Imagine a Smurf. Little blue guys in white pants and cap singing “La la, la-la la la…”

Now imagine a disease-infected Smurf with black skin, clenched fists, and angry red eyes, whose only actions are hopping around, shouting “Gnap!”, and biting other Smurfs on the ass (which then turns the victim into another Black Smurf).

That was actually the premise for a 1963 comic by the Smurfs’ creator, Peyo. In it, all the Smurfs wound up turning into Black Smurfs – even Papa Smurf, who was working on an antidote – but the world is saved when the Black Smurfs cause Papa Smurf’s lab to explode, scattering his in-progress antidote into the air, where it does its job of resetting the plot.

That story was also adapted in the 1981 Hanna-Barbera Smurfs cartoon, although they chose to depict the infected Smurfs as purple rather than black. Perhaps appropriately, the episode debuted on Halloween of that year.

I found this rare collectible Black Smurf figurine in 1982 in a tourist gift shop called The Smiling Cow in Camden, Maine, while on a date with my first girlfriend, Jean. I didn’t know its background at that time, but the uncharacteristically angry and Black Smurf figure (literally?) screamed to be purchased. It’s been a conversation piece and highlight of my memorabilia box ever since.

I’m pretty sure that the Black Smurf figurine was quickly recalled, or at least discontinued, making it something of a rarity and a collectible. Pretty interesting, if more than a little bit dubious.

Black Smurf figurine

Five Years

May. 22nd, 2007 03:17 pm
5 years ago:
In mid-2002, I had just been let go after seven years of work at Sapient. I’d also just started my LiveJournal, and was about to leave for an amazing 12-day tour of Scotland with the DargonZine writers.
10 years ago: 1997
In mid-1997, I had just finished a four-month stint of grand jury duty, which was how I escaped a death march project at work. I had also just returned from the first open-attendance DargonZine Writers’ Summit, hosted by Jon Evans in Washington DC. My father was also suffering from terminal cancer.
15 years ago: 1992
In mid-1992, I moved from Shrewsbury to Natick, having separated with my ex-wife the previous summer. I was spending a lot of time clubbing and seeing bands with my buddies Barry and Sean.
20 years ago: 1987
In mid-1987 I was in my last year of school, and writing one of my favorite stories, “Legend in the Making”. I’d marry Linda and honeymoon at the SCA’s Pennsic war within a couple months.
25 years ago: 1982
In 1982 I was about to graduate from high school, and was in the middle of the first grand romance of my life, with Jean.
30 years ago: 1977
In 8th grade, I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” and began writing my own derivative story. I also was a founding member of the New England Tolkien Society, and the editor of its annual literary journal, Mazar Balinu.
35 years ago: 1972
In 1972, having finished 2nd grade, my family moved from Portland to Augusta, Maine. This was the last year of my sister’s life.
40 years ago: 1967
In 1967 I was a pre-schooler. My family was living in Portland, Maine, having moved there from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where I had been born.

It's meme.

Oct. 26th, 2006 06:06 pm

All answers. Two words. Got picture? Now go!

1. Explain what ended your last relationship? Thermonuclear war.
2. When was the last time you shaved? Carpe diem.
3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.? Reading clock.
4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Presto change-o.
5. Are you any good at math? Radical one.
6. Your prom night? What prom?
7. Do you have any famous ancestors? Your gran'mama.
8. Have you had to take a loan out for school? Not really.
9. Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile? Haha FTN!
10. Last thing received in the mail? Credit offers.
11. How many different beverages have you had today? OJ Simpson.
12. Do you ever leave messages on people's answering machine? Stupid question.
13. Who did you lose your CONCERT virginity to? Ailsa Loverboy.
14. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach? Fucking egotism.
15. What's the most painful dental procedure you've had? 30,000 dollars.
16. What is out your back door? Newbury Street!
17. Any plans for Friday night? QUITTING JOB!
18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair? What hair?
19. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns? Ewww no.
20. Have you ever been to a planetarium? Yawn. Yeah.
21. Do you re-use towels after you shower? Before, too!
22. Some things you are excited about? Munny! MUNNNNNY!!!
23. What is your favorite flavor of JELLO? Dead kelp.
24. Describe your keychain(s)? Null set.
25. Where do you keep your change? Under scotch.
26. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people? Work award.
27. What kind of winter coat do you own? Leather, suede.
28. What was the weather like on your graduation day? Schoolkid question.
29. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed? Nasal passage.

Nothing's Wrong

I recently read David Kundtz’s “Nothing’s Wrong: A Man’s Guide to Managing His Feelings”.

I guess the first thing to relate is why that book interested me. I grew up in a family where little to no emotion was visibly manifested. I was extremely introverted and intellectual. As an adolescent, I found myself becoming ever more angry, selfish, and hateful.

Then I started dating, which was an immensely transformative experience for me. I was confused by how impulsive my first girlfriend could be, and jealous of her stunningly carefree demeanor. I decided to try to incorporate this lesson into my life, thereby gaining a previously absent appreciation for beauty, nature, kindness, and humor.

Back then, I didn’t think the intellectual and the emotional halves of my personality could coexist, so I created separate, distinct identities for them. “David” was cold, calculating, and intellectual, while “Ornoth” was impulsive, open, and joyous. One or the other would be predominant for six months to a year, while the other popped up at odd moments, and then they’d reverse. In those days, someone close to me could see in my eyes when I switched gears. That took me through college and into marriage.

Despite all that, I guess the trend was for the cold intellectual to gradually reassert itself. My ex-wife’s parting shot to me was to give me a Mr. Spock tee shirt for my birthday, an unabashed reference to my lack of warmth toward her.

In the fifteen years since my divorce, I’ve changed more radically than I ever thought possible, but the basic disconnect with my emotions has persisted. I’ve worked hard to develop compassion and generosity, but no matter how hard I look, I can’t seem to detect what most women tell me is the essence of life: my emotions.

It’s undoubtedly a difficult thing for a woman to understand: that a man really doesn’t have the emotional range or insight into his emotions that is so basic to her. I can’t speak for any other men, but I don’t think I’m alone when I admit that I’ve spent much of my life honestly doubting whether I have any emotions at all, and whether I could ever detect any I had, however hard I try.

Thus, the book.

The first thing the book establishes is that men need a different vocabulary to talk about their emotions. Women’s emotions come from their hearts, but men feel things “in their gut”. By drawing attention to the body’s physical reactions, Kundtz actually echoed themes I’ve heard in my Buddhist studies, which emphasize the physical form and its state changes as the place to look for evidence of emotional activity.

The next logical step is, of course, for a man to become more aware of the changes in his body. That would seem like a potentially productive line of inquiry, although I found the way it was presented a bit unhelpful.

“The very first and vitally important thing you have to do in dealing with any feeling is really something that you must *not* do. Don’t bury it. Don’t run from it and don’t cover it over. Just stay in the moment and feel it. Just feel it. Don’t bury. Don’t run. Don’t cover. […] Got the idea? Just stay put; don’t run. Just feel.”

That kind of rhetoric does nothing to help those of us who have stopped, have looked, and found nothing. “Just take a few deep breaths and feel whatever you’re feeling” is not only an unhelpful tautology, but it’s also thoroughly frustrating for someone who has no idea how to “feel what they’re feeling”.

Kundtz talks about this ability to notice one’s feelings and says “Without this first step, all else is doomed”, but then turns around and says, “It might also be true that at any given moment you may not be feeling anything very strongly”. Well, duh. I can’t say I’ve “felt anything strongly” in years!

The underlying, common assumption is that men are all actively suppressing their feelings, because everyone has feelings, don’t they? As someone who is reasonably mature and has actively tried to sense my own feelings and come up empty, I find that a decidedly hurtful way to dismiss my difficulties. I may indeed have emotions, but don’t accuse me of being dysfunctional simply because my emotions are not as overt as a woman’s. Defining women as normal and men as inherently abnormal is both prejudicial and hurtful.

Beyond that, as Kundtz himself is quick to point out, “Nothing’s Wrong is based on the strong conviction that there is a direct and causal relationship between violent behavior in males and their repressed (buried) feelings.” If that were true, one might well expect me to be a mass murderer, given my longstanding and lack of emotion, which can supposedly only be explained by active repression. But it hasn’t happened yet, so far as I know.

Anyways, leaving that particular issue aside for the mo’, let’s turn back to Kundtz’s three-step program to male emotional fitness: notice the feeling, name the feeling, and express the feeling. Assuming I find some way to get past step one—the real problem—there’s still this final step of manifesting the emotion.

The next question is *how*. Okay, I’m feeling happy, and maybe I can even recognize that; now how do I make a conscious choice between the myriad ways of depicting that emotion in my actions? Should I skip and jump? Should I whistle a tune? Should I go buy a drink for a cutie at the pub? How do I choose? And don’t you *dare* tell me something useless like “whatever you feel like doing”, or I’ll rip your throat out. It’s not that easy.

When he starts to talk about expressing one’s feelings, Kundtz cites a 1998 Newsweek article that reads, “when people regularly talk or even write about things that are upsetting to them, their immune systems perk up and they require less medical care”. Kundtz interprets this as “The talking or writing is the third step. It externalizes the feeling.”

That’s actually extremely good news for me, because I do a *lot* of written self-expression, as the length of this entry attests. The very first thing I turned to when my wife left me was email. Ironically, even today my real-world friends criticize me because they see more of what’s inside me by reading my blog than by talking on the phone or hanging out with me. Another funny bit is that Kundtz not only mentions writing, but also specifically calls out cycling, poker games, exercise, and meditation as other avenues for self-expression, and those are all things I do quite a lot of.

Another interesting bit is how thoroughly Kundtz disses isolation. He opens one section with a quote from Men’s Health magazine which reads, “Lack of social connection is ’the largest unexplored issue in men’s health’”. He follows with, “If there is only one change that you make as a result of reading this book, please make it this one. *Please!* Determine somehow, some way, at some time to regularly get together with friends.” I found that kinda interesting, considering I’m really the epitome of the isolated bachelor, and have recently been pondering how to reach out and craft a few new meaningful friendships.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I disliked the book. It was reasonably interesting, and successful at raising all kinds of topics for reflection. I just wish there was a little more depth to his analysis of how to detect one’s own emotions. “Just feel what you feel” isn’t helpful at all, although I’ll start watching my physiological responses to see if they provide any clues.

One last bit, which is something of a tangent. In addition to the Mary McDowell quote I’ve posted about already, Kundtz also cites the following quotation: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.”

I think that’s about the most eloquent statement of the Buddhist law of karma that I’ve ever heard. Satisfaction comes from taking moral actions, and immoral actions produce dissatisfaction. And I’m blown away that the speaker added “And that’s my religion” as a postscript. Can you guess who the quote was attributed to? I’ll give you a hint: he has a wretched hairdo and spends most of his time on $5 bills.

Imagine what might happen if we had a president today of a comparable ethical standard.

4:52am

Mar. 11th, 2006 06:30 am
4:52am.

It's like having just come from an incredible movie that touched you to the heart, over and over.

And no one else has ever seen it.

No one else has ever even heard of it.

And they'll never get the chance to see it.

You'll never be able to share it with anyone.

"Made mindless" and the Southern Cross.

Berg and the Nakeds.

From Ka-Ve to my wedding to the Paint Lady.

Car magazines and reading primers

Frankenstein and Philadelphia Freedom.

Corrugated fun.

Dodgeball and Seally Pond.

The Saco River and the quarry.

Garnet and Garnett.

Watching the most important person in my life dying in an ICU.

The Bentmen and Concussion Ensemble.

From group love in a Jersey suburb to a different kind of group love in a cottage on a Scottish loch.

Free Enterprise.

Disco duck and "sprots".

Frodo Lives! at the McClurg Court Theater.

Sink the buses and save the nukes.

He's an eviscerator.

Sweet, Abba, and Devo piped thru a jury-rigged speaker system.

Mosquito Mountain and the Devil's Triangle.

Miles and miles of roads and trails that no one else has ever seen.

The Klong Yaw.

Hundred thousand dollar tax bills, and one-cent bank statements.

The Great Lie, and Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

Blond. Egad.

The turn toward Race Point, and resting at the beach afterward.

The campanile of the New Old South Church.

Astoria, and the RR.

Nights at Bill's or the Pluff.

The Toxicmobile. The Glick. The Starship. The Devinci and the Plastic Bullet.

Quack and meow. I'm flabbergasted. Ay-ant! Juggo naiyo.

Fletcher Pratt. "Eh? Did you say munny?" Yes, shut up, Hal.

Playing ball against the wall of the DMV for years at a time.

Compersion, and the ten thousand and one unspoken crushes.

Suits, casual, and back to suits. Purple rugs everywhere. I think the Morale Committee should have considered that.

Pemaquid, Camden, Battie. My tree in Old Town.

The ComDisk, MJJWSMBB, and HSnet.

Mazar Balinu, Carmarade, and DAL-SYS.

Kenny Kinnikinnick, inventor of Gnip Gnop.

Silent summer drives back from girlfriends' homes.

And the Southern Cross.

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

If you've been part of my life, I owe you something I can never repay. You've honored me greatly, and no matter how small a part you played or how distant the events in question, rest assured that you have touched me, and I remember.

Though no one else can or will, I shall remember, until the end of my days. Namaste, my friend.

Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'.
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.

So I'd like to take a few minutes and tell you about one of the most transformational events in my life, and how it has played out in a recent episode from my life.

My first series of anecdotes comes from my senior year in high school, and my first real relationship. Steeped in the intensity of the conflicting emotions of adolescence, I found myself to be an intensely jealous person. I wasn't just jealous of people, but anything that received the attention or affection of my girlfriend, Ailsa.

For example, one of the popular songs when we were dating was Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", which came out with "Rocky III". Ailsa loved it so much that whenever it came on the radio, she'd stop whatever she was doing (even if it was necking with me!), turn the volume up, and sing along at full volume. It didn't take long for me to absolutely despise that song, with a blind hatred that burned fierce and blinding.

Another of the things that she loved were irises. My mother had coincidentally planted three or four such flowers along the side of our driveway, and one day when Ailsa and I weren't doing so well I got so irritated by their reminding me of her that I pulled up all the flowers, bulbs and all, and smashed them into oblivion with a sledgehammer right in the middle of our driveway.

These certainly aren't the only such stories, but they serve to underscore how irrational, how overpowering, and how instinctive my jealousy was at that age.

Now, fast-forward twelve years, when Ailsa and I began dating a second time, and lived together for a short time. Both of us had been through marriage and divorce, and we'd begun exploring various sexual fringe groups: she'd spent some time in the lesbian community, and we were beginning to explore both BDSM and polyamory together.

As we attended various "play parties", she commanded attention from some people, and I commanded it from others. Each of us met new people and were accepted into new groups that we wouldn't have been able to enjoy if we'd operated separately. It became very apparent that we both benefitted socially when we allowed one other to make contact with other people.

Now, under these circumstances, you'd think that jealousy would be an immense problem. After all, we're talking about your primary partner being pretty explicitly affectionate with someone else, right in front of your face! However, we both realized that we'd each get our own share of attention, and that we were committed to one another in a way that was much stronger than the more casual exchanges we had with folks outside our relationship.

This really hit home for me when Ailsa developed a serious (but at the time unspoken) infatuation for another woman she knew. Knowing that I'd gotten the lion's share of attention from people outside our relationship, I knew it was only fair that I give her the green light to see where their relationship might take them. I also knew that my relationship with Ailsa wasn't threatened, so I let it go ahead. It really was a completely new frontier for me, being able to completely support my partner's interest in another person.

And once I got that far, I found myself in a position where I didn't just passively authorize their relationship, but actively put the two of them into situations that had romantic potential. Since I'd already decided that it would be okay with me that Ailsa take on another lover, that extension only made sense. And besides, it was fun!

The most powerful part of the situation, which cemented it permanently into my behavior, was the feedback I got. Because she knew it was okay with me, Ailsa was free to share the heady excitement of her new relationship with me, which was an absolutely wonderful way for me to experience positive reinforcement for the freedom and support I'd given her. Seeing the woman I loved, flush with the thrill of a new romance, was incredbily moving, and I found myself in the almost unbelievable position of supporting her relationship and not feeling even a hint of the jealousy that I otherwise would have expected.

It has been only recently that the made-up term "compersion" has appearred in polyamorous circles to describe this very unique feeling I experienced: the abundant joy of seeing someone you love falling in love. Most people (certainly virtually all monogamists) in such a situation will respond from a place of fear, selfishness, denial, resistance, and possessiveness. Taking polyamory to heart enabled me to respond in a completely different way: from a place of love, trust, support, and sharing. And what a wonderful energy I got in return! This kind of basic transformation of your relationships is why I consider polyamory a far, far more integral part of who I am than mere "passtimes" such as BDSM and bisexuality and so forth.

What this episode did was firmly establish the perspective from which I treat the people I care about. Love is not about possession or control, which is what 95 percent of people practice (even though they do not admit it); love is about making another person's happiness just as important as your own, and really acting that way.

Now let's fast-forward another seven years. After four years of dating perhaps the most wonderful woman I've ever met, I'd pretty much decided that Inna was the love of a lifetime, something I had been absolutely unable to envision after the failure of my marriage. And yet, at the same time, Inna (a monogamist) was becoming more and more convinced that I was not the person she wanted to grow old with, and that we needed to stop seeing one another in order to give her enough room to see other people. She and I had a number of long discussions about how and why she thought this outcome would make her happier in the long run. For me, coming from my world-view, that was the most important factor: her happiness.

Many of my friends wondered how I could surrender my own hopes and desires for the relationship, and support Inna's desire that we separate. I'm sure that some of them surely think that my lack of a dramatic, possessive, selfish tantrum proves that I don't really love Inna, but in fact they've got it exactly backwards. The only reason why I can give up my dreams of a life together is because I love her so much, and because her happiness is so very important to me.

Between my divorce and my relationships with Ailsa, I've developed a very simple but unique philosophy, which has been tested and, in my opinion, proven correct in my relationship with Inna. If you love someone and they want something, you have a simple choice: you can either support their desire and help them pursue what they believe will make them happy, or you can establish yourself as an obstacle between your partner and their happiness. You might even be able to get away with standing between your partner and her happiness for a period of time. But every time you do that, you will prove that her happiness is not important to you, and in the long run she will tire of your selfishness and leave you. In short, the typical monogamist tactics of jealousy and selfishness and possessiveness are self-defeating long-term strategies.

So for me, the answer is clear: always remember that "love" means valuing someone else's happiness, and always do your best to help the people you love achieve the things that will make them happy. That's how you act from a place of love, not from a place of fear.

I'm afraid this is going to be a lengthy one, even by Ornoth standards. It's a good example of how one inoccuous comment can trigger a whole series of discussion topics.

Inna and I have been very close for four years now. During that time, we've become more intimately familiar, and more open and forthright, with one another than with anyone either of us has known before. I think it goes without saying that our relationship is something I treasure immensely.

Certainly there's an investment in education there: we've taken the time to really get to know one another deeply and intuitively, which only comes through long months of shared experiences. Contrary to popular myth, that kind of understanding cannot happen overnight, or in a matter of weeks. But the investment of time certainly isn't the most important reason to value a relationship.

Instead, there's a special joy in sharing your life with someone who really knows you, and who interacts with you at a level of depth and real understanding and intuition that simply can't be approached without that investment. For someone to take the time to know me so well is priceless to me, for that is the baseline for genuine appreciation and understanding.

At the same time, offering that intimacy of understanding opens one up to unparalelled criticism. To let someone know you that well is also to let them see your worst and most feared faults, even the ones you choose not to acknowledge, and hide from yourself.

A couple days ago, on the way home from a dinner, I was walking across the Harvard Bridge, accompanied by Inna and two of her friends, when I made the apparently understated comment "This isn't bad".

All that night, Inna had been hounding me to express an opinion about the evening. It is, of course, one of her triggers, because she is excessively concerned with how others perceive the events she chooses to take responsibility for. In addition, her emotional state is influenced to a large degree by how demonstratively happy the people around her are. In a phrase, she is more affected by how the people around her enjoy an event than by the event itself. All this results in people's reactions being an emotional trigger for her.

On the other hand, I am extremely conservative in demonstrating my emotions and enjoyment of any given event. It's just the way I am (I'll get into the reasons for that in a moment). But you can see already how this combination of personality traits will result in Inna feeling insecure, and me feeling pressured or criticized.

Inna reacted to my comment by indicating that "This isn't bad" is "the highest praise possible from Orny", and going on to attack me for being so stingy with my emotions. I went on to defend myself, and the evening ended quite unsatisfactorily, with each of us feeling hurt and angry for expecting something different from one another. Nothing that won't get settled, it's just that I needed to relate that bit in order to proceed from here.

In the rest of this entry, I discuss why I am so reserved. It's a lot of self-analysis and some of it I admit will sound quite adolescent. It's naturally something I typically try to rise above, but at the same time, it's also still something that continues to influence my behavior.

So why am I so reserved? It would be easy to cite the familiar axiom that it's easier (or safer) to be negative than to be positive. In the past, that has certainly been a factor in my tempering my reactions, even recently. I think that I've made great progress on this one recently, thanks partly to Inna, and partly to my increased participation in the creative community. I'm learning, gradually, how to be more supportive and less judgemental, at least when the circumstances require it.

But there's much more to it than that. There are ultimately two big reasons why I'm not more demonstrative: first, I lack the ability to feel, express, and act on my emotions, and second, I fear what might come out if I tried.

I'm unable to feel, express, and act on my emotions? Isn't that the easiest thing in the world? Well, to many people it must be, but I've never been ruled by my emotions; I've always kept them under smotheringly tight control, to the point where today I have great difficulty even identifying when I have emotions, much less what they might be. I know that's probably counterintuitive to most people, but trust me on this one; I know of what I speak.

The root of most of my insecurities surely lies in my reaction of our family moving to an unfamiliar town when I was nine years old. I think it's typical that most children will react to such a traumatic event either by becoming extremely extroverted (in order to attract new friends), or by becoming extremely introverted (out of fear). I fell into the latter category, and never had a large number of friends until late in high school (see below). My family reinforced the value of intellect over emotions, and my life goal became to live forever, so that I could learn everything there was to know and know how the world would turn out. And after all, what use are emotions when you're alone?

When I began find myself attracted to women, my introversion and insecurity kept me from actually pursuing relationships. They of course seemed extraneous to my life's goals, but with no outlet, the unreleased sexual tension of adolescence worked inside me, turning me into a very hateful, judgemental racist: a very dangerous hooligan, but without the disregard for traditional values that would have enabled me to do real harm.

The stage was set for my first real romance, which took place during my final year of high school. Jean was, of course, everything I was not, but most especially she was positive, in touch with her emotions, and impulsive. My entire life turned around in one moment that took place in my parents' back yard. On a warm, lush spring day, I watched as Jean actually laughed and skipped down a set of rock stairs into the grass beneath a maple tree. I (quietly, of course) stood there dumbstruck, watching her suffused with joy to overflowing: an emotion I never let myself feel, expressed in a way that I could never express. That was my revelation, and I made a very conscious, deliberate decision to be more impulsive (ironic, eh?).

At that time, I was one of the principals in the New England Tolkien Society, a group of young fans of the author who wrote "the Hobbit" and "the Lord of the Rings". The group had one or two camping trips each year where everyone got dressed up in medieval garb and pretended to be hobbits or elves or whatnot. This was to be the testing ground for my new impulsiveness.

At NETS gatherings, I stopped caring what people thought of me, and actually pushed myself to become an extrovert. I started acting before thinking, incorporating random acts of silliness and flirtation into my behavior. Amazingly to me, I became quite popular, even with the girls. I had successfully been able to "flip the switch" from cold, hateful intellectual to outgoing, silly, and impulsive extrovert.

The problem was that I was still living at home, where that kind of behavior would never have been acceptable. So in order to rationalize my different behaviors, I borrowed from schizophrenia, describing myself as two separate people. David, the name I used up until college, was the master of intellect and self-control; Ornoth, or Orny, which I'd used as a name in Tolkien fandom and other medieval recreationist events, was the flirtatious, uninhibited fool. That was the situation when I graduated high school.

Throughout college and into my marriage, I went through several phases when one or the other of these two "personalities" were dominant. Any given phase would last about nine months, but within those larger phases, I might switch back and forth (intentionally or not) for a period of days or hours. Friends who knew me well said that they could see in my eyes when I made the discrete transition from one to the other.

But as my language indicates, these two halves were never integrated, and my intellectual half never learned how to demonstrate, or even see, my own emotions. Two decades later, Inna wisely told me that this division was contrived and that perpetuating it from adolescence was unhealthy, so I tried to set it aside. Unfortunately, for the most part that meant losing touch with my emotions, though I shouldn't lay the responsibility for that wholly on Inna. After all, my ex-wife's parting shot was to give me a Mister Spock tee shirt, effectively saying that my coldness and rationality were the equivalent of the Vulcan's banishment of all emotion. And while working for Sapient, I twice took the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, perhaps the most famous personality test in the world, and never scored so much as a single point on the "emotions" scale.

One thing I pride myself on is expressing myself accurately in written form, after I've had a chance to digest things and determine how I feel about them. But I am wholly inarticulate, unable to detect or describe my emotions in "real-time", as events occur. This was particularly well demonstrated when Inna and I spent a week on Cape Cod two years ago. At the time, Inna had no idea that I was enjoying the trip. To be entirely truthful, I don't believe I knew it, myself. But after coming back to Boston, I realized how much I treasured those memories, and how much I'd enjoy repeating them, and only then was I able to show Inna how much they meant to me. Of course, to her, who trusts emotions far more than words spoken after the fact, this sounded insincere.

So for more than a quarter century I've practiced a uniquely successful method of denying my emotions, to the point where today I find myself questioning whether I have the capacity for emotions at all, and if I did, how I could possibly recognize them in myself, much less allow myself to publicly demonstrate them and act upon them. There are, of course, both advantages and disadvantages to this way of life, but I think it would be nice (and healthy) if I had the capacity to choose whether to demonstrate my emotions or not, rather than having no choice at all because I cannot even register them.

And then there's the other question: if I demonstrated them, what might come out? As I mentioned above, I was a pretty angry kid in high school, and there is still some residue from that. I was hateful, racist, reactionary, and, more than anything else, judgemental. Those were the emotions that were most natural to me then; would they resurface? Of course, I've thankfully evolved out of most of those. I've put aside most of my racism and hatefulness and prejudices, and I've tried to be more supportive and less quick to judge.

But one thing remains with me: I'm really not fond of people at all. I can't say that I truly hate people anymore, which is good, but my tolerance and patience with them is extremely low. As my relationship with Inna proves, there are people out there whose friendship has immense potential for me, once it reaches a certain level of depth. I think my problem is that as an introvert, it just doesn't seem worth the effort to make that investment. Most people either aren't compatible with me (through no fault of their own, of course), or simply don't desire the depth of friendship which would make the investment of time and energy worthwhile. Most people operate at a very shallow level, and that bores me to tears. I need a few good friends who know me very well, who are intelligent and articulate, with broad interests which include some of my own, but also include other, new things that would help me grow.

But establishing those kinds of friendships takes time, during which you have to slog through all the common, surfacey stuff before genuine depth comes through meaningful shared experiences. And putting that time and effort into a surfacey friendship that might never "pay off" is what I, as an introvert, shy away from. And that's why I am so alone, though I live in the very heart of the city.

So my fear is that if I really allowed my emotions to show, my general impatience and intolerance of people would drive people away.

With such an attitude, one could reasonably ask why I need people in my life at all. For the most part, indeed, I have concluded that I don't. But there are certain reasons, most of which are either very practical or mundane.

First, being alone is dangerous. What happens if I have a heart attack or cannot live unassisted? That's a problem, but it's hardly a great basis for friendship!

I'm physically attracted to people. This is the one thing that I find most frustrating, this unquenchable desire. There's so much turmoil that I wouldn't have to face if I could just rid myself of my sexual desires. I've tried; that's just not going to happen...

People are necessary for my entertainment and growth. Even living a purely selfish life for my own amusement, I need what other people create. I need live music, interesting artwork, architecture, graffiti, fashion, literature, dining, modern technological innovation, and all kinds of shared activities. I need intellectual challenge, and people who can bring me new experiences and ideas. That's why I live in the middle of Boston, and why I can't just pack up and live in isolation up in northern Maine, even though that has its attractions.

Of course, none of these are terribly lofty reasons for interacting with people. The one thing that I really need from people, that I could never possibly deny, that makes everything worthwhile, is exactly what I described between Inna and I at the beginning of this entry: understanding.

What I need, more than anything else, is for someone to know me. Not just in a surface sense, but to really know everything about me, fully and deeply, and understand who I am, what I've seen, and where I want to go. Someone to share my pains with, to appreciate my fiction, to understand why I think DargonZine is an honorable life's work, to know what polyamory means to me as well as my negative opinions of marriage, to share the spiritual appreciation I feel of nature, to understand my philosophy and why I live the way I do, to know when to push me and when it's best to leave me alone, and to occasionally surprise me when they understand me even better than I know myself. And I want to be able to know them as thoroughly as they know me, and know the new experiences and ideas that they can bring me.

And, of course, I want them to understand the difficulty I have with feeling, expressing, and acting upon my own emotions, and help me to overcome it, rather than condemn me for this area of weakness.

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