A few weeks ago, at the end of summer, I was woken in the middle of the night by a text message. It was about 2am, and the text was from one of the deck chair guys I used to chat to, making me a dubious offer. He was obviously pissed out of his mind, because he had never made any such advances when we talked face to face, or dropped the slightest hint there.
I was over-tired yet vaguely amused and texted back, teasing him about it.
From then on, punctual as clockworks, I would get messages on Friday nights/Saturday mornings, every time with the same offer, every time a little more direct, every time so obviously encouraged by too much alcohol. Needless to say, I declined every time... I was a bit flabbergasted, because I am pretty sure I have told the whole beach front that I am gay, just to keep my chats with them on an innocent, platonic level. But then there is a drunk guy's reasoning, which probably includes a big portion of megalomania (i.e. being convinced he could turn me around and I am just gaga after him).
It was always a source of amusement, and of course I never heard from him when he had sobered up. Us girls had a good giggle at work about it, and the usual theatrical "gawd, what makes him think??" chats and the old "Men!" statements. And don't give me shit about being indiscreet about it... if he can send me semi-obscene offers based on his being oh-so-full-of- himself, then I have all the right in the world to take the piss with my girlies. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to, you know. Wisdom brought to you by Stephen King - a man!
Anyhow, very recently, I got another message in, Friday night, 4am. Pretty much to the point. No euphemisms. "Want you. Can't wait to make love to you." (Well, at least he had the decency to not use txt msg spk, which is something you can't say of the boy cunt.)
Wait a minute. Doesn't "can't wait" imply that I have given some sort of consent? The next morning, I texted him back and asked him why he thought I was up to a humpage?
From what he texted back, I gathered that just talking to him was all the consent/willingness he needed to have. "It would be entertaining!", he suggested. Great. What does that make me? A fucking performing monkey? I was still laughing about it to my friends, but the longer I pondered this, the more my mood sank. When you think about it, it is quite an unsettling, disillusioning thing, and it confirms the views I have (and don't want to have, trust me) already. Hah. By the time I'm 30, I will be so bitter, my mere presence will make milk curdle and babies cry. The thing that drives me crazy is that what this guy is doing is considered normal, perhaps. Boys will be boys, or whatever the fuck they say.
The thing I find so unsettling is: I just don't know what on earth I did or said that made him think I want to fuck him. Or let him fuck me, for that matter. (And scuse my language, that is all it would be. It's not making love. Having sex. It's just a cheap fuck.) Was I that ambiguous? What the hell constitutes flirting? Being nice to people? Is being chatty and matey with people - when you are a girl - just another form of giving consent? Do I now have to be wary about what impression I give every time I chat with a bloke, and do I have to worry that I cannot make male friends because my being friendly gives them the wrong idea? And it is depressing to find out that you may not be able trust male friends because they may have hidden motives... or that you have to be constantly wary that they may get paranoid about your friendliness, and can't just trust the innocence of your affection - that your being affectionate could actually endanger a friendship. So your friendships end up being riddled by anxiety. And for fuck's sake, it is no secret how much I hate being anxious. This is why I HATE HATE HATE social games. This is why I believe open, honest friendships are the highest form of any human relationships. This is why I appreciate German directness. Can't be mistaken there.
When I told my mates about this incident, I laughed, because I initially found it so weird, but when I think about it and put it into the context of my life, it actually makes me feel quite lost and depressed.
I just dunno how I'm supposed to act anymore. When has being friendly become such a sordid thing? Such a thing to be distrusted and misunderstood? And where am I supposed to see myself and my role? I mean, some of my male friends don't even see me as a girl, because, fair enough, I just am not very girlie. I used to wear dresses and stuff, but not anymore, because in this town it is a surefire signal to the blokes that you are available - for that and only that. I wonder how many girls here are even aware of this. I'm sure plenty are, but I know enough girls down here that are brilliant and cool, and they still dress like that and feel comfortable. I don't condemn it. I just can't imagine feeling comfortable like that, reducing myself to a stereotype set of key stimuli that could be put into a behavioural science book. So I always believed that the way I dress and talk and act would set clear enough a signal. But still, as I said, some don't see me as a girl at all, but others see me as only that, as a possible fuck; is there no one who can just accept me the way I am? As a girl and a human being? Can I ever only be one or the other? Either it's men who tell me straight to my face they want to fuck and just that, or it's men that laugh in my face because they cannot put me and sex in the same sentence. Either way, I feel like a freak. How could I see sexuality as anything other than a weapon, a threat or something that I should avoid as long as I have any self-respect left?
So here I am, trying to deal with yet another mindfuck. I question too much, and I feel so distanced from myself I don't even seek any romance, because I know enough to know it is a ridiculous notion. I could not involve myself without feeling like a puppet onstage that is too aware that she is part of a play. It's not that I never fall in love, but it makes me feel like a weak human being, like a slave to my lower instincts. It's also not that I don't believe in love, and its power, and importance... I just believe that love has little to do with this social game everyone is so keen on playing.
The only thing that terrifies me is that I feel too far removed from everything that I can't be involved in anything even if I wanted to. Things seem not real anymore; I feel I am standing outside of the world, watching and thinking, 'this is all so stupid'. But there is still enough human need in me that being like this makes me feel like I am withering, freezing, disconnected from everyone, dreadfully lonely. I have embraced being a freak, but I don't want to be a freak, I don't want to go around for the rest of my life feeling like I am not allowed, not good enough, to have part in what is so normal for others. More so, it feels like I am physically, mentally, spiritually incapable to do so, as if I am an entirely different species in human form.
Part of me thinks, for God's sake, I am 28, shouldn't I want certain things, so why on earth don't I? It wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't crave the very things so much I reject, like I want to go fast, but feel incapable of using the means for doing so, like drive a car or fly a plane. Does that make sense?
Part of me thinks I am going insane, but that's not what it feels like. What I feel is that I think I am waking up. And the part of me who wants to have peace wishes I wouldn't. But now that I know what things are really like, can I honestly go on living in an illusion? It's not that I don't want to. But it's become impossible. How can you honestly and fully live in an illusion if you know it for what it is? In a way it's like the choice between the red and the blue pill.
I just wish sometimes I hadn't been given the choice. I dunno if there ever was any. I'd just rather live blissfully unaware, playing the game like everyone else without the humiliation of knowing it is a game only, and then get eaten, thinking I have got everything I wanted from life.
The other option may be truth, but it isolates, and once you chose it, there is no going back. It is a dreadfully lonely choice. I feel like a rationally observing scientist stuck in the body of a herd animal, with its herd needs constantly firing in its cortex, but unable to connect to its herd because the fucking scientist constantly reminds it that it is all just a game, that it has been indoctrinated to play this herd game by biology, God, evolution, whatever. So there is this sheep with its sheep needs but made incapable of acquiring and receiving whatever fulfills those needs.
It makes me distrust my own motives. Was having sex with the boy cunt a while ago something I did because I liked him, or merely an attempt to test out whether I am actually capable of still connecting to someone else, to see if I can still immerse myself in life? The way I felt was just like what I had made myself... a lab rat in my own experiment, watching this ridiculous act from the outside, wondering what the fuss was about. I can't feel anything else but scientific curiosity, as much as I want to be normal, let go and just experience it like everyone else. How have I become like that? Was it really just that one moment of dissociation when that old bastard was trying it on with the 12-year-old me? Did something snap there, unnoticed until 16 years later? Is there a way I can reverse everything that has turned me into that emotional zombie? Is there a way I can become a healthy, normal girl without ever feeling I have only brainwashed myself into thinking that? This is not a whine... fuck, please, someone tell me how to fix this!
It's moments like that, moments when I am most aware of this, that I lose hope, because I just can't see it happening. It's then that I want to die. Can you go through life feeling like a lab rat, like a circus act? Can you live on cynicism and irony?
I enjoy life, I enjoy loving people, I enjoy living with my senses to the fullest, as long as I can block out this feeling of nothing being real, of being completely isolated... but when it comes to this stuff, something in me stops dead in its tracks. And no fuckin Prozac and no fuckin therapy has ever been able to change that. Because, maybe, I have found the truth. I hope to God that's not it.
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