It’s not just a Twitter handle. Brat is a lifestyle.
Girl, so confusing
Brat is female advantage. It’s pouting your lips until he goes, “Don’t make that face,” and curling the corners of that pout upwards when hesitation turns into submission.
Brat is asking for forgiveness instead of permission, because red lip gloss and watery eyes will get a “ok, go ahead—but just this time” out of any grumpy, middle-aged parking enforcement officer.
Attention-seeking? Me? Of course. Lee Edelman called it the “fascist face of a baby”, the way drawing attention to ourselves is our earliest talent. Brat is made to be looked at.
Vera Atkins, the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, was a top officer in the Special Operations Executive during WWII. She said:
I’ve always found personally that being a woman has great advantages if you know how to play the thing right and I believe that all the girls, the women who went out, had the same feeling.
We’re captivated by femme fatales and Bond girls. We make muses out of women like Marilyn Monroe—her breathy “Happy birthday, Mr. President” at Madison Square Garden can make us feel embarrassed, mesmerized, or even disgusted, but one thing it can’t make us feel is angry:
How can you get mad at an attractive woman for showing off what she has (without admitting your own envy or insecurity)?
Boys
Brat is a lover girl. I have a real passion for life, and I know life loves me back.
The scalpel of reason deems the tumor of passion inoperable, and so, I’m terminally sentimental. Spicy on the outside, sweet on the inside.
Brat is wearing dark sunglasses to watch men play beach volleyball. My blonde boy had turned honey-brown from the sun and sand, his hairy legs tickling me every time he plopped down onto the towel for a quick hydration break.
Brat is exchanging looks with a girl friend whenever a shirtless man walks by, synchronously swallowing a smirk that could’ve wiggled out of control, then going back to the conversation.
Brat is savoring the two-page love letter (For Sherry.pdf) written by a mysterious acquaintance and feeling like Cupid fired a shotgun straight at the temple.
Brat is thinking about the bartender I met in Manhattan on a hot Friday afternoon that felt like an eternal afternoon:
He told me he’s from Austin, Texas. I told him I like the desert. He told me he recently finished Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I told him I love that story. He told me he makes music. I told him I’m a professional dabbler. I told him I love lemons. He offered to make a Tom Collins from a secret recipe.
Brat is looking forward to seeing him again, eight Fridays later.
Art
Brat wants art, and art is fantastically deceitful and complex if it is to be good art (as Nabokov, my favorite writer, puts it). I hate it when people want to create “simple” things—that’s not art, that’s content. And in this house, we despise content.
Brat likes decadence. Brat likes delicious things, like an Old Fashioned with as many maraschino cherries as can fit on the bamboo skewer. Brat slurps two dozens oysters in one sitting. Brat needs a minimum of one croissant a day. Brat likes gold jewelry and Puccini arias.
Brat devours Nabokov. Lolita is the only book I’ve read and reread and re-reread (and am re-re-rereading). That novel feeds me like a plump apple strudel. I care about how something is written as much as I care about the plot. That’s why commercial nonfictions are like Kleenex—to be used and discarded, if used at all.
I don’t want information; I want enchantment. And what keeps something safe from being eaten by moths is not its facts but its art, only its art.
Sincerity
There’s no problem with earnestness, but there’s also merit in mischief.
Sentimental people understand that the most painful part of navigating life comes from being too earnest:
I was ashamed of myself when I realized that life is a masquerade party, and I attended with my real face. —Kafka
Brat is playing the game because it hurts more not to play.
Jung said that the study of the soul begins and ends with Mercury, the pagan god of merchants, profits, and thieves. He’s the Tinder Swindler. He’s Anna Delvey. He’s a trickster and a master storyteller. He’s in the Forbes-30-under-30-to-prison pipeline.
The Ancients designated a deity to mischief because it is a vice to try too hard to be sincere. You’re either sincere or you’re not; one does not try to be sincere. For example, if I say, “I’m humble,” am I actually humble? What mature person has to say, “I’m mature”?
Mercury represents a kind of detachment. I’m not saying that it’s good to lie or cheat; I’m saying that trying too hard isn’t the best way to get what you want. There’s something blatantly wrong with the pickup artist, yet, there’s something not quite right about someone who doesn’t have any game. You may be a good person, but what if you’re just not fun? If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?
Negotiations are won by whoever cares less. —Naval
Brat is a kind of transparency. It challenges hypocrisy and shakes up complacency. Brat is a splash of brandy in the cake—a little genuine fun in polite society.
Paradoxically, you need a dose of Mercury to keep things honest. It’s why the goofiest faceless accounts on Twitter are the most genuine people in real life, or why you and your close friend use the most unserious memes to describe the darkest times of your lives.
Sometimes, a good laugh is the best pesticide against bad fortune.
Ending thoughts:
Thanks for reading,
Q. What is good writing?
A. Good writing is so many different things, hard to define but you know it when you read it.
This post is really good writing. Kudos to you Sherry.
What a delightful read, not surprised Lolita is your favorite novel.