Not one of my best days.
Nov. 19th, 2009 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingersToday I took Poor Mad Felix for lunch, as I do every week.
Felix has a number of bees in his bonnet: normally they wash over me half-digested: the words are all in order, and they correspond to sentences, but the content can sometimes be....a little um....different from any reality I know or understand*.
On the way back from the gastropub he started on a bit of a rant, which I did my best to ignore until it became apparent that Felix was ranting about the evils of homosexuality: how homosexuality is (not should be) illegal, immoral and wrong. Now it should be stated here that some of Felix's illness' symptoms include delusions that he is actually in charge of the world, and decides what is and is not law. This is not a constant and consistent belief, but a sporadic and strongly-held-for-the-moment one.
Anyway, I rose to the bait and told him quite candidly that he was talking rubbish. He became angry, and his rant increased in volume and bile: mentioning the black-magic evils of buggery as promoted by the Templars, Masons, Knights of Malta, and Columba, the O.T.O., and the evil-magic world order, which Felix was single handedly holding at bay. Eventually, my volume matched his, as did my vehemence in defence of folk like my godfathers.
I can't believe I raised my voice to a madman who is also a chum, just after I'd been lecturing another different chum about the need for toleration. My feeling of personal shame is...upsetting.
Of course, we both apologised to each other, and I'll see Felix next week, but even so.
Something I said to my other (virtual) chum herein mentioned returns to haunt me.
The wrong target, and insufficient reason.
Also, in Felix's years of institutional incarceration, I fear his experience of sexual predation at the hands of other equally mad but less decent and restrained folk may have coloured his views somewhat. There was a sense of old injuries coming to the fore. We did eventually agree that predation is a bad thing, and that consensual acts of a non black-magical kind, even if gay, were acceptable, but it was a close-run thing. Arguing with Felix makes any debates on the interweb seem like the soul of rationality. So bloody tiring my dears.
I'm a fucking hypocrite. But at least Felix probably won't subject me to that sort of rant again. And of course I don't want our lunches to have subjects that aren't spoken of....
As an aside, the whole thing brought to mind this:
And the wonderful entry on Aleister Crowley from which I quote this small extract.
Among other practices, he recommended self-improvement through mystic buggery.
Donaldson puts a whole different slant on the Crowley thang, really. But I shan't mention it to Felix: I doubt he'd get the joke.
*For a given value of understand, obviously.
Felix has a number of bees in his bonnet: normally they wash over me half-digested: the words are all in order, and they correspond to sentences, but the content can sometimes be....a little um....different from any reality I know or understand*.
On the way back from the gastropub he started on a bit of a rant, which I did my best to ignore until it became apparent that Felix was ranting about the evils of homosexuality: how homosexuality is (not should be) illegal, immoral and wrong. Now it should be stated here that some of Felix's illness' symptoms include delusions that he is actually in charge of the world, and decides what is and is not law. This is not a constant and consistent belief, but a sporadic and strongly-held-for-the-moment one.
Anyway, I rose to the bait and told him quite candidly that he was talking rubbish. He became angry, and his rant increased in volume and bile: mentioning the black-magic evils of buggery as promoted by the Templars, Masons, Knights of Malta, and Columba, the O.T.O., and the evil-magic world order, which Felix was single handedly holding at bay. Eventually, my volume matched his, as did my vehemence in defence of folk like my godfathers.
I can't believe I raised my voice to a madman who is also a chum, just after I'd been lecturing another different chum about the need for toleration. My feeling of personal shame is...upsetting.
Of course, we both apologised to each other, and I'll see Felix next week, but even so.
Something I said to my other (virtual) chum herein mentioned returns to haunt me.
The wrong target, and insufficient reason.
Also, in Felix's years of institutional incarceration, I fear his experience of sexual predation at the hands of other equally mad but less decent and restrained folk may have coloured his views somewhat. There was a sense of old injuries coming to the fore. We did eventually agree that predation is a bad thing, and that consensual acts of a non black-magical kind, even if gay, were acceptable, but it was a close-run thing. Arguing with Felix makes any debates on the interweb seem like the soul of rationality. So bloody tiring my dears.
I'm a fucking hypocrite. But at least Felix probably won't subject me to that sort of rant again. And of course I don't want our lunches to have subjects that aren't spoken of....
As an aside, the whole thing brought to mind this:
And the wonderful entry on Aleister Crowley from which I quote this small extract.
Among other practices, he recommended self-improvement through mystic buggery.
Donaldson puts a whole different slant on the Crowley thang, really. But I shan't mention it to Felix: I doubt he'd get the joke.
*For a given value of understand, obviously.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 07:50 pm (UTC)still, at least he actaully is *mad*, while some people with obnoxious opinions don't have as a given value.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 09:19 pm (UTC)Or at the hands of institutional staff. Which is far more common than one might like to think and often deeply buried under the kinds of silences and deliberate inattentions that constitute fraternal loyalty in such professions.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 11:35 pm (UTC)Some messed up stuff happens in those facilities. I got in some deep trouble when I was 18 when I was in a temporary R Wing Facility. There was a catatonic girl who had been raped, she was just to be finishing high school, and going to some Ivy League school, stayed after one night for help on some school work. Got raped, sent to the loony bin because she went catatonic. Well, I was chatting with another young woman on a couch next to the one this young lady was placed on when a black guy who was there, for who knows what reason he was there decided to move next to this young lady and grope her.
The lady next to me just all of the sudden in mid conversation stiffened, hit me, and pointed to this man groping this poor girl. I lost my temper and went after him, jumping over furniture with the intent to do him incredible bodily harm. The staff didn't believe me, or the young lady who was chatting with me, despite the fact the catatonic girl was rocking violently with tears streaming down her face and moaning and sobbing. They acted like I was a monster, while the man taunted me from behind his barred bedroom door. I got transferred, and despite my requests to at least move the girl to the other side of the wing, they were ignored.
Anyhow, your friend probably appreciates the fact you actually didn't just agree blindly to what he was saying, deep down, somewhere. People tend to humor those who are different and locked up out of fear or pity. When lucid, those men and women who remember those people who humored them, tend to become resentful due to it.