Posted by Atticus on August 22, 2004, at 9:50:32
In reply to Re: poem ... Red-Tinted World of Slow Time, 1988, posted by Jai Narayan on August 22, 2004, at 8:32:28
T'was nothing, milady, to take a PBC in lieu of just observing like some spineless knave. But I will bear in mind that the Lidless Eye is always scanning his kingdom, and not even a Hobbit can evade his gaze for long.
I guess some of us just can't help sticking up for people we care about who have, in our judgment, been wronged. Ironically, though my father backed me up during this incident, I grew into this role of being a "protector" by stepping between him and my mother when he used to go after her. I began doing this at about age 10. I used to get the crap beat out of me for interfering, and I never would have drawn my father's wrath if I hadn't taken the blows meant for her, but who can stand by and just watch something like that happen? I guess he saw it as some kind of challenge to his role as king of the castle. This also goes a long way toward explaining my antipathy to authority, I believe, which I always assume is corrupt until proven otherwise.
Tripper's real-life counterpart didn't change one bit, as is the wont of people like him. He did lose status in his own clique, the Prep/Jocks, for being taken down by a "Grim Reaper," their derisive term for male Goths (they called the girls "Black Widows") -- both terms based on our affinity for black clothing, and in Temple's case, heavy black eye-liner and lipstick. I was kind of an atypical Goth, because I moved easily between the artsy Goth clique and the rebellious punker clique (Walter was purely a punker). The whole story had been so blown out of proportion and mythologized during my four-week exile that it utterly defined how I was seen for the remainder of the semester. The punks loved it, some of the jocks were impressed, the preps hated me, and the Goths were kind of on the fence about the whole thing. I think, like Temple, they reveled in the idea of something as romanticized as swordplay when it was on the strip and no one could get hurt, but when it crossed the line to become a genuine act of violence, some were taken aback by it, and saw me as some kind of barbarian. This is what I sensed in Temple that day I returned: an ambivalence toward a painter and poet who could, without warning, transform into something more frightening. The "darkness" they embraced in Anne Rice novels was something else again when there was real blood drawn. At any rate, "Tripper" kept his distance from both me and Temple. No metal detectors in schools back in the '80s, and he may have been afraid I was carrying something else. Who knows. He's probably a CEO under indictment these days. Ta. :) Atticus, who still has that very saber and the rest of his fencing equipment somewhere in the back of his closet, just in case you call
poster:Atticus
thread:380468
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/380781.html