Did anyone else notice how Miranda acted alive and normal at the bar?
This tripped my head out the most. It was that scene which finally made me sympathize with Abe, who I had previously disliked for his ungrateful narcissism.
As soon as I saw that everyone else at that bar was attractive and all the women wore tight black dresses, I said "Oh shh*it, it's a bar for extroverted, young, rich, healthy, cool people who don't have any psychiatric problems." They're smug, self-assured yuppies with no empathy at all and ZERO tolerance for "losers". I bet Mahmoud only pretends to like Miranda because she's easy to fool and sexy. Guys have tried that with me, and I reject them, not because I don't want to be f*kked, but because they were trying to fool me.
The guy in American Psycho was an extreme example, but that bar was the absolute last place Abe should be. I'm surprised someone didn't punch HIM!
It's cold-hearted people like that who made me abandon "humanity" and retreat into a cave.
Like, say you have a sympathetic friend at work who you confide in and share your troubles with. But when they talk to you in the presence of another "normal" person they're aloof, sarcastic, and caustic. You realize then that their fake kindness was really just the easiest way for them to adapt to a crazy person they have to work with every day. You feel the Big Disappointment again, and you ask yourself, "Given how horrible other people are, is it any wonder I'm depressed?"
Abe was almost lucky that he was so far gone and narcissistic, because he was spared those realizations. He will never discover that the friendly social context he thought he was in bears no relation to what's actually going on, like when he was trying to get Miranda's phone number.
Being crazy hurts, but knowing you're crazy is frightening. At work, someone said something to me as I walked past and we had a short conversation. Then the guy said something completely unrelated, and I suddenly realized that he was actually having a conversation with someone in a cubicle and was pointedly ignoring me.
I could imagine Abe's inability to decide how to handle this kind of disorientation at the bar when he saw Miranda having fun. I understood his feelings of betrayal. I'm mad at her for being so inconsistent in front of Abe, but then, she never really did care about him at all. She only wanted to marry him because she didn't want to grow old alone, and normal people won't marry her since she's so depressed.
Abe's speech to his mother in his bedroom was absolutely true: Everyone else really IS selfish, horrible, and greedy. Like Ally Sheedy said in Breakfast Club, when you grow up, your heart dies. The only people who care that you're in pain are staring at you and masturbating.
But normal people already know that, and they wonder why you expect anything better. See, the difference between being a bewildered, depressed adult and being "wised up" is that only crazy people EXPECT anybody to care about them. That's why they don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves--which causes the cycle to continue.
But even though it was true, Abe's speech was scary to hear because I could see how maladaptive and mentally-ill it was. Only psychiatrists and other crazy people can tolerate listening to how things in your past have damaged you. Watching that speech, I realized that the dismissive yuppies in bars like Mahmoud's hangout are, in fact, well-adjusted normal people. They're just in a room where they don't have to pretend to feel sympathy for whining, self-absorbed losers like Abe.
And me.