The two Pisces, satori and my sister sort of settled this for me today. satori thought people looked at other people as examples of people who had changed but they didn’t really know them. It was just comment until later when I spoke to my sister.
(swearing below the break)

“Remember when I was 4, and I wanted to go to school?” I asked. “I wanted to school so bad. I wanted to get out of the house so bad, plus I just wanted to go so I could show off my reading.”

She laughed.

“Well, remember you fuckers didn’t believe I could read. Do you remember? I read every book in the house but still no one believed I could read and I was just sick of it. Fuck you guys! I wanted to go to school and show off all over the place so I did all these hi jinks. I begged and writhed around. I debated everyone I could find about the merits of my school going but it didn’t work. You can’t go to 1st grade when you are 4, so I got left home.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, so I became obsessed. I wanted to go to school so bad so when you came home… you, “our older sister”, the neighbor kids because we lived in town that first year - I used to get you guys when you’d come home, I would corner you and quiz the living shit out of you, do you remember? I wanted to know what happened at school and I mean I wanted the minute details.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, what’s the first thing that happens when you get there? I wanted you to start from the beginning/ The bell rings, you’d say. You didn’t give a shit. Then what, I’d ask, I was intent. Then it’s the pledge of allegiance. The what? What is that? Tell me about that. TELL ME! You gather around the flag, put your hand on your heart…do you remember this?”

“Yes. You wanted to know about the pencils. Those big red ones. How big, you asked.” She laughed.

“I couldn’t wait to see one of those pencils with my own eyes.”

“Yeah, you wanted to know everything you could find out.”

“Right. Now get this. When I was 23, I met Ben. And he’s gay and I knew whatever I knew about homosexuality back then. I has whatever exposure I had but all the sudden I was working in a restaurant with 17 gay men and 3 women. We were the minority, see, so it was strange.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah it was. And Ben and I got very tight. We got to be close friends and he was in the desert but he’d been around. He’d lived in San Francisco and New York, various places. So he was worldly, see?’

“Uh huh.”

“And AIDS was just coming on then. I mean the very first cases, people were actually making jokes if you can believe that. AIDS was brand new but anyway, bath houses got mentioned and oh boy did that get me curious. Bath houses, huh? Well what the hell?”

She laughed.

“So next thing you know, I’m quizzing, Ben. Tell me what happens from the time you pull up. You pull into the parking lot and what? What are you thinking? How do you feel? What are hoping to have happen as you walk up to the place? See what I mean? I wanted a blow by blow account. I wanted every single fact I could get and he told me too. Now tell me that’s not the same MO as when I was 4.”

“It’s the same. You were always like that. You used to research things in the library intensely from the time you were a little kid. You wanted to know as much as you could.”

“No shit! That’s why I taught myself to read. It was because you motherfuckers wouldn’t tell me shit. You would not tell me what I wanted to know, you would not read to me so fuck you! Fuck all of you, I am reading myself. (Note MARS MERCURY, drive for knowledge, also independence!)

“Yep, that’s what happened,” she said. “You were always… the curious cat.”

“Yeah, well I was curious about that stuff. And back then… well as far as gay went no one knew anything. This was all secret back then If I could have gone myself, I’d have gone myself and found out firsthand but I couldn’t go to school. A year early, yes but not two. I couldn’t go to a gay bathhouse. You know, I did dress up as a gay man once and infiltrate,” I told her.

She was shocked.

“Yeah, well I want to know about certain experiences and I am very willing to have them myself but if there is some reason I can’t go myself and you happen to know what I want to know, I will pursue you relentlessly. And not only that, people do tell me the stuff and I think it’s because they can see how important it is. It’s like a matter of life and death. So you see I’ve not changed. The only reason I am not doing this now is because there is nothing that fits my criteria but if or when something comes up that I want to know and I know someone who can tell me, I am going to pursue them like a dog to get that knowledge..”

How often do I quiz you guys, huh? I do it because I have NO IDEA what it is like to be you and I want to know. Back to the beginning… satori.

I strongly suspect if you better knew the people you think have changed, you’d see they’d not changed one lick.

See this pic of me when I was 17 (might have been 18). Do you not think she is watching things?

::laughs::

Do I look like I’m stupid?

Do I look like I could grow up and write a blog like this?