Norman in my life
(This monologue was formerly called “Being Spielberg” as part of an attempt to see the creation of War of the Worlds and Munich from his point of view. I may eventually make a video out of this)
I wake up in the middle of the night to the thump, thump, thump of Norman’s footstep in my hall.
I know it cannot possibly be him because he is deep in some federal prison.
I hear him just the same – panting like a wild beast, his savage stench filling my home like an advancing plague.
I panic like I always do, feeling every muscle stiffen so I cannot move.
I’m a deer caught in headlights I cannot see, waiting for the impact of a car that has not yet arrived.
Reason tells me I have all the walls and fences I need to keep such a beast away.
Fear tells me differently, pictured me in the middle of a vast space alone, stripped of family, friends and security guards.
I feel isolated in a place where the beast can get at me, and I do feel hunted.
His kind has always hunted my kind from the dawn of time, brute force seeking to make a meal out of the physically weak, needing to feel superior by suppressing those of use helpless to stop them.
When I was a young boy, I always managed to out-think such beasts, refusing to put myself at risk by playing their games.
I always kept head of those Normans by thinking what they might do and not being near them when they did it.
I stuck to my own kind, taking up classes and hangouts, beasts like Norman wouldn’t remotely consider cool
I clung to the A/V room, hoping the scent of film and heated vacuum tubes would act on my Normans the way garlic did on other vampires.
I suppose deep down I always believed in some greater power – if not merely intelligence and talent – protected me.
I believed in God, in fate, and in the ability of good to triumph over evil.
Maybe that’s what hurt most when my parents divorced.
This shook up something fundamental in my life, and I have felt the aftershocks ever since.
I couldn’t get a firm grip on reality after that, as if my universe had turned to Jell-O and slipped out between my fingers each time I tried to grasp it.
Nothing could be counted on after that.
No one in my life could protect me.
Even the places in my life changed. Friendships faded with each move like sandcastles being washed away by waves.
I’m not saying I was always afraid.
And I still believed the world could be fair and just.
But I did take refuge in my imagination, recreating the world into what I wanted instead of what it was.
Perhaps this escape allowed me to become a god of my own, creating a universe where justice punished evil and kept people like Norman from hurting people like me.
In my worlds, space aliens weren’t communists, they were saints, coming down from the sky to guide us.
If there was evil in them, it came from our rejecting their friendship.
I think I might have gone on the rest of my life feeling this way had not the real Norman tried to reach me.
He wanted to humiliate me in ways even my vivid imagination could not envision.
I was in Ireland when Norman invaded by California estate, slipping onto my property like ghost.
I still don’t completely understand his need or even the seed deeply planted into human consciousness that inspires hatred like his.
Even with thousands of miles between us, I felt vulnerable as if he had pulled the scab off my parents divorce and I was that same helpless child all over again.
Sure, I feel a little guilty about having him put away for the rest of his life.
But what do you do with a beast that refuses to be tamed?
Is his freedom worth the terror me and my family must feel? Do we not have a right to feel safe?
If this is a dog eat dog world like some people claim, which would you rather be, the dog who feeds or the dog fed upon?
Still, Norman is always here, stalking my nightmares, roaming freely inside and outside of me as if he was master of my home instead of me.
He wears many faces.
But all wear the same obsessed look, full of hate for me.
It was Norman that killed John Lennon, and Princess Diana
His kind making blood sacrifice out of my kind.
And no amount of wealth can keep him out.
Not even my imagination can.
So now the world where I once strolled with nymphs and fairies is plagued with shadowy Normans, too.
So as on many other nights like this, I get up, turn on the lights and look around the room to assure myself Norman is not here with me.
Then, I walk from room to room to room looking in on my family members. They are my friends, my society, and my allies against those who would do us harm.
I pick up the phone to call security to ask if there have been any intruders.
No, they tell me, all is well.
I lay down again.
Close my eyes.
I no longer hear Norman’s heavy breathing or footsteps.
And for a moment, I am again Peter Pan, floating back to the untroubled Never Never land of more pleasant dreams.
But I know, sooner or later, Norman must come again.