This Essay is appearing in Issue 02 of the online magazine The Dinner Jacket.
Check it out: www.thedinnerjacket.com
I think of what that means sometimes when the eyes looking on me stop at my mask.
I've been thinking about another me. The other me, the me that I allow all of you to see. To hide in plain sight I wear a mask and present my altered self, to keep one identity secret and keep the other properly proliferated. You call me a hero because I help a person on one side of the line and punish another person on the other. You use the word hero because I exceed the average, but there's a part of me that wonders if my achievement is in my deeds or how the appearance of this ego encounters theirs. You use hero because you need to use me, as a benchmark of your fantasies. You make me wonder how much I use me, and which one is the alter and which is the ego.
Everyone hides and we all alter; everyone who has a face chooses a mask. For many of us, the mask becomes more recognized; many of the faces behind become all but lost completely or never really known at all. My mask is a hero, a literal and figurative ego. My mask is a public figure, a subject of fame. Every fame is a love that is hated in equal portion.
When I can put aside what people are thinking about the other me, under the scrutinizing, unblinking eye, I consider the actual altering. Who do I actually become? Do I become or do I merely revert?
I've done things with my face in hiding that I could never have done without my identity protected and my other identity worshiped. I've been brutal and daring; I've made decisions about others, both to hurt and to help, that were facilitated by alter identity and his altered values.
I most definitely feel an awakening within my persona, a freedom and confidence washed with inflated, fraudulent pride and shadowed modesty, to allow my ego to mingle freely with Freud's Id. I feel more like me when I'm not me. I feel a lack of consequence in my swell of confidence... Quite honestly, I feel lucky.
Isn't it just artificial? Am I a hero to myself or merely just another victim of perception? How can I be different? When does someone become different? Is it at the point of thought action or consequence? Is the strength we derive from these masks make hiding our true selves behind them a worthy transgression?
Can I take credit for acting on my own consequence or do I merely react to the call for good deeds and harrowing rescues? It is understood of this pursuit, by the criminals I encounter and the people I protect, that must also protect my vulnerable life, and that I should present an identity greater than myself. If I am to stand up for people than I must stand for something, and that something must be splendorous.
Burden is believed to come in the cost of celebrity, in the loss of anonymity. A hero carries the cost of the beholder as it lays the public eye upon him. As hero and celebrity have become interchangeable icons, I have found that those who complain most about a burden have perhaps forgotten they are wearing masks. Burden comes not with adorned perception but in the aftermath of substantial deeds. I see them when they look at me with pathos. They think I've missed their sympathy when they acknowledge they couldn't attempt what I accomplish in a glance that drifts by and apologizes for my burden.
I clearly suffer some a level of vanity, while I profit from it, to dress in this way and continually put myself in the venue to do magnificent things. But as much as I need to exhibit I need to hide, I need to protect myself as I feign protecting others. I've been called a hero many times, but I wonder sometimes if the title comes not from my actions and my deeds and my victories but my successful portrayal of an ideal. People believe my mask, that's really all the heroism that tends to be necessary.
I think about secret identities beyond my own. The common Freudian masks that alter/cover our faces and weigh on our shoulders. They offer a form of protection and an attractive deceit, but at what cost? Where would any of us be without our masks? Who among us knows how to wear a naked identity anymore?
How would we encounter one another without the comfort of a masked greeting? We use an expected alter ego to evaluate our peers and rivals in our discourse. I put on a mask the day I decided to become heroic and envied, though it certainly wasn't my first, but I've seen since how vital they are.
Sometimes a lie serves the people being lied to as much as the liar. Almost as often, a lie becomes an agreeable alternative. We accept that we aren't capable of presenting ourselves in a genuine way. We expect to see masks, that we might later see defended identities emerge from, as we earn the pleasure of meeting them. You ask me to wear a mask to represent something that's fundamental, that's more than a face. You like this mask because with it between us it doesn't get sticky and intimate. You don't have to worry about seeing me at the supermarket and saying something awkward. You need me to wear a mask when I do the things you want me to do, that you won't do, so you won't have to look me in the eyes when you say thank you.
The lie I tell everyday is the truth's alter ego, a yin behind the yin that tries still to oppose the yang. It's the truth in a mask, trying to do the right thing, but in a questionable way.
Some lies are forgivable.
We don't want to know each other.
S-P
