You and I Are Pretenders

Who am I really?

... a question we ask, but fail to answer.

Who is he/she really?

... a question we ask, yet don't care to answer.

Why am I pretending?

... a question we seldom ask, because we know the answer.


We are all pretenders. Don't try to convince yourself otherwise, because you'd just prove my point. Whether we are the self-proclaimed-but-not-openly-hipster, jock, flower child, busybody, loner, soccer mom, do-gooder, do-badder, left-brainiac, right-brainiac, regular-joe-cubicle-guy or biker-bad-ass-with-a-soft-side...we are all pretenders. Everyday we pretend to listen, we pretend to give to the salvation army for a motive other than getting rid of old junk, we pretend to care about the environment when we recycle only half of our recyclable items, we pretend to read Thoreau for a  reason other than being able to tell people we read Thoreau, we pretend happiness in both extravagant and humble existences and above all, we pretend to be original.

I don't know where the urge to pretend begins in human development and I'll spare you the explanatory cliche of lost innocence, because I'm feigning original thought (not to mention a superior vocabulary with that super awesome synonym for "pretending" courtesy of thesaurus.com!). Anyway, the exact date doesn't really matter, because the destination is the same.We are all destined to pretend; to one day place ourselves in a category, or even multiple categories, and act/dress/speak within the parameters of that category. Don't blame society, because you put yourself there. No one made you. You chose that category, because you were afraid that the world would choose one for you. You may not fill a blatant stereotype, but it's in there somewhere, concealed by internal assertions that you don't give a hoot about what anyone else thinks.

It's true that the disingenuous outweigh the genuine, however, I'm not a cynic just yet. The world has more substance than we often give it credit. It's characterized by both sparks of true individuality and routine drones. But despite this, our inherent sense of self-preservation gave us each a mask. We may leave it stowed away in the attic most of the time or never take it off. There's no right or wrong location (though we're all judging you for its home) because either way, those masks will inevitably fix themselves to us and mold our personas in some way, telling us who "I" and "he/she" is and then leaving us out to be graded by expectations and biased opinions. In the end, it seems the human population is just a bunch of chronic pretenders.

Don't worry though, there's no real reason to even take this post seriously, because to be honest, it's only here because a girl somewhere is pretending to be a writer.


...That's it folks! For some reason I couldn't muster a positive outlook today. Maybe I'll amend this post later.

The People-Watcher

Family. The building blocks of society. That one over there is setting the foundation for a monster of a child, and by extension the monstrosities in our world. A child wails in his highchair as his parents make every attempt to quiet him with promises of ice cream and toy cars. Once a mating ritual, then courtship, now cheap beers and a shared bowl of tortilla chips. Disgust written in bold at the corner of her lips, a woman watches her date shove fistfuls of tortilla chips and guacamole into his mouth between swigs of Corona and the occasional grunt. Knives and spoons used by prehistoric man; forks, later by the Greeks. Professor Stephen Lawrence unrolls his napkin and places its contents in a neat row on the table. He can’t help but to scan his surroundings studying the social rituals of his fellow human beings. He finds himself constantly consumed in the practice of people watching. The small 30 x 60 foot hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, known as Cielito Lindo, is the ideal location for an anthropology professor to study the social patterns of the human species, for on digs nothing truly breathes and in a larger location one is overwhelmed by possible subjects. 

            After a waitress takes his order Stephen resumes his observations. The earliest alcoholic beverages were made in the Middle East from berries and honey. They were used for medicinal purposes, but today it appears as though they have the opposite effect. A group of middle-aged men are on their third round of beers, growing louder with each passing minute. Portraits of culture, art is the purest form of human expression and the greatest link between the most diverse cultures of the world. Flamenco dancers and men donning sombreros and impressive mustaches seem to dance about the orange walls in colorful drawings and authentic black and white photographs. English and Spanish, descendants of the same Indo-European parent. Language evolves over multiple generations. Professor Lawrence overhears a conversation in Spanish while eating a rice and bean burrito. Consuming food as a social experience shared with others, is as old as humanity itself, yet I eat by myself and always have. Professor Lawrence’s almost incessant musings have made him blind to any human interaction he is called upon to take part in. 

            However, what he is largely unaware of is the interest his subjects often take in him. In Stephen’s mind, it is his appearance they find intriguing, for it elicits mystery. His hair is a mop of scruffy, dark brown, gray speckled frizz with an unruly beard to match. His somewhat large nose sits comfortably on a scraggly mustache and his eyes, framed in wrinkles, are a brilliant green. Often he leans in too closely to people when he speaks and never makes eye contact with them. Even his students take note that he never fully pays them any attention. He is a hard man to place, foreign yet not exotic. That is the core of it all really; he is a hard to place. In a sense that is his natural repellant, as well as his source of magnetism; for what society cannot categorize is terrifying. The unknown is mankind’s greatest fear; and like observing Professor Babb, we are drawn to it, yet frightened of the dark. So as he sits there, people-watching, sorting societal rituals and social exchanges into separate boxes and taping them up with ease and confidence, Professor Stephen Lawrence himself is being placed in the “other” category and will finish his dinner alone.

Twelve Years of Silence: Final

All that changed a week ago in Cincinnati. Johnny had been gone all day and all night, mumbling about a business deal of some sort when he left. Early next morning he hadn’t returned and I grew worried. Driving around the city, in hopes of finding him, I spotted him wandering the streets. He came to the car blubbering, “ nowhere…I failed… gone nowhere…can’t take it no more you know?”

“Yes Johnny, I know” I said while hugging him to me. He pushed me away, “No, no, no… damnit, you don’t”. He stumbled into the driver’s seat, “Johnny maybe I should…” He slammed the door shut and took off before I had the chance to open the passenger door. 

You know how when people describe watching death happen, it’s always in slow motion? Well, it wasn’t that way for me. The ensuing seconds were probably the quickest in my life. Maybe, it’s because I wasn’t at all shocked. I think I knew from the very beginning he was the type that dies young. “Live passionately, die tragically” he used to say, thinking he was quoting it from somewhere, though I’m pretty sure he made it up. 

As I watched Johnny’s truck accelerate into a nearby streetlight, I didn’t scream, nor did I put my face in my hands or look to the heavens pleading with God. It sounds cold, but I simply just watched, as if I were doing nothing more than watching television. Then upon reaching the site, I found Johnny as lifeless as the wreckage that surrounded him. And it was okay. 

Looking back, I think I’ve had the perspective to disentangle the succession of emotions that ran through me in the initial minutes of Johnny’s death. It took me some time to place the most dominant feeling, because it was so unexpected. Or at least I didn’t want to let myself believe it, because the crushing grief I expected never surfaced. It seemed so unnatural to feel relief, but I felt it all the same. Johnny’s death left me with a sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt since I first left Boone Grove. I could finally see a future for myself beyond endless expanses of road and diet pills. My life was mine again.

However, it was true I felt lost, not unlike the women who once tended to the country’s wounds in a time of war, only to lose both their husbands and their jobs once the war ended. I may have been free, but my freedom was the only thing I could claim as mine. In all that time, I had produced nothing of my own to stand on. It’s the plight of the female I guess; to be left with nothing when one’s man dies. 

I lost twelve years to Johnny. Twelve years of driving a truck across the country. Twelve years with a man that could never execute his grand plan. Twelve years without love. Twelve years of standing still. Twelve years of complete silence. I want those twelve years back.

Twelve Years of Silence: Part II

I arrived in San Francisco, naïve and unsure. Everything was so unfamiliar, the people, the clothes, the music. I was in an entirely different world, far removed from anything I’d ever known. In a few months I found my creative niche. It was a Spanish restaurant turned bar/poetry lounge. The original sign had never been removed, nor had a new one ever hung beside it. I think it’s because they liked the sound of it, “Tapas” something poetic in the way the syllables fit together.  There, I expanded my thoughts and freely experimented with writing different forms of poetry.  It was also there that I met him.

It was 1965. Though I’m not sure of the month or date, as I often lost track of time back then. Each night a man with a crooked smile came to watch me read poetry. At first, I remember thinking there was something eerie about the interest he had taken in me, and he wasn’t particularly attractive, but his manner held my intrigue. It was the way he moved his hands, as if outlining the cosmic order, when he spoke of his philosophies and the fiery enthusiasm with which he expressed his grand life plan. I was enraptured. Two weeks later we were on the road, fulfilling his dreams in a truck that easily carried our few belongings.

Johnny had plans to make his mark on the world going door-to-door selling diet pills. The women of the western world were in a frenzy at the time, desperate for Twiggy’s waif figure. He told me it was just temporary. When we made enough money we’d travel the world together, “living a lifetime in each breath” he used to say. I told you he was dramatic. 

Anyway, we moved around a lot. Johnny was always popular with his customers, women especially. I learned to ignore the coy flicker of eyelashes and the subtle brush of fingertip against leg. Actually, it was better for Johnny’s business that I stayed in the car altogether. After a sale was made it was only a matter of days before unexplained skin rashes developed and Johnny’s customers realized how craftily he had cheated them.  When they were set on retribution, it was time to move again. The life of a nomad isn’t as liberating as it’s made out to be. While preying on female insecurity, we saw all four corners of the nation, and everything in between, but most of the time it was just endless stretches of road. I never recognized that Johnny had taken advantage of me in a way not far removed from the women whose doorsteps he stood on all day. 

During that time I saw the country changing, cities filled with young radicals, and rural areas dotted with communes. Change was in the fiber of America’s youth and it urged revolt. But I was driving right on by, traveling on a road that never changed direction as much as I wanted it to. I might as well have been back in Boone Grove, for I never had the chance to be a part of a revolution I so desperately believed in. Whenever I grew restless, Johnny always used to tell me, “Babe, don’t let it get you down”. In countless instances he promised to take me to New York, where I could begin working my poetry into the Broadway scene.  “As soon as I tie up this sale” he would say. But, there was always another customer to be conquered, or an encounter with law enforcement that occupied our attention. And there were times when Johnny would leave for hours on end, and would come home aggressive and heated, but I wouldn’t allow myself to look upon him with a disapproving eye. He appeared somewhat content for the most part and regardless of his selfish nature, I was deeply in love; for somehow in a mind fogged by love, states had no laws, schemes no moral implications and promises no discernible fractures.   My poetry lay mute for years, untouched by neither pen nor thought, my creativity stifled by a depression I never quite recognized. Poetry, my life’s greatest love, had been replaced by him. I can freely admit I am ashamed of who I was then.

Twelve Years of Silence: Part I

I always thought it would be raining when I attended the funeral of someone I loved, but it’s not. The day is clear, and filled with the vibrancy of life that has now left my Johnny forever. But, somehow, this atmosphere seems appropriate. Johnny always had his way in life. I’m not sure if it was his smile, charm personified in a crooked upturn at the corner of his lips, or his laugh, which was bewitching in its wild tones, but he had a way of persuading the very ground beneath his feet to lay flat and allow him unhindered passage. Being the dramatic soul he was, he would have wanted more theatrical conditions as he was lowered beneath the earth. Today, however, it appears the world rejected his last request and I take a kind of pleasure in knowing that. One might say I’m somewhat bitter. 

I grew up in a small town in Indiana by the name of Boone Grove. It was the heart of blue-collar America and I was one of its offspring. Bearing the full experience of the Second World War, my parents were greatly affected by a strong vein of patriotism that once stretched across the nation. As a result, I grew up in American tradition. So when I turned my back on marriage I was little more than a disappointment. Though, if you asked my mother, I’d always been a disappointment as a daughter that preferred the world of poetry over the reality of womanhood. My father had worked in a factory his entire life, but I never thought much of the place and its sign, a rust-speckled badge of unmet expectation, that read, “Thorgen Tool & Die Molding” The factory went up with the war. It represented the country’s efforts on the home front and the diligence of women working to the benefit of their men. Whatever its history, by the time I turned nineteen and began my years of internment there, it was producing the molds that were necessary for other factories to create something of actual use to society. Anyone with a true poet’s soul can recognize poetry in even the most mundane tasks, but this was the exception. My passion lay dormant. 

After six years of stamping and filing, self-preservation told me that leaving was my only option. I’d seen pictures of San Francisco and its eclectic collection of people in magazines. It was the epicenter of change and the antithesis of Boone Grove. For a young, ambitious poet, it was where I knew I belonged. In September of 1963, I boarded a train to San Francisco and never came back. I’d planned to visit, but Johnny isn’t one of those fellows that runs according to plan. 

I’d never really thought much about how I would feel if I lost someone to death. I guess it’s because I’d always been too busy fitting my own visions of, what I supposed the experience to be like, in rhyme schemes. Johnny’s death wasn’t real to me until he was six feet under, or that’s how the expression goes anyway. His departure should have been obvious when I saw him lying motionless on the steering wheel, when I attended his wake and his body was in such perfect condition I had to hold back the urge to shake him from sleep or during his funeral when they spoke of his life in past tense. No, it was not until the dirt was packed firmly over his head that the mixed emotions set in.