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Thursday, March 23, 2006
12:43 
The world ain't black and white, bub
 There's something I find deeply irritating about people who react to failure by insisting that those who have succeeded are the failures.
The commonest expression of this in social consensus is, I suppose, that whole thing about working and non-working mothers, and childless women. There's no way to win. If you're a working mother you're a failure for not being at home with the kids. If you're a stay-at-home mum then you're a failure for sacrificing your career and giving up on feminism. If you choose not to have children then you're a failure because you haven't fulfilled the fundamental function of womanhood. Women who feel inadequate in each of these categories will use these pejorative comments to make themselves feel better about the choices they have made.
Which is stupid. You pays your money, you makes your choice, and then it's up to you to deal with the consequences. They are different choices - there is no right or wrong. Only those trapped in the whole Good/Evil, Black/White bipolar paradigm prison would insist that there has to be a right and a wrong.
The same thing applies to those who haven't made it as Gimps. You didn't get to the end of the conversion process? You didn't like the way it was screwing with your head? You managed to back off? Great! Good for you. Three cheers on your success at rejecting a bunch of non-con entities. Feel good about your achievement.
But don't, don't then start spouting off about how those whose success involved making it through the years of hell that is the conversion process are the failures. Don't start making out like we're the ones who need help and are dysfunctional and somehow wrong. The decisions are different.
I have a good job, and I'm getting paid to save the planet. I'm not socially dysfunctional, despite having no morals and no absolute rules other than the fundamental rule of Family: thou shalt get away with it. I am married, and have had an excellent relationship with my husband for sixteen years now (happy anniversary for Tuesday, darling, now hurry up and get the damned house sold cos I miss you). I may not understand how other people think, and I may not even be able to pretend I have the same thought processes as them, but I know how to function. People don't know there are non-con aspects to my life unless I choose to tell them.
It's not only just plain wrong to say that Gimps and others who have the attention of the Peanut Gallery are generally dysfunctional and broken, it's bloody rude. Yes I'm probably an amoral sociopath whose thought processes are alien enough to make Freud turn in his grave, and it's not for nothing that I describe myself as the black sheep of the family - although purple would probably convey what I mean more accurately - but that doesn't mean that I'm evil.
Well, maybe it does. There's no such thing as evil - only a difference of opinion. And my opinion evidently differs here. There's the problem with the whole bipolar shtick - if you're caught in the black/white trap, the Venn diagram of things that are evil and things that are good doesn't tend to have much of an overlap.
In the instance that has pissed me off this time we have:
Touched by god = mentally dysfunctional = planet killer
My only response to that is: "Fuck off!"
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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
19:24
Another dream
 This one was maybe 2 weeks ago, the week before I came back up to Scotland.
There are two groups of us – 5 or 6 in each group, with some friendly, competitive rivalry between the groups. We have just finished a job and have several hours to kill before evac, so we wander down to the sea to have a beach party while waiting until it’s time.
There’s a garage there – sort of what looks like a classic car dealership, maybe. Sales and services. At first we’re all just kicking around, looking at the cars. They’re on the expensive side. Then the other group start hazing the new guy they’ve got with them – he’s young, probably no more than 17 or 18, and he’s pretty chuffed to be along on a job like this at all and so he’s putting up with it, albeit with the sort of forced good humour that means he hates it and loathes it but he doesn’t want to be seen to be a sissy and left behind on future jobs. At first I join in, because it’s the done thing, but then it starts getting brutal and sexually charged so I try to put a stop to it.
Everyone else thinks I’m being soft and some of them get angry. I decide new guy’s not worth me putting my foot down, especially as he hasn’t voiced any complaint, so I go off to look at the cars.
One of the girls has boosted an expensive machine – a yellow car that looks like a Lotus Elan. She is driving it around the dirt roads and tracks in the immediate area. We’re on a headland, a spit of rock sticking out into the sea like Fife Ness, with dense grass and sandy soil compressed on top of what appears to be a volcanic rock substrate. Where the promontory drops off into the sea the rocks are oily in the darkness; black and glistening.
The sight of the car distracts the others from abusing the new bug and immediately the rivalry between the groups starts up again. Only now it’s down to who can boost the best car.
It’s not long before there are several cars being driven round and round the premises. I stand on a high point with my Second, who is a woman I've worked with a number of times, watching them. One of the cars appears to be being operated remotely by a girl on the other team.
I spot a car that looks very strange. Up until this point I haven’t wanted to get involved, even though there’s no intent to do anything with the cars other than drive them around for a bit and then leave them when it’s time to go. But now I see this car that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It is tall, with a one-man bubble cockpit on top set into the central spine, and big tail fins. I go look at it and I’m calling it a Cadillac because of the fins and the taillights but I know it’s not one of those. It looks like nothing so much as the Batmobile crossed with a motorbike, only with four wheels.
My Second and another of my team, a young man who has shown himself very capable, help me check the security on the car. It is shackled at the front: a big, heavy device locked around part of the chassis and fastening it to the wall, something like a massive bicycle D-lock. At the rear a trailer has been parked to pin it in place. We can move the trailer easily enough. We just need to get the car unlocked.
All three of us are under the car, poking about. We can hear engine noises and laughing and joking from the others. Freeing this monster-car has now become an exercise in problem solving that we want to complete for the sake of it, not because we want the car.
I tell my Second I’ve got a handle on the lock mechanism. I reach forward and touch the lock, making it shift and release. There is a click as the mechanism disengages and then the whole place is lit by strobing red lights and an alarm sounds out, painfully loud.
Laughing like naughty schoolboys caught scrumping, we all drop whatever we are doing and run for the sea, meaning to escape along the shoreline for a distance and then scatter into the darkness, just staying out there until our evac window opens. But almost immediately we hear engine sounds – jeeps – and vehicle-mounted spotlights sweep the area. I am thinking that it was too soon, they must have been waiting for us, and I know we can’t outrun them because up above is a helicopter equipped with devices capable of tracking us.
Rather than exhausting myself and my team and risking a fall on the rocks, I tell my team not to resist capture. The other team carries on running, and as we wait patiently for the approaching authorities we can hear shouts and scrabbling as the others struggle over the rocky ground.
We are approached by four military men, all armed with automatic rifles. I’m smiling, still playing it like we’re a bunch of high-spirited youngsters who meant no harm but got a bit carried away. This might be working on three of the men, but something tells me that their leader is playing along with the story for his own reasons and knows better.
He directs us to move along the coast where apparently there is a pick-up waiting. We scramble along for a few hundred yards and then discover our path is blocked because the tide has come in. The sea is about fifteen feet below us.
I’m not sure what I was thinking, exactly, but with a shrug I jump off and into the sea, feet first, and float there. My clothes seem very buoyant and my skin/shell is thick, protecting me from the cold. It’s like I’m wearing a drysuit. I am perfectly comfortable. It’s actually quite pleasant and relaxing.
The rest of my team don’t hesitate to follow me into the water. I have drifted some way by the time the last of them is in and they have gathered together, and I do a bit of backstroke, not paying attention to where I am going. Suddenly a motorboat appears, with searchlight, and zooms towards me as if to cut off an attempted escape.
Grumbling, I roll over and start doing crawl, swimming back to the others who are making their way to the pick-up point further along the coast. The boat stops but a surge of water rolls over me from its bow wave and I’m choking, almost drowning, spluttering in this mass of water that just keeps coming.
The men in the boat fish me out of the water and take me in. Eventually I end up back with my team in a military base, in custody. The other team has also been arrested.
We stuck to the story of being pranksters who crossed the line without meaning to, but when it was my turn for individual questioning I remember saying something to the man who had led the capture, and it was a trigger, provoking action that would let us get away cleanly. I don’t remember what I said but it started with 'Elite', that being almost like 'soldier' but a particular sort of soldier. Rather like 'Marine', it had some sort of connotations about capabilities and remits, and it they were connotations that did not mesh with the job he was currently doing. It was as if I were reminding him of what he had been - something nobler and with firmer purpose.
At that point our evac window opened and we were out of there anyway. Which was something of an anti-climax.
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