The mood provokes writing. The dark steaminess of the bar envelopes me like I’m wearing a soaking wet trenchcoat. I’m smoking because it gives me a sense of adding something physical to the atmosphere; it is my aura. I sit there, looking through the wall, the scene, everything, and I think about ordering a drink. Something with a bite. Something that will make the bartender raise an eyebrow and the patrons turn their heads with my favorite mixture of disgust and respect.

But I don’t smoke. I don’t know what alcohol tastes like. I’ve never been to a bar. Yet I thirst for it. It seems so familiar. A few months ago, I would have been appalled at a friend who suddenly decided to engage in these activities, let alone myself. But I wear the attitude that suggests I have seen and done many dark things. Have I? I guess I have. I’m probably a regular at that tavern I’ve never visited.

I recently read a book that brought up the idea that perhaps mankind has a dual nature. There are some primitive(/advanced?) cultures that believe each person has “one who stands beside them;” a spiritual twin, connected but somehow opposite. There are sides of us that become repressed by the routines we impose upon our daily lives. They get shoved out of the way, buried, left for dead. But they fight to the surface in our dreams, causing us to cry out into the night. Or they may return at more lucid moments, shocking us with the terrible energy that suddenly floods us. At these times, I look at my mind, turning it over, examining it like I would burnt hands and I revel in my waking fantasy/nightmare.

The book related a fable as told by one of these primitive cultures about a warrior who was the greatest wrestler in his tribe. He defeated everyone, standing unopposed. Seeking a worthy opponent, he ventured into the spirit realm where he encountered his other self and was destroyed. I relate to this imagery because it is mystical, violent and intimate. I see that inside of myself there is a conflict, a dance, and an ongoing rape, between two sides. There seems to be a struggle for supremacy, for control, but I don’t know which side to cheer for. I think there was a time when I did. Everything was clear and plain. But that’s someone else’s life now.

I was shocked by the atrocities of the German concentration camps as described by this book. I abhor violence and the meaningless loss of life.

“A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”

– Joseph Stalin

When I read about hundreds of thousands of people dying in a war, sometimes all at once, I imagine each individual. Each man had a name, a favorite color, a certain way they smiled, a best friend, a hope for a future. Gone. They are just smeared away.

I think about all those Jews being put in the gas chamber and think that it would be so great to take all the Germans and feed them to alligators. Or just blow them away with a gatling gun, to see their faces erased in a wet spray of red gore. I have a computer game called “Castle Wolfenstein” in which you do just that. But the guards and the blood are pixelized. Even so, I feel that it is satisfying some base desire in me to kill the Germans. They also make this game for Nintendo.

A friend of mine told me that violence begets violence. I am no better than the Germans. At times I think justice, and at other times mercy. Sometimes I want to take an eye for an eye, but other times I turn the other cheek. There are many who are convinced that they are delivering justice and righteous vengeance who will not admit to themselves that they enjoy the power of ushering a soul into the afterlife in a harsh, abrupt fashion.

“I know you well — you are neither hot nor cold; I wish you were one or the other! But since you are merely lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth!”

– Revelation 3:15-16

Sometimes… no, most of the time, my writing is a veil I weave around myself. I think that I am writing something foreign and unrelated to my life. That I’m experimenting with a new persona or style of writing. But the truth is, the veil is very thin. What I write and these personas I create are just as much a part of me as my nightmares. One is tempted to think that nightmares are somehow borne into our sleeping minds from a dark, outer realm. But no, they come from within. In a way, we design what we fear and loathe the most.

In my stories there is violence, sex, paganism, “shit” and “fuck.” I tell myself that these things exist only there behind the page. But do they? Am I making a channel with my writing or am I making a fountain?

I smash the table in front of me, relishing the adrenaline. One day I might stand in the middle of the academic quad and just scream and scream. Then everyone would know. No more “Hi, I’m fine.”

Da da da – love your hair

Da da da – can you lend me a ten?

Da da da – I love your big house

Can you spare a dime?

Well I’m sick of it

It’s a load of shit

“Guns in the Sky”

— INXS

We are taught here at DePauw to ignore the private war. Don’t make eye contact. You are in a hurry. If you don’t move faster, the bells will start to ring and then you will be late for class. “How are you?” is a rhetorical question. Swallow your tears and get that homework done. Just accept the fact that your life will never fit into the class syllabus. My teachers and professors usually never know that sometimes I’m not in class because I’m thinking about never going to class again. Never going anywhere again.

But I step back from the edge, unload the gun, put the child-proof cap back on the bottle and put the razor blades away and manage to move on. It’s the duality thing. One part got me up on the ledge, and another gets me down. Even when I’m up there, I don’t know if I want to fly or fall. Sometimes it’s hard to think with a blender so close to my head.

I don’t expect everyone to take a deep personal interest in my life. My problems are my own. But I just want to say, “Damn it, don’t ask me a question when you don’t really care! You know that you’re making me lie and tell you I’m fine.”

It’s the duality again. The outer face we wear that keeps our messy lives from spilling over the boundary into someone else’s personal space. We live as though consumed by homework, eating, sleeping and partying. That can’t be all there is. I know it isn’t.

Well we all have a face

That we hide away forever

But we take it out and show ourselves

When everyone has gone

Some are satin

Some are steel

Some are silk

And some are leather

They’re the faces of the Stranger

But we love to try them on

“The Stranger”

— Billy Joel

There are wants and desires. A beautiful woman enters the bar and sits down in a booth on the other side. I want to be in love with her and be married, but I also want to ravage her, to invade her, to leave her panting my name while I forget hers. There is a dark purity in sexuality.

I have an attraction to women that is not just sexual and social. I feel that I relate on some other level with them. An emotional/spiritual level. Most all of my really good, close friends have been girls/women. They understand things that I feel men don’t. The flip side of my masculine nature is the side that cries at movies, that likes children, that feels weak, that likes coloring books. Not that these things are inherently feminine. It’s just that I’m so used to living in an environment where emotions and behaviors are classified as “Male” or “Female.” I don’t think I have any other reference points. How much of it is the testosterone, how much the heart, how much the mind, how much the society? I don’t think we can ever really know.

I look at myself in the mirror and wonder sometimes if it is really me. When I see old pictures of myself as a child, I am amazed that I was ever so young and naive. Was that me? My senior high yearbook contains another image of me: clean cut and bright-eyed. Andre Monserrat — Senior Class Chaplain. I live the irony every day. Trenchcoat, boots, dark look.

So, I don’t know…

You might see me in church or in jail, reading the Bible or Hustler. My music is loud and discordant thrashing played by children with angel voices. I write about morality, filling my stories with sex and abusive language. I’ll throw frightening shadows at you while I cry like a child.

Perhaps I cannot be sifted. Maybe I can find answers between the lines. I know that I rage with anger both murderous and righteous, passion that is feral and intimate, a desire to live and to die. I guess it just comes down to the choice, the direction I take. It can’t be that simple, but it’s a start.

My favorite color is Grey.