Playing With Fire

This first appeared in F.U.C.K. as volume 0351

I have never thought of myself that attractive.
People say otherwise.
Whatever.
Looks are so materialistic.
But the funny thing is, I am egotistical enough to think I am the best damn thing since the slice of bread.
Whatever.
My standard response.
Here is the paradox. and while this can be appropriately applied to me, I have seen this applied to too many people in reality.
When I am put in a situation where in essence I have to prove myself, in some way or some ideal, I am *the* best damn thing that you will ever see. I am more stronger emotionally, physically, mentally. the most intelligent, the most everything that you’ve ever seen and I *will* rock your world.
And it works, because confidence is attractive isn’t it?
On the flip side, media is screaming at me: you are nearly 6′ tall? You have to weigh 8lbs, have hunks of blonde hair, be incredibly stupid and like sex occasionally.
And that is such bullshit. how can I strive to be “me” in every sense of the word, to explore and find myself, to stretch and become myself, to grow and to learn about myself if the goddamn media is feeding me this tripe on such a basis that I’m literally screaming “fuck off” in my mind every time that I see some walking clothes hanger walk by me. Because when she does, for the briefest of seconds I mentally beat myself up for not being the things that I described above.
Whatever.
That irks me more than anything else. That while I am still learning about me, my likes, my dislikes, that I have to fight Madison avenue at every possible moment.
And it’s not the print, vision or Internet media, it’s the bimbos that I see every time I step out of the house who are running around with copies of Cosmo, Vogue, sticking their fingers down their throat, letting themselves be taken advantage of by guys in the name of love, being scared to be alone, to be strong, to be themselves.
FUCK THAT!
All in the name of beauty.
All in the name of being loved.
All in the name of being accepted.
All in the name of getting fucked.
All in the name of every conceivable media muckraking machine piece of crap
that ever existed.
When I was 20 years old, I dated a guy named Alan. This was love. This was everything I dreamed it would be. Sexually I let loose and did things I had only dreamed about. And as every post-teenage-angst being fed on a diet of diet coke and diet pills, we went shopping one day. He turned around and looked at me while saying most earnestly “you know, with your face and Cindy Crawford’s body, you would make a lot of money modeling”. Isn’t that nice? yes, I thought so. Turns out he was fucking another girl for the majority of our relationship (1.5 years). Isn’t that nice? I am sure he liked the fact that I beat the shit out of his ‘fiancée’ in a night club after I turned 21.
Now that I am getting older, I am less conscious of how my face and body looks. It doesn’t stop though. Men still sniff around regardless of how much I weigh, or if my hair is short/long or if I’m suffering from the lovely monthly round of zits from PMS.
Something about me…
Playing with fire…
This fuck file came along when I was just browsing the web and looking at sites at random. A friend of mine came online and we were talking about our first meeting which occurred recently. He had taken me to his place of business, and we had met an associate of his.
Now this meeting was all innocent between my friend and I. He is in fact my publisher who contacted me about a year ago about putting my writings in a book form and actually be printed. We were meeting to talk about various and sundry things. And I do not have a habit on cheating on my boyfriend’s.
But I digress. My friend and I were talking online tonight about the first meeting and setting up another meeting soon to go over business related things, when he related that his associate came up and said to him, in reference of me, “your playing with fire”.
This never fails to amuse me. Because it seems that there is something about ‘me’ that is different than anyone else. My ex-boyfriend Dan kept saying that to me when I left Michigan to come to San Francisco. “Something about you, that I have never seen, will never see again. I love you”.
And that is the common thread it seems in all my life. Some deep inner part of me is calling out to just about everyone. Something inside of me that seems to shake people at the core of their souls that makes me unforgettable.
Enough of “something” to be the product (indirectly) of marriage breakups, relationship breakups. I have had guys change their minds about one girl only to like me. I have been accused of sleeping with a majority of these people (not true).
And I’m tired.
I’m tired of the competition, of the bullshit, of the pseudo lying and the theorizing of who and what I am.
And is it not ironic that Dan and I’s song ‘The Freshman’ by the Verve Pipe is playing on the radio? I traveled 2000 miles to get away from that song, local heroes gone bigtime, only to be assaulted by it on a 15 song rotation.
“When I was young I knew everything
and she a punk who rarely ever took advice
now i’m guilt stricken
sobbing with my head on the floor
stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice
I can’t be held responsible
cause she was touching her face
I won’t be held responsible
she fell in love in the first place
for the life of me
I can’t remember
what made us think we were wise and
we’d never compromise
for the life of me I cannot believe
we’d ever die for these sins
we were merely freshman…”
I probably never told him (Dan) what he really meant to me. Maybe I was a cunt bitch from hell, maybe there was too many wrongs, and I wouldn’t compromise. Because when all is said and done, I walk away being the one with the most cake.
My friend from the meeting said this about me tonight: “You are a magnificent puzzle-maker
one of the best I have seen but like every puzzle-maker, you on some level want the pieces assembled and the clues to the puzzle are scattered… throughout the writing you have scattered on the Net and such and if one cares to read your writing verrry verrrry closely one finds, in the contradictions, the Scyllas and Charybdis’s”
While my boyfriend is at porno sites.
And while I trip walking down the street looking up at the clear night sky.
I marvel how I got from here to there.
as I walk in City Lights bookstore, running my fingers ever so delicately at all the wonderful books
as I sit Indian style at my computer picking a scab on my knee
as my cat gives the both of us evil looks
as I scratch my ear
as I yawn
I wonder what tomorrow brings
where the day breaks
where I begin and end
while loving that I am me, and not some ‘normal’ mundane person concerned
about their 2.5 kids and picket fence
while I dream about an apt in Chinatown
maybe this made no sense.
I don’t give a shit. I never make sense, least of all to myself. But the moral of the story is that what seems to be lacking in many people is the need to dream. The need to be. The need to go beyond the bullshit and to push ourselves into some sort of oblivion that doesn’t exist. The need to break beyond the media, the muckrakers, the fucked up bullshit world we live in. A place that only exists in our minds. A place of worthy entrance and only the accepted are allowed to come in.
Maybe all we wanted was to be loved for ourselves.
But we won’t allow to that happen now will we boys and girls.
No we won’t.
We will be force feed what type of bullshit to buy from our condoms to our
toilet paper to wipe our lily white asses with.
And we are all struggling thinking we are all so unique and ohh soo
different when all we are is nothing but a bunch of sheep being lead to the
slaughter by mind control of the media.
And me?
Am i included in this we?
Fuck no.
I will be dancing naked around a ring of fire while the rain pours.
Hoping against hope that everything I’ve begun to search for will come to me.
Plotting the stars.
Reading a book that i bought without the help of ads.
And listening to the voices in my mind.
Because I’m not an addict.
Really.
I’m not.
(and this is a lie.)
-simunye
June 7, 1997
4:31 am