Big Swiss

by Jen Beagin

She’d been a listener all her life and tended to surround herself with people in love with their own voices.

OM: What’s a trauma person? FEW: Someone who can’t stop saying the word “trauma.” Trauma people are almost as unbearable to me as Trump people. If you try suggesting that they let go of their suffering, their victimhood, they act retraumatized. It’s like, yes, what happened to you is shitty, I’m not denying that, but why do you keep rolling around in your own shit? If they stopped doing that for two seconds and got over themselves, even a little, they might actually become who they were meant to be.

“You know, I’ve seen a rise in borderline personalities in Hudson,” he said. “It seems they’re very attracted to narcissists.

Yes, people age horribly. They suffer strokes. Their bodies and brains fall apart. But the male ego? Firmly intact until the bitter end.