RUDIMENTS, pt. 49
Making Cars
I never was much for the things that
keep normal people : the preoccupations
of the daily moment. Everything I had
was a'jumble and I tried working it
just like that. I liked it straight and
simple. No complications, please. I
used to see a lot of girls, bar-girls I
mean, biker girls and all that - in
their vain effort at simplicity it all
just became a vain effort at vanity,
and it was made of things of absolutely
no import : 55-dollar fingernail jobs,
for instance, every two weeks or whatever.
The silliest and sometimes even the most
complicated efforts : seasonal, holiday
themed, American flag motifs, even once
or twice I saw a finger or two studded
with a jewel or faux jewel. That was
always the most opposite extreme
to simplicity, and I could never understand
any of it - and they really worried about
it all. Pre-occupied for sure. If you're out
aiming for something, I'd figure you should
at least make sure first it's on the target
you're aiming at. Stuff like that, for me,
never was. I couldn't categorize very well.
I would just go along, seeing and inputting
what I saw, without making judgments - I
found it was, like everything was, always in
its 'ideal' state and never need anything from
me. Pride and bearing. Stateliness. The
perfect old man. The perfect elderly woman
pushing a cart. That's all I ever saw.
-
It's like the choices people make : you get one
life, why would you ruin it by bad choices, or by
allowing others to ruin it for you? I just couldn't
often understand the rackets people sometimes
make of themselves. If you had the choice of
staying at the Comfort Inn - where everything
is light and right and easy, or the Discomfort Inn,
where the beds are too short, the floors are crooked,
the doors don't close correctly, there are no closets,
etc., and everything is just wrong, it would seem
pretty apparent to me the one you'd opt for.
-
I'd walk around and (I have this penchant for doing
this) get engaged in the weirdest conversations
sometimes, with people who'd just start talking
with me. It was sometimes like the opposite of
radioactivity - instead of running, people
swarmed in. I never knew why, but I never
ran from it either, figuring people always wanted
something out of those moments, I filled a quick
need of assertiveness for them. They wanted to
be reinforced. I'd be there; sometimes I'd even
mess with them : Incongruous statements.
-
One time, I was waiting around and this guy
starts talking to me about how he'd missed his
train twice - once from being too long in the
nearby station bar trying to pick up this
'interesting' local girl, and the second time for
being too long in the men's room. I surmised
that the first had something to do with the
second, but didn't let on. His smile was too
broad to be misconstrued (there are all sorts
of character types, everywhere, in all walks,
and I knew a lot of them and could recognize
too. Like I said just before, mostly I just saw
the 'perfect' version of each and every). At
about that time I realized how much I hated
being with men whose heads were bigger than
their brains. So, messing with his head, I turned
back on him figuring to screw him up good,
and said, 'Yes, I sometimes prefer men myself.'
The blowhard didn't flinch, seemed unaffected.
The silly, crummy small talk continued, mostly
about his claims on women, and then some
dweeby little older guy slides over. I guess he'd
been overhearing us and he turned to introduce
himself : "Excuse me, gents, but I couldn't help
overhearing your conversation, which I found
most interesting. Myself I am Professor Irwin
Klempfer and in my own way I am a renowned
sexual researcher, an investigator of the science,
say, and my specialty is sexual roles and gender
in the history of civilization so as you can tell all
of what you were saying in your off-handed and
light way was pretty much the sort of material I
am always seeking and searching for - the tidbits
of information as I get them from colloquial groups
in such places as these - train stations, bus depots,
malls, etc. The most interesting material, and outside
of the usual academic blather I contend with. Allow
me further comment, should you not mind.' We looked
at one another. He looked at his watch, and we said
'Sure' - shrugging. What did we have to lose and
who cared, lizarded in as we were in this swamp
of time and with people passing and the trucks
and trains and cars, who cared. A sort of disclaimer
went up, no one would get offended. Besides, I kind
of liked this professor guy more than I did the
traveling drudge guy, so I sat back to listen.
-
'You then have just come back from a quick and happy
session with the local girl here, shall we say, whose
work area includes this station and its various rooms,
am I not correct? If I am incorrect, please at any
point interrupt me. This pleasure, this dollop of
sex brought your way seems to have made you
happy enough to miss two departures causing, I
surmise, no problem in your business or personal
life. Therefore this elation over the trade-off of
time for sex is seen as satisfactory and without
the usual hide-bound guilt factors which would
usually complicate matters. Other men, I'd say,
would be hindered by this, and kept from attaining
any close connection with the inner experience that
continually stirs beneath normal consciousness, and
it's a good idea then to look at the psyche and its
relationship to sexual identity, for the psyche is
neither male nor female, but in normal systems of
belief is often identified as feminine, along with
artistic productions which emerge from its creativity
and in that context the day hours and waking
consciousness too are thought of as masculine along
with the sun, while the nighttime moon and the
dreaming consciousness are considered feminine
and passive. In the same manner aggression is
thought of to be violent and assertive action,
male-oriented, while female elements are identified
in terms of the nurturing principle, and physically
speaking you would have no males or females
unless you first had individuals of a specific
sex, biologically speaking, so the particular
kind of focus we have is responsible for the
great significance we place upon male and female.
Listen: as your hand and your foot have different
functions so do these roles and focuses and if you
wanted to focus upon the differences in you behavior
you could build an entire culture based upon their
diverse capabilities and functions and characteristics,
just as hands and feet are obviously equipment
belonging to both sexes, but on another level the
analogy remains valid for each individual is both
'male' and 'female' too, in those terms, but when I
say this I realize that you put your own definitions
upon these things.' Awright, I figured, this guy was
over the top but I didn't care, I was just sitting
around, and the other guy was like spellbound
except I think it all baffled him. The professor guy
let out a sneeze or something, tuning away to
blow out the noise, some kind of noise from behind
his mouth and eyes and he looked like an owl with
glasses and the other guy, I noticed, just raised
his eyebrows and they sort of stayed there, raised.
A few people were walking along, by us, non-committal,
and it was as if we'd been transported someplace else
anyway. In my own mind I was figuring what better
place than right here, at this station, so what the heck.
I looked up and suddenly got caught into watching
the mesmerizing gait of some fearsomely fashionable
female going by, in heels and with a leather case, and
professor whatever, who I guess had seen me, starts
again : 'Biologically the sexual orientation is the method
chosen for the continuation of the species for otherwise
no specific characteristics of any kind are attached to
that biological functioning for you must be quite
aware that in your experience definite physical and
psychological differences do exist and those that do
are the result of programming and are not inherent.'
Boy, I sure wanted him to tell that to the piece of
skylark who just walked by. 'Not even biologically
in the species itself. In fact, the vitality of the species
was assured because it did not over specialize in
terms of sexuality - for instance there was no fixed
mating period and instead the species could reproduce
freely in case of calamity so that it would not be tied
into rigid patterns that could result in extinction. The
more flexible mating patterns made humankind
different. A greater diversity of individual characteristics
came to be so that no one individual was bound to a
strictly biological role, for if that were true the species
would never have been concerned beyond the issues of
physical survival. It could have, however, survived
quite well without philosophy or art and music and
even structured language - it could have followed
completely different paths tied strictly to biological
orientation. But that would have been too limiting.'
-
In my mind all I kept hearing was like, 'Hambone,
Hambone, have you heard, Mama's gonna' buy you
a mocking bird.' I think that was it, an old kids'
nursery rhyme or something I remembered my
own mother reciting. We were getting fidgety by
now, and trains were due. But he still raged on....
-
'...Masculine tasks, feminine tasks, with no leeway for
other action and of course it goes without saying that
many of the pleasurable aspects of sexuality are the
things we live with and what we remember...' At this
point, Bonehead next to me piped up, 'Oh, yeah! I'll
go with that!' And Professor Orgasm here just kept
running on...'Yes, exact, and intended I suspect exactly
as spoken.' And then, thank God, a few arrivals and
boardings were announced, and - miraculously, just
like that - we greeted each other with goodbyes,
and they went on their merry, separate ways. And
that was only one day of my freewheeling life among
the perfect embodiments of all this world.
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