High on The Gaze
2025-10-10
It is FRIDAY morning as of writing this post. I've got KNON Now playing as the background music for today, and after having one of those Reign energy drinks, I'm feeling good and ready to shoot some shit off the top of the proverbial dome.
You know where the best place to get dope is? At an NA meeting. Seriously, the last person a dope fiend needs to hang out with is another dope fiend. Thankfully, most people aren't dope fiends in that kind of connotation, so a dope fiend can reasonably not hang out with other dope fiends if they so choose. But here's something I find interesting: everyone has that inner dope fiend in them. Everyone is fiending for something at some time; at the core of it, I think that the main drug people vie for is attention, or even more bluntly, the urge to be seen.
I recently read up a little bit more on The Gaze. Apparently there's this phenomenon where people feel that they are being gazed upon as some kind of obscure Other or object instead of the complex and vivid person they see themselves as, and well, that makes them mad. There was some prominent feminist writer who talked about the Male Gaze and how women seem to universally feel a sense of objectification when men do a double take at them or something. I can't really speak on that because I am a man and have no perceptions of any kind regarding the female experience, but I do find myself doing double takes when I see an attractive woman. Does this make me a bad person? Well, that doesn't make me a bad person; the fact that I'm a bad person makes me a bad person.
Even I, a man at the bottom of the patriarchy, have a desire to be seen. It's funny though because bottom-tier dudes get the least amount of the desired drug that is attention. For men at this tier, we are constantly told that we are only worthy of love depending on our value to society. If we are uniquely capable of deep commerce or statecraft or talented at a specific and necessary thing, we are deserving of attention, desire, and affection. But if we're just replaceable cogs in the machine? Then it truly doesn't matter whether or not we live or die—some other undesirable will take our place.
For me, I feel an ever-growing resentment at that. I refuse to play that game, though, and even if the world wants to spit at my face and make me feel no better than the dirt off of someone's boot, then so be it. I have no desire for status anyway. Well, at least status in the traditionally 'masculine' sense. Power, yes, that's what I'm looking for. I have no desire for power. For me, I have no desire for it because worldly power breeds woeful ignorance of powers that are greater than any man could ever willfully possess. Instead of tapping into shitty worldly power by being concerned with money and owning property and all that other stuff, I want to tap into the greater power that exists deep in the recesses of what's beyond anyone's sight.
I want to feel the power of the Most High course through my veins. In this power, I will find something greater than any drug we can willingly conceive of.
Call it peace, call it grace; here in my corporeal tomb, I will find what I'm looking for, no matter how long it takes.