Ephemera

I cry at sappy love stories on television, because I cannot connect in real life. Fantasy touches me in ways reality cannot, does not. I yearn for the feelings of attachment and the bonds of closeness that fictional characters share, even knowing that relationships- real, honest, and actual- do not resemble the characters and caricatures onscreen before me. Mine is a duality of emotion and emptiness, being touched by nothingness.

Pros and Cons

I saw something at work today that just turned my stomach. This old guy- 60ish, grey hair and moustache, slight accent (British?), not what I think anyone would consider handsome- came into the store with an escort. Young, maybe 5’2”, pretty, perky, blonde- a little too made up. She seemed sweet, though, when we talked briefly about the Damzl Fuel drink we sell that she enjoys but can never find anywhere.

(As an aside, it sells like crap in my store.)

The thought of this pretty thing coupled with this hairy, ogrish older perv just made me sick. Still does.

She wasn’t his granddaughter or anything like that- I’m certain. I had seen this guy in the store on a previous occasion, that time in the company of a brunette pornstar I recognized. Acquainted with her body of work, so to speak.

Now, despite being in So Cal, Long Beach is still pretty far from the porn capital of Chatsworth, much less Los Angeles, so I was fairly certain the pornstar girl wasn’t just in town visiting an older relative. Especially when the guy made a ribald remark to her about using the licorice rope he was holding as a whip. Complete with demonstration. She looked nearly as uncomfortable as I felt. I tried not to compound her unease by staring and letting on that I recognized her.

For some reason, though, the pornstar and the old perv didn’t unnerve me quite as completely as the young blonde and the dirty old John did. I did think it somewhat odd that the pornstar might be resorting to escorting (though I am given to understand that even the porn industry has been hit hard by the economic downturn in the country). Still, I suppose it was more the association of her porn background with the notion of “sex for sale”, as opposed to the facelessness of the blonde that made the difference to me.

In one of life’s little ironies, I was just discussing porn and the damage it can do with a friend a few days prior. She was remarking on how terrible an effect it can have on perceptions of the female body – both to women and to men’s expectations of what they should look like. For my part, while I agree that porn is pretty degrading in its depiction of women, I shy from giving too much credit to the industry’s ability to dictate how people regard sex and women. To me it’s just as slippery a slope as saying that video games and television cause violent behavior. There are always other factors involved, and it’s foolish- in my mind- to try and pin the blame solely on one thing, as if rectifying that will somehow serve as a panacea for your social ill of the day. Foolish and unrealistic.

Still, though, I can’t deny a correlation. Not a one-to-one causality, but a connection all the same. Aside from the aforementioned geezer and his objectification of women via use of escort services (and I could probably speculate for pages on the foundations of that urge), my friend had some other interesting comparisons to make to me.

She talked a little bit about how she could tell the guys who’d gotten all of their sex advice from watching porn by the way they behaved in bed. “Tired of guys wanting to do the Jackhammer,” I believe was how she put it. We joked a bit about the silliness of porn embalmed guys in today’s society, but I really wondered at the absurdity of it all.

I’m not very sexually experienced, but even to me, it seems common sense should dictate that most porn sex is ill-suited to real world applications. Unless you’re trying to get a camera in there, most of those positions are at the very least awkward, and more likely are downright painful and uncomfortable- especially to the women involved. Maybe pornos need disclaimers like you find in stunt shows and deadly magic acts- “These performances are for entertainment purposes only, and are performed by professionals. Do not attempt these positions at home?”

Ultimately, I imagine it is the rescuer complex in me that was most touched by the thought of that pretty girl selling herself to that old guy. I am a bit awkward when it comes to sex- discussing it, having it- and I know that my values aren’t quite in step with the times. Add to that, the girls in question was clearly consenting and cognizant of the choice she was making (and presumably of legal age). Yet still I can’t help but feel for someone engaging in sex for money. It seems like such an intimate thing to share, even in spite of more relaxed values of the day. I just wanted to tell the girl she is a beautiful person and… what… save her from herself, maybe?

I just can’t quite wrap my head around feeling such a need for money that you’d be willing to do almost anything to get it. Then again, I guess we all prostitute ourselves to one degree or another, don’t we? Maybe it is a slippery slope after all.

School Teacher

We've talked only a handful of times. Flirted? A little, perhaps.

Would it be too tacky to ask you out- clerk to customer? Am I afraid of your rejection? Or do I fear complications in a romantic sea that already tosses me between many vexatious shores?

Whichever, you and I have remained distant, going no further. I've no emotional stake in you.

Why, then, this tightening in my chest, this darkening of my mood when I see you with another? It should mean nothing; I fear perhaps it means far more than the obvious. Shades of a deeper void within, having nothing to do with you at all.

The hearts meanderings continue to baffle.

Not Seeing Is Believing

Some of the best conversations I've had in my life have been with people who aren't there.

I may be a freak or weirdo for admitting to it (though I know at least one other person who has confessed to the same), but I have had- and fully expect to continue having- discussions with imaginary people.

The people themselves aren't usually imaginary- they're friends, family, prospective paramours. I talk with them to work through dilemmas I'm having, or to make a trial run at a romantic scenario, or just to have a pleasant conversation with a familiar face that isn't physically present.

Maybe it's because I'm a writer, and like to practice dialoguing; maybe it's because I get bored talking to my own voice (whether in my head or aloud- yes, I'm one of those people at times). In any event, it is comforting to know that my loved ones are never quite as far mentally as they may be geographically.

Survival Guide

I love zombies.

I don’t say that as a prelude to a love-fest celebrating the resurgence of zombie films in popular media. Nor shall I rant against the ill-advised and uninformed re-imagining of zombies in several recent productions. (Though if you want to read about that sort of thing, Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg elucidated wonderfully about it in this article from the Guardian.)

I mention it because, for much of my early adolescence, I was deeply terrified by zombies and other creatures of the night. Now they entertain me.

It all started one summer in 1980 or thereabouts. A local tv channel was showing horror movies in the afternoons, and with plenty of summer break time on our hands, my brother and friends and I took in a lot of them. Them!, Empire of the Ants; movies about killer snakes, giant spiders- they weren’t terribly good movies, but they were fun and scary. The one that truly terrorized me, though, was Son of the Blob. I find it amusing now, but after watching that film, I could not sleep at night without leaving a light on. Visions of a mindless, gelatinous mass slowly oozing its destructive path through the world, absorbing every fleshy body it touched into its corpulence and slowly digesting them filled my dreams with fright. Aside from the need for nocturnal illumination, I also couldn’t watch scary movies at all without breaking into pangs of fear.

Then one day, several years later, I got over it. Horror movies just didn’t faze me. No more nightmares. I even began to actually enjoy watching scary movies, or going to haunted houses for Halloween, and reading horror novels. Maybe I just grew out of it.

Or maybe I realized that real life is much scarier than any fiction.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. – H. P. Lovecraft (Supernatural Horror in Literature)

The thing that I love about zombies over any other horrific creation out there (no slight to the great and powerful Cthulhu intended), is that to me, they are metaphors. Zombies represent, for all intents and purposes, death. They are scary because, like death, they are inevitable. They are ponderous, but tireless; you can try and outrun them, and possibly succeed for a while, but they will always catch up with you in the end. They are free of malice; they’ll kill you because that’s their nature, their function- they don’t do it out of anger, or spite, or vengeance. And, more often than not, they appear in the guise of our friends and family- which is frightening on several levels. Do we not fear the loss of our loved ones? And how disturbing is it to think that we might not only outlive them, but that they might themselves be responsible for our deaths? You only hurt the ones you love.

To me, zombies are truly the iconic horror monsters because they epitomize that fear of the unknown. At least, to most people. Because most people view death as the great unknown horizon. Me, not so much.

Stop me if I’m getting too morbid, but to me death just- well, it just is. I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, any great reward or punishment awaiting when we shuffle off this mortal coil. When this too, too solid flesh of mine finally gives out, that’s all there is to it, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t fear death because I know that it’s going to happen at some point, some day, and the rest of creation might as well cease to exist when I do because I won’t be here to testify that it didn’t. Very empiricist of me, I guess. Or solipsistic. As you will.

Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft believed that the true nature of the universe was so alien that any human mind attempting to comprehend it would descend into madness. To me, the sheer breadth of human activity is alien enough in many ways. Making choices, going through the motions, even just the tedium of mundane activities can just get too overwhelming to even begin to comprehend. (I hate having to constantly buy socks because I wear the heels out so much; and what kind of creator would have ever thought that dust was a good idea? Chalk one up to agnosticism.) Just the things required to do to maintain one’s solitary life can be maddening enough; factor in other people- their feelings, their routines, relationships- and it can be paralyzing.

Not long ago, a good friend challenged me to tell her something about myself that would surprise her, and I told her that I felt like the most terrible coward in the world. Much to my chagrin, she stoically nodded and said that didn’t surprise her at all. Now, I’d like to think I’m not that transparent (though, to her credit, she’s uncannily insightful), and I know she didn’t intend any slight in her assessment. Recently, though I’ve been considering that perhaps her lack of surprise was simply a recognition that being afraid is the only sane response to such an anarchic world as that in which we live.

In any event, such is the case: life, with all its myriad aspects, is horrifying to me. Much as I am dissatisfied with many of the things I do, there is a cold comfort in the familiarity of settling for less than I know that I’m capable of. I’ve spent a good part of my life underachieving. I know how to get by; I know how to do without, how to accept what comes my way and not go outside my comfort zone trying- and possibly failing- at attaining those things which I might truly desire. I think I’ve settled for so long that I no longer have a clear picture of what my real passions might be- if I ever did.

Which isn’t to say that I haven’t accomplished some wonderful things in my life, or that I regret every moment of it; that’s certainly not true. In spite of myself, I have managed to do and share some amazing experiences with many beautiful people.

It’s a struggle sometimes, though. To just slog through the day, feeling like I’m just going through the motions. Pretending at being like everyone else. Trying to avoid the craziness of being a cog in society’s endlessly grinding gears- because I’ve never quite understood why and how people allow themselves to become a part of the Rube Goldbergian machine that is modern society- and yet finding myself flitting in and out of the contraption anyway, because I ceaselessly fail to chart my own course.

To further complicate matters, I am horrible at seeking out and accepting help from others. I’m not entirely clear on why, though I think I can largely pinpoint two factors in my life. The first stems from a conversation I had with my brother shortly before I went away to college. I’d been lagging in applying to schools and for loans because I really wasn’t sure if I even wanted to go to college, or what I wanted to do; my brother was sternly trying to encourage me to get it in gear. His exact phrase was “to grab sac,” and make things happen, because no one else was going to do it for me. I don’t think he intended for me to take his words so fully to heart in the way I internalized them- as a testament to self-sufficiency to the point of virtual isolation- but that talk we had has always remained fairly vivid in my mind, so it was clearly formative.

The second big factor is probably my mom. She always seemed to live her life in the roles others selected for her rather than one she chose for herself. I know for a fact that she always wanted to write, and kept journals and poems that she wished she’d pursued. But instead, she opted to be: a daughter, a wife, a mother. When those roles ceased to be sustained by their instigators- upon the death of her parents, my parents’ separation and later divorce, her children growing up and moving on to their own lives- her world quickly and profoundly began to fall apart. Seeing that, living with that for as long as I did- it was pretty brutal to experience. And, I’m near certain, greatly informed my own decision to rely as little as possible on the assistance and influence of anyone outside of myself.

I’ve slowly been coming around to the realization- due to the love and companionship of such incredible friends and family- that what I do isn’t really important to them, just who I am. Even more, that who I am isn’t defined by what I do. It’s an incredibly liberating notion, and though I’ve miles and years yet before I truly comprehend and accept it, I feel it has helped me to be more open and able to accept the love of others than I ever have in my life prior. And to accept and be happy with who I am and what I have to offer as well.

Ultimately, the only one who really cares what I do with my life is me. I would definitely love to be doing something that I feel passionately about, that fulfills me. It could only make everything else that much more satisfying, and make me more complete. I just don’t know quite where to begin. It may be that I whatever I do doesn’t have to encompass my work or “career”; maybe just having more outside interests is a key.

Life is scary when you’re steering rudderless. But I hope I’m getting better at navigation; time will tell. In the meanwhile, if you’re looking for wisdom and insight into a harmonious nirvana, or how to walk that fine line of the Golden Mean, I might not be the best person to turn to. On the other hand, if there’s no more room in Hell and the dead start walking the Earth? There’s always room in the back of my armored truck for fellow survivors.

Fractals

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