Chaka & Khan: Liberated in the Land of the Lost

For many centuries humankind has sought to fulfill its escapist whims in a variety of ways. Some people have utilized drugs for this purpose, others sex, and some. . .some have grown facial hair. What better means is there for a person to shuck off responsibility than by assuming an alternate identity. I dare say that the happiest people in our universe are those who make a living by being that which they are not; that is, by becoming that which they are not allowed to become in the prosaic and rigidly monitored drudgery of everyday existence.

The liberated souls portraying Bozo, Chaka (from Land of the Lost), the Ewoks, and H.R Pufnstuff, to name a few, are all incredibly well-adjusted individuals. Why? Because they can do that which the rest of us are mortally terrified to even think about. Who of us does not subconsciously contemplate running around like an uninhibited farm creature, speaking like primordial man, using the word "poopy" or seeking the approbation of young children. Tragically, the typical adult in industrial communities has allowed him/herself to become humanoid carbon paper upon which a regimental corporate stamp of conformity is indelibly pressed.

This is not to suggest that facades are the exclusive domain of the subversive. Erving Goffmann, the famed sociologist, once postulated that all human beings go throughout their lives wearing a variety of masks to suit particular occasions. For instance, were you to stealthily observe me through a window as I approached your door, you would notice that the expression on my face would change from indifference to a taut, pleasant smile. This is just one of many social conventions. Appearances are everything to the common person--appearances which are sanctioned by the hegemony. Many believe that the upper echelon are free from the burdens that you and I are subjected to everyday. After all, they are the rule-makers. ...Or are they? Counterintuitively, the top-feeders are even more restrained by expectations and "masks," if you will, than the plebians. Look at the public's furor over John Grunseth's molestation charges, Bill Clinton's denied Dionysian drug dance, Michael Jackson's purported pedophilic fervor, etc...ad naseum. If one is a scholar from his/her motorcycle helmet to his/her toes, s/he will recognize that there is no easy escape from the present tyranny of assimilation (Mental Note: gender neutral language can be a real pain in the ass). This vicious cycle is perpetuated by both the elite's acquiescence to conventionalism and all the blue collar workers, professional 9-5ers, homemakers, pill-pushers, and vagrants who drool over, emulate, and punish the deviance of these cachet-possessing heroes. This maddening pattern is readily evidenced by the inordinately large circulation rate of "star-fucking" publications like People and US.

...It is the supreme paradox of the 21st century, then, that those who are forthright about their disguises are the most well adjusted and acclimated to their environments. Jason Vorhees, the famed camp-haunt, wearing a hockey mask and wielding a large machete, is paid billions of dollars for his neurosis (he doesn't like young camp counslers who have a propensity for pre-marital fornication, you see). "Uncouth" behavior performed in certain contexts is accepted, even applauded. Write about Jason in the paper and he's a deranged lunatic and a threat to society; put him on the silver screen and he's a star -- perhaps even a psychotherapist by proxy. Fangoria magazine is to Jason and his ilk what Tiger Beat is to Joey Lawrence. Pee Wee Herman (a.k.a. Paul Rubens), to name another, was on top of the world when he assumed the persona of the asexual and strangely pre-adolescent 35 year old who orgastically shimmied up and down while wriggling his posterior on an erotic vibrating chair, replete with mouth and nostrils. Yet, when this sexual energy was assuaged in an "adult" theater instead of on the airwaves in front of a million little kids, the country went berserk, proving once again that genuine identity and our responses to it are tenuous, perplexing things. Paul Rubens, it seems, became so self-confident and oblivious to external society--so liberated--that he made the mistake of allowing his id to govern his loins to the extent that he no longer recognized when he wasn't in costume. After years of "play-acting," he literally became too comfortable with himself! Not showing deference to official convention was his true crime. Had the bow-tie, the grey suit, and the pancake make-up been in place, his stint at the Pussy Cat theatre would have probably been viewed as an outrageous promotional stunt, albeit one grossly unsuitable for his young target audience at the time.

I feel a song coming on, and this is the refrain: Don a disguise and they'll love you; take it off and they'll become apoplectic, violently resorting to the old "king of the hill" routine in which the testicularly deprived majority once again definitively prove who's running the game and, this being done, sink back into complacency. Having observed the scene on the street the day after our friend Mr. Herman was apprehended and awaiting impending penal reform, I report the following composite response: "Hey, Joey, you ever been to one of those theatres? You ever jerk it? Only freaks...What's that? What? I don't wanna know about it....Hey, I don't care if the goddamned Kinsey Report says that 98% of American males jerk-off. You do anything like that and tell me about it, I'll kick your ass!"

The moral of the Pee-Wee saga is not "Get a VCR if you feel compelled to veiw and 'respond' to squalid flicks." No, it is "Conceal your desires. Don't tell. Hell, don't even explore yourself enough to find out what your desires really may be. Emulate Kilroy if you wish to survive in our world." Keep that mask on!

Admittedly, every theory has it's limitations, and here the exception would be John Merrick, The Elephant Man, who probably would have been a happier lad had he been able to trade his famed deformity for a more conventional appearance on the condition that he lap up his own bodily excretions until he died of dehydration. [Incidentally, how many times could you imbibe the same pint of piss over and over again before it ceased to sustain you?] Mr. Merrick, confined to a disguise, spent a few miserable years behind a horrible potato sack veil which hid his face before later hemmorraging to death. In this instance, wearing a mask did little to rectify our disfigured friend's dire situation (the "dire situation" not being deformity as much as it was life itself), but he is clearly the exception.

In an insufferable effort to lose myself, to seek another plain of existence, I grew a beard for 15 days. This was perhaps the single most instructive experience of my life. For once, everything became clear to me. Stares. Shrugs of disgust. I was a filthy outlaw. I saw all of my acquaintances in an entirely new light. Even close friends failed to recognize me as Patrick TIllmann. I instead became a " freak of nature" -- the recipient of multiple stunned double takes. I don't really blame the gawkers. After all, I did look pretty awkward. Imagine Ricky Schroeder circa 1983 with a Raleigh Fingers stash. My response? I avoided all consideration of how others regarded me. I was a stranger in a once familiar land. I became obsessively introspective, learning a few things about myself that not even a Nazi interrogator with a large drill and rectal probe could have ascertained. Festooned with hideously innapropriate facial growth, I became my own man. Eschewing restricting societal paradigms, I caught a glimpse of who I was and, more importantly, what I could become.

While ill-spaced hairs adorned my face, I had another epiphany. Masks are everywhere, I thought. Why do some seem to facilitate mental and spiritual growth and others the opposite? What was the answer? Then it hit me: the most unsightly people on this globe that we call Earth are, ironically, the most healthily attuned to themselves. ...Tip O'Neill, Sandra Bernhard, Albert Einstein, Ed Asner... Like those who make a living off literally donning disguises (Momenchantz players, puppets, 7-11 stick-up artists, Barney, etc.) these fortuitously ugly men and women are in a unique position to subvert the crushing tendencies of the populace at large and actually harvest something beneficial from, what is to others, mindless oppression. This insight calls to mind that salty old joke about the woman with gas who found herself alone in an elevator and feeling undue pressure from her anus, let waft a most unpleasant air-biscuit. As soon as the elevator car stopped and it became clear that someone else was about to enter, she proceeded to take pine-scented Lysol out of her purse and excitedly douse the air with it before the door opened. Upon entering, a hapless man cringed up his nostrils and exclaimed, "It smells like someone shit on a Christmas tree in here!" Much the same, unattractive people will find that their efforts to affix make-up to feces is of little avail. They learn this lesson at a very young age. People who are semi-attractive, however, are constantly obsessed with bettering themselves via the aid of artificial toiletries and beauty aids as a means of priming up that mask. Plain-faced women futiley try to look like the strumpets splayed across the staples of magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, while their male compadres hopelessly attempt to look GQ suave. So as "normal" and "average" looking people continue to dominate the earth's surface, the refrain of my unhappy song inexorably plays on into infinity.

On March 1, 1994 at 10:09 A.M. I bid my furry friend adieu. Why did I lose the beard, you ask? Too much knowledge makes a man wise, to be sure, but it also has the undesirable side effect of isolation. "How lonely it must be to be God," I thought. Yet God I was for a few glorious days, scrutinizing my very soul, grasping at the key to my existence, creeping ever closer to the meaning of life. I may venture into this liberating territory again someday, but I'd prefer to do it in the presence of many fellow travelers. For an undertaking as momentous as this, intellectual dialoge and interaction are essential. We must band together to simultaneously plumb the depths of our souls. As far as I can see, there is only one to accomplish this task! Men: Let your facial hair grow until you can braid it to your flaxen locks and wirey pubes. Women: Those of you who are capable, do the same, or if beards or moustaches are altogether impossible, disfigure your face! By strategically placing a nice gash on a visible section of your countenance, you will look just as hideous as your bearded male companion. Yes, I realize this is rash -- not to mention permanent -- but the world that I'm proposing will not allow those endowed with seminal vesicles to ever shave again. Where we're going, razors will be just as illicit as heroin is at present. Gather 'round everyone, bow to your new leader, the patron saint of masques: Rocky Dennis.

Since it is possible that my too-unsubtle-to-be-true Oliver Stone-patented prose tactics still leave more than a few people scratching their heads asking, "What the hell was that lunatic talking about?" I will exhibit my incomparable largess by summarizing the thrust of the argument with the words of a much more eloquent person than myself -- Frederich Nietzsche. Mr. Nietzsche once posited that "Our defects are the eyes with which we see the ideal." It is imperative for all to join together so that we may, through unsightliness, forge a collective vision of peace, love and unity. Parents assume an especially important role in engineering future well-being. It is up to these guardians of the young to ignore the child-rearing paradigms of old. Utopia will be a reality only when local Park & Recs afford young children the opportunity to participate in disfiguring sports like motorbike dueling, boxing-with-blades, alligator taunting, sky-diving at low altitudes, spin-the-grenade, and when all parents present Red Ryder b.b. guns to their infant children on Christmas day.

The beauty of the future resides in ugliness.