For the next week, I’m going to write all about how much I suck. No, no. Not quite like that. Self-Dep Week is all about acknowledging the flaws that make me (and all of us) the people we are: three dimensional, fucked up, and full of shortcomings. The way I see it, the better you know your flaws (and the more open you are about them) the better those around you are able to navigate those foibles. Doesn’t necessarily make the flaws go away, but at least acknowledging them puts it all on the table: I’m a fuck up. So are you. Let’s go get a beer.

Today’s Suckage: Blabbermouth
I loves me a good story. I love hearing stories and retelling them. Then I love telling the same story again, cuz I wasn’t sure if it was you or someone else I told the first time.

My mouth is in near perpetual motion. My lips, like the hummingbird’s wings, blur from all the flapping and chatting. I can tell you all about almost anything, and for hours at a time. I go off on long tangential side-stories, and just when you think I’m done and it’s your turn to talk, I loop back to the original story, picking up the thread you hoped I’d forgotten so that I can conclude the story before — wait, I’m not done yet! — launching into the next one.

When I get bored of my own stories (trust me: I never run out), I start telling other people’s stories. Do you know what this makes me? A gossip. Oh sure: I can keep an impeccable secret &mdash if you remember to tell me explicitly, this is a secret, Ariel. Please do not share it. Otherwise, your latest drama becomes another plot line in the novel I’m constantly reciting.

Some of my best ideas fall out of my mouth, unknown to me until they’re spoken. That was most often how I came up with articles for Lotus, and just last week, when I was struggling with my book’s narrative arc, I called my agency and just started rambling and low and behold: a story arc came out of my mouth and it was better than any of the ideas I’d tried to grind out in my head. In other words, my mouth is sometimes smarter than my brain.

Sometimes not, though. I’m infamous for saying things I shouldn’t, and I’ve learned the hard way that when talking about others, I must never ever say anything that, were that person standing behind me, I wouldn’t say to their face.

And it’s happened. Once, while visiting with an old roommate in San Francisco, another old roommate called on the phone. This second roommate owed me several hundred dollars in back phone bills, but on the phone he was all butter, reminiscing about good times we’d never had. When my first roommate asked me who it was on the phone, I covered the mouthpiece and said, “Oh, it’s K: he’s kissing my ass and making nice in the hopes that I’ll forget how much money he owes me.” When I got back on the phone, K had heard every word I said, and was outraged.

“Are you not kissing my ass in the hopes that I won’t bring up the money I owe you?” I asked him. He floundered, and I shrugged. It might make me a bitch, but when I get caught talking about someone, I never deny it. I may be a gossiping blabbermouth, but at least I’m honest.

Tomorrow’s Suckage: Uncompassionate