In Which DuWayne Explains His Rage, Anger and Fear...Part One

I really don't have the time to do this now, but the way things are going, I never will. And I need to. The following series of posts (interspersed with other posts) will probably include a great deal of profanity, it will certainly include a great deal of information that will likely make some readers uncomfortable. I am going to talk about what many would perceive as rather dark aspects of human sexuality and even darker aspects of the human brain - namely my own. I am a very dark and lonely place

I want to be very clear to those who choose to read the following, that I make no apologies and carry no shame for who and what I have been. I am who and what I am, who I have been got me here. Quite honestly, given the opportunity to do it over, I am not certain that I would do a damned thing different. I have always done my best with the tools I have, though all too often those tools have failed me or my ability to use said tools has failed me. More...
Here I am, fucking naked again. More naked than before.

Of my first twenty-four hours out of my mother's womb, I slept just under ten. Before my eyes could even focus enough to see anything more inches from my face clearly, I needed to see it all. My mom hated it when I actually took a nap, because that would inevitably mean I was going to sleep even less that night. And when I woke up, I was always absolutely awake and ready to see more shit. My brother Jack taught me to read when I was two, at which point I began to incessantly devour books like they were food and water in a time of famine. I read Paddington Bear when I was four and was onto philosophy and theology by the time I was nine.

When I was nine, I learned about people. I learned how to read the people around me, not just what they expressed to me - I learned to read the truth of them. I had ideas. Always hammering me relentlessly, on top of each other, around each other and in and out of each other - it never fucking stopped, not even for a moment - but it slowed a little when I was explaining some bit or another. It made it better for that little while. When I was nine, I learned that when I was bouncing ideas off of the people around me, they didn't have the smallest clue what the fuck I was talking about.

When I was nine, I begged my god to take me home. I just wanted to die, rather than to go on without even the tiny abeyance that came when I was explaining it to someone else. But my god just wouldn't do it. So I retreated into a special world that I created for myself. A quiet place that was filled with the people I came to love so very much, the characters in my books. The times, places and realities that were not my own, but that I could borrow for a time. As a little boy I slipped away from this place and into a place of wonder, where I wasn't so very stupid and slow.

When I was ten, I took ownership of a very special sort of freedom. I no longer wanted to die, but nor was I afraid to die. This body wasn't the whole of me but I don't think that mattered even then. Had there been nothing more than this, the this I had had to that point would have been enough. But at the time I knew it wasn't. Not fearing death and being the singularly arrogant person that even then I was, I felt no real fear of any temporal authority. To be sure, I felt beholden to my own moral framework and the dogma of my Faith. But I was beholden to these, to the exclusion of all other authority.

I loved my god with every bit of my being. There's a very good reason for that, two really. For all of my study into the bible and theology, I created my god in the image of my idealism. And for all of my awe and wonder at the world around me, the world that my god had created, my observation of reality was also shaped to fit the reality of my god. Even though I dearly loved the people around me, everybody around me, People were an abstraction to me. Later, when I became more fully aware that People were people too, my god creation changed - But I digress. At that point in my life, the reality I perceived and inhabited was entirely my own creation.

The reason that the betrayal of my church (see a much earlier post) was such a traumatizing event for me was not so much the betrayal itself, it was the shattering of my own, perfect little reality. It became unglued, untenable - while I was desperate to hold on and keep it together. But I couldn't keep it together and everything was hammering me again. Because in the act of creating and maintaining, I burned enough of my energy, used enough of my brain to stem the tide of thoughts and ideas to a peacefully babbling brook - contrasting the non-stop flash flood that opened up on me, even as my reality collapsed.

Then I discovered cannabis and alcohol. And before long, sex.

I will continue this in another post, for the moment I just need to stop. But I would like to take this moment to explain something. In a previous post I mentioned balancing the sensory overload of music and drugs, with the additional sensory overload of sex. Someone very special to me, who I am coming to adore and care for very much, mentioned the contradiction of that, when I sent her the post before I actually put it up. She later wrote me and asked why I hadn't changed that (I told her I would). I couldn't answer at the time, because I really didn't grasp entirely why I didn't feel right changing that.

I think I understand it now. I meant exactly what I said, even though I really didn't consciously understand why. My life has generally been various states of sensory overload in a rather delicate balance, with one thing playing off another. Through this process, I have slowly learned to ride the balance of the tide, as it rushes through my head. The conscious and unconscious largely interchangeable. And after decades of running from it, I have finally come to embrace the rush. With the last vestiges of my creations falling to dust around me, I am finally riding the reality of me.

At thirty-two, I am both a very old man and a swaddling infant - but I am free. I am, finally, me. This is why I am afraid of going on more meds. Ultimately, I am just finally getting the opportunity to know me, with my filters stripped bare.

I know that it will be ok and I know that I need to do it. No matter how many ideas and sculptures of words flow through me, I am unable to do a fucking thing with them as it stands. And I fucking have things to do.

Wide Open: Why I Expose Myself

This is who and what I am, naked on the stage
Doing the best I can, to grow a little
Thrust out in the world, driven by my rage
Every time I turn, I see and feel others pain

I Am, DuWayne Brayton & Alec Steele 1993

The very first secular song I ever wrote, set the stage for who I shaped out to be. Over the years, the notion of exposure, standing naked has woven itself throughout my music, poetry and prose. As have the concepts of anger and pain, almost exclusively the pain of others. Which really gives lie to my openness, because from early on my path has been largely defined, guided by my pain.

I suspect that this focus on the pain of others, was a coping mechanism that allowed me to ignore my own, even convince myself that it didn't exist. Too, I suspect that it was founded in the idea that focusing on my own pain is selfish, contrary to my internalized interpretation of the biblical principal of selflessness. I have always had a pathological concern for others, often to my detriment. But it has also fueled my openness about who I am - good and bad.

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Because, as I mentioned, I am angry - quite often really fucking pissed. And ultimately, the target of my rage isn't small minded bigotry. It isn't assholes who think that for whatever reason, they're more important than everyone else and therefor above petty notions such as courtesy. It's not even psychotic fucknuts who get off on damaging their fellow humans. Honestly, I feel sad for people like that, though not a little angry at particular instances in which they express their pathos.

I rage at the inhumanity of human nature. I rage at it more, because being human, I fall prey to it myself at times. I am open, because I want to be accountable for who and what I am.

I am also open because one of the most profoundly formative experiences, was being cast out of what was supposed to be a safe, loving family. For years after, I lived on the outside, the fringes - the very periphery of society. And I never got back - may never really have been there. It's ok though, because I love the company. I adore my fellow outcasts and even better, they have loved me and accepted me for who and what I am - no strings attached, no expectations or molds to conform to. Queers and trannies, addicts and others who are broken wide open, just like me. We prop each other up and hold each other together.

The vulnerable.

I'm open, because I am and always have been, sick and fucking tired of the weakminded, weakspirited, who feel the need to prop themselves up by preying on the vulnerable. Even as I hurt for them, and hurt for them I do, as I hurt for anyone weaker than myself - I also feel the need to fight them. Because while I am vulnerable, there's vulnerable and there's vulnerable. I open myself up and make myself more vulnerable - I do it every day in a variety of contexts. And I goddamn well fucking dare weakspirited, pathetic fucking fools to prey on me. Because while I am vulnerable, I am anything but weak. Prey on me and I will break you, teach you what it is to be vulnerable and to make it infinitely worse, I will love you.

I'm open, because I love more than any others, the lost, broken vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, I'm alone. No matter how open I am, no one really knows me - least of all me (and there are those who know me better than me). But I am loved. I am accepted. I have family everyfuckingwhere I go. And I want others to know that no matter how alone they are, no matter how broken, no matter how vulnerable - they are not alone and that there is a great deal of strength in being broken and vulnerable.

I'm open because I'm a narcissistic exhibitionist. I'm a little boy seeking the approval of the adults around me, sadly discovering that most adults are just pretending.

But mostly I am open, because in my openness I discover who and what I am. And I am open because it helps me hide from the pain that largely defines me.

So here I am and here I will be, naked before you...