Surreal Day - do I belong here?

Here is a taste of my surreal life:

On Wednesday I forgot to bring my lunch. I'm becoming a good cook solely by virtue of having to eat something I make daily, in order to avoid monthly bills for eating lunch out that well exceed my car payment. On my way out to go to Whole Foods I ask around our small office to see if anyone would like to come too. Our CEO, who I really like (a brilliant businessman, and an excellent leader who types his own memos and creates his own Powerpoint presentations), and a female VP from New York who I rather dislike (she's friendly, but I find her shallow and inconsistent, and she does not ever seem to really do anything but create a tremendous amount of emergency busywork for others) want to go.

As we get underway, I realize that this is going to be a very silent lunch for me.

I'm aware that I'm geeky and shy, but it's not impossible to have a conversation with me... unless you are a person who is so obsessed with work, that there is no other conversation you can have.

This is exactly what happens. CEO and VP begin discussing all of the CEOs and VPs they know in common. Names drop like rain. She finds out he has worked with Karen S., oh, she really admires Karen so much! The next thing out of her mouth is something so slanderous and shameful about Ms. S., that my dislike of her increases, right along with my amazement at how comfortably and in what friendly tones she conveys that Ms. S. was really very weird, that she never understood her, and that she (Karen S.) had a consistent tendency to imply in important interviews that she was the founder of a company where she had only been a minor late-hire manager.

This elegant conversation continued all through lunch. As we left the Whole Foods parking lot, I saw something very strange: A black woman, with short hair, otherwise attractive, had two horns - like cartoon demon horns - cosmetically embedded in her skull.

"That woman has horns!" I interrupt.

To me, a person with horns is a profoundly interesting topic for conversation.

Is one person so attracted to open and purposeful evil that she has gone to the exhorbitant cost and trouble of deliberately, personally and outwardly mimicking the traditional physical attributes of the most evil beings that could ever exist?

Or, does she so little believe in "evil" that she has idolized individual self-expression to an evil degree, and so made an extraordinarily ironic philosophical statement?

If worshipping self, self-expression and self "freedom" has created in her the desire to outwardly express that worship, and if the expression of that worship is accurately expressed by the horns, then there is tremendous irony there. Because it seems possible here that the lack of belief in active evil has led to an actively evil belief, accurately expressed outwardly by deliberately demon-like horns. Not believing in evil, she seems to have developed a belief that in its exaggeration has outwardly expressed itself with the appearance of an evil thing.

And a further irony, the apparent worship of self-expression and self-freedom, in its outward manifestation, has actually deprived her of the self expression and self freedom that she so desires.

Because suppose one day she actually feels happy, good, and like she would like to do normal, pleasant things? Her appearance immediately and unmistakeably places her in the stereotype of a kinky freak who will probably be game for anything. No one will treat her just as herself while she is wearing a statement like that. And, she is certainly not "free" with horns to work wherever she pleases or even to pass without remark among people in general - especially among people who try (not necessarily with any accuracy) to discern between good and evil, peole who would have good reason to avoid and suspect someone who deliberately looks like a nightmare.

Is she a nice person? Maybe. Do the horns convey that? Or do they convey something else?

So I stare, fascinated by the philosophical possibilities, and CEO and VP glance over.

Here is their single comment: "Oh. I thought that was all pretty much only in San Francisco."

After a short pause, they revert to industry gossip.

WOW.

The possibilities for self-examination kick in on the way back. Do I envy the woman with horns?

Oh, yes. I must admit I do. Not a lot, because I see too clearly how she has set herself up to be treated always and only in a certain way. No one will ever see past the horns, whether it's an attractive man with bizarre sexual fantasies who approaches her thinking she will easily fulfill and exceed them, or a mother with a child who protectively pulls the child away, or a tired grocery clerk who thinks, "I've seen too many weirdos today," and doesn't smile because he sees only horns and not the tiredness or lonliness that may be in her face.

But a little, because it takes a tremendous amount of effort to do what I do, to try hard to be good because it's who I want to be, to try hard to do right because I think it's right, and to hope to win approval on the way. Approval is seldom won. Let me amend that. Approval is almost never won. It might as well be never, is the truth. To keep on going is lately unbelievably difficult.

Woman with horns doesn't have to do that. She's placed herself beyond it. No one will ever bother to think that she is good. She's made an extraordinarily obvious statement that she is not.

I remember when my hair was punk - dyed bright white and spiky, about three inches long. Not only was it really cute, it had an incredibly unexpected benefit: Everyone thought I had an attitude. When I behaved rudely or angrily, no one came down on me because it was only what they already expected. When I felt like being pleasant, everyone was surprised and very happy with me because they didn't expect that at all. Everyone cut me so much slack. All of that certainly ended when I looked normal again. When you look like what you are, people's expectations adjust accordingly.

Woman with horns has a place to hide, and I don't.

But woman with horns can't come out of her hiding place - no one will see her. At least I can hope that some day some one will truly see me.

deborah64554