Superstition
1st chapter of a fresh new memoir that I'm writing one bit at a time.
How did I get to this point?
Even at the hospital, people are laughing at me. What the hell is their problem? My father is dying in there and these people have nothing better to do than smirk and whisper about me. They’re so small, they’re obviously depressed, and their world view is so limited. But still, I can’t help but be angry and I wonder what it is that makes them feel it’s okay, - to disrespect me, to dismiss me, or to discount me. What makes them feel that I don’t count.
The other day they tried to give me food poisoning. I know because they were too nice and too respectful to me at the fried chicken place, and they gave me extra pieces of chicken that I didn’t order. They gave me like 5 pieces for 4 bucks. It’s unheard of. Plus they loaded my food box with fries and fried pita chips. It’s a thing in this culture. I noticed it before because it happens a lot. They give you too much food, and it balances out the guilt or the ‘sin’ of contaminating your food. They do a good thing so they don’t have to feel guilty about doing a bad thing.
I felt something was a miss, and something was a foot. I’ve been in this situation before. My spidey senses were tingling this time. I get a feeling, I can’t explain it, an awareness, when there’s ill intent towards me. I tasted that something was off with the cold slaw. Besides, there was a group of boys 3 tables down, and they were smiling. One was telling the other, “don’t look behind you, but the person behind you is so and so, and they did so and so, and the whole world knows about it, and there’s an international ring of hackers pursuing him, trying to catch him doing so and so, but they’ve never been able to find anything on him so far, but don’t look.”
These kids, I’m guessing 20 year olds, were trying to pretend they didn’t notice me and weren’t interested in me, but they were thoroughly entertained by my being there, and they stole glances in my direction over and over again. They were out of ear shot but my intuition told me exactly what they were saying to each other. My intuitive gifts, as a cancer, an artist, a mystic, were paying off in some of the worst ways imaginable. I was reading minds. I was reading other people’s bad thoughts as if they were written on this page.
I followed the conversation and ended up confirming the idea that these people, unlike Americans, just can hide their emotions. You see, things are really bad in this country for the average Joe. Economically, all the wealth is tied up in the hands of the few, and the majority are subsisting on low salaries and informal, maybe sporadic, employment. People, generally, are not in a good mood. So when they’re happy, and I mean thoroughly entertained, and not just content or intellectually stimulated, something’s a miss. Something’s always up when the misery of the people suddenly lifts, and I see a look of pleasure upon their faces.
At times, I’m happy to be their jester, but if they knew the true story of how things got this way, I don’t think they’d laugh. I think they’d cry a bit, and realize nothing they believed is as they thought it was. This journey that I’ve been on, over the last 20 years, and my ill fate, has changed me as a man. I’m no longer fully attached to this world, and I look at my life as if it were a shop’s window display, just as Don Juan advised Carlos Castaneda. I’m window shopping my life with you.
I didn’t get food poisoning. after the cold slaw tasted funny, I didn’t eat much of the chicken. I did end up regurgitating most of it manually at about 3am - since my iron stomach wouldn’t pass it and wouldn’t let me sleep till it was all out and in the toilet. The international man of mystery that I’ve been made into won’t be undone by a few pieces of chicken. Not at this point, because we’re past that. Also, these people don’t want to kill me. Where’s the fun in that? They like the idea of me getting diarrhea and some brain fog. I’m in the Dumb and Dumber universe.
Things are awkward at the hospital, in the hallways, but in the room it’s just me and my dying father. It’s his fourth stroke and he’s lost the ability to speak. We don’t know how much of his brain is actually intact, but he sees us. That I can confirm. And his gaze is of course haunting, more than it’s ever been. In the room I reassure him. I try to allay his fears and about me and my life’s direction. I try to assure him that I’ll be fine, as I always have been. I always seem to survive, no matter how bad things get or how many people turn on me. This is not the death of me. It’s the death of everyone around me, and I’m watching. I’ll go too, oh sure, when it’s time, but I guarantee you that thanks to everything I’ve suffered and seen, I’m alive like few others. I’m paying so much attention. I’m paying so much attention that I can’t even take it sometimes.
We expected as addicts that we’d pay for things we did. I never imagined I’d pay the price for things I hadn’t done. Not only that, but I’d see myself suffering for things I wouldn’t do, and frankly couldn’t do, because they weren’t in my nature. Every sex addict has an MO. A modus operandi. There’s a set of things we would do, and because sex addiction is so diverse, there’s a whole set of things we’d never do. Your MO is hardwired into your brain from childhood. These things would activate my addiction and some corner of my brain would literally start to tingle and feel funny.
By now you’re probably wondering to yourself, why? Why is this happening? That’s the right question, but to know the answer is to know pretty much 20 years of my life. It’s to know what my addiction is, and what it isn’t, and how the mind works, and the nature of human desires, and the soul, and the essence of the person underneath a public persona offline and an even less accurate persona online.
And frankly, it’s none of your fucking business. I don’t owe you anything and I’m under no obligation to tell you what’s wrong with me and how my mind works, or even the deeper essences of my spiritual journey, my artistic-intuitive-creative self, or my triumphs as an educator. I’m certainly under no obligation to tell you my whole story, save for the fact that you bought the book, and it’s all in here.
So it’s fine, I’m going to tell you anyway, even though I don’t have to. Besides, I have lots of things I want to show you, and I’m hoping you’ll see what I’ve seen.
Don’t expect that solving this mystery is going to be easy or linear, because it hasn’t been for me. Don’t expect that there’s an easy answer or it’s going to all make sense. What I can tell you is that if I had actually ‘preyed on the innocent’ and if there was any evidence, so much as an account of victimization from a child, they would have brought charges.
Yes, a myth has been created around my existence and it’s gone global. Sorry, but that myth doesn’t tell you much about me, because it isn’t really about me. It tells us something about you. Not you you. Not you personally, because I don’t know you, but it tells us something about you in general. It tells us that you, (everyone else but me), create myths to explain what you don’t understand.
So come with me on a journey and I’ll make you understand. Maybe you won’t need the myth anymore. If a myth is a dead religion, what’s a dead myth? A superstition.
When you believe in things that you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way
-Stevie Wonder