System of a Weenie 1

The main problem was choosing what mask to wear for Halloween. And that I was going to be beaten, or worse, for whatever choice I made: “Weenie, We goan fuck you up make no diff what you do, where you run.”

But I should back up. I should say that the mainness of this problem was a matter of its nearness. Nearness, not importance, or scale. What the important, larger scale, all-around surround problem was, (the context for the problem of what mask to wear for Halloween) was not the absence of a mask but

an excess of masks. It was being unable to choose from the masks I already possessed. Too many. And not only the ones I possessed, but the ones I was in the process of possessing, and would probably be possessing, in the near and longer-term future. (If such a future was assured, which it was not). So, this essential aspect, of too many masks as the surrounding context of the main problem, (the nearness of Halloween problem), was, as well, perhaps more so a nearness problem. More a nearer-nearness problem than the nearness problem of Halloween, since this problem of too many was potentially right now, or as near as the next purchase of another mask was, which could be in the next few days, hours, minutes, or seconds, depending on the circumstances. This was a situation in time as near or as close as the physical proximity of a mask touching and covering the skin of my face, which highlighted the other, perhaps even more important, larger, encompassing, all-around surround context problem to the "what mask to wear” problem, and the "too-many masks to choose from” problem: the problem of, "I don't particularly like wearing any of the masks that I collect" problem. I just didn't. This was perhaps a maybe even more important, bigger, all-around, surround problem, the one enclosing the "Halloween is coming" problem, enclosed by the "can't choose" problem, which were both enclosed by the "too many masks" problem, all, finally enclosed by the "I don't like wearing any of the masks that I can't stop collecting" problem. And all of these on further reflection could be enclosed or bracketed by, or put inside an even greater problem set of, what could be called, “what all these masks, what this addiction to seeking out and collecting all of these masks, is for"  problem, (although addictions to collecting anything are ultimately about, or for nothing but, collecting more of anything, and don’t require a function or rationale beyond collecting more of that anything). Unless it becomes a problem. And it had become a problem. Become many problems. So, defining a mask function was a value that frequently appeared as an important missing or negative value in the overall system integrity problem. 

The multiplying problems inside linked to “not knowing what the masks are for” may be the mainest problem of all, in terms of nearness, (or proximity, or urgency) of time (available, until not), space (available, until not), personal and social pressures (bearable or not bearable beatings, or worse) and financial expenses (affordable, until broke). I could call it “the functional problem.” This functional problem would be the biggest, most inclusive, most wrap-around surround problem bubble of all, big enough, I think, to contain all the other problems, and flexible enough and maybe porous enough to allow other problems to move in and out of it, depending on their definition, “hardness” or “softness”, or linkages to other problem sets, and even mathematical properties (like those descriptions of hyperspatial geometry that I try to understand but can’t understand, and can’t understand why I would trouble these things to understand,  since I was in the slow, remedial arithmetic class at school). Anyway, working on the problem of “not knowing what the masks are for”, or, “the function problem” fell to me as the one thing (besides acquiring another mask) that I had had that could calm me down, settle my jitters, keep my heart from climbing up out of my body, (in addition to the World Knowledge cassettes I listened to to fall asleep, but more on that later), while at the same time dissecting a condition (addiction to mask collecting) that was arguably the cause of my pariah queer weenie untouchable status and the reason why I faced beatings and worse on the fast approaching October 31st. But to back up: the time nearness problem was that Halloween was one month away, and I couldn’t decide on a mask, or no mask. The social pressure aspect, on reflection, could and did quickly pass through the other subsets, like fear as a kind of black matter or dark radiation or even neutrino (making up most of the known universe yet undetectable to almost all forms of measurement, invisible in the same way that my peril was invisible to the adults that might protect me from this peril). This black matter fear passing invisibly through me and everything else, shooting or quivering or expanding up through the other subsets to enclose all into one singular problem, was because many bullies, and many other almost bully kids, and many more, pretty much all, kids at school generally hostile to me, all knew me as The Weenie (as in, Halloween-Weenie). As the name suggested, this was because of my obsession with masks and other “queer things”, (though the full extent of my collection, as well as my queerness, were mostly a matter of rumor or even suburban legend, since I never, ever let anyone into my mask room or talked about queer things, and always responded to any direct questions about them with silence, cunning, evasion, or outright denial). Being the Weenie of Halloween with Halloween approaching meant not only heightened attention and harassment by the bullies, but the threat of actual beatings, or worse. Beatings, or worse if I didn’t come up with a great mask. Beatings, or worse if I didn’t come up with the right mask. Beatings, or worse if I showed up with the wrong mask. If I showed up with no mask. Beatings, or (perhaps the worst) if I didn’t show up at all. This was the nature of the nearness, proximity or urgency of the Halloween problem: having the shit, or the very life of me, beat out. So being able to frame, rank, categorize, put in groups or hierarchies or sets this problem, and its many subsets, multiplying perhaps analogously, metaphorically or in some sense hyper-spatially or metaphysically with  the physical increase of masks on the walls of the mask room,  (or, again, metaphorically, or even ritualistically, echoing the act of enclosing a face inside or under a mask), made this framing or ranking activity the only activity (aside from the collecting of masks and the listening to lectures on the cassette tapes) that made me feel my heart was not climbing up out of me. But a valid, if conditional closure to the function problem, the “what the masks are for” problem, came to me: “display.” To hang them with pushpins or picture hooks or blue, wall-painter's tape to protect the walls, or whatever else worked, all over the walls of the mask room. Their arrangement was subject to continual revision, based on new additions or new ideas about where they should go, or simply a desire to see them in different patterns or with different “partnerships.” Perhaps arranging these "partnerships" was an antidote to the lonely helpless station I occupied as a kind of puppet of outer forces, and inner obsessions. Pinned or hooked to the wall, so to speak. It is true that my collection of masks followed the ritualistic and rigid rhythms of the magically thinking autistic, though there was always a wild and unpredictable inclination to follow hunches and hunt down surprising leads to the next mask acquisition. That will be described later. But the “disorder” or seeming arbitrariness of the masks’ arrangement on the walls was exactly that, a seeming lack of sense. Their arrangement, in fact, observed exacting but mysterious criteria involving combinations of form, color, material, texture, identity, “personality,” secret histories, arcane associations, visual/verbal puns, dream linkages, cartoon taxonomies and pop lineages, monster mashes, theatrical and cinematic and cosmetic and prosthetic and criminal applications. When I went to the mask room and turned on the light, something always flitted past me out the door. A haunt/haint that hovered over the room: the mask worn by the invisible man. It covered, not a secret face, but no face at all.

I added a new mask to the wall and surveyed the collection. The new mask was a reproduction in wood of a Pogla Mudman from Papua, New Guinea. It fit in great beside a cheap rigid plastic Ernie Bushmiller Nancy mask on an elastic string. But more on that later. At that moment I remember thinking about the absence of a single organizing principle for the wall of masks as an organizing principle. The principle that is no principle. (I thought about the principal of my school, and the spelling rule, "the principal is your PAL").  I followed a mental school staff organization chart from the principal directly to the bullies. The fast-approaching beatings and worse were because of the masks. Also, the queer thing. Also, for sitting in the slow class. Sitting there when no one would believe I should be doing that, even when I swore I should be doing that, since being anywhere else could only be worse.   All of this is to say that I was busy, very very busy. Trying to manage this fear. With silence. With systems. With masks. With sitting silent in the slow class. Trying to manage incomprehension at school or after school. In the street. In stores. Alone or with other people. But especially in classes. The fugue of classes. Remedial classes. Slow classes. I constructed systems while not being able to do basic arithmetics. Systems while not understanding or reading books for kids two grades behind. Three. It seemed only right that in addition to Weenie, I was known as The Professor. I did everything I could to disappear into the silent dumb, into the humblest block of wood or brick door stop. But it was no good. I was Weenie, I was The Professor. Some of the bullies hated me because they believed I was pretending to be stupid when I was really smart (which was oddly encouraging and affirming and thrilling—that they believed in this brilliant boy when no one else did), (their hate being some kind of belief in me, slathered in acid and covered in razor blades and rusty nails, but belief) though belief in who, exactly, and what that who could be thinking right now—that was  utterly terrifying, because those bullies that believed in me and hated me for believing in me could have no conception of what I was thinking, or perhaps they did, they all did, but I could not understand what they knew so I could not understand myself. Or that I could be projecting, completely against my conscious control, a quick intelligence completely divorced from my slow reality—or, as  I sat solemn in the slow class, I realized that I was being hated for precisely what I really was, (not the hidden intelligence but the hidden dumb, the slow false boy of block head wood, which seemed only a natural and right response, as the bullies, with their cruelty and obtuseness and sneering, puffy yet epically oafish faces—premonitions,  really, of big world faces to come—exemplified  what real living boys were supposed to be as defenders of a certain kind of threshold  of low real, in a way). So, I kept my peace in the slow class. A peace kept to crank the key on the spring of the inside job: running the slow systems in my wooden block head.  All I wanted was to be the normal boy. The real normal boy. The real normal anything. A wood block head anything. A Pinocchio anything, I suppose, as I had said, because of a sense of a puppet thing going on, tugged by strings of fear, penetrated by neutrinos of fear at not being real. But under the shield, the umbrella, the force field of an expansive, encyclopedic, all-encompassing, universalizing yet morphing system, I would get a handle, a purchase, a foothold, a toehold on the slow class, the school of bullies, the fast-approaching beatings and worse, all coming up October 31st. And money, enough money to keep buying more masks. This was the financial problem, and it was becoming more dire. I was a kid, after all, and had no independent income. I was dependent on a small allowance from my parents for performing chores around the house and made some additional income by mowing the neighbor's lawn, raking their leaves, helping another neighbor lady clean out her garage and basement.  So the “not having enough money to maintain my mask collecting habit" problem swelled into the important encompassing problem category, and set the wooden gears of the wooden head to turn. 

The problem of having enough money to buy the masks that became necessary to buy was becoming an expanding, principle problem, superseding and enclosing the other problems but representing an obvious structural contradiction as well. After all, having the masks was a major source of my social ostracism, my Weeniness and Queerness, and therefore the ultimate reason why beatings and worse were fast approaching on Halloween. At the same time the failure to acquire new masks, the masks that I located and that I felt were essential to buy and add to the collection, immediately, would lead, I believed, to a complete breakdown of everything for being anything. Collecting new masks and putting them on the wall of masks were essential to my survival. And they were responsible for my destruction. But let me back up: There was the implication from some subsets of system that not buying new masks, and gradually or suddenly divesting myself of the collection, and doing it in a way that would be obvious and common knowledge, (like all the kids and bullies could see the disappearance of my masks in my face?),  might make all the students and bullies that hated me for the masks, and for sitting silent in the slow class, reassess me, have a  loss of hate interest in me, perhaps drop the Weenie name and The Professor name in the same way I dropped my masks. And we could all start over, different. I gave this implication some consideration, and it quickly developed into a fuller proposition, leaner and smoother than what existed already. It bifurcated neatly into vibrating reversals: “Money +” (the problem value  of acquiring more money as affirming the choice of  buying  more masks, and the consequent perpetuation of the mask problem and its resulting effects of space reduction, continued social ostracism, and continued physical punishment, versus “Money –"  (the problem value of the resolution of the money problem by eliminating the need for more money via the elimination of mask collecting, resulting in no special crisis, and a highly theoretical, problematic and remote possibility of the end of social ostracism, psychological and physical threat), (but the triggering of a yawning abyss of incalculable unknowns about what would come next, across the empty walls and the empty life, when new masks stopped coming in).

But emerging like groans and creaks from a poorly designed bridge about to surrender structural integrity to weight or vibratory harmonics it could not bear, the obvious structural deficiencies of my financial solution system, (involving the elimination of my mask collection, and therefore the need for extra money, as well as the elimination of the cause of my pariah status as a weenie, or as The Professor) were acutely, sensorily apparent. In addition to the almost audible groans and creaks of instability, other systemic illogicals and clumsinesses could be felt as a high-pitched ache in my left molar filling, and a bright silver-white pre-migraine pulse inside my temples, or a static-electrical bristling of nose hair, initiating nosebleeds that ran against gravity up into my eyes like some eye-daggering old-style villain Snidely Whiplash mustache. At the same time, a new problem realm had opened as an off-shoot of the “mask function problem”: the potential that an essential function, (perhaps the essential, principle function of the masks, or a mask,  heretofore discounted or overlooked), was to avert, eliminate, paralyze or neutralize the hate interest, (and therefore the beatings, torture, or worse) via the force or power or aura of the right mask. In a word, protect me.  All along, my systems of analysis had been based on the fundamental tenet (as expressed by the bullies) that my mask choices or actions on October 31st were irrelevant: “Weenie, We goan fuck you up make no diff what you do, where you run.” But their proposition did not factor what masks my mask collection actually included. I had not worn most of the masks, and so had no experience of what they felt like “from the inside” or what effect they might have "from the outside."  I had not, as well, considered the masks as protective forces, nor had I sought out new masks with the idea that they might function in this essential manner at all. This introduced a whole new urgency to the search for, and acquisition of, new masks, not only for collecting-in-itself or existential affirmation, but as a practical survival tool to stay alive. 

For these reasons then, it became urgent to acknowledge the merits and efficiencies of the “elimination of the mask collection as solution to the financial problem.” 

And I would have to step up my search for more masks. 

For the right mask. 

Was there a right mask? I looked in the mirror. 

Will you look in the mirror too? 

Gregg Williard is a writer and visual artist based in Madison, Wisconsin. His recent work can be found in Collidescope, The Quarter(ly), Star 82 and L+Y+R+A, among others.