More to the Deputy Than Meets the Eye
He was about what you’d expect—whoever “you” are, and whoever “I” am who is telling you this: well put-together, but with his stocky frame—mostly muscle, for now—threatening his uniform at every seam. His patent leather shone slickly, and the law enforcement accoutrements adorning his thick belt made you wonder if they were permanently attached, or if he had to reinstall them every morning, and forced you to imagine that process. He was a peace officer in the old sense, well-liked by fellow officers and the public alike, because he was genial and helpful and just didn’t give you anything to challenge or dislike. He enjoyed a good beer, bad joke, and was an exceptional marksman, and the kind of guy everybody wanted on their bowling team.
Of course he was named Danny.
But it is my job to tell you now that when he went home at night, things were different.
Danny was single, lived alone, and when he was safely in his fortress of solitude he shed his uniform, carefully hanging everything up, perhaps to be worn again, perhaps to be dropped off at the cleaners, depending on the circumstances, safely stored his Glock and Taser, took a shower, went to his “other” room, and after surveying the rich assortment of women’s clothing in the walk-in closet, re-dressed. He loved the luscious feel of silk panties (don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it), and nylon stockings, and applied his make-up with great and tender care. Danielle was set free—Danny a faint memory. You might say, a dream.
There was a liminal moment during the transition—no longer Danny, not yet Danielle—when, like opposite charges, his two selves canceled each other out, and he felt the bliss of pure consciousness—minus the tiresome inconvenience of identity. Maybe refinding that place every night was the whole point—when subject and object swapped places, when “I like these panties” became “These panties like me.” But Danielle didn’t think of it that way, she just followed her heart.
First of all—and this is me again—forget the trick that there is “a” self—we are never more than our latest “I.” Our reality, when something has told us the limit of what our reality can be, and we have believed it, is a competition between the multiple I’s that elbow their way into the spotlight, including the I that concludes there is no master I, and the one that wonders how it knows that.
Or, if you like—as in my case—the narrator.
All of this milled about in the realm of the intuitive. It wasn’t something Danielle dwelt upon, nor something Danny could share with his bowling team.
Other things they couldn’t share:
The occasions when they had come around a corner in the house to discover themselves sitting in a chair.
Their mutual suspicion that they were dreaming themselves, and themselves were dreaming them, and so there was nothing but dream.
The enigmatic sticky notes each self left for its later—another word for “other”—self, which the recipient could only puzzle over, never comprehend, like koans, wondering what they would know if they could revive within them the germ of that inscrutable message.
How curious to wonder: what am I trying to tell myself? Knowing there are no selves, only the places where they have been.
August 19, 2023