Eccentric Flower:199907/In which the bottom falls out

Douglas Adams once described a computer game he'd worked on as having "a pear-shaped structure. Once the player gets comfortable running in circles around the narrow neck, the bottom falls out."

Last night I was evading, dodging, running in circles. The problem is that I didn't want the bottom to fall out. But it is inevitable.

First, a story.

I'm not sure if Shannon was actually younger than I was or she just made me feel that way. She is the only person I've ever dated who made me feel old. Admittedly I haven't dated that many people.

She was a big person. That's not a euphemism for fat. I don't think she was fat. She was large. She was the kind of person who could describe herself as a Big Beautiful Woman and pull it off with no trace of irony. She had eyes with the same ability as Liv Tyler's - the way of staring into space while focusing on something nearby at the same time. But hers were blue.

She smoked American Spirit all-natural cigarettes a long time before they hit the market - she was a test customer. They'd send her cartons in the mail. She affected my musical tastes more than any other girlfriend before or since. I don't know why. She just happened to listen to a lot of things I didn't listen to that I discovered I liked.

We tried sex and it didn't work, but that wasn't unusual for me at the time. That probably would have killed any relationship, had we had time to form one.

She was the first Northern woman I'd ever really met. She hadn't been born in the North, but she went to school there and it was obvious that was where she belonged. Northern women are blunt and practical. They wear clothes for function and not fashion. They don't flirt and they don't play games. If they want you, they'll tell you, and if they're done with you, you'll know.

One night I had gone to do something with her. It wasn't an "intimate" evening, because Marc was there, so maybe the three of us had gone to a movie or something. Maybe we'd had food. I don't know. I remember I was driving her home; Marc was in the back seat. We were discussing art and creativity, and I finally just lost it. I don't remember what set me off.

I launched into the whole tirade about how it was all a rigged game, that the system rewarded people with promotional ability and not talent, how I was never going to succeed at any of my creative efforts anyway because number one I didn't write the kinds of books publishers wanted and number two I didn't get off my ass enough anyway and how I was doomed to be worthless for the rest of my life and -

"I can't be around people who hate themselves," she said. "You need to get help."

I don't remember if I ever saw her again. She was planning to go back North. Sometimes, walking around Boston, I see people who look a little like her and I panic. I consider her a bridge I have burned, and that makes me sad.

If I did see her, and against all probability she recognized the person she'd spent four or five weekends with many summers ago ... what would I say to her? What could I possibly say?

I don't like people. I don't trust them. People have messed with me, hated me, screwed me over, and when I learned that a lot of them simply were not very intelligent or very alert to the possibilities of their surroundings, I lost whatever vestige of respect for people (as a group) that I had left.

But when someone else says any of the above, I get very nervous, and I tend to avoid that person thereafter. I can't be around them: They hate people.

I don't want to be around someone who sounds like I do because I suspect that I am not a very pleasant person to be around. I don't want to hear their harsh words about humanity because the last thing I want is an accurate mirror.

It's possible - likely even - that I could have a lovely conversation with a person who distrusts people as much as I do. But that would be the Two People Cackling in the Corner.

You've seen them. They're at every party you've ever been to. There are two people sitting on chairs in the corner. They don't dance, they don't mingle, they aren't really taking part in the festivities in any meaningful way. They're just sitting in the back, making fun of all the other participants.

And sure, they're doing it together - they're participating in a social activity, of sorts - but not a very good one. It is an exclusionary activity. The very practice implies that a line has been drawn between Them and Everyone Else.

One reason I'm so sensitive to all attempts to draw such a line is that I'm always on the wrong side of it. I am usually the person on the chair in the corner. I trade nasty remarks with the person in the chair next to me, and try to forget that I do it only because I'm grateful of the company: If they weren't there I would be sitting alone in the corner, thinking nasty remarks to myself, which is even worse.

Yet I refuse to participate in the party.

I dislike all groups, all commonalities. I don't like people banding together, no matter how valid their purpose. I don't like fan clubs or trade associations or support groups or political organizations. And the main reason I dislike these groups is because I envy them the spirit of community they usually have. I desperately long to belong. But I refuse to join.

I refuse to join because it is extremely important to me that I be identified primarily as an individual, not as part of a group I share characteristics in common with. Yet to do that I have to give up the friendship and support of all groups.

You might say I'm an extremist about keeping my identity. Except that I am not sure what my identity is. In fact, I'm not sure I have one. Inside, I see myself as an amorphous thing.

If you asked me to characterize my personality, I wouldn't be able to. And if you came up with some adjectives you thought characterized my personality, I would resent all of them. I guarantee it.

The ultimate end product of being the ultimate individualist is that you aren't allowed to have any adjectives at all. After all, there's always at least one other person who has that adjective, right?

I don't want to be part of the world. I am sad because I'm not part of the world.

I have friends. But everything a friend says about me is automatically suspect, because they are a friend. Friends like you despite all the things you do wrong. That's wonderful but it's not honest. Carrying that to its logical conclusion, the honest people are the ones that say nasty things about me, right?

I realize this is sociopathic. I recognize that some people do really see good things in me, and that some of them are very unhappy at reading this mess, at hearing how little the inside of my head thinks of itself.

I am glad you see good things in me. Really. I just wish that for once, maybe for a few seconds, I could see some of them myself. I'm not asking much - just a glimpse to carry on by.

People say nice things about my appearance sometimes (no doubt to counteract all the self-denigrating I do). I'm flattered, honestly, but my first reaction is puzzlement. It's "what are they looking at? Are they seeing the same person?" Admittedly, some of that is because my standards of attractiveness are not normal.

And some of my other standards are skewed too. I'm glad you like some of my fiction. But it could be so much better. It has to be perfect, nothing less. I know that's unreasonable. Tell it to my head.

I have written only one piece of fiction in the last several years where I could actually sit back and say, "Gee, I don't think I could have done that much better than I did" - where I could actually enjoy the nice things people said. It was called Lies Beneath The Skin and it was very short and I wrote it in one draft. I enjoy the praise - and then the anguish sets in. Oh, god, what if it's like poetry? (I have already written the best poem I will ever write, which is the main reason I seldom write poetry these days.)

See? Success is no more heartening than failure. Well, not for long anyway.

And yet - and I know this is hard to believe - I am actually a happy person. Very little of this impinges on my day-to-day life. I play, I work, I write, and I do it all in a carefree way. As long as I don't stop to philosophize, reflect, or in any other way get "meta" about who I am and the world I've created for myself, I have a great time! Life is a ball.

But unfortunately I am cursed to think too much.

Oh, and I tend to be nervous about my cycles of self-denigration and self-realization. First I get guilty because I whine about myself so much. Then, during rare moments of clarity, I feel guilty for making others listen to what I've figured out.

So I forget it all.

See you next time.