a long way to go

i’ve got a long way to go.

on the edge of the toilet seat, pulling up the second sock and poised to run to catch the six o’clock, i realized, and more importantly, resigned to the cotton pickin’ notion that they just would not do.

even if they were dark-dark blue, my pants were dark-dark black.

and in the frickin’ fluorescent light the contrast was startling, and just a tad too-beyond subtle to ignore.

deeply, i wanted to dismiss this somewhat insidious difference. but, alas, something deeper made me run to the sock bin and frantically fish around like a child learning to swim.

with an earnest endeavor and a bit of chagrin, for a fraction of a second, i fought furiously against my self-consciousness which smirked and dangled its threat like a whet-noose, one which all social misfits are hung by as soon as the eyes of others spy that telling lack of color coordination.

for another minim of the moment monopolized by my conscious-ringing id—i also felt “gay.”

and in the most “male” voice i could conjure i said to myself “why the fuck should i care? what’s so damn important about what i wear?”

yet, the queer eye just looked at the straight guy in me and winked. hood-winked.

* on the bus, half-of-me dressed in black, i sat in the back quietly and calmly knowing no one would now laugh at me under their breath today.

but even as serene as i was while reflecting upon this bit of a bout and comical calamity, i also felt unsettled—as if i had lost part of me in this innocuous submission to my own damned self-consciousness.

maybe, because that’s exactly it—its not really mine…

“There are two kinds of people in this world:
Those that enter a room and turn the television set on,
and those that enter a room and turn the television set off.”
~ The Manchurian Candidate, 1962

in the beginning .00 daily archives

l.m