Author: John Knych

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The Imp of the Perverse

poe headimp

Yesterday I re-read Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Imp of the Perverse,  and was still thinking about it an hour later while masturbating with my own feces.

Self-destructive behavior and self-destructive thoughts are an interesting field of study. In Eddie Poe-Poe’s short story he begins with an essay describing this principle of perverseness: “…an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something…a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt…through its promptings we act, for the reason we should not.”

In other words, we do the thing because a voice in our head tells us not to do the thing. Poe-Poe ends his story with the narrator admitting to the reader that he is a murderer who committed his crime without being suspected or punished. One fine day, whilst the murderer is “sauntering along the streets…murmuring, ‘I am safe – I am safe- yes – if I be not fool enough to make an open confession!’ he is stricken by the Imp of the Perverse and makes an open confession. He ends up condemned in prison wearing fetters.

But throughout this essay and story I couldn’t help but wonder: “Can we ever fathom all of the reasons for our actions? How much should we hold ourselves accountable for knowing the reasons behind what we do? Do we truly understand the “self” behind “self-destructive” behavior?” And concerning the battle going on in our heads “Do this, don’t do that.”…who are we to pick sides?

It’s all very confusing when you go down the rabbit hole…even Poe Poe says, “Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements.” Yet here he is analyzing the tendency.

What if the narrator of the story had encountered a beautiful, intelligent, convincing Christian woman two months prior to his confession. What if she had preached the merits of confessing your sins. Maybe the narrator forgot about this woman, even though she still managed to alter an aspect of his subconscious. So it wasn’t the imp of the perverse telling him to do the wrong thing, but the angel of Christian morality telling him to do the right thing.

I felt hesitation typing the sentence, “masturbating with my own feces,” but I went along and did it. Similarly, I feel some apprehension and guilt concerning the unhealthy, sleepless lifestyle I’m leading in order to publish stories, continue with blog posts, novel, job, etc….but I’m destroying myself/health because I value a different aspect of myself: clarifying and simplifying my writing voice…working a job that allows me to keep living in NYC…providing my growing audience with posts to read…achieving my goal of supporting myself through writing.

We’re all destroyed in the end. Some of us do things in our lives which cause us to expire faster. From a narrow and limited perspective it may seem like the man swimming with sting rays is engaged in “self-destructive” behavior (Steven Irwin) but perhaps he values adventures with dangerous animals over personal safety. From a narrow and limited perspective is may seem like holding your breath for 17 minutes is “self-destructive” behavior (David Blaine) but perhaps you value testing the limits of endurance or proving skeptics wrong over physical comfort.

What makes all of this problematic and convoluted is the fact that we have desires and often these desires are subconscious or conflicting. Pussy, money, weed, love, comfort, attention, solitude. What do you want? In our fumblings and gropings to get these things we often engage in (what looks like) stupid, self-destructive behavior. We often have a voice in our head which shouts, “Don’t do that! It’s wrong!” but a quiet, subtle, more insinuating voice…with hidden, stronger motives…overrides and we do it.

Edgar Allan Poe was a controversial, combative, raging alcoholic who wrote gruesome, violent stories. I think an insight into his aberrant behavior and “terrible” stories is the last paragraph of The Imp of the Perverse:

“But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! Tomorrow I shall be fetterless-but where?”

The deep and obsessive understanding that many artists have of the annihilation we all face leads them to act “crazy, self-destructive, wild, hurtful, outrageous, etc. etc.”  Look at me! My paintings! My music! My words! I’m here! I’m here! Quick! Before I’m dead! Then their addictions or wild tendencies find free reign in the knowledge of the encroaching blackness.

My alcoholic grandfather used to watch joggers and say, “Poor bastard doesn’t think he’s gonna die.” This sort of thinking often leads to “I’m gonna do, think, or drink what I want…cause it’s all ashes and dust in the end.”

We shouldn’t give in to nihilism, though. I think the best we can do in order to avoid the imp is figure out what we really want…clarify it, repeat it, work towards it. And until then….you gotta just keep shitting in your hand and jacking off.

Have a nice day.

 

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Lost Innocence and Childhood: Stop Fantasizing Against the Inevitable and the Irrevocable

girl with cigboy with gun

Last night a regular at my bar (“The Devil”…see People at my Job) pulled me aside and shoved his stinky-booze-breath in my face,

“Uh…dude…you should check out the bathroom…big problem.”

I opened the door and discovered shit smeared on the wall and shit-covered toilet paper all over the floor. I put on gloves, got the mop bucket, held my breath, and cleaned up the mess. Then I watched the security camera.

Two boys were the culprits. But wait a second…they were still sitting “with” their family at the restaurant! (Separate table though: telling.) I thirsted for some type of revenge, but I’m a manager and wasn’t about to make a scene, so my tactics for releasing rage were limited. Perhaps I should let the whole thing go? My nostrils were still quivering from the stench. Nay.

I approached the low table of adults and half-kneeled next to them (same plane of eye-contact, manager technique, disarming) and said,
“Are your sons feeling alright? Are they sick?” The parents and grandmother looked angry and confused.
“No. Why?”
“Well, fifteen minutes ago they went into the bathroom and smeared their shit on the wall and left shit-covered toilet paper on the floor.”
“Nooo, not them.”
“I watched the camera. It was them.” They paused and looked at each other.
“Ahhhhh, oh, yes, ____ wasn’t feeling well, we’re sorry.” They weren’t sorry. I had observed them since they sat down. They had sent food back twice and complained unnecessarily to the server. They were wretched, despicable human beings. The grandmother’s hideous face was lined with wrinkles of bitterness. The father had beady eyes, a hitler mustache, a pointy chin, and struck me as a prick. The mother was obese with sagging cheeks, bleary eyes, and wispy hair. The mother blurted:
“And?” The father added,
“What do you want?”
“Tell your sons that it’s inappropriate to smear their shit on the walls of a public bathroom.” The father nonchalantly leaned to the side,
“_____ and _____! Tell the waiter you’re sorry.” The boys hadn’t been listening.
“We’re sorry Mr.!” I walked away. Nothing had been accomplished.

Twenty minutes later I was working upstairs when I received a text message from a bartender:

“Customer wants to talk to you.” I went downstairs and saw the mother leaning against the bar.
“How dare you,” she said. “Never have I gone to a restaurant and had a waiter complain about me and my family. My son has special needs. He’s not stupid. He’s smart. But there wasn’t any toilet paper left and he didn’t know what to do. I’m writing a bad review as soon as I get home. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Sometimes, in life, I wish I was more of an asshole. Because if I was…I’d have been prepared for such an attack. I’d have lashed out with my opinions. I’d have been quick to the gun. But I’m not. Despite being socially pounded in the ass by NYC and restaurant environments, I look for the best in people. So I stood there, in disbelief, wondering if this woman was being serious at first, then letting her rant because what would fighting against her have accomplished? I knew there had been two full rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom in which her son/s had spread their feces, yet I let her shout, nod in satisfaction, and leave.

Twenty minutes later I found a server crying in a stairwell.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “Transfer all of my tables to Caitlyn.”
“Why? What happened”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I’m leaving.”
“Was it that table with the two, shitting-boys?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No.” She doesn’t know that I had a crush on her when she was hired, but that it faded away due to time, the seriousness which we take our jobs, her comments implying being devoutly religious, and the social barrier of manager vs. server. Again, if I was an asshole I’d probably have ignored this barrier. But I wouldn’t put a woman in the pressured, difficult place of choosing between job/livelihood and pleasing a man above her. (How many millions of women are put in this kind of wretched situation everyday?)  Besides, she had developed a crush for a bartender. That’s why she was crying. He was drinking after his shift at the bar and hitting on her too aggressively. There was a regular there who liked her, too, and was also hitting on her. Then there was a drunken, idiot saying inappropriate things about her yoga pants. The three guys were all sitting in a row next to one another and chuckling. (I learned all of these details later.) She just wanted to go home.

An hour later the only barback/busboy arrived at the restaurant. He hadn’t shown up for work the past two days and wasn’t responding to phone calls or texts. The police showed up, though, looking for him. Long story short, his girlfriend had put a restraining order against him. She had stabbed his ball sack with a box-cutter (did I want to see it? No.) He had slashed her ear.  He had spent a night in jail. Here’s the paperwork. He’ll be in for work tomorrow.

At 1:45am I’m sitting in the ferry terminal waiting for the boat. I’m thinking how my life is a ceaseless grind, and yet there’s no way that my perspective is unique. Other people must be going through this sort of thing too. Other people must be coping with daily depressions.

But am I paying for wrong things that I did in my past, or am I being somehow prepared for obstacles in the future? That’s the problem with justice: you never know which direction it’s coming from. Are you being punished for what you’ve done? Or bombarded by senseless pain and confusion so you’ll be ready for what will arrive?

You ever hear someone say “I wish I was a little kid again”? Ever watch a movie or listen to a song that laments lost innocence and lost childhood? I couldn’t help but fall into the fantasy as I sat there in the terminal. What happened to my joyful innocence? How did I end up here?

But after indulging my childhood memories….here’s what I realized/was reminded of while sitting there: the problem, the ridiculousness of such a desire…when you’re a kid, you’re a leech. Between the ages of 0-20 (depending on your family environment) you’ve been provided for, allowed to play, given a fantasy world. Of course the memories are often rosy and nice when you could lounge with stuffed animals, draw in coloring books, and play games without worrying about the implications and support of such a lifestyle. You could smear your shit in a public bathroom without consequences. But that’s not reality anymore…that’s not life.

I think the sign of a mature mind is how fast you move on from the pettiness and problems of the daily grind. I’m not very good at it, but I’m getting better. Because while sitting there in the terminal and telling myself to stop fantasizing, I began to look around. Already the stress of the previous shift was melting away and the events that occurred seemed funny. I was looking forward to going home.

 

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The Fosbury Flop (a lesson for Artists and Entrepreneurs)

Meet Dick Fosbury…1968 gold medalist in the high jump:

dick-fosbury-1

While growing up, Dick Fosbury was a mediocre athlete. He failed to make it on to his school’s football and basketball teams, so he became a high jumper on the track team. At the time (early 1960s) high jumpers were clearing bars using methods such as the scissors jump:

EthelCatherwood1928

The Western Roll

2-western-roll

And the straddle technique:

ADN-ZB Mittelstädt 5.3.77 Berlin: DDR-Leichtathletikmeisterschaften in der Dynamo-Sporthalle. Höhepunkt des ersten Tages der Meisterschaften war der Hochsprung der Männer. Hier stellte Rolf Beilschmidt (SC Motor Jena) als Sieger mit 2,25 Metern die von dem Jenaer kürzlich erzielte DDR-Bestleistung ein.

In his sophomore year of high school, Dick failed to complete jumps of 5 feet (the qualifying height for many high school track meets) using the straddle technique.

So he began to experiment with other forms of high jumping. 

But even while practicing high jump seriously and using the upright scissors technique, he was not particularly good. He was only able to clear a height of 5 foot 4, well below an Olympic standard.

At a Rotary meet they raised the bar to 5 feet 6 inches. Dick was frustrated and nervous. He’d knew he’d have to do something different. He attempted a variation of the scissors technique, lifting his hips up and pulling his shoulders back. That day he cleared 5’10. But he looked strange.

Because he looked so strange, coaches wondered if he was breaking some rule. But they discovered that high jump rules stipulate only that competitors may only jump off one foot at takeoff: there is no rule governing how a competitor crosses the bar, so long as he or she goes over it.

A revolution was born.

So Dick gradually adapted his technique to make himself more comfortable with his jumps and to get more height out of them. He began leaping over the bar by pushing himself back first, a bizarre technique that necessitated landing on his neck, looking like a corpse pushed out a window.

Of course there were doubters and haters. Spectators referred to Fosbury’s early attempts as an airborne seizure. Newspapers ran semi-disdainful headlines: “World’s Laziest High Jumper” “Fosbury Flops over the bar” (name origin), and comments concerning how he looked like a fish flopping in a boat.

Even when Dick began college, his coach, Berny Wagner, believed that Fosbury would eventually achieve greater results using the western roll (see above) and convinced him to continue practicing the old technique through his freshman year.

It is difficult to break tradition. Teachers sometimes don’t know what’s best for their students.

However, in his first meet of the season his sophomore year, Dick cleared 6 feet 10 inches using his flop method, shattering the school record. The superior results were too much for tradition. The coach let Dick continue with his flop.

Over the next few years Dick continued to refine his technique (developing a curved, J-shaped approach, adjusting point of take-off as the bar was raised, etc.) In 1968 he won the gold medal and set an Olympic and American Record (7 ft 4¼ in.) Now all elite high-jumpers use the Fosbury Flop. Here it is:

Fosbury Flop

The “secret” behind Fosbury’s technique (which even he didn’t know at the time) was a physics idea known as “the center of mass.”

For every object we can locate the average position for all of its mass by taking into account how the mass is spread around the object.

With the old methods of jumping, the jumper’s center of mass was located on their body, so they had to make sure they applied enough upward force to have this center of mass clear the bar.

western vs. straddle

But with the Fosbury Flop, the jumper’s center of mass is located below their body, so they don’t need to apply as much upward force to clear the bar.

fos center

What’s important to know is that Fosbury didn’t know the physics. He just wanted to clear the bar. The physics explanation was an after-thought.

Lesson applied to Art and Business:

Clarify in your mind the end-goal: the emotion you want to convey, the product you want to create, the experience you want to communicate, the service you want to offer…then within a framework of rules…do whatever you can, harness your frustration and experiment, forget the doubters, remember that even your mentors can be stuck in a stagnating groove, adapt yourself and do what feels comfortable…as long as you clear the bar.

Life is a game filled with games. Don’t take for granted how people, even the ones you look up to, are playing it.

Because sometimes you gotta be willing to look like a corpse falling out a window to get what you want.

 

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Girl Across the Hall

Fiction
Published in Fall 2011 in
The Laurentian Magazine
Reading Time: 3 minutes

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