I am the dark half of someone who is respected elsewhere, someone who gives me the truly horrid stuff to write, stuff that attracts downvotes like horseshit attracts flies. Someone who doesn't have the balls to stand up and be counted, some whining, sniveling little coward.
I am the inferior/superior enigma of a personality, with the arrogance of a whipper-snapper and the servility of a pound dog. I am made of the stuff found at the bottom of base desires, the wispy unrealities of a dreamer, the vile instincts that ooze out from under the rock of civilization.
I don't like myself but I am perversely proud of me; I am a survivor. I am the one who picks both of us up and says, "Fuck them all" whenever
rejection looms on the horizon. It is my job to keep us going, to
act as if everything is normal, nothing is wrong.
I'll tell you a story, a story about what my other half once did and what I did to save his ass.
A long time ago he had a little house, had just moved in, as a matter of fact. Some of his buddies came over one night with a case of beer and they were all sitting around in the kitchen, getting drunk.
It doesn't matter what led up to it, but eventually these idiots went out in the back yard with a flashlight and several cans of spray enamel and painted pictures on the back wall of the house. Being well-oiled, they thought it was great art.
The next morning, after his buddies had left, the resident idiot was out in the back inspecting the handiwork of the previous evening. His next-door neighbors, a stuffy retired couple, came to the fence and asked "who in the world smeared that horrible stuff on your house and how are you ever going to get it off?"
I answered. I told them that I had done it. Because I liked art. I particularly liked the one in red and yellow, the free-form Mickey Mouse. We turned to point at it. When we turned back to address the neighbors they had quietly walked away.
See what I mean? I saved his ass. He'd never have had the guts to say something like that himself.