Diary: On Discovering Other Writers

I've read a few more stories on dragscape.  It seems to me that there are a few drastic differences between the stories there and those that I tend to write.  Those stories are very often homosexual, and that's the number one difference, although not always.  But second, and most important, those stories never quite get into the head of the metamorphoser.  That's what fascinates me.

For example, there's that story about the army guy who gets ordered to become a girl, and who just suddenly discovers that he loves it and instantly goes all the way with it.  I much prefer the mental development, the discovery of a hidden, dark, very taboo sexual propensity.  And I love it gradual.  It's the understanding that it's completely wrong, but being completely unable to resist experimenting, and getting even deeper into it.  Just like I did it.

Diary: A Writing Project

Alright, now I've decided to start an ambitious project: I will start writing a piece of fiction, in secret, about transvestitism.  I'll tell it like one of my postmodern tales.  It will be narrated by both the shrink and the patient.  The patient will be the trannie, and the shrink will present his case, not quite as a case study, but as a long anecdote, an interesting tidbit of information.  Much of the story will be the patient's diary.  It will be edited by the shrink.  And perhaps another person.  It will be my original idea for my story of two narrators.  The trouble is that I can never reveal what I am doing, and I must (if at all) publish this under a pen name, for fear of having my name forever associated with transvestism.

Anyway, here's the basic plan:

Foreword by the shrink.  Introduction to the subject from a pseudo-scientific perspective.  Then a disclaimer: this is not science.  This is an interesting story for the world to hear and enjoy.  The shrink, however, must treat his subject with a bit of detachment, a bit of disdain, and even a bit of admiration.  He must not, however, edit the diaries too extensively.  He treats his subject seriously.  I, on the other hand, will treat him comically.  The trick here is to figure out exactly what a shrink would do in such a situation, having heard such a disquieting tale of sexual perversion, and who will not admit to finding it incredibly arousing (although there should be hints).  I'm not even sure that this shrink should be male.  How about a female shrink wondering about the effect of these revelations on her own views of gender roles and whatnot.  Yes, I think that that's the way to go.  Anyway, the foreword will be straightforward on the surface, but actually quite satirical and comical under the surface.  My hero (the patient) will be a trickster figure, running around trying things, being foolish, straddling definitions.

Then, a similar structure as that of Gone Indian.  The shrink will talk a bit, then the diaries, alternating until near the end.  An important difference: the story will not follow a linear chronology as Kroetsch tends to.  It will have to be completely logical in its leaps and bounds, but, as the shrink takes it from scattered literary remains, she must piece it together somehow, not necessarily systematically, but narratively.  She will use her bits to comment on the diaries, and to make her points about gender roles in today's society, (subtly) about how our generation is so obsessed with the right to be individual that it accepts such behaviour blindly as an expression of the "true" self.

It will end somehow.  I'm not sure how.  But it must end.

I just did a quick search on [the college library database].  I came up with at least 9 promising titles.  This could be quite daunting.  I don't even know when I'll have time to do all this.  Oh, well.  I'll find time somewhere.

Anyway, all this is for another file, I think.  I'll copy this stuff over.

Character Study: Psychotic Murder Rationalization

Or so they say.  I have always been a proponent of the rational mind.  It was an ongoing mental exercise to plot the murder of one whom I thought had no value at all in the world, not to me, not to anyone, including herself.  But I was wrong.

She should have been easy to kill if my assessment of her worth had been accurate.  But she was anything but easy, while she lived and afterwards.  No, I cannot say that I have a guilty conscience.  I very much doubt that I have any conscience at all.  In a way I am glad that I took her life.  Who else can say that he killed someone without anger to spur him on, or remorse to stop him?  I am proud of my achievement.

What a waste she was.  To think that in my own pitiful state of mind, I was able to pity her as well.  Through the waves of self-pity, I must have seen her suffering as being as noble as mine.  No wonder I clung to her like she was a part of me.  A cancerous growth as it were.

I went to lengths I once thought of as extraordinary to plan my dastardly deed (I snicker in sinister pride when I recall.)  I scoured maps for easily accessible, yet secluded areas in which to dispose of the body, at least temporarily.  I studied and memorized every bend and curve, every stone and stump of a certain piece of land which I shall not allude to any further.  I located a spot in a dense thicket, hidden from view from every angle, and dug a six-foot deep hole in preparation.  I practiced at digging and refilling, and covering up the grave, and of disposing of the tools.  I made certain that I could lug a heavy dead weight into the thicket, without being seen.  Disposal, for the moment, was feasible.

Acquisition was the most difficult of my problems.  How could I have my victim agree to follow me without anyone knowing?  Simply, my powers of persuasion, and the fact that she probably would trust me, would suffice. 

Character study: Psychotic Killer Driven by Heartbreak

That was about three or four years ago.  An adolescent eruption of self-pity, as it were.  Today things are different.  I can imagine hearing the same cry of despair in many people of all ages at this very moment, submitting to their darkest whims of self-inflicted, guilt-ridden torture.  But I, having experienced that grotesque facet of human existence (or any existence, shurely?), I know better than that.  I know, for instance, that one must seize the reins, the proverbial reins, as it were, of circumstance, and steer into more pleasant pastures.  Or better yet, dangerous, but fulfilling pastures.  I have led circumstances beyond the chicken wire fences erected by society, and all the misguided morality that fuels it, beyond the imaginary line that people paint between good and evil, right and wrong, acceptable or unacceptable.  I see no more barriers, since I have taken to a different course entirely; I tread not on one side or the other of such distinctions, nor on the hazy line between them: I hover above, and swim beneath.  I am the extra-dimensional man, since I decided that such two-dimensional thinking is simply absurd.

Who can honestly tell me that my actions have been any less morally upright than theirs?  Frankly, only I can, because I can understand their moral stances, for all of the nasty contortions that make them so unique.  Worst of all is that they secretly wallow in their own guilt and regret, as I did only a short time ago, and righteously damn me for things that they can only suspect me of.  I lack a trustworthy face.  I had always thought of myself as trustworthy, until I fully understood the power trust brings.  It can be exploited like oil, or coal, or Amazon Rain Forests, or baby seals.  They certainly do not appreciate it when they are betrayed, but that is the name of the game.  Luckily, I never allow them to know that they have been betrayed, not until they chose to betray me.  One must keep an eye out for such parasites.  I have so few friends.

Those bastards . . . they perpetually want to suck you dry, without even telling you.  They offer their goods, and deliver worthless trash instead.  Why?  Because all they want is to be liked, and to have a friend, one must betray another.  Friends are made and kept by making enemies.  

I only wanted to know what I was missing, although I thought I knew.  A perfect match for the soul, two pieces of a puzzle linking together to form a perfect, beautiful, whole, eternally joined in a cosmic fate determined by some unexplained extra-dimensional phenomenon.  And not only for the virtuous, but for everyone, good, bad, short, tall, ugly, beautiful, smart, or stupid.  I knew exactly what I needed to complete my life: some hot chick with nice, firm round tits, an hourglass figure bottoming out in an ass I could hold in both hands, and a gorgeous face whose expression I would quiver in ecstasy to see in a moment of sexual abandon, glistening with sweat and moaning for more, softly into my ear . . . Of course, she would also have to have a brilliant mind.  As far as I was concerned, my fate would grant me all of this, just out of the simple justice of nature.

Alas, such women are so difficult to find.  One must imagine them, or glaze over with one's tongue hanging out at the lovely pictures in dirty magazines, who would naturally be as brilliant as the observer, at least insofar as the fantasies go.  Nature itself, through so many centuries of literature, has never gone wrong before, so why would it not happen for me?  Especially when I needed it most, at such a crucial point in life, which would be certain to determine the course of my existence.  Hey, suicide is preferable to the injustice of being denied of one's constitutionally guaranteed right to the Perfect SoulMate(R)(C).  Luckily, I was offered the next best thing: a wholly inadequate, mentally depraved youngster who desperately needed the kind of pity I turned onto myself to survive, because she reasoned in a moment of brilliant self-torture that her own pity simply was not good enough.  Happily, I dumped my pathos onto her troubles, which seemed to shrink into microscopic size next to hers.

It has been nearly a year since we stopped our lengthy affair, and I dropped back into depression worse than before.  So I killed her.  End of Story.  I wish I knew how I turned out. 

Character Study: Despair

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
-Aldous Huxley

I can feel it all inside me, like a gelatinous, bitter beast residing in my heart.  It bites, claws, pushes, pulls, pounds, punches, kicks, screams, all simultaneously, struggling to rip apart my soul to escape.  Is there no relief?  Not even my guitar can relieve me of my despair.  Writing is useless.  Talking is impossible.  When will it, at last, be wrenched free of my mind?  When will it be, at the very least, appeased?

It is a beast that I have created.  My pain is all of my very own doing.  The Beast has materialized to torment me for my mistakes.  As if it weren't bad enough that I fail at everything in the first place.  I have unwillingly poisoned my soul with the anguish of futility.  

Nothing works.  Murphy's law stipulates that Everything That Possibly Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong.  In my case, everything, including the impossible, goes wrong.  It is inevitable.  The first dismal failure provokes a chain reaction of soul-tearing proportions.  It is beyond salvaging; I have fallen prey to insane hallucinations and paranoid delusions.  The world is falling to ruins behind me.  I may as well be directly responsible.  Imagine the money and resources wasted simply to maintain my pitiful existence!  The only unexplored possibility is the Final Option.  The Beast can feast on my useless corpse for all its morbid pleasure, and leave the rest for scavenging insects stupid enough to risk nauseating themselves on the putrid waste of my carcass.
The wounds fester in the recesses of my spirit.  Why?  Why must I be the channel for all of the negative energies in the universe?  Why should I be left completely alone to face my immeasurable agony?  Perhaps because I deserve no less.  It boils inside me, time only making it worse.  It never goes away.  Happiness no longer exists.  My despondency does not permit joy of any kind.  Relief is impossible.  The world is slipping away . . .