Self Disclosure

[trooper6]

Deep thoughts and less deep thoughts.

Less deep thoughts first:

Today I went back to the gym for the first time in...as it turns out...a smidge over a year. When they told me that I thought back to what has been going on in the last year to keep me away from my physical fitness? It was about this time that I started teaching my summer course...then it was all work, all hectic for the last 376 days. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of gymnasium things. Now what happens when I arrive? I get there late in the afternoon...I probably put off going in the morning because I wasn't ready to face my trainer...whom I haven't seen in a year...and who is generally not in the gym in the afternoon. Well right when I pull up I see my trainer pull up in his yellow HUM-V (that's a Hummer for you civilians). We chat, he was happy to see me...and yup...I will soon be under his tutelage again. So back I am. This is all part of my campaign of taking care of myself this summer. Now I just have to get to the dentist.

Okay, now on to deep thoughts.

I'm going to talk a little about who I am as a person. I've been watching Season 2 of Deadwood and many things resonate with who I am as a person...not the characters who are cursing and less washed...but the characters who are exceptionally polite.

I stand on ceremony. What tends to motivate my behavior? Propriety. Honor. Compassion.

Most of my behavior comes out of my personal sense of propriety. That I am generally motivated by propriety I think is one of the Victorian things about me. I think what is less Victorian about me is what comprises my sense of propriety...I mean, all sorts of loose sexuality and live and let live falls within my sense of propriety. What might for others be a contradiction lives calmly in my world view. For example--if I am dressed in a suit, I would feel a bit funny taking off my jacket, tie and unbuttoning my shirt in company...it seems to me inappropriate...and I'd have to ask permission before I so scandalously disrobed--yet, I've also been a lot more disrobed than that in sex clubs.

Sometimes my propriety (which I do not extend to anyone else besides myself), says the most appropriate action in this moment would be a threesome...other times propriety dictates that I offer someone a ride, or the offer of crashing on my couch.

What I think is very interesting for me, is a shift in my motivations. When I was younger, I did a lot of things always mindful of what others would think of me (it wasn't really all that healthy)...and now my propriety is mine. It is not for others...though it often is about interacting with others. For example, I don't curse...and if a curse word utters my lips, I will apologize...even though all the people I hang with tend to curse themselves and really none of them have delicate ears.

But I don't feel hung up...I feel...settled. I feel well. I feel like I have my quirky little code and it is comfortable and comforting...it is like...like when I was in kid and I'd hear the Rosenfeld sisters play Ragtime on the piano next door as I walked home from school. I always loved Ragtime and it always spoke to me. But I wouldn't really want to live in the teens...because boy would it have sucked to be me in the teens...but there is something from there I want to take here and make it mine...something that resonates with me. A way of moving through the world. A smell of Old Spice. A straight razor. A waltz. Calling on someone at their parlor. Tattoos and a critique of the white supremacist heteropatriarchy. And I want to have all of my detachable collars and antiquatedness while I hang out with radical freaks and geeks.

Comments

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

"...I want to have all of my detachable collars and antiquatedness while I hang out with radical freaks and geeks."

Sounds like Dickens Faire to me. ;-)

Regarding your navel-gazing in general, it sounds like your inner journey has paralleled my own in many ways. For a long time, I gauged myself by the reactions of others, and I'm doing that far less now. And while I do curse, I don't curse as often. I find myself saying "Darn it" and "Son of a--" without the "bitch" and "blasted" and "frickin'" (that one skates the line) more often than I used to--although in some situations, the only reasonable response is a good Samuel L. Jackson style tirade.

Speaking of ragime, did you ever see the movie Ragtime? It was the last film that James Cagney was ever in, and while it can be hard to watch, it is a fine piece of filmmaking.

[trooper6.livejournal.com]

Dickens Faire! Is there one down in Southern California? I only know of the one up north.

I thought Ragtime was an amazing film--though I haven't seen it in ages...I should watch it again...I do have a bit of a fondness for films that are hard to watch.

Have I told you by the way, that I think of you as a kindred spirit? And I'm always quite happy to know you are out there. *bows to you*

[boynecksdoor.livejournal.com]

Damn! You just reminded me I have to go to the dentist! About 4 months ago, I was called about teeth cleaning..... but I've switched insurance haven't found another dentist yet.

Congrats on gettin' back in the gym! I started working out for the first time in years back in March. I've done it three times a week, consistantly. It feels great and awesome to see the results... but I wish I could afford a trainer!

I know how you feel about living in a different time...and how it be rather interesting to say the least for someone like me... but I often think about the fact that I was born in the wrong decade...

[trooper6.livejournal.com]

I wonder where the feeling of being born in the wrong decade comes from? I wonder what it means to feel that way...to have nostalgia for a time that we were never in?

[boynecksdoor.livejournal.com]

I am sure it stems from a lot more places than I can grasp... but I feel it's because I feel completely old fashioned and part of wanting "the simple life" at heart. And that just doesn't seem to be part of my generation.

[thoughtsofatree.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the thing that you always seemed to understand that others could not is beautifully expressed here. A sense of what would, for many other people, be a contradiction in what one considers appropriate and what one doesn't. The idea that certain situations require varying styles of propriety, but that all DO indeed require some kind of propriety is rarely encountered out in the world. In any event, I wished to express my appreciation for not being the only one in the world who thinks this way.

Love ya, man. And I miss you and our similar minds. Oh, and if you haven't seen the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth you should, because it was terribly good and you would enjoy it.

[trooper6.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that P&P yet...I'll rent it. By the way, I like your new icon.

Oh...and I'm sorry you are having a rough time right now. There are people out there for you.

[caprine.livejournal.com]

I like your sense of propriety. It is sexy. It helps that it is combined with a radically subversive sensibility.

[trooper6.livejournal.com]

Why thank you! That is a big compliment coming from you that I take seriously.

You know, it occured to me the first time I watched the Jerry Springer show. Here was a show about making scenes in public (very un-Victorian) in which the so-called normal audience indulged in ugly behavior all the while feeling superior to the guests. It struck me as awfully improper. I thought there might be a way...in this age of Jerry Springer, that an altered egalitarian propriety might in itself be subversive. I certainly think it would be a good thing if violence against women (and really anyone, including developing countries) was seen as improper behavior...but somehow in this anti-feminist backlash space violence against women is somehow being justified in this very creepy post-feminist way ("Women want equal rights? Okay let me punch them in the nose because that is equal! Wah...look how oppressed I am as a man because I'm no longer the Patriarch!"). Sure violence was always done...but at least society said it wasn't proper at one point...and yes for paternalistic creepy reasons...but why do we have to keep the gross parts of the old ways and then add more gross new things? There must be a way to forge a new frontier of being polite and apropriate to the moment and indulging in social play with others and doing so in a way that respects people. Some folks would call what I'm advocating "phoney"...these are usually people who like to hide their cruelty under the guise of "honesty." I'd prefer someone treat me well, even if they don't really like me, than treat me like crap.

And my time in the BDSM community has really helped me appreciate boundaries...and I wish we had more social boundaries. I look at a person like George Bush...they way he pushes around countries less full of nuclear weapons and economic power...the way he cheats, and takes people's rights away, and presumes to tell other people what to do, advocates torture, refuses to talk to governments he doesn't like just because they didn't give him what he wants...the way he acts boastful, beligerent, arrogant...well, he'd not be a gentlefolk in any Castle Falkenstein world I know. He's a boor.

[shadowolf.livejournal.com]

Happy B'day!

[trooper6.livejournal.com]

Thank you!