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_I don’t want to hear it

I don’t want you to tell me about it. I don’t want or need an account distilled off the raw experience, filtered through the limitations of your experience.

I want to go and do it myself and experience it. Feel it. Enjoy it or not, but do it myself. A second hand account simply won’t do – as interesting as it can potentially be. When I hear it, I just want the Whole Fucking Thing.

I wan’t to work out what is actually needed to get there and get to it. It doesn’t have to be fancy, or perfect.

It just has to be Me that achieves it.

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_The Old New Normal

As much as I have written about gender-normative interactions in this blog, and despite this dynamic still being pretty attractive to me as a literary resource, and of course, a source of inspiration and arousal, the reality is that I have grown into a not-so-normative self.

I don’t really care enough to actually talk about that here. In fact, on that matter in particular I hate labels with a passion, because these are always conducive of hatred and judgement and to be honest, I have no time for that shit.

What I do care about is the effort and dedication by the vast majority of individuals around me growing up in order to perpetuate the Norm. In its “working” shape, the Norm might be a set of implicit behaviors and social constructs that instigate and uphold the toxic values affecting people in various negative ways (Intersectionality there for ya), but you cannot really share an implicit “value”: In human inter-actuation, bias is almost always expressed violently.

When I was a child, my male family members (father, uncle, grandfather) and – in lesser measure – my female family members would make comments out loud to express that implicit Norm that was obviously embedded deep within the way they behaved: “such and such is a faggot”. Often followed by laughter, as if it was some sort of joke to humiliate a person’s entire existence. These comments generally came out of nowhere, as a critic of what they had just seen but never as part of an argumented dialog. This is because they were just vocalising the poisonous Norm inside them. In fact, the few challenges I presented to my elders as a younger adult in this area were always received with contempt and promptly dismissed, but not because I was wrong, but because the others had nothing to say for themselves (and of course took their own voice as Gospel).

This annoyed the fuck out of me because I never really had the opportunity to debate with my family peers about the shit they were talking about, and I was meant to accept it because they held a position of seniority over me. This is extremely disappointing and patronising, and to date, it boils my piss beyond any hope when it happens. In part because I was never given the opportunity to develop my negotiating skills as a child, which made me struggle later in life when dealing with conflict, but also because their aversion to dialog was the very proof that I had to accept the Norm and give it continuity.

Of course, I am writing this now because I had the urge to challenge this bullshit, and because at the time, this challenge could not be done externally, I had to process everything internally and reach my own conclusions by osmosis and observation. I still am working on it. In fact I truly believe that there’s no Arriving in this life, that everything is process, which again, is in dire contrast with everything that I was taught? told? Made to believe!

I could go on for hours about how much the above behaviors extended both in type and radius (race, gender, country of origin – school, friends, acquaintances, public figures) but this would mean a lot of repetition when, I trust, by now the people that matter have already clocked what I mean.

So, why such commentary? Why so aggressive? Well, the reasons are varied and complex. In essence, I gathered that this could be an expression of perceived superiority. If you are a “faggot”, you are obviously weaker than me, who is a manly man and I do manly things (like psychologically torturing and manipulating my family or drunkenly and violently reacting to concerned challenge of said family about one’s behavior :D). When in actual fact, quelle surprise, you are the Weak Man. In so many levels, it’s hard to even know where to start. This would be wasted breath of course, so I am going to leave it at that. In short, expressing such toxic thoughts in such violent and uncalled for manner denote great weakness. Hiding from criticism show even further weakness. Boo.

For anyone thinking: well, boys will be boys. There’s a clear link to later behavior and effect of this negative thinking. Obviously not on the primary target (you called someone on TV a “faggot”) but on the immediate listeners: I can hands down say that this display of over-confidence and reluctance to discuss anything is directly linked to my lack of self-confidence, that I noticed later in life despite being an obvious over-achiever in many aspects of my life. Ah, the idiocy of it all.

Life is catching up with people. This was never a race against them or anything, that suddenly they kind of seem to be losing (?) but instead It was always there, blanked under the hateful speech and Norm ridden humiliation. When your concerns in life shift because of positive natural life events (having kids, moving in with a partner or marrying, buying property) your focus changes and you stop paying attention to important things, namely Woke culture (fucking hate that term but it simplifies things and focuses the scope of what I am talking about).

Like everything else in life, you can certainly over do Wokeness and I have seen it manifest itself in so many different areas / people of my life in recent years that honestly, it’s extremely hard to pin-point what it means. What I have observed is that you can certainly pretend to be self-aware but have a Norm of your own over your head. The thing is that, again, the Norm is selective. It would not be the same Norm here or in Shanghai. And I would like to remark that everyone is entitled to how they feel, I have absolutely no problem with that, with the caveat that you don’t just assume that I will accept any odd shit, I want a DIALOG.

This is why when people are sadly affected by this shift in behavior (a black person is suddenly your manager, your partner clocks that they are not contractually required to stay with you until one of you dies when they realise that they have made a huge mistake, your children come up with ideas of their own, a trans person decides to go for fucking groceries at the same time as you did and you are offended by this) very few people actually accept that IT’S THEIR RESPONSIBILITY to address whatever they are feeling. Of course without that previous dialog, this is not only unthinkable but extremely hard to achieve. It can happen. Perhaps with time (decades?) but it’s unlikely.

Life (real life) catching up with you and overtaking you “on the wrong side” is not a declaration of war, it’s the unavoidable revolution to fight the Norm (whichever one) and make things better for everyone. If you are unable to see this, perhaps try to start that dialog. You are no longer special, as undoubtedly you were made to think growing up. Feeling special is obviously appealing for everyone. Generally, this is a loaded reward for subscribing to your Norm. Lack of dialog with your peers makes personal differences invisible and intoxicates your relationships.

In essence, listen more and fucking talk.

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_Discrepancies (In lieu of therapy 14/X)

The more I think about the conversation, the more it irates me.

It turns out that it was now all my fault? Adulthood is such a joke. When you are a child you project this sense of self-control, knowledge, wisdom even into the grown ups around you. When things went wrong when I was a child, I was made to know from the get-go that it was essentially all my fault because of course, adults could never err and I was disturbing the precious balance of their lives.

The more I think about the conversation, the more I feel like that child. To the point of seeing red.

To add insult to injury and without wanting to be portrayed as ageist, the person at the other side of the screen was substantially younger than me. Yet the patronising traits were already there, like they once sat with the adults in my school, my family, my community, my after-school activity groups, the shops and business around me, the local streets and the foyer of bars, the transport network; everything and everywhere. In this case, however, perhaps it’s cultural? Some residue of a sore loss 80 years ago, the bitter taste of your gramps telling you how things went south in their “own” land.

I was so emotionally exhausted during the conversation that at the time I could just deflect what was being thrown at me. I think I “won”, but if this happened now (ha! of course) I would essentially tear that man to bits. Poke and rip until whatever mental fortitude was gone. I’ve had that done so many times to me that frankly, it would be muscle memory. Absolutely, it would feel horrible afterwards but at the time it would be Art.

Being patronised as an adult is bizarre. As a clearly privileged white male I don’t often suffer it. But when it happens it’s hard to immediately tell that it’s actually happening, until after the fact. Then is when the anger kicks in, the exploration of all possible decision in the arena until the winning one is found. A post-mortem strategy that yields perhaps nothing to learn but fury.

I definitely hadn’t foreseen adulthood as this permanent ethical challenge to do the right thing, but at the same time, I would despise a life in which I am not given such test on a regular basis. The Right Thing, that mystical mental stadium that looks completely different each time:

Be the Bigger Person, be humble, and when in deep shit keep your mouth shut and look straight ahead. Except when having to chew on the ocassional dickhead to not be laughed at because if you try to bully me you are going to end up with more than surface cuts.

No “B” People, ever, except when you actually want to have something that ressembles happiness and friendship in your life – then you are going to have to lower your standards my friend, you can’t be thinking ahead of the game at all times and expect that MF’s are going to want to even know you, you weird creep.

Be diligent and cultivate yourself and think and learn but do not go and start figuring life out and, most importantly, other people’s bullshit because that is disrespectful and noone wants to be called out in their lies.

Be the Best, the Fastest, the First in Class, Shine above the rest but THEN, be happy with the mediocre hand that you were dealt and who the fuck do you think you are to ask for MORE? Like, memorise the game rules but then do not play to win, just sit there while others chomp on the prize while you crack on with a stupid smile on your face.

I did not want to be in this game, but I can guarantee that I am going to always come on top if you challenge me.

Cause at the end of the day, I am no longer that child.

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_Scotch & rollies

There are certain kind of traits impossible to shake off. Once they might have been indeed part of the group pressure dynamics. Now even in solitude (perhaps only in solitude), they are soothing. In a twisted, self-assigned, self-harming, warm, sort of way.

Unable to speak for myself I encounter relief in their dry peat.

Eloquence is a tricky thing: in what way eloquent? In what language, even? I can escape forwards, steady into doom. I can escape – period. Or can I?

I might not be racing to a red light but this could certainly be the case of selective color-blindness after all.

What did my anti-heroes teach me, if anything? They were just narrating their pity for a dime. Living their stories for vintage clout, albeit admittedly – unknowingly.

Safe havens get smaller with age.

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_Quorum

When your personality is dictated by traits out of your control – what are you really?

A man, woman, citizen, language speaker, skin-wearing animal.

I don’t know mate. I can’t relate.

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_Monsters (In lieu of therapy 7/X)

How can I relate to these feelings when I never experienced what they are telling?

Hearing about sob love stories reminds me of my monsters, the ones I escaped from. Only to find more around the corner.

Short memory.

Selective memory.

Shocking shamelessness.

Torture.

Psychological bullying.

Gaslight.

I can’t relate, yet I am affected by it. This is fucking embarrasing.

I’m still at the bottom of the trap hole, well inside the woods, in pitch-black darkness, guessing.

Wasting my life away.

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_Aliens (In lieu of therapy 5/X)

For you it was all take, take, take. And never give a single thing. Never give a single fuck.

A summer camp.

What have you really learned? Why did you come here in the first place?

I don’t feel like I belong anywhere in particular. We could look at this through an anthropological prysm even, and you would only see some traces of cultural rooting, both from “back home” and from here, too. I guess this is Back Home now anyways.

Of course you are free to do whatever the fuck you want, but I can’t help but despise the likes of you, always so right, always so ahead of everything yet beached in the most arcaic imaginery and cultural idioms of all.

Tell me anecdotes of what was like a weekend away for you, while I consolidate the certainty that moving here saved my fucking life. Perhaps not in the literal sense of it, but in a more abstract and obtuse manner – my future self (current, but at a different plane of reality) would have destroyed himself. I am sure I would have lacked even the most basic sense of self-awareness and possibly end up dead or in prison.

I observe that reality plane from my undoubtedly higher understanding of Life and the World now, and I can only sigh in relief. I am my best self, not one that is objectively better, but one that is able to actually understand HOW MUCH WORSE I would have been in every aspect, should I have stayed “back home”.

Yet here you are returning like if nothing had happened. Quite literally, Like If Nothing Had Happened.

I know you.

You suck.