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Long ago in a galaxy far, far away I became known as Magick. It is a time I remember fondly, although I often have a hard time reconciling who I am now with who I was then. It was what people called me from 1994-1998, during an era of my life filled with tremendous change and upheaval. Mostly I was known as this guy everyone seemed to love, with the exception of those who thought I was a womanizing creep because of my tendency to walk around with a woman on either arm. It was all for dramatic effect, and Magick enjoyed his dramatic impact, especially when it came down to sitting with those who thought he was a womanizing creep and completely changing their perspective.

I became known as The Dead Guy in 1998, or at least that was when people first started calling me that. It started with a young woman named Tammy who looked up to me and expended a great deal of effort trying to get me to notice her. By the time she saved my life it was too late for me to help her escape the hand fate had dealt her, and so I took the name she gave me as a way of remembering all that she did for me.

That was a long time ago. The kids I work with these days call me "Old School" and tell me I have to get with the times, learn the new music and the new lingo. And then they laugh and ask me to sing them some old school songs, and I usually do. It is all for the smile and the laugh, for I am quite serious in what I teach behind the veil of the court jester.

I needed to recreate myself. These days no one calls me The Dead Guy, even after I tell them my stories. It seems like someone I used to be. As I read back over the writings of TheDeadGuy here on E2 I tend to think of him as someone else, someone other than who I am today. When I write under this name I often find myself saying, "What would TheDeadGuy say here?" and then have to remind myself.

My new incarnation will not be truly complete until several things happen, one of which is the changing of my user name here. I can no longer write under this name. This will be the last post of TheDeadGuy.


This has been a difficult week in the life of The Doctor. I have reached a critical crossroads and absolutely nothing is clear. The tests become harder as I move forward. The road of trials becomes more intense and I have come to question my intent and my purpose in matters before the court. My directive is always "Give everything you can to everyone you know" and when it comes to those who have a profound impact on my heart and soul what I am able to give increases. This inevitably leads to a critical crossroads when that impact reaches the point where I find myself falling in love with a person. This is the source of what is known as the three queens in my mythology. It is the way I understand how my heart works and how it interacts with my mission in life.

Those people in my life, those women who enter my life and change it completely by the depth of emotion they bring out in me, are known as Queens of Diamonds. There have only ever been three since my death experience in 1994. There were others before that, but I operated on a different level in those days and never understood what I was doing or experiencing. Magick had a Queen of Diamonds. The Dead Guy had a Queen of Diamonds. And now The Doctor has a Queen of Diamonds, which was what prompted the profound change that created a new incarnation of who I am. In some ways it seems absurd, or even a matter of overthinking, but it is how I control my perception of things. A Queen of Diamonds is a muse. She inspires me, she changes me, she draws me out of myself and divines me to become more than who I was. They also frustrate the living fuck out of me. I have to evolve in order to understand them and to survive them.

It often seems a curious thing to me. I have known and loved some very incredible women in my time. I married one of them, and they all know that I carry something akin to a curse. I'll always end up chasing a Diamond. As I was once told, "You give me more than any man ever has or ever will, but you can't give me all of you." Reminders of that drove me into the life of a mad monk, never letting anyone get too close while convincing myself there would never be another Queen of Diamonds in this lifetime.

Denial is a funny thing. You imagine you can find peace by going through a ritualised schedule, doing what you must and distracting yourself with simple pleasures. And then you make a mistake, in so far as this falsified peace is concerned. You crack your own walls unintentionally and the very thing you tried to deny makes its way through those cracks.

Tina was TheDeadGuy's Diamond, and in the end she told him things that restored his own faith, even as she told him the reason she'd never so much as touched him was that she was afraid he'd turn out not to be real. The Doctor's Diamond, unobtainable and distant, as Diamonds always are, grows more distant with each passing day.

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I fell in love with Tina. Every time I went to her bar it was harder to look at her and know she was going home to someone else. And yet I kept going. I knew there was a reason for all the pain. I would ache when I looked into her eyes and tell her she needed to smile more often. I would go home and get drunk, cursing the married man who held her as his mistress and treated her like shit. And a few days later I would collect myself and return to her bar with a smile on my face and do what I could to inspire her to believe in herself. And in the end I had to be satisfied with succeeding in that mission, all while my heart and body ached to be closer to her.

It might be the greatest test any man could be asked to undertake. It is my way, to do what I can to help inspire and bring a measure of happiness to the lives of others. A Diamond is always broken, suffering through a life that brings her unhappiness and I am drawn to her. I bring her inspiration and a measure of happiness, becoming an oasis of sorts, helping her to reason and believe in herself enough to find greater happiness, and along the way it happens. I fall completely in love with her, a result of giving everything I can possibly give, more than I can give any other soul, and I lose control of myself as a result. My own emotions get the better of me and I have to put on a brave face in order to complete my sworn purpose, to bring a smile to her face and inspiration to her life without asking anything in return.

"Anything in return" is inevitable. It is human nature to anticipate that anyone doing something for you will expect something in return. That is the way it has always worked. For me it is particularly painful because I can't avoid wanting. It isn't necessarily in return, but that is how it is perceived.

I get flashes. Images that flash wildly before my eyes as I walk down corridors and across parking lots. They simply will not leave me alone. They are images of what it would be like if my beloved stopped being distant and let me in. I can see so clearly stolen kisses, conversations over coffee, passionate embraces... but these things mean nothing because she is so distant and the images just won't stop.

Inside of me are monsters and ghosts. Every positive energy seems to require its equal in negative energy. There are hungry ghosts and they have their wants, their unanswered questions and their pain. And they have their passions. They most definitely have their passions. I've come to accept that unconditional love is possible but that it brings about an enormity of passion and desire that cannot be quenched. The pain of that unresolved passion must somehow be offset. It is the kind of pain that drives one over the edge, to know what one must do, what one is capable of doing while knowing that the flashes and the dreams are all that will ever come.

Walking away is not possible and neither is surrender. Either is an admission that the original promise was not true and shows a person who has been let down by promises and vows that you are nothing more than another part of that disappointment. You have committed yourself to what you offered and what you gave to she who inspired you to do so in the first place. It comes full circle because you cannot withdraw without invalidating yourself. The Diamond always unintentionally corners you and a cornered animal is never happy.

The key is to know it is unintentional. You cornered yourself because you gave everything you had inside of you for her, not because she asked for it but because she inspired you to give it. A muse is a curious creature. Those who inspire others have no idea why they inspire them and never intend to inspire them. They just do. They just are. And they will unintentionally drive you mad because they don't understand why they are driving you mad in the first place. They are so innocent they make you sick.

And yet this taste, this sense of untouchable possibility, it stays with you. The epic love, the kind of shit poets ramble on about, this unrequited ecstasy, it drives me. It is the only thing that drives me, because I have tasted it and never devoured it. I descend like a fury into madness trying to hold onto just that taste of it and it never matters how many times I am offered body, heart and soul from a woman who is not a Diamond, I long for it. Even when I convince myself that I will never experience it again, it calls to me, from unexpected places and unforseen circumstances.

No Diamond is the same. Magick's Diamond came from the unresolved past. TheDeadGuy's Diamond came out of dreams born of death. The Doctor created his own Diamond without realizing what he was doing. It was supposed to be another random action of the Mad Monk, cheering up someone who was going through rough waters in their life. And then he lost control. Whether losing control was a failure or a inevitable success is a matter for the winds of time to decide.


TheDeadGuy's journey is over. My journey is not. I cannot survive it without reinventing myself and so I will. TheDeadGuy is dead. Long live TheDeadGuy.

Good night and God bless. See you on the other side. I love you all.

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