I hope you don't decide to fade away DD. You're one of the most interesting folk here, and I'd miss you.
Well, thanks. I have to fade away, but I'm not deleting my account. I'll try to explain. That means I'll be back, right?
I think of this:
Cheap Trick ( I love the stupid song!)
"I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me"
Sorry, Dunc, but that song is not about me. In fact, the opposite of that song's sentimental message is closer to the true me. I got off the stage at an early point in my music career. I also made sure I stayed behind the camera. I am at home with the grungy pub atmosphere, here, and I prefer to be the over-sauced, drooling, red-eyed graybeard in the corner, singing to himself and bragging to everyone for half an hour about making it to the head and back, without any beer or piss spilling incidents, but not noticing that I forgot to zip my pants, or that I picked up your beer by mistake and started drinking from it, occasionally kicking the jukebox until an annoying song stops playing, all the while needing to wipe my chin, again.
Having a lot of attention or actually "praise" drawn specifically and directly to me is somewhat toxic. I never had trouble with crowds, because people in crowds are mostly like a herd of bovine or some other such unintelligent hoof-trotters, but there have been times when I was devastated by some asswipe on stage creating a scene to make me "look good". I almost had to run away once when the manager of a huge club got on the microphone and talked about how that particular local band had played that venue many times and they often closed early because no one was there to play for, but on this night it was after one o'clock AM and the people were still there dancing, standing, chanting and wanting more music. He gave me full credit for the turn-around, since it was my second night to work that club and band and my sound company was the only thing different from the previous weeks. Within about thirty seconds I had almost two thousand people cheering for me and expecting me to like it. I managed to wave back, twice, before I stumbled backwards off my sound-riser to the back and blew a fountain of bile in an atomized spray about eight feet in radius.
It literally makes me violently ill to be "made over" too much. I can't take it. My logic systems tell me that it is harmless and it is usually meant in good faith, but logic doesn't keep me from becoming overwhelmed and blowing bile. It's the only thing that makes me toss-tidbits, but it is not something I can control. Admittedly, that was an extreme case, but the feelings are still there at times when someone wants to make me the center of something.
If I am to be in the center of something, it
HAS TO BE ME doing it! If I get into a fight it has to be MY fight! Really, I can take it if it is only one or two people, but several people trying to sing some high praise of me gets to me, rather quickly. When there were several people trying to get me to join the World Council and telling me that I "belonged" in it, I was getting some disturbing feelings and I had a difficult time expressing them - probably should not have tried. I suppose I'm a little embarrassed to be such a wimp, considering some realtime trauma that I have trudged through. It probably doesn't make sense, either, to post my fractal artwork and not expect to get praised, but (this is the key point) that artwork is not something I have my soul invested in. I do it for the release of stress and it is out of a childish sense of friendship that I share them, besides, it is the programs I use that deserve all the credit, anyway, not me, so it is easy for me to stow-away what is said in that thread.
The rest of the pages I post in here represent the real me - hopefully most people know the
sarcastic me by now, too. It is me at my most human and fallible, not some persona I have cultivated for this site. If I was going to create a stylized likeness of myself for Intensity
Squared I would not have chosen to be an old washed up, depressed, headbanging, half-schizo, jobless, dry-sponge, living off the good nature of a fine woman with little of substance left to live for except his young kids. I would have chosen some personality that would be a little more interesting, don't you think? My negative reaction is an unforeseen circumstance due to the fact that I have tried to be as honest as possible with myself and my "new friends" here (investing) and I am not hiding behind some pseudo-persona, that makes it most difficult to tolerate the excess of attention (not the right word, because I crave deliberation, encouragement, approval, and guidance, but not accolades, glory, exaltations, kudos) when it happens, like the "Newsbox" thing, which really put me off, but again, I choose carefully which battles I fight. I can't help it. It is just me, being me. With the real me, you get the real me, but even with much of the squareness knocked off my pegs I still don't fit those neat round holes very well. Scr'eap even accused me of trying to get compliments, which goes to show how far off my communication skills are at times, since I just wanted it to end.
Just so that no one thinks I'm cooking up some dramatic mystery by disappearing for a while, I should let you in on some of the unusual things that have happened this month and captured my attention. It's May in Indiana, so there's the race, of course, but I'm also up against some personal stuff. I figure if you are still with me after all that, you deserve to know some of the really scary, emotionally heavy stuff, too.
I have been in contact, over a dozen emails, with the woman I fought over, (mentioned earlier in this thread) whose brother (I fought with and tried to kill) died a few months ago. The first fight took place when I was fifteen, but it later got very serious and was not really over for more than a year. However, the lovely lady (a year younger, but looks ten years older than I do, now) who I had known since childhood, was a person I "frequented" after I split up with my first wife, in my early twenties.
She and I were both horny sluts and involved in some group activities, living wild on the beach with other hippie/doper types, etc. but she became pregnant. At the time, last I saw of her, she was going to have an abortion, because she really did not want to start a family, especially not knowing who the father was. It was a big impact to me, because it ended a good thing. In many ways it was a blessing, however, because I let her go and concentrated my efforts on my business and had some successes, followed up contacts, my dad helped me get bank financing for some expansion, etc, etc. and my "life" took off at that point. Something changed her mind, though, and she brought the child into the world, anyway, but she stayed out of touch. I had no idea she had done that, until this month, which was the first time I had heard from her since the early '80s, but with no mention of her three or four year old son at that time.
The punchline ... her, soon-to-be, twenty eight year old son looks exactly like me in the picture she sent (I really don't need a DNA test, but my wife wants me to have one, thinks it would be good for me to know for sure - she does not know what it feels like to be this sure of anything) and he has also been diagnosed with autism, about twelve years ago, when he was still in high school.
This is the second "surprise" offspring I have lived my life without knowing of. My ex-wife also has a child who is also, obviously, begotten of my begettings. I have tried to contact the son of my ex-wife in the past, but she won't budge. I have shown respect at an arm's distance, though. God only knows what he has been told about me. She wants to hold him over me in some strange way which I don't understand. Dealing with my ex-wife is very tricky, because she is a whackjob psycho, so I had let go of the agony of not knowing a child of my loins, several years ago. Now with another "surprise" kid to ponder, I am wondering if my ex-wife's middle son (my son) is also autistic. If so, that would make four autistic kids from one autistic spazcase loser with nothing to brag about but the ability to produce high motility sperm. I don't know if that is good or bad, but the whole thing is somewhat upsetting, if you can imagine. I have got to meet these two young men, if at all possible, but I am not sure how or why.
It took me a while to explain. This was not meant to be so longwinded and it rambles a bit - sorry.
... and I don't expect anyone to respond.
