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The Return of the Cracked Mirror
I have goofed and now I'm red-faced.
On the journals list, I wrote one of my sermonettes about how I hated to see people be ashamed to write about sex, how if you are keeping a journal and your sex life is something you want to write about, then you should feel free to do so and not worry about it - that it's nothing to be embarrassed about. You know, the usual screed.
Of course, in my next message I had to admit that I don't write about my sex life. But it's not because of shame. It's because of Nonelvis. And I admit that sometimes I resent not being able to write that. On the other hand, when it comes to my sex life, I don't usually have a lot to say. I have one. It's good. There's nothing really kinky or bizarre going on in it (unless you count some mental gender games which should be no surprise to any Ardent Readers).
Now, my fantasy sex life ... that's bizarre and kinky enough that I generally don't talk about that for fear that you'll think I'm some sort of hideous deviant and run screaming into the night. (I write fiction about it instead, but I don't always show that either.)
So I'm a hypocrite. And I apologize, Annelie, for reading you chapter and verse. For what it's worth, I think my fundamental point is still valid: Don't be embarrassed about your lusts.
I'm just not a shining example of the philosophy.
Remember, my life is predicated on being weird without appearing to be weird - I'm way too concerned about what other people think, as I get told just about every day by all my friends. Of course, my friends are a little bit hypocritical too: They can say that, but they look mostly normal when they're walking down a street, they don't have neon signs floating in the heavens above them that blink FREAK. I feel like I have one sometimes, and it doesn't matter if no one knows it's there but me.
Some say I should relish my freakdom - wave my freak flag, as the They Might Be Giants song says - and my answer is: I do. A great deal. In private. My eccentricities, my odd choice of fantasy materials and clothing habits and the parts of my body I choose to depilate, all give me a great amount of personal pleasure or I wouldn't keep doing them. (Certainly keeping my body almost completely hair-free below the neck is enough work and expense that I wouldn't keep it up unless there were tangible benefits.)
It's only when I do it in public that I worry. For an exhibitionist, I am really scared of standing out.
When I tell people I'm an exhibitionist, they laugh. But the people who laugh have never seen me on a dance floor in a black sequined evening gown. (In fact none of my friends have seen that particular spectacle, nor has it been repeated since I left Louisiana, nor do I have the gown anymore - it was borrowed.) The secret is: I can only let my exhibitionist tendencies run rampant in a safe forum.
Example: I can talk about myself here, with considerable frankness and at some length, because this is a journal in a place of other journals, and if you can't prattle about yourself in your journal, where can you? Certainly not in social situations, where I was raised to think it was rude to make any claims for yourself at all. You have to know me reasonably well to get me to say much about myself; then the trouble becomes shutting me up.
Example: In the gay/bi/ambiguous disco where the evening gown made its appearances, "anything goes" was the rule. Moreover the pressure was off because that community appreciated camp. If you went out on the floor and you were stunning, that was a Good Thing; if you went out on the floor and you were ridiculous, that was a Good Thing as well. No mocking laughter either way, so no penalty for making a fool of yourself.
Example: I will happily discuss sex if I know the rest of the room are all deviants as well. I will happily wear a skirt to a sex show, where all bets are off. I will wear a skirt to a gay pride rally, where the rules are different. I did not wear one to the Christmas party last night - although I considered it - because there might have been one or two people there who would have raised an eyebrow at it, despite it being a pretty enlightened crowd.
Oh, they wouldn't have said anything to me. As I said yesterday, no adult has ever called me out openly on my appearance. But my worst nightmare is that, after I leave, someone says to the host, "Hey, who was that tall freak, anyway?" (Actually, no, that's not the worst. The worst nightmare is that the host says back, "Oh, he's harmless, he's just got some crazy ideas." To be dismissed is somewhat worse than being ridiculed. Take me seriously, damn it.)
I'd give another example, about the SF-fandom community and the hacker community, except in those cases I have run so far from the possibility of "standing out" that I have basically severed all association with those groups.
The reason is that they stopped being a "safe haven" for me some years ago. When I started being uncomfortable even in situations where I was a fan among fans, I knew it was time to leave for good.
I get in a lot of trouble every time I write about this. A correspondent pointed out that the problem is my adjectives are slanted, that my condemnation of these groups is implied, much as I go out of my way to say that I'm not condemning them. That correspondent is right. Therefore, not only does the word "geek" appear nowhere in this entry, but I will state for the record: I am an SF/fantasy fan. I live and breathe computers. But I try to not manifest either of these things.
The problem isn't that I disapprove of the subjects. The problem is that conversations in these areas are only interesting to those who are rabidly involved. It takes me about ten minutes to try to give someone an example of what I do for a living, because it's kinda complicated. No one really wants that answer, and there are probably better things to talk about. I have ample proof that the single sentence "I'm a programmer" can kill a conversation beyond revival. The other person's eyes glaze over and nothing I say from that point on will be worthwhile.
(Is anyone's job a fascinating subject? Maybe if you're in one of the Exciting Professions, but few of us are. So why do new conversations always start by asking what the other person does, instead of, say, what music they listen to? Is it precisely because our jobs are a safe, tedious subject that it's used as a conversational gambit so often?)
I don't even like having a computer conversation, and it's what I do every day. I can't summon up the requisite level of SF fandom to talk about, say, continuity errors in the Star Wars movies ... although I have heard such a conversation take place, and eavesdropped upon it with some interest.
Did I mention I'm a hypocrite?
I got some insight tonight. Accidentally. My comment on the journals list started this essay, but it's as long as it is because of my insight. I imagine several of my friends already had this insight and have been waiting for me to figure it out myself. Because I am paranoid, I figure they've been laughing at me while they wait.
I began to write this in an email to a friend:
"It's taken me years to get comfortable around some of your regular party guests, but I am now, apparently. I even exchanged a few sentences with [Person X] - who, being a) hyper-intelligent b) geeky c) male d) irritable, pushes all my unfair-dislike buttons."
Then I stopped and deleted the sentence, stunned at what I had just written. I was not about to send it, because the person I was writing the email to is the person who has chided me the most often for having a cracked mirror. (He'll read it anyway now, but this medium is my "safe haven" for self-disclosure - I can say it here.)
I don't like to be around smart, temperamental people who don't bother to conceal either their intelligence or their reluctance to suffer fools. They make me nervous. I used to think they made me nervous because I wasn't going to measure up to their standards and so I'd have to deal with their scorn. I hate being scorned. And I still believe this explanation is partially right - I maintain that among the "regular party guests" I refer to, I'm one of the dumbest people in the room.
But I cannot dismiss that I am also describing myself in the quote.
So, putting aside the issues of gender (I'm always going to be suspicious of men, period), I don't like being around people who are too much like me? Sort of. I think it would be better to say that I don't like being around people who exhibit the characteristics I try to suppress in myself. Remember, I think displaying one's intelligence is wrong; I think displaying one's temper is wrong; I think being dismissive because someone isn't as intelligent as you, or doesn't correspond to your narrow range of likes, is wrong -
Oops. There we go. That's the point where my logic loops back onto itself. I dismiss them because I worry that they might dismiss me, that they might be the kind of people to be dismissive. Therefore I am exhibiting the fault that I fault them for. Whee!
[sigh]
Y'know ....
I can't shake the idea that in a perfect world, we would all be modest and reticent in conversation - to a fault. You would have to really work to drag any claims, any feats, any personal information in fact, out of someone else (to prove you genuinely wanted it). On the other hand, we could attempt a conversation with anyone about anything else. Everyone on an equal footing. No comments that reduce everyone else in the room to glassy-eyed oblivion. No comments that raise the conversational bar to the point where everyone else feels outcast and/or stupid. No stigmas. No condemnation. No worries.
There are three problems with this.
First, intelligence (or knowledge, at least) tends to come out whether you like it or not. I've learned this several times in these pages, where I didn't think I was being particularly scholarly or deep, but it turns out I was, according to the Ardent Readers. (These times embarrass me greatly, because I figure I'm making the readers feel outcast and/or stupid, as described above.)
Second, there's always the danger that with the personal removed, none of us would have very many conversations with each other at all. No one would think it polite to make conversational overtures to anyone, and we'd all be worse off for it, constrained by our own politeness.
Third, if I can't even manage to practice what I preach, why in hell should I expect anyone else to?
© Columbine
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