Much of the time, I’m working hard to not say anything ugly. When I’m in the presence of someone good and holy, for instance, I keep telling myself, “Don’t say anything horrid, Horrid Boy.”
What does this mean that I’m yearning to say bigoted things? That I’m yearning to shock and awe?
I think it’s connected to Eroticized Rage, which means getting a charge from breaking the rules. I often look out my window at the windows of other apartments and think it would be swell to quietly check out the dirty deeds going on there (I’ve never done this, but I feel the temptation, so I understand Peeping Toms).
I’m dying to transgress and to invade, some nights I have to tie myself down to stop from taking over the Sudetenland. I get a thrill from the temptation of breaking the rules, from the thought of invading someone’s boundaries and privacy and taking what I want.
I think it is a reaction to smothering mother figures in my earliest years and to a famous and impossibly righteous preacher daddy. I guess I developed in my childhood an unquenchable desire to lash out but couldn’t safely express this until I became an independent adult and then I got online and it poured out in a vicious torrent I can barely stand to think about today. I feel like the Orthodox Jewish version of the Marquis de Sade. I hope if I can just pour it all out, I’ll heal.
The more connected I am to good people and to God and to Torah and to my true self, the less driven I feel to transgress in these ugly ways.
A fire out of control, just another fool
You touch me and I’m weak, I’m a feather in the wind
And I can’t wait to feel you touching me again
