characteristics of a narcissist — 1 thorough investigation
characteristics of a narcissist — 1 thorough investigation
characteristics of the noun, the unmarked version, is what you get when you have reached the end of the qualifiers. no covert, no malignant, no vulnerable, no grandiose. just the noun. the noun by itself is, somehow, the heaviest version.
i am writing this from the desk while carla sits in the all-hands on the third floor, which buys me roughly the rest of the morning at 11:08am on a thursday. the elevator door across the hall just opened on nobody. that happens twice a day in this building and nobody has logged it.
i am compiling a working list. eight items. a normal number for a thursday. the focus_kw of the day, if you must call it that, is characteristics of a narcissist, plain noun, no adjective. the larger conversation about gaslighting lives one floor down in the same building, metaphorically.
1. characteristics of a narcissist, the working list
before we list, a clarification i would like noted. i am not a clinician. i am a man with a list and an elevator. the list i am about to write down is the working list, which means it gets revised every quarter when i think of a ninth item. eight is where it lives today.
the people in question, in my limited fieldwork, share a posture more than a personality. the posture is leaning slightly toward the mirror in the elevator without admitting they are leaning. that is item zero. it is the one that makes the rest possible.
i am not going to call the items “signs”, because signs implies a road and the people in question never read road signs. they read mirrors. i am going to call them characteristics. the noun. the heavy version.
2. the elevator where the call came and i let it ring
the elevator i am writing about is the one between floors two and three in this building. it has a panel of four buttons, three of which work, and a mirror that runs the full back wall. i have seen people enter that elevator and rearrange their face for the mirror before the doors close. i have done it myself. i am not above the list. the list is also about me.
two days ago at 1:38pm i was in that elevator alone when my phone rang. it was the_man_who_calls. i did not answer. i looked at the mirror. the mirror looked back. i pressed three. the call rolled to voicemail. the voicemail box has been at full capacity since february. i have not cleared it. that is also a characteristic, possibly mine.
this is the pattern i want to log. the dodged phone call, the elevator, the mirror. it is not unique to narcissists, but it is one of the rooms where the working list takes shape. for the longer relational version of all this, see the entry on toxic relationship definition, which covers what happens when these characteristics get assembled into a person you live with.
3. items 1 to 4, the dodged-call grade
here are the first four. these are the ones that show up before the relationship has a name. the early-warning four. the dodged-call grade.
1. the voicemail box that is always full. not because of volume. because emptying it would mean acknowledging the people who left messages. acknowledging is a kind of debt. the people in question prefer not to owe.
2. the call dodged at the atm. i have observed this in the field. the phone rings, the eyes flick to the screen, the screen goes face-down. the atm receipt prints. the receipt goes in the wallet. the call goes nowhere. the explanation, later, is always that the signal was bad. the signal was fine.
3. the mirror checked twice in any reflective surface. elevator doors. the side of a stainless steel kettle in the office kitchenette. the screen of a phone before it has been turned on. anything reflective is a referendum.
4. the apology that contains the word “if”. “i’m sorry if you felt that way.” that “if” is doing more work than the seventh microwave i killed last spring. that “if” is a load-bearing if. it carries the entire ceiling.
THE IF. IS DOING. ALL OF THE WORK.
5 to 8, the elevator-grade characteristics of a narcissist
the next four are the ones you only see once you have been in the same elevator for a while. months. quarters. a fiscal year. the elevator-grade.
5. the inventory mismatch. they remember the things they gave you. they do not remember the things you gave them. the third yoga mat under my couch from 2023, possibly evolving, was, technically, a gift. it has been re-attributed in their memory to a yoga instructor who does not exist. i am still in possession of the mat. the mat is the receipt.
6. the strategic illness. a cold arrives the day of the conversation you have been trying to have. the cold leaves the day after. the cold has a calendar.
7. the third-party narrator. they tell you what a friend of theirs (who you have never met, who possibly does not exist) thinks about you. the friend is always disappointed. the friend has high standards. the friend is the one talking. they are just the messenger.
8. the elevator stare. the look they give the mirror when they think nobody is watching. it is not vanity. vanity has joy in it. this is something else. this is auditing the inventory. counting the assets. confirming the lean.
let me say something, and you can write it down. i was at the corner once, on a tuesday, listening to a man explain that all narcissists are mountain people, by which he meant they live above the rest of us, looking down. i told him that hot take number twenty-two of mine, the official one, is that mountain people are wrong about everything except cheese. he said that was the same observation. i said it was not. he ordered another beer. we agreed to disagree, which is the most narcissistic outcome two people can reach in a bar.
the point being. the eight characteristics above are durable. they outlive the relationship. they outlive the elevator. they will outlive me, probably, and the seventh microwave, which is doing fine, thank you, the new one is from a brand i had never heard of and that is, frankly, a relief.
closing pulpit, the characteristics are durable, the elevator is slow
i would like to leave the working list here, on the desk, where carla cannot find it, because carla does not need to know that her co-worker spends thursday mornings cataloging the people who once knew his phone number. carla has all-hands meetings. carla is busy. carla is fine.
the eight characteristics, taken together, do not produce a diagnosis. they produce a portrait. the portrait is not flattering and the portrait is not unflattering. it is a portrait. it hangs on the back wall of the elevator i described in section two, metaphorically, between the third button and the mirror, where the people in question can see it without admitting they are looking.
if you have spent any time around a long-running ensemble drama with a recurring antagonist, you know the type. the type is not new. the type predates the elevator and the voicemail box and the seventh microwave. the type just got better lighting.
idiot again
compiler of the eight-item working list, between the third button and the mirror, on the second elevator from the left.
p.s. the voicemail box is at 47 messages. i am not going to clear it. that is item zero, possibly mine, possibly not.
