I've got two wildly different things I
want to talk about, but they occupy the same head, and I don't think
there's any way to really combine them. I'm going to just start
writing one of them and either break off and make a new blog, or
somehow discover a way they might work together. We'll see.
I'm starting to simulate what I think will happen when I get back in “it.” It, in this explanation, is that mode of being that goes hard, obsesses, believes, and exhaustively explores some avenue that's taken interest. I felt myself so confused as to what to do with myself after work today, I ended up falling asleep. I can feel my psyche shifting into needing an overwhelming topic, or shutting down from the energy zapping the circuits. Nothing else seems “right” or “appropriate,” but to progress through the things I got a taste of the other day. Clean more, build more, work more.
I think a lot about having money. I already have money, not huge amounts, but a means of acquiring it where I'm no more than a month or 2 away from being “even” or generally better off than even most first-worlders. I think about all the money I watch on talk-shows. Rich people are just like us! After a while, they just want to have game nights, and raise kids, and while they'll talk more nonchalantly about the amount and types of vacations, deeper animal desires and instincts will start to reign. “Competitive” won't be an overbearing character flaw, or a niche interest can get to work masquerading as a humanitarian exercise.
When I have money, I'll want the laughs. I'll want to keep powering through movies and shows and being fairly culturally “plugged in.” I'll want to improve on my musical knowledge. I'll want to entertain. It occurred to me that when I actually believed I could “help” something, it seemed as good a reason as any to exhaust myself in service to the mere chance I could provide. I don't know how much of my languishing belief in that is due to this 2 or so year waiting period, but the “burden” feels less imperative. I want something profitable and successful drawing off the wisdom of a thousand failures tomorrow, but I've got more of a “pace of life” attitude about it. No matter what, I'm still going to work, and I still need to refine the home base. What sense would it make to start ignoring the foundation after you've been beaten into respecting what it takes to set it up?
It's interesting me to watch the priority shift. I'll proclaim how “anti-aesthetic” I am in service to getting the job done, but I'll take my naked insulation and barn over a trailer any day. The yellowing foam insulation is keeping the bugs out, and can be trimmed any time. The mud caked onto literally everything is an immensely satisfying power-wash away from clean. While I think it'd be dumb to go into debt for the things on my Amazon wishlist, they are there for various reasons. Few hundred dollars at a time? Spend the next two weeks playing with new toys until the coffers fill back up. Consistent ongoing tune-ups and oil changes? Why, it's the responsible thing to do! Ten dollar event insurance? No sense in risking losing out.
It's feeling more and more like a craving. I can feel my chest pulling me towards my spot. I can feel myself walking lighter and smiling quicker. I'm not a person who habitually looks for a problem, and when one of the biggest ones starts to lift, it's like, now what? What do I do with my improved mood? When did I start to bother mingling? Who am I going to risk sharing what I'm doing with? It's something I cherish about drive or compulsion. You know where it's pushing you if you're willing to pay attention. I can ask every question, but I'll know I'm where I need to be when I snap into the moment and just go, “yeah.” Enough of those bred the romance I had for college friendships, so I'll be better next time, but the feeling is no-less desirable.
Let's break off and flip the script entirely. The next blog is about pee tapes.
I watched the docu-series on R. Kelly. I notice a familiar pattern in documentaries. First, there's an obvious “bad guy.” R. Kelly the child rapist is about as dark as you can get without drifting into an exposé on murderers. What most people can comfortably and loudly proclaim is that R. Kelly has a problem, and it's wrong to take advantage of the naivety of youth. One profession after another testifies to his controlling nature, his charisma, and his undeniable music genius that millions find compelling. The regrets are for ever having introduced someone to him, being seduced by the money or perks, or knowing full well what was wrong and how they were complicit.
I was frustrated watching the show. I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that each person professing their pain was looking for their own kind of redemption. It's almost too easy to point to the Big Problem of R. Kelly's sexual exploits. It's going to a wake or funeral knowing it's not really about the dead person, but the living's ability to process or cope. It's a memorial to reflect on what the music means to you or what kind of spell he put you under, skipping right along past what your responsibility to it might actually be. At least with the actual dead, they won't be watching to keep you honest.
That's to say, no one was offering how their experience was going to make them better. No one recalled what they “might” have done to improve upon their concerns. No one offered a proactive sentiment or where they've taken their lessons after coming out the other side. There is no real understanding of the nature of that complicitness, and instead of parsing it, in an important sense, we pick the big easy and “powerful” targets to scapegoat. I think it's the normal generalized human tendency because complicated psychological trauma is just that.
Let me be clear as well, I don't excuse R. Kelly for “preferring younger women.” I don't deny the power and consequences of manipulation. I know teenager brains aren't developed. I know the fucked up situations I put myself in when I was younger that I would totally have appreciated more guidance through or received leeway on. Nothing I say in this blog is supposed to be the kind of devil's advocate for exploiting children, if you're so inclined to fuck about with deliberate mis-reading.
The task is to take from specific examples, and draw out the larger ethos or implication. Isn't it weird that pee fetishes or stories seem to come from the top? Why is Trump embroiled in his own? Where do you go when you have everything besides return to a kind of filth? You'd probably reflexively say you could just enjoy and vibe with the good you have and the opportunities presented, but then I think you're living in the kind of fantasy world where our minds don't attack us when we're happy, or pick our most secure periods to feel anxious.
I couldn't help but hear faint echoes of the dialogue surrounding me and the party dynamics in college. I've not been accused of pedophilia, but I have been of rape. How did that conversation go? Well, it mostly didn't, but my power was brought up. The implicit guilt I should feel because I knew what I was doing. What for years might've been written off as a kind of alcoholic and immature culture immediately became my problematic behavior. And certainly, let's not forget that we're supposed to, without examination or doubt, believe all women regardless, because it's time to wildly swing the culture war in the other direction, civilian casualties a mere rounding error.
I don't think I've ever denied my awareness of my power. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think the sway of fame and fortune wouldn't capture nearly everyone. But I always return to the moment. It's in the moment you discover what your responsibility is. It's in the moment you seize power. It doesn't help the conversation or the capacity to take on more responsibility when “problems” remain as distinctly abstract as a series of damnations all alluding to horrible feelings. It's not enough.
They say it starts small. First he made girls who were susceptible to him call him “daddy.” Then he'd control who they could talk to. Then he'd keep them in his house. He'd beat and degrade. Every day, every hour, and every minute of that process was a moment. Each of those moments absolved and absorbed by fear and every complicated psychological description of the consequences of fear. Here maybe we start to begin picking at what “our” cultural responsibility is to young girls, or young black girls, or youth. What we may or may not find entertaining I think is mute before you have that discussion.
What is R. Kelly afraid of? Consequences? Eh, maybe, but he pretty reflexively pisses in the face of the idea of those, and then proceeds to make a million dollars in doing so. What am I afraid of? It's certainly not bringing up rape accusations and comparing myself to R. Kelly. I want to have the conversation about what we're going to bring into the moment moving forward. I want to discuss the ardent feelings and insistence I believe is earnestly felt if misplaced. I could spend hours dancing around political ways to explain myself or write off the situation in a series of crass doubled-down horrible jokes (or do both), but neither would speak to the conversation I have with myself regarding my behavior. R. Kelly has fans who “believe” in him. How should we regard that belief? To the degree it's a blind fervent love, little to none. I can apparently party and have sex with a fair amount of people, be excessively open about it, and still have my motives regarded as predatory and forceful, to me, as ardently believed by any fan of popular hashtag-moments might. So then what's my responsibility?
Notably, when you do something criminal, the suggestion is that you go to jail. We, of course, don't live in a world where punishments ever remotely match crimes, and usually the accused's most ferocious defenders have more than one skeleton that resembles what's on trial. I don't think it wise to serve unjust sentences, nor do I think a lack of conviction erases implications. My method is to keep talking and keep asking. I likely won't be conducting myself with the same age-group of drunk crowds the rest of my life. Do you apologize? I was told it would be the height of a bad idea to reach out. And then I'm apologizing for hurting her, or for a rape I don't believe I committed? Moreover, I do believe, easily, that I tore her vagina and probably missed a cue to slow down or when to start back up. I've managed to accidentally make girls bleed with us perfectly sober, let alone drunk enough to think a quickie on the side of a house party was tactful.
That “compulsion” or “force” that points you at what needs to be dealt with is playing out with #metoo and Black Lives Matter, and the general consequences of concentrated wealth and power. That's the underlying conversation and psychological battlefield. Knowing what you know now, what happens if you have a daughter who'd ever be willing to call someone daddy? Knowing what you know now, how often should you use alcohol for anything beyond a polite buzz or to share in a sense of camaraderie? How easy is it to rail against the likes of R. Kelly or reel at the idea of getting pissed on, verses the Olympic task of addressing child brides more broadly, or our complicated biology and aberrant sexual preferences?
What if we took a step even further? What if we discovered in ourselves the filth and the worst thoughts? What if we couldn't pass the depravity onto someone else's example and had to take responsibility to act in spite of it? What if we had to remind ourselves every day, “But for the grace of God go I?” What if you're always going to love I Believe I Can Fly no matter how many 14 year olds you watch R. Kelly pee on or have sex with? What if you never allow yourself to forgive what your under-developed brain considered a good idea and “always/never” your understanding of yourself and past into a depression spiral? When do you recognize and take the moment for all that it is, and not just the single feeling or person you can point to and judge?
I'm in a job where, to be effective you're forced to, at the very least, pretend that everything is okay. Interestingly enough, for me, in an important sense, it is. I can calmly ask you about accusations that you sexually molested your child. I'm not there with an agenda to catch you. If I can I certainly will and will nail your ass to the wall, but it's a story first. There are significantly more examples of spiteful ex-spouses, resentful sister-in-laws, and crotchety grandma's calling us with crazy stories than there are violent drug-addled child molesters looking to hurt everyone around them and tear things down. There are a lot of problems out there, and there's an infinite sea of grey that no institution, nor really any individual than the person suffering, can do much about. The story of either of our responsibility to their situation is the eternal cultural question.
Are there easy takeaways? Don't be complicit might be one. I'm not going to ignore a hypodermic needle I see in your house or pretend it's cleaner than it is. I'm not going to attempt to unduly punish you or speak as harshly of you as you attempt to provoke me to. I know you're broken. I know you can't pronounce “denial” before you get around to discussing what it is you're denying. I know that method works insofar as you're not the one rehashing dramatic instances in your life from slightly modified angles over years. I know it's hard to accept that achieving a remote peace of mind is even possible. I know you'll feel guilty of something regardless.
That's how I read people. I get bored to tears hearing the same catch-phrases and cultural virtue signaling. You can state what you blame on someone and follow it up with your course of action or responsibility. You can build within yourself, and future relationships, the bullwork for combating what you see wrong with how power manifests or the indignity and intransigence of those you wish to see take more responsibility. But you can tell most of the story in how they respond. Do they want more or less? Do they entertain or dismiss? Do they cry and shut down, or spit and choke out as close to an approximation of what they're feeling and thinking in spite of themselves?
::breathe::
But let's bring it over to “forgiveness.” I feel like forgiveness is a pat-on-your-back sort of thing. They say you'll never really process or move on until you forgive. But if things are all coming from you. If it's about how you morph reality and how you understand it or can cope, then ultimately you're forgiving yourself. No matter what somebody has done, you have to forgive yourself your anger, forgive yourself your angst, forgive yourself the depression and the pain and the lashing out or whatever the fuck else.
And then that becomes a double-edge sword, because your capacity to forgive yourself can develop the kind of pathologies that protect a lot of shitty behavior, or give others the tools to understand you in a “forgiving framework,” even when some shit doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Remember, it's God that forgives all sins. So how convenient little god-complexes present a holier-than-thou posture about their hypocrisy and hatred. It becomes forgiven when they give up thinking about it or were too dumb or afraid to process the devil at the wheel.
I don't like a great deal of things that have been implicated about me and my life. I don't like that I had to pay a ticket for passing a school bus I did not intend, nor really believe, I actually passed turning. I don't feel like a proud “bad boy” for being overtly sexual and finding myself on some proverbial opposite side of the ring regarding the progression of women's rights or the severity of men's shitty behavior towards them. I don't beg for the pain and drama nor try to deny when it's a palpable force in how someone's life feels like it's being conducted. I don't want to be ignored for my railings against too-good “problems” and the weather to then dare believe we should be dismissing the complicated psychology or circumstances of teenagers who are stardom-adjacent or 20-somethings and party hook-ups. You have to be willing to accept it and work with it all. Not accept things as “perfectly right” or “correct” or “inevitable,” but accept there's layers that work to depersonalize and reassign the nature of how we're going to relate to each other.
You have to remain responsible to the moment, not what you presume to believe yourself capable of in the future. You have to examine the past, because it's manifest in what you're feeling and how you're behaving right now. I'm not begging to be around people who prefer to think of me as a rapist. I don't feel guilty when a catchy song comes on from someone we all know about. If you do, turn it off. And if you feel bad and don't, unpack what “complicity” means to you. Put little weights on the scales about how good, or nothing, you feel against the idea of kids getting peed on. Or don't, and keep skipping from monster to monster to blame. I think at some level we know we deserve what that strategy is giving us.
I'm starting to simulate what I think will happen when I get back in “it.” It, in this explanation, is that mode of being that goes hard, obsesses, believes, and exhaustively explores some avenue that's taken interest. I felt myself so confused as to what to do with myself after work today, I ended up falling asleep. I can feel my psyche shifting into needing an overwhelming topic, or shutting down from the energy zapping the circuits. Nothing else seems “right” or “appropriate,” but to progress through the things I got a taste of the other day. Clean more, build more, work more.
I think a lot about having money. I already have money, not huge amounts, but a means of acquiring it where I'm no more than a month or 2 away from being “even” or generally better off than even most first-worlders. I think about all the money I watch on talk-shows. Rich people are just like us! After a while, they just want to have game nights, and raise kids, and while they'll talk more nonchalantly about the amount and types of vacations, deeper animal desires and instincts will start to reign. “Competitive” won't be an overbearing character flaw, or a niche interest can get to work masquerading as a humanitarian exercise.
When I have money, I'll want the laughs. I'll want to keep powering through movies and shows and being fairly culturally “plugged in.” I'll want to improve on my musical knowledge. I'll want to entertain. It occurred to me that when I actually believed I could “help” something, it seemed as good a reason as any to exhaust myself in service to the mere chance I could provide. I don't know how much of my languishing belief in that is due to this 2 or so year waiting period, but the “burden” feels less imperative. I want something profitable and successful drawing off the wisdom of a thousand failures tomorrow, but I've got more of a “pace of life” attitude about it. No matter what, I'm still going to work, and I still need to refine the home base. What sense would it make to start ignoring the foundation after you've been beaten into respecting what it takes to set it up?
It's interesting me to watch the priority shift. I'll proclaim how “anti-aesthetic” I am in service to getting the job done, but I'll take my naked insulation and barn over a trailer any day. The yellowing foam insulation is keeping the bugs out, and can be trimmed any time. The mud caked onto literally everything is an immensely satisfying power-wash away from clean. While I think it'd be dumb to go into debt for the things on my Amazon wishlist, they are there for various reasons. Few hundred dollars at a time? Spend the next two weeks playing with new toys until the coffers fill back up. Consistent ongoing tune-ups and oil changes? Why, it's the responsible thing to do! Ten dollar event insurance? No sense in risking losing out.
It's feeling more and more like a craving. I can feel my chest pulling me towards my spot. I can feel myself walking lighter and smiling quicker. I'm not a person who habitually looks for a problem, and when one of the biggest ones starts to lift, it's like, now what? What do I do with my improved mood? When did I start to bother mingling? Who am I going to risk sharing what I'm doing with? It's something I cherish about drive or compulsion. You know where it's pushing you if you're willing to pay attention. I can ask every question, but I'll know I'm where I need to be when I snap into the moment and just go, “yeah.” Enough of those bred the romance I had for college friendships, so I'll be better next time, but the feeling is no-less desirable.
Let's break off and flip the script entirely. The next blog is about pee tapes.
I watched the docu-series on R. Kelly. I notice a familiar pattern in documentaries. First, there's an obvious “bad guy.” R. Kelly the child rapist is about as dark as you can get without drifting into an exposé on murderers. What most people can comfortably and loudly proclaim is that R. Kelly has a problem, and it's wrong to take advantage of the naivety of youth. One profession after another testifies to his controlling nature, his charisma, and his undeniable music genius that millions find compelling. The regrets are for ever having introduced someone to him, being seduced by the money or perks, or knowing full well what was wrong and how they were complicit.
I was frustrated watching the show. I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that each person professing their pain was looking for their own kind of redemption. It's almost too easy to point to the Big Problem of R. Kelly's sexual exploits. It's going to a wake or funeral knowing it's not really about the dead person, but the living's ability to process or cope. It's a memorial to reflect on what the music means to you or what kind of spell he put you under, skipping right along past what your responsibility to it might actually be. At least with the actual dead, they won't be watching to keep you honest.
That's to say, no one was offering how their experience was going to make them better. No one recalled what they “might” have done to improve upon their concerns. No one offered a proactive sentiment or where they've taken their lessons after coming out the other side. There is no real understanding of the nature of that complicitness, and instead of parsing it, in an important sense, we pick the big easy and “powerful” targets to scapegoat. I think it's the normal generalized human tendency because complicated psychological trauma is just that.
Let me be clear as well, I don't excuse R. Kelly for “preferring younger women.” I don't deny the power and consequences of manipulation. I know teenager brains aren't developed. I know the fucked up situations I put myself in when I was younger that I would totally have appreciated more guidance through or received leeway on. Nothing I say in this blog is supposed to be the kind of devil's advocate for exploiting children, if you're so inclined to fuck about with deliberate mis-reading.
The task is to take from specific examples, and draw out the larger ethos or implication. Isn't it weird that pee fetishes or stories seem to come from the top? Why is Trump embroiled in his own? Where do you go when you have everything besides return to a kind of filth? You'd probably reflexively say you could just enjoy and vibe with the good you have and the opportunities presented, but then I think you're living in the kind of fantasy world where our minds don't attack us when we're happy, or pick our most secure periods to feel anxious.
I couldn't help but hear faint echoes of the dialogue surrounding me and the party dynamics in college. I've not been accused of pedophilia, but I have been of rape. How did that conversation go? Well, it mostly didn't, but my power was brought up. The implicit guilt I should feel because I knew what I was doing. What for years might've been written off as a kind of alcoholic and immature culture immediately became my problematic behavior. And certainly, let's not forget that we're supposed to, without examination or doubt, believe all women regardless, because it's time to wildly swing the culture war in the other direction, civilian casualties a mere rounding error.
I don't think I've ever denied my awareness of my power. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think the sway of fame and fortune wouldn't capture nearly everyone. But I always return to the moment. It's in the moment you discover what your responsibility is. It's in the moment you seize power. It doesn't help the conversation or the capacity to take on more responsibility when “problems” remain as distinctly abstract as a series of damnations all alluding to horrible feelings. It's not enough.
They say it starts small. First he made girls who were susceptible to him call him “daddy.” Then he'd control who they could talk to. Then he'd keep them in his house. He'd beat and degrade. Every day, every hour, and every minute of that process was a moment. Each of those moments absolved and absorbed by fear and every complicated psychological description of the consequences of fear. Here maybe we start to begin picking at what “our” cultural responsibility is to young girls, or young black girls, or youth. What we may or may not find entertaining I think is mute before you have that discussion.
What is R. Kelly afraid of? Consequences? Eh, maybe, but he pretty reflexively pisses in the face of the idea of those, and then proceeds to make a million dollars in doing so. What am I afraid of? It's certainly not bringing up rape accusations and comparing myself to R. Kelly. I want to have the conversation about what we're going to bring into the moment moving forward. I want to discuss the ardent feelings and insistence I believe is earnestly felt if misplaced. I could spend hours dancing around political ways to explain myself or write off the situation in a series of crass doubled-down horrible jokes (or do both), but neither would speak to the conversation I have with myself regarding my behavior. R. Kelly has fans who “believe” in him. How should we regard that belief? To the degree it's a blind fervent love, little to none. I can apparently party and have sex with a fair amount of people, be excessively open about it, and still have my motives regarded as predatory and forceful, to me, as ardently believed by any fan of popular hashtag-moments might. So then what's my responsibility?
Notably, when you do something criminal, the suggestion is that you go to jail. We, of course, don't live in a world where punishments ever remotely match crimes, and usually the accused's most ferocious defenders have more than one skeleton that resembles what's on trial. I don't think it wise to serve unjust sentences, nor do I think a lack of conviction erases implications. My method is to keep talking and keep asking. I likely won't be conducting myself with the same age-group of drunk crowds the rest of my life. Do you apologize? I was told it would be the height of a bad idea to reach out. And then I'm apologizing for hurting her, or for a rape I don't believe I committed? Moreover, I do believe, easily, that I tore her vagina and probably missed a cue to slow down or when to start back up. I've managed to accidentally make girls bleed with us perfectly sober, let alone drunk enough to think a quickie on the side of a house party was tactful.
That “compulsion” or “force” that points you at what needs to be dealt with is playing out with #metoo and Black Lives Matter, and the general consequences of concentrated wealth and power. That's the underlying conversation and psychological battlefield. Knowing what you know now, what happens if you have a daughter who'd ever be willing to call someone daddy? Knowing what you know now, how often should you use alcohol for anything beyond a polite buzz or to share in a sense of camaraderie? How easy is it to rail against the likes of R. Kelly or reel at the idea of getting pissed on, verses the Olympic task of addressing child brides more broadly, or our complicated biology and aberrant sexual preferences?
What if we took a step even further? What if we discovered in ourselves the filth and the worst thoughts? What if we couldn't pass the depravity onto someone else's example and had to take responsibility to act in spite of it? What if we had to remind ourselves every day, “But for the grace of God go I?” What if you're always going to love I Believe I Can Fly no matter how many 14 year olds you watch R. Kelly pee on or have sex with? What if you never allow yourself to forgive what your under-developed brain considered a good idea and “always/never” your understanding of yourself and past into a depression spiral? When do you recognize and take the moment for all that it is, and not just the single feeling or person you can point to and judge?
I'm in a job where, to be effective you're forced to, at the very least, pretend that everything is okay. Interestingly enough, for me, in an important sense, it is. I can calmly ask you about accusations that you sexually molested your child. I'm not there with an agenda to catch you. If I can I certainly will and will nail your ass to the wall, but it's a story first. There are significantly more examples of spiteful ex-spouses, resentful sister-in-laws, and crotchety grandma's calling us with crazy stories than there are violent drug-addled child molesters looking to hurt everyone around them and tear things down. There are a lot of problems out there, and there's an infinite sea of grey that no institution, nor really any individual than the person suffering, can do much about. The story of either of our responsibility to their situation is the eternal cultural question.
Are there easy takeaways? Don't be complicit might be one. I'm not going to ignore a hypodermic needle I see in your house or pretend it's cleaner than it is. I'm not going to attempt to unduly punish you or speak as harshly of you as you attempt to provoke me to. I know you're broken. I know you can't pronounce “denial” before you get around to discussing what it is you're denying. I know that method works insofar as you're not the one rehashing dramatic instances in your life from slightly modified angles over years. I know it's hard to accept that achieving a remote peace of mind is even possible. I know you'll feel guilty of something regardless.
That's how I read people. I get bored to tears hearing the same catch-phrases and cultural virtue signaling. You can state what you blame on someone and follow it up with your course of action or responsibility. You can build within yourself, and future relationships, the bullwork for combating what you see wrong with how power manifests or the indignity and intransigence of those you wish to see take more responsibility. But you can tell most of the story in how they respond. Do they want more or less? Do they entertain or dismiss? Do they cry and shut down, or spit and choke out as close to an approximation of what they're feeling and thinking in spite of themselves?
::breathe::
But let's bring it over to “forgiveness.” I feel like forgiveness is a pat-on-your-back sort of thing. They say you'll never really process or move on until you forgive. But if things are all coming from you. If it's about how you morph reality and how you understand it or can cope, then ultimately you're forgiving yourself. No matter what somebody has done, you have to forgive yourself your anger, forgive yourself your angst, forgive yourself the depression and the pain and the lashing out or whatever the fuck else.
And then that becomes a double-edge sword, because your capacity to forgive yourself can develop the kind of pathologies that protect a lot of shitty behavior, or give others the tools to understand you in a “forgiving framework,” even when some shit doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Remember, it's God that forgives all sins. So how convenient little god-complexes present a holier-than-thou posture about their hypocrisy and hatred. It becomes forgiven when they give up thinking about it or were too dumb or afraid to process the devil at the wheel.
I don't like a great deal of things that have been implicated about me and my life. I don't like that I had to pay a ticket for passing a school bus I did not intend, nor really believe, I actually passed turning. I don't feel like a proud “bad boy” for being overtly sexual and finding myself on some proverbial opposite side of the ring regarding the progression of women's rights or the severity of men's shitty behavior towards them. I don't beg for the pain and drama nor try to deny when it's a palpable force in how someone's life feels like it's being conducted. I don't want to be ignored for my railings against too-good “problems” and the weather to then dare believe we should be dismissing the complicated psychology or circumstances of teenagers who are stardom-adjacent or 20-somethings and party hook-ups. You have to be willing to accept it and work with it all. Not accept things as “perfectly right” or “correct” or “inevitable,” but accept there's layers that work to depersonalize and reassign the nature of how we're going to relate to each other.
You have to remain responsible to the moment, not what you presume to believe yourself capable of in the future. You have to examine the past, because it's manifest in what you're feeling and how you're behaving right now. I'm not begging to be around people who prefer to think of me as a rapist. I don't feel guilty when a catchy song comes on from someone we all know about. If you do, turn it off. And if you feel bad and don't, unpack what “complicity” means to you. Put little weights on the scales about how good, or nothing, you feel against the idea of kids getting peed on. Or don't, and keep skipping from monster to monster to blame. I think at some level we know we deserve what that strategy is giving us.
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