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Dafremen
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As a young man, I was as New Wave/Punk as was tolerable at a farm town high school. With my bright yellow hair and dayglo orange Vans, my way oversized blazer, jeans and "Assembled To Factory Specifications" sleeveless muscle shirt. (As one example), my double pierced left ear with the Ankh at the bottom, the safety pin through the top; I was certainly picked on, beat up, put-down and shit on more than most kids at my school. I can still hear the comments "Hey dickhead! Got batteries for them shoes?" "Where'd you get the jacket? From yer Dad's closet?" "Hey shit-fer-brains! Why don't you pin yer ears together so we don't have to look at yer face?"
My habit of dress had come from earlier experiences with society, with people and their cynical, hateful ways. Their tendency to look for emotional prey and then pounce, drawing blood from the self-esteems of the weaker in order to feed their own. I learned the hard way that many of my friends weren't friends at all. They were gossip mongers and predators who liked to smile and flatter their way into your confidence, then tear you apart when you're most vulnerable. I also learned that being alone was better than being hurt or controlled.
Unfortunately, I was not designed to be alone. I have an intense need to HELP people. It is an urge that I find uncontrollable at times, annoyingly so on occasion. Imagine meeting someone who would do practically anything to help you. Imagine how vulnerable and easy that type of person would be to use and abuse. I found myself being used and abused constantly before and so I had to devise a defense mechanism, I believe a lot of teenagers and pre-teens develop similar defense mechanisms. I learned that if I dressed against the norm, I could weed out the shallow people, the people that aren't willing to read between the lines and get to the person underneath. These are the folks that were most likely to use me and so by dressing to displease them, I kept them away. Yea, I got my ass kicked and picked on, but having never let those people into my life, it was a simple thing to keep from getting hurt by their words. In this way, only the folks that had real depth to them would look past what they THOUGHT I was, to who I was.
Unfortunately, a LOT of people judge by appearances and as I said, I need people, need to help and care for them. It was a very unhappy time for me except for one thing, the online world. Back then it was BBSs(Bulletin Board Systems) and local Chat systems called D-Dials. I met many people through there and was very happy...at first. Then I started to meet the people in person that I thought were my online friends, and I had many.(Like I said, I really do care for people, DEEPLY and I let that shine through in my online persona Roger The Fremen or RTF as they called me back then.) As I met the people, I found that I was running into the same problem, the same shallow, users and abusers. The same predators that I had learned to avoid, except here was the problem: I couldn't keep them away, because they couldn't see how I dressed...and in MANY cases, they dressed similarly. That's right, they were supposedly open-minded individuals who wanted people to look past the way that THEY appeared, to the real them underneath...or the real them that they PRESENTED.
I found this intriguing and apalling at the same time. First apalling, because it left me without a recourse, without a defense mechanism to avoid the hurt. It left me without a layer of camouflage for would-be friends to dig through to get at the real me. Secondly, I found it intriguing, because it presented a challenge and the opportunity for me to investigate into something, which I enjoy very much.
The challenge it presented was this: How to keep the fakeys and the people who judge by appearances away and still let good folks in? How to find the predators and the competive types with self esteem issues and closed minds without completely alienating those who WOULD try to see and appreciate the real person underneath? Finally, how to do it in a world where all that can be seen are your words? Thus was born Roger Dafremen.
It is a sad thing to report that right off the bat, most places could not accept Dafremen's way of defending himself. They demanded open, "sincere" (another word for societally acceptable or NORMalized) communication from the get go. They either had no time or no inclination to see beyond the constantly changing personality, the abrasiveness and the cruel sarcasm, to the contradictory constants (which were in fact, the actual personality.) In almost ALL cases, emails sent to me were answered out of character...in other words, I dropped the charade. The exceptions were emails sent to criticize or judge (right dax, rhinna?). These emails were answered in as arrogant, but polite a tone as possible to give the impression of Dafremen's being "real" in his email correspondence. I was booted off of one site, was overwhelmingly judged on another and...finally came to blather.
I would like, right off the bat to say this: Blather gets high marks for tolerance. If you only knew how many times I wanted to knock it off in the beginning, ESPECIALLY when it didn't look like anyone was getting it. Then some of you started to, you actually started to see through it all. You unhinged, you were one of the first..TJ...Db..noc..Aimee.
Some of you tolerated it, but didn't really see through it. Eventually of those of you who tolerated it, some of you just caved into the desire to judge and judged based on nothing but words, not the decency that was there for you to find, but the "bitch", the "asshole", the "hypocrite" that was being waved in front of you like a flag.(Spork...yummychuckle aka squint, stork daddy others...you know who you are.) I'm sorry about that, you have no idea how many times I've felt REALLY bad when I watched one of you fence sitters fall off on the other side. In each and every case, I had been hoping you would see through.
Some of you seemed to stay on the fence, and some of you actually slowly slid off of the rail and gave me the benefit of the doubt in spite of the contradictory words (Photophobe, cube, phil (By the way, phil..I'm still trying to figure out how to answer your email. I know what you meant at the end and I think so too. We're BOTH a coupla yak boxes huh?) even a little paste! and most recently, FrAnk)
Then there were those of you who just plain bought the act hook-line-and-sinker (S'Bob, dax, Rhinna...others..you know who you are.) At first, I was going to say something snide here about how you judge by appearances, but that wouldn't do anything to help and in fact it would just serve to make me feel bad later, maybe make you feel bad now and I honestly don't want that. What else did you have to go on? (One might ask.) You had ALL of my words. You had the BEAUTY of some of them. You had my letter to trazlo under suicide and my letter_to_the_human_race, you had my EMAIL address. You had my poetry and my love of life to let you know that something wasn't quite right about what you were seeing. I suspect that, in a way, we both lost out. I don't think you're shallow Bob..I think you're suspicious because you're so damned sensitive (Hmm sounds familiar.) and your suspicious nature is a defense mechanism. I think you're critical because you're loyal to blather and you see yourself defending it loyally. I don't think you're a bitch Rhinna, I think you're a sweet person who probably has her own crosses to bear and who is bearing them the best she can. I don't think you're an asshole Spork, dax, I think you're creative and strong, I also think you're capable of better judgement, but that is really, as I have said, BOTH of our losses. MY loss too. I guess that's the price one pays for these sorts of defenses after all. It's the price I paid for protection when I walked down the school halls in my outlandish clothes and the price that I pay for the defense that Dafremen has provided me. That price can be counted in the number of decent people who threw me away just like the worthless, shallow ones did. Even decent people tend to judge by appearances at times. Life is short and who has the time for games? But self-esteem is in short supply and who has the extra to spare on head and heart games? Not me, that's for sure. I spent many years reconstructing my ego and my self-esteem after a brutal childhood (see also: PIECE_OF_WORK ). I value mine too much to start letting just ANYONE in to mess with it. Ya know what though? I think the scar tissue around my heart has healed, and strong too. I think it's just numb enough to take a chance, just strong enough to fend off predators and so here I am, ending this experiment. I'm still Roger Dafremen, but I'm the guy behind the mask now and you're just going to have to take my word for that, or walk away. That's really up to you, and I suppose I couldn't blame any of you either way. For those of you that DO decide you'd like to meet_roger_dafremen (and those of you that already have) know this: I'm here to help you, and care for you and I'll do that with all of my heart if you like. That's what I do, THAT's who I am and I'm sorry it took so long for me to get up the nerve to show you that.
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