Decrying Gravity

Coming Out and The Name of Love

Posted by Ophelia | Posted in coming out, counseling, transition | Posted on 7/31/2010 06:35:00 PM

With my sister leaving tomorrow and my class ending in a week and a half, it's increasingly becoming apparent that I have nothing left to hide from: I have to start physically/socially/emotionally transitioning. Up to this point, I have flirted with it, acting coy by making eyes and playing footsie underneath the table. But now I have to start getting serious. I have to make resolutions of presentation, dedicate significant amounts of time to voice work, and, then, I have to start coming out to all the people I don't want to come out to.

Although I'm fearing the difficult, the time, the intangibility of the presentation aspects, I am relishing the chance. I mean, that's what this is: it's the presentation (to others and myself) as female. It's what I want, more than almost anything else. And although it will be quite difficult and take a lot of time in so many regards, it is what I need to become any semblance of happy.

The coming out, though, is not what I'm relishing. At PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), one of the gay men who helps run it always says during introductions that his goal is to foster a world where children don't have to come out to their parents. This is possible by normalizing LGBT identities and prompting parents to embrace such possibilities so that a child naturally develops into their own instead of ever feeling like they have to hide and eventually "come out." Unfortunately, that's not the case today.

Now, I'm fairly fortunate, as far as these things go. My immediate family has been tolerant, often varying degrees of helpful, in regards to my transition. I have not been berated, cast out, attempted to be convinced otherwise (much), etc. I've told quite a few friends and a few professors, and I have yet to have a negative experience. Some are more supportive than others, but I think it's something of a shock that takes everyone time to get used to.

It's interesting, too, how you find that "coming out" is not just an LGBT issue; it's a secret that puts you at risk/makes you vulnerable once known. I hadn't really thought about this too much, but I was talking to a friend who has cerebral palsy and she was mentioning how she had to decide when to tell people and how to educate them. She said some people don't believe, many people never think of disability when making requests/making assumptions about others, and others are just plain ignorant about it and how to handle it entirely. She will tell them, and they will treat her differently, not know what to say, detach because they feel awkward, responsible, helpless, confused. And when she said this, it sounded exactly like coming out as LGBT. And the more I talk to people, I realize that you have to come out about so much. You do it if you're suffering from depression, suffering from abuse, suffering from addiction. You do it if you're pregnant, getting married (or divorced), even dating (or breaking up with) someone. You do it and sometimes it goes fine and sometimes it's too real and people react in all kinds of different, often hurtful and nonsupportive, ways.

Last night, for instance, I was talking to a friend who had a condition (I forget the name) that caused her to experience extreme pain during vaginal intercourse. It was tearing her relationship apart, fundamentally altering her life, causing immense distress, and she'd only told about five people. She had a hard time finding anyone to relate to, since she hadn't been sexually assaulted/abused and wasn't older, the demographics it normally affects. And she said it would undeniably affect all the relationships she would be in. She felt asexual and was worried that she'd never really find someone who would understand, much less feel that it wasn't a make-or-break issue. And so much of that resonated with my experience as trans, from the social divisions to the secrecy to the fears about acceptance.

Of course, it's different, too. Her issue is not something that will get her sent to hell, her issue is not something she has no choice but to come out about, her issue is not going to be stamped on her birth certificate and found in every background check anyone conducts. By my issue doesn't preclude me from sex, doesn't prevent orgasm (although it does mitigate it, even with sexual-reassignment-surgery), and isn't quite so esoteric. The similarities are striking, in both experience and reactions.

Reactions are the second half of the coming out equation. It's one of the things I want to conduct outreach on, how to handle someone coming out to you in whatever way they do. How to extend meaningful support, how to listen, how to help even when you can't really help. But even though you can't make the pain go away, you would be surprised (although, honestly, you probably wouldn't be since you've likely been there) how far some support can go.

And, indeed, that "support" is an interesting concept. For instance, one of my friends who reads this blog but who I haven't explicitly talked to this with made it a point to tell me he was supporting me, didn't fully understand (but hell, who can?), and that he wanted to be up front about these things. To me, that meant a lot: he was assertive in his support, not just passively tolerant, and that makes such a huge difference.

My father, on the other hand, is and pretty much always has been passive in his support. Indeed, for as long as I can remember, he has never had a problem telling me he loved me or that he was proud of me. What he's had a problem with is actually making either of those mean anything outside of empty words. Certainly, he likes the idea of being proud and loving. But his love is usually limited to vague platitudes of "I hope everything works out for you" and some material support. His pride is limited to those specific things that he wishes he could do/did (for instance, me writing for the paper and perhaps not drinking) but holds little regard for me as an individually competent and respectable person.

Case in point, he, my sister, and I went out to dinner tonight as a good-bye sort of thing before she moved. On the way back, he asked her what she was doing for Thanksgiving, she replied possibly staying in Boston, and he tried to think of all these different ways for her to get back to Tennessee. He spent a significant amount of time on it and said that he "just wanted her to feel wanted and supported." Thinking of Thanksgiving and his parents, I was thinking that I would pretty much have to come out either then or a bit before then because, at a certain point, there's really no hiding my transition. Even if I don't grow largely noticeable breasts, even if my hair is androgynous enough, my voice will likely (hopefully) get stuck in female mode and it will be uncomfortable, if not impossible, to sustain use of it as male. I won't have the option of hiding, past a certain point.

He asked why I was quiet and subdued, and I said, "I was just thinking that I'll have to come out to [his parents, my grandparents] and I don't know when or how." And he was immediately silent for a few minutes [my sister mentioned something about a dog]. A few minutes later, he said [roughly], "If that's why you're going up to see them next weekend with me, I don't want to go. I just can't handle it right now. I need you to help me out here." Now, I never said anything about coming out next week. And he is in a somewhat tenuous position at work, saying "I realize you're making some hard choices, but I just can't handle that now."

Now, as I've said, he hasn't shunned me. He hasn't berated me or tried to convince me to stop. He has questioned how fast I've moved and whether I've thought it all through and feels very uncomfortable speaking of it, but part of that's just his fundamental lack of trust and respect for me and part of that's just him getting used to the idea [My mother may not be the most discerning of readers, but she does her best to at least do research]. But you don't win an award for not simply being a brute or a jackass to people who are different. You don't get to consider yourself an ally or a supportive person if the extent of your support is "I am tolerant of your choices, but let's talk about how this affects me." And, in my mind, you don't get to say you love me if your love is nothing but crass materialism and the word itself.

This is just an example, of course. If my father really was in a particularly trying part of his life, I might have some sympathy. But he has always been like this. He has always been depressed over his job, over his relationships, over something. I have never known him happy, never known him in a "good place." And hell, we're all in various struggles. But he always holds this up as an excuse for why he can't do more than say "I love you." If you've ever wondered why I hate gifts so much, it's because he will make such a huge deal out of needing to buy me something [despite my wishes] on my birthday, needing to get my mother or his mother flowers, needing to demonstrate his affection through some material form. And yet, when it actually comes to him making compromises, risking anything socially or emotionally, listening to others, even trying to avoid hurting them, he puts himself and his perennial excuses first. It's why he can tell us he loves us one day and then, the next night without a qualm, line us up and yell at the top of his lungs as my nine-year-old sister's screaming and crying her eyes out that he demands we tell him whether he and my mother should get a divorce. And even when she pleads, "Nononononono" he continues, a bear-like interrogator, "Tell me. Tell me. Should we get a divorce. Tell me."

It sounds so petty when I write it. In and of itself, it's not much either. But it's part of the pattern of his life where he must have an image of himself as a supportive, proud, and loving father [everything his father wasn't], but he never internalizes any of the responsibilities that go along with that role. I have pretty good ideas of why he's like that, and he has undoubtedly been hurt. But I know people who have been hurt in the same ways and to similar extents, and that doesn't stop them from making me feel like their love means active support.

By my definition, buying me a gift I don't want on my birthday isn't love. Saying, "what you're doing is going to be hard as hell, and I'm going to stand beside you, risk myself alongside you, and defend you against it all" is. When I say I love somebody, it's not empty. It means that I will fight for them. I will risk myself for them. I will inconvenience myself, I will place my smaller concerns [when they are smaller, which is almost always] aside to help them in their time of need, and I will do what I can to help them be safe and happy. I may need to be asked, for I am wary of being presumptuous in attempts to help them where they don't wish me to help. But damn it, if I love you and you ask me, I will be there.

I'm still learning how to do that. I'm still gaining a sense of self-efficacy where I think I can actually help others, that I'm actually valuable enough to make my help significant. And I make mistakes. But at the core, my idea of love is an idea in action, an emotion made manifest. If you need me, I want to be there, emotionally, physically, mentally, whatever. I won't be perfect in that, but I will do my damnedest to try. And I know I am so fortunate to have many people do the same.

I love my father. And that's why I keep going back to him, even after I was free, after the divorce, after he called me a traitor, told me I didn't love him, made me feel terrified to go see him and be alone with him and he was so angry, so so angry, and I wilt under his anger like a flower on fire, a rabbit before a bear. I loved him, and I did not give up on him [insomuch as I felt I could do anything for him], and I kept risking myself for him. And although I know better, it hurts anyway.

Thank you, and I hope you all know who you are, for making "love" more than just a word.

So, so, so

Posted by Ophelia | | Posted on 7/10/2010 03:16:00 PM

I still can't stop crying. I'd been wanting to for weeks and then, finally, around 3am, I started and I haven't been able to stop. Stop in the sense that the ache won't go away, the incredible sense of loss and fear and love. There is so much, so much. I don't even know where to begin, if I even should, because deconstructing anything now seems almost sacrilegious, but I want to hold on so badly. I have never felt so loved, so connected, so competent, so engaged, so known, so loving. I have never. And what, exactly, led to this whirl of circumstance I don't even know. How a group of high school students could make me feel so goddamn good after a group the same age made me feel so so terrible is almost mystifying. And the cruel, cruel irony of having to leave them so so soon, so so so soon after I finally find them hurts so much.

But I tell myself the hurt just means I care, and the care just means I had something worth caring so much. And whether that is loving one, loving two, loving four, loving twenty, loving half a hundred, loving this pseudo-utopia, I don't know. I have always wanted to stay at Governor's School, always wanted for it to never end, and yet this year has been so much more than the rest and now, for what seems like the first time in my life, I'm crying crying crying over simply saying good-bye.

They were so beautiful, sitting around me in the dead of night as I transformed into a monstrous thing to test them. They were so beautiful, tears running down all five faces, as you looked at me and told me, again, how much you cared, again, how much I meant, again, how much it hurt that I couldn't trust. Saying that I was so afraid of having someone run from me if they knew what was inside, while wondering aloud how they could ever do that since they would only find so much love beneath. Saying how I gave them so much daily joy. Saying how I understood better than anyone else ever had. Saying that they knew I cared, knew I loved, knew I was so full of such love. Saying I was brave in a way I almost believed. Exposing how I wasn't, but staying nonetheless. Saying that I was so, so important. So, so, so loved. So loved. So loved. They hurt me as they said so so much, the familiar hurt of fear and terror. And I broke down. I've lived more than a 1/3 of lifetime more than they have, and they broke me and they stayed with me as I collapsed.

I cried again as the sun rose, when it hit that it was over. When there was no more denying time its due. Tears streamed and I couldn't bare to face the end. And so I fled to our familiar place, and wept at the loss and the love I never wanted to let go. And they sat beside me. Sat before me. Held and would not let go. You wouldn't let go. I have always feared that letting go, and you wouldn't let go. My rainbow paladin, my poet, my strong silent stalwart, my love-as-I-should-love-myself stayed until they had to leave, with tears in their eyes.

And they're gone, gone, gone. Gone back to prisons, internal and out. Gone back to the traps they set for themselves. Gone back to unacceptance, gone back to disapproval, gone back to constant struggle. And I'm going back, too. Back to dependence. Back to transgression. Back to so much loneliness. I never been so understood, so touched, so intimate, so connected, so loved, so loving, so so so until now, and they're gone.

You asked me if it was worth the pain, and I said, without a doubt, yes. I knew there was a price for this love, for all love. I knew it. And it's so heavy to pay now. But I would pay it a hundred times over because of so so so. You asked me if I'd come for you, and I did, without a doubt. I knew I would not answer, but I was so glad to go. You asked me if I would remember you, and I said, with so much doubt, yes. For forever lasts too long for promises. But how could I forget this hole you've left behind? How could I forget my haven, my baptism, my pilgrimage? How could I forget?

I love you all. I love you all so so much. So so so much. And I only hope, desperately hope, that I can spend my life in loving and being loved as, today, I had no doubt I was. And I was. I was. So so so much.

Facsimiles and facades

Posted by Ophelia | Posted in identity, self-hate | Posted on 7/05/2010 10:07:00 PM

Words can be so constricting. Prisons of meaning, trapping the ethereal into dirty concrete. And yet, I chase them, like a knight after El Dorado, searching, always searching for the magic phrase that unlocks the cage holding the rest in.

In many ways, it's the same for identity. I mix and match, trial and error my way through self-definition (a vault to the word's cell) and inch closer to finding the form that matches the function. It hurts as much, if not more; a minefield plagued with poor fits and devastating pot holes that break and bruise so much more than the constriction of words. If anything, words are the tools of identity; I am trans, female, male, predatory, monstrous, overwhelming, self-centered, maniacal, TAB, noise noise noise. I am words, I am labels, I am identities that bash and bleed their way into and out of my self, stopping at nothing short of domination.

My favorite lines “this is not what I meant at all/ not at all” and “the train is always leaving, and you have not found your words.” Inexpression, anxiety to an existential degree. I have not found my words, and it fills me with the terror of the unknown. Everything I say, everything I am is not what I mean, not what I'm looking for. And I search, frantically, I search and scour and come up with facsimiles and facades. The words, the meaning, the self. Shades in lieu of colors, acts in lieu of actions.

And when you expose. When you do not tell but show, do not capture but be. When you are.

You are monstrous. Sorry monstrous. All apologies. King Kong in chains with the world taking pictures and leaving as they will.

Cognitive Dissident

Posted by Ophelia | | Posted on 6/26/2010 07:44:00 AM

"This got me thinking more about identifying as a rape victim in public. One of the reasons I told my boss I didn’t mind everybody knowing was because I want everybody to think about rape when they see me. This is what a rape victim looks like. I want them to know that. I am a complex individual full of talents and abilities, and I want them to know that rape victims file papers, speak to judges, wear bad shoes, refill the coffee pot, call the repair people, eat their lunches. I want them to think about how many other victims they’re surrounded with and they don’t know. I want to be the antidote to the only depiction of rape victims most of us are going to get, which is either the secret hidden porno in the middle of a movie, or the horrifying image of a woman’s crying, contorted face on a rape “prevention” poster. Rape victims get up and walk around and look like everybody else. They fucking have to. They are there when you talk about Polanski. They are there when you make rape jokes. They are there when you use rape as a euphemism for “did a good job.” I don’t get to forget that, and I don’t think anybody else has the right to forget it, either." -HJ, @ Fugitivus

Two things:
1. HJ's really turned me into an anti-rape advocate. I think she's done it single-handedly. I've read some other things, on the feminist blogs I frequent, but HJ's both humanizes and explicitly explains what it's like being a rape victim and coping with that to a remarkably vivid degree. It's still surprising to me, though, that when I think of my counseling interests: domestic abuse, depression, gender identity/LGBT issues, self-esteem, and rape counseling, rape counseling is the only one I don't have immediate personal experience with. It may be because my father was a rape victim, and I largely consider the miseries of his (and, consequently, my family's) life to be related to that. But it's also so vividly sexist, so vividly hurtful, so vividly crushing that I can't help but feel compelled. I'm not certain of many things, but supporting gay rights, destigmatizing mental illness, and bringing down rape culture are things I'll defend to pieces.

2. I want to do what HJ describes above, but for trans people. Of course, I think it's only something I could do if I was really comfortable with myself/my body/my presentation and identity, and I don't know if that'll happen. But if it does, I want to be out and open. I want to normalize transness, just as many homosexual folk have increasingly normalized gayness. My counselor, a lesbian, once said someone told her that her very existence would cause others "cognitive dissonance." The fact that she existed, in other words, was enough to fundamentally challenge the worldview of others. And I want to do that. In fact, I want to be a cognitive dissident (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?). Not in a "SO ANGRY ALL THE TIME TRANSMASH" kinda way, but with an assertiveness about my identity that causes people not only to question the gendered way our society is structured but for people to question their own gender presentations. That's my kind of activism: actively existing as a political statement. And I think that's what HJ advocates in the quotation above.

Gender Part Four, Female

Posted by Ophelia | Posted in hope, transition | Posted on 6/19/2010 12:37:00 PM

(Divided for fluidity: part 1 safe, part 2 male, part 3 transition, part 4 female)

When I am female, I want to learn how to dance. I want to swing, to flow, to twirl and be twirled, to move organically without hesitation, feeling my partner with the playful intimacy of the platonic or an electric incandescence. I want to feel the visceral joy of physicality as music flows through you, linking the mass of humanity writhing in unison. It's intrinsic, intense, not necessarily ecstatic, not necessarily desolate, but intense and so, so real.

Unfortunately, this is problematic because although my maleness is, arguably, an impediment to that state, this all reeks of self-image and self-esteem. The dichotomy I've established is not one between male and female but rather between right and wrong, inanimate and alive. It's not exclusive to transness but almost certainly to many who find themselves in various states of discomfort about themselves.

I say this is unfortunate because it leaves me searching for identity. I am not, as the stereotype goes, a woman trapped in a male body. I am a genderqueer individual who, for an inexplicable reason, identifies with and seeks female presentation. Not just feminine, but female.

I say I want to dance when I am female, because I can't as a male. Oh, I've tried. Importantly, I don't want to lead. I don't want to be the aggressor, the controller. And that shouldn't be a problem, since that's a matter of gender. And I wonder, if our culture was different and women could lead me instead, would I not feel this dysphoria? Are cultural norms the things responsible for this? Is it all just a matter of me not liking what society tells me to do?

Perhaps. But so too I'm aware of how people look at me and see something that shouldn't be there, that I can't stand, that isn't me, isn't expressing what I want it to. Only in words can I express what I want, and there my gender doesn't come into play. Perhaps I dislike the role of the male (or much of it, anyway). But I have distaste for the role of the female, too. What I want is to be authentic, whole. I want to be real instead of a construct. And even though so much of identity is a construction, there is something essential there that points us towards certain avenues of expression, certain presentations, certain ways of being that are truer than others.

In many ways, dancing is emblematic of how I'd like to feel in general. As a male, I simply cannot express myself physically because my physical express are not me. I like me, for the most part; it is the maleness that I am so worried about. And I hope that I can overcome that worry and anxiety by becoming female. The stiff, self-hating, self-consciousness resulting from my maleness dropping away like shed skin and leaving a female fluid and vividly alive.

Again, not just feminine but female. Female and feminine are distinct. I would say that I already foster a great deal of femininity. As far as stereotypes go, my body is slight, my mannerisms submissive (more often than not), my preference to be submissive rather than dominant, my valuation and facility with empathy, etc. I am masculine, too, in some regards: I am assertive sometimes to the point of being aggressive in debate, I have a masculine frame and facial structure, I have interests that probably veer towards culturally masculine although the way I interact in those spaces tends to be closer to feminine. Point being, becoming female is not simply a matter of feminisizing my personality; I've already, significantly, done that.

What it is, though, is a set of signs and signals, understood implicitly by our culture, to represent the female. Clothing, obviously, is very significant. Voice, a make-or-break. Ways of taking up physical space, gait, demeanor, hair, shoes, makeup, and more and more. These all have elements of femininity to them, naturally; gender is a construction, after all. But they're learned on a level that make them difficult to crack. I'm trying, but it's difficult to feel "female" without them, which is discouraging because it's difficult to practice them if I don't feel female.

I say this to try and say that it's a difficult thing for me to conceptualize and make real. I can crossdress, I can work on my voice, I can do all these different things, but to actually feel female? To actually believe? I cannot simply say "I am letting my true self come out" because what I'm doing is constructing myself according to cultural norms of sex. They're norms that, mostly, I'm pretty ok with meeting (in the theoretical "You can do it!" kind of way). Yes, I want to wear skirts. Yes, I want to speak like a woman. Yes, I want to be pretty. But one of the reasons it's taken me so long to get here is because I know how fake it all is. I can wear a skirt and be male, I can speak differently and be male, and I can, to some people, be pretty and be a male. Hell, I can have a vagina and still look, talk, think, and act male.

So is being female just a matter of critical mass? It's not just the clothes, not just the mannerisms, not just the voice, not just the physical aspects, but instead an amalgamation of them all? As if gender is a scale and at some magical point one trait or prop or the other tips it from one side to the other.

You can note my incredulity, but I cannot conceive of an alternative. And maybe that's ok. I don't know why I want these things. I don't know why I identify this way. But when the pieces start falling into place, and the scale finally tips, I feel... right. I feel joyful. Not because I think only females can feel joyful, but because I am thankful for so much, excited about so much, engaged with so much and this maleness stands like a wall, a dam blocking it from flowing. And I wish I knew why. I wish I knew why.

Gender Part Three, Transition

Posted by Ophelia | Posted in past, transition, transsexuality | Posted on 6/19/2010 09:32:00 AM

(Divided for fluidity: part 1 safe, part 2 male, part 3 transition, part 4 female)

So, in a sense, I know who I am/am not. Or, at the very least, I know "he" is a state that cuts the horizon in half, turning a vibrant and beaming existence into a puppet-shadow-show. As a male, I do not identify with myself. This means my "pleasure" mustneedsbe vicarious, my joy a zeitgeist not a bubbling from within. I could hold Laura, as we fell asleep, assured that she was what mattered more than all the small somethings that batter and bruise beyond, and I still, despite my passion, love, devotion, would be apart. I could feel, but her smile reflected in me so much more than one of my own.

It was, I think, one of the fatal flaws of our relationship. I cannot be vulnerable to the extent intimacy demands simply because I am always masked even when bare. I am always deceptive, always hiding, even when revealing. I am distorted, stiff. I am constructed, thoroughly. You cannot truly love a strawman, you can only feel the outlines of what should be real.

It's difficult to wrap your mind around if you're cis (aka not trans), but the best way I can concisely describe it is like a fundamental feeling of wrongness that can't be fixed not for lack of trying but for the implacability of definition. Being called "he," being expected to "act" as a male, being grouped with other males, checking off male on forms, going into the male restroom, having other males view me with a sense of intimate (unearned) camaraderie, having females view me as predator other, these and more are not so much wrong, in a political sense; they are insults, lies, distortions. Every time I check "male" on a form, it feels like a compromise.

Of course, I don't want to be expected to act "female" either; I want the dissolution of gender policing. But that's a political stance. If I was the sex I feel, I would roll my eyes against the forms, speak against policing, transgress groups and norms, but these acts would be assured and with ideology oft in mind. Being referenced as male is a much more personal, much more fundamental affront. It is personal. It hurts, in the way insults, slurs, hatespeech, abuse hurt. It cuts past the armor of reason and assurance to hit a place still vulnerable, still weak. I am Cassandra, speaking truth, feeling truth, and believed by no one. Maleness hurts. It's wrong. It's false. It's a wound that will not heal, but bleeds and bleeds until it's out and I'm out and I am naught but vapors, shadows, masks. Smoke and broken, breaking mirrors.

Gender Part Two, Male

Posted by Ophelia | Posted in past, self-hate, transsexuality | Posted on 6/19/2010 09:29:00 AM

(Divided for fluidity: part 1 safe, part 2 male, part 3 transition, part 4 female)

As a male, I am hopeless. At least, I have no hope for happiness. It seems incompatible. I am anxious. I am depressed. I am wrong. I am so damned wrong. My body hair taunts me, sits like scars from a desperate surgery, tainting once pure flesh. My hands and feet are large, dwarfing, monstrous in their reach and extent. My eyebrows are thick like storm clouds, my face is harsh like rocks against waves. My voice is a cannon or a coffee grinder, my self lacks subtlety and grace. I am large, bulky, clumsy. I am worried, always worried. I grind my teeth awake and asleep, worried. I am wrong. The veins in my hands speak of age beyond me, speak of death while they breathe life. My chest is flab and pricks of hair, weeds after a costly war. Between my legs is a nuisance, a demon, a callous lackluster display of aimless flesh. A protrusion, a weapon, a tacit assertion where I mean to invite, a warning. My shoulders seek lebensraum, invading space around me while I try to reign them in, ashamed and fallen angel, wings wrapped around me. My beard an irrepressible disease, a herpes that can be cleared but never cleansed, a reminder of who I am am not cannot be.

I am distant. Pulled like a puppet. Commanded and obeying. I do not feel insomuch as I react. I wry and decry, deride and snide, snark and bark, not tough but too rough all the same. How can I want him/like him/love him? Who could want such an abomination? Who could want a predator, a carnivore who munches sullenly on grass while hungrily eying gazelles? Who could touch him unscathed? He is a mangy dog, snapping and pitiful. He is a shell. He is a mask. He is deficient. He is man's monster, risen from the dead to stalk and stumble towards a best-case complacency with a lifetime of gray and graying days. He is not who I am who I am cannot be not who not who not who whom being not no wrong.