Sunday, May 30, 2010

Drive Redux

Or, "How did I not post this before?"

I wrote this a while back. It remains one of my favorite works (if it's not too early or pompous to consider any writing of mine a "work").

It was originally written as a MySpace blog, but all things considered, I elected to store it. In some ways, it's perhaps not so true as it was. In others, more true than ever.

* * *

Drive

Went for a drive today. There was no destination, no plan; only the path of least resistance.


Up in the hills, following narrow, winding roads lined by expensive houses. Few people were visible. Just the houses and cars.


Out of the hills and heading south; the sun hot through the windscreen, wind cool through open window.


It's been a long time since I've visited Laguna Beach. The last time I'd had company. Today I am alone.


More narrow, winding roads, more opulent houses staking precarious claim to treacherous land. As in the hills, follow any of these roads long enough, you hit a cul-de-sac. In the hills there'd be enough room to simply turn around. On the cliffs of Laguna Beach, you can barely manage to twist your way out by a six- or eight-point turn.


The radio doesn't work well out here, the cliffs block the signal. So the drive continues in silence.


There's a girl walking a dog. She's a little pudgy, no SoCal goddess of human perfection here, right? Except. Her skin is a lustrous bronze and her hair only a shade darker. Her walk is kinesthetic poetry. Watching her cross the street: her face is pleasant, her lips slightly curved upward even at rest. The lips of someone who smiles a lot.


I want to roll down the window and shout after her, tell her she's beautiful.


Instead I drive away.


If no one hears me, did I shout? If no one sees me, am I there?


Anonymity, invisibility: a siren song. To leave it all behind, to float unattached through the world of real people, to observe everything and participate in nothing...


I drive, and there is no thought, no emotion. I'm going down streets alone I once strode holding hands with someone. The thought, that once would have torn at me, causes no pangs. I feel nothing. It's just data. Am I empty and numb, or simply untethered?


I don't know, and the thought drifts away unanswered.


The past isn't important. I'm not important. I don't think. I don't exist, as I've existed: a shambling composite of all I've seen and done. Something's changed.


The road unspools like a black and yellow ribbon, the broken line of the divider passing under me like the ticks of seconds and minutes pass through me. The radio's still off, the only sound is the kiss of my wheels on the road and the twin roars of wind and engine.


There is nothing behind me in time or in space. There is barely a me. There is only the road, only the sun and sky and the wind that whips my hair around my ears.


* * *


Yesterday I went to a nearby open-air mall.


I sat outside on a cold concrete bench, and smoked a cigarette, and watched as the peoples of Earth passed before me.


Young, old. Quiet, loud. Male, female. Healthy, sick. Straight, gay. Beautiful, hideous. Sit there long enough, and you'll see every race represented, you'll see blacks and whites and Asians and Indians and Hispanics. Sit there long enough, you'll see every tribe: preppies, goths, punks, jocks, wiggers, cowboys. The devout and the profane, the indigent and the wealthy.


There was only one common denominator.


No one was there alone.


Except me.


It should make me sad, but somehow it doesn't.


I'm a social loner. There was never a time it was any different. Sometimes it was less obvious than others, sometimes I wedged my square self into the round holes life presented me, but I don't fit. I never have, and I don't expect I ever will.


I used to wish I wasn't invisible, railed against being cast as the outsider looking in, to perpetually being alone in the crowds. I used to think I needed someone to see me, to hear me, for me to be real.


I thought I needed to be real to be happy. So I held tight to those rare moments where it seemed I was real to someone. I guarded them jealously and I quaked with fear of losing them. And when inevitably I did lose them, I went through a withdrawal no less fierce than from any other addiction.


* * *


My mother becomes a completely different person when she's around her sister, her best friend, her daughter. It's like any rises in ambient estrogen turns her ears off and her mouth permanently on.


When my sister visited, the entire visit was endless demands for attention, nonstop meaningless chatter and constant motion. And that was after my mother's best friend had already been there a few days.


I think I got sick in self-defense.


That got me some distance, gave me an excuse for being quiet. It let me watch as the three women twittered and cawed for all the world like a trio of birds, making noises that didn't mean anything, just to prove to themselves and everyone else that they're alive, that they're there, that they're real.


It would have been fine, but none of them were really being themselves.


It was a relief when everyone went home. When I could stop pretending to be real, when I could slip back into the gray where no one sees me.



* * *


I used to think my importance depended on the attention I got from others.


I used to think I needed that attention, that I had to do things, big things, important things, so people would look at me, would listen to me, so I could be real.


I used to wish I was someone else. Someone who was good at getting attention.


But it's dawned on me over the past few days: I am not that tree in the woods. I am myself regardless of whether I'm observed. I don't need other people to tell me I'm real.


My identity isn't what they think it is. It just is.


All the pain I've felt in my life, it's been from trying to be someone I'm not.


I want to accomplish things, yes. But not so I can be important, not for the attention I so used to crave.


It's for them. From my coign of vantage, looking in from the fringe, I see more clearly. I see what they cannot. I can tell them what I see. The lone wolf, watching out for the sheep?


There's no reason to compromise the integrity of my beingness. There's no reason to pretend, no need to force my way inside.


I'm not real because they see me.


I'm real because I see them.


Saturday, May 15, 2010

In which I analyze the irrational appeal of Twilight


Ok so I'm writing this because I keep getting my head bit off by older women who loooooove Twilight.

DISCLAIMER: No, haven't read the books or watched the movies. I am emphatically not the target demographic (about which, more later). EDIT - But I have read essentially the Cliff's Notes so I know what happens in these books.

I don't think I know a single person who isn't aware of the Twilight phenomenon. It's like Pottermania for a slightly older crowd (teens and tweens) and a hefty dose of sexuality and hormone-drenched hand-wringing. Actually in terms of sheer fanaticism, Cullen leaves Potter in the dust.

I'm not going to make further comparisons to the respective franchises, because I don't think there's any other way they can properly relate.

From what I can tell, the target demographic was apparently clumsy, plain tweener drama queens -- based on the putative heroine of the books. Swell. Except their moms got into the books as well and this is where I actually start getting really disturbed.

If 40-year-old men went as batshit gaga over a 17-year-old girl, they would be thrown in jail and registered as sex offenders faster than you can say "Megan's Law". In fact, this has already happened. Now granted, that dude is clearly disturbed. *ahem*



Realizing this actually leads me to believe that the liking of Twilight is a cultural thing rather than a simple, inescapable matter of genitalia and chemicals.

Before I get into that, I'd like to float my theory of why Twimoms are so damned defensive about their Robsession: It's because they damned well know it's wrong, it's a double-standard AT BEST and the stories themselves are reprehensible. Based on my encounters, I honestly wonder if they've intelligence sufficient to properly deal with the "guilty pleasure" concept, so instead they invent reasons why the franchise is "wonderful" and "lovely" and why they attack naysayers all out of proportion to the disagreement.

HOWEVER, the people I know who actually are pretty damned smart yet love Twilight, are quite self-aware and entirely comfortable with the fact that it's messed up; they can take criticism of Twilight without it becoming personal.

Anyway. Here's the thing, and I know this might get up peoples' noses a bit. Also it may not be true for everyone. Hell, it might not be true for ANYONE. But as a theory, I think it hangs together pretty well. Here it is:

These women resent their emancipation and wish for the lives their predecessors had. Only they don't wanna admit it because then they'd have to admit they were wrong.*

Cultures change slowly, and it really hasn't been long enough for Women's Lib to have caught on. They're still working out the kinks (as seen in the continuing battle for equal pay for equal work, for example).

Before the '60s, the hats worn by the sexes were pretty clear and straightforward. Women worked until they landed a husband, then they became homemakers and had the care of future generations.

Within the last hundred years, women started calling bullshit (probably because the men's egos were getting big enough to form their own gravity well) and kicking back.

You all know this. But okay look: Women never really turned over their hat as homemakers and child-rearers. Nor can they, frankly - not entirely - men being physically incapable of giving birth. Don't look at me like that - pumping out progeny is where that shit starts.

So ladykind has had to not only continue wearing the hats they've had yea these endless milennia, but now also have to compete with men on more or less the same playing field. That's pretty amazing, when you think about it. I'm willing to bet most men wouldn't choose to step up to that plate short of death or desertion. So if you're thinking I'm a condescending sexist asshole - um. No.

Point is, that's a pretty rough row to hoe, and I for one don't blame 'em for sighing after simpler times.

Back when "all" women had to do was secure the future of the human race, they weren't required to be anything but what they were. They could be silly, clumsy, plain - it didn't matter as long as they could do a reasonable job in the kitchen, with the kids, and when the lights went out. Their apparently small sphere meant such things were not only forgivable but endearing.

But out in the man's world, the world of business and labor, well. Women have to let out their inner bitch, because that world is dog-eat-dog. It's how men like it (because damn it, it's manly) and they made it that way. I daresay it's not quite what they hoped for, those women of the burning bra.

So here comes a series of books about a plain, clumsy dorkgirl who, near as I can tell, wants nothing more than to find a dude who will run the show so she can chill out with her weird little Ridley Scott chest-burster baby.

The dude in question is a complete asshole by all accounts, which is perfect because assholes thrive in the business world. So, y'know. Good provider. And if he smacks you around, it's only because he loves you. Or something.

From a guy's perspective on all this, though, the first question that comes to mind when faced with Twilight is, "How the hell is it right for a 100+-year-old dude to go trolling a high school for pussy?"


* I just want to make clear that it's not that I don't think women can compete with men (because of course they can), and I cast no judgements over whether they should. My entire point here is that our society has not had enough time to get used to the idea or its proper execution. And particularly for women of a certain age, there's likely a certain amount of culture shock.