Past Lives (Dead to Me?)

We've all been other people in our time. You get to be a certain age and you look back at the you who has since passed to the sands of time and you hope you've grown since then, even if it was just last Wednesday. Last Wednesday I was packing for a marvelous weekend getaway with a whole passel of inspiring, talented, accomplished women and had just sketched an idea that had wanted out for some time, some man I met in a drug house in my late teens, early 20's, some face you can see saddled up to the bar in any Wisconsin tavern. This Wednesday I woke up to a message that an old friend was in jail for having committed (allegedly) a horrible crime against a woman. The juxtaposition is stark as day, between the person I had been and the company I had kept, and the woman I've become, and the sorts of souls I rally around me today.

"Dave", a sconnie.

To understand the populist dive toward fascism you must understand the simplicity of the simple man, or woman's fear, it is a visceral pang, sometimes sprung from very real trauma, sometimes nothing more than the inconvenience produced by a intolerance of rap music, or "faggots". The sensibility of the average Wisconsin "Dave" is one of having simple needs met and waving away the complexities of having to think too much about these needs, their origins, their triggers, chief among these needs, to be delivered from anything painful, and second, to be conveyed towards pleasure in the simplest and most direct form - usually the stomach, through rich food and cold beer; 3rd, a win from the beloved Pack; and 4th perhaps some luck at the scratch-offs. All the rest are some variation on these, and of course, sex might be nice here and there, and if they've thought far enough ahead, a son who they will someday teach to be a man like themselves.

They cannot be bothered to empathetically ponder the idea of a man trapped inside a woman's body or vice versa, the science of chromosomes or vaccines, the role of pigmentation and economics in systemic injustice, but they can readily absorb slogans and simple patterns, which pass as exercises in thought and give a supreme sense of satisfaction and triumph, when rendered in an effective, ideally humorous manner, over the uncertainties they face.

The uncertainties are many. We can only imagine cowering and apologetic Dave in a prison situation, entering the screaming, banging, stinking corridors for the first time, and his gut feeling on our reaction to whatever he had said prior to this snapshot. I don't remember what he said, or if his name was Dave, I know he didn't say the N-word and I have not forgotten the tinge of regret to his voice, as if to also intimate that he was missing some important coping feature he was mourning in his admission to fear-based racial aversion. I do believe he sensed we were a threat, and might have been if not for his cowed apology, to us, to everyone. He is not sorry he does not like black people because racism is wrong, he is sorry because he is weak; he is sorry only for himself, and possibly remains so, ticking the box for Donald Trump to absolve his world of the pain and inconvenience of the black, the gay, the trans, the foreign, upon his weary mind, and to right his world with promises of money and thoughtless ease. Like us all he seeks peace, but he is not equipped to find it himself.

This is the secret to tapping populism; mastery of their fear will always be stronger than inspiring their collective hope.

As for my friend in jail, like all problematic friends, you mourn them, you reach back and acknowledge the love you had in the moment for who you thought they used to be, maybe cherish it, maybe understand that time, action, and sentiment can alter its course. You are not bad because you loved someone who committed a terrible act; stopping loving them does not mean you didn't have something real once. Both can be true whether you feel deceived and betrayed by their acts and hate them now, or want to scrub yourself forever of their memory as if they'd never existed. Sometimes that love tarnishes and that is natural, sometimes that love has a well worn patina from holding it so dear, sometimes it shatters like a blow to the face, sometimes is hangs on despite the shame. What shakes out, in the end, remains to be seen.

As for my fellow ladies with whom I passed a most remarkable weekend, I am certain not a one would blame me for the complex feelings I'm navigating and the gamut of memories from funny and innocuous to biting and traumatizing, and I'm mighty glad to have in this moment such a better apprehension than the young observer of Dave, in a long-ago drug house, where the baby sat forgotten in a wind-up swing in front of televised idiocy while the adults crowded together in the laundry room waiting for the straw to come back around again before breaking off into the white screaming wind of winter.