Deborah Hill Cone: A touch of evil - is it so really bad?

Opinion

I am feeling a bit Eartha Kitt-ish. "I want to wake up in the morning with that dark brown taste. I want to see some dissipation in my face. I wanna be evil. I wanna be mad ..."

But more than that, I want to defy the cellphones in cars ban. If I had a girlfriend, I'd want to take her on a business class trip to London on the taxpayer.

I'm not averse to gambling, sex or fagging either. Not to mention letting off fire crackers, eating saturated fat or knocking over cyclists. (But I will only tip up the smarmy pedal pushers who wear lycra and fetishise their bikes. I saw some cyclist guy creepily fondling the wheel of his bike outside a Devonport cafe the other day. Perv. On the other hand, I wouldn't knock over my less athletic friend who has a cycle helmet that looks like a tweed vicar's hat.)

When did I start wanting to hurt flies? I'm not sure, but I do know I am tired of being pressured to be a goody-two-shoes. I don't refer solely to genuflecting before the Green religion with recyclable shopping bags and short showers and bleddy ugly organic veges that never get eaten and sit there rotting unappetisingly and uneconomically. But that's part of it. Everywhere you look it seems being restrained and righteous is idolised.

Of course, by definition being virtuous is good. Can't argue with a tautology. What is intriguing is the decided lack of discernment between the frankly pointless gesture (wearing charity T-shirts, droning on about food miles) and the truly significant self-sacrifice (sublimating one's own ego for another).

It's hard to tell the difference because the concept of being altruistic has been so roundly debased to include everything from cancer bracelets to pillow biter Chris Martin. Bring back being mad, bawdy and dangerous to know, I say. Because being bad is actually not all bad. It's just honest to concede we can't all be white bread all the time.

Of course these days being a ratbag has a branding problem. It used to be quite glamorous to be a rascal. Now being bad is all about the underclass, and gangsta rap and P and being sordid and tragic. Being bad has a dress code. It's okay to be fiendish if you're wearing a collar and tie.

Whereas I suspect I have been listening to too much lower socio-economic music and maybe this is what has turned me nasty. I never felt like making trouble when I had Schubert's Trout Quintet on high rotate. But Swing, by Savage, now that is a different matter.

But this existential nausea over niceness is not just confined to me. A civil servant friend, Kerry Lamont, who lives in the country and makes bread and does yoga, greeted me this week by saying she wants to sashay into a Monday morning with a cigarette holder in one hand and martini in the other, "just to see if there is life behind their eyes ..."

I'm with you, babe. Maybe all those obedient people out there who clean their grouting with a toothbrush are just as sick of being wholesome as I am.

Needless to say I am all for being compassionate and kind to people. But compulsory do-goodery - like sanctimonious Edwin the Boy Scout with his irritating daily good deeds - is not the same thing.

Real generosity is not often on display. The crucial point is I feel more like talking on the phone when driving now than I did before. Are they going to ban red lipstick next?

It's enough to make me "want to be horrid, want to drink booze. Whatever I've got I'm eager to lose." Thanks Eartha.

deborah@coneandco.com