Confidence Stench

Confidence has a smell, and no, it’s not an actual aroma as this is not some body wash for men advertisement, but rather it has a certain palpability to it that lingers on people.

I personally have a confidence stench.

I make phenomenal, glaring eye contact when the situation calls for it.

I enter rooms with a half smile half smirk like I know something everyone else doesn’t.

Is this true? Maybe, maybe not but if you say anything with enough conviction and confidence it sounds true. And say it often enough and you will believe it too. Hell, I have told enough stories filled with partial truths and entertaining self aggrandizing fibs that my friends can retell them the same way. You know why? My confidence stench.

The way I look at achieving things and getting different things is different from one of those lame-o visualization exercises where you see yourself achieving “FILL IN PARTICULAR GOAL”. It’s more of, “There are billions of people in the world. Vast percentages are inept morons. I am not an inept moron, ergo; I can do what I want.”

If I want to randomly pack up my car and move directly across the country to a city I have never even visited, where I don’t know hardly anyone, have no job lined up, and no place to live, I will do it. And I will do it knowing that I will get an awesome job, get a place to live, and make as many friends as I want. Confidence stench.

And I know that if I were to move back to Chicago and try and make a career switch, even it was in some stupid industry like car rental, that I would be the youngest manager in the downtown market within ten months. Confidence stench.

Were I to randomly wake up one day, and decide in the midst of a job recession that I wanted to quit my job, with nothing on the horizon and bills to pay, that I would have no problem finding a new job where I got paid more and worked less. Confidence stench.

When meeting people, interviewing for jobs, or bartering at your favorite flea market, it is of the utmost importance, you have to let your stench be made present. Without it, that’s the sort of shit that gets people mugged and attacked by Rottweiler’s and paying exorbitant prices for a second hand wooden tennis racket.

130% of job interviews are decided on three factors, and I know this because I have hired now 8 people in my brief professional tenure:

1) A firm enough handshake by a person making direct eye contact with sound posture.

2) A person who is ready and willing to talk about the subject about which they have the best knowledge and confidence, themselves.

3) A person who projects the attitude, “You’d be fucked up in the mind to not pick me.”

I have always gone forth from any interview, personal interaction, or flea market purchase thinking about what a great impression/second hand wooden tennis racket purchase I have made. And whatever decision others make, I find it to be like the opposite of the classic breakup mantra, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Instead it’s a whole lot of, “It’s not me, it’s you, you fucking idiots. But oh well, it’s not on me. I’m gonna be alright, it’s you I’m worried about, what with your awful decision making skills and ugly sweaters.” There are times, albeit rare, when you must defer to others and mask your stench. I have not discovered such a situation, but I am sure they exist.

The confidence stench is unique to the individual. Everyone has a particular way of showing how they are the best. The key thing is you are always prepared for everyone else to smell your stench and recognize it.

"Leprosy, Flesh Eating Bacteria, Hot Dog Fingers, Government Created Killer Nano Robot Infection"

As the summer season rolls continues, we have, much to the delight of literally three to fifteen million people, carnival season, festival season and all the lovely picnics you could imagine in local neighborhoods and at local churches.

And this brings me to discuss one of the true treasures we have in the US and A- the carnival worker. Oh you know who they are. You love them. Maybe some of you have been drunk and literally loved them (although on my jack and coke scale you would be past death level to have to do something this extreme. Like a 18. 18 Jack and cokes might make this excusable. On second thought, no. If you have ever hooked up with a carnie, you are doing wrong with your life). And you know who these people are. Carnies are easily known as carnies based on their general carnieness. They have a cigarette in their mouth or on the ready in their hands at all time, they stare listlessly off into the distance constantly which is also their style when operating that rickety old scary ride (about which your Dad always says, "Must be totally safe. Do you really think they would let all these kids on it if it weren't safe?" Yes Dad, I do think they might not be safe. These machines weren;t built by NASA employees in their down time) or taking your money so you can play their rigged carnival game. , they have some sort of tattoo related to America a la the bald eagle drinking whiskey with guns it its talons. These people are America.

Yet one thing that I have always been perplexed about is just how one ends up becoming one of these carnival workers. It's almost like the old joke about naming your kid Jeeves so he would become a goddamn butler, which is basically like telling your child you hate them (Ace, Buck, Icarus...those names equal pure love). Carnies might start off from the same path, receiving names like Riaan, Fred, Arrork, Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda (alright so I just started naming African countries. It was easier that way for all of us. Trust me.) But somehow I don't get the feeling that the path to carniedom follows this route:

1)Normal middle class upbringing, complete with high school, college, and taking MBA classes at night.
2) Become a carnie.

That would be fucking ridiculous.

I have a feeling like it's more like this

1) Found in a dumpster by nuns during infancy
2) Given an odd name since nuns, realistically have little or no contact with the actual world, nor do they know they are making you destined to become a carny.
3) Get your first tattoo at three. Also develop a lifelong dependance on oxycontin, whiskey, cigarettes and strippers, but slightly later, like at 10, on a field trip to a meat packing plant where you seperated from the group and went to a strip club.
4) Burn the orphanage down.
5) Work for a carnival. Your skillset is perfect and boy did you ever trick the manager of the carnival to agree to pay you in all the corndogs you could eat. That fuckin moron.

I mean, think about it, there are a number of blue collar jobs which can still place people in a whole different strata than the carnival worker. But at the same time, is the carnival worker not as beautiful and majestic as a soaring bald eagle in terms of its representation of America?

Carnies with good social skills get promoted to being a roadie.