I am a fucking freak.
["Baby, do you think if we tried REALLY hard, maybe for just, like, a day, do you think we could be normal?"
"No."
--Helena and Norman...]
I was walking to work yesterday when I was struck by an epiphany: I am absolutely not normal.
In conversation, I'm ALWAYS talking about, "the weirdo who came into Java's today," or, "that one screwed up dude we always see outside the Giant [grocery store]." I'm always talking about the five percent or so of the population (okay, more like 60 percent, but I'm trying to be generous...) who are designated as completely and utterly hopeless freaks. The dude who came into Sharkey's the other night bellowing about the Prodigal Son. The kid with M.S. who's always trying to flirt with girls by spasming more violently than usual. The schizo drunk who stands guard at the State Street payphone, refusing to let anybody else use it, because it's his "office." The misfits. The freaks.
Realized yesterday that just because I can hold a conversation with somebody for more than two minutes without automatically appearing as though I should be institutionalized, DOES NOT make me normal by any stretch of the imagination.
For some reason, I forgot my bookbag on the way to work yesterday. Of course, this was a huge tragedy, because work tends to get REALLY dull around 9 or so, and one MUST have something to do: a book, a magazine, a notebook... If one DOESN'T have anything to do, one is subject to the harsh ennui-inspired compulsion to actually speak to one's customers, which can easily become unspeakably horrible. Thus, my first instinct, upon realizing my forgetfulness, was to turn immediately back and grab my bag, which was filled to the brim with goodies, such as: books, the dictionary, notebooks, a really groovy folder with song lyrics in it, and a full medicine-cabinet's worth of toiletries and over-the-counter stuff.
But alas, I was late already, and so I scurried on towards work, my only present possessions being my jacket, my cigarettes, and my discman.
It's a two-mile walk, give or take, and there are plenty of little shops along the way; I made up my mind to drop in on one and purchase a notebook, so at least I'd have SOMETHING with which to occupy my time. You'd think, that in a two-mile stretch of walking, there would be ONE store that sells notebooks, or something similar. But no. I'd already passed the drugstore, and the grocery store was a little bit out of the way (well, like a block, but I WAS running late...) Instead, I flung myself into the used-book store, grabbed the first two under-five-dollars books I came across, and flung myself back out into the street, which was when the revelation happened.
Had I been sleep-deprived or under the influence of some harsh chemical other than nicotine, I would state that I was standing outside my body looking at myself. But as I was in a perfectly unaltered cognitive state, and I was certainly not outside of my body, I guess I'll just state that I IMAGINED I was outside myself looking in. Anyway, what I imagined made me want to shit myself laughing.
There I was, a perfectly ordinary, normal, mainstream 20-year-old female on her way to work. Wearing jeans and a t'shirt. Upon imagining myself more closely, however, I wondered exactly how many ordinary, normal, mainstream 20-year-old females go around wearing mostly black, listening to Emerson Lake and Palmer, with a paper bag stuffed with used existentialist literature at their side, and sweeping madly at her unruly lesbian haircut.
Surrounding me were a bunch of kids shouting at each other things like, "Sha-MEEEE-kuh! Gimme that or I'll knock your fat white ass on the ground!" Across the street was a trashy-looking couple in faded New York Giants jackets pushing a shopping cart filled with huge bags of cat food up to their house. A little further up was a young woman of about 25, dressed in a business suit and talking desperately on her cell phone, apparently about car trouble. And I have the damned nerve to think *I* am normal?
I, on the other hand, was contemplating women philosophers; I had a professor in college who'd told the class that women could not wholly be philosophers because God had created women with minds for nurturing children and husbands rather than minds for analyzing their surroundings and identities. I was contemplating having asked Norman whether there were any women philosophers, and having him cite me only two examples. I was contemplating having gotten an "A" in that philosophy class despite having boobs and an apparently "nurturing" mind. I was a million miles out in space, thinking about all of this, listening to Emerson Lake and Palmer, and swinging Camus' "The Stranger" and Sartre's "Nausea" at my side.
Had somebody pointed at me and giggled, I would not have been surprised. In that place, in that time, I was such an absolute contradiction to everything, that I wanted to laugh at myself. I am quite possibly the only person EVER who has walked that particular block humming Emerson Lake and Palmer to myself. I'm quite possibly the only person who has EVER sat in the front window of Sharkey's reading a book and composing letters. I'm probably the only 20-year-old alive who works two jobs, doesn't go to school, and yet reads Sartre for fun. Maybe I'm the only person in this entire town, maybe the entire state, and -- who knows? -- maybe the entire world, who is practically uneducated, and yet has an apartment full of books, postcards of surrealist art, and CD's that range from freaky jazz to Lynyrd Skynyrd to obscure Japanese ambient-techno. I'm the ONLY damned one; I'm the only one even REMOTELY like myself. And still, I go on believing I could POSSIBLY be "mainstream"? Hell, I couldn't be freaking "normal" if I walked down the street in Gap clothes listening to Brittany Spears, and chewing on a Big Mac. I'd probably STILL be thinking about the 2,500 varieties of wild mushrooms found in western Washington state, or the effect the drug war is having on, say, Charlotte Street...
So, in the last five minutes of my walk to work, I laughed at myself for being so damned out-of-place, so antagonistically different than fucking EVERYBODY else. It seemed as though one of Dalí's melting clocks had just leaked black leather time-juice all over the sidewalk of Main Street, USA. I may as well have been walking along with sewing needles sticking out of my forehead and a "support your local brewery" bumper sticker adorning my ass, for as much as I fit in.
I'm a freak.
I'm not even TRYING to be a freak. You know the ten or twelve high school kids who go around moping and wearing strange clothes and doing strange things with their hair in order to prove they're NOT mainstream? Like, for example, most of my friends when I was 17? Guess what, kiddos? I, Helena Thomas, have got you beat.
Anyway, in addition to being amused, I was also strangely satisfied. Not satisfied that I was, to the careful observer, a walking circus sideshow, but satisfied because I'm living a self-styled life, and that, without protests or weird hair, without even consciously trying, I've completely defied everything "normal," just by doing what I like. Mostly, I was satisfied because I LIKE myself, and because I WOULDN'T give a shit if anybody started pointing and laughing.
"I don't belong here..." --Radiohead
...And all I have to say about that is, "yeah."
~Helena*
"Once or twice I had a mind to assure him that I was just like everybody else; quite and ordinary person. But really that would have served no great purpose, and I let it go - out of laziness as much as anything else." --"The Stranger," Albert Camus.