![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
empathy malfunction
Jun. 8th, 2007 02:26 amI remember a talk, sitting with my dad, his hand loosely holding mine. Some old guy, duff suit, dandruff. His tone could have put rabid dogs to sleep. His posture said that he was trying to engage you, his eyes said you were the 50th person today he'd had to go through this with.
My eyes defocussed and became still, the background of the room, the stippled ceiling, all went gaussian as retinal persistence faded and detail washed away.
Then I came back to attention as both men, tangibly relieved led me into a room next door. I remember sitting on a plastic chair, like at the dentists. I remember looking at my dad and crinkling my brow. I remember him looking slightly sad, resigned.
Then, a staplegun to my temple, or so it felt, and it all went away.
Afterwards, lots of parties. I think. It seemed like parties. Blurs of my parents, other kids, smiles, laughter, jelly, icecream. Presents and toys. I don't remember what the parties were for, or the faces I saw there. I don't think I was meant to be kept still long enough to remember.
The majority of my memories start to kick in from about age 12 onwards. I never really questioned their absence before that, most people I knew by the time I started thinking about it had blurry or insubstantial memories of the time. It only began to raise in my consciousness as I realised the detail with which I could remember everything else after that.
I seemed to have some synaesthesia, my memories of interactions and emotion were coded with something that felt like colours. There wasn't a "red for rage", "blue for calm", but the same areas of my head tingled, I could differentiate between them. A kid I knew once got laughed at for saying how lipstick smelt like marzipan tasted. Not for the insight, because he'd clearly been toying with lipstick and was therefore queer.
My memory of how he looked like he felt as they kicked him feels like the colour of a carpet burn. A brown that burns, greys that cut like gravel. Surprise at how the tone doesn't seem to fit the texture, like banging your head into concrete.
Talking to kids my own age, we could laugh and joke and fight about what colour something was and how blue to you wasn't blue to me (or, "that's not blue, that's almost lilac, you fucking pooftah"), but conversations about the taste of emotions always wound up with the other kids looking at me funny. Worse, it always ended up in the same colour of emotion. Something between yoghurt and mould, faintly bitter and turning nasty. I learnt it quickly. I learnt to shut up.
So what happened between now and then?
I got through school just fine. Combination of my own smarts, dodging the bullies and blackmailing the teachers. They never worked it out.
I killed three men. For fun.
I had my heart broken five times. Four girls, one boy.
Kept and lost two dogs. Still have a cat. We don't get on, but he hasn't run away.
Never married, never had kids (that I know of).
Many, many, many relationships. I remember them all, very clearly.
I kick back and drink heavily every night, looking at the town from a penthouse apartment. Nothing in it. They keep trying to sell me services and upgrades and loan me flatscreens and game systems, sometimes whores. Never the same lackey twice, though, I know how to make them leave me alone quickly.
So I'm different. So I rock back into my chair, blasted and feel the heat of the emotions sparkling in the crowds below. I've got a little pair of binoculars, I don't need them to know how many people are in the fight or if the girl's being raped or loving it, I just get curious about what they look like sometimes. When I'm sober enough to see.
Sometimes I call the police when it kicks off. Sometimes I jerk off. Sometimes I just lie back, very still, the sound of the crowd like the sound of the doctor's voice and let the canvas of human emotion go gaussian, watch the background pattern soften and blur until I just get the sense of the couple, the party, the crowd, the riot.
Riots are good. Nothing like watching a good riot with a bottle of Jack, it's like fireworks made of feelings.
Sometimes I call the police.
Sometimes.
[empathy malfunction]
My eyes defocussed and became still, the background of the room, the stippled ceiling, all went gaussian as retinal persistence faded and detail washed away.
Then I came back to attention as both men, tangibly relieved led me into a room next door. I remember sitting on a plastic chair, like at the dentists. I remember looking at my dad and crinkling my brow. I remember him looking slightly sad, resigned.
Then, a staplegun to my temple, or so it felt, and it all went away.
Afterwards, lots of parties. I think. It seemed like parties. Blurs of my parents, other kids, smiles, laughter, jelly, icecream. Presents and toys. I don't remember what the parties were for, or the faces I saw there. I don't think I was meant to be kept still long enough to remember.
The majority of my memories start to kick in from about age 12 onwards. I never really questioned their absence before that, most people I knew by the time I started thinking about it had blurry or insubstantial memories of the time. It only began to raise in my consciousness as I realised the detail with which I could remember everything else after that.
I seemed to have some synaesthesia, my memories of interactions and emotion were coded with something that felt like colours. There wasn't a "red for rage", "blue for calm", but the same areas of my head tingled, I could differentiate between them. A kid I knew once got laughed at for saying how lipstick smelt like marzipan tasted. Not for the insight, because he'd clearly been toying with lipstick and was therefore queer.
My memory of how he looked like he felt as they kicked him feels like the colour of a carpet burn. A brown that burns, greys that cut like gravel. Surprise at how the tone doesn't seem to fit the texture, like banging your head into concrete.
Talking to kids my own age, we could laugh and joke and fight about what colour something was and how blue to you wasn't blue to me (or, "that's not blue, that's almost lilac, you fucking pooftah"), but conversations about the taste of emotions always wound up with the other kids looking at me funny. Worse, it always ended up in the same colour of emotion. Something between yoghurt and mould, faintly bitter and turning nasty. I learnt it quickly. I learnt to shut up.
So what happened between now and then?
I got through school just fine. Combination of my own smarts, dodging the bullies and blackmailing the teachers. They never worked it out.
I killed three men. For fun.
I had my heart broken five times. Four girls, one boy.
Kept and lost two dogs. Still have a cat. We don't get on, but he hasn't run away.
Never married, never had kids (that I know of).
Many, many, many relationships. I remember them all, very clearly.
I kick back and drink heavily every night, looking at the town from a penthouse apartment. Nothing in it. They keep trying to sell me services and upgrades and loan me flatscreens and game systems, sometimes whores. Never the same lackey twice, though, I know how to make them leave me alone quickly.
So I'm different. So I rock back into my chair, blasted and feel the heat of the emotions sparkling in the crowds below. I've got a little pair of binoculars, I don't need them to know how many people are in the fight or if the girl's being raped or loving it, I just get curious about what they look like sometimes. When I'm sober enough to see.
Sometimes I call the police when it kicks off. Sometimes I jerk off. Sometimes I just lie back, very still, the sound of the crowd like the sound of the doctor's voice and let the canvas of human emotion go gaussian, watch the background pattern soften and blur until I just get the sense of the couple, the party, the crowd, the riot.
Riots are good. Nothing like watching a good riot with a bottle of Jack, it's like fireworks made of feelings.
Sometimes I call the police.
Sometimes.
[empathy malfunction]
