I spoke before about where I grew up being a rough neighborhood, rough as in Crime prone, where violence was palpable even on the days it didn't erupt into anything visible.
It was present within the families as well.
I am not clear on when I stopped trusting the system, it must have been early, what impressed me as a kid was the hypocrisy of everything, people said something but meant something else, or did something else and this applied to the system at large, Church in particular.
The people going to Church were the scariest to me, I had witnessed there the biggest evils, the violence in a way seemed more honest, that was what everybody felt, caged and enraged within a system of inequality and confined in government projects without hopes for their future.
I was an hybrid there, I had one foot into the system of privileges that a private education was granting me and a foot on the streets.
But while I was not clear if my education privileges would ever take me anywhere, the Gangs people of my neighborhood, had arrived 'somewhere', they had cars and big houses to show that and above all, they commanded Respect.
I soon became attracted to men who I perceived had some sort of power, the Alpha males so to say, of course every Alpha follows their own Alphabet, so if you are a Alpha male in a crime neighborhood, you must be the top dog within a Crime "bloodline" or close, or somehow you had to be regarded with respect by them.
Of course at the time I did not understand this was born out of Fear, I lived with an eccentric mother who decorated our home in a cheap Victorian style, inside my home everything seemed fine, ceramic dogs and laces, the piano playing, she tried to put a thick layer between herself and the world outside of our door and only look for the 'good side of things' even in a neighborhood where there was no good, she turned our home into a magical kingdom of plants, some real and most fake to create the desired fake harmony, while I cultivated dreams to just get away from this underworld and move on up.
At the time I had no access to the world of "men with a future", those men didn't roam our neighborhood if not briefly to come and pick up drugs or other illegal stuff, so the closest I could dream about moving up was either to leave Italy, that in itself would be a move up because in my imagination nothing could top Italy in the lower realms -and boy was I wrong- or just join the gangs.
The Gangs were Male dominated, the entrance into the power world of the Gangs would have been only through affiliation with a Boss, hence the importance of grooming and be beautiful, because men would pick women out of their shit holes to mate with them and if the women were good at holding on to the goodies, relationship could be formed, just for sex of course, but the goodies of women were the only weapon to guarantee an entrance into the forbidden world of men and power.
No wonder we made of prostitution the oldest job in the trade, it was The Only Job we could see and have access to that would give us some Equal footing in terms of Money as Power.
The first time I watched the Godfather I came out of the movie theatre Awestruck, I was a teenager, by then the only 2 powers I had identified were the Church and the Police, The Godfather became a cult movie for me, much like 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show" for some, minus the costumes, because to be a powerful Mafia person you only needed normal clothes and a load of money. That would become my idea of what real Power is, which when I translate it today would be to scare others more than they scare you, to be the top scary dog and so I often dreamed of being the Gangster's Moll, which in some ways is a Character that even though I have not lived in it's potential, I have lived in all its nuances.
What I liked about Gangster's Molls was that they were strong chicks, yes they were maintained by a man, but that didn't diminish their fieriness, their feistiness, that role would suit me fine, I felt the fiery in me and I did not know where to place it because men liked sweet wimps, or so it seemed, and so the search for the top dogs of my life began.
This led me to a lot of less than satisfactory relationships, as many top dogs are just that, dogs, that is the role they play, so wanting the exclusivity of an exclusive man was always a struggle in itself. My first success was my Irish boyfriend B., my first love, he had a Fun Fair and he was the middle son of a family of Gypsies, we would say today, people with no fixed abode, he had fair eyes -I just listened yesterday to Anu's interview about physical traits, haha, the FREE spirit I though I was- was in a band and all women wanted him, plus he had the respect of his staff, he wouldn't refrain from fighting hard and he was jealous, all good traits in my book, the jealousy was important because it warranted me unconditional safety. As a kid I had been bullied by boys, taken to the cellars and asked to take my clothes off or I would be beaten and had just been saved by the bell when my mum walked downstairs to store the bycicle away, but the fear staied, that a group of men could always overpower me in a cellar or in a courtyard and I discovered that men in a group will always do what the 'leader' said, so I wanted to get me a leader, because he could tell the others 'leave her alone', she is my Babe.
On this note I found interesting that things that offended other women, I longed for instead, I loved being called a Babe, Baby, I loved that a man would say 'I'll take you there' or 'Come here', and when I got married and my ex husband didn't play this role for me I felt forgotten and unsafe. The first time he said 'I don't like to say 'I'll take you there, you are not 'a thing'' I could not understand what he meant, such was my desire to belong to a man, I wanted to be a possession, I wanted to be possessed, in every way.
So tomorrow I will walk the Fear, Thought, Imagination, Backchat/internal conversation/ Reactions (Emotions/Feelings)/ Physical Behaviour and Consequences of this Character I have created, because on the coming back of B. and our long chat, when we kinda role played with this Character I felt a reaction of wanting to go back in time and re experience that sense of empowerment through disempowerment, if that makes any sense at all, I wanted to be the Babe, the Doll, the woman he wanted and craved next to him no matter how fiery and dangerous I have proved to be, but I could not bring myself to engage it in full, I have slipped out of some of my addictions and now I can't find the lever to press that brings out the Gangster's Moll suit in all its splendour but just what I perceive as a pathetic attempt to diminish myself, so I can belong and when he said 'Don't you ever Change' I felt the return to Reality of the 'Too late, I already did'.
thanks Eleonora - I can really relate
ReplyDeleteThanks Christine! I am undoing this Character let me know if the undoing rings a bell as well because it took a very unexpected turn as I brought that Character here to take a good look at it..... Ele
Delete