Thursday, June 5, 2008

Open

I blog, therefore I am...right?

What do I say in here?
Who do you get to meet?
The guy who looks back at me every morning while I Sonicare my teeth?
Or the guy who is endlessly interesting, refreshingly candid, without a hint of self consciousness, comfortable in his own skin?
I don't know who the hell that person is.

Look - I am 42, made some mistakes in my life, I'm overweight (but losing it), I've been lucky enough to find someone who loves me for who I am and she is pretty wonderful so that must say something good about me, right?

So why am I here?
What do I have to say that makes you want to listen?
Where is my voice?

What do I do better than a lot of people?
I watch, I listen - I am an people watcher of the umpteenth degree, I have my black belt in people watching and I can say that one thing that bothers me more than anything is the massive inequality that pervades our society - racism, classism, ageism, weightism - if you can add an ism to it then it probably exists. For all of our advances, for all of our sophistication, we still act like a bunch of kids on the playground, we pick on the ones that are different, we ignore the ones that are silent and we hate what what makes us uncomfortable.
I've grown up different, I've grown up feeling just a little awkward, never fitting in. Maybe it's because I see, maybe I am just a weirdo or maybe we all feel this way somewhere deep down inside and it scares us so much that we will do anything to fit in, or at least feel like we do and that includes excluding the ones who don't fit into our need for a tidy and orderly world.
Why do we have this all pervading desire for labels, pigeonholes?
Why must everyone be put into some sort of neat category that clearly shows who and what they are?
Who the hell fits into that?
I sure as shit don't and I don't want to put you or anyone else in a box just to make sense of my world. I like it messy, I like it unkempt - I like it as strange as possible. I have had some strange and wonderful characters populate my life and I am grateful for each and every one of them - from the Mexican trannies who lived over the diner on the corner of Belmont and Sheffield and sold me K in Chicago to every one of the colorful felons and inmates who work for me here (and drive me absolutely batty with their bullshit) - I couldn't have done it without you.
I like people - it takes all kinds and if you can stop and see that, then maybe you are in the right place after all.

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