"What is your name?"
I tell him my name.
"And to which phyle do you belong?"
I have no tribe, I say.
Immediately,
this guy's face goes all bundled up, big deep lines erupt down his
pockmarked, greasey skin, down cheeks from near his long, hawkish nose
and stretching down below his mouth until they meet his sextupled jowels. His
lifeless beady eyes are going squinty, and his fat face is mottling
to a kind of red.
His face is saying things like, "I'm trying not
to throw up right now, but there's a talking pile of diarheal foecal
matter in front of me."
He won't look me in the eyes, so I stare him down while I smile apologetically, the way soulless car salesmen are trained to.
He
attempts to say something, and from the high pitch of his voice, I
infer that it is a base inquiry, requesting that I clarify upon my
former statement.
You get used to this. People won't look at you.
Being in your presence reminds them of aborted fetuses, conjoined
twins, hermaphrodites, burn victims, lepers, child molesters, and
rapists. It reminds them of ghouls eating the flesh of the dead,
faeries that steal their children, trolls that live under bridges.
Asking them to really look at or listen to you, that's just unreasonable, isn't it?
"I
have no tribe," I repeat, offering no further explanation. Invariably,
an explanation only makes it worse. Make it gruesome, and they hate
you. Make it tame and they hate you more, because you're a liar. It
doesn't matter if it's true.
Asking them to believe you, it's like asking them to take the Devil at his word.
Even
if you're normal, these people's handlers don't care about your name.
Most of them don't care what color you are. Not really, anyway. They
only care about how much money you make because they want to make sure
they're paid.
Tell them you don't have a tribe, these people don't
know what to do with you. They assume you sleep in an alley, that you
are incapable of controlling nonstop urges to rape, murder, and steal. They assume you shoot methamphetamines and have tuberculosis.
But
you get used to it. After awhile, it's just second nature to lie about
it when you can. Find some phyle that doesn't really have any
prescriptions or mores, and represent as if you were.
Sometimes,
though, you just have to prey upon those who have no choice but to
serve you. It's their duty, it's the way of their tribe. In X instance,
they do Y, regardless of Z.
It's
times like these you take the
time to give praise to beaurocracies and say a prayer to the ruthless
capitalist ventures that make your existence survivable. To these
machinistic societies, you are just a number in a ledger, a
name on a
list. The
Mobb is held at bay, and monsters are saved from burning at
the stake, sterilization, slave labour, and purification surgeries
that
focus on the removal of certain portions of your frontal lobe.
These
indiscriminate, equal opportunity abusers are a global network of
extended family, ready to take you to court over unpaid rent and phone
bills, ready to loan you money on incredulous interest. Ready to turn
you in, but only for a reward from Crimestoppers. So anxious to sell
their dream to you, so eager to forget about you once you've bought it.
They are the alocoholic fathers we always wished we had.