Blending In

While mulling on the nature of polyamory yesterday a part of me came back to the fact that it might be quite good fun to watch a woman I am in a sexual relationship, having sex with another guy or woman over Skype. After all, as I think she’s hot then it would be super hot to see her getting fucked by a good looking guy or an equally smoking girl.

Then I had a reality sneeze and realised that this type of thing is not something that I could casually go into.

To elaborate…

In the vivid, labyrinthine corridors of my imagination I can create any situation and have it please me. I have always regarded fantasy as God’s way of stopping the isolated, lonely and desperate from automatically killing themselves when faced with the reality of their lives. Douglas Adams touched upon this in the Hitchhiker books with a machine that projects a “to scale” map of the known universe into the room with you and has an arrow saying “YOU ARE HERE”. The reality of the complete insignificance of their lives, drove those subjected to this treatment utterly insane. 

We all like to believe we are important and that we control, to a small or large degree, the reality that we perceive on a daily basis. The truth is that life goes on its way with or without us, like a London bus, and nothing we do has that lasting an effect on history. 

From childhood until today I’ve always had a little voice in my head that has told me to adapt just slightly to appease to what I think will make my daily reality a little more bearable or “fun”. I recently gave up drinking for good (currently on 7 weeks without booze and I don’t miss it) and it was mainly due to the fact that I realised alcohol was the main reason for most of the bad things that have happened to me from about the age of 17. I thought that alcohol would bend my reality to my own whims and that my life would be more fun with it. It was, but only because the beer accentuated some of my emotions and negated or dulled others. By giving up completely I am no longer having anxiety hangovers that would cripple a nervous pony or feeling sick and lethargic all day. Why did I drink that much sometimes? Because I thought it was something that would unlock a secret door marked “Really Enjoy Yourself”.

When I think about my lady friend getting shagged by another guy or gal, I am in control of that fantasy and imagine the guy would be ripped, well hung and good at sex. The reality may well match up to or even exceed that line of thought, but there is also the greater possibility that he or she fall way short of my dream standards.

For years I kept growing my hair long and then a year or two later, cutting it short. I told myself it was my job (postman, inclement weather, rain on head) or that I looked younger because of it (which is actually true) but the truth was I thought it was going to make me be more able to “get along” with people and therefore make my life more bearable.

I have recently caught myself doing things that I have done for years without realising it that were unconsciously to blend in. I am on holiday at my father’s house in Crete, Greece as I write this and  my bedroom has a double bed. I sleep in the middle of it and can starfish, crash and lounge to my heart’s content. However, until last week and for all of my adult life I used to sleep on the left side because, even though I’m single, I subconsciously believed I should keep the other side free.

I have a LOT of T-shirts. Tons in fact. I also have ONE green, lightweight, long sleeved shirt that I have never worn. I tried it on yesterday and realised that I really like it and it suits my miles better than the T-shirts do. Reason I didn’t know? I thought the T-shirts made me look “better”.

As children in the 1970s and 80s me and a lot of my peers would hears adults say “you don’t mind do you?” or “you don’t want that!” Always rhetorical and sometimes with the edge of threat that if you object then you aren’t as mature as they thought you were and maybe you need bringing down a peg or two. In some cases this was good, sound advice (getting a shit Xmas present but feigning gratitude to be polite) but in others it was done as a form of bullying and an attempt to get you to bend to their view of the world and their will. Attempts to argue or reason with the Grown Up would result in diatribes and laments so most of us learned to simply grin and bear it. 

I personally don’t like making small talk. I do it a lot because as a kid I was told that being silent meant that I was “sulking” and would alienate people. The British, and especially the English, specialise in mundane chit chat about fuck all and I am someone who indulges. I have found in the last two months that I actually prefer solitude and silence can indeed be not just golden but radiate sunlight. 

Most of us try too hard to accept what we don’t want because we think it will make others like us more. 15 years ago I would, like most guys in their 30s, drink pints of beer and then switch to bottles of WKD Blue. Reason? Not enough room in my belly for more than about 6 pints. Friends of mine, or even people I worked with would call this “poofy” and regard it as a black mark on my masculinity as men drink pints, preferably lager. This was one of the few times where I genuinely didn’t give a shit, as I was too far gone to care by that point and was able to stick to my guns without anxiety or embarrassment. 

There are thing we do to blend into society that are no good for us as individuals but benefit everyone as a whole (queuing, paying taxes, not stealing). Other things are done only to try and pretend that we are “one of the gang” and ultimately don’t fulfil us. While Western society has become superficially more tolerant in many ways over the last 50 or 60 years, there are still times where people will keep their mouths shut or lie in order to merge**. 

I now prefer to not be one of the gang and do what I want. 

And I feel much, much better.

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** My personal fave being that anyone who is uncomfortable with transgender people is deemed to be intolerant and in need of diversity training...including a woman who had severe panic attacks when in the same room as men, but was put on the same ward in a mental institution as a man who identified as female.