Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-539

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

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