CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, Fame without Fortune

Rosary OM made me, suggested by Mini

*Emptying my journal from a few years ago, and this is dated around December of 2010.

Agoraphobia’s set in. I’ve become anxiety prone, having trouble making my way in civil society. I don’t know why. Okay, I kind of know why, but I can’t figure out why I am unable to lick this feeling.

I’ll be shopping, and all the sudden I’ll hear my last name screamed out. Phonetically perfect, my last name people have always loved to say. For all of my life, it has replaced my first name. And, for whatever reason, people love to say it loudly.

Then a rush of activity.

Disbelief.

IS IT REALLY YOU? they ask. REALLY?

I smile. I nod. I feel completely trapped. I want to run. I want to hide.

Nothing bad has happened. No one has been rude. In fact, they’ve been very kind, warm even. Glad to see me. Glad to see I am okay. They’ve heard things, worried, and wondered from time to time how I was. These encounters continue, almost daily.

Having my hair cut, where the stylist has been touching my beautiful head for quite some time, the stylist suddenly pipes up, I was in your class back in X year. Do you remember me? I feign remembrance, but most of the time I cannot place them. I just want to slide under the floor. I am waiting for THE moment when someone freaks the fuck out and goes ballistic.

At the DMV in Chula Vista, booming voices yell for me … like a tragic Greek chorus. That DID scare me. Hahahaha. Click, clack, click, clack a bunch of shoes shuffle over. Oh my God! Oh my God! You’re out! You’re out! We thought you got like, what?, forty years! Yeah, that’s not uncomfortable amongst a group of complete strangers. Hahahahaha. I looked down at the pen in my shirt more than once, contemplating stabbing myself in the neck in order to escape the rest of that moment. Hahahaha.

Bars. Restaurants. Book stores. Parking lots. Libraries. Trolley stops. Gas stations. Old friends. Students. Church friends. Colleagues. Miscellaneous peoples throughout the years. Doesn’t seem to end. I guess it won’t. I guess it shouldn’t.

Meeting new people is difficult, and that’s mostly because I’d have to trust them enough in order to confide. Old people in my life want to be caught up on the latest, what happened, and so forth. 

Both situations are intolerable. Privacy is gone.

So she talks to me, making excuses to speak with me. Faby is what she goes by. Super cute. Cute plus. Sweet.

Almost forcing me to speak, she asks more than she needs to about my being in her presence (for the sake of discretion, I’ll keep it at that). She comments on everything I have in my possession. Nice hat, you go to State? … I like your bag. Where’d you get it? … What book is that? … You always play your music so loud? … What does Fugazi mean? … She has this way of making me feel as if no one else is around, no one at all, when we speak.

I am so nervous my hands sweat. I sorta know where this should go. I can’t do it. Nope. Not ready. So there I am.

I am a superfluous man, completely. I don’t matter. I cannot matter. I won’t matter. I am invisible. Extra. Tangential. Marginal. Outside. Aloof.

All of my attachments are gone. I am unattached to people. Unattached to things. No money. No assets. Plenty of past, little future.

Floating.

And I mean it.

checalaloskelsos@gmail.com
  
Craig Edward Kelso is the author of Anarcho-Capitalism (2014), a primer on the philosophy of peaceful, stateless cooperation. His curriculum vitae include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from San Diego State University, and a Post-Baccalaureate secondary education credential in both Social Science and English Language Arts. Kelso taught for nearly a decade in the American public school system, and was voted by colleagues Teacher of the Year, twice in his short tenure, earning numerous accolades from chambers of commerce, mayors, state assembly persons, governors, congresspersons, senators, and even Wal-Mart. Currently he struggles to earn an opportunity to be employed, working as a laborer, dishwasher. He is deliriously happily married to Myra Kelso, living in Southern California with their adorable children.