A Slice of the Fable

01 09 20

Reckless Rambles

Draft 1

By: Chase L. Currie

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

I have a fatal flaw, I trust people, and I desperately want to know their stories.

I’m not sure where this desire to learn someone’s story came from in me. I don’t think there is one key place in my history that I can pinpoint for it to come around. Maybe, it is a core fact of all storytellers to want to hear more tales. Every writer wants to tell someone’s stories but to do so, we must first know them.

                But this longing came to me the other day as I was sitting in the coffee shop. The lady behind the counter, who knows my name, but I have no idea what her name is, was talking to me about art. She is going to school for art history, so we chat about paintings we like and don’t like all the time. We always come to each with new things to tell. (This week I’m thinking about bringing up Edie Sedgwick and how as of late, I can’t stop watching her interviews.)

                It is a fun little game we have, but I was reading there one day, glancing over at her. Well, not at her for the most part, but past her and out the window. She happens to be in the way, and when I back to work in my journal a bit …

                I started to write questions I wanted to know about her.

                Why art history?

                Where do you come from?

                Is this place home?

                Cake or pie?

                I almost needed to know these things about her. Then I sat back, thinking to myself about how I had always been this way. I have this thing about myself … I like to be an outsider. I’m sure this came from me always hanging out with the odd kids in school. Or the fact, I always felt like an outsider among most people.

                Even today, I feel on the other side of most things looking in on it. At church, I watch people trying to see what reason brought them to this building on a Sunday morning. I said something to the people around me seeing the hush look they give me because I do not do a great job at watching my language there.

                Not anymore.

                Shit, fuck, and damnit, flow easily from my lips these days.

                When I see these stares, I want to know why they are so disheartened at my words. Who told you I can say those things in this building? Why are you taking them the wrong way? Tell me about your father and how it felt moving from place to place all your childhood?

                I want to know people on a deep level. I don’t too much enjoy small talk, but then again maybe small talk is simply the foreplay to the bigger things. Like my friend at the coffee shop, I love talking to her about art, but there is so much more to learn. I want to dig into those darker places in her heart to see what story I could find there.

                You could lie to me about the stories, I wouldn’t mind.

                You could tell me the truth about them, I wouldn’t mind that either.

                I simply want to know is all …

                Like I said, this may have come from the fact I have always seen myself as an outsider looking in. But this has also led me not to understand why the outsiders of the world suddenly want to be on the inside. I can easily recall when the Alphabet People were fighting for equal sight under the law, which I agreed with, but then they turn to this idea to … well, you have to accept me too.

Uh, whoa, sir or madam, me disagreeing with you is me seeing as a human. I disagree with my family and friends all the time. If I wasn’t willing to sit down at the table and talk to you, then that means you mean nothing to me. I do not have to accept anything about you and nor are you going to make me.

                But, also, why on God’s green earth do you want to be on the inside? Can’t you see what that means? It means people like me who hate the idea of being on the inside see you like something we cannot become. Being the outsider allows you to see so much more than being trap in the norm, but I do understand the reason for wanting to be in the norm.

                I get it.

                I see it, and it is so much safer in there.

                Lame, but safe.

                This could also come from the fact my mom and dad were odd people in the world. My dad was a Christen biker, who played D&D most nights while riding with the Hell Angels. My mother was a poet and who was a hangover of a flower child, never wanting to be like everyone else. Both of them tried to do it the world’s way, the normal way in life, and it always fell apart for them. Neither one of them were normal, but they didn’t act like they weren’t anything but themselves.

                School might have a lot to do with my feeling of being on the outside as well. I couldn’t read in school, kids made fun of me for it … and being fat … so it was best to be on the outside. And yet, soon, all those kids who were picking on me saw that I was happy being myself. I didn’t care what they thought or said or saw. I was me, and it was all I needed.

                I made some great friends afterward.

                And then I went to a school with more odd people, more outsiders, but even there I felt out of the camp. The only way I knew how to be around people was to listen to their stories. I wanted to hear them, see them smile, watch me cry, and wondered why they were this way.

                My dad is drunk, she said on the bus ride home. I hate it.

                How bad is it? I asked.

                Bad.

                But how bad?

                She told me about having to get in the morning to get ready for school and making sure she didn’t step on the broken beer bottles. They were all over the floor, and sometimes, her dad would be asleep on the couch, vomit all over him. She would help him up, clean him off, and get him to bed.

                I guess that is why I let the boys – use me. At least, then I mean something to someone.

                Oh, love … oh, love.

                The stories weren’t always rainbows and flowers, most of them were heartbreaking, and some of them were downright soul-crushing, but all of them needed to be heard. Most people – okay, all of us, don’t get to share our stories with people. We are not sitting on the mountain tops of life screaming into the world, listen to me! Hear me! What most of us get to do is sit across from someone with a cup of coffee, in a low voice, and said …”Here is my story. It’s not a lot. It’s not great, but it is all I have.”

                Well, friend, it’s all I want to hear.