Identity Shrugged by Teddy Nutmeg

Reminiscent of Acceleration, this treatise on the disconnect of work and life pretty much sums up that thing commonly referred to as the "quarter life crises."

Now Teddy has a job he likes; and we don't get any new pieces from him. Coincidence?

Lastly, Teddy's dated reference to Calista Flockhart is yet another example (read the piece that drops Dean Cain's name) of why you should never use cultural references in your writing. Other than that, great stuff, Teddy. -KV


Identity Shrugged
Teddy Nutmeg

I'm driven. On the road for three weeks and I'm not sure who's behind the wheel anymore.

Why? I live my own time so swiftly that after-images and after-emotions remind me what I was doing, who I was seeing what I had time to care about. Arkansas and fat people Hoovering™ BBQ. Kentucky and horses and sweat. Colorado and a new convertible Mustang rental and more relatives than I've seen in years. A visit with Grandma whose emaciated body is so wracked with Parkinson's that I hardly recognize her but I sob nonetheless as I caress her amazingly soft hair. Texas and a young angel sitting next to me, smiling with wide happy eyes and a halo around her head from the rising sun behind her. Wyoming and the smell of freedom-of welcome, lived-in desolation. I love it.

Work burrows in and eats me, eager termites that make sawdust of my aimlessness and leave me with questions that only gnaw more. What's left of my life?

I: Fly-should I take off my shoes? Drive-where am I going? Hotel-is there an exercise room? Computers-what do I have to fix? People--what do they need to learn? Drive--where am I going? Fly-is there anybody to talk to? Hotel-do they have a spa? Drive-where am going? Computers-what do I have to fix? People-what do they need to learn? Hotel-can I sleep in this room? Drive-where the FUCK am I going? Fly-get the fuck out of my face with your fucking boring nothing-talk, you fat slob, and that's MY half of the seat that your rolls of tubby chub are oozing onto. Home again-open my door to dust and darkness. I hate it.

That's not me, that hate-filled voice, that quickness to spite. Its all the non-work, off-task memories and emotions, stuffed into me so tightly that I see Grandma's involuntarily twisted body and Angel's eyes and fat Arkansians at random flashing intervals when I space off. I'm more conscious of my life when I'm dreaming and floating. I'm me when I'm unconscious. Why?

Because purpose, destination, desire are as alien in MY psyche as Calista Flockhart would be in a Lane Bryant. And they take ME over with a singularity and swiftness normally seen only in black holes and mob psychology. Why? Because Teddy is growing up.

Younger, he was the guy who never stressed, who was mildly interested in an education that came as easy as candy from vending machines. The guy who floated aimlessly, unanchored by doubt or fear, from one degree to the next, from blue eyes and tan legs to beautiful lips and wonderfully shaped necks, from groups of friends and their obsession with philosophy and classical music, from other groups who unknowingly and inexpressibly quasi-experienced (through mind altering substances) the darkness and light at the center of existence.

He floated-task to task, class to class, impulse to impulse, conversation to conversation, drug to drug and word to word without the burden of direction or expectation. He thanks and blames Mother and Father: "Its okay, Teddy, you can do whatever you want. Just be happy."

My whole life I'd bounded around like a puppy in a room full of fat women, not knowing true sadness or even that it existed, until one day I landed in her lap, and she held me tight and cooed in my ear and I was at home in her need. Beautiful, intelligent, creative, she nonetheless had one trait dwarfing the rest: an overwhelming, consuming, unreachable desire to be happy, which was easy for me to fulfill because I had always been the willfully subjugated, the one who just wanted to please others. As long as I could remember, I'd been full and rotted with sweet happiness, eased into a world of ignorance and hate I could have dominated had I been raised like her: in the stern and stoic Japanese manner to face that which is in opposition to everything you believe.

But everybody just hurt her to help her, and she shrank from the harsh upbringing, only hearing taunts about her weight, only seeing a fat girl in the mirror-she desperately wanted to taste sunshine, to drink in the poisoning, softening elixir of unconditional love. To me, shadow and depression were welcome changes from an idyllic suburban upbringing that injected me with all the same pathetic pre-packaged emotions as everyone else: pride at winning essay contests, puppy love with Suzy, anger at little league injustices and unrestrained elation at birthday parties and pathetic pitiful pain when "I just want to be friends" made its way into my cochlea. To her, shadow and depression were unwelcome barnacles that she just couldn't scrape off; like a diabetic, she would've thrived in the same sugary love that had rotted me out from the inside. She was mesmerized drinking in my nectary love, a lotus-eater, and in return she rained her warm tropical affection on me like a storm up out of the Pacific. God, we were good together.

But that's all gone now. Those bumper stickers that say "no fat chicks" about sum me up. I'm straight and hollow and to the point. I'm a paper mache piñata. Inside me a skeletal frame of hollow purpose holds nothing. No candy will come out when you break me, just a little sand perhaps, and maybe some dry kernels of corn. Empty with feeling, why am I so wretched? I should feel nothing. I should be so lucky. I am born again.

-Teddy Nutmeg