Acid

People have been talking about Harley Quinn for years now. And like some Gen X hipster, I’m the person that says “I was there, I saw her being ‘born.’”

So, full disclosure, I have a few points to make before I go on to my main goal.
I’m a Batman fan. Always. Not a comic reader. Scandalous, sure. Sacrilegious. Yeah. Okay. But comic books are like anime. Crack is cheaper. This also goes for the games. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to play them, brain masturbate over the previews, and feel like I truly missed out on an experience. It just didn’t happen.

I have not seen Suicide Squad. Not yet. It’s been out almost a month. I had some personal shit, and then there was the “Lack of Joker” murmur.

A very nice young man at my place of employment asked me if I had seen the Batman origination movies. At first, I was all, wow, this kid knows his shit. Respect. Then he started describing Penguin. Catwoman. “You mean the ones with Two-Face and Riddler in the same movie?” Excited, he said yes. “Uh, those are Tim Burton movies. I own those.” I thought he meant something older. Since people seem to be forgetting how old the concept of Batman is. I digress.

There are two things eating away at me about Harley Quinn right now. And one sub-point for The Joker.

First, the Millennial Love Worship.

Here is the best example that I have found. I present unedited and anonymous for effect:

“Harley Quinn and the joker do not have an abusive relationship. The comics portray it that way as in order to say love is beyond crazy, hostility binds two into one as does love. They push each other to their hostile limits as to see how much they can handle only to them show that their love for each other can conquer that. There’s so much more to their love than anyone can imagine. Their love should be a symbol to couples everywhere.”

I shit you not. Verbatim. God bless Facebook for showing us how damned Millennial Relationships really are. First, I love how Harley’s name is correctly capitalized, but not the Joker. He’s an afterthought to this person. What this person loves is Harley’s devotion, no matter what it is to. They love the intensity that they’ve been raised with. At no time have they not known superhero and comic book movies. I don’t know what skewed their view of relationships. But if I recommend viewing A Clockwork Orange, or The Cell, it’s a “trigger.” They idolize, and indeed Hollywood edited, what The Joker and Harley have always been. The dysfunction Gen X didn’t have the Internet to talk about. Did I answer if I think The Joker loved Harley? I will in a moment.

Second, the lack of Joker in Harley’s descriptions. This is the meat of the walnut. I studied before writing this subject, which has been under my skin (and hopefully tattooed on it one day) for some time. I didn’t want to go in with just my idea of Harley. Psychology Today did a good article on their blog, and girloncomicbookworld.com was a wonderful resource into how Harley changed according to medium and over time.

Through all the YouTube, blogs, sites, fan posts, steamy fan art, and general chatter, I noticed one thing.

No one mentions The Joker.

They “mention” The Joker.

Skip over him like a stone that at best was a catalyst, and at worst, a mere ripple in her personality.

One thing I will concede, she had to have that madness in her before she met The Joker. The abused will seek to be abused over and over again. Not consciously. Either out of familiarity, or the “at-least-they-are-better-than” syndrome. So, let’s follow Harleen’s story, either as an overachieving child in a neglectful and at the very least emotionally abusive home, or abandoned by a family member’s death, emotionally, blah blah. Everyone reaches the same conclusion. Nature and nurture had already played their Greek Tragedy on Harleen. Now she’s fascinated with the Joker. And everyone either voices this with an air of contrivance, or predictability. Really? After a decade of Criminal Minds, Tarantino movies, Call of Duty, and “bullying awareness?” A society that soaks itself in the fascination of what a good person does on a bad day (or, as I like to say, a bad person does on a good day) really wonders how easily Harleen was drawn to The Joker? Click the Legos. Take out all of other societal bullshit people project onto her, we would do the same. And we do. When we fight about which Joker is better.

Here’s the side note. Stop comparing Jokers. Just stop. Ledger’s Joker is not even the same person, let alone the same kind of Joker. I can go into a dissertation about psychosis, sexuality, and character contrasts. Instead, focus.

In a controlling relationship, and for Harley specifically, people assume that it’s one-sided. That The Joker feels nothing, maybe not even contempt.

This is a fallacy. The person being controlled will tell you “sure, it gets bad, but when it’s good, it’s great.” To the person who is the controller, the dominant, their love is a gift, a favor that’s to be paid back, the show of power they have over the submissive’s emotions. Those times when he feels genuine affection for Harley, he’s lost control, and those are the situations where he tries to kill her. It doesn’t matter who gets in the way, they won’t get in MY way.

The Joker needed a submissive as much as Harley was comfortable having a dominant. Being the responsible one, escaping abusive home life, sustaining your own well-being and pressure to not turn out like them, it’s being Atlas. A masterful dominant, The Joker saw that weakness in her from the start. For those two, it was love. Love in the sense of an emotional connection, in the sense of seeking out what the other needed, already groomed to the damage. Because she was used to being weak in relationships, she saw the affection she wanted to see. Because he was used to being able to manipulate everyone flawlessly, he was angered by the lack of control emotions take. He wasn’t expecting her to be eternally breakable.

For Harley, this control was freedom. A punch in the face knocks the world off of Atlas’ shoulders. Being slapped around removes the pressure of being a real person to that person you are being controlled by.

To Harley, that was the freedom she was familiar with.

So her life became just one choice.

Either become The Joker, or drown in the acid.

Midway

Nobody wants things for you
They want things from you
Nobody flatters you
They want to be flattered by you
No better than a port
Being plugged for
Desired content
Put a social token behind your ear
And pull it out from the other
You're supposed to clap
Because they think they passed
Through your mind
As effortless as a pinball
Insert coin
Pull lever
You can practice
Giving them what they want
They'll never stay long
There is always a machine
Better than you
More willing to play along

Begrudgingly Convenient

I had a library debt.

For a book I did not damage.

A year ago.

It made me angry for a long time. Anyone who knows me knows that’s just fucking ludicrous.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had several ulterior motives for paying it. Some were not clear to me until I went to actually do so.

As a Poor Angry Writer, I love my resources. Everyone should love their library.

But the library that charged me this paltry sum of 37.00 had many other sins. That I received it damaged. It was almost as old as me. They refused to return it. I had to force them to, and THAT’S how I got the fucking charge.

It looked like an elementary school library. Most of the floor covered in half-tall shelves you see for kindergarteners. An open story time area that made mid-day unbearable. Computer space that was hidden in the back where only perverts and Mormons gathered. I have no idea what it was about that library that Mormons liked… I always had to order something over, they never had it there. And a huge section where old people would just hang out, raid coupons, read the paper for free, and leave a mess. Awkward cafeteria tables with power strips duct tapped to them for computer stations. It was terrible.

So I held a grudge.

Then it became in my best interest to pay off the scourge. So I could go to a different library. At a new job, there is a library not far, and I could easily go to that one before work, drop stuff off after close. It would be nice.

So fine, amongst the fair amount of catching up I had to do with bills and errands, fuck it, I’ll do that, too. Out of my hair, I’m an upstanding citizen. What the fuck ever.

Then I go in.

And it’s nice.

They’ve remodeled the whole thing. Sectioned off rooms. No half shelves. More floor space given up for books. I paid my fee, and went browsing. Lo and Behold, they have two lectures I’ve been wanting to hear, the Great Courses series on The Symphony and 30 Greatest Orchestral Works. Looking around, it was 37 dollars well spent. When I went to check out, I got the Oh Shit You’re Gonna Expire, Mate!!!

The last staff was mean. And it sounds silly to say the word as an adult, but bitter, unhelpful, rude, and dismissive all fall under that category.

This young lady helped me cheerfully, like she was happy to work with books! And I’m fuck yeah, books!

Truth be told, I’ve missed the library. It’s invaluable.

Maybe, I could be a little less angry.

We’ll see.

The Slavery of Retail: No Personal Identity Allowed

When people complain about my recent (joyful) breakup with yet another retail employer, I don’t argue with them. But I try to explain. Everyone is understaffed and over-worked. They expect Mensa level application, Atlas force effort, and Roman fealty. And at the bargain basement price you thing they are passing on to you.

I don’t make excuses for bad workers, for people who don’t care to learn their job, or general apathy that is at best negligent and at worst prosecutable.

I blame the culture we’ve instilled into the concept of Retail.

Not just the “customer is always right” bullshit, or even “buyer beware.” Somehow, the business mentality of 80/20 has made Retail life insufferable.

For those not familiar with the 80/20, it’s called the Pareto Principle, or the Law of the Vital Few, which states approximately 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. Business…gurus, I can’t think of a better word for how they treat business, like a new-age religion, actually call the 80/20 Rule a way of life, a belief. Not the statistic that it is. Applied on the ground level, from a Retail Grunt’s position, it translates into “Give This Screaming Bitch Whatever She Wants.” This is done for many reasons. To stop the screaming, much like a little child. To make the customer happy, if it’s possible (please keep in mind that some people enter a retail establishment to buy unhappiness the same way people like to haggle for cars). There is the concept of over-compensation. Which has a jingle type word, a buzz word, that reeks of paperback shyster psychology. Whatever it is called, it is the idea that giving a customer too much will make them feel like they owe the business their patronage. So, 80% of the business’ problems are created by 20% of the customers, and making them over happy is the only way to avoid any trouble whatsoever.

And customers know this. Instead of getting a problem fixed, or a right wronged, most retail interactions have become a used car lot sales haggle to keep the customer from trying to get over and get more than you, an employee, are allowed to give.

This obviously is not everyone. But I’ve got something to say about the 80% soon enough.

Now, this 20% will say and do anything. I haven’t decided if they don’t think about employees as humans out of conditioning, or if it’s some sort of subconscious let-go that they know it’s basically an adult Showbiz ball-pit and they can get what they want, quite literally.

The 80% are comprised of people who just like to look down on you. Throw their money on the counter like you’re a fucking whore. Tell you “I can tell how much you hate your job, it’s quite apparent.” Let their kids piss on the floor. The theft alone is staggering. And of all the more examples I could go into, this part lead to this: you have to take it.
In a retail job, you are at the bottom of the food chain. One “you’re fired” away from homelessness, maybe two steps away from hanging out with Homeless Jesus on the street corner. The customer may wield this knowledge like a child with a hammer.

But it’s your bosses that know they hold your marionette strings.

While all that bullshit, bullying, pandering, bowing and scraping, ass-sucking, and general fur smoothing happens on the public side of the counter, no one thinks about what happens on the business side of the counter.

I’ve recently been liberated from a company that doesn’t hire security, even though it’s standard in their certain sector of Retail. Product is allowed to expire, because there simply isn’t enough hands to rotate product. If you get a good boss, you are damned lucky. Because a bad boss will ruin the business, put you in a foul mood, and generally be a hardass about what they will or won’t let you do to get the interaction completed.

Here’s something that’s actually happened. A District Manager came in. I thought we sprayed for those, but we must have skipped the Orkin Man’s appointment.

I was going through a lot of personal shit. My best friend was going through a lot of personal shit that necessitated my desire to send flowers to a minor’s funeral. Relation were in town, and I was too ashamed for them to see how tiny my apartment is. So, not a year and a half after shit I have to still deal with, I had to dodge family, buy funeral flowers, and then I got to go to work to be yelled at by addicts, dodge physical assault of vagrants, hope this is the day we don’t get robbed. And the District Manager said to me, “you need to smile more.”

She had a trainee with her. Or someone, I don’t know who. I’m looking at this fucking manager, thinking about all this shit that is none of her business that’s going on in my life. Her roadie got it. The look on my face made a very concerned look on hers. I have a feeling if she had her say, the conversation would have gone differently. But it wasn’t a conversation. This manager spent the whole time talking. It was a one-sided speechifying event.

Not once did anyone ask why I wasn’t smiling, if unhappiness like reads on the face like that, it has a good reason to be there. No one cared.

We work with an epileptic. I didn’t know it for the longest time. One day, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her doing what I could only describe as an amateur pirouette. My honest first thought was, “wow, I’ve never seen her that joyful before.” And went about my business. Not five seconds later, the gossip train rolled right into my station. Watching, no one said anything to her. Just talked about her. After she left for the day, I said as loud as I could, “You know, if I happen to come to work with no pants and tell you my father is Sergeant Pepper, PLEASE ask me if I’m okay. You have my permission.”

Oh, yeah, this happened in a pharmacy. Where a Doctorate holder, two to four kids in school to be nurses, and people who have worked pharmacy for years decided to gossip instead of ask if their comrade with a medical condition is okay. The whole thing made me fucking sick. If I had known she had a small (rather elegant looking, I’ll give her that) episode, I would have just said, “you okay?” and she could have decided to take a break or communicate she was fine. But at least someone would have fucking cared.

So Retail allows you no personal identity. The demands corporations make are increasingly dehumanizing, and it effects the attitudes of those in minor positions of authority, and that’s how you get that poor, miserable, broken and unfeeling person behind that counter that could care less if you got your Vess soda on sale or not.

Food for Thought.

Stress

I've heard people say that stress was a good motivator to keep working. Keep the money coming in.
Great work if you can get it.
But I'm talking to my Tax Bracket 1 and 2 sistren and brethren. The minimum wage, low wage, no wage job holders who keep Aleve's parent company profitable. Stress, for us plebs, is a constant.
You figure out an outlet, some way to let off steam, release tension. For writers, it's calling the Muse. Wrapping yourself in Inspiration Bacon and wait in the trap to be eaten.
But sometimes Life overachieves. Gives your already diabetic stress level a fourth helping of getting-fucked-over.
It's hard to write like that. For me. Whether it's money, or job, or just the day to day uncertainty of health, wellbeing, and safety, stress will siphon off my creative source. I can't hear the Muse in all the screaming panic static. I think we both cover our ears and say "fuck this" and check out. Into a movie. A book. Nervous cleaning. Meticulous sorting. Meme hunting. Bed cover hiding. Whatever you gotta do.
Fighting stress is hard. Being so very broke, and not even as broke as you were, which was pretty fucking broke. People playing with your lively hood, with no basic dignity of caring how hard they are going to fuck up your life if you didn't catch them while they thought they were being clever.
Still, I punish myself when I feel like I can't produce. When the weight of the world presses down so hard, it starts to feel like it actually is extracting oil, that beautiful place words come from is hard to reach. Not unlike climax under same circumstances.
Forcing it out hurts, makes it disingenuous.
So, all really one can do is pick an escape that is your Inspiration Bacon, so you can lure your writing Patronus from the ether.
Because in times of great stress, Time already feel lost.

Motivation

I don’t even know how to phrase this properly. I won’t get it right.

Writers think many things about themselves, but “common” is not one of them. Yet, there are so many. Maternity writers, Retirement writers, Memoir writers, This Book is a Result of my Fame in Another Career writers, Already Famous writers, Inherited Industry writers, and any combination of a wild mix of these.

The whole point of this blog is to demonstrate, I’m not any of those things. I missed the boat. Went Directly to Jail, Do Not Collect MFA. If I put down a Blame List, it would be very fucking long, and I wouldn’t be exempt, and I would have blame on all sides for those reasons, too.

But when the weight of the stories I’ve written, the ones rattling already done but not written, the ideas that just bubbled up, and the random snippets, quips, and judgments become too heavy from rejection letters, time spent, time spending itself on me, I question what keeps me coming back.

Because I don’t have anything to offer the world other than what I write, and nothing behind my name to show for it, why do I do it?

I’m an anomaly.

I hear it, I hear you thinking “yeah, you’re special, you delicate snowflake, you unique, glowing, shimmering diamond in the rough, what the fuck ever.”

I carried writing with me this whole time, but I don’t have anything professional to show for it. So, statistically, it’s likely that this blog is the only thing that will be seen of what I write.

I have no idea what anyone thinks of my writing, except people that already like me. There are no agents here. No estuaries of writers that are like me. There’s no fucking Dead Poets Society. Oh wait, I forgot, those were rich kids. Scratch that example. Where was I? Oh, only groups that dabble and hobby, or, this one is really great, a guild that you already have to be published to join. We actually have a best-selling book-to-movie novelist from here. But they moved about the time their work started getting published..from their magazine job…after college which came immediately after school. I don’t think we should claim them, personally. Move back next to the crack house, you want some of “hometown’s glory.” Otherwise, we’re not good enough, then we’re just not good enough.

So, a group of writers who take their craft painfully serious with no published experience of any kind. Oh, wait…scratch that, too. I published two short stories. For online publications. For “exposure.” I don’t even post the links for them anymore. No published experience.

What the fuck keeps me writing? Why?

Some days, I really buy that “for the love of the game” shit. And I do love the game. Finishing my first novel was what I imagined the Peace Corps meant when they said “the toughest job you will ever love.” And it was so fucking hard. As soon as I called it done, I wanted to do it again. Taking an idea into a fully realized section of reality, the crafting. Sometimes I think books are really just written for other writers to read anyway, because otherwise, I never would have caught that hat trick if I hadn’t just done it myself. Or put down the book in awe wondering how you got those common, feudal letters to make such profound ideas into concrete blocks. I could go on like Metatron. But I guess I said it. That’s why I do it.

So, this last week is a good example of the word “fraught.”

I work close to forty hours, and that’s a goddamned gift these days. I just got off my first paid vacation in six years. And it was a glorious example of what writing life could be like. Then my Monday came. They’re depressing anyway. I drive over twenty miles for a job that just crests above minimum wage, but not for long, if other business’ have their say, because there are no jobs in my area. I actually predict that in at least fifteen years, the town I occupy will be called officially “dead.” It’s mostly Baby Boomers and addicts. Old houses that are broken down occupied by people who have no money to fix them.

This Monday was actually a small blessing, since I didn’t have to close/open. Retail people know that misery. And with a variant drive time between fifteen and thirty minutes and insomnia, I’m lucky to sleep. My Tuesday was okay, a little hurried. My Wednesday was perilous. It was a holiday weekend, so everyone had to get shit before whatever they do. And we were less than half staff. When I got home, I was too sore and too tired to eat. My Thursday was more of the same, short less people this time, and at the end of the shift, I was dreaming of the Epsom salt bath I could have. But I was too tired to do it. When my Friday came, it was all I could do to remain upright. Even though I spent most of my Saturday sleeping, I still got up and wrote that night. My Sunday is my weekday to get shit done. Taxes are coming up, doctor appointments, car servicing, grocery shopping, cleaning. Right now my days are fixed, but not my shifts, they go up and down, open, close, and mid. I don’t have a routine, I work around work. On any given day, I have to decide, sleep or write? What’s more important to me, health or sanity? If I stay up all hours, I will eventually be sick. If I never write, I spiral.

So when I bitch about Time and Money, it comes from a place where I may never get to do the thing I love. No one will ever see the thing I love. It may happen that the thing I love just isn’t good enough. I have no way of knowing. I may never know.

This is something I think every artist should experience. Being the Emperor with no clothes. Are you brave enough to walk around with ideas in your head and call yourself clothed? Is the craft alone good enough for you? Everything else is transient. I have books on my shelves by writers whose book that made them famous was not their best book, their best book was much more brave. Must have been written for other writers. They may never see the bestseller list again. But I’ve got their autopsy on my shelf, because it cut me open, too. For a moment, they lived the dream. For all the good it did them.

When Publishing fell in love with Technology, handed you they keys of instant access to the whole world like a weapon, and demanded that you be satisfied, were you? Satisfied with Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, and Google+? Satisfied that anyone can put out anything on public platforms? Satisfied with the demands that all these facets, now created, are needed for a writer to be seen as a writer? Publishing says it must love you, forgives your appertaining rage, do you still rail that Publishing has become the villain? The calm, dishonorable, vile submission to the whims of the masses.

No one is looking for the next Stienbeck.

It’s your job to sell you now, you’re on your own.

Oh, by the way, why isn’t that book finished yet?

Social...

I debated about starting to blog again. I debate about lots of things. 
I have vitriol in my veins that seems to get more caustic by the day.
I write because I always have. No matter what, I always will. 
How is it that I only "see" writers who have time to write, have already broken past the tar sealed roof of corporate capitalist control, and landed, injured or not, into a nice desk chair, with time to write.
I refuse to believe that I'm the only person our there living inside writing everyday, but comes home physically exhausted from a low pay job. That I'm the only one that's one paycheck away from being homeless, but I think about Shakespeare analytically. I can't be the only worm trying to escape the apple.
No one told me which books to read, or how to start, or encouraged an education. In my demographic, college is a luxury, and you leave the fucking city to get it. 
I have found out all I have accumulated on my own, because no one was there to mentor. Not even the angst teenager way. No other writers escape the woodwork where I live. I don't live in a grocery desert. I live in a cultural desert, and the oasis that can be found is far, far away. In time, money, and achievement accumulated.

I can't be the only intellegent, poor, isolated writer...

Because now, finding other people like me, it's the last chance for sanctuary I have.