hi all. it's me, the author of this blog. like, the actual person. someone you know personally and know well.
i was talking with a friend's mother recently, a woman i've known for 17 years, about my writing. she brought it up. my friend had (incorrectly) told her that i was working on something and she wanted to know how it was going. we talked for a long while and i loved her unabashed questioning, loved the answers i was coming up with. there's something very special about the talking-to-a-childhood-friend's-mother-now-that-i'm-an-adult dynamic that could fill a whole separate story but i won't go there. the conversation finally turned to my mother and what my mother thought about my writing
"oh my mom doesn't read my writing. and i kind of hope she never will."
"well why is that?'
"because i tend to write about dark things. the parts of myself that aren't okay. and i think that reading about that would worry her and i don't want her to worry. because i actually am okay. i think."
"well what if you wrote something like an introduction? an introduction or a foreword, something that could frame what you're talking about and make it safe for her. safe for both of you."
this idea, or something quite like it, has come up a lot recently. the people who read this blog don't seem to see me in it. or who they see is discordant. so i feel compelled to write something, because i want to set some record straight but also because - like everyone else - my favorite subject is me.
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my initial impulse, the one i always have, is to write something in the vein of eminem's "criminal" intro. to reflect my egotism even 100x brighter, spray it in the face of whoever might be reading and then revel in the sour-milk-stomach reaction. if you don't get it then you don't get it and that's your problem.
but thinking a little longer, i realize that this isn't right. eminem's influence on my aesthetic is undeniable and miles-deep but - when i really think about it - i don't want to model my life after his. why not take a moment to behave more genuinely? except "genuine" is the wrong word, because i genuinely feel almost everything i write on here. why not take a moment to write in the voice of my real-life self? the person i project outwardly 99% of the time? (my immediate reaction is like, "why the fuck would i do that, i do that all the time this is my only space to be vile and selfish and broken and now you want to take that away from me?" but let's just go along with it for a minute)
i feel very alone. i feel that way often and i've felt it for a long time. i haven't been able to maintain many stable relationships through the years and the relationships i have had have always felt - for me - at least one degree away from "right" and not something i feel safe surrendering myself to. being vulnerable for. (there was one distinct exception to this rule which, when it went south, gutted me completely. i still cry about it at least once a week - hard, painful cries. but that's again another story.)
i often show people my humor. if they get a little closer, i show them my sweetness. closer still and i'll show them my weaknesses, the places where i've been hurt before. but none of this is what drives my loneliness. i have no real trauma, very little "bad" has happened to me from the outside. it's the shit on the inside that makes me feel alone - this wellhead of selfishness and perversion and ego, the things i keep writing about. i am better than everyone. people are sex objects. i will betray anyone to serve myself. these are the flashes that come to me. they are honest and unconscious. i am genuinely afraid of them. why does my head work this way? why am i so different than everyone else? why can't i get close to people?
the wellhead. it's something that i'm sorry about but not something that i want to hide. it's a part of me and it always has been. i've done lots of work to remove its influence from my day-to-day self and from my interactions with others but that doesn't mean it's gone. that it doesn't need somewhere to go. and that bring us to this blog.
if you're reading this it's too late. we've either slept together or we've been friends since high school. and yet. i want you to know that by looking through this blog you're only looking at my relief valve (writing in my journal doesn't work. it doesn't sooth me unless i know someone else might see it). this blog isn't me. if you're getting to know me by binge-reading these posts - you're going to get a very wrong picture. if we're having a fight and you read this blog to reinforce your impression that i'm a bad dude - that's not fair to me and it hurts my feelings. if we haven't talked in years but you're still checking this URL (ahem) - please know this isn't me. or at least not the whole me. not even most of me. i maybe hoped everyone would know this intuitively but that doesn't seem to be the case.
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wow. it feels cathartic maybe, to write in my own voice. this is the longest piece of writing i've produced in a while. i know it was meandering. and self-centered. and almost nobody will read it. and for the ones that do read it it will probably have the exact opposite effect that i'm intending BUT. it feels good man. i'm going to go skateboarding now, before i run out of light.
tms
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