A Key To Ken

I mentioned in one of those cruise recaps that I came to an epiphany in Key West.

I am a man of contradictions. I'm fairly intelligent (he said, modestly), but at any time I'll unwittingly do something ridiculously stupid. I'm extremely empathetic, but even more absent-minded, which can make me appear rude and uncaring at times. My heart is an open book (actually, it's more like a library), but around strangers I tend to seal myself off. And I thrive on touch...but only if I know you.

I can explain all those contradictions, and they all make sense in the context of who I am. But I became aware of one in Key West that makes no sense at all. Oddly enough, I've written about both halves of this contradiction several times...but never linked them.

We were on the trolley tour and the guide (who was a real hoot) was talking about Fantasy Fest, an annual celebration very much like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. This one happens to feature a hundred thousand naked people.

Well, not quite naked: going around in public without some kind of covering is still obscene (sigh).  But during Fantasy Fest, we were told, body paint is a covering. "Once a month," the guide said, "somebody misses their cruise ship here. At the end of October, it happens intentionally."

I turned to Eva and said "cool".
And it is. Were it not for the alcohol that would turn the swinging dicks into a bunch of swinging dicks, I'd be booking a return engagement in Key West for the end of next month. Hell, I'd participate. Eva would paint me gold from bald head through Buddha-belly to toe tips and I'd sit in full lotus...okay, that part wouldn't work. But...yeah. I like it.

I'm not, as I have said repeatedly, a naturist. I actually like the feeling of comfy clothes on me, for one thing; for another, my body lacks suitable pockets; for a third, it's either too damn hot or too damn cold around here to be nude most of the time. But I have no problem whatsoever with the philosophy behind nudism. It is, as I've said, just skin, and we all have it. No big deal. I could get up right now, disrobe, and walk down the street in the altogether, except the human body we all have is considered indecent for some reason I'll never really understand. I can write about this for an hour, but you've read it all before.

But I have a profoundly negative body image. It's been polished to an ugly sheen over decades.

This next part: I'm not fishing in the pity-pool, okay? The fish you catch in that pool are sunfish: they look nice, but they're nothing worth keeping. These are just hard, cold, dry facts.

I get a lot of compliments from people, and they feel good. Everybody likes compliments, right? Here are the sorts of nice things I've heard from people just recently:

"You're a really likeable guy. You're capable of talking about a wide range of things."
"You're kind and generous..."
"You make me laugh...
"You help me see myself better, know myself better. You are so fearlessly self-aware that you make others so as well."

(Not as self-aware as you think. Keep reading.)

I could go on, but even things like that make me feel a little uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to hear them. I even happen to agree with them. I just don't feel right repeating them.

But to make a point: all of these are inner-things. So is virtually every other compliment I've ever received in my life.  I married the first person who ever said something nice about the way I looked. Took me a long time to realize she was serious. At first I thought she was full of shit. Then I thought, "well, it's nice that she thinks that way." And fifteen years later I'm still in that second stage. Only because it's hard to take the word of one person -- even Eva -- over the non-words (and more than a few disparaging words)  of several hundred others going back a long, long way.
This is the root of my social anxiety: the iron-clad conviction, reinforced over years, that I am physically repulsive. It's why I'm so much cooler online. (That song...that video...the guy in it even looks a little like me at that age.)
I never misrepresent myself online. I just discard that repugnant outer shell and let my inner qualities out where people can see them. That I've had a fair share of success with people this way tells me that yes, I do have those inner qualities...but it also suggests (to me) that my appearance negates every last one of them.

You've heard all this before, as well. It's tiresome, I know. I'm tired of it too. But it's why I'm so uncomfortable out in public where people can see me. I have to forcibly and repeatedly remind myself that (a) Eva never knew me online, and she married me and doesn't seem to have any problem being seen with me; (b) I have other friends who don't act as if I'm radioactive. Sometimes it even works, for a while. But most of the time I feel like the Phantom of the Opera and I want to hide myself away lest somebody look at me and unconsciously --sometimes quite consciously, I'm convinced -- recoil. No surprise I was obsessed with the Phantom of the Opera when I was a teenager. I memorized the entire piano score, put it on tape, and presented it to the girl I was also obsessed with at the time...a girl who, in today's parlance, had kicked me so deep into the friendzone that I was barely even on the field, in favour of your standard hunka hunka burning love (who treated her like shit, I might add).

Anyway.

This is not the normal mindset of someone who says he could walk around buck naked without a care in the world.

If I really feel this awful way about my physical appearance, how is it that I can bare all of it without blinking? That makes no sense at all. What makes even less sense is that I'd never so much as noticed the glaring contradiction.

It went off like a bomb in my head when I did notice it. I immediately set about thirty mental tracks to figuring out (a) how this had evaded notice for so long and (b) how I could resolve it, preferably in a way that helped my self-image.

I eventually decided (a) didn't matter, but (b) mattered a great deal. And what I've come to is this. I don't care how other people look--never have, never will. If someone is beautiful inside, it makes them beautiful outside, to me. And if someone is ugly inside, she could be Miss Universe and I wouldn't look twice at her.  I've always been convinced that this attitude makes me pretty much alone in the world, given just how much value our society seems to place on the outermost layer of a person.
You've heard me say, many times, "mine is not a better way, mine is only another way?" In this, and almost this alone, I say, no, "mine is a better way". If everyone really thought the way I do on this it would heal so much pain...
...including mine. Not once have I ever thought to apply this to myself.

I've always tried to focus on other people's pain to avoid dealing with my own.  I specialize in self-image problems. You think you're ugly and worthless? Come to me, I'll convince you otherwise. Countless times I've offered advice and emotional support (that's another thing I'm great at, I'm told) that really, honestly helped people...and would have helped me if I'd ever bothered to notice what was spilling out of my mouth or fingers. If I ever tried to do such a thing, I'd scoff at myself. It's different with you, I'd say. YOU'RE ugly. Not like ____ at all.  When's the last time you ever heard somebody say otherwise? She just heard otherwise...from you. Because she's beautiful, and YOU'RE...

Cue self-destructive mental loop.

So.

I'm not capable of adopting that macho strut that alpha males have mastered, the one that says I'm going to rape you later and you'll thank me after I'm done and beg for seconds.  That kind of self-confidence is well beyond me: also, I find it disgusting. But I can adopt my I-don't-care-what-you-look-like attitude to myself. I think I do it without thought every time I think about walking around naked. It's just skin.

So maybe I can walk around in clothes pretending I'm naked.

It strikes me as beautifully ironic, proof of how gloriously ass-backwards I am. Most people, I think, could only walk around naked themselves if they could first convince themselves they're fully clothed. Me, in order to feel comfortable walking around fully clothed, I have to pretend I'm naked.