Censorship: self and societal (or are they one and the same?)
All men are repressed. The British simply have it down to a fine science. If we have strong opinions, we couch them in polite speech so as not to offend. Strong feelings are smothered as they threaten the stability of society; we replace these with work and healthy organized activities like sports and religion or less acceptable ones like drink and drugs. Strong sexual drives – the taboo of existence - are carefully controlled, finding that necessary outlet only in those dark private places where we will not be recognized by our ordinary acquaintances.
Was it any wonder the 60s happened? It wasn't so much Beatlemania as human mania finding its voice for the first time in modern society, the unleashing of perfectly normal emotions that rattle the institutions of power to their very foundations. I was much too young to see it that way. It was simply a given – silly school girls screaming like idiots over rock stars. It made every young British male want to be a rock star, to have girls screaming over him.
But I never wanted anyone screaming over me. I hated any form of upheaval, hid from it really. I was the kind to sleep with the enemy not throw myself against the bars that contained me, railing at the many injustices of life. I wanted to placate people. To keep them sweet and off my back.
So why was I so attracted to Ivo? Why didn't I shy away from him in the very beginning? He was the first person to force me to look at myself and question why I did as I did. He was the first to make me truly uncomfortable with who I was.
"Why for fuck´s sake are you censoring yourself?" he asked me once. I had no reply for him at that time.
Now I say to him – "Because that is how I was trained to behave. Because like all men I fear chaos and anarchy, the unwritten law of the jungle that might result in my demise. Because life is meant to be quiet and passive, not wild and savage."
So which of us is right? The outsider who cares not one iota for the perpetuation of a society that excludes him? Or those of us who cling to such an oppressive existence?