Intro

Yesterday night i fell asleep on the sofa watching Sound of Music; if it sounds suspicious for a 30 year old man to do so, it's because there's reason to suspect. I'm gay, and do match the stereotype as far as enjoying movies that straight men wouldn't touch with a two meter pole. There's more: i live alone with a cat that wakes me up every morning by bouncing onto my chest, whether i'm sleeping on the sofa, my bed or the floor (yeah, it happened once). My first impulse is to grab her by the tail and send her spinning to the other side of the room, but then my better self (always oversleeps a little, poor guy; i must tire him a lot) starts simply scratching her behind the ears, and she starts purring... Then i have to stop her from rubbing her ass against my face because, for some reason, as soon as i start petting her, she lifts her tail, crouches on her paws, and shoves her ass towards me... I'm flustered by this behavior, dr. Spock: What have i done wrong for the horny little bitch to have such wrong ideas about our relationship, i wonder?

Anyway, there are extenuating circumstances for my fitting of stereotypes... I live in an isolated little village on Vestlandet, and at the moment am practically snow-locked, hours away from the nearest city, and before choosing Sound of Music i'd already run through more than half of my movie collection on the previous days -- much of it gay-themed too, i admit, but not all of it. The other night i even watched MIB and no, it's not because i have a fetish, either! Just the occasional (frequent, my friends say) display of bad taste which, again, takes me away from stereotypes.

But why am i writing so much about the s word this morning? Contrarily to what this freudian slip would indicate, i tell myself i don't care one bit whether i fit into them or not. I've noticed that our social lives are defined by attempting to conform to (or get as far as possible away from) stereotypes. When you're a child, you have to be a "good boy", show that you are "well educated"... Then you're taught to grow close or away from some behaviors if you want to be a manly man (my Latin American upbringing showing its teeth again), and in order to be accepted by different social groups (family, school, the people you work with, etc.) you have to warp your personality in yet other ways. And if you realize how unfair and thwarting this all is and, like Joan Jett, you decide you don't give a damn 'bout your reputation, you become an outsider, and many of your needs as a social animal are not fulfilled, and you grow up deformed anyway.

So the trick lies in realizing that very few people are completely healthy in this world of ours. Everybody has their quirks and sensitive spots... If our emotional personæ were visible, I imagine they would have members that would match our physical ones more or less faithfully... but then they'd be made of all kind of incongruous materials: parts of us would be metallic or wooden carapaces that'd hide, alter or exaggerate certain features, while others would be made of putty or even vapour...

Of course, i know we're not like other animals because culture does play a very big role in our formation, but still, I'm sure there should be a balance between how culture shapes us and how much we get to develop our innate potential... No, it's more than that: nobody should ever have to be shunned by their differences. On the contrary, we should create a meta-culture that treasures differences, both in cultures and individuals. But our species had to learn to discern without guidance, and we're not done yet, obviously, so we got work to do. Social and cultural engineering are far away, yet.

Anyway, i got to go mail some letters.