25OCT-23NOV 2009
When it gets like this I feel like one story again, instead of all stories .. and my self esteem wavers. The Toughness I have relied on seems a faded memory.
The House made me choose between a rock and a hard place. Being numb and unReal, or being caught up in their sexualized games. Neither path would have led to a life any less than the one I have now.
Either way, I would’ve been lacking of any education past sixth grade. I would have been devoid of contact with anyone near my age. I would lack the classic stories of coolnesses and successes like being good at a sport, having fun with friends, dating girls.
In that way maybe the House wins. It took away any opportunities for a successful life.
There’s Chance. You can’t believe in Equality without believing in Chance. Anybody could’ve been born in the House, and I could’ve been born into any life, in any culture, in any time, with any colored skin.
I’m not one story, I’m all stories .. because all of them were and are possible .. that’s my identity, and that can’t be changed. If this were untrue, then it would be true that people who supposedly lived better stories -- ones without Abuse, ones in industrialized countries, ones with the _proper_ color skin, those who were loved and those who weren’t -- actually are better than the ones who didn’t.
I could’ve lived any story, and am worthy of all stories, same as anybody else, good stories and bad, because I know it doesn't mean anything what story I happened to have; I am no more worthy or less worthy than anybody else -- those with tragic stories and those without tragic stories.
When I remember that no one is their story, only themselves, I remember myself again, the one experiencing the story.
I notice many philosophies and belief systems are terribly afraid of Chance, as if dice were the ultimate symbol of evil.
When I think about how I am all stories, what I’m really reminding myself is I am all Qualities, with no story or evidence necessary to prove them.
__________
I went on facebook and looked at Mos___’s albums, most of which are of this deployment.
Mos___ is best friends with Hi___. I look at a picture of me in his albums and cringe at my looks. I see a picture of Hi___ and see the same kind of face. I see a picture of K___ and wonder what it must be like to be photogenic.
Hi___ does what I do. He has low self esteem, which manifests into him thinking his face looks dopey, when it doesn’t. He looks half-hearted in his pictures, like he’s not all the way present.
It’s because he’s holding back, afraid to really show up. He makes it worse by donning this attitude like he’s better than every one else, like a defense.
Once, when I was fourteen or fifteen, our church decided to make a yearbook. We all had to pay a few bucks and show up on a certain Saturday to have our picture taken by a professional.
A___ and I were the only ones in our family who went to that church. A___ was considered beautiful. I had messed up teeth, to the point I rarely would open my mouth, and if I did smile or laugh, I held my hand in front of my mouth, to hide it.
When it came time to have my picture taken, the photographer didn’t want a toothless smile. He yelled at me, angrily. Finally, I showed teeth when he said smile. His assistant showed me the picture on her computer screen. She asked if I would like to buy a set for myself. I said no. It wasn’t just the teeth that had made me so ugly looking, but all the acne, too.
I went to the bathroom afterward, where I could be alone. I remembered how the photographer had yelled at me. I leaned against the wall and thought, If I were in the book She’s Come Undone, or in The Secret History, I -- the main character -- would have some sort of reaction. I would cry a tear, or vomit in the commode. But I feel nothing, just numb.
Maybe now that I’m not ugly I’ve got to feel what it was like to be ugly. Maybe it’s the last step of resolving the low self esteem.
But I didn’t feel it back then for good reason. There was nothing wrong with looking that way and I knew it. I was disciplined that way. (Disciplined to the point of numbness.) Oh, you felt it, I think to myself. You just didn’t acknowledge it.
I remember what it was like to wake in the morning after sleeping with a girl. The self esteem issues were gone to the point of being forgotten, the Focus so effortless it was assumed.
Once, W__ and I were at a restaurant, and two women were at a table not far from us, with two dopey guys. _We should just go over there, talk to those chicks, and take em from those two guys,_ he said, grinning.
_You can,_ I said, _Not me._
He caught my drift and said, _I’m not gay or anything, but I’m telling you, you’re an attractive guy._
Those words burned into my memory, because I believed him.
I went to my first out-of-state class for work a while back. A girl started to tag me. She was seemingly shy, but actually just mildly vain. She looked like a Barbie doll but was too ni_eve to feel the power that might conjure. She allowed others to want her despite her not really knowing what to want, besides attention.
I liked the way she stole looks at my biceps, my forearms, my chest, and I stole looks at her. My crush on her was definitely not about self-development.
Her qualities were definitely not for me, they were qualities impossible for me to ever own. It made me want her more, it made me want to take her, to devour her or something.
She sat in front of me in class and talked to me during breaks, and later, in the nights. There was this new heat, exactly like the heat I’d known before, with R___.
It wasn’t like a heat that made me sweat, but the kind that made my blood pump harder somehow, made it feel hotter as it rushed through my veins, made it harder to concentrate on the instruction block at hand. I had a hard time talking to her, due to the Heat, so I let her do all the talking.
She stayed in the room next to me and regularly invited me places. She was the hottest girl in our class, and I hadn’t realized that I was the hottest guy.
In the end, I wasn‘t much attracted to her. She was pretty enough and sexual enough for me to fall for the Real parts of her: her ripe body and effortless femininity; but not the superficial part of her that was in her mind: her thoughts, her ideas of herself and who she thought she was, her story. That attitude made me un-attracted to her, and I started the long drive home with no regrets.
It’s not my fault I didn’t have a series of experiences to build my confidence about my looks. In that way the House won, knowing my body would feel this way sometimes, despite my discipline.
I’ll sell myself short the same way with women because it happened with E___. I began sleeping with her because I felt obligated, pressured.
I hadn’t noticed that E__ and Max___ were each in love with me. That the relationship had never been platonic. I didn’t know, hadn’t; hadn’t even realized I deserved anything like that, and they didn’t believe me, couldn’t see how I could not have known.
I remember when A__ and I went to driver’s ed. All the girls in the class sat at my table. A___ said it was because I was a wh-ore.
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