A Mismatched Pair of Leather Gloves....
As I left my apartment for work, I grabbed a pair of gloves from the pile that sits on a rolling chair in my living room. While I drove, I noticed that I wore the left of one pair and and the right of another. On the right, dominant, masculine energy hand was the smooth leather, silk-lined glove that fits like a second skin. On the left, lesser dominant, feminine energy hand was the working woman's glove--loose fitting with a wool lining, leather palm and fake leopard upper.
When I thought about it again on the way home, I was not at all surprised how the mismatch was paired. I am not very good at compartmentalizing; of tucking different parts of my identity discreetly away while presenting the appropriate fraction of my face to whatever sector of the populace I am interacting with at the moment. I cannot do this with any more facility than I can write with my left hand or bowl with my right. But it is easier to remember the limitations of practical physical functions than to remember the ones that revolve around social necessity. My unconscious reminded me of this with a simple stylistic Freudian slip.
The slips tend to occur more frequently these days as I struggle mightly with my ambidextrous identity and lack of rigid boundaries between what should be private and what is appropriately public. Who I am from one minute to the next can, and oftentimes must, vary according to who I am with and what I am doing. There are conscious multiple personalities scattered about my social circles. One group of friends knows about the crocheting Suzy Homemaker as well as the chains on the bed of Mistress X. Some know the writer, but not the insecure working-class woman who hides her missives for fear of being discovered too smart or too dirty-minded. The people who knew me as the dedicated, brilliant theology student would accept the failed homemaker but would shun the sexual adveturer. And those who, in a non-professional capacity, met the dominatrix usually fixated on that one showy aspect, asked probing questions about my personal life that I answered freely and openly, yet still managed to fixate on their own domination fantasies and how I might fit them.
Whether I am the intellectual, the dominatrix, the writer, or the homemaker, each sector of my self buffets the projections and misconceptions of the group or individual I must interact with at any given moment. When I am found out, I attempt to reconcile these disparate selves with the claim that I am simply being true to myself and following my bliss. And then there are smiles and nods, judgments and distrust. Words like "eccentric" and "ecclectic" and "difficult" are mentioned or whispered. People walk away, shrink away, turn away.
So, it seems to me that in the eyes of both polite society and its more unsavory sectors, a diverse, mulit-faceted, sexually complex, and creative woman causes confusion and courts derision. It is of no consequence that I am comfortable because others are uncomfortable. I feel that to gain acceptance somewhere I must be psychologically uniform and predictable in order not to ruffle feathers, challenge the prevailing ethos, or confuse the confoundable.
It then becomes a matter not only of which identity fits like the second skin and which is merely there to do the job of protecting me from the elements, but also a matter of which identity is dextrous and which is sinister. This is tiresome to my consciousness and my spirit. It is far more than I can adequately handle at times. The slips happen in moments of personality fatigue--raising a hairy eyebrow here or flashing misplaced anger there; wearing a piece of wildly inappropriate clothing or using a 25-cent word when a 10-center would suffice; and, of course, the socially eccentric and fashion-forwardly ecclectic pair of mismatched gloves.
When I thought about it again on the way home, I was not at all surprised how the mismatch was paired. I am not very good at compartmentalizing; of tucking different parts of my identity discreetly away while presenting the appropriate fraction of my face to whatever sector of the populace I am interacting with at the moment. I cannot do this with any more facility than I can write with my left hand or bowl with my right. But it is easier to remember the limitations of practical physical functions than to remember the ones that revolve around social necessity. My unconscious reminded me of this with a simple stylistic Freudian slip.
The slips tend to occur more frequently these days as I struggle mightly with my ambidextrous identity and lack of rigid boundaries between what should be private and what is appropriately public. Who I am from one minute to the next can, and oftentimes must, vary according to who I am with and what I am doing. There are conscious multiple personalities scattered about my social circles. One group of friends knows about the crocheting Suzy Homemaker as well as the chains on the bed of Mistress X. Some know the writer, but not the insecure working-class woman who hides her missives for fear of being discovered too smart or too dirty-minded. The people who knew me as the dedicated, brilliant theology student would accept the failed homemaker but would shun the sexual adveturer. And those who, in a non-professional capacity, met the dominatrix usually fixated on that one showy aspect, asked probing questions about my personal life that I answered freely and openly, yet still managed to fixate on their own domination fantasies and how I might fit them.
Whether I am the intellectual, the dominatrix, the writer, or the homemaker, each sector of my self buffets the projections and misconceptions of the group or individual I must interact with at any given moment. When I am found out, I attempt to reconcile these disparate selves with the claim that I am simply being true to myself and following my bliss. And then there are smiles and nods, judgments and distrust. Words like "eccentric" and "ecclectic" and "difficult" are mentioned or whispered. People walk away, shrink away, turn away.
So, it seems to me that in the eyes of both polite society and its more unsavory sectors, a diverse, mulit-faceted, sexually complex, and creative woman causes confusion and courts derision. It is of no consequence that I am comfortable because others are uncomfortable. I feel that to gain acceptance somewhere I must be psychologically uniform and predictable in order not to ruffle feathers, challenge the prevailing ethos, or confuse the confoundable.
It then becomes a matter not only of which identity fits like the second skin and which is merely there to do the job of protecting me from the elements, but also a matter of which identity is dextrous and which is sinister. This is tiresome to my consciousness and my spirit. It is far more than I can adequately handle at times. The slips happen in moments of personality fatigue--raising a hairy eyebrow here or flashing misplaced anger there; wearing a piece of wildly inappropriate clothing or using a 25-cent word when a 10-center would suffice; and, of course, the socially eccentric and fashion-forwardly ecclectic pair of mismatched gloves.
posted by Tish Grier at 8:21 PM
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