[1005] Hush Hush, Eye To Eye

I’ve just completed an old episode of Vice Investigates where the founder of #metoo says, “Once you shine a light on something, you can’t unsee it.”

I work as a counselor. I habitually prompt people to, in their own words, start explicating things in their lives that are routinely under-illuminated. We might talk about how you constantly interrupt your spouse. What, precisely, any given person “sees” during or after that discussion is seemingly a large contributor as to why they can or can’t be bothered to change their behavior.

The boring, yet universal and infinitely impactful, truth about whatever it is you think is in the spotlight is that it is incomplete and perhaps wholly unknowable in a manner that will be emotionally salient. One person interviewed about her…4 years of discomfort…working for a restaurant owner had her explicitly state that it was unfortunate that he just couldn’t disappear and there was nothing in her imagination that would speak to forgiveness. Do you think she really sees the locus of her discomfort if it’s localized so viscerally in him?

It’s human nature to turn whatever we shine a light on into a fairy tale that helps us sleep at night. It’s just as much in our nature to turn the story into a nightmare. I’ve tried to spend less time bemoaning my experiences, negative as they register and perpetually uncomfortable, as though they’re only and forever my most damning indictments of how ambivalent and fucked life is. I invite layers of discomfort into my experience, be it in people who are miserable communicators, activities with endless questions I never quite find great answers to, or jumps into roles and responsibilities that no one beyond my ambition is asking me to take - if you don’t count the imploring screams of negligence.

Part of me is incredibly angry at people who allow themselves to be victimized by themselves. I’m not criticizing mental health or where you might be on your journey through trauma. But I’m incredibly put-off and almost insulted on behalf of every…child whose died via something preventable? Victim of a genocide? Anyone who’s ceaselessly punished for their existence, yet manages to dictate for themselves why they stay alive? People experience all sorts of crazy traumatizing things, big and small, and with some regularity. Creepy managers or crude commentary are not the bar to hang yourself over. It feels gross, entitled, and pretentious.

I’m absolutely fascinated that it has seemed to take years for us to culturally digest the idea that masculinity is not “toxic” by default. We are still reckoning with “competitions” between some of the dumbest and craziest people on the planet getting the keys to power. And we haven’t quite connected just how aggressively we attacked the foundation of how humanity rose in evolution through it’s interplay and connected dynamic. We’ve threatened something wholly foundational so aggressively we’re literally willing to forgo all semblance of reason to destroy the prospect of solving problems in a democratic way.

It’s the attitude. It’s the lack of expectations or end game. It’s not the “best” or “smartest” people who beat the addiction to their own bullshit. It’s people who keep their light trained on the next logical step for them to improve how they feel. When you’re entitled to your feelings and aggressively asserting the impact of “harm,” there is no indication that you have anything to contribute or anything to change. You just chant until the trance takes hold and carries you past any checks or balances.

I suppose after enough attempts to succeed at difficult things, whilst simultaneously watching dozens of failures every week, I see two dramatically different habits and patterns that distinguish people. Do you know how many times I’ve been “too busy” to do anything I want? I haven’t been. It’s a shitty excuse. I read about people who are actually busy doing huge things who still cut out time for their mental health. You, resident of Bedford, have the time. Do you know who gets all caught up in their feelings to the point it threatens not only their life, but of the people they care most about? People who tell you, automatically, every time, “I’m fine.” They lie, often, always, until they die.

We should be asking ourselves how many lies does it take to create the story that allows me to live with myself? Do I have to say I’m prettier than I am? Do I have to say I love my family until I’m blue in the face? Do I have to overlook a list of red flags about my partner that’s longer than any I’ve written for groceries? Could I recognize how dumb I was even if I asked the question? Can I reckon with my lonliness? Are my daily affirmations not juicing me like they used to? Did I live up to even 2% of what I imagined for my future as I was growing up?

We are a violent, ignorant, incredibly lucky species, and we carry on as though we’re all just trading answer keys to different tests. We are all trash, sniffing farts, and looking for the next excuse to crack the facade, en masse, so we don’t have to personally feel responsible for our behavior. Is my culture sick? Who cares, it lets me get away with countless lies about the state of my country, town, or capacity to change anything. I don’t need to shine a light on the gratifying feeling, in fact, it makes me shine so bright, it’s curious how many people can’t seem to see me. Even as I smear shit on walls, attempt to instantiate fascism, or couch my existence in an endless stream of infotainment memes.

You know I want a lot of money so I can run, right? I want backup plans. I want secured locations. I want to make my feeble attempts to build a better culture from somewhere safe. I’m trying to pull out. I’m trying to manage. I don’t have a living memory of feeling like I’m surrounded by adults who are in charge. I was in 6th and 7th grade when Bush was elected and found myself utterly confused that such a fuckwit could be put in charge, then teabaggers and Sarah Palin happened and it’s felt like the proverbial death by a thousand cuts right up until today.

I’m a victim too. I can still access incredibly low and dark spaces when I reflect on the examples that were set, on me, as to how to deal with innocence, ignorance, and vulnerability. Except, every time I shine a light on what’s happened to me or remind myself what I’m capable of, I also acknowledge the choice. Do I repeat the story to myself and make the feelings get more intense? Do I find myself trying to justify a lack of remorse and moves to exploit? Do I choose what I feel to be the wrong thing because it will be briefly gratifying? That’s what happened during my blow-up fight with my ex. I chose to chuck garbage cans, and yell and scream, and fuck her up mentally because she did not expect me to throw her the fuck out, and I knew calling that bluff would hurt as bad or worse than she had been making me feel.

Should I stay smug and entitled to how I felt leading up to that? During? What if I noticed I started taking pride in it? I’d be fucking sick. I would need guidance. I would need someone to hold me accountable if I was unable to do so for myself. I don’t want my amplified feelings dictating the rules. I don’t want the story of our dynamic to be of the inoperable discomfort where I’d start wishing she disappeared and that I’d never bothered. But this is what we’re currently doing, like, wholly trying to burn everything down and pretend we don’t exist in a larger context with greater ideals or hopes and prospects to do better. We don’t expect anything, let alone something remotely positive, to come from the larger experiment. And the day-to-day civility feels fragile and insincere.

I get criticized routinely for what I would describe as having standards. I need you looking forward. I need you to recognize and state what you need and share it honestly. I need you to incorporate perspectives that don’t agree with yours. I need you paying attention and trying. I need these things selfishly. I need to exist around people who are demonstrating and practicing the things that I must in order to remain oriented and healthy. I can’t be engulfed in your universe if it swirls with shitty excuses and the infinite void is utilized to dodge ever landing on a planet worth terraforming. I need you to say, “Yes, that thing is bad, and here’s what I’m doing about it, or deliberately not doing what would make it worse.”

I have a lot of ideas on how to personally survive in my own little bubble or chosen trajectory. I don’t know what “we” have going for us as wholly dependent on each other as we are. I feel empty and angry when I think about relying on you to speak, vote, work, or do anything but abuse your substance of choice, the narrative that keeps you precisely where you are. I’m hostile to the idea of collaboration. The way the world has trended suggests in my bid for more control or influence, I will court a new disaster in nearly every mind I try to incorporate. The unyielding pulse of existence will press me to seek control over cultivation. Will I be smart enough to devise a way around this? Will I choose a dozen tiny points of corruption until the driving ethos and mission statement transcend mockery? Either way, I’m keeping the light on the choice. Where’s yours pointed?

[982] That Was Easy

Something’s missing.

This is probably one of the most consistent thoughts I have even if it never sounds so precise. I’ll eat something, but it won’t quite hit the spot. I’ll discover a new and useful tool, but it just doesn’t meet what I’d ideally like it to do. An endless blur of TV drones on with dialogue that doesn’t get there and plot points playing out an existential crisis one cliché and predictable episode at a time. I write, and am lucky to find maybe half of what I wished to say because I’m trying to capture what’s missing; the empty or wanting feeling more often persists than gets alleviated.

I’ve named consistently what’s been missing from my experience. From getting into this habit, I’ve been able to zero in more on both the nature of my desires, and what does or does not change upon acquiring them. I know how to match my words to the process of altering my feelings. It never has been, nor will ever be, that I “just don’t feel” or “don’t care.” I’m doing work. I recognize the language, tone, body language, and series of spontaneous utterances that tell me when you’re doing the work too.

What is “the work?”

I’ve spoken about “the machine” I put together that tried to colloquially break down for my clients at the methadone clinic a means for processing their thoughts and actions. I took from what helped or inspired me, and walked people through headings that started with “responsibility.” For as increasingly controversial and perhaps pettiness and anger that I have begun to observe from Jordan Peterson, I think he was spot on when he stressed personal responsibility.

I think many get confused when you talk about personal responsibility. They believe they’re supposed to “feel” some kind of way about “everything.” It comes across like an obligation, most often unwanted, and unfair. It is all of those things. Literally no one chooses to exist. By default, you aren’t asked to cope with what you look like, sound like, how much brain power you don’t have, or the series of horrendous circumstances you might find yourself in. To even suggest you have a responsibility is the most unfair thing possible. You caused none of it, and now you have to clean up? Now you have to fight? Now you have to sacrifice and risk whatever otherwise happiness or stability you’ve achieved? Who in their right fucking mind would bother?

So let’s be the rational actor, disappearing into their little world. They work hard, they send their kids to school, they recycle, and hell, they even donate to charity and vote. This plays out with regularity, tinged with righteous indignation, most often unvoiced, for those who can’t be bothered to leave you alone to “do you.” You’ll just move to a “blue state” or you’ll hole up with a gun cache and wait for the threat or until the leadership unleashes you. It’s pretty much chaos at all times, as far as you can tell from the headlines…just keep swimming.

I’ve felt like I’m surrounded by fish with so many missing memories. Whether it was about things we were supposed to have meant to each other, or the reasons we drunkenly blathered for why we were going to create something. When I talk about the superficial nature of my relationships, it has a lot to do with shaking off the responsibility to understand or engage. I know it’s often dangerous and disingenuous to take your personal experience and try to map things writ large, but I’ve been deeply examining the minutia of my experience for so long, I’m hardly, if ever, surprised or confused by “everything” being shit or things breaking down.

I’m not so naïve as to think it’s just not “my friends” who don’t wish to have an ongoing dialogue that tackles difficult subjects. That’s people. I’m fascinated with Sam Jay who seems to have built a brand around having dialogues. Will “the culture” be better for it? Or is it treated like a niche window into how a handful of people discuss their lives in something of a Taxi Cab Confessions manner with a comedic twist?

I don’t know that we’re built for “democracy.” I don’t think people are really thinking. I think they follow scripts, occasionally they get backed into corners or alter their mind chemically, and then what might be considered an actual thought or several start to come out. Because our brains are always doing “something,” we conceive of this as “thinking.” You think you thought about what you wanted to eat. You think you have an opinion on an inflammatory headline. You think you don’t like how something feels, so it’s bad, should be cancelled, or isn’t worth your time and attention.

I don’t respect liars. Part of my ongoing disconnect with people is their willingness to lie. It’s almost always lies of omission, but those omissions add up to a lot of work not being done. It’s lies dictated by fear for real repercussions that preclude even entertaining ways of changing or fixing something.

You know who doesn’t lie like that? Crazy people. They lie loud and proud and with their entire being. They lie for generations and build it into institutions. They lie through things literally understood throughout time as “deadly sins” and are proud, greedy, and grow fat off your silence, fear, or indifference. You know why history is wrought with war and martyrs? It’s not that ancient civilizations didn’t have rational people. They weren’t full of those incapable of empathically understanding their neighbor. The crazy, ever waiting, got louder and louder until they ate themselves alive. We’re just playing out our modern version of the script.

I’ve definitely chilled in my enthusiasm for people the more I…tried. The more I worked. The more I invited. The more I carried the enthusiasm. The more I rooted for and believed in. The more I sacrificed, the less pull people had on me. I’m dispositionally pretty distant, but also, when I tried not to be, I tried not to be like how I do things. I went all-in. I’m not going to truly challenge my worst ideas about who and how to manipulate unless I give myself over to the idea that there are people it’s worth it not to behave like that towards. Did I pick the wrong batch of people? Almost certainly, but I can’t deny what it taught me.

Today we have “ghosting,” because so many of our bonds are so fragile and arbitrary. My “style” or manner of communication set myself up to be “ghosted” by dozens of people in short succession. Whether it be gossipy rumor mills or the facebook chat that doesn’t get responded to for months, the message is clear. I don’t matter, at least to them. How much suffering might it cause a person who locates their “missing” piece in the interactions with people who want nothing to do with them? I wouldn’t wish that on most. At least with someone like me, it’s not a secret that I didn’t generally make you “feel good” nor do any better of a job of that today than I did then.

I’m always struck by the contrast in assessments of my behavior, words, or choice interactions with what I consider actually bad if not considerably worse things. I don’t mean to suggest that because big bad things happen in the world that you should ignore critical feedback or not take responsibility for your actions, but I’ve never found people more thoughtful, more vocal, or more willing to share than when they were angry with me. Not the world, not themselves, but what’s fucked up about me was ever so clear and particularly worth singular condemnation. It’s a point of ongoing fascination, not because I’m regularly eliciting negative feedback, but because the reasons why I see infused all over.

I say the quiet part out loud. I say anything at all, but I most often choose to say the prickly things. Moreover, I disagree the prickly things can be dealt with when we carry ourselves like so many balloons. You can’t “cancel” fascism. You can’t “persuade” me that fat is beautiful, on myself or otherwise. When conservatives bemoan a “woke agenda,” it’s scenes in Star Trek that go on way too long with the awkward non-binary kid staring at her(oops) gay dad in all of his glorious understanding. And I don’t even mean to suggest that these are particularly relevant or strong points and topics to get all fussy about. It’s just what’s on offer today. The march - the practical, detailed, and deliberate crazy is working to erode rights because it’s working. It’s working on the means by which things exist or don’t.

The crazy march voices its lies. It’s proud in its opposition. It’s not been a secret that Roe v Wade was a target. It’s not been a secret the billions of opinions offered as to what Jesus meant. It’s not a secret that the country is failing. It’s not a secret that homemade signs and megaphones mean precisely dick to those with money, influence, and organized decades-long systems for instantiating power.

What’s the work? Did I ever get around to answering the question? First, acknowledge how complicated “everything” is. You don’t get to silence people; I don’t care how hot your topic is or righteous your cause. You don’t have to invite David Duke to speak at your graduation ceremony or entertain him on your platform, but he gets to speak. But that’s easy to understand if you’re remotely thoughtful. Really, what is the work?

You have to stop lying. You have to speak up, but you have to do so in a way that isn’t furious concurrence with the status quo of your social circle. You have to own that the moment you choose to take anything from the shelf of life, you have to follow or establish the rules of the store. Right now we’re letting the crazy lock us inside and poison the food because they “believe” a whole series of incoherent self-gratifying catch-phrases. Like that bitch in “The Mist,” they need to be shot in the head, and preferably before they literally need to be shot in the head.

What is the work? You have to keep asking. The work is to build bravery, coalitions, and organize around deep understandings of the history and context in which decisions get made and power flows. I don’t have half a dozen friends who’ve been on this journey since college on this land with a series of practical responses to the things we worried and complained about graduating high school the year before the financial crash. We heard about climate change back then. We saw Sarah Palin. We fucked off, moved to different corners, got all in our feelings and suffered in adult silence in our jobs and relative first-world poverty. Brilliant set of go-getters we were.

All of this rests on what you think your responsibility is though. Is it to yourself? Certainly, in some important sense. You have to be in a good spot if you want to help others. Is it to “the world?” Now you’re just kind of being naively vague. You certainly don’t feel like you have a responsibility to talk to me lol. We get older and decide it’s just about our sliver of the world. We forget, very actively, that there is no “personal” world. Just the one we’re all plugged into for better or mostly worse. When “our” world is characterized by silence, and pithy rallies in lieu of seized power, “my” sliver gets sharper, cutting away at my dreamiest conception of where I am financially, psychologically, or socially.

I try to conduct myself in a manner I think serves “the” world, subjectively processed, but not persuaded by. I’m comfortable asserting how much I don’t know. I’m able to label when and why and how I have patience to entertain difficult subjects or judgments. I try incredibly hard to give as honest an appraisal as I can of what I see, hear, and experience in those pre-verbal parts of my brain that tell me time and again how much I’m missing. The thing about what’s missing is that it’s not just lost to time or impossible to find. It’s just what people refuse to do until they’re forced. Be honest. Fight. Talk about what “no one” wants to talk about.

I’m weirdly ambivalent about Roe getting overturned. I wish I could believe that maybe we’ll get some real anger this time. But what has history taught me? Do Black lives still matter? I could have swore with George Floyd’s blessing we’d be seeing some real change in society this time. Can you remember the last person to get #metoo-ed? Weren’t there so many feelings and testimonies and major revelations associated? Like the Panama Papers or those Occupy Wall Street guys! It’s almost like there’s this pattern of “outrage” that begets increasingly horrible circumstances as all of the ignorantly incensed retreat after failing to identify and address which mechanisms and holders of power don’t give a fuck about them.

It's going to be really hard to abandon the land. I’ve put in a lot of work. It’s a huge indication of what I “believe” in. It testifies to what I think the proper response to the chaos around us is. Salvage, conserve, diversify, learn new shit, give yourself more time, money, and space to create, reconceive of your space and how it can be used, and build into your bones how long it takes to achieve something meaningful. I’d bet $1000 that the videogame junkies are still videogaming and the middle-management jobs are just barely paying the bills, and the reality of so many lives hastily pursued in service of placating “discomfort” is crystalizing in joints, arteries, and daily happy-pills. But what do I know? No one’s going to talk about that unless it’s on-brand or a trending meme or can be summarized by a change in profile picture.

If I wanted to pretend I wasn’t living in a fascist country, I could continue to laud my efforts and chop, grind, and stack away without a care in the world. If I wanted to pretend like I didn’t expect myself to have a “house house” and a considerably higher bank account by 34, I could ride this train into oblivion. My country failed me. My peers failed themselves. I won’t let myself get sucked into my own narrative. I will keep talking about what’s missing. I will continue to feel bad because I allow myself the obligation and dignity of a responsibility to change my circumstances. I can plan and invest and demonstrate that I believe in more than either my most fanciful or damming conceptions.

It's always going to suck. I’m always going to feel alone. And I get to die either way, I’m just trying to avoid it happening via stray bullet or my neighbor making me a bogey-man. It’d be illegal to abort me at least.

I’m missing my match. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of educated people saying considerably more articulate and cited versions of my sentiments. It’s not that I don’t have people in my life who work as hard as I do, especially when it’s work none of us care to be doing for the money offered. It’s certainly not that there aren’t people who are angry and exhausted and trying in some manner or another. But if I met me? If I had another person who could do what I do like I do it, be loud about it, encourage and be open to exploring and trying and investing. Who did things “now” because time is precious, showed up because to be invited is an honor, and could pair incisive yet hilarious observation with the spirit of inherent knowledge that there’s a way through provided we do the work ourselves? Jesus wouldn’t have a prayer. I’ve been lucky enough to have 4 people who flicker on and off in riding with me at that level. But I’m a junkie. I want it all the time. And if we weren’t running out of time when I started, we sure as fuck don’t have any now.

I just have my back, the integrity of my tools, the patience extended for jobs and tasks that don’t recognize me, my debt, and my will or motivation to turn any nice day into something “more productive” than my mere enjoyment of it. That humbles you and chills you out. I learned how to watch “all TV,” and how to allow myself to read nonfiction, or enjoy a beer or hobby. I can do all that alone or surrounded by people. I can speak to when I’m not feeling like I’m fighting the good fight as well as I’d like. I may only be able to take so much responsibility for the mismatch between what I feel is my responsibility and how I’m able to respond to it, but at least I fucking claim the responsibility, talk about its nature, and try to own what is or isn’t working. Here’s another 4 and a half pages none of us have the time or energy for sorting out. I’ll be sure to reread it several times so I can still allow myself to sleep.

[785] The Good, The Bad, and The Pissy

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.