Misanthropic Tendencies - Not for the faint of heart

My buddy, Midge, told me yesterday, "You give people too much credit, Billy. You are too nice. You give everyone the benefit of the doubt." I am not really all that nice. I mean I treat people with kindness. I value life, playfulness, openness and creativity.

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(This is a good time to remind people that this is completely fictional, well almost completely fictional, I am exploring ideas and emotions, I do not actually have a schizoid psyche.)

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There is a cold, raw marble-like piece of my psyche. I would like to let her out to play tonight. I am going to call her Parker.

From Parker:
I hate people. I disdain them. They bore me. Lazy, stupid cattle. All eating the same bland grass and thinking each and every one of their selves is unique or valuable. I'd like to show them the killing house, the meat grinder, the mind eraser. I would like to watch them stand there dumbly, looking at that great edifice of massacre, cowering, moaning, saying woe is me, chewing hay, farting, shitting on each other, not moving, fattening themselves up. I should like to say, “You are slaughtered for your sloth, for your passivity, for the way you taste,” you stupid fucking cow-humans.

From Parker:
I have nothing to say. You don't want to hear from me. Your creation. The smooth alabaster facade that held together Billy's fractured psyche after years of listening to you go to town, shredding every little tiny glistening teenage ideal she clung to. Fuck you bitch. Fuck your mother.

From Parker:
Dear not mom in law. Here is what I should have liked to tell you about your daughter. She needs help. She is a black hole. I have no emotions left to give her. She has sucked me dry. My intellect falters. I am hungry, I think. I can't tell anymore. I have forgotten how to eat. I lie awake in bed mornings hoping today is the day I will die and I can stop this charade. I am a toy. A pawn. An embarrassing reminder to your normal daughter that she can't be perfect and hold down a good man, a real man, a man's man. My skin grows cold. I don't want to touch or be touched. I have no opinion on paint color. I have no lingering fantasy of morning coffee eternally bathed in love and excitement. The gate has closed. I cannot open it without loosening the last little private piece of untouched happiness before the great sucking me-hole your daughter has collapsed into upon herself.

From Parker:
You silly little tart. Don't test me, bitch. I will fuck you up in ways you didn't know existed. I'll take that little butch tongue of yours and nail it to a board. I will nail the board to a truck bed. I will put the truck on a track. I will let you be drug around town by your stupid fucking tongue. I will dissect you alive, limbs pinned to wax tray. Removing fatty tissue and crop, gizzard, aorta. Your big doe eyes saying what your shredded tongue never had the brains to.

From Parker:
And you, you last shriveling, Gollum, glub little fuck. You think I forgot about you? You think you can hide in some dark recess of my mind, almost not a memory, almost not real anymore? You perverted little child fucker. I am going to take you to dinner one night, for old times sake. I will start a pot of water to boil. And then I will strip you naked. I will make a slit in your skin right at the top of your scrotum. You would like that, wouldn't you? I will peel back your skin, running it through a pasta roller directly into the boiling water. I will keep rolling and boiling until you are standing in front of me, completely fucking naked, exposed and bloody, then I will punch my hand through your chest and grab your bloody fucking heart and squeeze it so hard, so calmly, until it bursts and I can be reborn in a warm, salty blood bath, you fucking piece of slag shit. Die. Die and let it be horrible.

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Of course what I really think and say is:

Oh, you want to shove a camera up my ass?
Oh, I am so sorry to have offended you, please, let's still be friends.

Oh, you are unhappy?
Oh, I am so sorry, let me give and give and give.

Oh, your mom hates me, she cries to you about me because I couldn't love you enough?
Oh, let me run back and prove her wrong, let me make it right, let me try, I know I can do better.

Oh, this is our little secret, no one has to know?
Oh, let me not tell a soul, let me worry decades on end, centuries on end, that somehow everything is my fault, that if I was only better, more morally incorruptible that none of this would have ever happened, that I invited it, that I cannot live without it.

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The play within the play.

My sister, the advertising executive (so fun to say), was back in this manure pasture of a town a few weeks ago. She went to a local bar, known to us expats, us former expats, us soon-to-again-be expats as the kind of place locals go because they are bored and want to rassle up some trouble to make life more interesting.

Her best friend, a real doll who works for a former US president and also grew up here in slagsville, USA accompanied her to this bar. The two of them were going to go and dance and reminisce about their high school days.

At the bar my sister and her friend went to go to the bathroom. There were some other girls in there. Some words were said, unprovoked. Basically, one of these little trampy whores called my sister's friend, - who is an intelligent, soft spoken, self educated, incredibly successful young woman who never stands up for herself - a worthless small-time country bumpkin, or in Binghamtonian she said, "Go back to Norwich." (The irony is Norwich, in my opinion, is a much nicer community than Binghamton.)

My sister, in a moment of indignant righteousness, lost her mind, put a hand up on either side of the bathroom stall walls, got a small swinging start and, I kid you not, Karate kicked that little puke right out of the bathroom and back out into the bar.

She came home that night, incredibly embarrassed, saying, "I can't go out here ever again. I am a professional. I have a job. I can't be kicking girls in the bathroom. I can't lose my job over something some little tramp says to me in a bar in fucking Binghamton."

And here is the rub. Some places are just antithetical to intelligent, peaceful, loving and creative living. It sucks that our hometown happens to be one of those places. And maybe it doesn't seem that way to everyone, to the college kids from long island, to the Lockheed starfuckers, to the kids from connected or wealthy families, but to us, the girl's, the Keefe sisters who grew up on Chenango Street and had friends with switch blades and had to steal lunch money from our mom (okay I am being very selective in details here), but to us it is a reality. To us this place is a dangerous sink hole that has the ability to negate all the incredibly hard work we have done in our lives in order to be able to envision a world where happiness, kindness and love are all really possible. And please, before you rip me a new one for how I portray Binghamton, realize that this is MY experience of this town having grown up here and been very, very poor. Other people may have completely different feelings and that is fine and great. Leave a post. Write your own blog. But don't you dare tell me I am wrong about this.

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Today I am going to sleep in. When I am done typing this I am going back to bed. I am not going to check my emails. I am not going to answer my phone. When I feel like waking up I am going to go to breakfast, then I am going to drive out in the hills, collect myself and make a plan.