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code red: when you start wondering if you’re a persona or a real person, then it’s safe to say you crossed a line. most people including me can’t tell the difference—and maybe we shouldn’t be able to. What is the difference? Shall we say that you’re a comedian, and you make fun of yourself to make a living, but, when you make fun of yourself, it hurts, a little (or a lot) and you end up needing a mind altering chemical to re-draw the line; in effect, to turn it off, or, like i was saying, to tell the difference? but as soon as you use something to draw a line, you’re actually blurring the lines, even though it may feel like you’re onto something, on a roll, etc.
now, we’re always going to find ourselves using something to mark where one sentence ends and another begins—but we can do things that don’t make us depressed afterwards, like chugging water, having a diet soda pop or a cup of coffee—even though coffee changes things up a bit, so you should use it in moderation—but that alone is not enough to make you depressed. Now, if you were drinking twenty to thirty cups a day, then, clearly, you’re not yourself. So yeah—a little deviation from the mean is called a spread—and you’re allowed to have a spread. You’re expected to have a spread. As long as you don’t change the spread too much one way or the other, you are yourself.
so what was happening to me? I was losing myself to some unknown woman that I call Ursula, who had a voice that was not quite the same as any voice that I’d ever heard, and yet I could hear it in my mind’s ear. At this point, I was way beyond caring what people thought about me—or how they interpreted this political satire—as long as I didn’t get in trouble with the law. I didn’t want to do anything that could get me institutionalized or jailed. I wasn’t cut out for it. I couldn’t be separated from my creations—not for a minute, not even a second, without having intrusive thoughts that made it impossible for me to live in my skin.
i had to ask myself this specific question: did I want to be with Ursula (given acceptable living conditions), or did I want to be Ursula (given acceptable living conditions). now, most people don’t have to ask. they know, and they have known, what and who they are ever since puberty, if not before that—maybe they have a crush on somebody and, in conjunction with that, they imagine themselves doing manly or womanly things (whatever that would be).
but my parents come from the states of Utah and North Carolina—states where anything less than heterosexuality is held, in general, in disgust and contempt. Therefore, as a schizophrenic that could not venture out on his own: had this background made it feel too unsafe to be my true queer self—possibly even my transgender self? Is that why I never knew anything, like other people do? But what am i right now, with this knowledge, and this question in mind? The question, i think, is what i would be (granted both drug and alcohol free) if i were able to live somewhere, on my own? What if I lived with Ursula? Would I discover, to Ursula’s horror, that, now that I’m on my own, save Ursula, of course, I’m basically just in love with myself? And would that be a bad thing—other than leaving Ursula in the lurch?
To be fair to all that might or might not be interested in me, then, i do my best to leave all my options open, by stating, simply, that my sexuality could amount to nothing or anything or both—i honestly don’t know. Except I do know, at least for now: i like being a man, but the idea of being a woman is entertaining as long as I don’t lose my opportunity to be a man. Likewise, I like women, when, that is, I’m not under pressure to do anything, and I imagine myself—ideally, that is—being a man that, for all intents purposes, behaves like a woman—a kind of cross between a male homosexual and a woman. I have no interest, then, in getting an operation. That is out of the question—and completely frightening. What would I do with myself if I couldn’t be a man? I am a man. I am not a woman—even if, if i could, i might try to do both.
President Jack Daniels was beginning to frighten me. He was talking about using the military to control what happens in progressive cities—it’s no mystery that he was laying the groundwork to ensure an indefinite role as the President of the United States. There were all kinds of things wrong with him—just as there were all kinds of things wrong with the people that looked up to him because they wanted to be him—minus the extra weight and the rambling. It’s kind of funny how he says things as if he can almost make them real by saying them—and who knows, maybe he can! But when he says something like, “a lot of people would like a dictator,” he’s definitely trying to make it come true.
Ursula says that he thinks he’s a misunderstood genius of political science, if not one of the most influential men of all time—even if that hasn’t quite happened yet. But, I suppose, if he started a war with progressive American cities, he, in fact, as the author of civil war, albeit in localized, discrete locations, he might very well be one of the most influential people for at least a long while, since, honestly, something like that would have been unheard of when Jack ran for president the first time around. Incidentally, i think i’m a misunderstood genius, too—I always have, or, that is to say, I have always believed myself to be destined for great things, to be, like Jack, one of the most influential people of all time—so what does that say about me? Who’s company? Who, or what, are we, as a people, if everybody around us is misunderstood? What do I, for example, misunderstand? Because to me it seems like most people are cruel.