The Ghost and the Machine

The Ghost and the Machine

Identifying Lockean Problems Through Science Fiction

John Locke’s empiricism explores a number of notions on identity that may not be as fleshed out as one might hope. Many other philosophers have attempted to clean up untidy ends, while others pull at the loose strings to unravel his ideas even further. One of the key points foundational to his system is the parsing out of various types of being. He offers accounts for what  he believes constitutes identity over time for vegetables, animals, men, and persons. His division between “man” and “person” is perhaps one of the trickiest and most important concepts, a space in which many debates rightfully take place. In order to examine and intellectually test the implications of Locke’s system, one must engage in thought experiments that defy conventional laws of nature. There is no better arena to explore these notions than science fiction. This paper will examine Locke’s notions by discussing the conceptual integrity of identity through John Crichton’s “twinning” in the television show Farscape and the process of teleportation in Star Trek.

In order to rigorously examine these experiments, some criteria must be determined to establish on what identity can be based. Vegetables, the simplest changing life forms, require material organization that allows for the change from one form – such as a seed – to another – a tree. It must also have a story of continuity, a “continuity of insensibly succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant” (Locke, 210). Animals are a step up the chain in that they possess perceptive abilities. Man possesses the capabilities of the “lower” forms, but not much more than that – Locke discusses the possibility for a soul, but assigns no empirical value to it. The identity of man is judged by his place in space and time, so there must be spacio-temporal consistency, just as with the vegetable and animal. These notions combined can be discussed as part of bodily continuity theory.

Alternately, there must be psychological continuity theory. In this, Locke explains the nature of identity for the person, a very different organized being than man. The person is the conscious, perceptive being that can reflect upon his self. The primary identifier of the continuity of consciousness is memory, the self’s ability to maintain a personal story connected through time. This is where the ground becomes shaky, as memory is a deeply unstable notion. Harold Noonan states “if memory and consciousness are together regarded as logically necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity then forgetfulness ensures the loss of, or an interruption in, personal identity, and this is surely implausible. That is, it is implausible to hold that my past identity as a person should depend on the present vagaries of my memory” (173). Another concern is that “Memory could not be logically sufficient for continued personal identity because memory is only ever partial, what is remembered is only ever a subset of what the individual was actually conscious of at the time that is remembered” (Helm, 184). However, for the sake of argument, it can be said that memory acts as an imperfect informant from one period of time in a person’s life to the next. This imperfection should in no way undo Locke’s entire project, but does allow for many reasonable challenges.

With this framework established, the boundaries must be tested. Under the restrictions of this rather humdrum universe, there are seldom significant outliers to the traditional human experience which shed light on the “normal” notions of identity. Mental illness can offer some perspective, especially those individuals afflicted by multiple personality disorders, persistent vegetative states, or fugue states. These human organisms do not properly synch with the expected one-to-one ratio of man to person. However, Locke has provided at least some answers to these cases. The truly difficult cases lie in speculative fiction. These thought experiments allow for hypothetical conclusions to be drawn from a variety of interesting – if unlikely – situations. Through these reflective exercises, Locke is put through his paces to see just how well he would hold up in the case of unlikely situations.

The first unlikely situation is pulled from the science fiction television show Farscape. At a certain point, the main character, John Crichton, is subjected to a process called “twinning.” It is described as “the splitting of Crichton into two identical beings; neither of the Crichtons can be called a copy and neither is the original; they are both equally John Crichton” (“John Crichton”). This is an example of a hypothetical situation referred to by Sydney Shoemaker as “branching.”

The very instant that Crichton experiences fission, there seem to be two versions of the John Crichton. Both have equal, legitimate claim to be called Crichton in the historical sense of identity through memory and retrolineal spatio-temporal continuity. However, from that point on, they are both experiencing different subjective realities and, as such, each can only be referred to as a John Crichton. Crichton A and Crichton 1, named so for the purposes of this paper, experience almost all forms of continuity required to maintain personal identity as John Crichton. Each is thereafter exposed to different environmental and interpersonal stimuli, resulting in slowly diverging behavior patterns, which would also fit rather well with Locke’s notions of tabula rasa and its implications for the empirical development of identity. This is a source of great distress for the Crichtons, as each one considers himself to be the original and the other to be a usurping pretender.

Paul Helm would not agree that either have a legitimate claim to Crichtonhood, saying “Given Locke's criterion of identity no divided consciousness could be identical with the undivided consciousness since there is another consciousness spatio-temporally continuous with the original but distinct from the other consciousness... Locke's criterion of identity seems to require us to say that upon division the original consciousness went out of existence” (183). Helm argues that a consciousness must be connected with itself forward through time, not simply backwards through memory, in order to maintain continuous personhood.

In his discussion on the identity of vegetables, Locke states that a plant must exist as organized matter “constantly from that moment both forwards and backwards” to be considered the same plant (210). This also applies to both animals and men, but not necessarily to the person. Locke says of person that “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (211). It must then be the case that, at least to John Locke, John Crichton the man died the moment he was divided, though Crichton the person could arguably have lived on in the forms of Crichton A and Crichton 1. Bodily continuity is destroyed while psychological continuity diverges into two persons growing ever more unique.

The other hypothetical situation is the concept of identity and the use of transporter technology from the classic show Star Trek. As a means of near-instantaneous long distance teleportation, a transporter dematerializes an individual and rematerializes him or her at another location. This is a process of total destruction and recreation, as a person’s being cannot be physically transmitted through space. This concept is very similar to Sydney Shoemaker’s hypothetical “brain state transfer” procedure, in which “Precise details of your brain states will be recorded and then, simultaneously, your entire body will be destroyed and, in another location, exact duplicates of your brain states will be implemented in the blank brain of a body previously cloned from you” (Naylor, 390). In the case of Star Trek, an exact duplicate of one’s body is also created. On the show, characters are portrayed as calmly being atomically destroyed and remade with seemingly no disorientation or discomfort.

From the Lockean stance, a few problems arise here. First and foremost, there is not just a gap in memory (as a night of drinking may produce), but a momentary gap in existence. For at least a few seconds, there is no Captain Kirk. His position in spacio-temporal continuity ceases entirely. This would eliminate the possibility for bodily continuity outright. Captain Kirk the man must no longer exist. Thus it remains, does Captain Kirk the person persist?

Andrew Naylor does not believe he does. Returning to the brain state transfer procedure example, a new clone “would not be you according to a properly formulated psychological continuity theory [because] the psychological states of the clone would date not from any times prior to the onset of the operation of the BST-device, but only from the time at which the device structured the brain states in which those psycho logical states are realized” (390). Naylor believes that the memory of doing a certain action, e.g. making out with a hot alien, must have been generated during the act of getting down with said alien.

While this may hold sway with the bodily continuity theorists, it does not seem to refute psychological continuity. It shouldn’t matter when the memories were created in the “new” mind. A strict empiricist should realize that it makes no difference that memories are newly instantiated in the mind – memories are not required to have developed immediately responding to external stimuli. One can never verify the inception of a memory empirically as it is impossible to return to the original stimuli to experience the memory being created. The knowledge of the development of memories itself lies in memory and is therefore hazy at best. The true empiricist should recognize that the only requirement is that the memory can be recalled. The only sensation that is able to be recognized is the immediate sensation of the act of remembering. One cannot verify the age of a memory, only place it within a temporal context relating to other memories. As such, memories are only situated relationally – they don’t come with fixed time stamps. The personal identity, the thinking, sensing mind that extends backwards to past actions must remain if the person carries with him or her the narrative of collected life events. Strictly speaking, the age of particular memories have no empirical value and should not could. This implies that the person persists, albeit with a fresh new man after every away mission.

Consciousness is constantly being interrupted, usually on a daily basis. Sleep interrupts personal continuity, and yet the person persists. Locke says “Socrates waking and sleeping are not the same person” (213), showing that these gaps in personhood are rather quotidian. Identities are continual, not continuous, and this is a source of no small anxiety for individuals and societies. People use connective narratives – “I was asleep/drunk/temporarily insane” – to avoid having to confront the possibility that, for at least one evening, they did not exist as the discrete individuals they claim to be. Over the course of a nap, a person ceases to exist, which can be a very troubling notion. The truth is not in the details for Locke, but in the overarching trends, just like identity. Each person is a chaotic advancement through time, not some imperious, unbroken line. While his system is in no way unimpeachable, it certainly offers a greater account for the unavoidable Heraclitean flux that people seem to experience as a necessary part of daily life.

Works Cited

Helm, Paul. “Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity.” Philosophy, Vol. 54, No. 208 (Apr., 1979): 173-185. JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

“John Crichton.” Farscape Encyclopedia Project. Farscape Encyclopedia Project. 2014. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

Locke, John. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” Modern Philosophy.” Ed. F. E. Baird and W. Kauffman.4^th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. 173-239. Print.

Naylor, Andrew. “Personal Identity Un-Locke-Ed.” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Oct., 2008): 387-396. JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

Noonan, Harold. “Locke on Personal Identity.” Philosophy, Vol. 53, No. 205 (Jul., 1978): 343-351. JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

Yum

@ and & met in a room, shades half-drawn. Blue dusk colored the world. Their bodies took on a velvet softness in the light as they fumbled through disrobing. Their mouths pushed together, breaking only for increasingly labored breath. They spilled onto the bed, entwined, a gravity pulling them toward something inescapable. They each breathed in the smell of the other, fingers curling in hair.

They came apart to stare at each other. All was darkening shades of blue. @’s lips parted with the need of a kiss, but & would not return it yet. & moved its mouth down @’s neck, scraping its teeth on shuddering flesh. A hand on a throat, gentle, but with the promise of mastery.

@ raised its arms above its head, arching its back. Pillows fell from the bed. Vanilla and salt on the tongue. @ could not move. The explosion inside was burning through its cracks, shutting it down. “Let go,” & whispered.  @ forced itself to release, unclenching its muscles. The furnace burning inside raged. The pounding of blood in their ears filled their heads, and the scent of sorrow-turned-hunger stained the bed.

“Trust me.” & unhinged its jaws. It wrapped its hands around @’s thighs and bit deep into its hip. @ moaned, feeling like it was pierced with sugar and silk. @ licked its lips as & swallowed the flesh and moved upwards. Sticky sweetness welled up in the teeth marks and slicked the sheets, as blue as all the rest. At @’s side, & stopped to wipe its mouth. For @, there was no feeling of separation, no incompleteness. It was whole but collocated, lying in bed and burning inside &’s throat.

& returned to chewing its way up @’s core, breathing heavily through its nose, taking in all of @. Having consumed up to the breast, & started biting into the neck. “Breathe,” & said. @ complied, now too overwhelmed to be able to rely on instinct to control necessary functions.

They pulled each other close as flesh gave way. A surge from @’s chest took root in &’s and the bodies bridged. Separation slowly eroded. Pockets of individuation sparked and were dissolved into unity. Their foreheads pressed together trying to, by physical force alone, manifest pure, unclouded understanding. They were sinking into the morass of each other, held by an unshakeable certainty of need. Pressing their final kiss into each other’s lips, their mouths shattered into one, each breaking bone a scream of joy.

At the end, they were compressed under the weight of their longing. Having become singular, they lost form and substance, ending in blackness.

As the red light of dawn painted the room, their eyes locked. Whole, separate, defined, they knew aching again.

“I don't think sex can ever actually be portrayed – the sensations and the emotions are... beyond language. If you only describe the mechanics, the effect is either clinical or pornographic, and if you try to describe intimacy instead, you wind up with abstractions.” Alice Elliott Dark – “In the Gloaming”

Some of the best sex I have ever read is from Clive Barker’s Imajica, because there is no pretense of realism. This is an attempt of mine to concretize the abstract so as to avoid entirely the mechanistic boredom of the act of sex. The act is immaterial – it is only the emotional that is valuable. To turn the emotional into the tangible without the limits of space, anatomy, and causality is the only way to begin to touch what sex truly is. Sex doesn’t need gender, and it doesn’t need identity. It needs you.

Sedona

There were a lot of factors that led us to Sedona and that informed what happened there. We had been in Mountain Rest, South Carolina, a nowhere little place near Walhalla, a slightly larger nowhere place. It was my junior year of high school.

Both my mom and I had been diagnosed, accurately or not, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In either case, it could as easily have been depression. My mom wouldn’t leave her bed for days except to sneak to the bathroom when no one was looking. When she did interact with us, it was in short, emotionally unhinged bursts. She mixed up her words constantly, I ended up being her translator.

 I was allowed a medical leave from school, during which I spent about six hours a week with a teacher who gave me my assignments and tried to tutor me as well as possible in the short time. Surprisingly, I still managed all A’s and B’s, even in AP courses. The rest of the time, I slept, usually about fourteen to sixteen hours a day.

I didn’t really have friends there, except for my ex-girlfriend Cindy. She was probably the best relationship of my youth, but during the convergence of multiple personal crises, I pushed her away to reduce my dependence on her. It didn’t work.

My step-dad was getting increasingly resentful of the burden of supporting my mother. She became a ghost; a fat, pale, gibberish-spouting mess of a ghost. He was commuting two hours one-way to Greenville for work, and when he got home, mom would be shut up in her room. I’d be left alone with him and his bitterness. Denied the life he thought he would have, he drank. He drank and he yelled while mom hid.

Mom saw psychics. She was so desperate to have some hope, no matter how ephemeral, that she funneled money into the pockets of those egotistical, crazy, or manipulative enough to bill themselves as seers of the future. They saw right through her, that’s true enough. She brought me along, and shit but that made her an easy mark. What do you tell a hopeless woman who is very clearly obsessed with her son? Tell her the son is destined for greatness. Tell her that he’s an angel incarnate, fated to help guide humanity into a new era. She’ll have meaning by proxy, and it’s so much more believable because it doesn’t feel as arrogant. The kid will be just as convinced because he is alienated and suicidal and wants any measure of hope that he might actually matter some day. Win-win, if you can forgive that it’s all bullshit.

It was from one of these psychics that mom first heard the name Sedona, Arizona.”It’s got seven energy vortexes!” she told me, having just learned what vortexes supposedly were. Deeply dissatisfied with life and about to reap the benefits of a class action lawsuit, it was time to move again. My step-dad would stay behind and continue working, sending money to my mom while he slept in his car.

So, with our usual lack of any sort of plan, mom cashed a $10,000 check, put the bulk of our shit in storage, and we got in our truck and headed west. We drove for five days to a place we’d only heard of a few months before, because anything would have been better than where we had been.

One of the psychics had hooked us up with a woman who would rent us a room until we found a place. Two months sharing a room with my already cloying mother. But we started meeting people and my mom started to do things. Without me. It was great.

I started feeling better, too. Could have been those vortexes (vortices, if you aren’t all New Agey). More likely, I was out of range of my step-dad’s rage and was no longer my mother’s sole emotional connection in the world. I also made a few friends. I had been moving towards the goth scene a bit, but this was before the Internet was big and I didn’t have a lot of role models that I could examine. Pretty much what I had was The Crow and Marilyn Manson until I was able to dive deeper. But I actually met some other people who were going through their own self-discovery and I felt like I kind of fit. Of course I was the new kid like always, but I actually felt like I had more than one friend for the first time in a long time.

We got our own place after a month or two and I was going back to school full-time. Vortexes. Or maybe not wanting to kill myself, which was so surprising as to be a giddy sensation. It didn’t last long.

After about five months or so, shit took a nosedive. My step-dad had continued to work in South Carolina and live in the back of his truck. I hadn’t asked many details as he was a miserable fuck who, almost a continent away, was still too close to my life. He must have hit a wall in his desire to function. He got busted on a DUI and spent a few days in jail. Lost his job because of it, or so he said. He was driving out west.

I stopped eating.

I didn’t eat for the next few months, taking in all of my nutrients with Mt. Dew and caffeine pills that I stole.

The money from the lawsuit was nearly gone and the financial lifeline my step-dad had provided had dried up. Mom hadn’t gotten a job because Reasons. So the bastard joined us and I started unraveling.

Thankfully, I had people I could retreat to. I fled to my friend’s houses when I could. I became a burden, but I couldn't stop myself. I got a job at a TCBY and worked as much as I could while being underage. At 16, I was the only one in my house drawing a paycheck. Food started getting scarce. My mom made me call up my dad to see if I could get my birthday money a few months early so we could pay rent.

My mom got arrested for a bounced check my step-dad wrote.

My step-dad went to my friend Matt, a 16 year-old kid, and asked him if he could borrow $900 dollars to pay off the debt. Matt had been saving for a while at the insistence of his parents, and my step-dad had known about it somehow. Matt gave it to him, unbeknownst to me. I don’t know if his parents knew, either. I couldn’t bring myself to ever ask.

Not long afterwards, I was downstairs reading when my step-dad said, with the nonchalance of a mortician, that I should talk with my mom.

I went upstairs to her bedroom and she was lying in bed – she’d gotten back in the habit pretty hard. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but she tried to tell me as calmly as possible that she was going to kill herself. She said that she was going to sit in the car in the closed garage and end her life because she couldn’t take the failure any more.

We hadn’t had any food but condiments in the house for a few days. Seeing someone eat peanut butter with a spoon still makes my stomach churn. I hadn’t told anyone that I had started stealing what little food I ate from convenience stores or work. Mom and my step-dad had applied for emergency financial aid and got something like $200 once, but whether they just didn’t know where to go to help or they weren’t eligible for some reason, we had nothing left and mom was giving up.

I panicked. My innate, animal dependency on my parent kicked in and I did whatever I could to save her so she could maybe someday get around to raising me. My step-dad sat on the edge of her bed, saying fuck all, looking more bored than anything. I knew that I was responsible for keeping her alive. I knew that if she died, it would be my fault for not stopping her. I flailed for answers, crying and pleading. “If you kill yourself, I will, too” I lied, hoping that that image would stop her. It eventually did, but I would pay for saying that for years to come.

When we were finally evicted from our apartment, we lived out of our car but were able to crash at a friend’s house for a while. My mom begged her family for help, but no dice.

One day, my step-dad announced that he was leaving. He decided he was going to his mother’s in North Carolina and fucked promptly off. Not quite a “going out for cigarettes” event, but close enough. That was that. Never saw him again, may he rot.

Finally, my aunt Sally came through for us. We had an out. We just had to wait for some funds to sort out and we could go.

I was used to moving and not having more than maybe one person give a shit, so much so that I was completely surprised when my friends threw me a going away party. I tried like hell to not cry the entire time. Matt, Gretchen, Mattie, and Michael – their faces stick out to me profoundly. They were the icons of an era of my life, while I merely wandered through theirs. That is the curse of the new kid – always feeling that you remembered people more than they remembered you. It happened every place I went, all through my childhood up through New College. I was transient, temporary, while they were fixed points in my life.

Today Facebook allows for that slight tethering, just enough for me to be proud of how beautiful and adult and happy they all seem now. Except for Matt. I don’t know what happened to Matt. My asshole parents never paid him back, as far as I know. I don’t know if he is angry or not, or where he is, or anything at all. I’ve been too afraid to ask.

It’s a weird time, between a going away party and the actual going away, especially if that going away keeps getting delayed. Much needed closure almost prohibits further interaction, but I wasn’t really in a fit state to interact. In addition to not eating, I had stopped sleeping but for maybe two to three hours every other day for the last couple of weeks before we left Sedona. The place we were crashing at was like a halfway house for cultists and conspiracy theorists. I met a guy who had been in Heaven’s Gate, but had been kicked out before the mass suicide. He said he felt like he’d missed his one great chance for living a real life. I could relate.

But then we left. We left the most beautiful place I have ever laid eyes on, the place that had hosted one of my greatest trials. We were saved, at least temporarily. That chapter was closed.

Coping

“Tasteless” and “offensive” are sort of part and parcel of how I communicate. I try to make it funny, and sometimes I try to make it valuable. This will invariably be hit or miss. I’ve taken a  lot of shit from people for my defense of dark humor, and, to a degree, I haven't enjoyed losing the esteem that those people may have held me in. But this is me, and I don’t feel like I have a choice in being me.

I’ve been through too much to face life head-on. I just can’t. I don’t have it in me.

I feel like the only option that I have left is to come at life sideways through humor. I use jokes to defang the things waiting in the darkness.  

I’m sickened and terrified by rape.

I’m sickened and terrified by murder.

I’m sickened and terrified by suicide.

I’m sickened and terrified by hatred.

So I make fun of these things to try to chip away at their enormity. And not just about the concepts in general, but the damages done specifically to me. I joke about having gone hungry, about having been homeless. I joke about the fact that my mom shot herself in the head. I joke about the fact that my small body was subjected to the unstoppable hands of predators. I joke about the fact that I was abused in every way possible by people who were supposed to love me. I joke about being rendered less than a man by a crippling infirmity.

Therapy can only help so much. It helps you to find your own coping mechanisms. I have found mine. To people who don’t know me well, it can seem callous or sophomoric. It can be caustic and uncomfortable, which I suppose it is, and it can conflict with others’ coping mechanisms.

So be it.

This is what I’ve got. I’ve got a shitty, crass, foul-mouthed demeanor and I admit who I am. Hell, sometimes I even come close to liking who I am. My intentions are not to harm. My intentions are almost always to amuse. Few things in life give me the high of making someone laugh; truly, deeply laugh, especially at something frightening. The rest of the time, my intentions are to enlighten, because I’m pedantic and arrogant enough to think that I might have some wisdom to share (the desire to teach is an innately arrogant thing). Either way, what I want is to make the world better, or at least maybe easier, strange though that may seem. This isn’t always accomplished by Reader’s Digest saccharine wholesomeness. Sometimes helping requires a sharp edge.

I don’t take my suffering as free license to abuse others, no. I don’t attack anyone, and I do not invade another’s intellectual space to start stirring up shit. I keep to my own soapboxes to shout my profanities. Every reader always has the choice to roll their eyes and keep scrolling, or to terminate our friendship entirely. So it goes.

What I'm not doing is I'm not apologizing. I'm not saying how I act is right. I'm not saying it's righteous. What I am saying is that it is inevitable. If this seems terrible to you, then I guess we won’t see eye-to-eye, and that may be the demise of our relationship. Denying me my coping methods would only compound the damages already done to me and I can't afford to let anyone do that. my grasp is too tenuous. If you don’t like what I say, you have the freedom to ignore me or to walk away. I won’t blame you.

But I might call you a cum-rag.

(I might call you that if we stay friends, too.)

---Meant with genuine love---

Warning Label

The past three weeks have been profoundly challenging. The pain has escalated so much, and with so many sudden spikes, that I have mentally retreated from the world as much as possible. 

I am emotionally unstable. It feels like the door to my happy place, whatever that is, has been barred. Not a minute goes by that I don't remember that I am in pain and that I have been in pain for seven years straight without a day of rest.

It has gotten Bad.

I'm not saying this for pity or sympathy. I am saying this because a wounded animal is a dangerous animal. It is a struggle to mitigate how much I want to lash out, and anyone in my sphere is at risk. I feel I have kept myself in check, but I want this to preemptively explain my behavior. No matter what I am going through though, I am still accountable for my actions, which is something so many people forget. My trials do not entitle me to be selfish. 

I want to go out. I need a good time. I simply can't bring myself to get out of bed for anything but an obligation. 

Even opening up about this is hard, which is a rarity for me. I'm not even sure that I want to engage people about the topic. Talking about it makes me think about it more, and there is nothing any of you can do for me. It simply felt unhealthy to keep this in for so long, as I have been in some serious depths. 

As for my plan, I intend to try like hell to stay distracted and to just keep plodding on.

Open Letter to David Shore, Creator of House, M.D.

What do you do when you suddenly find yourself a cripple? What prepares you for that? How do you let your life change around you and still hold on to the illusion of control?

February of 2007, the pain started. To say the least, I wasn’t ready for it.

There are no classes in dealing with what happened to me. There are probably support groups for the newly broken, but I never learned of them. Who could I look to in order to navigate this complete shift in my life?

I’m an American, so I could only look to television.

Every handicapped person on television is a fucking champion. Every last one of them has a huge smile and a can-do attitude. They sit in their wheelchairs and play basketball like goddamn pros, proving that the world will never get them down, that limitations are all in the mind. If they do experience hardship, they’re only a montage away from becoming well-adjusted and whole; one short sequence of grimaces during physical therapy, finding new ways to reach the top shelf in their kitchen, and suddenly our hero is the little cripple that could. Every single one of them seems indomitable.

I did not feel indomitable.

I felt highly fucking domitable.

After only a few months, I felt my brave face slipping. Shit started getting real. Really real. Time after time, doctors told me that they didn’t know what was wrong and it felt like a fresh piece of me was lost. My emotional stability was eroding and I simply didn’t know how to cope. Not one of these goddamned heroes on TV had any answers for me. They exemplified these ridiculous standards of bravery and composure that I simply couldn’t maintain. They were like the happy, smiling black people; the ones that comfort an audience by showing that, hey, that guy is having a good go of life, surely there aren’t any problems we need to deal with. These angels on crutches were the model minorities made to comfort the masses. They are made to seem happy and totally fucking fine, because disabled people are frightening reminders that at any passing moment, you can suddenly find yourself one (like I did!)

I whined. I cried. I snapped at people. I wished my pain on others. I began to hate people who took their bodies for granted. I withdrew from people who were close to me. I stopped going out. I started becoming a boring recluse. Every event had to become planned, every outing plotted and considered. Bar crawl? Anything with the word “crawl” in it went right out the fucking window.Then there were the pills and everything they did to me.

Everything they do to me.

I grieved for the life I had thought I would have as I slowly came to realize that unrelenting pain was my new normal. It would be with me, as far as anyone could say, for the rest of my life. It became A Fact.

Then I start watching House, M.D. Here was a brilliant man who suddenly found himself broken and was dealing with it just about as poorly as I was. It helped that our afflictions were almost identical, though from different causes. For the first time, I started feeling like maybe I wasn’t a shitty, weak wuss who couldn’t effortlessly tap into the irrepressibility of the human spirit to surmount every challenge I faced. Maybe it was okay that I sucked at being a cripple.

The story arch in which he has the Ketamine procedure and the pain goes away for a while hurt to watch. There is a scene in which he’s running on the treadmill, trying to power through the return of his pain, and it’s getting more and more apparent that his relief was just temporary – I fucking bawled.

The episode in which he makes a big deal about going on vacation to Vancouver Island, just to spend a week alone on his couch with his Vicodin without anyone calling – God, I fucking get that. Why hassle with striving against your limitations just so you can get a photo or three? Better to slump into the furniture that you know you can find some kind of okay position in and stay there for as long as possible.

His anger, his bitterness, his frailty – I needed it like nothing I’d ever needed in my life before.

House was the one realistic representative that I got in the media, but he was the only one I needed. 

He saved my fucking life.

No Shame. Never Shame.

People have occasionally told me that I am a bit flippant about how I discuss having been sexually abused. I guess people think that it’s odd that I don’t try to hide the fact that I was sexually victimized. No one else tries to hide it when they’re victimized in other ways, though. I don’t know of anyone who covers up that they were physically assaulted or robbed or defrauded. No one feels shame in saying that some asshole broke into their car or stole their wallet.

That must be the magic word, though: shame.

I don’t feel shame about having been sexually victimized because it wasn’t my fucking fault. I did nothing wrong. I was the victim of a crime, just like any other victim, and I refuse to hide it. It might make people feel uncomfortable for me to be so frank about the situation. It might make some people view me as damaged goods. Fun fact: I am. But you would know that whether I was hiding shit or not.

If I speak openly about my abuse, others might realize they need not feel shame. At that point, healing can happen. The more often people speak out about their experiences, the less afraid they have to be.

I’m not over-sharing, I’m showing others it’s fine to speak up. If you can’t handle hearing about something bad happening to me, you aren’t my friend. If you like me less because I’ve been the victim of sexual assault, you aren’t anyone’s friend.

A crime that happened to me sucks, and it affects me, but it’s no source of shame and it’s nothing to hide. That’s a change that really needs to be made. It’s not as simple as blaming “Rape Culture,” because rape culture is a symptom of an ingrained desire to victim-blame, no matter what the crime. It’s the innate response called counterfactual thinking, and it’s going to happen; it’s a coping mechanism.

What we’re doing is trying to imagine a world in which bad shit doesn’t happen, basically saying that if we had done A differently, Bad Thing B wouldn’t have happened. Example: I once left a Discman sitting on the passenger seat of my car, and someone smashed my window apart to steal it. What did everyone say? “Shouldn’t have left your Discman on the seat.” Not “that guy shouldn’t have stolen it from you,” because criminals are criminals. No, what they were doing was offering what they thought was advice so it wouldn’t happen again, and trying to reaffirm that the world is a controllable, predictable place. It’s our stupid way of trying to feel in control. Our duty is to not let this override good judgment and to realize that our coping mechanism can sound pretty shitty when we don’t frame it right, especially with emotionally raw issues like the violation of sexual abuse.

There is nothing anyone can say that will make me think that what happened was my fault. I’m not ashamed of my past, and I’m not afraid of it. It’s there and it’s real, but so is my future, and that is far more important to me. 

Outcast

It was April of 1992. I was just entering my fourth school in two years, two each for fifth grade and sixth. Oakcrest Elementary in Pensacola, FL, Brevard Elementary in Brevard, NC, Fletcher Elementary in Hendersonville, NC, Hughes Middle School in Greenville, SC. No friends, no roots, no support.

Hughes was the worst. Figures it would be the school I spent more time at than any other in my life. It was a class divided. About half of the kids were the children of successful white business people. The school was less than two miles from the 10^th hardest par golf course in America, Chanticleer. On the other side of the school was a very depressed collection of houses, a place of rotting porches, domestic violence, and frequent house fires. From here came the other half of the school’s population, the poor black kids. They at least had strong community ties and all seemed to be friends, huddling together against the oppressive reminder of inequality.

Right between those two halves was a tiny sliver of outcasts, the poor whites. There were a few of us. We were ostracized by the rich white kids, and therefore easy targets of the aggression of the poor black kids. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they were the only people I could sit with at lunch.

I fucking hated them.

They were constant reminders of my solitude. The only thing we had in common was our place in the caste system. Might as well have been lepers.

One I hated more than the rest was Seth. He was this skinny ginger kid who smelled of fried food and his mom’s cigarettes. He was even lower on the totem pole than me – people didn’t like me, but they didn’t really hate me. Everyone hated Seth, and he seemed kind of okay with it. We rode the same bus, but different stops. Of course all of the pariahs rode my bus, we all lived in the same shitty neighborhood.

One day, Seth pushed me over the line. We were sitting across from each other at the lunch table after we had finished eating. I was reading Stephen King’s Tommyknockers, but was about to put it away to return to class. I looked up at him and our eyes met. He smiled and sneezed right in my face. I was always a fastidious kid, and this was an all out assault. I whipped my thick paperback across his face. Ms. Leiffer only saw that last part and I was given detention for the next day. Seth smiled as he walked behind the teacher and went about his day.

The bus ride home was tense. Randy, the fat kid (every school had one then, there seem to be more now), kept whispering at me, “You gonna take that?” Everyone loved a fight.

I got off at Seth’s stop. He wasn’t smiling anymore. A couple of other kids got off, too, also not their usual stop. It wasn’t a far walk for any of us, totally worth it to witness what they hoped to be an epic ass kicking.

I walked behind the frail little prick, pushing him in his cheap plastic backpack, trying to get him to stop and face me. He was silent. Shit, as they say, had gotten real, and he wasn’t smiling any more. I kept at him, knowing we only had a block until he could escape into his home to hide behind his notoriously litigious mother. I didn’t care if she sued my parents, we had nothing anyway. Finally, I kicked his right foot so that it caught on his left and he tripped. I could vaguely hear whoops from the onlookers, but they faded into the back. I was so mad at his affront. This little shit had the audacity to strike at me, his better. I was lower than basically everyone, but not him. How dare he?

I turned him over and he tried to ball up. I stood over him and did my best to punch him in the head a few times, but I was eleven years old and was not in the habit of punching people. It was pathetic, a thoroughly stoppable force striking a fully moveable object. After some time, hard to say how long, I was satisfied that he looked sufficiently frightened. Then, trying my best to block out the sun, I stood over him and gravely spit in his face. He took it with a sort of depressing aplomb. I turned away to walk home, trying like hell to not cry. It was a while before I heard him getting up. I turned around to walk backwards so I could face him, to stare at him to make the indignity last. He had no expression on his face at all.

Just another day.

On Confidence

Money does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know a poor person who has it.

Good looks do not give you confidence.

            You know this because you know an unattractive person who has it.

Intelligence does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know a dumb person who has it.

Accomplishment does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know an do-nothing who has it.

All of these things may give you self-esteem, but self-esteem and confidence are not the same things at all. There are rich, good-looking, intelligent, and accomplished people who are not confident at all, though a casual observer can’t understand why. It is because confidence is an attribute, not a byproduct.

Confidence isn’t something you receive, it’s an image you choose to portray.

How do you choose to act confidently? Fake it. Much like swimming, if you’re going through the motions, you are ACTUALLY doing it.

On Being Goth

Genesis

I’m a goth. We are a dramatic breed. We’re a bit defiant of convention, and we love to play dress-up.  We also have a certain flexibility when it comes to traditional gender roles. This has informed my love of wearing makeup and women’s clothing. I don’t mean smart pant-suits or sundresses.  In fact, there is nothing feminine about the clothing when I wear it. I can put on a full-length, flowing black skirt and change it from elegant to intimidating. I put on dark eye-shadow and become someone else, someone darker, someone unafraid. I can move outside of myself by embracing different looks and, in a way, personas.

My unconventional aesthetic desires started manifesting around when I started my junior year of high school. It was 1996. I had recently bought my first Marilyn Manson album, and was amazed by how the band members all looked so bizarre and so interesting. The Crow movies had come out, and I thought the male main characters looked badass in their makeup, so why couldn’t I? Before seeing these guys wearing their makeup, it never occurred to me that it was something that a male was allowed to do, like it might even be against some law somewhere. However, it seemed that American culture was moving to a place where, while it wasn’t ordinary, it was less extraordinary to see a guy in makeup.

My problem was that, at the time, I was going to school in Walhalla, South Carolina. The town was only a few minutes from the Chatooga River, famous for being the river Deliverance was filmed on. The closest shopping mall was over an hour and a half away. It was the kind of rural town where you did your shopping at the combination pizza place/video rental/convenience store – not exactly a hotspot of progressivism.

I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was something so banal as a cry for attention. Maybe it was because I was so disgusted with my life and the status quo. Or maybe it was just because I had discovered that I appreciated a different aesthetic. Whatever it was, I acted.

During one otherwise average lunch period, I noticed my ex-girlfriend Cindy reapplying her makeup. It was near the end of the period, and the clatter of hard plastic trays had given way to the excited chatter of children who thought they were adults.

“Can I borrow that?” I asked. She was a bit of a hellion, so with a shit-eating grin, she gladly gave me her black eyeliner, black lipstick, and compact. I snapped her compact open and used the tiny, powder-dusted mirror to draw my eyeliner on. I jabbed myself in the eye a bit, but I muddled through. I managed the lipstick slightly better – I had at least had some experience with lip balm to fall back on. When I was done, I looked up, not realizing the effects of my poorly-planned makeover.

The entire lunchroom had gone quiet, and everyone was staring at me and talking in hushed voices among themselves. I really wish I was making this up or exaggerating. This kid Chad, a ginger football player, actually fell over one of the plastic chairs trying to get a better look at me. I immediately regretted my decision, but refused to show it. I joked with Cindy for a minute, trying to appear nonchalant. The other kids eventually started talking to each other again, and after a few minutes I hurried to the bathroom to take the makeup off.

I sat in my next class almost shaking with adrenaline. The other kids who had shared the lunch period with me were grilling me, asking me “Why?” All I could respond with was “Why not?” Still, I felt as if I had broken some cosmic rule. It’s just not something that boys do. How was I able to say “Fuck it,” and how was no one else able to? Was something wrong with me? Was something right with me?

About halfway through the class period, a senior I didn’t know showed up at the door and handed my teacher a note. Mr. Richards took it and looked at me.

“David, could you go to the guidance counselor’s office?”

Shit.

Mrs. Côté and I had a perfunctory conversation in her tiny office, in which I (falsely) assured her that everything was fine at home. She seemed as poorly prepared for this discussion as I was. All I could think of was the fact that for my fifth grade “How To” presentation, I taught my class how to tie a noose, and that for my sixth grade book report, I chose Stephen King’s IT. This was what got people’s attention? This was the big red flag? A smudge of black around a kid’s eyes and suddenly they are “at risk?” What utter garbage. I was always the weird kid, I was always the damaged one, and any informed observer should have seen that as clear as day. What was it about makeup?

The next year, I was at a different high school in a slightly more cosmopolitan area of Florida. I wore black eye-shadow to class every single day, and it was great. It was baffling, too, because that was when people stopped making fun of me. I even made a few friends. People thought I looked, well, cool.

Primping

Some people respected me for my audacity. Some did not. Some didn’t know how they felt at all. In 2001, I was in the bathroom of the one bedroom apartment that I shared with three other people. I was hunched over the sink, gently pulling my eyelid out straight to put liquid eyeliner on, the cool sensation of it tickling.

“Move it, you prissy bitch. People have to piss,” Pippin said.

I sighed and didn’t move. “Beauty like this takes time, jackass. But I guess you wouldn’t know.” I made him wait as I put the finishing touches on my makeup; pale foundation, smoky black and purple eye-shadow, and black lip-liner with purple lipstick. He was probably really high, so he sat down at the end of Ryan’s bed and yammered on, hurling the usual insults at me.

 After a while, I had stopped caring about being called gay, or fag, or any other insult to my masculinity. It happened so often that I couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge each time. Whether it was some hillbilly screaming at me from his truck window or the good-natured ribbing from my friends, I became calloused to it. The insults were used to try to corral me into some image of heteronormativity that I simply couldn’t be bothered with. It probably helped that wearing lots of makeup had transformed me from an awkward weirdo to a somewhat savvy ladies’ man. For some reason, girls really seemed to like it, which was pretty great.

I usually didn’t wear skirts, but when I was getting ready to go out to a club that night, I decided to borrow one from my roommate, Kristen. It was a loose, black Lycra affair, and it matched my skin-tight Lycra short-sleeved turtleneck. I had pulled my long hair back severely, and completed the outfit with a pair of stompy boots. I thought I looked cool. Not everyone would agree.

Crazy James happened to be hanging out in the living room, and he stepped into the back room to see what we were doing. He immediately became very agitated.

“Aw, God, David. Why would you wear that?”

“Wear what in particular, James?” I replied innocently, pressing my lips on the edge of a tissue to remove the excess lipstick.

“The - the skirt. That’s just wrong.” He kept averting his eyes and then looking back at me strangely. He held his arms tightly around his chest and paced around the cramped room. His tension was palpable, I had no idea what he was going to do. Pippin was watching him with a confused grin on his face.

“Why?” I said. “Because the fabric isn’t divided between my legs? I’m covering just as much as I normally would. Besides, the dance floor gets hot, and it’s July. This is way more comfortable.” I tried to be reductive and sensible. James walked out of the room muttering to himself angrily.

Pippin chuckled. “You remember that time James said ‘I have gay thoughts like everybody, but I suppress them like a good Christian?’ I think you almost made his head explode. I don’t know if he wanted to fight you or fuck you.”

It was not for nothing that we called him Crazy James.

Meg

On the other hand, dressing in an unconventional way may have saved my ass. October of 2012, I was at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA. It was Shadowland, the monthly goth night, and a costume night in honor of Halloween as well. I know just about everyone there, and we are exceptionally tight-knit. I also know most of the bouncers and bartenders, so I felt comfortable going out dressed as Meg Griffin from the TV show Family Guy. I looked ridiculous, everyone got a great laugh, and I won “Funniest Costume.” It was a great night.

Towards the end of the night, though, something bad happened. I saw a stranger punch my friend Grace in the face and grab a handful of her hair. I didn’t stop to think. I immediately ran to break up the fight. I grabbed the offending girl and tried to subdue her. There was a scuffle, more people got involved, and I ended up on the bottom of a six-person pileup. A few minutes after everyone got pulled apart, the bartender, Brenton, asked me if I could talk to the cops.

Dressed as Meg Griffin.

I was a thirty-two year old man with broad shoulders and, I’ve been told, an intimidating appearance. I had just roughly and physically subdued a small young woman. I might normally have faced some repercussions for this.

The cop could barely keep a straight face while I was talking to him.

Sure, it helped that the bouncers were in my corner and very appreciative of the help, but I can’t help but feel that if I were dressed normally, something bad might have happened. Any time fights break out between genders, the guys usually get the brunt of the legal action. However, when the police officer saw me holding my pink crocheted cap in my hands, I immediately gave him the first impression that I was a funny, light-hearted guy who probably didn’t rough girls up for fun.

Also, I got to break up a bar fight while cross-dressing as Meg Griffin. I have to doubt that anyone else in the world can say the same thing, and I will treasure that memory until the day I die.

Progress

Over the years, perception of wearing makeup and women’s clothing has changed. It has been a long time since anyone has yelled obscenities out of their cars at me. Of course I still get dirty looks, but it wouldn’t be as much fun if I didn’t. Part of the allure is being confrontational, getting in people’s faces and forcing them to assess their traditions. That doesn’t always work out well for everyone.

In 2007, in Lancashire, England, a young goth couple was attacked. Sophie Lancaster, a beautiful girl with black and red dreadlocks and a lip ring, was beaten to the ground and kicked to death. The perpetrators’ only reasons were based on the couple’s appearance.

Sophie Lancaster is a name we know in the goth community. Her death acted as a rallying cry. Her death was a result from ridiculous prejudices, but ones that are slowly eroding. As a direct result of this incident, in April of 2013, the Greater Manchester police added Subculture to the list of protected groups in the case of hate crimes.

The world is slowly growing to accept us playful deviants. The relative fearlessness of my youth has declined as I’ve aged, but I’ve had less cause to be afraid. I would still wear whatever the hell I wanted to wear, but that wouldn’t change my anxiety. Today, I’m known and (apparently) liked in my town. I’ve managed businesses and made connections with many professionals. I am respected and involved, and I play dress up. I’m not ashamed of it.

Every time that someone who has learned to respect me learns of my unconventional style, they start with the questions. “Why?” they say. I still haven’t come up with a better answer than “Why not?” However, I feel stronger about the philosophy behind the question. Why shouldn’t I wear a what I like to wear? Many cultures throughout time have allowed or expected it. An ancient Egyptian man wouldn’t have been caught dead without eyeliner. Even if there were no historical allowances made, what difference would it make if the garments I wear on my lower half are split into two sections or not?

My petty rebellion won’t change the world, but it might broaden a few people’s perspective on what traditional appearances mean, and why we cling to them. That, and it gets the ladies.

Sexy Beast

It’s Saturday night and we’re going out. My wife Angie and I are in our tiny, cluttered  bathroom trying to use the mirror at the same time. I’m prying my eyes open to slip in my red contact lenses and she’s applying some feathered fake eyelashes. I blink away the extra moisture and grab my black eyeliner pencil. The tip is dull.

“Sharpener?” I say. She passes it to me. I sit on the toilet lid and grind the pencil to a point, shaking the moist shavings into the trash can. When I stand up, she’s using spirit gum to apply rhinestones along her cheekbones. I cover the inner lids of my eyes with kohl, giving them a dramatic, smoldering look. Angie finishes up and goes to find her boots, leaving me with some elbow room. I pour some foundation onto a makeup sponge and begin applying it to my face, using special care around my beard. I have to get the makeup as close to the hair as possible without getting any on the facial hair so as to avoid any lines or hair discoloration – a problem that I feel very few people have. Satisfied, I stand back and examine my face at a few angles. I look into my red eyes lined with black and I smile. I look like a sexy beast.