is about to start running down the sink. There ain't no compromise, son. Frankly, if you choose to be hard-boiled, then your only friend is the truth. It's the only thing that's keeping you alive. Does that mean you're not careful who you open your mouth too? Of course not. If you start blabbering to the first blondie who bats her eyelids then you're not hard-boiled, you're just thick. This is the golden rule you must live by: if you are forced to lie, you'll only do so to serve the truth. But never become part of a lie. Observe deception, decay and corruption: study them, understand them. But only in the same way that a scientist studies a deadly virus. Keep a safe distance. Don't become infected.
And that's about it. There's other stuff, minor stuff, which you'll get to realize as you progress. But you got the gist. And now I see a question forming in your young eyes. Who am I to be telling you what hard-boiled is? Is it hard-boiled to talk about what hard-boiled is? Well, son, let me tell you: that's the right question to ask, and it shows you're on the right track. When you get there, if you get there, you'll work out the answer yourself.
Now, beat it. That goggle-eyed greased-up fat lump of a pianist is about to go on stage. You wouldn't believe it looking at him, but he does a decent standard, and I like to listen to him in peace. And yes, an appreciation of jazz is an essential part of being hard-boiled. Who do you think you oughta be listening to?
Kylie Minogue?
You don't even know what hard-boiled is. You think hard-boiled is wearing a brown coat and a hat and walking slowly along a poorly lit street during a winter night. Anyone can do that.
Drinking heavily, smoking constantly, and swearing regularly don't make you hard-boiled. Nor does occupying the stool at the far end of the bar every night, looking morose. Women who want someone to mother might show some interest in you and walk up to you and say "do you always drink alone" or something to that effect, but guess what -- that doesn't make you hard-boiled. It just means you look so miserable she thinks you need a pity fukc.
Wasting your time and money on horses and dogs doesn't make you hard-boiled, either. You might think that you've approached this state when you've just blown your last twenty on a dubious tip from some bearded guy, but I'm sorry, it's just not it. I won't even discuss the scenario of gambling and winning: that's positively soft-boiled.
The amount of women you nail has absolutely nothing to do with being hard-boiled. If you think the hard-boiled guy always gets the girl, you've misread: the girl actually gets him. She runs to him in despair, begs his protection, offers him her body and cooks him breakfast. But it won't be long before she leaves him, and that's the best-case scenario. More often she will betray him, give him away, turn him in, crush him. If it's pussy you're after, you don't want to look for it by being hard-boiled. Go to regular parties instead, and always steer clear of the half-drunk redhead smoking those long cigarettes.
Hard-boiled is not about beating people up. It's about getting beat-up yourself. If you are some karate-kid type who can pulverize any number of thugs who try to steal his wallet in a dark alley, you're not hard-boiled. You would be if you gave as good as you got and still ended up with a broken arm and no wallet, and you weren't afraid to walk through the same dark alley the following night. And hard-boiled isn't sizing up your opposition, weighing your options, thinking through your plan of attack and all that siht. Hard-boiled is entering the fray without caring how many times you'll get hit before you land one yourself.
If, by any chance, you associate hard-boiled with having enough money to take your chosen femme to a fancy restaurant and show her how large you are by ordering the best champagne and sending back your steak because it wasn't bloody enough, please leave now. You are unworthy of my words.
Hard-boiled isn't really about looks, but you do need some scars. No scars means you never got beat-up, so you can't be hard-boiled. Not too much, though: a sizeable cut on your forehead or a discoloured circle from a bullet on your left shoulder is enough. If you've ended up in a wheelchair, you might have been hard-boiled once, for which you are certainly owed some respect. But you're a retiree; you're burnt toast.
But most of all, hard-boiled is about character. If you tell that bald fukc of a barman to refill my glass I'll let you in on it.
Character, I tell you. Your parents didn't shape it, and you didn't learn it at school: that's not hard-boiled, that's just doing as you're told. No, the hard-boiled character is shaped by feeding on the filth, experiencing the excrement, breathing in the disgusting froth of man's unending unfairness to his fellow man. You can't always be the victim here, don't get me wrong: if you allow people to walk all over you, you're far from hard-boiled. But you've seen what the strong have done to the weak; what bosses do to workers; what bigger kids do to smaller kids; what bankers do to borrowers; what drunken, violent husbands do to their wives. You were there when the dealer pressed a blade against the boy's carotid, demanding his overdue pay, and you were there when the boy snatched the gold-plated crucifix from the chest of the old woman who was feeding the cats.
When I say you've seen those things, I mean you've really seen them. Nobody else saw the state hospital doctor who demanded a grand from the wife of the guy who was waiting for an operation to move him up the list, but you did. The kid from the northern suburbs with the fancy leather jacket who raped the fast-food waitress in the back of his dad's Mercedes? Yes, you saw that, too. And you saw one government after the other deliberately neglecting the west-end until people who were once house-proud and honest had no choice but to work for the drug lords, and you saw the place turn into a hive of thieves and dealers and prostitutes and pimps. You have a good memory: you remember how it was when you were growing up there, and you compare it to what it's all become, and it chokes you.
You don't care that you are just one person and -- what the fukc? How much difference are you really going to make? It doesn't matter. You know you won't change the world. You know bosses will keep fukcing workers, you know husbands will still cheat on their wives and give them a black eye when they find them too bothersome, you know dealers will bully junkie boys into attacking old ladies, you know the waitress has been raped and there's no undoing that, and more will be raped, and some of them will even be killed and left in dump to have their skins pecked off by seagulls. You know the next government aren't going to clean up your old neighbourhood, 'cause frankly it's beyond cleaning up. But you don't give a damn. You'll still do your bit.
You don't necessarily need to be a cop or a private eye or a journalist to be hard-boiled, but you've got to be active in a field where you can do something about everything that's making you want to be hard-boiled. Know what I mean? Can you imagine a hard-boiled postman? A hard-boiled marketing consultant? A hard-boiled fashion designer? These are concepts that make us laugh. But you can certainly be a hard-boiled doctor, lawyer, graphic designer, film maker, musician, poet, computer engineer. And in the end, to call a spade a spade: whatever your job, if it doesn't allow you to be hard-boiled and you want to become hard-boiled, you'll leave it, no matter what the consequences. Otherwise you're just a wannabe.
You know what? I'm not the first person to think of all these things. It'd do you good to do some reading. That old dog Raymond Chandler said it all, and in better-chosen words, too, in some essay he wrote back when you and I had no idea that we would be born in this sihthole of a world. Yes, you can google stuff and still be hard-boiled, as long as googling is done with education in mind, for the hard-boiled man is a cultivated man, a man of the world, one who knows his onions as my father used to say.
Hard-boiled is about intelligence. You won't always need to solve great mysteries, and whodunit is always going to be left to the real cops (who will often fukc it up); but you will need to know when you're being led up the garden path. And people will attempt to do this. If you've got any doubt that people will try to screw you, then you're not cut out for this. Hard-boiled means that you trust people who have gained your trust over a solid period of time. It isn’t about never trusting anybody, by the way; that's being paranoid. But if you have a tendency to trust too easily, you're not hard-boiled. You're in another place. You're sunshine and apple-pie, and you're heading for a fall.
Strength, yes. I told you before. You need to give as good as you get. You'll get beat-up, but that doesn't mean you can be a flabby bastard. Look at this -- you call this a stomach? No more drink for you. Get me another one. You have to be fit. You'll be running for your life often enough, oh yes. Better have a good pair of legs on you. And you've got to know how to land a decent punch. Mind you, if you really mean it, and you really wanna be hard-boiled, you'll learn soon enough. Be prepared, son: you've got this big bright white fukcing Colgate smile -- that's not gonna last if you become hard-boiled. Someone will break your teeth sooner or later. But if your incisor is lost, you can, and must replace it. Dentistry has come a long way. A hard-boiled guy missing a front tooth? You sihtting me?
The hardest ingredients to come by, however, are honesty and integrity. Hard-boiled is about stepping up to take the heat, son. It's about being close buddies with the truth, no matter how much it hurts you or how much it hurts people you love. Did I say you should be careful who you trust? Well, I'll give you this: you can trust a hard-boiled guy to come up trumps. A hard-boiled guy doesn't lie, for others' lies is what made him hard-boiled in the first place. If he starts chewing his words, he's stopped being hard-boiled and his shell is about to crack and his yolk is about to start running down the sink. There ain't no compromise, son. Frankly, if you choose to be hard-boiled, then your only friend is the truth. It's the only thing that's keeping you alive. Does that mean you're not careful who you open your mouth too? Of course not. If you start blabbering to the first blondie who bats her eyelids then you're not hard-boiled, you're just thick. This is the golden rule you must live by: if you are forced to lie, you'll only do so to serve the truth. But never become part of a lie. Observe deception, decay and corruption: study them, understand them. But only in the same way that a scientist studies a deadly virus. Keep a safe distance. Don't become infected.
And that's about it. There's other stuff, minor stuff, which you'll get to realize as you progress. But you got the gist. And now I see a question forming in your young eyes. Who am I to be telling you what hard-boiled is? Is it hard-boiled to talk about what hard-boiled is? Well, son, let me tell you: that's the right question to ask, and it shows you're on the right track. When you get there, if you get there, you'll work out the answer yourself.
Now, beat it. That goggle-eyed greased-up fat lump of a pianist is about to go on stage. You wouldn't believe it looking at him, but he does a decent standard, and I like to listen to him in peace. And yes, an appreciation of jazz is an essential part of being hard-boiled. Who do you think you oughta be listening to?
Kylie Minogue?