Sartre, Flaws, And Pause

015 PopShuffle1

I've had a few women tell me over the years that I am a good-looking man. Not too many, but just enough I suppose. I've even had some people of both genders tell me I'm beautiful, but they're not saying that about my enhanced femininity. No, both sexes tell me I"m butch. As a description of my careactor and appearance, not as a name. My tough act is a cover up.

I studied to be an actor in college. By that I mean that I was a Drama and Speech major. I took the required acting classes. I made a couple of "A's", but mostly "B's", after all, it was my Major and I always showed up for class. It's not like I actually earned a good grade. It didn't take long for both me and my instructors to realize I wasn't one of their "dedicated" acting students. I've never been dedicated much to anything or anybody. Autism does that, High functioning or no.

The Director of the Drama and Speech Department liked me okay, I reckon I wore him down because I kept showing up in his classes for twenty years, always swearing I was gonna get that BA degree from his department. I never did. I lacked one class to finish. One I could have easily made an "A" in. I never knew exactly why I refused to get a college degree.

I read a book once that came as close as anything for explaining why I deliberately hurt my career goals by not getting a college degree. This was an astrology book this old woman loaned me to read. It was an interpretation book that held forth on the influence Pluto had in a person's natal astrology chart. The book had thirteen chapters. An introductory chapter, and one chapter each for the influence of Pluto on each House. In my case, Pluto was in the Ninth House, and that's the only chapter in the book I thoroughly read. It said I didn't finish college to spite my father. I can be mean-spirited. I can be spiteful over hardly anything for decades without surcease. I'm not going to heaven. At least, not the one you'll end up in, so don't worry.

My spitefulness toward my father could actually be true. We fought like cats and dogs until maybe the last ten years of his life. I think we both kind of liked fighting. I had to. My father was a fighter. He and my mother had some kind of fight about something everyday I ever remember them being together. Their fighting was the bane of my existence. It constantly brought up abandonment issues. It wasn't physical. I often wished it was. There would have been blood. There might have been a winner. They might have taken a few days off and thought about it. Never happened.

I literally think I slugged my second wife with my fist because I always thought my father should have hit my mother right in the mouth. They would have an argument, and then me and him would head out to the fields to work. His side of the argument didn't stop when we left the house. I remember yelling at him, and asking him sometime. "Why didn't you hit her? How could you let her talk to you that way. If I said that to you, you would beat me within an inch of my life. What kind of man are you?" That was cold. It haunts me now.

There was only a couple of times I felt like we were actually reaching for something in my college acting classes. I never felt like i was being prepared for a career nor for any aspect of the theater. This was probably more to do with my lethargy than the institution, but it could have been due to uninspired teachers who were merely there to draw their State checks.

There was an incident in Key West that proved to me once and for all time that I wasn't cut out to be an actor. The Greene Street Theater was formed by a bunch of gays, and they were going to put on a gay play. Several people there knew I had studied acting, and encouraged me to audition for the part of a femme gay man. In short, my efforts got me laughed outta the place. Literally. That was the last acting audition I've ever attempted.

My thoughts at the time was that if I were truly an actor, I should have been able to fool those gay guys into thinking I could make the role I auditioned for pop. Granted, I knew I was mostly taken for being pretty butch by all genders and in between since I was a child. I'm not unhappy being butch. But, real actors can get you to believe they're something they're not. If I'd tried to make a living as an actor I'd be typecast. I'd be stuck as a inflexible character actor something on the order of Ernest Borgnine or (God forbid, John Wayne), and truth be known, one doesn't need to study acting for that, they just need to know how to go along to get along, and I'm even less talented at that.

I'm not a very good writer either. But, I've never studied writing any more than the required courses in school forced me to. When that happened I made better grades than I did in acting, and indeed, my acting teacher told me more than once I was more suited to be a writer than an actor. I've personally known more writers than I have actors. I don't know the business of either.

I don't think I'm bitter because I never had no great or prestigious career, and I don't think I envy those who have. I never aspired to do it. I was never dedicated enough to end up disappointed. Honestly, I never liked actor types, I don't know why I would have ever wanted to be one if I didn't like 'em. I've never wanted to be much of anything except me, and that's exactly why I haven't. Except for my remembering vision, this has not been one of my more exceptional lifetimes.

When I considered Sartre's human flaw, where he states that homo sapiens can't know their own possibilities in real time, I knew immediately it was true for me. It's so true for me I don't even know if Sartre ever said that. I can't know whether or not it's true for the Other or not. I have to interpret. There's the rub for me. When I interpret the events that arise before me, I no longer compare those events with my institutionally derived data base like many people seem to. I compare what's sot before me with the experiential database installed upon the event of my remembering vision.

The trick with this human flaw deal is that if you can't naturally recognize your own possibilities in real time, then you have to create the possibilities for yourself so that they'll come true and you'll have a future. Yes, there is a human flaw, but there is also a human remedy. A human being has to do something. They have to initiate that something and work at their dream coming true or they got nothing. I'm living proof.

Now I'm pleased with myself. I've finally recognized an existing solution for Sartre's flaw. That's what I write for. I've never had to reinvent the wheel in my life. How dull. How outre. How nonplussed that makes me feel. The past is the future.