I hardly ever consider the fact that I don't have a father. It seems like a pointless endeavour to send my thoughts down such a blind and spindly path. More often than not, this "lack" strikes me as a kind of freedom; an ability - a superpower even - to escape the doctrines of fathers of the past and present.
"You mean I can be whoever I want? Great!" That's more the kind of question-response that comes to me. An endless universe is awaiting me! And the paths are not delineated by what has already been built. My roads illuminate the night sky wherever I decide.
Of course, the flip side of this is that there are often only dead ends. Corridors that become ever-darker for never having been explored before. And I am literally on the edge of the universe all the time. It's a lonely path. For all purposes, I am a spaceman continually negotiating his way over new territory. Someone who seems odd to the outside world at all times. Someone who stands for nothing recognizable, who has no recognizable form.
When you don't have a motive to cut a path that's been taken before, well, the fact is no one takes you seriously. Without a motive, you are really invisible. How much easier it is to take what you want from this playground! To decide on a sports car and all the other trappings of success. I often think that those who are motivated are exactly what's wrong with the world. How can you do that! I am often outraged at the way men treat women; and by the fact that women keep jumping into relationships with those men.There is no doubt in my mind that men who are successful with women are psychopaths.
At least if I had a father to crystalize my identity, I'd have firm goals and more people would trust and even respect me. The fact is I'm all alone. I fantasize about relationships all day, but nothing manifests. I try all manners of things. I try to be funny, whacky, unique. I experiment constantly. Nothing seems to work though. I send out my feelers on the social networks. I have had very little success there, so I am reluctant to continue elsewhere. I guess they just don't see that image of the archetypal masculine with all his faults and crimes; his arrogance. They see a joker, a flippant idiot, or a crusty old philosopher. Someone who they aren't sure how to take.
"Perform!" They seem to say! Make your move, show me you're a man. But all I can do is smile sheepishly and try to show how determined and loyal and caring I'd be. Clearly those things don't amount to what it means to be a good boyfriend.
Once when a friend and I attended a street festival in a bohemian quarter of Cape town called Observatory,, I was dared by a group of women I did not know, to skate down a half-pipe. They looked at me and I looked at them with false bravado. The half-pipe was full of holes it was located right outside a bar called... well actually I forget the name. But the place was good for cheap beers and cheap doughy pizzas. When it came down to it, I was too scared to descend the half-pipe. And one by one the girls left.
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