149 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
149 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Perpetual Masquerade ] [ By The GNN ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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PERPETUAL MASQUERADE
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by THE GNN/DCS/uXu
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PLEASE NOTE: Every similarity to any actual person herein is purely
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coincidental and only a result of the author's vivid imagination.
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It began as a way to get noticed for being someone - that is, Someone, not
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just one of countless faceless look-alikes in the crowd. And when I did my
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thing, people surely saw me. Perhaps they did not like what they saw, some
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probably hated me, but at least they disliked Me for doing My thing. People
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who saw me did not think "there is yet another guy who do what we do, and
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think what we think, and is like we are" but "there is someone who is not
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like us". I did not care if they came to that fact out of antipathy, as I
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was only after the brute fact itself. I did not want to be like everyone
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else - I wanted to be a concrete Other, not merely an abstract Anyone.
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It was indeed a role I was playing. But I did played it fairly well,
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because otherwise it would not have worked. In my case, I made my role
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convincing by never backing off; no matter what I was told to be, no matter
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what people accused me of, I never backed off. Never ever! On the contrary,
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every word of aversion just made be go up in my provocative role even more.
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My simple aim was that when they left me, they would be upset out of one
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reason or the other. How they became upset did not matter to me. What
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mattered was that their trivial world of being like everyone else would have
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been rocked - by me. Me! Someone different! Perhaps they would not even
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forget me, but years later recall our conversation or (in extreme cases) my
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appearance. "I met this guy briefly", maybe they would say, "we spoke for a
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couple of minutes, he was so weird/angry/strange/bizarre...". (Yes, I
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daydreamed about such future predictions.)
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I did not need to care what they thought about me, because I was vaguely
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aware that I was merely acting - so, in a sense, it was not really me that
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people disliked, but my act. Do you find this paradoxical: I played to be
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Someone, and I appreciated being seen, even though it was not really me they
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saw? It is strange, I know. I have no explanation.
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It was not always easy. People who knew me well (at least better that the
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anonymous faces all around me) often reminded me that I was merely acting.
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They did not do so by asking me to stop, because they could not do that;
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they could not be sure if I was serious or not. I did not flex between two
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different selves; I was a mixture of several. But people who are close to
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you cannot help notice if you act out of the ordinary. After all, they spend
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a considerable lot of time with you, and observe your every move. And if
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something is dubious with the moves, they notice. They need not be as close
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to you as your parents or siblings, shallow friendship is enough. But I had
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a method of avoiding being confronted in any larger degree, one that I have
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come to understand is quite common: whenever I had acted in accordance with
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my provocative role, and confronted by someone close asking me if I was
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"really serious", if I "really meant what I said and did", I put on an
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annoyed look (as if the question was obviously ridiculous) and mumbled (as
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if it had been so obvious that I did not need to waste time articulating it
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clearly): "I'm kidding...". I wonder why no one ever saw right through that
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half-witted excuse, as no one ever (ever!) laughed at those statements I
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afterwards claimed to be some kind of "humour". Was not that some kind of
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proof that I was lying? Well, perhaps they saw through me, but did not know
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how to dress their doubts in words. After all, they were not experienced in
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life or skilled in how certain persons work. They were like me, young and
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confused, on the brink to adulthood.
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Once, just once, one person confronted me face to face and stubbornly
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demanded to know if I was playing a role. It was indeed a high risk stake,
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because a simple denial from my side would be all that it would take for him
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to lose. Of course, I denied - and he lost. Not only that, I also added
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insults to his failure. I claimed that he was trying to force me "to become
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like everyone else" instead of "respecting me for who I was". If you think
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about it, you understand why I had too add those things. If I had not, it
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would have been an indication of that he might have been right. And that
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could not have happened - because the character was supposed to be Me, not
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just a part of me. I was very upset after this incident. Not because I
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feared losing by disguise, but because someone-who-was-a-nobody dared to
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open his mouth and question me. How could that true Anyone imagine that he
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was able to tell others who they "really were"? He could not know. It could
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have been the case that I was not acting. It could have been the case! He
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could not know! (I argued like convicted criminals often do. Have you not
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noticed that most criminals always think that they have been unjustly
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judged, even though they in fact are guilty to their wrongdoing? It is not
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because they deny their guilt, but because they out of the painful shame of
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having been caught in the act protect their innocence by suddenly increasing
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the threshold of what is to be counted as "knowledge". They are sentenced
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because the court have come to know that they did what they in fact did,
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based on indices and proofs in combination. But the criminal always denies
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that they "really" know what happened - because there is always a
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possibility that it could have been in some other way! "The indices and
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proofs are not enough! They could have been made up!" There is always a
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possibility (how absurdly remote it might be). And this is all that is
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needed for a criminal to think that he has been unjustly treated, or for me
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concluding that accusations against my created persona were not based upon
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any kind of appropriate observations.)
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All my relations with the opposite sex have been complete fiascos. As I
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have always acted when encountering other people, only people with similar
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role playing games in their repertoire have been attracted to me. Why that
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is so I do not really know; perhaps those who do not fall back on roles find
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me artificial in my explicit behaviour, while those who do see a kind of
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soul mate. But as I, and my various lovers, only have had our roles to put
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forward to each other, we have never been able to talk to each other
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directly. There has always been a filter midway. Even worse, our roles
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became even more hard-wired in a close relation. Since it was in fact what
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we had been attracted by, we both cultivated them even more to not lose each
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other. How frustrating is it not to not be able to fully reach someone you
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care about! It is so twisted: to be able to reach someone you cannot play a
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role; but if you put the role away, you become a total stranger, and will
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not reach the other person anyway, because that individual only know you as
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the act you have shown to them. This frustration has always been the reason
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why I have never been able to stick to a relation for any longer period of
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time. Therefore, I have continuously been alone, even though I have not
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lacked company. Nobody can come to know my "real me" - because I possess no
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such thing. I only have my masque; and if I remove it, there is nothing
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behind.
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At the confusing time in life when humans go through the purgatory to
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become persons, identities they can refer to as being "themselves", I tried
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to escape the pain by taking a short cut. I am old now, my personification
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is completely out of control. My thoughts are constantly being moulded by
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something alien, I talk and act automatically. I want to quit, I tell you! I
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want to have a self I truly can call mine. But I am stuck. And it troubles
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me that I am stuck in something that I did not want to become: a nobody.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #539 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #539
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Call Postcards From The Edge BBS -> telnet pfte.iirg.org
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