Tuesday, June 19, 2012

How To Learn Secrets

"She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback dwarf can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their own less-apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no virtues or morals. If I am "good" (an they assume that I am), it's obviously for a lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually."
excerpt from Geek Love by Katherine Dunn