9.19.11

 
I guess the main purpose of this blog is to be honest; an attempt to be authentic and admit a range of both light and dark thought and emotion.

What is it about honesty that we perceive to be so liberating? Honesty can be terrifying, it can be incredibly unwelcome, it can be socially unacceptable; such a strange concept, even purely irrational in some cases.

What if you don't know whether you will be understood? Perhaps this is what constitutes authenticity - the ability to be honest despite your audience. Talk about terrifying: if honesty itself is challenging, authenticity seems like a naked stage-fright nightmare. Even as memories now arise and beg to be recorded, my mind fights back, "why would you ever reveal that?" I'm not entirely sure. Curious the phrase "in spite of yourself."

A friend of my mother's once caught me looking at a nude picture of Britney Spears.

Do I even dare tell you about this? My mind screams the contrary, it tells me that you will change the way you think about me and that that is a bad thing, the worst thing. It tells me that you will not understand, it begs me to avoid it. Or, if I can't avoid it, to at least explain it in such a way so as to show that I am not the same person as that twelve-year-old boy. "See!" it wants to say, "that was something bad, but now I've changed and am going to heaven. Judge me the way that I want you to!" Please don't, actually.

At the time, my room had a large window facing the patio and front yard of our house. My computer screen directly faced this window such that anyone approaching the front door could clearly see what I didn't want them to, unless the window was covered. This was the job of a large quilt my mother had fitted to the window to act as my pubescent stage curtain; different shades of diamond and trapezoidal pink that always seemed to me strongly Native American.

It was in the evening and I had grown bolder and bolder in my curiosity for the last couple of days. I remember thinking Britney Spears had the face of a goddess - some type of beauty that I couldn't really understand, and one that had some mysterious effect on me. As I think about it now, I am reminded of Marilyn Monroe: "goodbye Norma Jean, though I never knew you at all."

Why am I telling you this? You may be asking that question. I kind of hope you're asking that question and that the answer gives me an excuse to rethink what I'm doing. "Rethink" in this case meaning complete abandonment.

My face was close to the screen, close to Britney; close, I wanted to be close. I wanted; longed; she seemed so real, but frustratingly far away. There was a wall, some kind of wall; I willed myself to believe that it wasn't there, that all I had to do was get closer...break through the wall. The perfect curves of her body screamed to me in a language I did not understand, but wanted to; oh, how I wanted to speak that language, for her to know that I spoke it; for her to speak to me; to...

The doorbell rang.

"Delete that paragraph"

"What?"

"Delete the paragraph now."

"Shut up; you don't think this is hard enough?"

"Those emotions are inappropriate; admitting that you have ever felt that way is unforgivable. What are you, an animal? Some sick pervert? You are disgusting; why would you ever want to remember being so sub-human? If you don't delete that paragraph, you're no better than a sick dirty novelist."

"What's it to you? Maybe I am just a dirty novelist."

"People won't like you; they will judge you; it will hurt."

"What will hurt?"

"Being flawed. Being rejected."

"Maybe I am flawed."

"Well why the hell admit it to other people?"

I'm not entirely sure.

My hand shook almost uncontrollably as I clicked to close the browser window. I turned around to find that I had not drawn the quilt. I sprinted over to see who was at the door, my mother and Denise looked back at me, Denise was smiling in a giggling sort of way, my mom looked confused.

I had until after school the next day to think up what I thought to be a convincing lie. "It was in an email," I frantically told my mother, "my friend sent me an email and I didn't know what was in it; I didn't know that there would be a naked woman when I opened it!" I wept, terrified. I was scrambling to be believable, wanting with my entire soul for her to believe the lie, for me to believe it myself. Maybe it was just an email, right? Anything to avoid embarrassment. Sexual attraction was just something that happened to other people, right? That makes sense, I mean, it was those "other people" that had sent me the email.

"Other people" in this case meaning me.

What are we supposed to do with the emails we send ourselves? Trash? "Mark as spam"? Reply? Archive? "Mark as read"? "Add label"?

"Well, that depends on the nature of the email."

"Why?"

"Because some emails contain bad things."

"So, how about I just create a label called 'Bad things: Never feel again'?"

"Yes! Then you could set up your account so that bad emails were automatically archived! Then you'd never have to even see them in your inbox!"

"Sounds fantastic; a perfectly rational solution."

"Precisely! Wow! So, why haven't you tried this yet?"

I have.

I don't remember anything my mother said; I wish I did. Sometimes I kind of wish she had just cuffed me in the back of the head and told me to stop being a liar; to just be honest. Maybe she did. Would I have listened?

"They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name"