3/14/96
Even since this experiment in craziness began, I have been treated differently by the world around me. It's fun to act like a total idiot. The nutty thing is this: the more idiotic you act, the more people treat you normally. Well, I don't know what you'd call normally. It's more like fearfully. Virtually all the people I've run into, from the clerk at the grocery store to my own father, have treated me with an extremely high degree of respect. The more I act like a fool, the more I get treated like a god. As Madonna said, in Truth or Dare, "I treat them like shit and they still love me."
In a way, it feels really good. It's nice to have people look up to you, although it is VERY disconcerting when it comes from your own parents. In a way, it is also very isolating. Sometimes, when you're acting like a total jackass, it feels like it might be good to have someone say it, instead of treating you like an emperor who has new clothes. But, if you pretend to be confident in your foolishness, people will respect you. I didn't believe it could happen before. I saw it happening to Madonna, and I was mystified. Then I tried it myself, and I became a believer. It's like black magic. Not casting crazy spells or doing incantations, just giving people the illusion that you might be able to do such. And that is much easier than it seems. At least, it is if you feel like you've got a soul mate like Madonna in a powerful place.
There has, interestingly, been one exception to this contrived circus: my mother. She seems to be taking the opposite stance. She has been treating me with disrespect and trying to manipulate me ever since I first rented Truth or Dare. I hadn't even watched it, and she was already warning me about how Madonna wasn't an example for how to live. GOOD GRIEF! I had just rented a movie! I wasn't looking for an example of how to live, but I ended up getting one anyway. Actually, had she not planted the idea that maybe I should be looking for the right "way to live", I may never have even thought about ways to live as I absorbed the movie just minutes later.
Then, as I watched, I was bombarded with images portraying other people's ways of life. Three-quarters of the way through the movie, Madonna said that her show did not advocate a way of life, it described one. Bingo. And that it did. My mother has been telling me that Madonna was going to try to brainwash me into living a certain way. I got the opposite message from what the movie said, and yet at the same time, my thoughts were confirmed by what I was feeling. I wanted that way of life. I couldn't even admit it to myself, but it was true. I felt that I couldn't have that way of life, but it was so engrossing that I watched the movie again and again until it was due back at the video store. The experience was so good that I was willing to give up "real life" for a couple of hours every night to live in a fantasy, to experience vicariously what the characters in the movie were experiencing. All this was happening on a subconscious level, at that time. I was driven by pure instinct.
No matter what I have done ever since, my mother has made multiple attempts to make me feel crazy. About a week after I had watched the movie, I was running out to the store to buy albums by Madonna like a starved rat. I spent my Christmas money, my savings, my spare cash that I was going to use to buy hardware upgrades for my computer. I was behaving like a drug addict. After I had just returned from Wal Mart with two more cds, I said something to my mother about how I probably should try joining obsessed fans anonymous, if such a thing exists. She said it was nothing to worry about, that I was just going through a phase. Talk about denial! Talk about enabling! A week before, all I had done was rent a movie, and she treated me like it was the end of the world. Now, I was spending all my cash on music and doing nothing all day but reading about Madonna on the Internet. And this was ok. Just a phase. Hah!
So, being the trusting person that I am, I believed my mother. I decided there was nothing to worry about here, and continued to buy more Madonna crap. I went to the library and read books about her. I read things about her on newsgroups. I subscribed to an Internet mailing list devoted to her. I watched more of her movies. My parents were both horrified when I brought home a video titled "The Girlie Show." They then banned me from watching any more of her movies on their VCR. I said I'd buy my own when I got the money, and I'd watch them in my room. They went farther, telling me that I was not to bring anything by her into their house, where I was, and am still, living. I was devastated. Not! I just laughed and went to my room to listen to all her cds again. I was a rebel.
Before long, my mom would, on occasion, allow me to play another Madonna video on the VCR, IF I agreed to do certain things, such as go out and check for job possibilities, clean bathrooms, and do the dishes. I did so joyfully. I would whistle Madonna's tunes while I worked. None of the job checks assigned to me went anywhere. The bathrooms quickly got dirty again, and the dishes did the same. But I made off with more Madonna images in my mind, and those didn't go away.
At this, my mother would become angry again, trying to convince me that Madonna was a devious manipulator and a filthy "slut". I didn't care. I wasn't usually up to arguing with her about it, so I'd just avoid her. Then we'd talk about other things, but, inevitably, the subject of Madonna would return. Sometimes she brought it up, sometimes I did. I was most deeply disturbed at her response when I informed her that there were death threats on Madonna in Argentina. She said, jokingly of course, "Good. I hope they kill her. Then we won't have to worry about her anymore."
Inside, I felt ready to ... I don't know what. Hearing the words nearly made my heart break. But I played along with the joke. I said that they were keeping security guards around her at all times, and that the movie sets were fully protected. That line didn't get many laughs, probably because it was so close to literally being true. Ah well. As far as I know, the death threats have stopped, and Madonna's doing a great job over there. That made me feel good when I heard it reported from the mailing list.
These run-ins with my mother have not stopped, nor do I ever expect them to. At least not at any time in the near future. I might relate some similar, more recent, and even more rediculous instances of my mother's craziness in future articles.
So, why does my mother do it? I bet she feels rejected, and rightly so. In an emotional sense, I have found someone else to take her place. This is something that happens in every parent-child relationship in the world. It's normal. What isn't normal about it is the intensity with which it struck, and that is why the pain was so much more acute. I have been very close to my mother ever since childhood, and this closeness has continued through teenage years, and almost on into adulthood. Had I not separated when I did, I think the separation would have emotionally killed one of us. A child cannot stay with his parent forever.
Most people in the world, I believe, have a different experience. They are forced to begin to, emotionally, separate from their parents much earlier in life. In this sense, the world is getting worse and worse. It's not good for a child to be taken away from their parents all day of every day, at age five. But it's getting younger than age five now. Where I used to work, (and have just gotten another job offer and accepted) we're stickin' em in all day daycare at age 2 1/2. Other daycares do it earlier. Six monthes out of the womb, and you're ripped away.
Don't worry. Kids get used to it. They find other substitute parents to look up to. These parents are put in place by "trained experts" who know what they're doing. If you trust the trained experts, then you can at least have the feeling that your kids are safe. Go ahead. Get that extra job, put your child in another part-time evening daycare center. If you do that, you'll have plenty of money to put your kid through college when he/she grows up. It's the loving thing to do. After all, in today's society, a good education is a necessity. Without it, your kids won't be able to make their way in life.
Me? I'm glad I'm a high-school dropout. I'd rather be poor, live at home with my parents, blow all my money on cds from a bigger-than-life celebrity, and end up on the streets. Why? Because I've got what I need that's important to me. I've learned, from my mother and father, and from experience, how to eek out a survival. If I'm lucky, I might even be able to leach off of a rich celebrity for the rest of my life. If that doesn't happen, I'll find food in dumpsters and survive. It's what Madonna did for a while. I'm learning from her.
So, do I still love my mother after she treated me crazy? You bet. It certainly beats having no mother at all. Will the woman I marry be like my mother? You bet. That's why I want to, as Warren Beatty put it, enter an "insane atmosphere." It'll feel just like home.
Well, time for me to go eek out a living, while I, the damsel in distress, wait for my princess to rescue me. Actually, I don't think I'd be happy leaching off a huge celebrity for the rest of my life. I want to make my own way. It's more of a challenge, more fun, that way. The real challenge is to get the celebrity to look at me long enough to realize that I just want to visit her, and if she invites me to stay for a while, I'll oblige her, but not forever. After all, everyone has to separate themselves from their "mother" eventually. I'm no different.