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Wednesday, March 01, 2006 11:17
Am I being thick? All right. I get why someone might consider a relationships with Bods of various and sundry types to be unequal, unfair, even intolerable. I do get that. I mean, it's not like my relationship with mine has been a bed of roses, well, ever. I've been used, abused and made to do things that frankly I wouldn't have ever contemplated on my own. I understand why someone might want to tell them to go to hell and take all their little goblins with them. I've tried to do that myself.It just didn't work. It was never going to work. I'm not wired that way. I wouldn't be happy unless I was being used and abused and being made to do things I wouldn't ever have contemplated on my own. I would be utterly miserable if they left me alone to plod a pedestrian way through life. The thing with Family, as Ben [1] says, is that the price and the prize are near enough the same damn thing most of the time. Having to repeat a year at university: £6,000. Losing two years of my life to a mental and physical breakdown: ~£36,000. The opportunity to be fully what I am and the experiences that have made that possible: priceless. Price. Prize. Only one letter between them and sometimes that literal difference is the only one there is. I'm something of an extreme case, mind you. We look at it in terms of contracts. There are those who are born with their contracts already owned. I'm one of those. I was made for this and therefore I can do this and will do this and there's an end to it. The price for being able to do it is being expected to do it and the prize for having to do it is being given the opportunity to do it. My contract is not for sale, will never be for sale. I might be hired out, or lended, but I'll never be sold. That's the one thing about which I'm fairly sure - not entirely sure, mind, but fairly sure - I can trust the Old Man. I've never even seen my contract. In fact, in some ways it's more accurate to say that I haven't got one because I'm owned outright. There are those whose value makes them tasty enough for their contracts to be bought. I know a fair number of those. Know someone who has been ambling along, not entirely sure where their path lies but feeling there's something out there for them somewhere, only to have some deity or whatever turn up unexpectedly, out of the blue, and say "You're mine, sunshine"? Bought and paid for. The Game is all about contracts, favours, obligations. It's about the currency of balance. It's quid pro quo - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. For a player of my insignificant status, the aim of the Game is come out and stay in the black. If a person isn't willing to play the Game, and if he is wired such that he has the capacity to leave the table, then surely the sensible thing to do is to quit? There's no shame in quitting. It's admirable, in many respects. But again, the price and the prize are near enough the same damn thing. It won't be without consequences. If a person chooses to quit the Game and spend his life treating gods, spirits and various and sundry non-con entities as fictional and delusional and the product of a human mind that is rooted in social hierarchy and requires some power to look up to (no matter that this doesn't actually describe the attitude of most Gimps I know) then that person is not going to be open to the opportunities that such relationships can offer. If that person's contract was bought and paid for by an entity that saw a potential Gimp because that person had the wiring for it, then there's a whole aspect of that person's fundamental nature that is never going to get an opportunity to express itself. That's the way it goes. It's not possible for a person to deny the existence of gods because what he has seen isn't tolerable and then reasonably expect them to fall into line and say: "Well we'll be nice about it then" just to get him back. People are simply not that valuable. Really they're not. They're just another mortal species in the vast panoramic landscape of the universe and there's no point expecting gods to be anthropocentric about it. They're not in it for you. None of them is. Anyone who says differently is selling something. You are no more valuable than a tree, or a rock, or an anthill, or, indeed, anything that has a fleeting existence. Your value will only increase with playing the Game because that's just the way it is. No relationship is based on pure altruism. Even human friendships are about evoked feelings. That's the currency. So, given all that, why would anyone spend years and years of his life attempting to form a relationship with a god on his terms because the relationship that sought him was so unacceptable and intolerable that he decided gods are figments? What is it with that? Does he just want an invisible friend, an imaginary companion with whom to share jokes and hugs and who will tell him how lovely and great and noble and fantastic and valuable he is? If so, I can recommend a Tulpa. Low maintenance, as benign as you make 'em and an ideal first pet. That's not the sort of relationship he's going to get from a god. Alternatively, and this might be the best bet: he should get out more. There's an entire human world out there with people in it of all shapes and sizes and perspectives and proclivities. If you want a relationship that works on human levels then, really, you need to be talking to humans. Obsessing about how come the gods won't play with you the way you want to be played with is a waste of time and setting yourself on a hiding to nothing. And, ironically, in and of itself it means that any claims you might have to escaping their influence are just so much hot air. They're still riding you, still sitting on your shoulder whispering and telling you how you could have so much more. They're right. You could. But you'll pay for it. Everyone always pays one way or the other. The question that ultimately needs answering is: which price are you willing to pay? The person in question claims already to have answered that and made his choice. It's a shame that he's still wasting time trying to haggle when he hasn't got anything to bargain with. Trying to find a relationship that's acceptable to him now is a bit like throwing a hissy fit, telling the one who actually gave the invitation to play that he's nasty and smells of wee and it's a stupid game that only morons would play anyway, then trying to get one of the others present at the table to invite him to play with them. Even though he's just called them all morons. The gods aren't human. But they're not entirely unfathomable, either.
[1] Yeah, okay, that's actually the French/German cover of Wolverine Vol. 2 #9 - #133 in French nomenclature - done by the artist Gabriele Dell'Otto whose work is, frankly, astonishing. On the other hand, when I first saw that I nearly had a heart attack because that's near enough the dead spit of Ben as he was 10 years ago. Except for the claws, obviously. And the inhumanly chiselled physique. I mean, he'd have to be suffering serious dehydration to look that lean and that's no bloody good to anyone. (0) comments | links to this post
Monday, February 27, 2006 13:23
It's a rabbit. So we put the house on the market about 10 days ago. Instantly we had more interest than anyone was expecting. Even the estate agent was astonished. Last weekend (the one before the one just past) it was like Picadilly Circus in the house, which made for a very stressful weekend as it was also the occasion of the League's Farewell party and we had MVC and the Wing Commander staying over.We had a lot of offers. So we went to sealed bid. And here's where it gets unpleasant. One of the people pinged on the old Family radar as soon as he turned up. It's a Family thing. You just know. It's like seeing an old friend you haven't seen in bloody ages and yet still being able to slip back into that easy banter and familiarity that you had all those years ago, as if no time has passed at all. You like someone, want to spend time with him, want to talk and catch up and find out what he's been up to even though you've never met him before. He and his wife loved the house. I could see them falling for it in the same way that I had and I so wanted to sell it to them. I really, really, really wanted to sell it to them. Even the other things in the house were happy with them. We figured that all of the bids would be pretty much in the same ballpark and we could just sell it to them. Nice and easy. I even got as far as thinking about the list of notes about the house and its little foibles I would have to leave for them - like telling them about the thing in the bathroom with the toothbrush fixation. We're not mercenary. We didn't mind taking a bid of 5 thousand less or so to give first time buyers a helping hand. But Frood and I are moving to Scotland. He's most likely going to have to give up his job and be out of work for a while. I'm taking a pay cut. We're not mercenary types and we're not out for as much money as we can get, but when our second choice couple offered us in excess of a year's salary more than anyone else, we were faced with a dilemma. Yes. It was a dilemma. Family comes first. I may not have said that to Frood - I didn't need to. He felt it too. We really wanted to sell to them and still do, but how much of an idiotic decision would it have been to turn down that offer? What that would have been saying was that a stranger - Family, yes, but still a stranger - deserved that money more than we do. Frood and I haven't had a lot of money, ever. We've always struggled along with debts and overdrafts and that dreadful feeling at the end of every month when you're not sure if there's enough left in your account to pay for the week's food. This is supposed to be a fresh start for us. This is my grand prize for the last eight years of crap. I get a new job, at home in Scotland, and the fact that the property market boomed just as we put our house up for sale is part of it too (discounting for a moment that it's all just coincidence). Uncle Coyote said: "Take the money." He would. I could feel Wyrm's attention on me as well, could feel the two sides of what I am battling it out. It was so close. I came so close to selling to the lower bidder out of this sense of loyalty to a bunch of non-consensus entities, and to put some niceness back in the world. My game-playing little brain went spiralling off into this tactical analysis of whether or not this obscenely inflated offer had something wrong with it, whether it was a test to see if I'd turn my back on Family loyalty for a cash reward, and whether the reason Family turned up wanting to buy my house was because I was supposed to feel that loyalty and it was Family's way of giving them a hand onto the property ladder. "Send her to Carrion. She's a good Gimp. She'll ignore the money." I mean, even the estate agent was gobsmacked. It's a huge offer. Surely there has to be something wrong with it? It took me a lot of effort and an enormous exertion of willpower to put my sensible head on and say: "They can find another house. We won't get another opportunity like this and it will make so much difference to our life." I cried. I felt awful. I felt sick. I felt physically sick doing that. And, again discounting the idea that it's all coincidence, it feels like it was a test. It was just another opportunity for them to buff the edges a bit more. It feels like it was a perverse form of bunny training. Bunny training. It's an apocryphal method of teaching new special ops recruits how to be ruthless. How to switch themselves off. First day in camp they're excused all duties, but they're each given a rabbit to look after and told to spend some real quality time with it. Day one is boring. Just them and their rabbits. Day two they're starting to bond, have given them names, are playing with them and trying to teach them tricks. By day three their rabbit is their best friend and by day four they're telling the rabbit things they wouldn't even tell each other. And on day seven they have to break their rabbit's neck and cook it. This last period in my life has been a bit like being taken off duty and told to look after a rabbit. I haven't really mixed much with the outside world; have been, by and large, entirely absorbed in the needs and demands of consensus life. I don't have pagan friends that I see any more - I have cycling friends. I don't go to conferences to do workshops and meet strange people: I go to Audax or League parties. My contact with Family has been limited to the usual dreamwork, that bloody camp last year, and the people with whom I share my house. To have someone walk in like that was like standing on the edge of the cliff in Boscastle on a sunny day and having the Atlantic wind blow out all the cobwebs. Day one we bonded. By day two we were exchanging text messages. By day three we were adjusting our selling tactics to give them the best chance of being successful. On day seven we had to accept another offer and it broke my heart. For all of 24 hours. And Uncle Coyote says: "See? You can even switch yourself off Family now." Oh yeah. I surely can. Isn't that just peachy? I'm sure I should feel really, really proud of myself for being able to switch myself off the one thing that commands my loyalty at the very essence of my being. And at the same time I'm telling Ertla that it's okay to be the Monster - that we get the sexy outfits and the big guns and the best lines. There's really no such thing as the Good Guy. Several years ago I remember stating that one of my goals in life was to regain my sense of worth. All that Core business knocked it out of me. Christ, it took years just to come to terms with the idea that there wasn't something wrong with me because my Key couldn't hack it and ditched me while I was at home in Oxford and he was on holiday in Cornwall, using a mobile phone I didn't know he possessed - couldn't even do it to my face. It took years to come to terms with the idea that it was his problem, not mine. That I was better than that. I've been doing this gig all my life. I'm the Gimpiest Gimp ever to walk out of the Gimp Factory and my contract has never included any provision for material reward. Not like some folks. Some people ply their Gimpy way through life and their Bods make sure they are provided for. It has made me unconscionably jealous at times. Our favoured buyers said that it was a sad indictment of society to see that money was the bottom line. I wish it were that simple. This isn't just about the money any more. It's about me valuing myself enough to put my future first, to accept this bizarre piece of fortune and take what is being offered to me because I am worth it. I may be a Gimp but I'm a bloody valuable one. I'm the Gimp who can switch herself off Family, and no one who isn't a Family Gimp will ever be able to imagine how much I've had to pay for that ability. There's still a chance it could go wrong, of course. Nothing is ever final until the contracts are exchanged. It could be bunny training as well as a demonstration that turning my back on Family is always a mistake. It would be just like them to manage to pull off both of those lessons at the same time using the same exercise, no matter that they are diametrically opposed. What you got to say to that, you lecherous old bastard? What's the word on the street from the Prime? Am I now the perfect tool or am I just skating that touch too close to the edge? I may have managed to make myself feel I'm worth it, but do you? Don't you smile at me like that. That's not even a smile. That's just a collection of teeth messing with my mind. (0) comments | links to this post
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