Manufactured Weirdness

Why, I ask myself, do I not realize things earlier before I suffer all the consequences?  I feel a normalcy in terms of awareness and intelligence, even something beyond that?  So why, I puzzle, have I not realized this thing that turns out to be such a surprise to me.

It will not overwhelm you as it has me, but I am a dull bulb this week having returned to factory work, and haven't much to talk about other than my internal workings.  So what happened is this.  I was sitting in an office with two people who picture themselves as lefties and liberals and all the rest.  Not quietly, I might add, but vociferously.  I don't know what I've taken that to mean now, but I thought to tell a story that had some weirdness to it.  And the lesbian acted as if I'd farted loudly.  The other fellow who plays at being bisexual said nothing.  And I thought, what the fuck?  Having had to insist to society that you are normal hasn't made you sensitive to the weirdness of others?  But it struck me then that truly there was nothing liberal in the larger sense that belonged to these two, that for all appearances they both were deep down conservatives who would be borderline Nazis once they had access to power.  They each were driven by a yawning self-interest and were only concerned with others as far as it helped promote their own causes.  Suddenly I was seized by the image of the last Democratic Convention and its menagerie of costumes, faces, and concerns.  Survival, I thought.  That is all.

I've been thinking since about the people I work with who like to portray themselves in wild stories of revelry, and I realized they all were set in some manufactured weirdness.  Las Vegas.  Key West.  Even Mardi Gras.  There are rules.  There you can be in the milieu of Hurricane drinks and daiquiris and people flashing their titties, but there is not real danger.  They stick to the main streets never to wander down dark alleyways.  I've always gone down alleyways.  Literally and figuratively.

Not realizing that their weirdness is as weird as the Himalayan Yeti ride at Disney is dangerous has cost me much.  They may march for transgender equality, but when I tell a story about going to a voodoo ritual with hermaphroditic club dancers and watching them sacrifice chickens by firelight. . . well. . . I won't do that again.  Not everyone likes a good story.