#but then if i died that would make people uncomfortable too :) the grand paradox

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“I think it feels more challenging currently because I’m focused on it with a new attention, different eyes, and an older brain. I think one of the most challenging things for me in all of life has been can I, meaning me, who I am, not pretending, no barriers, can I exist in this world safely? What I mean by that is can my authentic self, in its soft, kind, compassionate, and artistic way of being, just be without being ripped to fuckin shreds because it feels like that’s all they want to do. You can feel it, the moment you leave the house, there’s this sensation, just making twenty paces out of your apartment, that you’re too soft to be on the street right now. You need to rein it in, stop day dreaming, and get the fists ready. I think that’s been a lifelong thing . . . finding ways, places, and communities where I can be myself and not get ripped to shreds.”

Tell me about some of your first times experiencing that?

“Oh God, it’s everywhere, all day. It’s super pervasive. I’m not paranoid about it and I actually don’t think about it, but these moments will arise and it will hit me. You go to school with purple hair, the teacher and your classmates can’t fuckin wait to tell you how terrible, stupid, or ugly it is. You draw a picture, now I’m thinking of children and adult figures, and literally someone is chomping at the fuckin bit to tell you you won’t make money as an artist, it’s a lousy past time, and where’s your career. I think it’s at every turn we make. You go to wear a skirt, a shirt, color of shoes, fuckin choose a lipstick, they’re the dumbest fuckin things. It’s not that I blame the people who are doing the, we’ll call it, hammering because I think people hammer for a lot of reasons. In fact, I would argue, I have no data to back it up, that the majority of people hammer because someone hammered them and they’re really, really glad to see you breaking the mold and, at the same time, they’re really, really trying to save you from the blow of the hammer because they know it already. I think when people say ‘is that what you’re going to wear?’ they actually love it and they would love to live in a world where that is what you’re going to wear and you’re going to go out. When they say ‘is that what you’re going to wear?’ it’s their fear, I’m not saying this makes it acceptable, but their love for you is their fear for your life so they hammer you because if they do it, it’s better than a stranger in a movie doing it. So, that’s how I feel about it.”

As you were saying that, I could also picture a parent or someone you’re romantically involved with saying ‘is that what you’re going to wear?’ but also in a way that’s going to reflect on them in some way and makes them feel uncomfortable.

“Or vulnerable to danger. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m 44 years old and I’ve learned these nuances that are in life that you wouldn’t have seen before and you get compassionate. I stress to myself a lot is that in these moments, like you said they’re worried about the vulnerability of themselves, they’re still acting, I’ll call it, mal-aligned, but there’s still such immense love there. I think it becomes tricky because you need to mind your boundaries because that’s still not a kind of love you need, but to be able to still recognize that they care so much, but they’re really frightened for your fuckin life. It counts for something, even though you have to put the boundary up that this isn’t the kind of love I need. I used to be in a place where I felt that clearly they hated me, but now I think love is the backing, it’s ironic in a weird way, of some really wonderful things, Flowers in the Attic, toxic things. It’s a weird paradox.”

For those who don’t know, Flowers in the Attic is the story of a mother who is sick or dies, locks the children in the attic, and the grandmother slowly poisons them with arsenic, but they are able to escape and nearly die in the process. So, tell me a little bit about some of your experiences early on with trying to be who you are in a world that wants to confine you.

“I know it. I’ve learned something, which is nice. I’ve learned that I don’t know if I’m actually capable of being who I am not, and what I mean by that is I think people can go to work and “play the role.” It might be a downfall for me because it seems more adaptable to be able to do that, but I just can’t. I just can’t. At some point, the stitches will rip and it will all explode, and I’ll say or do something. It’s been nice to at least realize I’m incapable of that. I wouldn’t go work for the Catholic church because I clearly know it’s not a cultural fit for me, where I think some people could. They could work the mailroom at the Catholic church and actually be a Satanist, or whatever. Some people can do that, but I can’t. I get called a bitch a lot, but what I think people mean is my incapability for pretenses.

“Experience wise, it’s been a little hard because when you can’t fit in, it makes life hard so you go around trying to fit in and you realize you can’t and, at the same time, I leave every time with myself intact. I don’t fracture because I think that kind of behavior can be fracturing. I’m pure as gold because it is what it is, take it or leave it. The flip side of that is when I do find something that fits, such as my relationships with my friends, I have an amazing, amazing group of friends; it’s a circle of about six people. We’ve literally curated our friendships with each other. I know that’s a strange word to say, but I think a lot of us didn’t have great family things going on. We had an idea that if religion is bunking a family up, you would think the family would choose the family over the religion, but that’s not what happened and that’s when all the problems come in. I feel that’s an easy choice. If we were able to choose your family, and in my mind I believe you are, you can literally choose if the preacher up there is saying something and talking about your kid, fuck the preacher, I’m going with my kid, but that’s not a decision people make. We talked about choosing your family and what that would look like, and we all had similar visions. Each of us is so different, vibrant, we take up a lot of space, and yet nobody feels squished, nobody is silenced, and our values are the same. Any of them could call me at 3 am and, in fact, I would be pissed if I found out later something happened and they didn’t call me at 3 am. That’s the kind of friendship.

“This thing about where you fit and you can be your authentic self, I think you need to curate it. I think it’s a very deliberate curation. I think, this is me and I’m not going to talk for anyone else, I have no problem saying “you’re a no, these are the values I hold, this is what I need to be, this is what you need to be, and if this can’t playout for your or I need to make myself smaller for you in any such way, you’re a no,” and I have no fuckin problem with that. I’ll tattoo it on your forehead ‘you are a no,’ you do not get the privilege of me in your life; if you ever change your mind about that, my table is wide open.’ I won’t settle at all. Like I said, it makes the group small.

Quality versus quantity, right?

“I guess. Fantasy with a capital F with the politics we engage in and the community building we engage in, whole neighborhoods and streets that operate like this. The problem is that I don’t see it happening on quite that a grand scale, maybe a community center, a church, or a school. I wish this kind of community building caught on larger scale. It’s also the kind of community where, have you ever heard of the expression ‘if I had two pairs of shoes and you had none, I have one pair too many’? Is it communism? Not quite, it’s just not, it doesn’t fit the mold.

“Corey, so we just reconnected and it’s been years and years and years. You have no groceries and you’re not sure how you’re going to make the week out. I have some, so you’re welcome to my some, but I also have this group of friends and I’d be on the phone and, by the time you left here today, you wouldn’t leave without enough groceries to get you through the week. What I’m saying by that statement is that it is not okay with me that you, Corey Hudson, are without food. If you said I have no food and I said yeah, that blows. No, literally, I am not alright with Corey Hudson having no food. Can we build larger communities like that? I’d like to. I feel like the best I can do is walk out the door, I’m no priest, I’m no saint, I can be the nicest person you ever met, and maybe if I’m hungry or whatever, I can shred you to pieces where you stand and play in your blood. The best I can do is to walk out the door of my house and be attentive, aligned, in the now, in the moment, really in the moment, I’m not regretting the past, I’m trying my best not to stress over the future. I’m here now, today, in this moment, ensure every pace I make throughout the day, each person I meet, every place I go, I do my best. In other words, to walk humbly by a homeless person and ask ‘when was the last time you ate something?’ Three dollars buys a whole loaf of bread. You can’t sit there and eat a whole loaf. If you at least get him that $3 loaf of bread, which I’m not going to pretend that everybody has $3, some people don’t even have that. If you’re able to do the $3, you get the loaf of bread, it’s something, and then you move on from that. Someone standing on the bus, you give them your seat. If I can move through these moments, sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I fail miserably. ‘Hey, you got a quarter?’ ‘Go fuck off; I’m tired, I just got a bill that I don’t know how I’m going to pay, don’t ask me for nothing, nothing, I don’t have it.’

“There’s a game I like to call Steal from Peter to pay Paul, and I lost that game a couple of weeks ago and my electricity went off. I thought I could let it go longer, I gambled, and I lost. Sometimes I scramble and hustle. Thank God, I’m a successful hustle, and it all worked out well. There was that day, I was holding that fuckin letter that it’s going to happen and I was just trying to come up with a game plan, having a cigarette on my balcony, and this dude asked me for a cigarette and I told him to go fuck himself, I didn’t even have electricity, don’t fuckin ask me for nothing, and he said ‘oh, I’m sorry’ and went away. Within five minutes, I thought that didn’t go well. But, for the most part, I try to do my best as I move through the world. Co-creator of this universe, they say, and I just try to create a world of my liking.

I think what you’re describing so eloquently is something I practice too, and I think it’s been how I move through any of my careers I’ve had, “to see a need, fill a need.” If you have the capacity to fill a need you see, don’t wait for permission to do it, you just do it. That also requires boundaries, which I think ties into what you were saying about being hungry or you not having electricity and this snap reaction of fuck off, I can’t help you when I can’t even help myself, of knowing when we have a well that is overflowing and when giving would deprive us of our own very basic needs. I think there’s something to be said for this mentality if we all could move through life with paying attention to what the needs are around us, what our own needs are and what we have, and if we could all give a little bit of something to each other, we would have a much richer, much more connected, kinder community. I think whether that’s happening on a friendship community level like you described the six people, a church, a school, a town, or a neighborhood, it kind of radiates out, and we know that’s what is missing in our society today with the one or two percent of the population.

“It became so clear with the fire at Notre dame. So, oh my God, everybody said there were all these homeless people, we need health insurance, yadda yadda, and Notre dame happen and, within twenty-four hours, four billionaires came together and raised x billion dollars, they had it all along. They’re like the image of a dragon, licking the pile of gold that no one can fuckin touch.”

Yeah, but the pile of gold, I think we talked about this a little prior to the interview and you eluded to it a little bit in the interview, attaining the things you desire and that you think are really going to serve you and bring value, purpose, and meaning to your life, whether it’s a sense of security, your stuff, a relationship, a car, a house, a career, you find that when it’s just you with that stuff, it has no value. It’s just greed and becomes a prison in a sense, like that dragon who’s in a cave with his treasure, isolated, alone, miserable, and angry. It’s when we share that it then has value, meaning, and it brings purpose to our lives.

“I had a really nice moment . . . as you know, I’m starting a new job tomorrow, that’s going to be amazing and I’m going to do well. There’s a woman in this building, who lives down just a bit, and the neighbors have been gossiping, it’s a small community, she has been without electricity for a week or so. I’m actually looking forward to my first paycheck because I think I’m going to slide $300 under her door, unmarked, cash, and let her decide what to do with it, but I can’t wait until that first paycheck because the longer I wait, the longer that she’s in the dark. I’m excited. I like to put, it’s literal this time, my money where my mouth is. I believe in these things I say and I do them. I don’t want her to know that it’s me, I want a plain envelope, all twenties, under the door at 1:00am so I know she’s sleeping. When she says, ‘someone put money under my door,’ I’ll say, ‘how weird, I gotta go to work.’”

That leads me to something that’s important in this idea of being kind, helpful, and seeing needs and filling needs, is compassion. I think, for instance you, having your experience of your electricity being shut off, you know what that feels like, you have empathy, you have compassion, you recognize when someone else is struggling and you know what that feels like, and if you have the capacity to help them, compassion moves you to take some action. I think that is a beautiful quality in much of humanity is that when some tragedy happens or when someone’s chips are down, if we too can relate to that experience or empathize in some way with the suffering or pain of that, we’ll step in. The problem is a lot of times we don’t have to wait for a disaster to happen.

“Or relate.”

Yes, or relate to something.

“There’s a lot happening, especially law wise, with trans things and abortion things. I don’t know . . . I’ll never know what that decision-making process is like. And, I’m also not trans, so I’ll never really know what it’s like to look down and feel like you don’t fit with what you see. I don’t fuckin have to. The thing is people who are experiencing those things are saying this is what I need. I’m never going to fuckin have an abortion, but what do you need? Oh, I need this; fine, I’m going to go in a booth and fuckin vote for this. You’ve literally told me what you need, I don’t fuckin need to understand. I don’t need to wrap my mind around anything; it’s a no brainer. I think it’s interesting because we can both act, like you said, we’ve both lived and experienced a thing, but to be able to act without is equally important.”

Yes, because on any level, we’re all human beings and we all have very basic needs and whether the experiences are the same or not, the emotions, the oppression, and the repression is all the same. So, how does this tie into authenticity, which is what you talked about, finding the space where it’s safe?

“It’s funny that you bring that up, I wouldn’t have thought of it. Things weren’t so hot in my childhood, and they really weren’t so hot into my twenties with family and stuff like that, cultivating healthy relationships, etc. I would say there’s a lot of narratives. Some I had taken on from outside and some I had created myself, of who I am that were really untrue. It was brought to my attention, thank goodness, because I have good friends, from people outside of myself, that they weren’t true. The narrative I think I had made, and probably with good reason, I mean you don’t do things without good reason, even though it’s not a good thing to do, there’s still a reason, was that I was mean. I would cut your throat. I’ll destroy you. I will literally rip you from limb to limb. Don’t mess with me. I have claws. There’s that narrative because when people do mess with you, they actually get that. From their perspective, you are a fuckin bitch because you’re being nasty, but the things my friend would say and bring to my attention, despite not wanting to, because that’s how shadow work works, we don’t want to acknowledge this thing, that fuckin bitches don’t slide $300 under their neighbor’s door. Fuckin cunts don’t buy groceries for the homeless. I say, ‘no, no, no, I’m mean and nasty’, but I’m not actually nasty; I’m actually quite gooey.

“When it comes to authenticity, in a weird way, it comes full circle, knowing that I’m gooey, it comes around to can my gooey exist in this world? I think it does, it does really well, and it does for those who want it to. Either you’re going to get the gooey, and gooey is good, or you’re not, and that’s really unfortunate because gooey is good. In the process of learning who I really am and not needing the armor, I’m not saying to walk through the world completely fuckin naïve, you don’t need to be so armored up like you’re untouchable. In learning how to do that tightrope walk, I tried to think of a metaphor or an analogy, but I couldn’t, but walking through the world like I had two hands behind my back and, depending on what presents itself to me, it’s either going to be flowers or an axe. I hope it’s flowers. That is how I get to be authentic. So far, so good.

Is authenticity dependent upon someone else’s capacity to receive you?

“No, well, I think authenticity is paradoxical, in the sense that I think when alone, there’s something authentic already there, there’s a core, a part, a thing. Now we’re getting real deep into the psychology or anthropology of it. Can we discount our own consciousness as the other? I am authentic in relationship to someone, but I’m authentic in relationship to myself, which I just thought of because I was initially going to say even alone, there’s a core there and then I think there’s also a piece that’s relational. I think we’re also relating to ourselves. I would argue that authenticity, I would even say existence, let alone authenticity, requires relation.”

You alluded to some challenges in your early years. Would you mind elaborating on those a little bit?

“I can tie it in, in the sense that for some reason my family, single mom and brothers, were afraid of me. What I mean by that—I can’t get at the why, I’ll never know the why and I’ve long since stopped pretending to read people’s minds. That’s a very good lesson to learn in real life. If you come home and you say she said hello like this, do you think she’s mad? Just fuckin stop, she just said hello; hello is all the data you have, so just stop, Madame Cleo stop trying to read minds. So, I’ll never get at the why, and we don’t have a relationship now to ask them. They were afraid of me, by that I mean, I might mean a lot of things. Being a child of my decade, was it so drastically different? It was the electronic age coming and I was the first one in the family to have a computer as a child. Was I that foreign to them? Was the thinking processes of my decade so drastically different that they couldn’t relate? There are a million different avenues I could go down. I kind of always, like I said I have a hard time pretending to be something I’m not . . . I just am. They’d find me up a tree and I’d have some fuckin shit, brambles on my head, was it all too much? There’s a lot connections and I’m going to go back to something I said earlier, you choose. If I had a kid and that’s what my kid wanted to do and as long as no one’s getting hurt, including themselves, then I love it, I just love it because they’re my kid. No further analysis of that is required.

“I think we talked about it, but it became the thing of get that off your head, get down here, why are you behaving like that, why are you painting, painting is for girls, it’s a girl color, why do you like it? I couldn’t just be. A very unfortunate thing can happen, when you do that to a kid, it doesn’t get out and gets repressed, but you can make a new kid, and I’m not saying it’s a good one, you can brandish a new kid with all that locked in this little box. I’m thankful because my family was my first lesson in it doesn’t matter what people say, as long as it’s what you know. It’s unfortunate that I had to learn that from my family. Years later, being gay and whatever, it sure as fuck came in useful. Someone would say “hey, faggot” and I’d say, ‘Please, that’s all you fuckin got.’ It is unfortunate because you shouldn’t learn how to let abuse roll off like duck feathers from your mom. Lesson learned, it was good. So, I guess that’s what I mean when I say things weren’t good.

“I can remember between ages ten and fifteen, I started to plot my exit plan because I realized this is not where I wanted to be and looked around and realized other people’s lives didn’t look like mine and I knew I had to go, and I went.”

Where did you end up?

“I left home really early, probably too early. I’m in my forties now, so when I look at anybody under the age of twenty-two, I call them kids; they’ll probably get mad. I can’t believe I left. I left home at sixteen the first time for about four years. I was still in high school at the time and homeless. I was outside Stop & Shop, the people were really nice because I was young, I’m white presenting. It was a different era, the police never harassed me, but also I was never disrespectful. I’m well-read and well mannered. I was quiet, with a sign, they’re either going to throw money in the bucket or not. During the day, I went to school and at night, I did that.

“It was a different time. Do you know those doors to the cellars, that open double? We have those in New England, and if you try a few of them, you’ll find they’ll open, maybe not in 2019. Garages were also easy to open. I could always find a place to sleep in someone’s basement or garage, and always made sure to get out and go to school in the morning.

“I met a very colorful group of folks. It was a flophouse with lots of drugs, but their hearts were in a good place, and that has to count for something. I think that’s where it began, truth be told, now that I look back because anybody who was flopping there, you were not allowed to go hungry or unclothed. It was just not allowed. I think it was my first taste, during my informative years, of what it looks like to take care of each other.”

So, you’re sixteen, in high school, you’re homeless, but found someplace to flop.

“Yes, finally found a place to flop. But, an interesting story, because it’s what popped into my head. I didn’t team up with anybody, and maybe I should have. It probably would have been smarter. I was on my own, making things happen. One night, the blackest of nights, I opened the double doors, went down into someone’s basement, and I usually liked to camp out right near the doors so that if I heard sounds and someone was coming, I could get out quickly. When I went down there, I found someone else there. It was a girl and she was down there, and it took me a moment to realize this wasn’t the person of the house. When I entered a house, I expected the people in it were supposed to be there except for me, so it was strange to find this other person, and she had the same thing going. We didn’t make a team. We didn’t become a fabulous duo. We just had the one night, but it was a nice night.

“I found this flophouse and I came of age in it. I finally got a real job and worked at McDonald’s because that’s about all I could do at my age. And then I had to learn how to use money because coming from a house with no money, you don’t get a lot of lessons about budgeting and how money works because there’s none to teach with.

“It was later in life, in my early thirties, my Saturn return, that I was really able to look back at my family for the holistic picture of who they were. What I mean by that is I really only knew this nasty, choking, abusive, clenching, snap, break, hammer, repeat, snap, break, hammer, repeat. Because I had become an adult, I now had big boy needs, big boy bills, a car, an apartment, it was then that I could sit and think if I was my mom, look at the space I’m living in, it would be me now, holding this pile of fucking bills in my hand and a 7-, 5-, and a 1-year-old. When I go grocery shopping and it costs $40, I’m like oh my God, and the 7-, 5-, and 1-year-old. I have forgiven, but haven’t forgotten. I was able to understand that with no assistance, she didn’t remarry or chase men. It’s unfortunate my mom was not able to have me in her life. The reason it’s unfortunate is because we’re so similar that we would be so perfectly matched. When you’re a child, you have your mom and in adulthood, they become your friend; that’s the ideal. We would be so perfectly matched as friends because I’m super smart, super independent, super loyal, super cunning and crafty, and a little mischievous; all these qualities that my mom was.

“When I was younger, about five years old, I was being a little shit, this was the 1970s, I think we were in fuckin Russell’s, they don’t even exist anymore. This dude kind of gave me a shove, he shouldn’t have because you don’t touch other people’s kids, because I was acting up and bumped into him. My mom, who’s all of 5’4”, 130 pounds max, we were in the hall of the restaurant, she came swooping down that hallway, I was still facing her, she was Lilith, there was just a fury. She put one hand on my back so she could cup me to herself and, with the other hand, she knocked the man in his face and knocked him on his ass and said ‘if you ever touch my fuckin kid again, I will fuckin kill you’, and she meant it. I can be a little like that too. I have all of her qualities, so it’s really unfortunate that we don’t have a relationship.

“Here’s two things because I really need to stop. There’s a geometric shape, it’s the shape of the shell. They say our solar system moves this way. We think it’s the sun with all the planets going around, and it is but even as it is happening, it’s moving, so it isn’t like this, it’s like this. I have to stop telling my stories like this because it escapes me, but I will circle back to say I wonder if she saw so much of herself in me, and her life was hard. She didn’t know what else to do. She knew she moved through life the way she did and it just bashed the shit out of her so if she could make a different person, it wouldn’t happen. To tie it all in, in my thirties, I was really able to examine my family in this way and I’ll call it forgiveness work. I forgave them, I can’t say I excused it and I won’t. I was able to objectively and affectively realize the pressure points that created the people that they were and the pressure points that I kept hitting with my existence.”

How did that shape your relationships following your teenage years?

“I haven’t had a ton of luck with romantic relationships. Sometimes it’s nice to revisit situations and ask if there’s anything you could have done, and maybe here and there a little bit. There was my first one, and they’re so lovely because they’re your first one, and you don’t even remember to acknowledge that they can end because it’s your first one and you think ‘this is it, forever’ and it wasn’t, but he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot about what care feels like, so I appreciate that I got a first one like that, and I’m old enough to know that not everybody does. Then, there was one who moved away. I don’t know how I feel about that. He moved away to do some school/career things, when we were in our twenties. I literally let him go, and I knew in that moment that I let him go. I would never tell someone to stay here and don’t do this career thing. I don’t know if I could do that and live with myself, and then the long distance broke us up. There was another where he asked me if we should have an open or closed relationship, and I said that I could go either way and asked what he thought. He said he wanted to have a closed one, I said that I could do that, and then he cheated. If we had not had that conversation, that exact fuckin conversation, I would have stayed and worked it out. But, we literally had a conversation where I said you can fuck anybody you want, what do you want to do, and he said not that, and he did that. So, I said I gotta go, I just fuckin gotta. I gave it to you on a silver platter.

“Relationships haven’t been super; there have been a lot of small ones. I can make it sound like I’m quick to cut, but I don’t think I am because I won’t cut without a conversation or plan. We can make a plan; I have said ‘hey, you seem to be fuckin drinking a lot, let’s see if you cannot do that and see where were at in six months.’ If in six months you’re still drinking a lot, it’s a cut. There’s been small ones, three months, six months, nothing that’s been rooted, I’ll call nine months the root. It’s been tough because I can be a lot. I said to a friend of mine, they’re bias because they’re a friend of mine, it’s really easy to date me because I don’t demand a lot, and they said Dominique, you fuckin demand everything, and I said thanks. And my friend said that what he meant was that I literally demand everything - they need to show up, be their authentic self, and they need to really peel it open so I can peel it open too; that’s everything. They don’t need to have a car or wear suits all the time, but what I demand is everything and for some people, they can’t do it. You need to be in a place to do it, you need to feel safe to do it. So, there hasn’t been anything.

“I also move through the world not thinking about it. I can be lone wolfish, but not so lone wolfish that I’m completely isolated. I can certainly keep my own company and enjoy my own company, and I have no problems with that. I’m a cat person. I realized the other day, I feel like I’m in a place, physical-plane wise, but also mentally and emotionally, that I think I’m ready again. Before when something came up, someone might tell me I was very attractive, let’s go out to dinner, and I would be like if I’m not doing anything, sure. I’m certainly not going to be ‘marry me’ to the first person that drives by slow enough. I bring a lot to the table. I’m super grounded. I’ve done a lot of the inner work of learning who I am, what makes me tic, what shadows and cobwebs there are, and also immense successes. I know myself in all my parts, and that’s a really good place to be when you’re looking to make a life with someone. I don’t feel like anything is missing. I may want something from them, but I need nothing from them. I feel like I’m in a really good spot to take on somebody and not have it be all complex. What I mean by that is it’s not full of complexes. I’m not lonely. I’m not doing it for financial reasons, or to feel attractive. I’m literally bringing someone into my life because life can be more fun and joyous when you’re a team. That was nice to realize, but I just don’t think about it. So, to even haven the thought, lots of things happen when I’m smoking in the bathroom. That’s when I have my epiphanies.

“The other day, I was super busy and I was on a bus. It was kind of a long ride. I was in a back corner seat, because I like to stare out the window and do my thinking, but I also drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and do a lot of thinking. I’m a thinker, except with a cigarette. I hadn’t realized it, but all of a sudden, this dude, not too far away from me, said “what are you doing?” What had happened, unbeknownst to me, sometimes you can think and think and get really in, and you run on autopilot, which can be nice at times, but sometimes it’s dangerous because you don’t realize you’re going to walk out into traffic. Autopilot isn’t always great. Because I was thinking, drinking coffee, had time, and was looking out the window, I had autopilot pulled a cigarette out of my bag, had it in my lips, and had the lighter lit, and was about to light up on the bus. I had to snap out of it.”

You talked about arriving in your thirties to a place where you were able to look at both yourself and your family in a different light. Tell me about what your twenties looked like. I would imagine going from a situation growing up where you felt that you were trying to be groomed to be someone that you weren’t into a situation where you had thrust yourself out into society in a way that you didn’t have your basic needs met could have led you to some coping skills or into some situations that were dangerous.

“My twenties were really turbulent. There’s something kind of pressingly important I want to stress because I came to realize it just now because these are specific questions. I clearly speak with my friends all the time about times that I haven’t thought about all at one time. My twenties were extremely turbulent externally. Although the external looked super turbulent, internally, they were less turbulent. What I mean by that is growing up with the family that I did, realizing that I just am who I am, and it’s just never going to happen with these people, so I left. I wasn’t ashamed of who I was. It wasn’t perfect. We all pull in these narratives that get directed at us. Of course, there was some level of shame. There was some level of whatever, but I had never bought into it, is what I’m trying to say. I knew that it was targeted at me, but by the age, I knew the world was targeted at me. In my twenties, I had been in the gay club seen since sixteen or seventeen years old. It was at a different time, I don’t know if they let minors in anymore. Things have gotten weirder and more conservative. I knew full well what others thought of me, but I also knew what I thought of myself was not the same, and I think that’s super important. Thank God for it because if I had bought into it, a whole lot more work would have had to have been done. If I had internalized it, I’m not saying that it didn’t get onion-skinned in, but it had not penetrated. My twenties were super turbulent. How did it manifest? It manifested in, it’s hard to explain, destructive behaviors that I knew were destructive that wouldn’t destroy me, but would destroy the external. I’m going to tie this into something psychological in just a moment because I just had an epiphany.

“I just had the thought that we go through these stages, I don’t mean to adhere to the whole Freudian thing, of our development where we world test, and I think one of the stages is learning to test the creative and destructive powers of our human self. I don’t think I had normal stages growing up because they weren’t nurtured and so now that I had been out of the house for a few years, what manifested was this destructive experiment testing of the outside world of literally I’m checking matter at this point. If I treat this person this way, what happens? If I don’t show up to work, if I walk out of the job, if I throw this TV off my balcony. It was a real scientific experiment. It wasn’t can I get myself so high that I wake up in a ditch, I never came this way. It was what can I do in this world. The thing that’s important to remember, for me anyway, is I didn’t exactly have super great familial relationships and I wasn’t old enough, like I am now, to build crazy, amazing friendships. I knew that I was hurting other people and I cared, but not enough to stop the experiment. I’ve long since forgiven myself; it was a different time. I don’t carry a lot of baggage with me in life. I’m pretty clean, is the word I use.

“My twenties were spent destroying a lot property, sabotaging a lot of jobs, sabotaging a lot friendships, and not being good to people. It wasn’t like haahaahaa I hurt, and now you hurt. That’s not the spirit it was done in. It was more scientific; I went into science now. My brain must work in a scientific way. It was really like that fetal position, when you break someone. There was a science to it. Maybe I should not do that. Oh, if you walk out of your job, they won’t let you come back, so maybe I won’t do that. I know now what happens when I do X, so, in the future, I can X with a contextual outcome that I want to happen. It was like learning boundaries and power.”

And consequence.

“Yes, and consequence. Also knowing that some people move through the world doing that same thing, but they’re enjoying it because it wasn’t super enjoyable. I can’t say it was a joyous time. It was a learning time and like “wow, I can effect change” time, but it wasn’t ‘I feel superb.’ You don’t feel superb when you’re tearing everything down. There was a bit of that, a good portion of that was part of the reason why I left home. It just couldn’t happen. It was already happening. It was wild times and things that I did. I’ve had a very long life. I’m lucky to be alive, and I am alive, and that’s how my twenties went.

“When I was about twenty-eight, I had broken away from the old gang, not a lot of contact with them, and I had a new set of friends. I was doing these things, and I thought that I got all I need out of this. I wanted to see if I could take who I was with my family, who I left that to be because this sure as fuck isn’t dead, and this thing I am now and see if I can Russian-Doll style it to superimpose on each other and make something that isn’t going to eat its own tail and eat itself, and they did. They just did. Maybe I’m lucky. I’d say I kind of got my act together by age thirty-three. I had a fantastic job, relationships were what they were, my boundaries were good, my mental capacity was good, critical thinking was good, and capacity for love was good. All those things you think ‘please God let me grow up and know that I will love something else’, and I did.”

It sounds like your adolescence was a period of trying to be groomed or molded into something that wasn’t you. Your twenties was kind of a stripping away of that, just tearing it down.

“I probably didn’t get a normal adolescent period. I think ages nineteen to twenty-six I would have done that from ages fourteen to seventeen, in a normal household. You break the door, you jump off the roof onto a skateboard, it’s a thing we humans do, which is why kids drive us so crazy. At age fourteen, they’re leaping cars and throwing bottles off roofs - material world testing. I didn’t get it until my twenties. It’s unfortunate because you’re smarter, craftier, and more destructive in your twenties. You can really ruin a life at age twenty-six in ways that you can’t at age thirteen.”

True. It sounds like you didn’t ruin your life.

“No. My self-preservation is strong.”

Along this journey, I know there’s a lot of components to your experiences, thought process, and your reconciling your stages of development, what are some things you’ve learned about yourself over these years that stand out?

“Some of the things I’ve learned are I really adore myself, I really do. I’m quite an exquisite creature and I’m pleased. I have a profound capacity for love, human beings, animals, the world, and the universe, like deep love. I’m super compassionate, really creative, innovative, and a problem solver. I’m also super resilient. Everybody has a plate, we’ll call it, that they can carry things on. My plate is sturdy, man. I’m definitely not weak. I’m super motivated. I’m a visionary and what I mean by that is I set visions and then I move towards them. I’m not one to be “I don’t know what I want to do.” I fuckin know at all times what I want to do, and that’s the direction I’m going. If the car is going this way, you can be in it and go this way, but my car is going this way.

“It’s been complicated. I think it might have been what led me to anthropology. There’s a really complex brain up there, and one of the things this super complex brain is good at is what I will attribute to pattern recognition. How this manifests is almost like the sight, but I’m not going to claim it as “the sight,” but what I’m going to claim is the my brain digitizes, archives, and files so cleanly that after the thirtieth time of seeing something, it can see it coming. So, when I meet someone and they’re like hey, I already know or yes, let’s see. It’s life-saving so I’m really glad I have that. Something will happen at work and I’ll say ‘I think it’s going to go like this’ and you can never fully be sure. It’s always good to test, but be ready if it goes like that. I think it’s just ones and zeros, not down here, but up here. So, I’m grateful for that. I’m something.”

You are something. It sounds like you’ve also acquired the ability to trust that kind of sense of recognizing patterns and being able to trust yourself.

“I trust myself above all others. I do. I had an experience when I was in my thirties where I taught myself to do that. You’re going for a job and your first instinct is to call your friend and say ‘oh my God, I’m going for this job, what should I do? What should I wear?’ It’s not that your friends aren’t good to bounce ideas off of, but there’s something special that happens when you call no one and you do it alone. The voice you’re checking in with is your fuckin own. Now I do both. I check in with myself and my friends, if I wish. There was a moment where I realized I never checked in with myself. I knew what I wanted, but I never just sat with a problem in my belly and solved it single handedly. I think it’s the majority of what I do now.”

How has that changed your life, or not, by moving towards checking in with yourself?

“I don’t know if it’s changed my life. It has definitely changed the way I operate in the world and the universe. I feel like a God. That’s what Gods do. They make decisions and make things happen. I had a friend who recently entered my life who has, I don’t know what happened. Some friends you travel with all the time and others you kind of loop in, then you’re gone for a few years, and then you loop in and pick up where you left off. The last time we looped in, he came back like an addict. I don’t know where it came from. This was a two glasses of wine at dinner kind of man and suddenly he came back as an addict and had lost everything. What I told him, is what I realized, and this will tie in, is that I’ve watched, I think he has forty days sober, and he’s fresh, soft, and vulnerable, him struggle through addiction and not use. He asked me to be his sponsor and I told him no, that I thought he needed an official sponsor who’s actually been an addict and has done the thing, so he has a sponsor. Of course, I’m his friend, so I can be there as a friend. Watching him, as his friend, go through this thing and not pick up again, and you think we’ll have a good day, but it’s like a minute to minute fuckin thing. He got his thirty-day chip and I told him that watching him battle and overcome his addiction has literally brought me closer to God. What I mean by that is I’m not crazy religious, but I believe there’s something, there’s a spark of it in every single one of us. To watch him do what he’s doing and see the strength, resilience, and grace that it takes, if I believe what I say I believe, then what I’m seeing is the resilience, strength, and power of God, and all things in the universe.

“When I say that I make my own decisions, what I’m learning about myself and the universe is the power. It’s almost the flip side of the coin or maybe the light and shadow have finally made gray on me. In my twenties, I think I was trying to get at what I get now, and what I get now is the power of existence to decide and manipulate matter and create. I’m just really grateful for it.”

Yeah, right. In that way, we are God.

“I think God exists in our relationships and nowhere else, if truth be told.”

In terms of relationships, we started this interview talking about authenticity through relation to ourselves, and it sounds like you’re been able to arrive, cultivate, and maintain that space within yourself where you are honoring who you are and you’re not abandoning or neglecting that space in any situation.

“I feel good about it. What I’m really excited about and I firmly believe that if we’re no longer learning we’re either dead or should be, or have already; we’re just the walking dead. So much has happened, lost and gained, more gained than lost. You never know when your time is. On human assumptions, I have another thirty or forty years to go. So, I’m really excited to be here and know that thirty years are behind, and this is what has happened. I can’t imagine what will happen when I’m seventy, and I’m really excited for it.”

Do you have a favorite quote, mantra, song lyric, or something that someone has said to you that really resonates with you that you’d like to share?

“I do. It comes back to my mom. Like I told you, we’re super similar, even though we don’t speak. The line is ‘know your own story.’ The reason I say that is I would tell my mom, ‘These kids at school said this or that, or whatever,’ and she would say, ‘Is it true?’ I would say no, but people believe it and she would say, ‘Yeah, and that will completely fuckin happen, but it doesn’t matter about all of that, you need to know your own story, really KNOW it because if you don’t know your own story, people can say things like I think you’re not being very nice and you know that they’re incorrect, or that you’re very irresponsible, and you know that’s not true.’ Or, the adverse, if you really KNOW your fuckin story, someone can say I think you are being petty and you can say, not that I’m going to stop, but I think you may be right. Nobody tells you you’re fuckin story and that can go for good things, too. How many times in life does it happen that somebody says, ‘oh, you’re so forgiving, I love it’ and what they really mean is you’re letting everybody fuckin walk all over you. Really it’s more like ‘no, I’m really not so fuckin forgiving, if you ever do that again, you’re done.’ So, ‘know your own story.’”

That’s really powerful and it definitely brings us back full circle to authenticity because I think that is what the crux of authenticity is - knowing your own story, honoring it, respecting it, and not buying into what someone else is trying to tell you what your story is because that is part of the narrative that we then adopt into our thinking, the way that we perceive ourselves, and the way we portray ourselves in the world around us.

“Yeah. I was really young, nine or ten, when she said that. She taught me a lot. She taught me how to be a woman in the world. Do you know what I mean by that? I’m clearly male and identify as male. Oh, your mom is a single mom as well? They just operate different because they have to. It’s not because there’s something intrinsically different about women. It’s because the game is rigged differently and it takes different strategies to be a women. When she was a parent to me, where a dad might say ‘you got to throw the football,’ my mom would say let people think that they’re super smart, like your boss, let them think they did something for you or they fixed it. Maybe not so much now, it was a different generation. I think those games, or navigation and strategies. By the time I came of age, my teenage years and into my twenties, I wasn’t a feminist, I hadn’t read feminist literature or anything like that, but I saw women as equal, and I also knew what it was like to be a woman in the world. It’s just interesting.”

It’s interesting that you brought that up, because I had a father growing up who was not really present in much of my life, even though he was there and would sleep there. I’ve always respected and admired women. They are, for the most part, the ones I turn to for a sense of power, strength, knowledge, and wisdom because of the way they operate. Those who do step up to the plate and bring forth a movement or their own authenticity or artistry in some way, I have always been captivated by that. Even though I’m male, I think there’s a very big part of me that is feminine, and I believe that we all have that sort of ying and yang. While growing up, I felt similarly being bullied or confined with terms like faggot, homo, fem, or things like that, those qualities were kind of diminished. I’m grateful now that they still exist and they’ve been honored. I’ve definitely taken some twists and turns of exploring what that meant to me, of who I was, and how I identified with that. I’m so grateful there are strong women who are being authentic, showing up in this world, and there are men who respect that and are not threatened by it, because I think that creates a lot of the decisions we were talking briefly about, like abortion. If we can consider that we don’t need to empathize with, we don’t need to have a uterus and we don’t need to have breasts or whatever to have been oppressed, and say that’s a valid need. The world would be a different place if we could look at the needs that are coming up, whether it’s acts of violence, which are forms of communication of needs.

“I’m curious what the fear is. We’ll never know because they’re not going to confess. They must look at resources and things as like a big pizza. What is it, a zero sum game? If I give this slice to you, I don’t get that slice, and they’re not looking at the pizza holistically. When someone says they can’t go have an abortion, but if you want to go have one, that’s completely fuckin yours and your alone fuckin decision. I don’t have to have one. For people unable to do that, I’ll always be curious what are the synapses firing in their brains at that moment.”

I think in a lot of ways the fear comes back to if I open myself up to this possibility then that brings every other belief and stance I’ve taken in my life into question, and I’ll have no solid ground to stand on. I think many people find security, as isolating and miserable as that can be, they find some sense of security on that platform and behind those walls. I think it definitely comes down to that—if you open yourself up to this thing then everything else comes into question.

“Correct. It just implodes.”

It’s necessary. In order for the rebuilding of something new, the whole thing has to be deconstructed or delaunched. I haven’t seen you in about twenty years, I come to visit you, and propose that you’re not only going to catch up with me, but you’re also going to open your heart and your mind in these ways to share with a broader audience. How has it felt to talk about these thoughts, feelings and experiences with me today?

“Um . . . it’s multi-level. On the one hand, I can be sappy and nostalgic. I got a lot of porcupine prickles but, at the same time, extremely almost maudlin, sappy, and sentimental. I say I like to spiral over familiar ground, so I’m always spiraling in, getting something new, spiraling out, and applying it to life. It’s been nice to spiral over these years again, revisit some things and see if there’s anything that’s still pulling me down, see if there’s anything that needs cleaning, erasing, or do I have a new outlook on things.

“To know that it goes to a broader audience, I’m old enough to know, at this point, that maybe in different nuanced ways, someone out there has, does, and will feel as I do in life at various stages. Ruth Benedict calls it the great arc of human potentialities when there’s a lot of things—variability. There’s someone who feels as I did when I did at sixteen, when they’re sixteen, when they’re forty, or felt it last week. I know someone will hear this and someone may say I have no idea what this gentleman is talking about, but then I think someone will. I think my stories lend an ear to queer people, disabled people, people of color, and people who are different. But, really they’re not different, that’s the thing, they’re perfectly well within the arc I spoke about, but somebody with power may make their lives miserable for it. That’s really what it is. Let’s say I’m swimming in the ocean and a five-headed turtle approaches and wants to play, maybe not everybody, but my new thought is nature accommodates five-headed turtles, and it’s as simple as that because there it is. Hopefully, someone will hear it and be positive, get some nuance from it on how to tackle something that they’re thinking about. Even if it’s just entertainment, as long as someone hears it and thinks something. I don’t have to dictate what they think, just something, anything.”

Awesome. Thank you.

“Thank you.”