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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  Perpetual Masquerade  ]                  [  By The GNN  ]


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                            PERPETUAL MASQUERADE
                             by THE GNN/DCS/uXu


    PLEASE NOTE: Every similarity to any actual person herein is purely
    coincidental and only a result of the author's vivid imagination.


It began as a way to get noticed for being someone - that is, Someone, not
just one of countless faceless look-alikes in the crowd. And when I did my
thing, people surely saw me. Perhaps they did not like what they saw, some
probably hated me, but at least they disliked Me for doing My thing. People
who saw me did not think "there is yet another guy who do what we do, and
think what we think, and is like we are" but "there is someone who is not
like us". I did not care if they came to that fact out of antipathy, as I
was only after the brute fact itself. I did not want to be like everyone
else - I wanted to be a concrete Other, not merely an abstract Anyone.
   It was indeed a role I was playing. But I did played it fairly well,
because otherwise it would not have worked. In my case, I made my role
convincing by never backing off; no matter what I was told to be, no matter
what people accused me of, I never backed off. Never ever! On the contrary,
every word of aversion just made be go up in my provocative role even more.
My simple aim was that when they left me, they would be upset out of one
reason or the other. How they became upset did not matter to me. What
mattered was that their trivial world of being like everyone else would have
been rocked - by me. Me! Someone different! Perhaps they would not even
forget me, but years later recall our conversation or (in extreme cases) my
appearance. "I met this guy briefly", maybe they would say, "we spoke for a
couple of minutes, he was so weird/angry/strange/bizarre...". (Yes, I
daydreamed about such future predictions.)
   I did not need to care what they thought about me, because I was vaguely
aware that I was merely acting - so, in a sense, it was not really me that
people disliked, but my act. Do you find this paradoxical: I played to be
Someone, and I appreciated being seen, even though it was not really me they
saw? It is strange, I know. I have no explanation.
   It was not always easy. People who knew me well (at least better that the
anonymous faces all around me) often reminded me that I was merely acting.
They did not do so by asking me to stop, because they could not do that;
they could not be sure if I was serious or not. I did not flex between two
different selves; I was a mixture of several. But people who are close to
you cannot help notice if you act out of the ordinary. After all, they spend
a considerable lot of time with you, and observe your every move. And if
something is dubious with the moves, they notice. They need not be as close
to you as your parents or siblings, shallow friendship is enough. But I had
a method of avoiding being confronted in any larger degree, one that I have
come to understand is quite common: whenever I had acted in accordance with
my provocative role, and confronted by someone close asking me if I was
"really serious", if I "really meant what I said and did", I put on an
annoyed look (as if the question was obviously ridiculous) and mumbled (as
if it had been so obvious that I did not need to waste time articulating it
clearly): "I'm kidding...". I wonder why no one ever saw right through that
half-witted excuse, as no one ever (ever!) laughed at those statements I
afterwards claimed to be some kind of "humour". Was not that some kind of
proof that I was lying? Well, perhaps they saw through me, but did not know
how to dress their doubts in words. After all, they were not experienced in
life or skilled in how certain persons work. They were like me, young and
confused, on the brink to adulthood.
   Once, just once, one person confronted me face to face and stubbornly
demanded to know if I was playing a role. It was indeed a high risk stake,
because a simple denial from my side would be all that it would take for him
to lose. Of course, I denied - and he lost. Not only that, I also added
insults to his failure. I claimed that he was trying to force me "to become
like everyone else" instead of "respecting me for who I was". If you think
about it, you understand why I had too add those things. If I had not, it
would have been an indication of that he might have been right. And that
could not have happened - because the character was supposed to be Me, not
just a part of me. I was very upset after this incident. Not because I
feared losing by disguise, but because someone-who-was-a-nobody dared to
open his mouth and question me. How could that true Anyone imagine that he
was able to tell others who they "really were"? He could not know. It could
have been the case that I was not acting. It could have been the case! He
could not know! (I argued like convicted criminals often do. Have you not
noticed that most criminals always think that they have been unjustly
judged, even though they in fact are guilty to their wrongdoing? It is not
because they deny their guilt, but because they out of the painful shame of
having been caught in the act protect their innocence by suddenly increasing
the threshold of what is to be counted as "knowledge". They are sentenced
because the court have come to know that they did what they in fact did,
based on indices and proofs in combination. But the criminal always denies
that they "really" know what happened - because there is always a
possibility that it could have been in some other way! "The indices and
proofs are not enough! They could have been made up!" There is always a
possibility (how absurdly remote it might be). And this is all that is
needed for a criminal to think that he has been unjustly treated, or for me
concluding that accusations against my created persona were not based upon
any kind of appropriate observations.)
   All my relations with the opposite sex have been complete fiascos. As I
have always acted when encountering other people, only people with similar
role playing games in their repertoire have been attracted to me. Why that
is so I do not really know; perhaps those who do not fall back on roles find
me artificial in my explicit behaviour, while those who do see a kind of
soul mate. But as I, and my various lovers, only have had our roles to put
forward to each other, we have never been able to talk to each other
directly. There has always been a filter midway. Even worse, our roles
became even more hard-wired in a close relation. Since it was in fact what
we had been attracted by, we both cultivated them even more to not lose each
other. How frustrating is it not to not be able to fully reach someone you
care about! It is so twisted: to be able to reach someone you cannot play a
role; but if you put the role away, you become a total stranger, and will
not reach the other person anyway, because that individual only know you as
the act you have shown to them. This frustration has always been the reason
why I have never been able to stick to a relation for any longer period of
time. Therefore, I have continuously been alone, even though I have not
lacked company. Nobody can come to know my "real me" - because I possess no
such thing. I only have my masque; and if I remove it, there is nothing
behind.
   At the confusing time in life when humans go through the purgatory to
become persons, identities they can refer to as being "themselves", I tried
to escape the pain by taking a short cut. I am old now, my personification
is completely out of control. My thoughts are constantly being moulded by
something alien, I talk and act automatically. I want to quit, I tell you! I
want to have a self I truly can call mine. But I am stuck. And it troubles
me that I am stuck in something that I did not want to become: a nobody.


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