Weirdos And Misfits

We have been looking at houses for about two months. No, don’t cringe back in horror, this is actually with a view to making me more productive. And there are “family economy” reasons behind it. Not in the sense of saving money (though true to an extent, if you consider the whole extended family) but in the sense of “making life easier.”

At any rate I will confess the main reason we’re looking is that all of us have a feeling of a move-in-haste at around September. We don’t know why, but we’d like to be prepared. And if it’s “trauma” and nothing happens, that’s fine. Mostly the looking involves us going to open houses. We found a house we REALLY want, but you know, lottery insists on picking the wrong numbers. (No, it’s not…. How do I put this? The house looks and feels like it was designed by Robert A. Heinlein, including the naval engineer touches, and the labor saving. And SO MUCH STORAGE and organization space. But you know…. ain’t got half a mil. If any of you finds it on the street, please send it in. Pleaz and Thanx.)

Anyway, this is in the service of: I finally figured out why I’m uncomfortable in suburbs.

I’ve always felt a little guilty about this, because the left hates suburbs so much. And because so many of you love them. But me? I’ve always felt most comfortable in older urban neighborhoods, usually the ones that never fell or were re-rehabilitated. My touch stones used to be “Can walk to at least two bookstores and a coffee shop. Walk to library can be slightly longer, provided the library is good.” That’s not true now. At least two of thos are inoperable. I still like coffee shops.

But this means most of my neighbors are liberal, so why? And why was the only suburb that was endurable (though I was still not that fond of it — the reason there being that walking was difficult as it was all uphill) the really expensive one. (Too expensive for us, to be fair. Strapped us down for years.)

Well–

I figured it out. Or actually Dan did. As we were driving away from a perfectly decent neighborhood, I said “that was nice, but I don’t think we’d be happy there.” And he said “Uh… you know, they look like a nice, close knit neighborhood. They’d resent us within six months. They’d try to have conversations that confuse us, interpret our responses as talking down to them, and then start low level acts of spitefullness.”

AND it hit me: I like urban neighborhoods because NO ONE expects me to be sociable. My neighborhood (then of a year) got to know me because I was part of the effort to trap and neuter Greebo and his brothers and sister (we couldn’t catch mom, which is why we had D’Artagnan and other cats.) And then we went to not talking to each other for three years, until the neighbor across the street accosted Dan and asked if I’d autograph her books. It wasn’t UNFRIENDLY. It was just “at a distance.” We smiled and waved, and when there was an emergency, like someone getting ill people helped. We’re still Americans. We just didn’t live in each other’s pockets.

Also, the neighborhood was very mixed ages, which means… well, at our age, buying in a suburb with lots of little kids will get us strange looks, at least until we have grandkids who can visit.

Anyway, that’s when I figured out it wasn’t the suburbs. It was us. We suck at lawn care. Mostly because I’m the one who does it, and I’m likely to suddenly disappear inside my head for three months, while the weeds grow chest-high. And we’re introverts. DUH. So having people try to talk to us all the time (ALL THE TIME the two times we lived in normal level suburbs) is exhausting. And on top of that, people often take our conversational style (“She sounds like she swallowed a thesaurus” — from a former neighbor) as PERSONALLY offensive, and like we’re doing it SOMEHOW on purpose. So we end up withdrawing and not talking to anyone, which is viewed as an act of hostility.

The problem, friends and blog-neighbors, is that we’re weirdos. Just straight up weirdos. You try to ask Dan how the game was last weekend, and he’ll cheerfully inform you he doesn’t follow. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, he watched it for some bizarre reason, and will start going into probability and statistical analysis until you run screaming into the night. (I’ve seen it.)

A normal conversation about the yard or movies around me, particularly if I’m trying very hard not to go political, will take sudden right (or left. Or kumquat most likely) veering turns into a book I just read, or my opinions on narrative construction or the history of archetypes.

I don’t do it on PURPOSE. The stuff is in my head, and it comes out, you know?

“Well, have you tried stopping being weird?” Sure. I have made great efforts since I was six or so, but weirdness keeps breaking through.

Look, I can hold it together for the space of the occasional party or social function. But people who live around us start noticing the oddness, and if they’re the kind that cares, it all goes downhill.

So what is this in the name of? I was talking to a friend who like me doesn’t write … as you’d expect from someone on the right.

Like me she gets afflicted with characters with weird sexualities (in her defense, she’s better than I. A lot of hers are alien.) Or characters that have other characteristics the left claims as theirs. Because this thing isn’t PRECISELY under my control. And if I try to control it completely, the life coursing through the writing dies, and it becomes a just so story. A slightly saner just so story than the left tells, but still blah and meh.

I mean, my arguably most Catholic work (Other than the Vampire series, because that was supposed to be the third book and…. oh, another thing to finish. I mean the reveal is in the third book and it turns the whole thing on its head) is Deep Pink, which is about…. satanic metal bands going to the pink. And the hero going to hell with holy water filled super-soakers.

Because I can’t just be normal. Doesn’t work for me. And my levels of pretending are lower and lower every year.

So, if we move are we going to end up in another urban neighborhood? There’s a high-ish likelihood, though right now my priority is being within walking distance of the church, for a bunch of reasons. (Will I horrify the other elderly church ladies? Likely, but you know what? I’ll volunteer for the cleaning and maintenance committee and they’ll shut up because I’m good at THAT.)

More importantly, talking it out with Dan made me less guilty about going into places — real and virtual — that are dominated by the left.

Because, honestly? We can’t let them claim the weirdos. Part of the problem was we let them do that. Which means they are squelching the leavening of society right at the source and turning all misfits bitter and full of hate.

They can’t have my people. Not anymore. Because I’m not retreating. Not from urban spaces. Not from weird fiction.

As I told my friend: We will march right on into their spaces and reclaim them. And if our reach is small (it is for both of us, relatively speaking) let it be so. Our presence will allow others like us to break out of the stultifying assumption they MUST be leftists. And they’ll have a little further reach.

Putting weirdos into straight jackets of thought breaks them. Which is what we’re seeing happen in real time, everywhere.

They’re not even of us, these leftists. They’re like Terry Pratchett’s auditors, trying to make everything fit into their mental categories. They just view our people as easy meat, because we’ve been weird since we’ve been aware of being alive, and are used to getting kicked around.

So, Weirdos, Misfits, Huns, follow me. Weirdness is ours, and they can’t drive us off.

Let’s go into the spaces we enjoy — or are called to — even if they are left-claimed or left infested.

Lift the light high. Claim our right to exist. And be weird.