The Joust tent

“Perhaps your knight in shining armor is a mere boy in tin foil…”

I hear so many assertions that chivalry is dead, but I don’t buy it. Chivalry didn’t die, it just went on a long vacation from the shallow, bar-traipsing bitches who disease the world with a sense of entitlement merely because they have breasts; they taint the common opinion for the rest of the gender. However, men tend to do the same for their poor species; my male friends constantly complain that there aren’t any genuine, intelligent, worth-while girls to date, yet when they find them, they act like complete idiots.

I’m not necessarily looking for a knight, and I’d certainly like to do without the armor for once. I’m independent, I need an extreme of space, and I certainly don’t need to be rescued. In the inventory of armor, I’ve got plenty for the entire occupancy of the Round Table, it’d be nice to find someone who allowed me to shed it and perhaps let it get a little rusty.

I suppose that level of worthiness is completely dependent upon my own willingness; I hate to shed the armor and have to lift it all back up again when people prove to be ready to merely impale me with their sword, in nowhere near the way that such an innuendo could prove to be positive. No, we’re talking blood, and guts, not a flurry of erotica out of an Elizabethan romance.

So. Long story short, I shed the armor. I lost the joust. The knight walks out of the arena as though he’s won, when really, he overlooked what the prize really was. He spilled blood, yes. Not many have done so, congratulations. But he missed the actual main event.

Someone once told me that I presume too often, while I claim to merely assess the information that I’ve been given, and determine my own opinion based on such. I honestly am still unsure what other choice I have in a world where people cover themselves with armor and refuse to stand in the arena and just fight. If the opponent is kept hidden, I don’t know what I’m up against and I have to form a strategy accordingly. Or die.

I wanted a shield. I wanted my armor. But I took it off, and I got wounded. Now, bleeding, in the middle of the dust, crowd on its feet, I get back up. I stepped into the arena, I fought for what I wanted, and now I'll walk away, head held high because I did so. My opponent thought he won. Unfortunately, he failed to see, we should have been fighting together.

The Blood Bath Tent

Strangely enough, as jaded, cynical, and bitter as I can be, I seem to have escaped all of the bullshit without too many unresolved trust issues; however, I’ve definitely got at least one: I don’t trust the request for complete honesty, because as much as people ask for it, they usually can’t handle it. I possess, and frequently use, a level of honesty that makes people extremely uncomfortable. Based on this, I’m too often labeled as intimidating, bitchy, or whatever negatively-denoting moniker people choose to fling at me. Plenty of people claim that they want to know the truth; they want to receive the information that makes the cogs turn in other’s heads. Yet when they get it, the reaction is much closer to that which would be produced had one gotten a bizarre form of sheep AIDS.

In any case, for the sake of my current thought, I really couldn’t care less about those people. Sadly, they probably comprise somewhere in the range of 90% of the general population, but I say fuck ‘em. What seems to be currently bouncing around in my gray matter, are the ones who have the balls to listen to and accept what they ask for. I’ve recently gotten closer to someone who can do that with such a level of maturity, sensitivity, and understanding, that it blows my fucking mind. So lo and behold: I’m NOT intimidating. I’m NOT too honest. Everyone else just happens to be scared shitless of the truth. I’ve not only been lucky enough to encounter someone who is brave enough to handle honesty, but who also clearly accepts me for exactly who I am. The result is the most open, bullshit-free, peaceful, thought-provoking, line of communication I’ve seen in a VERY long time.

So to a point, I’ve been consensually stripped. I’ve opened up more than I do on a regular basis, even within the common context of my blatant honesty. I’ve admitted weaknesses, I’ve spit in the face of the stigma regarding how people are SUPPOSED to interact with one another, and have been allowed the freedom to just be.

In the absence of trust issues, I’ve still admitted that I’ve got plenty of others; most prominently, commitment issues. Stemming partially from the hatred of unwanted obligation, the real core of the issue can be visibly seen upon my proverbial sleeve. My heart sits on the outside, and it resembles the cutting board in a butcher shop, after all the valuable parts have been swept away and put up for sale in a fingerprint-smeared glass case. Bottom line, my heart has been stabbed, obliterated, lacerated, walked-on, tread-through and smeared as much as anyone else's, and eventually, I mopped it up, shoved it all back together, and decided that another instance wasn’t worth the risk. I put the walls up, and put the heart in a tomb that even the most torqued-up chainsaws haven’t been able to penetrate.

So what happens when one comes along with a skillful scalpel? One so sharp, shiny, and precise, that I spread my arms, look the surgeon in the eye, and allow them to cut?

Palahniuk said, “In order to be truly happy, one must risk being completely cut open.” For so long, I held the armor in place anyway, because I didn’t believe the happiness was worth the risk. I’m happy with who I am, and I really questioned how another boot heel to the heart could potentially alter me too greatly.

Free from the drama, free from the bullshit games, I was given the chance to consider within my own twisted soul, whether or not I was right. And I was. The risk has never been worth it. And I’ve never let myself be cut open; until now. So I’m lying on the cutting table, with a few incisions, and I’m wondering what to do next. Because the scalpel is so skilled, and so brilliant, that I wonder if I may let my skin be stripped off, piece by piece, slowly and methodically. It must be slowly. And looking the surgeon in the eye, I’m not scared.

At times, I may still jump off the table and cover myself back up, like a frightened child under the covers. Or I may shiver a little at the thought of a particularly difficult cut over some previous scar tissue; but for once, I’ve allowed the cut to be made and I’m willing to bleed. I think I'm willing to lie on the table, willing to risk the pain, if the surgeon decides to continue cutting.

The Peep Show Tent...

The dynamic of sex and gender: such a cliché utterance of human interaction that horns its way into everyday life. The economy of it, the bartering that everyone tries to ignore, the ridiculous games hidden beneath the façade of animalistic need, all of which end in the same stereotypical resultant scenarios. Inherently, humans need this, the chase, the game, the coy smiles and the fabricated conversation; all of it creates a guise under which we can hide and pretend that we care about something other than the skin to skin, sweaty, breathless interaction that really drives the rest of the bullshit to manifest in reality.
It’s a never-ending cycle; the supposition that men only want the ‘no-strings’ interaction and women want relationships. We perpetuate the misunderstanding because anything else is met by shock and disappointment at not upholding the fantasy. So ‘round and ‘round we go…batting the eyelashes, holding open the door, reiterating that we aren’t ‘looking for anything serious.’
It’s all about fear. Fear of commitment, fear of isolation, fear that someone might actually live up to the expectations that so many fall short of. I’m just as guilty of perpetuating the cycle, although I typically tend to relate to the ‘male’ point of view. I have the sex drive of a seventeen year-old boy. However, casual encounters bore me. I have no interest in hopping into bed with random people just to fulfill a need that a vibrator can accomplish (likely with more finesse and less effort). However, if a moment strikes me and I should decide that I fancy a little roll in the hay, I think I’m fully entitled to pursue such an interaction, which hardly implies that I’m looking to propose marriage. Of course, when I assert such an opinion, I’m again reinforcing gender roles, as I’ll get labeled the whore while the men within the same context are congratulated. I’m less than concerned with that.
What I’m concerned with is the overall cycle that should have been extinct by now. Humans evolve, psychology evolves, and yet still, we’re all caught up in the vicious, vapid circle of interactions that prohibit such evolution of the mind and the heart. Fuck the stereotypes, fuck what you’re ‘supposed to think and do.’ Live. By your own set of beliefs, needs and wants. If you don’t, you’re already dead anyway.

The ride begins...

The legendary, yet tragic little pseudo-love-story of Echo and Narcissus, ends with the self-involved bastard of a daffodil meeting his demise due to his unrequited love affair with his own reflection. Now, I think N was being a bit of an asshole, but this self-indulgent little fucker may have been onto something: who’s to say that he wasn’t well-justified to turn down all of his potential suitors, before becoming completely enthralled with the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen? Perhaps Echo, and these other said suitors just didn’t have what he needed, wanted, or deserved; in which case, shame on us for expecting him to settle with an inarticulate little nymph.

So, Narcissus finds himself in what appears to be a lose/lose situation: he is lusted after by mediocre specimens, yet the one thing he loves is unattainable. However, he was also spared the potentially tortured existence within the constraints of what is now the last legal form of slavery (yes, kids, I mean marriage); not to mention, his devoted relationship to his reflection was also free from the drama-filled croakings twittering around the rest of pond; free to spend each day appreciating his own aesthetics, he was completely oblivious of who was stroking which pussy willow or who was catching algae from someone else’s lily pad.

I look in the mirror, because it’s more real than what exists in the vapid façade of small-town social bullshit. Bottom line: at the end of the day, I’m all I’ve got. Narcissus may have died, but I’m still alive and I’m just looking to vent, laugh, whine, banter and smirk about the cursed and the vile, the worthless and the worthwhile, the shallow and the vain, the tears and the pain, the stupidity, the idiocy, the unbelievable traits of the human race…and how I remain sane while being one of them in the middle of this “bullshit, three-ring, circus sideshow of freaks.*” Feel free to come along; no height requirement, no safety restraints, but you may be forced to pass an IQ test before occupying a seat. Please keep your hands, arms, and anything else of value, inside the vehicle and please remain seated until the ride comes to a complete stop.

And don’t you fret, this carnival isn’t leaving town anytime soon.


*Aenema - Tool