You will, I believe, one day acknowledge me as the creator of a new emotion, one that combines the attractive friction of sandpaper with the slickness of fish oil on a wet pane of polished glass. This emotion, which I call contempathy©®, will become the go-to emotion for conflicted people who find themselves simultaneously attracted to and repelled by another person. You’ll note that I have taken the unusual step of claiming both copyright and trademark protection for the new emotion, lest some highly creative yet utterly untoward huckster think he might snatch it away from me and sell it on the street. Such men, and their female counterparts who hold multi-level marketing house parties wherein they attempt to sell emotions that are not their own, are beneath my contempathy.
Unfortunately, Father Google tells me I am not the first to use the term contempathy, but I believe I am the first to apply it to an emotion that melds an experience associated with a common item found in wood-working shops with an attribute of an aquatic life-based nutritional lubricant. Therefore, I believe it is well within the realm of reason for me to assert ownership of the word in connection with describing its associated emotion.
Let me give you a practical example of the use of contempathy in just one convoluted paragraph:
“The restaurant, a five-star place with prices to match, oozed wealth and pretention. Self-satisfied men in Christian Dior suits and arrogant women in Carolina Herrera dresses sat eating Beluga caviar on toast points and drinking Dom Perignon out of Swarovski champagne flutes. When Loralee Smuckling spied the sculpted abdomen of the bare-chested man wearing a bathing suit seated at the bar, raw contempathy swept over her in a wave of lust and loathing.”
While we’re discussing Loralee Smuckling, though, I might as well give you an update on her ear surgery. As you’ll recall, if you remember, her left ear was ripped from her head from helix to lobe as she slid through a barbed wire fence on Tom Graham’s exotics ranch. Well, the reattachment surgery was a complete success except for one thing: the dyslexic surgeon sewed the thing back on upside down. The upshot is that she can hear people coming up behind her far better than before, but her appearance is a little unusual. This happened, of course, after she felt such contempathy at the restaurant. But, get this, apparently the restaurant episode got her addicted to that emotion. Now, wherever she goes, she looks for people behaving in ways she finds both disgusting and appealing. You watch her next time you see her at a party; if you see her face start to flush, that’s when she’s beginning to experience contempathy. When she’s full-on blushing in crimson hue, that’s raw contempathy.
Love it!