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{equality: no thanks} henry gray 2 – 1 = 1 To be equal is to be sedated. Prisoners are equal as much as any human thing could be. Citizens are not and never will be. And just so we’re clear: by citizens I mean humans. Humanoids. Animals. Beasts. I’ve never felt the need to emphasize this contemporary illusion of equality. Nobody is created in this light. Every thing born to this world is not granted a right to be equal. This was never, ever beneficial to the whole system, any system. It’s detrimental. More than that, this kind of simplicity is just not the way things are, or were meant to be. And more abstractly, it obfuscates the puzzle of existence, reducing it to a lie, not a story. I loathe those who fight for such a small thing as equality. This word is a veil which has hid so many more important ideals behind it. The liberty you believe you should have are not the choices you actually do have. Liberty is not to be given. Whatever you have, you have. This is not the responsibility of your government, your fellow humankind, nor is it the burden of your parents. It is yours, alone. Alone. Your choice. Topically it would seem appropriate that I would possess this perspective. I was born into a middle class family. I was given every opportunity that a child should. I have driven new cars. I have lived in nice dwellings. I have a beautiful wife. But, how small our vision is. For what I can guarantee is that, for every notion I posit, another sitting directly next to me in identical climes will think differently. It is precisely within this that axiom that the grind core of our existence reveals itself, saying: for all of my life I have been alone. And never once in all of these dark hallways did I ever wish to be equal to the others. In fact, in places where I struggled, stumbled and found the greatest isolation in my life, I knew the wrong thing was to crawl into the herd of humans, try to act normal and not as though something was misshapen inside me. What I know now is that my childhood was a disaster because I tried so hard to act like the middle of the pack, to fit in. I was a buffoon and a fraud and everybody knew it. And, that’s how they remember me. Equality is a dream somebody made-up just before that same person invented the idea that little kids should all get gold medals. Now, it appears, we’re not even hiding the fact that we’re full of shit and just lying to our kids, to ourselves. We just shrug our suburban shoulders and quip how that’s just the way things are, I guess… I never understood the drunk outbreak of emotion when, just this year, gay marriage was legalized in our state. Suddenly everybody decided to compromise and drop their integrity? Didn’t I once hear screams of discontent and: fuck the straight people? How the hell could a legal certificate validate your emotions when, for all these years you were ridiculed by the pedestrian mainstream and ostracized as an adolescent – so now you want to join their little, special club? Really, why would you want to be accepted into a brotherhood that didn’t want you in the beginning and still cringes when they think that the door was left open just enough for you, the thief, to steal in, in the middle of the night? I know that we all want to belong. And maybe we are all together outside this reality in some cosmic hand-holding. But here? When you’ve been slapped around all these years, day-to-day? Is it just because the fiduciary benefits of marriage are worth it? Is this compromise worthy because now you can visit your husband on his deathbed, because then you’ll be “family”? I don’t understand it. This equality thing has gotten to our heads. Somebody told me that they don’t make “men” anymore, they only make “dudes”. What really would have been impressive is if all the homosexuals fought long for these rights, then, when they were finally granted them, they all stood up and said: fuck you and your rights. We don’t want them. Now that would have been historic. Not this giving-in. That’s not historic. That’s boring. Maybe everybody has had it wrong: nobody was fighting for equality, they were fighting for the one thing they’d been fighting for all their lives – the one thing that was so large and in the middle of their selves that they got it confused with everything else because all the straight people did. Maybe their sexual preference was all that they were ever talking about. And if that’s the case: fine. As boring as that is to begin with, at least remain honest about your fight. At least fight for something that exists. I’m not picking on this one issue for any other reason other than the fact that it’s an analogy for all the rest of the subjects that have come before – the ones where integrity took a back seat. Race and gender mirror this great let-down, this tremendous drop in character. I have always known that my generation was a collective of pussies. Really, we are all soft, spoiled and, predictable. I have always known that mine will never be as tough as my father’s generation, or his father’s. What I see in my peer group is a bunch of pussies – those that gave-up fighting for the commonplace yawn. For the path of least confrontation. Or worse, lying about what they’re really fighting for – making it seem more lofty than it really is. If equality means being like everybody else, please God: don’t fucking make me. Please. |
