reality

“I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world- so manifestly real was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrications.

- Timothy Leary, 1966

we are like opposing magnets, the closer you come the further i pull away. you need to leave me alone. stop calling. stop emailing. stop contacting my friends. do you know that you are the driving force? i am doing nothing but responding. this is not lashing out. this is just how it is when you behave inappropriately.

you know who you are.

you are just like him, the hand that pulled the shower curtain back on me in my dorm when i was 18. the flannel shirt with no face. the sneakers that stood on the bathroom tile just inches from my own wet barefeet. you are just like him, the peeping tom. the first person to ever see me naked, the faceless hairy hand that sent me running to throw up in the sink. the invasion of privacy that brought me to my knees. i rocked myself on the floor as my freshman roommate lay asleep with a stranger from the night before, both hung over and naked in her tangled sheets.

that morning i wished i was not alone. i didn’t ask for it. i didn’t want the attention, as i was later told, scolded like a child by a drunken wagging finger and bloodshot eyes. i discovered later that the peeping tom crept around the dorm early in the morning, sometimes with a camera. he watched and probably tugged at his jeans, jerking off in his pathetic loneliness. he didnt’ touch me but he still took something from me that morning. it was power and control.

he left me paranoid. mistrusting. disillusioned.

for a long time as i walked around campus i was timid, wondering who it was who had seen me. it could have been anyone. he could be smiling at me right now as i find my seat in biology class. he could be smiling to himself remembering the shower. knowing in my shy demeanor that i had only ever partially undressed in the dark before a man, knowing my innocence, i wore it so well back then.

for awhile i got real angry and i wanted to punch and kick. i wanted a do-over to not be weak, to reach out through the shower curtain and grab him by the throat and squeeze real hard. but another chance never came. he peeped on me the very same morning they put locks on all the bathrooms in all the dorms because unbeknownst to us, this peeping had been a problem for months. i showered one hour too early that day.

the difference today, 15 years later, is that i know your face. your name is not tom. but still you peep. you lurk like a shadow in my life. you feel allowed with what used to be yours. you say you feel like me but i doubt it. i feel your eyes watching even when i pull the curtains tight. again i am paranoid, i distrust because you speak sideways out of your mouth. spouting new age bullshit to the counselor, when actions speak louder to me. when dysfunction rears its ugly head when doors are closed. actions shout and bang on car windows and scare little children.

you are transparent to me.

you are being seen through, like curtain sheers in the midday sun.