WARNING: The contents of this story are certainly not for everybody. It is highly sexual and not all that polite. The characters in this story are not, by any means, normal, nor heroic. They are full of embarrassment and strangeness. The New York Times book review, would not review a story like this. It's too real and accurate for them and their hypocrisy! As for the Deep South book review, should such a thing exist,this short tale would probably just be ... completely burned out of it, and sent to the Deep South God Squad to be analyzed and then the author of it condemned. Of course, we here at The Old WOrld Oracle could give a rats ass for the TImes or those conservative losers in the Dirty South w/ their God Squad. Just know: You have been warned!
BEGIN:
I walked in the door. Everything in the house was dark but you could hear the TV was blasting, some movie playing. I knew my wife was mad at me, because the argument we had gotten into the night before was pretty bad. She does not like to forgive quickly: ever since I've married her, if there's one thing she knows how to do, it's hold a grudge. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer. Cracked it open and took a few sips. I would need to be prepared for whatever apology I was trying to think up. I had avoided texting her all day while I was at work. I didn't want to piss her off again.
I went towards the sliding glass door of the living room, and that's when I saw it: She had brought him over. Well, a new him. That's how mad I had made her. I didn't think she saw me so, being nervous to see her with a lover, I went to duck right back around the door, to hide and walk off to my room. I didn't realize I had made her that angry. About a year ago she had sworn off lovers, and said she didn't care to do it anymore. When it first began I hadn't cared. I have Frannys name tattooed three times on my body: my wrist, my chest, and the back of my leg. I love this woman deeply...id let her get away with murder. So the lovers she brought around, at first, I didn't think would be a problem. Then I started getting jealous though and I told her she was getting carried away. She got pregnant with one of the guys kids and would have had it and I would have been raising it too, cept for a miscarriage. She was making me sleep in the back room and she’d have him spending nights with her, in the master bedroom of the house. This was something that, in the beginning, we had sworn “it will never reach that level”. It had, however...quickly.
It was after the miscarriage, though, when Franny sorta lost interest in the lifestyle. She got depressive. “I just wanna be with you now. I don't think I care for lovers. It was getting weird.”
It didn’t really matter to me, in a way, I mean I was never vehemently opposed to the lovers, so I just said, yea, ok, enough is enough, it’s over. It’s just you and I now. The topic was not really brought up again, if at all, and the times we even referenced the old lovers , they were few and far between. She had a new gig she was working w/ her sister at a nail salon and I was working with my cousins at his business he had just started. We were busy, mostly, and when we saw each other, we hung out and went places together or saw movies ,etcetc. We went to a lot of concerts in Philly. We hadn’t really gotten into many fights or arguments.And usually, when the lovers would be referenced again, Franny woudl always kinda assure me that, if she wanted to do it again, she would tell me. When we got marrried we were both anti- “secret” cheaters.
BUt then, the night before all this now, we had gotten, as I said, into a very terrible argument. She had shattered a lamp, and then I had punched a hole right throught the wall and almost crashed the caar when I had gone speeding off in it, around the corner. It had been a really bad argument and we had just lost control; we were lucky the kids weren’t with us, but staying at her mommas for the week. This had probably been one of the reasons the argument had boiled up to such a point as it did though. Usually if the kids are around, we keep it quiet, you know?
I couldn’t believe she had called a lover now, however. I couldn’t even believe she had known one who she could call. I kind of came to a realization, that FRanny had probaly been lying the entire time, the whole year. She had not really stopped with lovers. She had just said it and kept it under wraps. She had done it outside the house, like the vrey beginning, all over again, and now the argument had made her bring him over.
I went to walk off to go hide in my room. But then I heard her voice. She had seen me.
“You home asshole?” She said. She sounded angry.
I stood for a moment in silence.
“Ya.”
“Living room is off limits to you tonight, asshole.”
I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I was feeling it, the sadness. I just wanted to walk off to my room and sulk alone, lock my door and sit in the dark. I started to walk away again. Franny shouted out again.
“Hey you fucking asshole, don’t just walk away from me. Come over here. Open the door. Look at me in the face when I talk to you, you fucking piece of shit.”
I wondered what her man was thinking. I had not gotten a good look at him; and I did not want to see him. I have been attacked twice by Franny’s lovers.That was a long time ago though, she was so young, she didn’t really “mean” for it to happen. It just sort of happened.
Still. She seemed pretty mad. I didn’t want to make a wrong move and get my lights knocked out. I just wnated to go to bed in the bacrkoom.
“Get your fucking as sover here NOW.” she shouted again.
I ..did it. I walked over and looked into the living room. It was dark in there too, buit the big screen TV I had recently put up in there was illuminating everything quite nicelty, including the nice velvet couches she and the man were laying on. Well, she was laying down, and he was sitting up. He had no shirt on and no pants, just boxer shorts, and Frannys head was in his lap. He was running his hands through her hair. It was obvious he was enormous. Frannys lovers are, as a rule, always enormous and much bgger than me. “It wouldn’t really make sense to go with a guy exactly ike my husband.” was what she always said. I gess shes right. They’re attractive men.
I stood looking at them not saying anything.
“This is Carmelo.” she said to me, now in a nice voice, “and he will probably be here for, oh, about a week or so.”
Carmelo looked at me, then back to the TV. He didn’t say anything.
“I Don’t wanna argue with you anymore.” she said.
“OK.”
“So just leave me alone for this week. Can you do that, hubby?”
“OK.”
“Good.” she smiled, running her hand up Carmelo’s muscled chest. I could feel my penis getting a little harder. This was what she wanted. It was not what I wanted.
“Go away now.” she said. “And shut the slide door all the way, please.”
“OK.”
She laughed. “Say yes Franny, I will shut the slide door all the wa,y and yes, Franny, I will not bother you all week. Yes FRanny.”
I said it, quickly, because its not worth it, like I tell you, to start problems: “Yes Franny, I will shut the slide door all the way and yes Franny, I will not bother you all week. Yes Franny.”
I went finally back to my little backroom then. I shut and locked the door behind me, then I turned all the lights on. I saw what Franny had left for me to find in there, right away: There were two used condoms, full of semen, on my pillow, and next to it there was a black skirt of Franny’s, with white cum stains all over it. Then there were three yellow post it notes she had left on the nightstand:
Was I mean to you just now? Shush. Sorry baby. You know how your wife gets. I love you and you know that don’t you? Kisses and love.. -- Franny
She had drawn a big heart on one of them with colored marker. Franny is actually an excellent artist; she designed the tattoos I have of her name.
I cuold feel my penis now of course. It was as hard as a rock. I really wished it wasn’t. It...grossed me out, often when I thought about it, and remembered how I used to get so ‘turned on” by Franny being with other men, and as I looked at the used condoms, I told myself I should be even more disgusted. But, some other sick part of me, I knew, was not disgusted, but elated and happy, that Franny had done this. I sat in silence for a moment looking at them; I felt my hand run down to my crotch, I began to rub. I went to the door now, and put my ear up against its side, to listen. I did this often in the old days. I couldn’t really hear much ,just that TV. I was fantasizing though now about Franny with the guy, with the brief image of him and his body that I had in my mind.
I was starting to feel the rush I used to always get thinking of Franny with her men. It's like you're on a drug. Your whole body goes warm. I start to get sweaty and need to sit down, can't focus. I took a look over at the condoms and the black skirt . I didn't even want to touch it. I wanted to grab something to get it all off the bed with. But it was like Franny had done something to it all. Like she had made it magnetic. Her voice was in my head. Talking in a way she hadn't to me in so long. “Aren't you just the cutest little cum slut? Isn't your lil plaid skirt so pretty? You like your red lipstick , Franny?”
Franny calls me Franny , or at least she did. “Sometimes I think we aren't husband and wife. We're just twin sisters. Two Frannies.”
I didn't want to give into the emotion. But I'm weak and can't control anything. So I went and sudfenly reached out and grabbed the black skirt, to bring it up to my face and smell it. I couldn't help myself. And when I grabbed it off the bed, I saw Franny had left other little post it notes underneath it. I couldn't believe it. Everything ...everythin with her is always meticulously done like this. Always. Like she's working it as its happening to you. Like some sort of witch--- which she often jokes she is. I read the notes . One was again about how much she loved me , how deep her love went , with an even bigger heart on it, and our names entwined in it, and then the other one told me to go look in the closet, for my special gift she had left. I was legitimately afraid of the gift. But of course I couldn't help myself….
---- end
▼
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Interracial tales
I find the fear for interracial relationships very sad, and I am shocked that it is still ongoing, but sometimes it seems like it will never end. I will admit upfront here that, in truth, I believe I am more interested - personally - in interracial relationships, than I am in "normal" ones. I almost even, to a degree, can't fathom why anyone would be interested in a normal relationship. I basically just think they tend to be more likely to happen, and nothing more. This means to say that, if given the chance, I tend to believe most people would pursue an interracial relationship , over a normal one. The issue is that most people aren't given the chance. Especially if they live somewhere way out of the way and alll....
Of couse, interracial relationships is perhaps sort of a bad term to use for what my real interest is, because I am not solely interested in going out of my race, so much as I am in just going somewhere different. Different can mean anything, really, but usually it means something pretty distant. For example, I typically hate the idea of marriage with a woman ... but then, if you told me some Italian girl, or Norwegian girl -- who was actually from the European Union - wanted to marry me, I bet I would suddenly be a whole lot more interested, than I ever would be, for an American. For an American girl I have no interest in marriage. I would have to be slowly convinced. It would take a lot of time. I would think rationally. With an Italian or a Norwegian, who would offer me citizenship to the EU by way of marriage, I would not think rationally. When I was briefly in Italy in the summer of 2014, I actually proposed to a woman there, age 25 or so. Right in the middle of DaVinci's Florence. As you can guess, she turned me down. But she almost didn't. Her name was Flavia; she still writes me sometimes on WhatsApp. She gave me a ring, too, during a night in Pisa. I was perhaps too honest with Flavia about my real intentions: "I just never want to return to AMerica, so if you married me...I could stay, and I'll do whatever you want for you."
Needless to say, I have nver really proposed seriously to any Americans. I just don't have it in me. In fact, not only does my entire marriage desire change dramatically, once I am focused on the homeland here, but so too does my sexuality. Oh yes. I won't lie! My sexuality in the States seems, oddly enough, to actually skew queer, in a war it never would in Italy or Norway. And one part of the reason for this, I am convinced, is because in the US, there exists this big interracial game. Having sex with black men here, who fit this wild stereotype of being enormous and all that, is simply, in my opinion, too tantalizing and "rebellios" of a sexual option to pass up. I'm not looking to marry a man, but .. in terms of sex? Stateside? Interracial sex specifically? Wearing a skirt and eyeliner and sucking black dick?
I seriously think it's one of the only fun things this country has going for it. In truth, its sort of ironic: It could easiyl be said that the USA is such a fastidious and dysfunctional country because of its multiculturalism and i's clear to see liberalism does not work -- and is vehemently opposed by Americans -- because America is multicultural. Multiculturalism, I am not ashamed to admit, brings a lot of pain to the people. But it also brings a lot of god damn good sex, too. I mean, don't the two sorta go hand in hand? Pain and good sex. It's always sort of a close line....
Years ago when I was a kid, I didn't really fully understand the joy of dating anyone different than me though. If anything, I used to sort of purposely look for someone similar, a girl who was Italo-Americano just liek me. But then as the Internet got faster, and I Was able to be put into contact with different folks, I started to see just how interesting it was to hook up with people who are different. Ever since then, I became interested in dating interacially. I just think it's ironic of course that my iniial desire to find an Italian from Italy was what wound up leading to a desire that then started to revolve around finding a black man in the States. But again, the two are connected: They're both sort of exotic. In fact, the truth is, I basically relate culturally more to the black man, than I do the Italian from Florence. She speaks a different language after all. She has never listened to all the Nas albums. I have. And its hard for me to know, sometimes, just who I want more these days. The fantasies tend to coincide. I can imagine being a black mans little Italian girl, for instance, pretty easily. I know a lot of recipes. I'd love to cook. Then I can whisper in his ear at night, as I jerk his big dick, in Italian. "Mi piace te bello..mi piace te moltissimo.."
But alas! I get ahead of myself, and then I always remember that terrible fact , often forgotten in my fantasies: Interracial relationships, in 2017, are somehow still basically "illegal", in many regards. Many, many regards. If you don't think they are, then try to start writing about them, and see how awkward you'll start to feel. Try to start being truly public about them, see how you'll feel. People really don't dig these relationships. They exist, just like blacks themselves do in the US, in a sort of ghetto. This becomes immediately obvious the moment you try to find interracial media, and you see that next to none exists . Besides porn of course. White women fuck black men, joyously and triumphantly, all the time in porn. But what about regular, above ground media?
It is like it doesn't exist. There are hardly any films that feature a black and white couple, especially as the main characters or plot point of the film. There are certainly hardly any mainstream sex scenes that happen interracially (except the recent Jessica Jones that did it). And ... who knows...it just seems like something that is shockingly more controversial than many might totally realize. On dating apps like OkCUpid, for instance, they have discovered that white men are significantly more likely to get a response than black men. Black women , it seems, on Cupid, hardly get any love at all. For me, this is preposterous: the entire reason I love using Cupid so much, is to find someone different than me. So why not others? Why am I all alone? Why aren't there 6 different Hollywood films I can watch about white women who are not just married to black men---but determined to marry one?
Well, it's as I said before: It's the same reason I can't find movies about American men who , like my former self, are obsessed with trying to marry someone from the EU, to escape America, and find a different life. These are quite literally interpreted as "traitor tales", and we don't much dig them, collectively speaking. Instead of seeing the person who wants to date outside the comfort zone, as a hero, which is important for a film (film loves heroes) it seems society sees them as a lunatic, or a loser, or someone probably a bit dysfunctional. They aren't so far off the mark , either: Many people, in our own time, who want to do things like marry into another country, or fuck black men because daddy hates them, usually are pretty troubled. They aren't heroic in the "traditional sense". But they are still heroic to me. They are still brave....
Don't get me wrong: There certainly are some films about white women dating black men, like Jungle Fever from the 90s, but most of them are only ever willing to go so far in terms of "offensive" material.
I should like to change this in my lifetime here as a writer, but sometimes I'm not so sure it is possible, and I get shy. I want to eventually be published one day, I always say, and honestly, writing about interracial relationships the way I Would like to, just doesn't seem like something publishable, in this current time. I would have to make it all much more complex, for example, than I should like it to be. I should also probably have to make it end, tragically, which breaks my heart. Last but not least, I could never make it a true "fantasy" in the way, I'll admit, that I sometimes should like. For example, in the movie Warcraft, a fantasy I was just watching, there was a green skinned orc woman taken as a slave by a group of white men with swords. No one sees it as problematic. Now, imagine if I tried to do this with a story about black men and a white woman? And then imagine if I did something like, say, have the black men cast spells on the white woman, so that she did not resist her enslavement? She just became a ....
I shan't go any further. It's too controversial, Like I say. People would snap and flip out and maybe I'd even be hanged by the Klan in old Kaintuck. It's still pretty fun...and certainly sexy...to imagine though. I mean, shit, if that movie existed, imagine how many white women would walk out of the theater and ......
Again I almost get inappropriate. I must censor myself for the sake of the American Empire. My apologies ----
Becky Jean
Of couse, interracial relationships is perhaps sort of a bad term to use for what my real interest is, because I am not solely interested in going out of my race, so much as I am in just going somewhere different. Different can mean anything, really, but usually it means something pretty distant. For example, I typically hate the idea of marriage with a woman ... but then, if you told me some Italian girl, or Norwegian girl -- who was actually from the European Union - wanted to marry me, I bet I would suddenly be a whole lot more interested, than I ever would be, for an American. For an American girl I have no interest in marriage. I would have to be slowly convinced. It would take a lot of time. I would think rationally. With an Italian or a Norwegian, who would offer me citizenship to the EU by way of marriage, I would not think rationally. When I was briefly in Italy in the summer of 2014, I actually proposed to a woman there, age 25 or so. Right in the middle of DaVinci's Florence. As you can guess, she turned me down. But she almost didn't. Her name was Flavia; she still writes me sometimes on WhatsApp. She gave me a ring, too, during a night in Pisa. I was perhaps too honest with Flavia about my real intentions: "I just never want to return to AMerica, so if you married me...I could stay, and I'll do whatever you want for you."
Needless to say, I have nver really proposed seriously to any Americans. I just don't have it in me. In fact, not only does my entire marriage desire change dramatically, once I am focused on the homeland here, but so too does my sexuality. Oh yes. I won't lie! My sexuality in the States seems, oddly enough, to actually skew queer, in a war it never would in Italy or Norway. And one part of the reason for this, I am convinced, is because in the US, there exists this big interracial game. Having sex with black men here, who fit this wild stereotype of being enormous and all that, is simply, in my opinion, too tantalizing and "rebellios" of a sexual option to pass up. I'm not looking to marry a man, but .. in terms of sex? Stateside? Interracial sex specifically? Wearing a skirt and eyeliner and sucking black dick?
I seriously think it's one of the only fun things this country has going for it. In truth, its sort of ironic: It could easiyl be said that the USA is such a fastidious and dysfunctional country because of its multiculturalism and i's clear to see liberalism does not work -- and is vehemently opposed by Americans -- because America is multicultural. Multiculturalism, I am not ashamed to admit, brings a lot of pain to the people. But it also brings a lot of god damn good sex, too. I mean, don't the two sorta go hand in hand? Pain and good sex. It's always sort of a close line....
Years ago when I was a kid, I didn't really fully understand the joy of dating anyone different than me though. If anything, I used to sort of purposely look for someone similar, a girl who was Italo-Americano just liek me. But then as the Internet got faster, and I Was able to be put into contact with different folks, I started to see just how interesting it was to hook up with people who are different. Ever since then, I became interested in dating interacially. I just think it's ironic of course that my iniial desire to find an Italian from Italy was what wound up leading to a desire that then started to revolve around finding a black man in the States. But again, the two are connected: They're both sort of exotic. In fact, the truth is, I basically relate culturally more to the black man, than I do the Italian from Florence. She speaks a different language after all. She has never listened to all the Nas albums. I have. And its hard for me to know, sometimes, just who I want more these days. The fantasies tend to coincide. I can imagine being a black mans little Italian girl, for instance, pretty easily. I know a lot of recipes. I'd love to cook. Then I can whisper in his ear at night, as I jerk his big dick, in Italian. "Mi piace te bello..mi piace te moltissimo.."
But alas! I get ahead of myself, and then I always remember that terrible fact , often forgotten in my fantasies: Interracial relationships, in 2017, are somehow still basically "illegal", in many regards. Many, many regards. If you don't think they are, then try to start writing about them, and see how awkward you'll start to feel. Try to start being truly public about them, see how you'll feel. People really don't dig these relationships. They exist, just like blacks themselves do in the US, in a sort of ghetto. This becomes immediately obvious the moment you try to find interracial media, and you see that next to none exists . Besides porn of course. White women fuck black men, joyously and triumphantly, all the time in porn. But what about regular, above ground media?
It is like it doesn't exist. There are hardly any films that feature a black and white couple, especially as the main characters or plot point of the film. There are certainly hardly any mainstream sex scenes that happen interracially (except the recent Jessica Jones that did it). And ... who knows...it just seems like something that is shockingly more controversial than many might totally realize. On dating apps like OkCUpid, for instance, they have discovered that white men are significantly more likely to get a response than black men. Black women , it seems, on Cupid, hardly get any love at all. For me, this is preposterous: the entire reason I love using Cupid so much, is to find someone different than me. So why not others? Why am I all alone? Why aren't there 6 different Hollywood films I can watch about white women who are not just married to black men---but determined to marry one?
Well, it's as I said before: It's the same reason I can't find movies about American men who , like my former self, are obsessed with trying to marry someone from the EU, to escape America, and find a different life. These are quite literally interpreted as "traitor tales", and we don't much dig them, collectively speaking. Instead of seeing the person who wants to date outside the comfort zone, as a hero, which is important for a film (film loves heroes) it seems society sees them as a lunatic, or a loser, or someone probably a bit dysfunctional. They aren't so far off the mark , either: Many people, in our own time, who want to do things like marry into another country, or fuck black men because daddy hates them, usually are pretty troubled. They aren't heroic in the "traditional sense". But they are still heroic to me. They are still brave....
Don't get me wrong: There certainly are some films about white women dating black men, like Jungle Fever from the 90s, but most of them are only ever willing to go so far in terms of "offensive" material.
I should like to change this in my lifetime here as a writer, but sometimes I'm not so sure it is possible, and I get shy. I want to eventually be published one day, I always say, and honestly, writing about interracial relationships the way I Would like to, just doesn't seem like something publishable, in this current time. I would have to make it all much more complex, for example, than I should like it to be. I should also probably have to make it end, tragically, which breaks my heart. Last but not least, I could never make it a true "fantasy" in the way, I'll admit, that I sometimes should like. For example, in the movie Warcraft, a fantasy I was just watching, there was a green skinned orc woman taken as a slave by a group of white men with swords. No one sees it as problematic. Now, imagine if I tried to do this with a story about black men and a white woman? And then imagine if I did something like, say, have the black men cast spells on the white woman, so that she did not resist her enslavement? She just became a ....
I shan't go any further. It's too controversial, Like I say. People would snap and flip out and maybe I'd even be hanged by the Klan in old Kaintuck. It's still pretty fun...and certainly sexy...to imagine though. I mean, shit, if that movie existed, imagine how many white women would walk out of the theater and ......
Again I almost get inappropriate. I must censor myself for the sake of the American Empire. My apologies ----
Becky Jean
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Christmas eve: Depression notes
Every Christmas I pray for a Viking feast and cold hard rain to pour. It is always the unhappiest time of the year for me , in America. The wind never seems to get cold enough here, the woods never get lonely enough, and the American people themselves, eternally clueless. They have no spines, no traditions, no memories, no history. Even the celebraton of Christmas .. and the Winter Solstice..is something these tragic people have gone about in the wrong fashion.
Look, for example, what they have done to the elves. Their interpretation of the elves ... leaves my blood boiling. Certainly someone must tell the Americans: Not all elves are little! Not all elves are like children! By the Gods, no! But then, again, as I say: the American mind has no memory. Most of the citizens in this frightening New WOrld have no concept of how deep the old "pagan" traditions once went. They are entirely Christian in a way that no Europeans - ironically - ever were. For the reader has to really think: Even once Europe was turned entirely Christian, there always remained, still, the memories of the old Gods, whether they be Viking or Greek, etc. The old Gods were born in Europe, and in many places, some of their shrines still live. It is simply not possible to forget them there...
In America, however, the old Gods (in terms of the white folk) never lived nor arrived. They are completely unknown, for the most part, to the American people, in much the same way that anything about history,in general, is entirely unknown. To the American mind, even the most "Conservative" amongst them, everything in the World begins abruptly the moment the New World is discovered, in 1492. And even then, the American mind has hardly any concept of what the world was like at that time. For the most part, nothing really gets going for the American commoner, until almost the 1800s. The ancient world, the age of the Vikings, the medieval period, the Renaissance, almost all of it is completely irrelevant to the American perspective. They say the great blessing of this country is that it has no memory. I say I sometimes suppose I agree. Mostly, however, I Think I am forced to disagree. America leaves me cold, but it is not a nice cold. I find her lack of memories disturbing, I Find her dull, i find her naive. She is like a wife who has never read nor traveled nor dreamed. For what can a country that collectively knows nothing of history possibly dream at night? What songs can a bard sing, if the bard has never seen anything? Americans cry over nothing; so too do they dream over nothing.
But now I think again of Christmas ,and those Vikings. I bring to mind an imaginary late December feast that the Vikings would have celebrated. I can imagine that the whole Viking village would have come together on a day like the one on which I write this document, Christmas Eve. I do not imagine that these people, in the year 850 AD, would have decided to sit and feast alone , with only 8-10 others, in an "Exclusive" house
. I feel they went to the center of the village, where they were all together, posisbly in the hundreds, and there did they feast and drink to marvelous delight. I can imagine the scene coming to life..the warriors pounding on the tables with big goblets of ale, the women dancing all about by the firey candles, the music that the troubadours wuold have played, the sound of the children who would jump upon the wooden tables and stomp . How joyous it must have truly been! I see a child playfully grabbing his warrior fathers big metal helmet, laughingly putting it on his head. The child is a long haired blonde boy, he has the mot beautiful Norwegian braids.. he leaps from one wooden table to the other, laughing, as his people-his community- claps and cheers. Someone hands him a sword; the child playfully pretends to engage in a duel with some imaginary dragon....
Hundreds of people gathered together to celebrate in the center of town; all of their individual hearths and homes abandoned and darkened for the night. Only the saddest among them, only the sickest, stayed home on this day and night of feasting... .
ANd is there not something so sad about this? To think that men and women all the way back in the year 850 AD, probably had a better Winter celebration than myself, in this lonely, painfully "private" New World called 'America'. For the Americans, I again cry, have no sense of community , and they have never had one, because they have no awareness of the past in which a true community existed. They insist on exclusivity, on small gatherings. It's as though every family that fled from the Old World for the New was a family of despised, lonely outcasts, who never came to the feast in the center of town, who never danced with the others, who never joined the chorus and sang.
This thought, in fact, has plagued me constantly for years: The blood of the US is the blood of pure isolation and privacy. For who else would have come here, except the despised? Take note, for example, that American prisons are some of the only ones left still using solitary confinement. No one back home in Europe uses it. Why? Because the Europeans find the type of extreme solitude the Americans favor --obsessively-- to be despicable.
Look at the American children , look at how they are raised. They are all kept apart from one another, save for special days, and special "dates". This is unfathomable to the Old World. Children ran out of the house there -- and are still running-- straight into the arms of an entire village worth of other children. They dance and somersault and play in the streets. If they are bad children, perhaps they form packs and gangs and rob you. In America, this is simply unheard of. American children are raised like prisoners: Alone, in a cubicle, in a compartment, left to stare out of a sad lonely window. If they are lucky, maybe they have a brother or a sister, or a few of them. If not, they are totally alone, left to float in deep space. Americans have no community, hence their severe bastardization of the holidays. Instead of letting Christmas breathe as the communal holiday it once was and shoud lhave remained -- the feasting holiday--they turned it into one all about gifts. Gifts are good; but even this became a perversion, because the US Twisted it into the entire meaning of Christmas. Most American adults, for example, find Christmas almost debilitating, and beyond that, perhaps hardly noticeable. Because in the States it's just about gifts, nothing else. The celebrations are not considered important. The true festivities are not considered important. How can you be festive, after all, when you refuse to gather with more than 10 people?When you consider everyone beyond your tiny family an abject stranger?
IMagine the fact, for instance, that I am a musician myself, a player of multiple instruments, from the flute to the guitar to the piano and the tambourine, and yet .. there has never been so much as a single holiday where my instruments can be revealed? The American family table at a holiday is like a board meeting in some Manhattan skyscraper: Everyone has a dour face, they are quiet, they are subdued, they discuss taxes and presidents, they argue , maybe they drink, but never do they dance, or sing, or pound the table or clap. For you need, in my mind, dozens upon dozens of people to find that sort of celebratory mood. Young people -- when alone--can find it, even if they are few in number; but adults, especially American adults in fact, need the community. Alas, they will never know it: It simply does not exist. It can't exist. Americans are terrified of it. Everyone outside the Immediate family in this country is what I call "the extreme stranger". She is a country made up of foreigners, after all, and the word foreigner is interchangeable with "Stranger". As a result of this, all families here often tend to feel as though they need live on their own island. Everyne outside their own exclusive hearth , beyond their own Christmas dnner table, is essentially a foreigner. ....
--NOTES ON XMAS EVE
Look, for example, what they have done to the elves. Their interpretation of the elves ... leaves my blood boiling. Certainly someone must tell the Americans: Not all elves are little! Not all elves are like children! By the Gods, no! But then, again, as I say: the American mind has no memory. Most of the citizens in this frightening New WOrld have no concept of how deep the old "pagan" traditions once went. They are entirely Christian in a way that no Europeans - ironically - ever were. For the reader has to really think: Even once Europe was turned entirely Christian, there always remained, still, the memories of the old Gods, whether they be Viking or Greek, etc. The old Gods were born in Europe, and in many places, some of their shrines still live. It is simply not possible to forget them there...
In America, however, the old Gods (in terms of the white folk) never lived nor arrived. They are completely unknown, for the most part, to the American people, in much the same way that anything about history,in general, is entirely unknown. To the American mind, even the most "Conservative" amongst them, everything in the World begins abruptly the moment the New World is discovered, in 1492. And even then, the American mind has hardly any concept of what the world was like at that time. For the most part, nothing really gets going for the American commoner, until almost the 1800s. The ancient world, the age of the Vikings, the medieval period, the Renaissance, almost all of it is completely irrelevant to the American perspective. They say the great blessing of this country is that it has no memory. I say I sometimes suppose I agree. Mostly, however, I Think I am forced to disagree. America leaves me cold, but it is not a nice cold. I find her lack of memories disturbing, I Find her dull, i find her naive. She is like a wife who has never read nor traveled nor dreamed. For what can a country that collectively knows nothing of history possibly dream at night? What songs can a bard sing, if the bard has never seen anything? Americans cry over nothing; so too do they dream over nothing.
But now I think again of Christmas ,and those Vikings. I bring to mind an imaginary late December feast that the Vikings would have celebrated. I can imagine that the whole Viking village would have come together on a day like the one on which I write this document, Christmas Eve. I do not imagine that these people, in the year 850 AD, would have decided to sit and feast alone , with only 8-10 others, in an "Exclusive" house
. I feel they went to the center of the village, where they were all together, posisbly in the hundreds, and there did they feast and drink to marvelous delight. I can imagine the scene coming to life..the warriors pounding on the tables with big goblets of ale, the women dancing all about by the firey candles, the music that the troubadours wuold have played, the sound of the children who would jump upon the wooden tables and stomp . How joyous it must have truly been! I see a child playfully grabbing his warrior fathers big metal helmet, laughingly putting it on his head. The child is a long haired blonde boy, he has the mot beautiful Norwegian braids.. he leaps from one wooden table to the other, laughing, as his people-his community- claps and cheers. Someone hands him a sword; the child playfully pretends to engage in a duel with some imaginary dragon....
Hundreds of people gathered together to celebrate in the center of town; all of their individual hearths and homes abandoned and darkened for the night. Only the saddest among them, only the sickest, stayed home on this day and night of feasting... .
ANd is there not something so sad about this? To think that men and women all the way back in the year 850 AD, probably had a better Winter celebration than myself, in this lonely, painfully "private" New World called 'America'. For the Americans, I again cry, have no sense of community , and they have never had one, because they have no awareness of the past in which a true community existed. They insist on exclusivity, on small gatherings. It's as though every family that fled from the Old World for the New was a family of despised, lonely outcasts, who never came to the feast in the center of town, who never danced with the others, who never joined the chorus and sang.
This thought, in fact, has plagued me constantly for years: The blood of the US is the blood of pure isolation and privacy. For who else would have come here, except the despised? Take note, for example, that American prisons are some of the only ones left still using solitary confinement. No one back home in Europe uses it. Why? Because the Europeans find the type of extreme solitude the Americans favor --obsessively-- to be despicable.
Look at the American children , look at how they are raised. They are all kept apart from one another, save for special days, and special "dates". This is unfathomable to the Old World. Children ran out of the house there -- and are still running-- straight into the arms of an entire village worth of other children. They dance and somersault and play in the streets. If they are bad children, perhaps they form packs and gangs and rob you. In America, this is simply unheard of. American children are raised like prisoners: Alone, in a cubicle, in a compartment, left to stare out of a sad lonely window. If they are lucky, maybe they have a brother or a sister, or a few of them. If not, they are totally alone, left to float in deep space. Americans have no community, hence their severe bastardization of the holidays. Instead of letting Christmas breathe as the communal holiday it once was and shoud lhave remained -- the feasting holiday--they turned it into one all about gifts. Gifts are good; but even this became a perversion, because the US Twisted it into the entire meaning of Christmas. Most American adults, for example, find Christmas almost debilitating, and beyond that, perhaps hardly noticeable. Because in the States it's just about gifts, nothing else. The celebrations are not considered important. The true festivities are not considered important. How can you be festive, after all, when you refuse to gather with more than 10 people?When you consider everyone beyond your tiny family an abject stranger?
IMagine the fact, for instance, that I am a musician myself, a player of multiple instruments, from the flute to the guitar to the piano and the tambourine, and yet .. there has never been so much as a single holiday where my instruments can be revealed? The American family table at a holiday is like a board meeting in some Manhattan skyscraper: Everyone has a dour face, they are quiet, they are subdued, they discuss taxes and presidents, they argue , maybe they drink, but never do they dance, or sing, or pound the table or clap. For you need, in my mind, dozens upon dozens of people to find that sort of celebratory mood. Young people -- when alone--can find it, even if they are few in number; but adults, especially American adults in fact, need the community. Alas, they will never know it: It simply does not exist. It can't exist. Americans are terrified of it. Everyone outside the Immediate family in this country is what I call "the extreme stranger". She is a country made up of foreigners, after all, and the word foreigner is interchangeable with "Stranger". As a result of this, all families here often tend to feel as though they need live on their own island. Everyne outside their own exclusive hearth , beyond their own Christmas dnner table, is essentially a foreigner. ....
--NOTES ON XMAS EVE
Friday, December 22, 2017
unfinished letter, another to Becca-- always to becca
The truth is, Rebecca, that I'm absolutely terrified for you. Like, literally: Terrified. Your story to me is , and always has been, pretty frightening. It is a story, to me, that generally always been one of extremes. Serious extremes.
Last week, I said to you that , before I really dove deeply into our friendship, I was "sailing a sea of light". I'm sure you remember. Well, one thing I meant to get across w/ this was how, though my life certainly has problems of its own - even deep ones - I have, for years now, been at a pretty tranquil place, so far as my daily life is concerned. Nothing, at all, about my daily life is hectic. I have purposely arranged it, in some sense, so it will be this way. In fact, my life is so not hectic that most people would probably interpret it as a 'slow torturous crawl'.
On any given day, I do not engage in yelling, or screaming matches, there are no children crying that I must run after, I do not speed in the car, I basically don't argue "in reality" w/ anyone, and essentailly haven't for years. My life is incredibly quiet - once you put the music I listen to aside.
You might wonder why I'm writing this to you. Whats it have to do with you, or this most recent argument we were in? To me, it has an awful lot to do with it. Why? Because I Think you live this life, as I say, of high peak extremes. I thik, in fact, that you lived it for so long ---especially before I cam into your life---that you did not even realize you were living it. I have tried to stress to you again and again, for example, that "it is easier for a woman to fall into this sort of loud life" than it is for a man. The reason is simple: More people are willing to make fast friends w/ a woman. You attracted more dangerous people than I ever could have. My life as a male has been rather uneventful for some years now; but I have, at the very least, been granted the privilege of this most beautiufl peace and quiet. No one is all too eager to be friends with me, or date me, bfut...at the same time...I don't often attract "bad energy" either. A blessing in disguise, so far as I see it.
You see, the reason, Rebecca, that I became so upset w/ tthe talk of this particular style of sex , is because I think it is the core of the entire issue that you have complained to me so frequently of. As a result of my belief in this, I was , quite frankly, **shocked** and maybe even **terrified** when I saw just how "lightly" you really interpreted it. It was as though you saw it as something not at all serious, as something laughable, as something "not really connected" or even "possible to connect". I , quite simply, could not fathom the disconnect that I personally felt you were making. It left me frightened for you. It left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. It also, I'll admit, yes, left me feeling rather disgusted, as well. But of course, I was deeply hesitant about expressing my fear over this style of sex you spoke so lightly of, as though it was nothing to take note of. I was afraid to really try and point out how unhealthy I Thought it was, how directly correlated I thought it was, and even just how "wrong" I thought it was.
Here is what I Want to say in regards to this all, and it is my final idea on it: If someone like myself is vastly irresponsible when it comes to how I Just wish to sit here, in quiet, and write all day , which certainly hurts my finances, then ...Rebecca...quite frankly, someone like yourself, to me, appears to have a problem of another kind: This entire idea you have -- or, I stress, at least HAD--of sex, has obviously led you to some pretty dangerous paths. You created two children in a highly precarious situation. You are clearly lacking in some control here, and quite frankly, as I say again, it is really downright mortifying to think of. I have , in fact, been terrified, pretty much since I've known you, that I Would again get a phone call, or a text, where I Was told you have become pregnant for a 3rd time, with some other abusive males child . I don't say this to insult you, or offend you. I have always truly wanted to believe I would remain your friend even if this scenario were to play out; but ...I still must confess: It scares me. It literally keeps me up at night, almost, and scares me. I honestly don'tknow if it scares me more as your friend, or as some lover who wishes he was with you , but it scares me. It scares me for myself, and for everyone else in your life. It scares me for you. Just like I used to get scared, for example, when I Would be driven home in the midst of a horrific fight between you and Rob. I would always sort of wonder, in the back of my head: "Will I get a message from Becca tomorrow moring? OR...will someting horrible happen?"
I don't wish to insult you or offend you , Rebecca. I have always wanted, above all else, to be the best possible friend I can be for you. I do not want to "shame" you or "hurt" you or anything like that. But the fact is that you have now actually created other lives here , not once but twice, in the same precarious situation, and I can't help but feel that , considering sex is at the root of all of that, it probably means that one has to examine sex, above all. This is why, again, whEn I heard your comments about how "I just don't know sometimes, if I'd even be able to have normal sex, and enjoy it", I instantly became mortified, with this deep fear , that its all going to happen again, that I will have to be here, as you rfriend, and watch an entire other abusive relationship play out, etcetc.
Rebecca, I don't have anything against wild, aggressive sex... I told you.. I would demand prostitution and such things be legalized tomorrow if I could...but the fact is that, in your own case, don't you think that you've already been somewhat led to a path in which all of this should be looked at a bit differently? A bit more, dare I say it, conservatively? I know the example will seem extreme to you, but imagine, for example, if we knew a gay man who slept around constantly, with whoever, who then was diagnosed with AIDS...and **even after** being diagnosed, this gay man went around telling people "don't shame anyone who has sex with totally random people, unprotected...god how dare you think to shame them...or tell them not do it..god how dare you! It's their kink..unprotected sex in a dirty bathroom stall..it's their kink..with strangers...don't shame them!"
I understand that the topic of sex is touchy. I don't want to 'shame" anyone, but quite frankly, I would hope someone WOULD shame me, if it meant I might get diagnosed w/ AIDS, or that I might get myself embroiled in a relationship where I would be repeatedly beaten, over and over again, due perhaps to the fact that the sex was all "BDSM" etc. Or of course, if it meant I would wind up with children on my hands, in a difficult siutation. I would hope someone would point things out to me . I would hope someone would try to tell me "think twice". I would hope someone would try to make the connection between having sex with random strangers, and then getting AIDs, just like I attempted to make the connection between your tales of what many would consider totally over the top sex, and the abusive relationships that combined with it. ALl of this talk of sex would, you see, be something entirely different, in my opinion --- except for the fact that, well, you are sitting there with 2 children and 2 lunatic fathers behind them. That detail seems, to me, to change things in enormous ways. I am forced to read the situation much differently than I Would, if there were no kids, and no abusive fathers. In fact, Rebecca, the only reason the abusive sex was ever mentioned at all, was because the abusive relationship existed on the surface. If your scenario had been like it seemed you were attempting to argue -- "it can exist within healthy relationships"--- then the entie conversation would have never been presented. No one wuld have known the better. Instead Becca, it was really pretty much obvious from the start, what was going on, behin dclosed doors.
Last week, I said to you that , before I really dove deeply into our friendship, I was "sailing a sea of light". I'm sure you remember. Well, one thing I meant to get across w/ this was how, though my life certainly has problems of its own - even deep ones - I have, for years now, been at a pretty tranquil place, so far as my daily life is concerned. Nothing, at all, about my daily life is hectic. I have purposely arranged it, in some sense, so it will be this way. In fact, my life is so not hectic that most people would probably interpret it as a 'slow torturous crawl'.
On any given day, I do not engage in yelling, or screaming matches, there are no children crying that I must run after, I do not speed in the car, I basically don't argue "in reality" w/ anyone, and essentailly haven't for years. My life is incredibly quiet - once you put the music I listen to aside.
You might wonder why I'm writing this to you. Whats it have to do with you, or this most recent argument we were in? To me, it has an awful lot to do with it. Why? Because I Think you live this life, as I say, of high peak extremes. I thik, in fact, that you lived it for so long ---especially before I cam into your life---that you did not even realize you were living it. I have tried to stress to you again and again, for example, that "it is easier for a woman to fall into this sort of loud life" than it is for a man. The reason is simple: More people are willing to make fast friends w/ a woman. You attracted more dangerous people than I ever could have. My life as a male has been rather uneventful for some years now; but I have, at the very least, been granted the privilege of this most beautiufl peace and quiet. No one is all too eager to be friends with me, or date me, bfut...at the same time...I don't often attract "bad energy" either. A blessing in disguise, so far as I see it.
You see, the reason, Rebecca, that I became so upset w/ tthe talk of this particular style of sex , is because I think it is the core of the entire issue that you have complained to me so frequently of. As a result of my belief in this, I was , quite frankly, **shocked** and maybe even **terrified** when I saw just how "lightly" you really interpreted it. It was as though you saw it as something not at all serious, as something laughable, as something "not really connected" or even "possible to connect". I , quite simply, could not fathom the disconnect that I personally felt you were making. It left me frightened for you. It left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. It also, I'll admit, yes, left me feeling rather disgusted, as well. But of course, I was deeply hesitant about expressing my fear over this style of sex you spoke so lightly of, as though it was nothing to take note of. I was afraid to really try and point out how unhealthy I Thought it was, how directly correlated I thought it was, and even just how "wrong" I thought it was.
Here is what I Want to say in regards to this all, and it is my final idea on it: If someone like myself is vastly irresponsible when it comes to how I Just wish to sit here, in quiet, and write all day , which certainly hurts my finances, then ...Rebecca...quite frankly, someone like yourself, to me, appears to have a problem of another kind: This entire idea you have -- or, I stress, at least HAD--of sex, has obviously led you to some pretty dangerous paths. You created two children in a highly precarious situation. You are clearly lacking in some control here, and quite frankly, as I say again, it is really downright mortifying to think of. I have , in fact, been terrified, pretty much since I've known you, that I Would again get a phone call, or a text, where I Was told you have become pregnant for a 3rd time, with some other abusive males child . I don't say this to insult you, or offend you. I have always truly wanted to believe I would remain your friend even if this scenario were to play out; but ...I still must confess: It scares me. It literally keeps me up at night, almost, and scares me. I honestly don'tknow if it scares me more as your friend, or as some lover who wishes he was with you , but it scares me. It scares me for myself, and for everyone else in your life. It scares me for you. Just like I used to get scared, for example, when I Would be driven home in the midst of a horrific fight between you and Rob. I would always sort of wonder, in the back of my head: "Will I get a message from Becca tomorrow moring? OR...will someting horrible happen?"
I don't wish to insult you or offend you , Rebecca. I have always wanted, above all else, to be the best possible friend I can be for you. I do not want to "shame" you or "hurt" you or anything like that. But the fact is that you have now actually created other lives here , not once but twice, in the same precarious situation, and I can't help but feel that , considering sex is at the root of all of that, it probably means that one has to examine sex, above all. This is why, again, whEn I heard your comments about how "I just don't know sometimes, if I'd even be able to have normal sex, and enjoy it", I instantly became mortified, with this deep fear , that its all going to happen again, that I will have to be here, as you rfriend, and watch an entire other abusive relationship play out, etcetc.
Rebecca, I don't have anything against wild, aggressive sex... I told you.. I would demand prostitution and such things be legalized tomorrow if I could...but the fact is that, in your own case, don't you think that you've already been somewhat led to a path in which all of this should be looked at a bit differently? A bit more, dare I say it, conservatively? I know the example will seem extreme to you, but imagine, for example, if we knew a gay man who slept around constantly, with whoever, who then was diagnosed with AIDS...and **even after** being diagnosed, this gay man went around telling people "don't shame anyone who has sex with totally random people, unprotected...god how dare you think to shame them...or tell them not do it..god how dare you! It's their kink..unprotected sex in a dirty bathroom stall..it's their kink..with strangers...don't shame them!"
I understand that the topic of sex is touchy. I don't want to 'shame" anyone, but quite frankly, I would hope someone WOULD shame me, if it meant I might get diagnosed w/ AIDS, or that I might get myself embroiled in a relationship where I would be repeatedly beaten, over and over again, due perhaps to the fact that the sex was all "BDSM" etc. Or of course, if it meant I would wind up with children on my hands, in a difficult siutation. I would hope someone would point things out to me . I would hope someone would try to tell me "think twice". I would hope someone would try to make the connection between having sex with random strangers, and then getting AIDs, just like I attempted to make the connection between your tales of what many would consider totally over the top sex, and the abusive relationships that combined with it. ALl of this talk of sex would, you see, be something entirely different, in my opinion --- except for the fact that, well, you are sitting there with 2 children and 2 lunatic fathers behind them. That detail seems, to me, to change things in enormous ways. I am forced to read the situation much differently than I Would, if there were no kids, and no abusive fathers. In fact, Rebecca, the only reason the abusive sex was ever mentioned at all, was because the abusive relationship existed on the surface. If your scenario had been like it seemed you were attempting to argue -- "it can exist within healthy relationships"--- then the entie conversation would have never been presented. No one wuld have known the better. Instead Becca, it was really pretty much obvious from the start, what was going on, behin dclosed doors.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Dreams and things
What a strange dream that was that I just had . I found myself first wandering around with a friend outside somewhere, and I think it was winter weather. We found a door to a house, opened it and walked in. Now we were in an apartment stairway. We rounded the first levels of the stairs, and then we saw another door, which was the one we were heading for.
Suddenly I realized precisely who we were there to see: It was the apartment of a very old and once influential friend, someone I met long ago in my 8th grade year. Someone who wound up-- at lest in my head-- betraying me greatly. The moment I realized whers my friend was heading - that he wa going for this old middle school buddies door-- I turned back around, meaning to flee . I was about to literally jump down the stairwell, when the old friend opened his apartment door, however. He just about saw me. Half my face felt hidden in the dream. Like I was half down the stairwell already. But he looked right at me the moment my friend knocked and opened the door...
"Antonelli is that you? Holy shit! It's been so long! What the hell are you doing?"
He could see I was trying to flee . I tried to respond awkwardly. "I figured you didn't want to see me, Carmine. It's been a long time."
"Dude no way. Come in. Holy shit. Come in."
So the next thing I know I was standing either at the front entrance of his door in the hallway or acrually in his APT, and I was unwrapping a pack of cigarettes I used to smoke, but haven't in two years since I quit. I tossed the plastic paper opening the pack. Carmine of course wanted one. (Keep in mind the real Carmine actually used to loan me a lot of money sometimes).
I handed off a cigarette to him. Don't think I had one myself, though I can vividly remember handling one of them, staring at the little brown filter . I also remember commenting that I "haven't one in a few days". They all laughed. Bavk then it was seen as downright lunatic to actually manage to quit.
I soon found myself speeding quickly toward the end of the dream, however, and this part is the whole reason I woke up & wanted to write it down: I actually found myself going to sleep inside the dream itself, settling down for what was apparently supposed to be a nap on Carmines couch. This of course is absolutely something that would have happened with the real Carmine too: He had an apartment literally before anyone at all, when he was actually just 16, and he would often let anyone stay who needed.
At any rate the last thing I remember was then being awoken by Carmine. He was standing again at a doorway , and he had opened a door and knocked on the side of it to get my attention and wake me up. "What the hell you doing?" He laughed, "passed out on my couch? Wake up, man."
I apparently wasn't supposed to be doing it. This shocked me. In the dream, at this moment, it was as though I realized I was literally overwhelmed with fatigue whenever me & my friend had reached Carmines APT. All I wanted to do was lay down. So while they were handling the business of whatever they were doing , I did. But I wasn't supposed to actually sleep. Nevertheless then there he was waking me up. Except oddly enough the moment I got up (in a tired struggle) i back here in my room, on my bed with my dog, at almost 2 in the AM..
The first thought I had, after awakening, was if I had been as young in the dream as I was the last time I really saw Carmine. I was still a teenager back then I feel, probably 19 just about to go on 20. Maybe a bit younger. There's no way I was over 20 when I lost touch with Carmine, because the reason I lost touch with him was over Franny, and I lost touch with Franny at 20, and it had been quite awhile before Franny left my life, last I saw him. So I could not help but wonder after I awoke: Imagine the horror of hanging around as a 19 year old and then passing out for a brief nap on a friends couch, a wee bit drunk, perhaps stoned, only to then get woken up & fall off the couch, & when you open your eyes you somehow realize--- as I have just now--- tgat you're 10 years older? And that all these people you saw are as well? And they're now essentially totally different, lost connections? Impossible to contact? Useless to you? Old and weird....
Who knows. Maybe I had the dream because Carmine died and I haven't heard about it. I purposely stay off the social media here in this "waking dream", mostly because I hate following old locals who annoy me and depress me now. But maybe he died. He was a major drug user last I heard, even though when I knew him he really only drank (obsessively). Wouldn't even smoke pot really. I'll admit it is a bit strange cause a few weeks ago, after many many years, I did get a bit curious of Carmine and typed his name into google looking for him. I found an arrest from very long ago he had apparently suffered in a cop log, then I found an old Photobucket he had used (I had actually then searched his then often used online alias to find it ) and from there I found a Twitter he set up, but had apparently not used for long.
There was a picture of him as he existed 6 years after I knew him, plus a short description he wrote of what he did with his life. Said he liked driving Cadillacs and of course had all his bio written about how he'll never let you forget he was originally from the Bronx, NYC. In fact it used to even be his nick name: "New York Carmine" we called him when we were kids. He had about 40 different baseball hats back then-- always dedicated to the city or the Yankees especially-- and he used to have a tattoo on his forearm too (even when he was 13 he had it, in pictures, I vividly remember seeing) which was dedicated to the Bronx. Carmine seemed as though he was 20 when I met him in 8th grade. He had transferred in that year from the Bronx, you see, and he almost never showed up. In fact I think he might have dropped out from even 8th grade.
I just somehow happened to get his out of school info quickly enough before he did, and began a correspondence with him that at first was mostly online. My most vivid earliest memory of Carmine in 8th grade took place one morning for me on a sick day that turned into a long sick night, and was then about to be a new sick morning : I was awake, coughing my brains out probsbly? and sitting on messenger at 430 am. Back then of course no one was logged in that late. Yet then there he was: "New York Carmine has logged in". We both immediately saw the other was on. Sending messages.
"What are you doing up?" I said. "Surrly you're not sick, you have to go to school by 730!"
"Nah." he said, "I ain't been in lately, same as you dawg. I was out all night. My boy Jorge came down from the city to see me. Ain't seen him in a minute since I moved down here."
"Oh wow. What are you doing?"
"We was just shooting the shit and now I think we about to take off for a ride to the city , to see what's good."
"But it's 4:30 in the morning. On a Tuesday. What the hell you gonna go to NYC for? Ain't it a long ways off?"
"No way." he said, "if you know how to drive and yu drive real fast you can get there in just 45 minutes from here dawg. For real I never would have let my parents move me out here if it wasn't. I'd die if I was any further. Fuck, I told you that before man. The Bronx is everything!"
"Right. Shit. I can't believe it."
Then he logged off, supposedly to go to New York, but it seems my memory, in some way, has never logged off from that brief exchange: I have actually often thought of it over the years (and was just in fact thinking of it the other day) because Carmines telling me that one could reach New York in just a mere 45 minutes by car, from where I lived, was ...I don't know how to quite describe it ...but it was shocking, almost Earthquake type news to my then 8th grade self.
Who knows though. Like I said, maybe he died. He always lived a pretty risque life and fancied himself a gangster. He probably went and bought himself guns the moment he was able. Maybe he even had them when we were kids and just never showed me cause he knew everything used to scare me. He definitely always had a very large assortment of knives. Strange that I saw him in a dream. I often hate remembering him thanks to the "betrayal". Even stranger that I wrote it all down. Alas I am keeping to the promise I made to the ghost of William Burroughs that lives in my head: When I've got a strange dream, or at least one that seems strange to me, I ought to sit and write it the fuck down!
___
Suddenly I realized precisely who we were there to see: It was the apartment of a very old and once influential friend, someone I met long ago in my 8th grade year. Someone who wound up-- at lest in my head-- betraying me greatly. The moment I realized whers my friend was heading - that he wa going for this old middle school buddies door-- I turned back around, meaning to flee . I was about to literally jump down the stairwell, when the old friend opened his apartment door, however. He just about saw me. Half my face felt hidden in the dream. Like I was half down the stairwell already. But he looked right at me the moment my friend knocked and opened the door...
"Antonelli is that you? Holy shit! It's been so long! What the hell are you doing?"
He could see I was trying to flee . I tried to respond awkwardly. "I figured you didn't want to see me, Carmine. It's been a long time."
"Dude no way. Come in. Holy shit. Come in."
So the next thing I know I was standing either at the front entrance of his door in the hallway or acrually in his APT, and I was unwrapping a pack of cigarettes I used to smoke, but haven't in two years since I quit. I tossed the plastic paper opening the pack. Carmine of course wanted one. (Keep in mind the real Carmine actually used to loan me a lot of money sometimes).
I handed off a cigarette to him. Don't think I had one myself, though I can vividly remember handling one of them, staring at the little brown filter . I also remember commenting that I "haven't one in a few days". They all laughed. Bavk then it was seen as downright lunatic to actually manage to quit.
I soon found myself speeding quickly toward the end of the dream, however, and this part is the whole reason I woke up & wanted to write it down: I actually found myself going to sleep inside the dream itself, settling down for what was apparently supposed to be a nap on Carmines couch. This of course is absolutely something that would have happened with the real Carmine too: He had an apartment literally before anyone at all, when he was actually just 16, and he would often let anyone stay who needed.
At any rate the last thing I remember was then being awoken by Carmine. He was standing again at a doorway , and he had opened a door and knocked on the side of it to get my attention and wake me up. "What the hell you doing?" He laughed, "passed out on my couch? Wake up, man."
I apparently wasn't supposed to be doing it. This shocked me. In the dream, at this moment, it was as though I realized I was literally overwhelmed with fatigue whenever me & my friend had reached Carmines APT. All I wanted to do was lay down. So while they were handling the business of whatever they were doing , I did. But I wasn't supposed to actually sleep. Nevertheless then there he was waking me up. Except oddly enough the moment I got up (in a tired struggle) i back here in my room, on my bed with my dog, at almost 2 in the AM..
The first thought I had, after awakening, was if I had been as young in the dream as I was the last time I really saw Carmine. I was still a teenager back then I feel, probably 19 just about to go on 20. Maybe a bit younger. There's no way I was over 20 when I lost touch with Carmine, because the reason I lost touch with him was over Franny, and I lost touch with Franny at 20, and it had been quite awhile before Franny left my life, last I saw him. So I could not help but wonder after I awoke: Imagine the horror of hanging around as a 19 year old and then passing out for a brief nap on a friends couch, a wee bit drunk, perhaps stoned, only to then get woken up & fall off the couch, & when you open your eyes you somehow realize--- as I have just now--- tgat you're 10 years older? And that all these people you saw are as well? And they're now essentially totally different, lost connections? Impossible to contact? Useless to you? Old and weird....
Who knows. Maybe I had the dream because Carmine died and I haven't heard about it. I purposely stay off the social media here in this "waking dream", mostly because I hate following old locals who annoy me and depress me now. But maybe he died. He was a major drug user last I heard, even though when I knew him he really only drank (obsessively). Wouldn't even smoke pot really. I'll admit it is a bit strange cause a few weeks ago, after many many years, I did get a bit curious of Carmine and typed his name into google looking for him. I found an arrest from very long ago he had apparently suffered in a cop log, then I found an old Photobucket he had used (I had actually then searched his then often used online alias to find it ) and from there I found a Twitter he set up, but had apparently not used for long.
There was a picture of him as he existed 6 years after I knew him, plus a short description he wrote of what he did with his life. Said he liked driving Cadillacs and of course had all his bio written about how he'll never let you forget he was originally from the Bronx, NYC. In fact it used to even be his nick name: "New York Carmine" we called him when we were kids. He had about 40 different baseball hats back then-- always dedicated to the city or the Yankees especially-- and he used to have a tattoo on his forearm too (even when he was 13 he had it, in pictures, I vividly remember seeing) which was dedicated to the Bronx. Carmine seemed as though he was 20 when I met him in 8th grade. He had transferred in that year from the Bronx, you see, and he almost never showed up. In fact I think he might have dropped out from even 8th grade.
I just somehow happened to get his out of school info quickly enough before he did, and began a correspondence with him that at first was mostly online. My most vivid earliest memory of Carmine in 8th grade took place one morning for me on a sick day that turned into a long sick night, and was then about to be a new sick morning : I was awake, coughing my brains out probsbly? and sitting on messenger at 430 am. Back then of course no one was logged in that late. Yet then there he was: "New York Carmine has logged in". We both immediately saw the other was on. Sending messages.
"What are you doing up?" I said. "Surrly you're not sick, you have to go to school by 730!"
"Nah." he said, "I ain't been in lately, same as you dawg. I was out all night. My boy Jorge came down from the city to see me. Ain't seen him in a minute since I moved down here."
"Oh wow. What are you doing?"
"We was just shooting the shit and now I think we about to take off for a ride to the city , to see what's good."
"But it's 4:30 in the morning. On a Tuesday. What the hell you gonna go to NYC for? Ain't it a long ways off?"
"No way." he said, "if you know how to drive and yu drive real fast you can get there in just 45 minutes from here dawg. For real I never would have let my parents move me out here if it wasn't. I'd die if I was any further. Fuck, I told you that before man. The Bronx is everything!"
"Right. Shit. I can't believe it."
Then he logged off, supposedly to go to New York, but it seems my memory, in some way, has never logged off from that brief exchange: I have actually often thought of it over the years (and was just in fact thinking of it the other day) because Carmines telling me that one could reach New York in just a mere 45 minutes by car, from where I lived, was ...I don't know how to quite describe it ...but it was shocking, almost Earthquake type news to my then 8th grade self.
Who knows though. Like I said, maybe he died. He always lived a pretty risque life and fancied himself a gangster. He probably went and bought himself guns the moment he was able. Maybe he even had them when we were kids and just never showed me cause he knew everything used to scare me. He definitely always had a very large assortment of knives. Strange that I saw him in a dream. I often hate remembering him thanks to the "betrayal". Even stranger that I wrote it all down. Alas I am keeping to the promise I made to the ghost of William Burroughs that lives in my head: When I've got a strange dream, or at least one that seems strange to me, I ought to sit and write it the fuck down!
___
Saturday, December 16, 2017
The text messaging argument : For your reading pleasure
For purposes of posterity, I have decided to type up the texting argument that I got into w/ my friend Rebecca earlier this morning/afternoon over US liberalism vs US conservatism. A.k.a. "You're either for Trump or...you're against him?" Alas, Trumps name was really not mentioned a single time in this long argument, since my personal take on US politics doesn't really have so much to do w/ Trump , as it does with simple plain ol' liberalism. That word, you see, -- "liberal"-- was really the core of the entire argument w/ Rebecca this afternoon: I began, at some point, to finally (after many months really, if not years of talking) 'demand' that she state & declare a side. "Are you liberal...or are you not?"
I really wasn't sure what her reaction would be. I know she has severe discomfort w/the idea of liberalism, but alas, as I wrote in my letter available below this post, I literally have no idea *why* Rebecca is so averse to liberalism....since it seems so many of her day to day ideas are deeply liberal. I.e. She was involved in a terribly abusive relationship w/ a man, who gave her a child, but who also knocked her around a good bit, even to the point of getting himself arrested over it. As a result, Becca has often argued for a position that, to me, intellectually speaking, seems totally feminist. Feminism of course is completely in line w/ liberalism, last I heard.
And yet ... the girl ... or should I say woman...absolutely *refuses* to actually take that step forward & identify as a liberal. Why? Well, maybe someone smarter than me will be abl eto tell by reading this truly bewildering conversation that I had with her. Keep in mind I am only retyping it from about the midddle on. We had an earlier (and far worse) argument in the morning , over the same topic, and then we calmed dwn & said we would reconvene in the afternoon. So, as soon as the clock struck 12 afternoon, we began messagin again. Things descended into Hell rather quickly. I'm going to show you where that descent was basically already in full swing. And remember , the main thing I was aiming for was to get Becca to do one of two things: 1. Explain exactly what she meant by how she was "middle" , or 2. Just say she was a liberal and come to a beautifully happy, liberal place w/ me. As far as I care to tell it, the woman did neither. But I will let thee decide whose the ass and who ain't, eh?
(Rebecca will be R, and I will be S)
R: What exactly am I disagreeing w/ you about? Listen, goodbye until another few hours. Just know : I am *not* middle.
S: I'm not mad, Bec'. I'm just asking.
R: I'm going to scream.
S: Ok what are you then?
R: I'm angry still ,all over again. I'm going to ring someones neck! THats what I am.
S: Becca, I'm just ..really confused.
R: Kk, then we needn't discuss it. I can't talk right now. Again. I came back when I said, didn't I? But now I'm just getting more upset. I have to go to a wedding at 2.
S: Ohhh...so thats why you're so wildly out of it. Shit, I see. Now it's all making some sense! See ya later.
R: No. I was only upset about this. That's it. That's what set me off.
S: Becca guess what? We don't have to be friends and we don't have to argue. All you have to do is be clear about what you are or what you are not. If I say, I wanna build a fort today, and Jennifer says "I don't wanna" and you say "I'm not sure", you're essentially in disagreement w/ me, because I definitely want to build it. So ..you either want to build the fort or you don't. I don't even understand what the middle is. None of the political issues right now, to me, they ain't that complex. So, hey, good luck and goodbye. Hace a nice day...message me if you want, later. Ciao, ciao ciao.
R: You're just being an absolute asshole.
S: No I'm not. Look, it's so easy: I don't want any pepperoni on my pizza. No middle here. No middle! I'm not being an asshole.
R: Yes you are.
S: No.
R: Yes, you are.
S: Rebecca there's no god damn f'n middle!!!
R: You can't make me think otherwise.
S: Dude, one is either for or against a thing. No middle. You either free the slaves, or you don't free them. Et cetera. Pepperoni on the pizza or none. I ain't an asshole; I am just stating clearly *what I believe* so as to avoid confusion, you see?
R: Without listening to anything I've said for MONTHS! I'm not reiterating any of it.
(I must make an entry here and tell my reader that I literally have no idea what Becca is referring to about what she said 'for months'. I have literally no recollection of Becca ever actually stating a firm side politically speaking, ever. She has at times sent a few memes that make fun of Trump, for ex., but she has never outright opposed him. In the past, she once told me she is registered Republican; now that she knows I hate them, she will not say she is Republican. And a few times she did tell me she doesn't believe in hand outs...even though I believe she herself has gotten welfare for her 2 kids by 2 different fathers ...her being married to neither. Alas she has never at all stated any certain position in recent months. Her rude comments about hand outs "not helping anyone" and voting Repub took place well over a year and a half ago. Anyways, onwards...)
S: Becca what are you talking about? I'm literaly so confused. I don't...you never said anything about your position. I've never asked you for an exact position, really. I've just told you my exact position. Never asked yours, really.
R: Oh you see? You do this. You just fill it all in yourself. Details of me. Hey, look, ttyl.
S: Dude you're either a liberal, or you're not. Being middle, not liberal. Just tell me what!
R: Don't. Don't say it again. Don't fucking say it.
S: I'm just saying!! If you're in the middle, that's not liberal.
R: You're saying it again.
S: Give me a break.
R: No. You are relentlessly going. So I Won't give you one when you won't give me one. Thanks though.
S: Because NO ONE understands what this means.
R: Ohh, right, right, all the people online you discuss *us* with. That's fucking weird. Creep. Goodbye for now!
S: Who could understand this? You refuse to identify yourself w/ either party. It's confusing. You're, you see, you're fogging it all up. For no reason.
R: Nope.
S: No?
R: You. Just. Don't. Listen. To. Me.
S: Dude what's your problem?
R: I'm done repeating myself.
S: Dude I'm listening.
R: Nah I'm done w/ this whole convo.
S: I'm just saying: you refuse to state a position and I admittedly find it bizarre.... cause so much about you **seems** liberal, at times, and then you randomly turn...
R: You're not getting anything out of me. The end. Of this convo. THE END.
S: You said you're not liberal, yer middle. I said "Becca, I'm a liberal".
R: THE FUCKING END. YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN.
S: Right. END END / CONVO ENDED. END END/ END
R: Do not say it again. DO NOT. I just want get off this convo. I keep asking now.
S: You're being belligerently immature.
R: You won't let me leave the fucking convo. You kept saying you'd block me! Excuse me here? Whose being immature? Lmao. I have to go get ready. Wedding at 2.
S: I'm not gonna block you if you say you're not liberal.
(OK, time for anothe quick entry, because my reader might not understand the blocking thing and it probably makes me seem rude here ,instead of Becca. I wish to defend myself, so here's the background on the blocking thing: About two months ago, Becca randomly stopped replying to my texts, or my calls, for about a week and a half. I had no idea what happened, and since she lives kind of far and we don't date , I felt very odd just, you know, showing up at her house. I went into a deep freaked out panic for the duration of it all, and much of what I read online, on sites like Reddit & Twitter, told me that I had been 'ghosted'. At one point I even tried to add Becca on instagram -- she has a private instagram account, her only social media -- and I did it w/ an account I know she knew I made just for the purpose, using an inside joke for a name. She rejected the request. Then, two weeks later or w/e, she finally messaged me again. Her excuse was that the phone was broken. I never mentioned what happened w/ the Instagram. I did, however, explain to her in depth, that I believed I had been blocked randomly, or put on ignore, and that I couldn't believe it, it made me sad, etc etc. She assured me "you werent blocked...I'll never block you..ever ever...okay? PRomise?" I basically believe her but now I find that sometimes, yes, I'm the one threatening blocks. Cause I can't believe she didn't even *attempt* to contact me for all that time when her phone "died". AFter all, we talk every day. All day. So wth?
Onwards, however...)
R: You said you'd block me. It was immature. Definitely immature. But, ok, I'll ttyl now, OK?
S: I suppose if you said you weren't lib, I might just not talk to you as often. To avoid arguments, y'know?
R: Ya. TTYL.
S: Becca wth? Just go find someone who agrees w/ you. With your so called "middle" position. WHy is it so bad?
R: Fuck you. My God, fuck you. You don't know my position! You're too passionate about telling me what it is. Good day.
S: Yes! It's true! I don't know wtf your position is because you REFUSE to say what it is.
R: Good day.
S: I'm listening.
R: I gotta get ready. YOu're making me rip my fucking hair out. AGAIN!! I HAVE TO GO GET READY OK? AND I DO NOT LIKE HOW YOU WERE, OR ARE, TALKING TO ME. BECAUSE I'VE SAID I HAVE TO GO NOW AND EARLIER, A DOZEN OR TWO TIMES, AND TO NO AVAILZ!
S: You saying you're a liberal then?
R: Fuck you. Wow. Fuck you.
S: What didn't I hear tho?? What are you referring to? I don't get what I-
R: Fuck you. Fuck you.
S: I don't get what I didn't hear.
R: Fuck you.
S: Right.
R: Fuuuuuuucccckkkkkk youuuuuu is what you didn't hear.
S: Oh.
R: Jesus fucking Christ, let me go get ready. I'll ttyl.
S: Bye.
R: Fuck you means I've asked to go 1,870,554 times and you're still fucking HOUNDING ME.
S: You said "let us reconvene at noon". I had no idea this meant solely a 20 minute window. You made , you know, you didn't say you were going to a wedding at 2. Never mentioned that this morning.
R: You keep talking shit.
S: Yes. I am sorry. Terribly sorry. See ya.
R: You put me in a fog.
S: I know.
R: You put me in a fog bcus you were talking SHIT. So this FOG you speak of ..it's just RAGE...Through and through. Rage. It's making everything impossible.
The conversation ends here. I sent a short 5 second voice note where I said , in a sttrange voice, "relaxx... relax... just go ...we talk later..." and then she was gone, no further responses. I logged onto Twitter to start talking about, then I sat down an hour after that to start typing this up for y'all. It's now 2:54...almost 3. She's been at the wedding (if there even was one) for an hour. It just now occurred to me that if she went to a wedding she is probably drinking.
I wonder what that means?
I really wasn't sure what her reaction would be. I know she has severe discomfort w/the idea of liberalism, but alas, as I wrote in my letter available below this post, I literally have no idea *why* Rebecca is so averse to liberalism....since it seems so many of her day to day ideas are deeply liberal. I.e. She was involved in a terribly abusive relationship w/ a man, who gave her a child, but who also knocked her around a good bit, even to the point of getting himself arrested over it. As a result, Becca has often argued for a position that, to me, intellectually speaking, seems totally feminist. Feminism of course is completely in line w/ liberalism, last I heard.
And yet ... the girl ... or should I say woman...absolutely *refuses* to actually take that step forward & identify as a liberal. Why? Well, maybe someone smarter than me will be abl eto tell by reading this truly bewildering conversation that I had with her. Keep in mind I am only retyping it from about the midddle on. We had an earlier (and far worse) argument in the morning , over the same topic, and then we calmed dwn & said we would reconvene in the afternoon. So, as soon as the clock struck 12 afternoon, we began messagin again. Things descended into Hell rather quickly. I'm going to show you where that descent was basically already in full swing. And remember , the main thing I was aiming for was to get Becca to do one of two things: 1. Explain exactly what she meant by how she was "middle" , or 2. Just say she was a liberal and come to a beautifully happy, liberal place w/ me. As far as I care to tell it, the woman did neither. But I will let thee decide whose the ass and who ain't, eh?
(Rebecca will be R, and I will be S)
R: What exactly am I disagreeing w/ you about? Listen, goodbye until another few hours. Just know : I am *not* middle.
S: I'm not mad, Bec'. I'm just asking.
R: I'm going to scream.
S: Ok what are you then?
R: I'm angry still ,all over again. I'm going to ring someones neck! THats what I am.
S: Becca, I'm just ..really confused.
R: Kk, then we needn't discuss it. I can't talk right now. Again. I came back when I said, didn't I? But now I'm just getting more upset. I have to go to a wedding at 2.
S: Ohhh...so thats why you're so wildly out of it. Shit, I see. Now it's all making some sense! See ya later.
R: No. I was only upset about this. That's it. That's what set me off.
S: Becca guess what? We don't have to be friends and we don't have to argue. All you have to do is be clear about what you are or what you are not. If I say, I wanna build a fort today, and Jennifer says "I don't wanna" and you say "I'm not sure", you're essentially in disagreement w/ me, because I definitely want to build it. So ..you either want to build the fort or you don't. I don't even understand what the middle is. None of the political issues right now, to me, they ain't that complex. So, hey, good luck and goodbye. Hace a nice day...message me if you want, later. Ciao, ciao ciao.
R: You're just being an absolute asshole.
S: No I'm not. Look, it's so easy: I don't want any pepperoni on my pizza. No middle here. No middle! I'm not being an asshole.
R: Yes you are.
S: No.
R: Yes, you are.
S: Rebecca there's no god damn f'n middle!!!
R: You can't make me think otherwise.
S: Dude, one is either for or against a thing. No middle. You either free the slaves, or you don't free them. Et cetera. Pepperoni on the pizza or none. I ain't an asshole; I am just stating clearly *what I believe* so as to avoid confusion, you see?
R: Without listening to anything I've said for MONTHS! I'm not reiterating any of it.
(I must make an entry here and tell my reader that I literally have no idea what Becca is referring to about what she said 'for months'. I have literally no recollection of Becca ever actually stating a firm side politically speaking, ever. She has at times sent a few memes that make fun of Trump, for ex., but she has never outright opposed him. In the past, she once told me she is registered Republican; now that she knows I hate them, she will not say she is Republican. And a few times she did tell me she doesn't believe in hand outs...even though I believe she herself has gotten welfare for her 2 kids by 2 different fathers ...her being married to neither. Alas she has never at all stated any certain position in recent months. Her rude comments about hand outs "not helping anyone" and voting Repub took place well over a year and a half ago. Anyways, onwards...)
S: Becca what are you talking about? I'm literaly so confused. I don't...you never said anything about your position. I've never asked you for an exact position, really. I've just told you my exact position. Never asked yours, really.
R: Oh you see? You do this. You just fill it all in yourself. Details of me. Hey, look, ttyl.
S: Dude you're either a liberal, or you're not. Being middle, not liberal. Just tell me what!
R: Don't. Don't say it again. Don't fucking say it.
S: I'm just saying!! If you're in the middle, that's not liberal.
R: You're saying it again.
S: Give me a break.
R: No. You are relentlessly going. So I Won't give you one when you won't give me one. Thanks though.
S: Because NO ONE understands what this means.
R: Ohh, right, right, all the people online you discuss *us* with. That's fucking weird. Creep. Goodbye for now!
S: Who could understand this? You refuse to identify yourself w/ either party. It's confusing. You're, you see, you're fogging it all up. For no reason.
R: Nope.
S: No?
R: You. Just. Don't. Listen. To. Me.
S: Dude what's your problem?
R: I'm done repeating myself.
S: Dude I'm listening.
R: Nah I'm done w/ this whole convo.
S: I'm just saying: you refuse to state a position and I admittedly find it bizarre.... cause so much about you **seems** liberal, at times, and then you randomly turn...
R: You're not getting anything out of me. The end. Of this convo. THE END.
S: You said you're not liberal, yer middle. I said "Becca, I'm a liberal".
R: THE FUCKING END. YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN.
S: Right. END END / CONVO ENDED. END END/ END
R: Do not say it again. DO NOT. I just want get off this convo. I keep asking now.
S: You're being belligerently immature.
R: You won't let me leave the fucking convo. You kept saying you'd block me! Excuse me here? Whose being immature? Lmao. I have to go get ready. Wedding at 2.
S: I'm not gonna block you if you say you're not liberal.
(OK, time for anothe quick entry, because my reader might not understand the blocking thing and it probably makes me seem rude here ,instead of Becca. I wish to defend myself, so here's the background on the blocking thing: About two months ago, Becca randomly stopped replying to my texts, or my calls, for about a week and a half. I had no idea what happened, and since she lives kind of far and we don't date , I felt very odd just, you know, showing up at her house. I went into a deep freaked out panic for the duration of it all, and much of what I read online, on sites like Reddit & Twitter, told me that I had been 'ghosted'. At one point I even tried to add Becca on instagram -- she has a private instagram account, her only social media -- and I did it w/ an account I know she knew I made just for the purpose, using an inside joke for a name. She rejected the request. Then, two weeks later or w/e, she finally messaged me again. Her excuse was that the phone was broken. I never mentioned what happened w/ the Instagram. I did, however, explain to her in depth, that I believed I had been blocked randomly, or put on ignore, and that I couldn't believe it, it made me sad, etc etc. She assured me "you werent blocked...I'll never block you..ever ever...okay? PRomise?" I basically believe her but now I find that sometimes, yes, I'm the one threatening blocks. Cause I can't believe she didn't even *attempt* to contact me for all that time when her phone "died". AFter all, we talk every day. All day. So wth?
Onwards, however...)
R: You said you'd block me. It was immature. Definitely immature. But, ok, I'll ttyl now, OK?
S: I suppose if you said you weren't lib, I might just not talk to you as often. To avoid arguments, y'know?
R: Ya. TTYL.
S: Becca wth? Just go find someone who agrees w/ you. With your so called "middle" position. WHy is it so bad?
R: Fuck you. My God, fuck you. You don't know my position! You're too passionate about telling me what it is. Good day.
S: Yes! It's true! I don't know wtf your position is because you REFUSE to say what it is.
R: Good day.
S: I'm listening.
R: I gotta get ready. YOu're making me rip my fucking hair out. AGAIN!! I HAVE TO GO GET READY OK? AND I DO NOT LIKE HOW YOU WERE, OR ARE, TALKING TO ME. BECAUSE I'VE SAID I HAVE TO GO NOW AND EARLIER, A DOZEN OR TWO TIMES, AND TO NO AVAILZ!
S: You saying you're a liberal then?
R: Fuck you. Wow. Fuck you.
S: What didn't I hear tho?? What are you referring to? I don't get what I-
R: Fuck you. Fuck you.
S: I don't get what I didn't hear.
R: Fuck you.
S: Right.
R: Fuuuuuuucccckkkkkk youuuuuu is what you didn't hear.
S: Oh.
R: Jesus fucking Christ, let me go get ready. I'll ttyl.
S: Bye.
R: Fuck you means I've asked to go 1,870,554 times and you're still fucking HOUNDING ME.
S: You said "let us reconvene at noon". I had no idea this meant solely a 20 minute window. You made , you know, you didn't say you were going to a wedding at 2. Never mentioned that this morning.
R: You keep talking shit.
S: Yes. I am sorry. Terribly sorry. See ya.
R: You put me in a fog.
S: I know.
R: You put me in a fog bcus you were talking SHIT. So this FOG you speak of ..it's just RAGE...Through and through. Rage. It's making everything impossible.
The conversation ends here. I sent a short 5 second voice note where I said , in a sttrange voice, "relaxx... relax... just go ...we talk later..." and then she was gone, no further responses. I logged onto Twitter to start talking about, then I sat down an hour after that to start typing this up for y'all. It's now 2:54...almost 3. She's been at the wedding (if there even was one) for an hour. It just now occurred to me that if she went to a wedding she is probably drinking.
I wonder what that means?
Politics , another letter to a confused soul
Rebecca, I want to tell you a short little story now that I just hope you'll read, in regards to all these arguments we have--most of which I'm beyond convinced are basically just over politics. Even the arguments that don't totally seem to be over politics, in fact, I think usually are. But obviously most of the "truly obvious" arguments we've had have been blatantly political...and yes...its very true: Usually I am, i'll admit, the blatantly political person driving it forward.
Here's the thing though: When I was growing up as a kid, I was frequently subjected and forced to live w/ many truly scathing arguments that my mother & stepfather would engage in. Oddly enough, most of these arguments were rather similar to the ones you & i get in, but with a slightly more old fashioned twist: Momma argued in favor of believing in God, and my step-father often argued completely in defense of atheism. There were also a few other things - real life things - that would occasionally fall into place beneath the umbrella of the God versus atheist arguments they'd get into.
One of the biggest things was how my stepfather found the Catholic schools to be ridiculous, and he did not believe in them. He thought they were a waste of money, etc. He also never really had the same deeply negative perspective of the old neighborhood and the rest of the city. To my stepfather, living in the old neighborhood was nothing to be ashamed of, and it was nothing to run from. If anything, he liked it. It was home to him ...regardless of what color of people lived there. For him, my attending the innre city school woudn't have been "the endo f the world". IT was, after all, where his other sons went to school (and turned out fine), and where he went to school, and where my grandparents went, etcetc.
For my mother -- mostly thanks solely to her brother who, asI tol you, has always had significantly more $$ - it was, however. She felt deeply ashamed that she was not able to keep up w/ this man, in my opinion. He made her look bad . As though she wasn't doing "enough" for her kids. Etc.
The one thing I often used to ask my madre, however, especially in later years when we would reflect upon the arguments her & my stepfather got into, was "....how the hell did someone who believes so strongly in this God , wind up with someone who vehemently does not believe in God at all? How does that happen, ma?"
My mothers response was almost always the same: "I don't know how it happened really. I guess.. it just happened."
"But didn't you know?" I Would ask, "from the get-go, didn't you know he would drive you crazy w/ his atheism? I mean, it's a radically different view. YOu think you'd wanna be with someone who was a believer, like you."
At this point my mother would also always tell me the same thing: "I think what happened was that, when we first got together, I never really considered what he was, or what he wasn'T. I didn't know he was an atheist. Neither of us had any real clear cut political or religious views, back then. It all only came out ...years later. After we were married...and it was too late."
This is the part, of course, as you might imagine, that I myself always found so fascinating, and it was also the part that I've always felt I needed to take the biggest lesson from. And essentially what I feel it taught me was what I said to you this morning: I might be young, and I might not have traversed every area of society yet, and on many issues I basically don't "need" - on a personal level - to have a side. But I still have one, and I know exaclty what it is. For me, there is no grey area that exists, just like there is really no grey area for a Christian w/ a lot of faith who believes deeply in a very specific God. My mother, for example, isn't actually a vehement Christian: she is more really just someone who "believes in something". We never really went to church , aside from being enrolled in the Catholic schools. Most of my family is generally like this, except for the one uncle and his kids.
My stepfather, however, actually was sort of an extreme atheist...he had no middle ground, no grey area, when it came to the issue. He did not believe in God, nor Gods, nor Buddhism, nor zen, nor anything at all. To him, there was no next world nor even the slightest possibiity of it. He believed in what he called "the dirt nap". I often vehemently opposed him on this issue myself for many years, and my opposition to his atheism perhaps even led to our eventual falling out. This is pretty sad, of course, because on every single other issue, politically speaking ,my stepfather and I tend to , in fact, agree: Just like myself, he fancies the Democrats, and liberals, etcetc. He despises Republicans to a tee.
Now whats fascinating to me about his distaste for Republicans is, guess what? This specific distaste **never, at all,** bothered my mother, because my mother , though she believes in "something in the Great Beyond", does not actually align with any political party, whatsoever. My mother truly has no opinion when it comes to politics. She just has vague ideas. For example, she agrees when you say the War on Drugs has ruined things, or that blacks certainly appear oppressed ,or that gays ought to have the riht to get married, but she doesn't call herself "liberal" or argue vehemently w/ people over it.
My mother never argues for anything except compassion really. She has simply always professed that people ought be "nice to one another", and that she "doesn't understand why people get into arguments , or why wars begin". When Alessandro came from Italy, for example, and taught us all about how the healthcare system worked there, it being free for the public and all, my mother agreed. She did not vehemently oppose public healthcare, nor does she vehemently oppose so much as a single Democratic platform.
When I showed my mother a video of the former president of Mexico, Vicente Quesada Fox, arguing that the War on Drugs must end because it has destroyed Mexico & left it in ruins, my mother said "Vicente is correct . It is too extreme and it must end. It has done nothing." If my mother was a far right wing Republican, she would have a vastly different response. She would argue in favor of the War on DRugs, as most Republicans do. She would also argue in favor of things like the mass incarceration, wich she does not do, considering her poor cousin Stephen did a 12 year sentence that, ever since I was a little boy, she has told me she felt was "totally uncalled for".
Therefore, you see, my stepfather probably could have kept on pretty good ground w/ my mother, even with all his Democratic beliefs...had he only agreed that "something beyond all of this might exist". It didn't even have to be anything particular ... no particular CHristian god or anything...just "something is possible". Alas, he culd not bear the idea of agreeing -it was not what he believed--and so arguments, massive arguments, and a general level of discomfort, often ensued. She became deeply disturbed, I think, that she was with such an avowed, militant atheist. I don't blame her, since as I said: I personally would prefer to be w/ someone who believed "in someting" too. I'm not at all specific about what. Just "something'.
But my desire for someone who believes in "someting" does not , at all, translate to the idea that I might want to marry, say, some radically obsessed Evangelical christian. I would never do that because...it would make no sense! It would lead to tons of arguments. Et cetera. And what's lucky, too, is that...guess what?? The evangelical probably wouldn't want to marry me, because I have made my views on the topic very clear, just like they have. They are "openly evangelical" and I am "openly ambiguous and interested in all types of spirituality". The best bet for a partner for both of us is probably someone similar. Most evangelicals, last I checked, tend to marry other evangelicals, just like most really observant jews often only want to marry a jew, etcetc....
So.... the way this relates to us of course, whether we are simply very close friends or, perhaps, in some relationship, is that I am a far left liberal and I consider it a massive part of my identity at this point .And one reason I think you find my "allegiance" to liberalism so odd (at least it seems like you find it odd to me) is becuse you don't see where it is being born or originating. For example, you made the comment to me that "if you feel so impassioned, why not go do something of it? Go change the world.. don't just bitch." I understand wher you are coming from. You think that I just sit and bitch about politics... and it has no purpose.
THe thing is though that my politics are really being born in my writings, in what I love to read, & in the cultures I follow. I write politically charged essays, or at least I try to, and I also write stories that, in my opnion, could definitely be read as pretty liberal minded...generally speaking. In other words, as a writer, even if I am unpublished and unsuccessful, I am not really afforded the luxury that someone like, say, a baseball player is. A baseball player doesn't have to talk or share his own opinions. A writer , however, has to. ANd even if he doesn't, his characters have to. Most of my characters tend to be pretty liberal. Most of the plots tend to be liberal-esque fantasies.
The Shawshank Redemption, for instance, is a pretty liberal film that paints prison wardens and prisons in a pretty negative light. Prisoners tend to like that film. Prison wardens are usually Republicans or conservatives and probably don't like it much, since it makes them look like complete assholes makign things worse instead of better. Not coincdentally, Stephen King, the writer of the Shawshank REdemption, is a liberal. He writes liberal opinions literally every day on Twitter. He is anti-Trump now, and he was anti-Reagan in the 80s. He's a DEmocrat.Just like the vast majority of all the writers I have evre read are, in fact, Democrats, and just like the vast majority of all the musicians I have ever deeply loved are also liberals. All of my favorite artists are liberals...
So basically Becca, the thing that confuses me w/ you is as I said: I think sometimes that you personally aren't sure where you stand, and you feel uncomfortable taking a stand. This is normal and it is fine...the only thing thouh is that..you know.. *I* take a stand, and I do have a *side*. I don't want to be insulted for taking a side. I don't want to be told that I'm doing it just because of "society" etc. I don't want to be mocked, and it basically seemed like you sort of mocked me. I just want, you see, to be left in my peace to believe my liberal things. I don't really wanna argue w/ people who are intimately present in my life, over these things, and the wonderful fact is that , though we can't choose our country or our family, we can choose our social intimates. And so all I am saying is that I think it's pretty wise thing to not choose someone who feels in opposition to what I feel, or what you feel. I don't think it would be a good idea for you, if you feel like a conservative, to date a liberal. I don't think it would be a good idea for an anti feminist to date a feminist. I don't think it would be a good idea for an African to date a nazi. For it would be nothing but an horrific argument all the time....
The fact of the matter is that I have a side, and one big reason I chose to have one, is because I actually think -- believe it or not -- that it makes things easier for you, and for eveyone. ALl I have to do is say "look, I'm liberal" and most people should basically be able to understand ** exactly** what I believe as a result of that, on a vast number of currently hot political issues. I am not in some foggy spot where I don't quite know what I identify as at 5 PM, and then randomly start arguing in favor of the Republican side, for an hour, at 10 pm. I Never argue in favor of anything right wingers do, and I never in argue in favor of a "center" or an independent posititon either. I am far left liberal. That's it. For the purpose of making my position easily understood, yes, it's true: I agree with literally everything the far left liberals are currently trying to do. I believe mass incarceration is a problem, I think university should be pulblic, I believe healthcare should be public, I am a blue state lover , and thats the end of it. I do not believe in Republican red states. At all.
Are there, of course, certain areas, where I am perhaps in a bit of disagreement? Yes. FOr example, I tend to think liberals go a bit too far overboard w/ the gun issue . BUT here's the thing: I would never passionately argue with a liberal in favor of guns. Ever. I think libs go overboard on guns, but I would never argue as passionately for guns, as I would argue passionately for the end of the War on Drugs, or for prison reform, or for free university, etc. Republicans of course argue this passionately for guns. They get up in arms , literally. They perhaps want to start a war over the guns . I'm not that far obsessed with guns; I basically think the liberals are right -- no one needs an M16-- but that they are pressing the issue *too soon*. IN other words, they should probably wait til after they get free university passed, in order to start arguing against guns. But I digress....
The main point is that taking a side and waving a certain flag actually helps people to avoid arguments . There is, literally, no such thing as someone who has "no flag". Not having a flag is a political move within itself, in fact.. Pirates waved the Black Flag of the skull and crossbones. People who are surrendering wave a white flag. Americans wave the stars and stripes. Confederate sympathizers wave a confederate flag. They do this to let you know where they stand, right off the bat, so as to avoid arguments later. I, for example, would not show up in Mississippi, at the house of soemone flying a confederate flag, and expect to find people eager to discuss European liberalis,, prison reform, soul music, and weed legalization there. That would be ridiculous. I would pass that house over , and try to find a house waving a flag more to my fancy. Allegiances and positions and sides are unfortunatley a very real part of the life we all live. I don't believe in "middle grounds". I don't believe its possible to have a "grey area". As I said, if tomorrow there was a draft for another vietnam, one must be either for or against the war, when the recruitment officer calls. One cannot be in the grey. One must either dodge the draft or not dodge the draft, and of course many of the people who wish, deep down, that they could dodge the draft wind up caught and still sucked in. Those people still aren't really in a grey area though: They would rather not be there, but they accidentally got pulled in by no choice of their own. It isn't grey. It especially isn't grey when said drafted soldiers start writing songs and books denouncing the war as a shit show and saying they hate Uncle Sam for having sent them into it. The majority of conservatives didn't really do this. They supported the war for as long as it was going, just like they support the prisons now, the war on drugs, etc etc...
Anyways ... I wrote this letter because I felt i had to, and because I feel very bad. I do not know if you will ever read it. You are angry at me and you have every right to be. I don't really know what else to say at this point. I love being your friend , i really love it; but I don't love arguing over politics, and I basically just don't understand what your politics are -- because you won't really say what they are -- and I don't think its wrong for me to feel deeply confused over that, Becca. I think that you do have a position but you like, don't really know how to express it. I don't know. I sincerely cannot tell because you won't say. You say you are an independent, but what does that really mean? What, exactly, does an independent support? I have no idea. ALl I know is what the people in the two seperate parties support, and I literally have no idea what being in the middle of them would even mean, whatsoever. Again: one is either for or against the war. One is either for or against prison reform. One is other for or against the drug war. One is either for or against these things. IT's simply far too confusing to be constantly sitting in the middle becuase I just don't understand what the view of the middle is. I sincerely wish I could identify as middle; but I can't. I'm vehemently opposed to the republican agenda. Vehemently opposed.
There you have it at any rate. I won't write anything else. Nothing else to write.
--CIao.
Here's the thing though: When I was growing up as a kid, I was frequently subjected and forced to live w/ many truly scathing arguments that my mother & stepfather would engage in. Oddly enough, most of these arguments were rather similar to the ones you & i get in, but with a slightly more old fashioned twist: Momma argued in favor of believing in God, and my step-father often argued completely in defense of atheism. There were also a few other things - real life things - that would occasionally fall into place beneath the umbrella of the God versus atheist arguments they'd get into.
One of the biggest things was how my stepfather found the Catholic schools to be ridiculous, and he did not believe in them. He thought they were a waste of money, etc. He also never really had the same deeply negative perspective of the old neighborhood and the rest of the city. To my stepfather, living in the old neighborhood was nothing to be ashamed of, and it was nothing to run from. If anything, he liked it. It was home to him ...regardless of what color of people lived there. For him, my attending the innre city school woudn't have been "the endo f the world". IT was, after all, where his other sons went to school (and turned out fine), and where he went to school, and where my grandparents went, etcetc.
For my mother -- mostly thanks solely to her brother who, asI tol you, has always had significantly more $$ - it was, however. She felt deeply ashamed that she was not able to keep up w/ this man, in my opinion. He made her look bad . As though she wasn't doing "enough" for her kids. Etc.
The one thing I often used to ask my madre, however, especially in later years when we would reflect upon the arguments her & my stepfather got into, was "....how the hell did someone who believes so strongly in this God , wind up with someone who vehemently does not believe in God at all? How does that happen, ma?"
My mothers response was almost always the same: "I don't know how it happened really. I guess.. it just happened."
"But didn't you know?" I Would ask, "from the get-go, didn't you know he would drive you crazy w/ his atheism? I mean, it's a radically different view. YOu think you'd wanna be with someone who was a believer, like you."
At this point my mother would also always tell me the same thing: "I think what happened was that, when we first got together, I never really considered what he was, or what he wasn'T. I didn't know he was an atheist. Neither of us had any real clear cut political or religious views, back then. It all only came out ...years later. After we were married...and it was too late."
This is the part, of course, as you might imagine, that I myself always found so fascinating, and it was also the part that I've always felt I needed to take the biggest lesson from. And essentially what I feel it taught me was what I said to you this morning: I might be young, and I might not have traversed every area of society yet, and on many issues I basically don't "need" - on a personal level - to have a side. But I still have one, and I know exaclty what it is. For me, there is no grey area that exists, just like there is really no grey area for a Christian w/ a lot of faith who believes deeply in a very specific God. My mother, for example, isn't actually a vehement Christian: she is more really just someone who "believes in something". We never really went to church , aside from being enrolled in the Catholic schools. Most of my family is generally like this, except for the one uncle and his kids.
My stepfather, however, actually was sort of an extreme atheist...he had no middle ground, no grey area, when it came to the issue. He did not believe in God, nor Gods, nor Buddhism, nor zen, nor anything at all. To him, there was no next world nor even the slightest possibiity of it. He believed in what he called "the dirt nap". I often vehemently opposed him on this issue myself for many years, and my opposition to his atheism perhaps even led to our eventual falling out. This is pretty sad, of course, because on every single other issue, politically speaking ,my stepfather and I tend to , in fact, agree: Just like myself, he fancies the Democrats, and liberals, etcetc. He despises Republicans to a tee.
Now whats fascinating to me about his distaste for Republicans is, guess what? This specific distaste **never, at all,** bothered my mother, because my mother , though she believes in "something in the Great Beyond", does not actually align with any political party, whatsoever. My mother truly has no opinion when it comes to politics. She just has vague ideas. For example, she agrees when you say the War on Drugs has ruined things, or that blacks certainly appear oppressed ,or that gays ought to have the riht to get married, but she doesn't call herself "liberal" or argue vehemently w/ people over it.
My mother never argues for anything except compassion really. She has simply always professed that people ought be "nice to one another", and that she "doesn't understand why people get into arguments , or why wars begin". When Alessandro came from Italy, for example, and taught us all about how the healthcare system worked there, it being free for the public and all, my mother agreed. She did not vehemently oppose public healthcare, nor does she vehemently oppose so much as a single Democratic platform.
When I showed my mother a video of the former president of Mexico, Vicente Quesada Fox, arguing that the War on Drugs must end because it has destroyed Mexico & left it in ruins, my mother said "Vicente is correct . It is too extreme and it must end. It has done nothing." If my mother was a far right wing Republican, she would have a vastly different response. She would argue in favor of the War on DRugs, as most Republicans do. She would also argue in favor of things like the mass incarceration, wich she does not do, considering her poor cousin Stephen did a 12 year sentence that, ever since I was a little boy, she has told me she felt was "totally uncalled for".
Therefore, you see, my stepfather probably could have kept on pretty good ground w/ my mother, even with all his Democratic beliefs...had he only agreed that "something beyond all of this might exist". It didn't even have to be anything particular ... no particular CHristian god or anything...just "something is possible". Alas, he culd not bear the idea of agreeing -it was not what he believed--and so arguments, massive arguments, and a general level of discomfort, often ensued. She became deeply disturbed, I think, that she was with such an avowed, militant atheist. I don't blame her, since as I said: I personally would prefer to be w/ someone who believed "in someting" too. I'm not at all specific about what. Just "something'.
But my desire for someone who believes in "someting" does not , at all, translate to the idea that I might want to marry, say, some radically obsessed Evangelical christian. I would never do that because...it would make no sense! It would lead to tons of arguments. Et cetera. And what's lucky, too, is that...guess what?? The evangelical probably wouldn't want to marry me, because I have made my views on the topic very clear, just like they have. They are "openly evangelical" and I am "openly ambiguous and interested in all types of spirituality". The best bet for a partner for both of us is probably someone similar. Most evangelicals, last I checked, tend to marry other evangelicals, just like most really observant jews often only want to marry a jew, etcetc....
So.... the way this relates to us of course, whether we are simply very close friends or, perhaps, in some relationship, is that I am a far left liberal and I consider it a massive part of my identity at this point .And one reason I think you find my "allegiance" to liberalism so odd (at least it seems like you find it odd to me) is becuse you don't see where it is being born or originating. For example, you made the comment to me that "if you feel so impassioned, why not go do something of it? Go change the world.. don't just bitch." I understand wher you are coming from. You think that I just sit and bitch about politics... and it has no purpose.
THe thing is though that my politics are really being born in my writings, in what I love to read, & in the cultures I follow. I write politically charged essays, or at least I try to, and I also write stories that, in my opnion, could definitely be read as pretty liberal minded...generally speaking. In other words, as a writer, even if I am unpublished and unsuccessful, I am not really afforded the luxury that someone like, say, a baseball player is. A baseball player doesn't have to talk or share his own opinions. A writer , however, has to. ANd even if he doesn't, his characters have to. Most of my characters tend to be pretty liberal. Most of the plots tend to be liberal-esque fantasies.
The Shawshank Redemption, for instance, is a pretty liberal film that paints prison wardens and prisons in a pretty negative light. Prisoners tend to like that film. Prison wardens are usually Republicans or conservatives and probably don't like it much, since it makes them look like complete assholes makign things worse instead of better. Not coincdentally, Stephen King, the writer of the Shawshank REdemption, is a liberal. He writes liberal opinions literally every day on Twitter. He is anti-Trump now, and he was anti-Reagan in the 80s. He's a DEmocrat.Just like the vast majority of all the writers I have evre read are, in fact, Democrats, and just like the vast majority of all the musicians I have ever deeply loved are also liberals. All of my favorite artists are liberals...
So basically Becca, the thing that confuses me w/ you is as I said: I think sometimes that you personally aren't sure where you stand, and you feel uncomfortable taking a stand. This is normal and it is fine...the only thing thouh is that..you know.. *I* take a stand, and I do have a *side*. I don't want to be insulted for taking a side. I don't want to be told that I'm doing it just because of "society" etc. I don't want to be mocked, and it basically seemed like you sort of mocked me. I just want, you see, to be left in my peace to believe my liberal things. I don't really wanna argue w/ people who are intimately present in my life, over these things, and the wonderful fact is that , though we can't choose our country or our family, we can choose our social intimates. And so all I am saying is that I think it's pretty wise thing to not choose someone who feels in opposition to what I feel, or what you feel. I don't think it would be a good idea for you, if you feel like a conservative, to date a liberal. I don't think it would be a good idea for an anti feminist to date a feminist. I don't think it would be a good idea for an African to date a nazi. For it would be nothing but an horrific argument all the time....
The fact of the matter is that I have a side, and one big reason I chose to have one, is because I actually think -- believe it or not -- that it makes things easier for you, and for eveyone. ALl I have to do is say "look, I'm liberal" and most people should basically be able to understand ** exactly** what I believe as a result of that, on a vast number of currently hot political issues. I am not in some foggy spot where I don't quite know what I identify as at 5 PM, and then randomly start arguing in favor of the Republican side, for an hour, at 10 pm. I Never argue in favor of anything right wingers do, and I never in argue in favor of a "center" or an independent posititon either. I am far left liberal. That's it. For the purpose of making my position easily understood, yes, it's true: I agree with literally everything the far left liberals are currently trying to do. I believe mass incarceration is a problem, I think university should be pulblic, I believe healthcare should be public, I am a blue state lover , and thats the end of it. I do not believe in Republican red states. At all.
Are there, of course, certain areas, where I am perhaps in a bit of disagreement? Yes. FOr example, I tend to think liberals go a bit too far overboard w/ the gun issue . BUT here's the thing: I would never passionately argue with a liberal in favor of guns. Ever. I think libs go overboard on guns, but I would never argue as passionately for guns, as I would argue passionately for the end of the War on Drugs, or for prison reform, or for free university, etc. Republicans of course argue this passionately for guns. They get up in arms , literally. They perhaps want to start a war over the guns . I'm not that far obsessed with guns; I basically think the liberals are right -- no one needs an M16-- but that they are pressing the issue *too soon*. IN other words, they should probably wait til after they get free university passed, in order to start arguing against guns. But I digress....
The main point is that taking a side and waving a certain flag actually helps people to avoid arguments . There is, literally, no such thing as someone who has "no flag". Not having a flag is a political move within itself, in fact.. Pirates waved the Black Flag of the skull and crossbones. People who are surrendering wave a white flag. Americans wave the stars and stripes. Confederate sympathizers wave a confederate flag. They do this to let you know where they stand, right off the bat, so as to avoid arguments later. I, for example, would not show up in Mississippi, at the house of soemone flying a confederate flag, and expect to find people eager to discuss European liberalis,, prison reform, soul music, and weed legalization there. That would be ridiculous. I would pass that house over , and try to find a house waving a flag more to my fancy. Allegiances and positions and sides are unfortunatley a very real part of the life we all live. I don't believe in "middle grounds". I don't believe its possible to have a "grey area". As I said, if tomorrow there was a draft for another vietnam, one must be either for or against the war, when the recruitment officer calls. One cannot be in the grey. One must either dodge the draft or not dodge the draft, and of course many of the people who wish, deep down, that they could dodge the draft wind up caught and still sucked in. Those people still aren't really in a grey area though: They would rather not be there, but they accidentally got pulled in by no choice of their own. It isn't grey. It especially isn't grey when said drafted soldiers start writing songs and books denouncing the war as a shit show and saying they hate Uncle Sam for having sent them into it. The majority of conservatives didn't really do this. They supported the war for as long as it was going, just like they support the prisons now, the war on drugs, etc etc...
Anyways ... I wrote this letter because I felt i had to, and because I feel very bad. I do not know if you will ever read it. You are angry at me and you have every right to be. I don't really know what else to say at this point. I love being your friend , i really love it; but I don't love arguing over politics, and I basically just don't understand what your politics are -- because you won't really say what they are -- and I don't think its wrong for me to feel deeply confused over that, Becca. I think that you do have a position but you like, don't really know how to express it. I don't know. I sincerely cannot tell because you won't say. You say you are an independent, but what does that really mean? What, exactly, does an independent support? I have no idea. ALl I know is what the people in the two seperate parties support, and I literally have no idea what being in the middle of them would even mean, whatsoever. Again: one is either for or against the war. One is either for or against prison reform. One is other for or against the drug war. One is either for or against these things. IT's simply far too confusing to be constantly sitting in the middle becuase I just don't understand what the view of the middle is. I sincerely wish I could identify as middle; but I can't. I'm vehemently opposed to the republican agenda. Vehemently opposed.
There you have it at any rate. I won't write anything else. Nothing else to write.
--CIao.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Net neutrality
I can't say I'm all that surprised w/ the news of net neutrality. If anything, I feel that I have seen it coming for many years now -- maybe even since I was a youngin'. As I wrote on my Twitter account the other day, many of my childhood friends and I used to often joke that "..the internet was simply too fun, and too cheap, to be real". It always just seemed like something that was wildly out of place in this world. Everything was too easily accessible on it. Something always seemed plain "off" about the internet.
But of course, all those years ago, in the early 00's, the big 'secret' of the internet was that she was still relatively young. Cell phones back then, you might remember, did not access the Internet, and I have always personally been of the belief that the cell phones giving people access were what caused the greedier folks amongst us - like, say, Republicans - to finally take notice of the Internet, on a grander scale. To put it simply: Prior to the phones, many poor kids I knew, you might be shocked to know, hardly used the Internet. They were always "out and about" ...getting into trouble in reality...getting locked up in American prisons, etc. Then, the cell phones came out with high speed access to the net..and soon enough, those same kids were Internet nerds just like I had always been.
Sounds fun right? It sure does. And certainly is. For everyone except greedy old Republicans, of course. For them, poor kids smiling and having fun anywhere at all -- be it the internet or their own city etc--is a terrible, terrible thing. It is a thing that Republicans never want to see happen, because they hate common Americans w/ a very sincere hate. During Vietnam, they wanted to see them dead, for instance, and this death wish has not changed, it has just "been altered slightly".
Hence the moment all this cell phone access began, I'm convinced that so too did the gradual march towards Republicans realizing "something had to be done". The dismantling of the net neutrality laws that the former black president Barry Obama put into place will, in my opinion, perhaps just be the beginning. I have written before, a time or two, about just how terrible Republicans can make things on the Internet, if they are so inclined. They could censor the hell out of everything and anything that doesn't fit their view. It isn't hard to imagine and it is already happening, as we speak, in other countries that the Republicans admire for their "deep adherence to conservatism" . It especially isn't hard to imagine once you consider that they've already sterilized the whole country in reality anyways. The most important thing Republicans can do is to force God, as they believe him to be, down your throat, and also to make you feel like it's still the year 1850.
Drugs, prostitution, education, books, minorities ... all of these things exist in a sort of ridiculous ghetto of prohibition in the United States - thanks entirely to Republicans -- that functions at a scale no one else in the rest of the developed world can even imagine. As I always write: There are so many people in prison in the horror story that is the USA...because there are so many things that are crimes in the USA. So many things that are censored. Prohibited. Blocked.
This will probably wind up being the same, eventually, for the internet - and it's another thing I often used to think as a boy, like I say. "One day...we'll log onto this thing, and nothing will be there. It'll all be blocked. Just a distant memory of the good, cheap fun we used to have..." This sad prediction is already beginning to come true w/ yesterdays news. I am not at all surprised. I am saddened like the rest of the Americans (at least the ones from the coastal cities that use Twitter, not them in the middle or the south) but I am not surprised. I have learned to never be surprised w/ the happenings of this nightmare country anymore... I just sort of sigh I guess. Maybe the blue states will somehow not get the worst of it when it does happen. Who knows...
So there it is though. Net neutrality. Something Obama tried to help us out w/. Something that the rest of the developing world was watching us to see what we did w/. The Republicans have destroyed it. Just like they destroyed the entire rest of our country as well. Good going. I hope to see you on the battlefield when the war begins eh...
But of course, all those years ago, in the early 00's, the big 'secret' of the internet was that she was still relatively young. Cell phones back then, you might remember, did not access the Internet, and I have always personally been of the belief that the cell phones giving people access were what caused the greedier folks amongst us - like, say, Republicans - to finally take notice of the Internet, on a grander scale. To put it simply: Prior to the phones, many poor kids I knew, you might be shocked to know, hardly used the Internet. They were always "out and about" ...getting into trouble in reality...getting locked up in American prisons, etc. Then, the cell phones came out with high speed access to the net..and soon enough, those same kids were Internet nerds just like I had always been.
Sounds fun right? It sure does. And certainly is. For everyone except greedy old Republicans, of course. For them, poor kids smiling and having fun anywhere at all -- be it the internet or their own city etc--is a terrible, terrible thing. It is a thing that Republicans never want to see happen, because they hate common Americans w/ a very sincere hate. During Vietnam, they wanted to see them dead, for instance, and this death wish has not changed, it has just "been altered slightly".
Hence the moment all this cell phone access began, I'm convinced that so too did the gradual march towards Republicans realizing "something had to be done". The dismantling of the net neutrality laws that the former black president Barry Obama put into place will, in my opinion, perhaps just be the beginning. I have written before, a time or two, about just how terrible Republicans can make things on the Internet, if they are so inclined. They could censor the hell out of everything and anything that doesn't fit their view. It isn't hard to imagine and it is already happening, as we speak, in other countries that the Republicans admire for their "deep adherence to conservatism" . It especially isn't hard to imagine once you consider that they've already sterilized the whole country in reality anyways. The most important thing Republicans can do is to force God, as they believe him to be, down your throat, and also to make you feel like it's still the year 1850.
Drugs, prostitution, education, books, minorities ... all of these things exist in a sort of ridiculous ghetto of prohibition in the United States - thanks entirely to Republicans -- that functions at a scale no one else in the rest of the developed world can even imagine. As I always write: There are so many people in prison in the horror story that is the USA...because there are so many things that are crimes in the USA. So many things that are censored. Prohibited. Blocked.
This will probably wind up being the same, eventually, for the internet - and it's another thing I often used to think as a boy, like I say. "One day...we'll log onto this thing, and nothing will be there. It'll all be blocked. Just a distant memory of the good, cheap fun we used to have..." This sad prediction is already beginning to come true w/ yesterdays news. I am not at all surprised. I am saddened like the rest of the Americans (at least the ones from the coastal cities that use Twitter, not them in the middle or the south) but I am not surprised. I have learned to never be surprised w/ the happenings of this nightmare country anymore... I just sort of sigh I guess. Maybe the blue states will somehow not get the worst of it when it does happen. Who knows...
So there it is though. Net neutrality. Something Obama tried to help us out w/. Something that the rest of the developing world was watching us to see what we did w/. The Republicans have destroyed it. Just like they destroyed the entire rest of our country as well. Good going. I hope to see you on the battlefield when the war begins eh...
Women are Oppressed and women suck: here's why
I think I ended up not being interested in a relationship with any women due mainly to the fact that, when you are a man in hot pursuit of a woman, you really have to become obsessed with a certain level of conformity that I simply find unbearable.
The irony of this fact, of course, is that plenty of women seem "slightly" eager to be friends with a unique "non conformist" male, but they don't generally want to date them. They especially don't want to date them when you're in the social class of the US that I'm in, that being the lowest. Down here, in fact, there's probably nothing that's going to remind you more of just how low on the totem pole you are, than attempting to date women. To some extent, maintaining a hetero relationship with a woman is really similar to getting involved in the real estate market: You must always present a plan, you must be organized, you must dress a certain way, etc. This, I've noticed, is especially the case when perusing dating apps like OkCupid & Tinder: Talking to women on there, and trying to get them interested in you, seems to remind me more of giving a job interview to a potential employer, than trying to, you know, engage in anything romantic. If you want my opinion, nothing speaks more to the sterilization of the capitalistic American society than those dating apps. Nine times out of ten, they literally feel more like slave markets. Again: the women seem to be seeking a model employee, rather than a man. Hence the desire for the utmost conformity.....
Alas, don't think I blame women "alone" for this, because I certainly don't. If anything, I feel just as terrible for them as I do for myself , in this dreadfully sterile country. For the truth of it is that women's desire for a conformist man, whose like an "employee" rather than a human, Is all really coming directly from the fact that women are, as feminists tell us, oppressed. In fact, the truth about my entire feminist journey (because I do consider myself as one) all ironically begins and ends with the core fact that I tend to find women-- when I'm looking at them as romantic partners---insufferably annoying. Like, I really don't like them, I don't like trying to pursue romance with them, and generally when I have gotten lonely enough to attempt it, I always wind up feeling just as shitty as the last time I tried. Women do not often make me feel good about myself. If anything, I'm beginning to realize more and more that they usually just make me feel terrible --- if not downright suicidal at times. And of course I don't appear, at all, to be alone in this depression over women: It seems most men are in agreement, especially the ones who are actually married or in long term relationships. The only men who really seem happy to me in relationships are ones who are, in truth, already happy in every other regard as well. Some people might say "that's common sense ...one ought wait to be happy in other departments before getting into a relationship..." However, I'm in vehement disagree with that statement, because that, again, sounds an awful lot like applying to a job market, instead of applying for love, or a true genuine & unconditional human connection. People who seem to think that friends and lovers are only supposed to enter into the fold *after* you've become successful really do have something wrong with them (or I suppose they really are just that brainwashed by this truly horrific country).
So, as I was saying before, I'm well aware that it's not womens fault they are looking for employees rather than people, and it's this exact awareness that has led to me being desperately in need of the patriarchy being overthrown, in just the same way feminists say they're in need. The basic fact here is that, even though I'm a man, and even a fairly "masculine" one in some aesthetic regards, I still can't really sit comfortably with the demands that patriarchy places on me. The reasons why should be obvious: Patriarchy promotes unequal relationships. It promotes the idea that the man should be in control and taking care of a vast number of important things , whilst the woman takes care of a whole other set of things. Patriarchy is the entire engine that is causing women to feel forced to look for potential employees (or even slaves) rather than the men they truly want, deep down. And this need, as I said, is especially pronounced in the pathetic area of America that I'm in, where it seems three quarters of the girls have all had children of their own to worry of, ever since they were children themselves. These women are not freed to try and pursue any feminist ideal in my opinion: They feel absolutely compelled to find a strong man who can "take care of everything" as fast as possible. The only problem of course is...this strong man doesn't really seem to exist. The men that instead exist are a seemingly never ending series of men who will take up that strong man "enployee provider" mantle for short bursts Of time, until they get tired, or until it's discovered that they can't really keep control as well as they promised, at which point they find another woman to trick.
The only difference between myself and those men is I don't even have the energy to do it temporarily. I find this patriarchal role that suffocating. I also suppose that I find it to be a waste to use what little patriarchal powers I might have at my disposal on a woman. If I'm going to use them, shouldn't I might as well use them on something potentially profitable? It's hard to explain. I suppose I just don't like the role , and I'm perpsnally convinced that not liking this role - at alll-- is precisely what led to my "sexual identity" and also "gender identity" experiments. I was literally so fed up with women , and at a certain point in my early 20s, so angry and hateful of them, that I felt I literally had to "become a woman", at least temporarily, in order to get my love back for them. I can't express how deeply I hated women in my early 20s. I really despised them.
So I did these gender experiments and more, & vasically the only thing I learned from it was that being a woman really is just as miserable and oppressive of an experience as the feminists paint it as. Which is why my idea now is that the only thing feminists are missing - and why so few people find the argument compelling -- is all this negative stuff I'm saying about men, too, when it comes to patriarchy. Basically, I don't think most men are really made to be aware of just what crap roles they've been asked to play, because there's really no shame that accompanies the man role -- so long as he's successful-- like there is whne it comes to the woman's. For example, I personally believe that, even if I was a millionaire, I would feel annoyed by the patriarchy, because I don't want to be "in control" or "the sole provider", I want to be an equal with my woman. I would see being the sole provider as a burden, not a gift or a blessing. Most men, however, don't interpret it like this. They have been trained to see this all as being a blessing, instead of a burden, in much the same way, for example, that many women of the deeper past undoubtedly saw staying home all day, cleaning and cooking, as a blessing, rather than a burden. They saw this -- and many still see it -- as a glorious escape from the pain of the outside world and reality. As a writer who loves being home, I can't blame them; but, at the same time, there's also the other problem many women of modern day are forgetting about the past: Staying at home wasn't some lackadaisical choice to women back then. It was instead more of a prison sentence. You literally had no choice but to be there. I'm not sure about you but ....as much as I love writing in my room here...I Ain't sure I'd like it too much if someone suddenly locked me in the room. At that point, I think I'd want to get out ...no matter what was waiting behind the door. This is how feminism began, gloriously so.
Hetero men , however, in this strange in between time period, are, in my opinion, sort of being served a bit of a shitty challenge. Why? It's simple: Women have now gotten a bit out of the room men locked them in , but men, in fact, are still very much in the same old room that women locked them in. Powerful millionaire men perhaps don't care about being locked in this room--- they think it's such a fantastic room to be in-- but lower class men often do, at least once we fail. It's just that they still don't often totally realize they hate this room...
They don't want to admit they feel uncomfortable in the room, because guess what happens when you do? You end up like me , and no "working class" woman on Earth wants to date you . You end up an outcast with no friends except men generally, or women who will only feel comfortable with you if you tell them youre gay, and who otherwise don't want to know the first thing about you. This severe type of outcasting doesn't really ever happen for women: they're always allowed a slew of friends from both genders, regardless of their power or position in society. In other words, modern working class women no longer need to know one thing about cooking or cleaning to score a man, but you better believe that many of them expect me to know how to fix the lights, the car, pay an enormous sum of the bills, etcetc. They still expect me to be the strong man like its the 1940s; but they're no longer the weak little cooking girl (even if they try to pretend they are).
Well here's what I think of it, girls, speaking as your potential date: Go fuck yourself with it. Take this job and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS, BITCH.
The irony of this fact, of course, is that plenty of women seem "slightly" eager to be friends with a unique "non conformist" male, but they don't generally want to date them. They especially don't want to date them when you're in the social class of the US that I'm in, that being the lowest. Down here, in fact, there's probably nothing that's going to remind you more of just how low on the totem pole you are, than attempting to date women. To some extent, maintaining a hetero relationship with a woman is really similar to getting involved in the real estate market: You must always present a plan, you must be organized, you must dress a certain way, etc. This, I've noticed, is especially the case when perusing dating apps like OkCupid & Tinder: Talking to women on there, and trying to get them interested in you, seems to remind me more of giving a job interview to a potential employer, than trying to, you know, engage in anything romantic. If you want my opinion, nothing speaks more to the sterilization of the capitalistic American society than those dating apps. Nine times out of ten, they literally feel more like slave markets. Again: the women seem to be seeking a model employee, rather than a man. Hence the desire for the utmost conformity.....
Alas, don't think I blame women "alone" for this, because I certainly don't. If anything, I feel just as terrible for them as I do for myself , in this dreadfully sterile country. For the truth of it is that women's desire for a conformist man, whose like an "employee" rather than a human, Is all really coming directly from the fact that women are, as feminists tell us, oppressed. In fact, the truth about my entire feminist journey (because I do consider myself as one) all ironically begins and ends with the core fact that I tend to find women-- when I'm looking at them as romantic partners---insufferably annoying. Like, I really don't like them, I don't like trying to pursue romance with them, and generally when I have gotten lonely enough to attempt it, I always wind up feeling just as shitty as the last time I tried. Women do not often make me feel good about myself. If anything, I'm beginning to realize more and more that they usually just make me feel terrible --- if not downright suicidal at times. And of course I don't appear, at all, to be alone in this depression over women: It seems most men are in agreement, especially the ones who are actually married or in long term relationships. The only men who really seem happy to me in relationships are ones who are, in truth, already happy in every other regard as well. Some people might say "that's common sense ...one ought wait to be happy in other departments before getting into a relationship..." However, I'm in vehement disagree with that statement, because that, again, sounds an awful lot like applying to a job market, instead of applying for love, or a true genuine & unconditional human connection. People who seem to think that friends and lovers are only supposed to enter into the fold *after* you've become successful really do have something wrong with them (or I suppose they really are just that brainwashed by this truly horrific country).
So, as I was saying before, I'm well aware that it's not womens fault they are looking for employees rather than people, and it's this exact awareness that has led to me being desperately in need of the patriarchy being overthrown, in just the same way feminists say they're in need. The basic fact here is that, even though I'm a man, and even a fairly "masculine" one in some aesthetic regards, I still can't really sit comfortably with the demands that patriarchy places on me. The reasons why should be obvious: Patriarchy promotes unequal relationships. It promotes the idea that the man should be in control and taking care of a vast number of important things , whilst the woman takes care of a whole other set of things. Patriarchy is the entire engine that is causing women to feel forced to look for potential employees (or even slaves) rather than the men they truly want, deep down. And this need, as I said, is especially pronounced in the pathetic area of America that I'm in, where it seems three quarters of the girls have all had children of their own to worry of, ever since they were children themselves. These women are not freed to try and pursue any feminist ideal in my opinion: They feel absolutely compelled to find a strong man who can "take care of everything" as fast as possible. The only problem of course is...this strong man doesn't really seem to exist. The men that instead exist are a seemingly never ending series of men who will take up that strong man "enployee provider" mantle for short bursts Of time, until they get tired, or until it's discovered that they can't really keep control as well as they promised, at which point they find another woman to trick.
The only difference between myself and those men is I don't even have the energy to do it temporarily. I find this patriarchal role that suffocating. I also suppose that I find it to be a waste to use what little patriarchal powers I might have at my disposal on a woman. If I'm going to use them, shouldn't I might as well use them on something potentially profitable? It's hard to explain. I suppose I just don't like the role , and I'm perpsnally convinced that not liking this role - at alll-- is precisely what led to my "sexual identity" and also "gender identity" experiments. I was literally so fed up with women , and at a certain point in my early 20s, so angry and hateful of them, that I felt I literally had to "become a woman", at least temporarily, in order to get my love back for them. I can't express how deeply I hated women in my early 20s. I really despised them.
So I did these gender experiments and more, & vasically the only thing I learned from it was that being a woman really is just as miserable and oppressive of an experience as the feminists paint it as. Which is why my idea now is that the only thing feminists are missing - and why so few people find the argument compelling -- is all this negative stuff I'm saying about men, too, when it comes to patriarchy. Basically, I don't think most men are really made to be aware of just what crap roles they've been asked to play, because there's really no shame that accompanies the man role -- so long as he's successful-- like there is whne it comes to the woman's. For example, I personally believe that, even if I was a millionaire, I would feel annoyed by the patriarchy, because I don't want to be "in control" or "the sole provider", I want to be an equal with my woman. I would see being the sole provider as a burden, not a gift or a blessing. Most men, however, don't interpret it like this. They have been trained to see this all as being a blessing, instead of a burden, in much the same way, for example, that many women of the deeper past undoubtedly saw staying home all day, cleaning and cooking, as a blessing, rather than a burden. They saw this -- and many still see it -- as a glorious escape from the pain of the outside world and reality. As a writer who loves being home, I can't blame them; but, at the same time, there's also the other problem many women of modern day are forgetting about the past: Staying at home wasn't some lackadaisical choice to women back then. It was instead more of a prison sentence. You literally had no choice but to be there. I'm not sure about you but ....as much as I love writing in my room here...I Ain't sure I'd like it too much if someone suddenly locked me in the room. At that point, I think I'd want to get out ...no matter what was waiting behind the door. This is how feminism began, gloriously so.
Hetero men , however, in this strange in between time period, are, in my opinion, sort of being served a bit of a shitty challenge. Why? It's simple: Women have now gotten a bit out of the room men locked them in , but men, in fact, are still very much in the same old room that women locked them in. Powerful millionaire men perhaps don't care about being locked in this room--- they think it's such a fantastic room to be in-- but lower class men often do, at least once we fail. It's just that they still don't often totally realize they hate this room...
They don't want to admit they feel uncomfortable in the room, because guess what happens when you do? You end up like me , and no "working class" woman on Earth wants to date you . You end up an outcast with no friends except men generally, or women who will only feel comfortable with you if you tell them youre gay, and who otherwise don't want to know the first thing about you. This severe type of outcasting doesn't really ever happen for women: they're always allowed a slew of friends from both genders, regardless of their power or position in society. In other words, modern working class women no longer need to know one thing about cooking or cleaning to score a man, but you better believe that many of them expect me to know how to fix the lights, the car, pay an enormous sum of the bills, etcetc. They still expect me to be the strong man like its the 1940s; but they're no longer the weak little cooking girl (even if they try to pretend they are).
Well here's what I think of it, girls, speaking as your potential date: Go fuck yourself with it. Take this job and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS, BITCH.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
The European path: they made me liberal
If one were to analyze the psychological reasons behind how I became a West European "wannabe", I think the origin point of it all would be very obvious: Deapite being born in the USA as a citizen, I never , throughout my life, felt "quite a part" of any currently existing sphere of US society. I was a white boy born in a small white neighborhood in the midst of a city that was 3/4 not white.
In a sense, it was - and remains- a very weird position to be coming from: On the one hand, I couldn't really relate with any of the minorities with any true intimacy, and on the other , I also couldn't relate with the American whites who came from the other regions of the States. I especially, for that matter, could not relate with the ones who lived in the deeper suburbs out beyond my own "non white" city. For, you see, I was made to feel inferior to them, almost in a similar sense that the minorities were made to feel. Except, again, I had no real minority community of my own to feel "allied" with. I felt a similar resentment for the suburban , middle class American whites that minorities felt - but almost had no one, on a wide scale, to really share the emotion with. This aspect of not being able to share the resentment I felt for the middle class US white culture is important, I feel, because basically I accidentally became locked out of a type of "communal therapy" that I do think exists within minority communities. For example, minorities within the USA generally tend to have a whole slew of jokes and insults and so forth that they've worked out amongst themselves, to use against their oppressors and their outcasters. The jokes don't much solve anything in reality; but they do at least solve feelings of inadequacy in the moment. I had no such system. I was alone. If anything, as a lower white in a 3/4 minority city, I was supposed to be all the more inspired to eventually join the group of deep suburban whites that I felt were my enemies. This was supposedly my "gift". As you can imagine, it was a gift I didn't want. And this especially became the case for me once I discovered the existence of Wesr Europe and just what it was , exactly.
How come? It's simple: When I discovered W. Europe, and I then came to discover how well it functioned in comparison to the USA, I basically felt that I had finally found someone who, it seemed to me, was undoubtedly superior to the white Middle (or even upper class) Americans . Sure, it's true: the Europeans don't have any real military power in comparison to the Americans, but what they do definitely have are considerably more functional daily lives. They also have all that other important stuff that the middle Americans desperately want in their lives: They have elegant wines, cozy museums, beautiful quaint cities and towns, histories that stretch back forever, etc. If the middle Americans have that "posh" stuff at a rate of 30%, then it wild seem to me the West Euros have it at a rate of 60%. This especially becomes evident once you discover just how many jokes exist as well, in West Europe--- jokes that center completely around insulting Americans for being "cultureless hicks", more or less.
Like any other American boy, but especially like a low class one, I obviously grew up, as referenced, not really knowing what Europe was on any intimate level. I also, like any other boy here, grew up being told incessantly and repeatedly that this country was the greatest country, etc. I suppose that I believed it somewhere inside, even in spite of the fact that I came of age in what was clearly a completely decimated United States city. My basic childhood understanding of the world outside the borders was limited to all the countries that truly are terrible , in comparison to the mighty US: I was told endlessly about people starving in China, about mud huts in Zimbabwe, about evil communist regimes in North Korea, and of course about things like gulags in Russia. Beyond that too, of course, there was also always the ever present threat of the southern half of the American continent itself, where I was told countries like Venezuela and Mexico and so forth were little more than scathing hell pits that would eat me alive, If I were to ever go to them. This vision of the outside world was reinforced by the news, by patriotic uncles, by friends, video games, films, everything.
Oddly enough, of course, the one part of the outside world that was never mentioned was West Europe. Naturally, everyone knew that it was a place, certainly, but it was also as though this place had just sort of fallen out of existence at some point in the past. To most Americans , I'm convinced that Europe is nothing more than some thin almosr "Disney world" esque stereotype. It is a place widely thought to have ceased existing, a place that we are all convinced has never entered the modern world. It's politics and culture is thus sort of ignored. If American children grow up playing video games, browsing the Internet, and wearing fancy sneakers, the European child in a country like France must still be wearing a beret , old fashioned shoes , and yearning to be a painter like Renoir in the 1800s. This is really the idea somewhere in the US mind: the Europeans are not stupid - but they're stil "behind" in some other sense. I myself, in my opening period of deep European intrigue, even basically ran with this idea in mind, I always say: I wanted to go there to live, not because I thought the politics were superior and more functional, but rather because I wanted to wear that beret and smoke Gitanes and sit on some Parisian boulevard, writing poetry in a chapbook. In my early years , I was a European wannabe, the same as I still am, but my reasons were totally different. It never occurred to me so much as a single time that the modern politics there were better. That was unthinkable, as I stress. If anything, I assumed they were worse. I was happy to go live there regardless of course ...it was my "poets duty".
Therefore, the reader can imagine the absolute shock and surprise that unfolded in my mind when I came to discover that Europe was not just a great place to be a poet like Rimbaud; but that it was also even just a far better place to live than the States, in any given regard. When I came to see, for example, that university was free, that the prison system is almost not a prison system at all , that the cities are not universally destroyed, that joining the military isn't the only way a poor man can make it, and that everyone has healthcare and even, in North Europe, a multitude of welfare benefits from birth until death , I was literally in a state of utmost shock.
Alas, it was in that moment, I think, of this discovery , that something very crucial happened for me: I suddenly found a weapon of sorts that I had never known before. That weapon was the basket of insults and jokes I now suddenly realized were at my disposal for the middle class white Americans I had always felt so unloved and outcasted by, etc. And the thing about this weapon that I found was that it was radically different from the one that, as I said before, the minorities here in the States tend to use to defend themselves with. Usually , down here in the furnace of America, our weapon against the middle Americans was that they were "wimpy" and "unable to fight" and had no "street smarts". These insults of course fell on deaf ears: middle class Americans are not ashamed to have no street smarts; if anything, they're proud.
This weapon and these insults, however, from this "posh European" angle, I immediately saw, were insults that would potentially make an American cry. To get under white american skin. These were insults that would make an American feel as inferior as i myself had always been pressured to feel, in relation to their "middle class" "suburban" culture. Again: this was an insult that was clearly coming from above, rather than below. The European way of life, with all its benefits, clearly exposes all of America's deep inadequacies. In fact, I've brought up Europe with many white Americans, and if there's one thing I've noticed without fail, it's this: mentioning Europe tends to open an angry, sad wound in white American skin, even if the white American in question claims , obsessively, to be totally against the generous, liberal policies that Europeans have in place. It's able to do this for very simple reasons: White conservatives look to Europe and Cannot avoid the fact that they're seeing a place of far deeper white traditions than they've ever known. They're seeing "pleasant" cities that they know they'd like to browse around and see, but that even the wealthiest among them are forced to feel distant from. They're seeing the civilization that they so often obsessively claim to be apart of (when they're berating blacks in the inner city, for example) but that they actually know next to nothing about. And there's no doubt about it that this is all very painful for a white American to look at.
After all, imagine for a second that you've lived your entire life as some obnoxious white Republican from suburbia , whose hardly ever known a city intimately, and all your politics often revolved around were how "lower class blacks" don't deserve a helping hand, and how welfare is disgusting, and how whites "do things for themselves". And now imagine that you've just, for the first time, come to discover that the "actual white people" in the place where white people "began", are all, it turns out, living in enormously generous welfare states that literally make the hardly existent welfare system in America look like a game of peanuts & crumbs. If the reader, for example, thinks that I , as a white boy who was always sympathetic to Democrats & who was always in the 3/4 black city, and who never had a problem with welfare policies whatsoever , found the European liberalism shockinf, just imagine how shocking one of these ferociously anti welfare suburban Republican sorts must find it?
I think, quite honestly, that many of them are simply unable to completely compute it or fathom it. Beyond this, there's also the fact that, again, I don't think most conservative Americans even truly realize that this is the case anyways. I really cannot stress enough just how belligerently unaware 90% of Americans are wjth Europe. Especially conservatives. Remember: Most conservative Americans are in situations very far removed from the one that led me to thinking of liberal Europe in a modern light and researching it as heavily as I did . For starters, I was from the city and I was unhappy with the US culture, having felt left out, in the second place I developed an interest in old time poetry which led me to reading French writers from the 1800s, and third, the biggest fact of all, my family is italian and has much closer roots to Europe then most Americans in red states do. I firmly believe that my chances of even hearing about liberal Europe in any detail would have been considerably slim if I had been from, say, Kentucky, instead of New Jersey. It's almost as though the red state people are simply too far from Europe to remember it at this point, and what has happened as a result of this distance, is that they have literally reconstructed and rewritten what they believe "white identity" means. To them, being white goes hand in hand with being conservative. They are totally ignorant to the fact that, on a global scale, white West Europe is more liberal & generous to its own citizens - and organized-- than almost anywhere else on Earth.
And I suppose that I can't help but endlessly wake up and find this complete disconnect beyond fascinating ....
- notes
In a sense, it was - and remains- a very weird position to be coming from: On the one hand, I couldn't really relate with any of the minorities with any true intimacy, and on the other , I also couldn't relate with the American whites who came from the other regions of the States. I especially, for that matter, could not relate with the ones who lived in the deeper suburbs out beyond my own "non white" city. For, you see, I was made to feel inferior to them, almost in a similar sense that the minorities were made to feel. Except, again, I had no real minority community of my own to feel "allied" with. I felt a similar resentment for the suburban , middle class American whites that minorities felt - but almost had no one, on a wide scale, to really share the emotion with. This aspect of not being able to share the resentment I felt for the middle class US white culture is important, I feel, because basically I accidentally became locked out of a type of "communal therapy" that I do think exists within minority communities. For example, minorities within the USA generally tend to have a whole slew of jokes and insults and so forth that they've worked out amongst themselves, to use against their oppressors and their outcasters. The jokes don't much solve anything in reality; but they do at least solve feelings of inadequacy in the moment. I had no such system. I was alone. If anything, as a lower white in a 3/4 minority city, I was supposed to be all the more inspired to eventually join the group of deep suburban whites that I felt were my enemies. This was supposedly my "gift". As you can imagine, it was a gift I didn't want. And this especially became the case for me once I discovered the existence of Wesr Europe and just what it was , exactly.
How come? It's simple: When I discovered W. Europe, and I then came to discover how well it functioned in comparison to the USA, I basically felt that I had finally found someone who, it seemed to me, was undoubtedly superior to the white Middle (or even upper class) Americans . Sure, it's true: the Europeans don't have any real military power in comparison to the Americans, but what they do definitely have are considerably more functional daily lives. They also have all that other important stuff that the middle Americans desperately want in their lives: They have elegant wines, cozy museums, beautiful quaint cities and towns, histories that stretch back forever, etc. If the middle Americans have that "posh" stuff at a rate of 30%, then it wild seem to me the West Euros have it at a rate of 60%. This especially becomes evident once you discover just how many jokes exist as well, in West Europe--- jokes that center completely around insulting Americans for being "cultureless hicks", more or less.
Like any other American boy, but especially like a low class one, I obviously grew up, as referenced, not really knowing what Europe was on any intimate level. I also, like any other boy here, grew up being told incessantly and repeatedly that this country was the greatest country, etc. I suppose that I believed it somewhere inside, even in spite of the fact that I came of age in what was clearly a completely decimated United States city. My basic childhood understanding of the world outside the borders was limited to all the countries that truly are terrible , in comparison to the mighty US: I was told endlessly about people starving in China, about mud huts in Zimbabwe, about evil communist regimes in North Korea, and of course about things like gulags in Russia. Beyond that too, of course, there was also always the ever present threat of the southern half of the American continent itself, where I was told countries like Venezuela and Mexico and so forth were little more than scathing hell pits that would eat me alive, If I were to ever go to them. This vision of the outside world was reinforced by the news, by patriotic uncles, by friends, video games, films, everything.
Oddly enough, of course, the one part of the outside world that was never mentioned was West Europe. Naturally, everyone knew that it was a place, certainly, but it was also as though this place had just sort of fallen out of existence at some point in the past. To most Americans , I'm convinced that Europe is nothing more than some thin almosr "Disney world" esque stereotype. It is a place widely thought to have ceased existing, a place that we are all convinced has never entered the modern world. It's politics and culture is thus sort of ignored. If American children grow up playing video games, browsing the Internet, and wearing fancy sneakers, the European child in a country like France must still be wearing a beret , old fashioned shoes , and yearning to be a painter like Renoir in the 1800s. This is really the idea somewhere in the US mind: the Europeans are not stupid - but they're stil "behind" in some other sense. I myself, in my opening period of deep European intrigue, even basically ran with this idea in mind, I always say: I wanted to go there to live, not because I thought the politics were superior and more functional, but rather because I wanted to wear that beret and smoke Gitanes and sit on some Parisian boulevard, writing poetry in a chapbook. In my early years , I was a European wannabe, the same as I still am, but my reasons were totally different. It never occurred to me so much as a single time that the modern politics there were better. That was unthinkable, as I stress. If anything, I assumed they were worse. I was happy to go live there regardless of course ...it was my "poets duty".
Therefore, the reader can imagine the absolute shock and surprise that unfolded in my mind when I came to discover that Europe was not just a great place to be a poet like Rimbaud; but that it was also even just a far better place to live than the States, in any given regard. When I came to see, for example, that university was free, that the prison system is almost not a prison system at all , that the cities are not universally destroyed, that joining the military isn't the only way a poor man can make it, and that everyone has healthcare and even, in North Europe, a multitude of welfare benefits from birth until death , I was literally in a state of utmost shock.
Alas, it was in that moment, I think, of this discovery , that something very crucial happened for me: I suddenly found a weapon of sorts that I had never known before. That weapon was the basket of insults and jokes I now suddenly realized were at my disposal for the middle class white Americans I had always felt so unloved and outcasted by, etc. And the thing about this weapon that I found was that it was radically different from the one that, as I said before, the minorities here in the States tend to use to defend themselves with. Usually , down here in the furnace of America, our weapon against the middle Americans was that they were "wimpy" and "unable to fight" and had no "street smarts". These insults of course fell on deaf ears: middle class Americans are not ashamed to have no street smarts; if anything, they're proud.
This weapon and these insults, however, from this "posh European" angle, I immediately saw, were insults that would potentially make an American cry. To get under white american skin. These were insults that would make an American feel as inferior as i myself had always been pressured to feel, in relation to their "middle class" "suburban" culture. Again: this was an insult that was clearly coming from above, rather than below. The European way of life, with all its benefits, clearly exposes all of America's deep inadequacies. In fact, I've brought up Europe with many white Americans, and if there's one thing I've noticed without fail, it's this: mentioning Europe tends to open an angry, sad wound in white American skin, even if the white American in question claims , obsessively, to be totally against the generous, liberal policies that Europeans have in place. It's able to do this for very simple reasons: White conservatives look to Europe and Cannot avoid the fact that they're seeing a place of far deeper white traditions than they've ever known. They're seeing "pleasant" cities that they know they'd like to browse around and see, but that even the wealthiest among them are forced to feel distant from. They're seeing the civilization that they so often obsessively claim to be apart of (when they're berating blacks in the inner city, for example) but that they actually know next to nothing about. And there's no doubt about it that this is all very painful for a white American to look at.
After all, imagine for a second that you've lived your entire life as some obnoxious white Republican from suburbia , whose hardly ever known a city intimately, and all your politics often revolved around were how "lower class blacks" don't deserve a helping hand, and how welfare is disgusting, and how whites "do things for themselves". And now imagine that you've just, for the first time, come to discover that the "actual white people" in the place where white people "began", are all, it turns out, living in enormously generous welfare states that literally make the hardly existent welfare system in America look like a game of peanuts & crumbs. If the reader, for example, thinks that I , as a white boy who was always sympathetic to Democrats & who was always in the 3/4 black city, and who never had a problem with welfare policies whatsoever , found the European liberalism shockinf, just imagine how shocking one of these ferociously anti welfare suburban Republican sorts must find it?
I think, quite honestly, that many of them are simply unable to completely compute it or fathom it. Beyond this, there's also the fact that, again, I don't think most conservative Americans even truly realize that this is the case anyways. I really cannot stress enough just how belligerently unaware 90% of Americans are wjth Europe. Especially conservatives. Remember: Most conservative Americans are in situations very far removed from the one that led me to thinking of liberal Europe in a modern light and researching it as heavily as I did . For starters, I was from the city and I was unhappy with the US culture, having felt left out, in the second place I developed an interest in old time poetry which led me to reading French writers from the 1800s, and third, the biggest fact of all, my family is italian and has much closer roots to Europe then most Americans in red states do. I firmly believe that my chances of even hearing about liberal Europe in any detail would have been considerably slim if I had been from, say, Kentucky, instead of New Jersey. It's almost as though the red state people are simply too far from Europe to remember it at this point, and what has happened as a result of this distance, is that they have literally reconstructed and rewritten what they believe "white identity" means. To them, being white goes hand in hand with being conservative. They are totally ignorant to the fact that, on a global scale, white West Europe is more liberal & generous to its own citizens - and organized-- than almost anywhere else on Earth.
And I suppose that I can't help but endlessly wake up and find this complete disconnect beyond fascinating ....
- notes