Dirty dumb Uncle Vic

I hate my Uncle Vic today. I hated him yesterday. I hated him 5 years before that. I'll hate him tomorrow.

Why?

Well, after years of intensely hating Uncle Vic, the conclusion I finally came to is that my hatred of him, all has to do with social class.

Uncle Vic is from the worst social class on Earth.

Which social class is it? It's not the upper class. It's not really the middle. It's certainly not the lower, considering he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his son (who isn't nearly as obnoxious as he is) to go to a prestigious university.

No, the social class that Uncle Vic is from is what I call the "desperately aspiring to seem middle" class.

It might be hard to explain to some people, of course, because most people would consider a guy like Uncle Vic, who had all that money to drop on his kids college ed, to be middle. I don't consider him middle, however, for a few reasons. First of all, Uncle Vic himself isn't educated. I don't even think he can really read. Yes, he has a lot of money, but it hasn't changed who he was for the first 25-30 years of his life. If Uncle Vic was really middle class, he'd be able to discuss things with me, like books, or films that people in magazines review. He'd perhaps have interests like fishing, or bike riding, or maybe he'd even know the plot to Star Wars. 

Uncle Vic doesn't know any of that shit. He might as well be the Indian guy at the Deli down the road. Every single cultural reference goes over this dude's head. He has, it is very clear, never read so much as a single book. He has never, he swears, 'had any time at all', to watch a movie. He does not like fishing, he has never gone camping, and he certainly doesn't know the Star Wars plots. He doesn't know much of anything, as I say. There is nothing to talk about when Uncle Vic comes around, except the most mundane topics in life, like death, taxes, and Donald Trump, etc.

Again, if he were really middle class, Uncle Vic would at least have interests, but instead he's just a lower class guy, who happened to come into some money, but the money only seems to have made him worse, instead of better. Uncle Vic might have been OK, i sometimes think, if he hadn't of had the son, for instance.  But the son plus the money turned him into a righteous piece of shit of a human being. Uncle Vic is not content with the money he made during his life. Instead, everything for him is all about what that son will go on to do. In other words, will he go on to make my name a real middle class name, or not? Will he carry some sort of legacy of me, into some far superior neighborhood?

Uncle Vic didn't win a few gambling games, like most lower class folks will do, and start to wear a smile and consider himself lucky. He just wants more, more, more.

It is this trait of Uncle Vic that is the worst of them all. It is this one that has made me decide that he is, in the first place, a traitor to his own class, and also, undoubtedly, a self-hater.  He lives vicariously through a son who hates him just like I do.

I write the story of UNcle Vic, in fact, as a type of warning message. If you recognize traits of yourself being written here, please stop it, whoever/wherever you are. Uncle Vic is like a cancer and a plague on my entire family and my entire life... if you think you're anything like him...stop now...kill yourself... do anything... JUST DON'T BE HIM!

Some people might tell me now, of course, that Uncle Vic really is lower class and that this is how all lower class guys act. They might tell me that, by hating so badly on Vic, I'm really hating the Lower class. I don't fall for this shit tho. Again, I don't consider Vic lower class for obvious reasons.

 Lower class guys, for example, strangely enough, can often discuss a fairly wide range of topics. They can also be pretty funny. After all, they're lower class, and the deciding philosophy down there is that one ought to live for the moment. Lower class people tend to like music that makes you feel very alive, they like to tell dirty jokes, they're exciting, they're very salt of the Earth, and they're not usually too judgmental. I should know since all my best buddies came from this class.

Lower class guys are happier even when they're in f'n prison than Vic is in his fancy little suburban house worth 400 grand! Believe me!

Sure, if you get on the bad side of a 'LC' guy, they might rob you, maybe they'll even kill you, cause they don't fear prison too much -- but if you're their buddy, it's shocking how wonderful of a companion a totally uneducated lower class guy can be. Doesn't matter what age he is. I have other uncles, for example, who are not even close to insufferable as Uncle Vic. They can discuss fishing for 7 hours without tiring and its amazing. They can talk about funny shit like wrestlers and boxers, they can share a few Budweisers with you, they can 'shoot the shit' and laugh.

They've never read a book either -- but they're good guys. They get joy out of life, poor and mean as it has always been to them. They don't take life too seriously. They aren't too concerned with how far or not far their asshole sons will go or not go. They understand how to take it easy. Because they've often fucked up, they can accept a fuck up.

This isn't the case with Uncle Vic. I don't care what nayone says about him. He's an oboxious asshole from the worst social class on Earth. Honestly, of all the social classes, even the billionaire one, I find Uncle Vics to be the worst of them all. I really mean that. Uncle Vic is more insufferable than a billionaire. At least billionaires like Bill Gates, after all, actually do things for the world. Plus they create cool computers for me to play with. Can't say this about Uncle Vic. He hates computers. They're, to him, 'a colossal waste of time'. Uncle Vic thinks that one of the greatest inventions in the history of humankind is a waste of time.

Social class is really interesting to me, you see, because even with all the animosity between the classes, I've always felt that people from all social classes can have more to offer than most will believe. For example, most of my lower class pals, would often get very rude and downright refuse to hang out with anyone they even suspected of being upper-middle or above. But I always thought this was foolish for a few reasons, the biggest one of them being that an upper-middle friend can be, first of all, a great help, and scond of all, they tend to be so secure in their life, that they won't judge you too hard.

 In other words, an upper class sort of person, can actually be very easy to pass time with, becasue life is sort of a joke to them -- in just the same way that life becomes a bit of a joke, to someone very poor, as well. "After you've lost everything, there's not much else left to really lose." There's a strange place people who really have lost time and time again often manage to find. Some peple might find it hard to beliee, but theres a strange contentment in poverty or misfortune. "It can't get any worse." sort of thing. Everyone in small town America, i think, has some type of really unfortunate person in their midst like this. It's that wisened old war veteran who lost both his legs in war, but still finds a way to smile on the coldest winter morning, and wish you a good day.

In terms of art, for exampe, I've always said that the best artists tend to either come from the upper class or the lower. It's almost kind of rare to see a proper middle class artist, because those people tend to be obsessed with maintaining a 'status quo'. The upper class can affor the privilege of ignoring it; the lower just doesn't give a shit. See what I mean?

The thing that sucks about poor Uncle Vic, of course, is that he killed off all his lower class charisma, gaiety, and humor--  but never managed to really gain any of the cool points of what makes so many real "money folks" (or, again, middle folks) intriguing.

Sucks to be UNcle Vic, thats for damn sure.