Why didn't I turn greaser?
Purely personal and pointless. I've been thinking about this "in written form", so might as well write it.

After a typical midlife thingamajig or burnout around age 35, I've been hardass for 30 years. You mind your business, I'll mind mine.

Before the burnout I was trying to be nice, good citizen, hardworking, socially sensitive, all that shit. When I retardedly realized that niceness led nowhere: no love, no respect, no money, no satisfaction ... I stopped.

Recently I wondered: How would my life have gone if I'd turned hardass at 20?

By that point I already understood that hardass boys got the girls. Specifically, the girls I wanted were exactly the semi-tough chicks who loyally stuck with hardasses. I didn't want the abstraction-soaked bohemian womonpersons who were "appropriate" for my "position in life". And they didn't want me either.

I also understood that college was not leading to a career. I liked working on cars and fixing radios. I ferociously hated the university version of math and physics and "Poims, Poits and Poit-ry" as the lit-ra-tyuah professor put it. I had enough raw IQ to get those things done, but it was pure hell, leading perilously close to suicide several times. "Appropriate" and "position in life" again.

Best of all, after a year in jail in 1969, I had jail skills and jail credentials.

Means, motive, opportunity. Why didn't I switch style from nerd to greaser? Why didn't I learn the fine points of fighting instead of practicing non-violence? Why didn't I apply my car skills to rigging 409s for speed instead of rigging VWs for economy?

All of those changes were available in terms of basic skills and talent. I might have ended up with a wife who was worth working for. More likely I would have been shot by rival hardasses.

Pointless speculation, with one exception. After placing the hardass-me on the timeline at 20, I can sort of tune it forward and examine the dissonance or consonance.

Resultant understanding: The burnout at 35 didn't create a new hardass personality; it melted off the squishy hippieshit plastic coating to expose a hardass that was always there.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Alternate universe, TMI

  ¶ 4:14 AM