JUNE 24 (PRIDE STRIPT & WHIPT)

—-=Shakespeare=—

Duke. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
‘This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

As You Like It

Act II, Scene 1
(1599)

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A Monologue:

“WHO AM I?”

THE ERECTION OF A DELUSION

or,
The Delusion of An Erection

DRAMATIS PERSONA:
Confused Teenage Girl.

CONFUSED TEENAGE GIRL: [speaks on the phone with a friend]

I have been driven mad, almost mad,
by a question that wont stop sweeping through my mind.
It’s powerful.

“Who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I ?“

I feel like my brain is a little coastal town:
the sky is darkening as a hurricane approaches.
I can try to board up the windows and not think about it, or run,
but I’m completely flooded anyway;
and my appearance is changing
because of the power in the wind:
like, the roof is ripped off,
the family Bible is waterlogged,
–what good’s that without a family anyway ?-
and my childhood pictures bleed and blur.
It’s like the only way I can be cured,
is to move or rebuild the house,
a new image,
a new self.
I  honestly wondered if I was ill,
if I could get a pill.
But, you know, if the roof gets blown off your house, you must rebuild.
I’m wondering if I’m transgender.
When I look in the mirror,
I just see myself clearly,
the outlines of a different life
with short hair,
a man’s chest,
and a beard.
My Puritan Dad told me that this is what he feared.
My mother, who divorced him long ago –good for her–
told me she loved me and cheered me;
but, somehow I let me Dad convince me
to try out conversion therapy.
Then, after making an excuse,
I refused to keep going.
I told my Mom and she called it abuse.
She insisted we get a restraining order.
Dad said Mom is a bitch trying to restrain God’s order.
Then —here’s irony my Mom laughed at—
soon after all this,
we heard Dad lost his job.
He refused to undergo re-education for Implicit Bias.
Last we talked, he said he knew he went wrong
when he listened to my Mom,
and failed to whip my bi- ass.
So, he’s out of my life!
Mom said that if Dad truly cared about me,
he would’ve never suggested conversion therapy.
Then she said she’d be glad to have another son,
and offered to pay for my surgical transition,
and it’s all the better the sooner we’ve begun. 
But there is news I’m hearing from Europe,
where all this was initially developed and promoted,
and it has me questioning my motives.
They’re starting to reverse their course.
But, I’m not worried about it.
I’m bored with the old me.
Even if the new hormones stop me from ever being able to have a baby,
Mom says that’s just one less baby to abort,
and even if my chest gets lopped off,
I can always just adopt.
I know I would be a good Mom, I mean Dad,
not like the one that I had.
I can tell you this:
I won’t raise my kid to be prejudiced.
I can’t stand prejudiced people.
They’re all the same,
ranting on God’s love and hell’s flame.
My mom says she feels ashamed
just to say Jesus’s name.
I never can go wrong with her.
Am I right?
Hey, here’s a weird little twist
I just found out about,
but don’t shout it out.
Like, she told me she’s a feminist witch.
Ha! My Dad just texted me!
Speak of the devil.
I thought I had him blocked.
Says, “If the blind lead the blind then they’ll both fall in a ditch.”

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“[Demons through witches] are able to vitiate the natural use of any member….”

“[T]hey can take away the male organ, not indeed by actually despoiling the human body of it…. First, it must in no way be believed that such members are really torn right away from the body, but that they are hidden by the devil through some prestidigitory art so that they can be neither seen nor felt. And this is proved by the authorities and by argument; although is has been treated of before, where Alexander of Hales says that a Prestige, properly understood, is an illusion of the devil, which is not caused by any material change, but exists only in the perceptions of him who is deluded, either in his interior or exterior senses….It may be asked further with reference to the above method of devils, whether this sort of illusions can happen indifferently to the good and to the wicked: just as other bodily infirmities can, as will be shown later, be brought by witches even upon those who are in a state of grace. To this question, following the words of Cassian in his Second Collation of the Abbot Sirenus, we must answer that they cannot. And from this it follows that all who are deluded in this way are presumed to be in deadly sin. For he says, as is clear from the words of S. Antony: The devil can in no way enter the mind or body of any man, nor has the power to penetrate into the thoughts of anybody, unless such a person has first become destitute of all holy thoughts, and is quite bereft and denuded of spiritual contemplation.…Those who are given to lust, the devil has power over them. And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil’s work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of the nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belongs to a parish priest. All these things are caused by devils through an illusion or glamour, in the manner we have said, by confusing the organ of vision by transmuting the mental images in the imaginative faculty. And it must not be said that these members which are shown are devils in assumed members, just as they sometimes appear to witches and men in assumed aerial bodies, and converse with them. And the reason is that they effect this thing by an easier method, namely, by drawing out an inner mental image from the repository of the memory, and impressing it on the imagination…. And if it is asked whether the devil is more apt to injure men and creatures by himself than through a witch, it can be said that there is no comparison between the two cases. For he is infinitely more apt to do harm through the agency of witches. First, because he thus gives greater offence to God, by usurping to himself a creature dedicated to Him. Secondly, because when God is the more offended, He allows him the more power of injuring men. And thirdly, for his own gains, which he places in the perdition of souls.”

IBID,
Part 2, Question 1, Chapter 6,
“How Witches Impede and Prevent the Power of Procreation”