The Schema of Unrelenting Standards

I worry about finding myself in some hipster bar in Omaha with PBR in hand, laughing, talking, enjoying myself when suddenly someone within the conversation makes an obscure cultural/political/philosophical reference of which I have no knowledge. I am then forced to laugh knowingly and hide my complete ignorance or lyingly shake my head in agreement and feign understanding. This is the type of anxiety I have.

I told my therapist this last week when we were discussing my fear that I am not in the best academic environment. She asked what the worst case scenario would be if in fact I missed out on some possible education and what I described above was my response. She was trying to juxtapose the fear with the most negative possible outcome by asking that question. This technique probably has greater effect when the root fear is more rational but for me, and I suspect many others, it comes down to a ridiculous fear that I won't look cool in every possible situation.

Something that I write and think about often is the concept of rakishness and I wonder if true rakes ever live with this schema of unrelenting standards. Are rakes conscious of their rakishness? Do they compare themselves to other rakes? I would like to think that a quality of rakishness is a transcendence of competition and need for comparison. I doubt that if one could magically find themselves in the company of both Marquis de Sade and Oscar Wilde (two almost perfect examples of the rake in history) that either would be in the least bit concerned with a comparison to the other. I'm sure you might find a competition in some form but no concern for a hierarchy based simply on rakishness as a concept or from a technical aspect. Rakes aren't 80s metal guitar players trying to beat each other at metronome games.

But that's exactly how I would approach it in my increasingly neurotic world; and I would miss the whole point by doing such and giving into the schema.

The KOL Freakout

My preoccupation with rakishness would compel me to at least pretend that I’m emotionally inaccessible or socially unaware even if I wasn’t already those things. Fortunately for me I can be completely sincere. Sincerest still during a KOL Freak-out. acquaintances, fellow Slap Assassins, and most piano repairmen/flower merchants can attest to the red-faced teary-eyed furious end to a night that can ultimately be linked to only two variables: KOL and large quantities of red wine (the obvious overt sentimentality issues at the root i.e “the girl” can be considered a rotating third factor).
I have wanted to try and get across in words the complete concept. I want to see if I am the only one who experiences this phenomenon. I know I am not (Caleb himself describes the “Rooster”) but I still want to be Christ on the stauros; isolated; rakish. That seems dark but the KOL Freak-out can be dark.
Signs that you are in the middle of a KOL Freak-out:
1.) You have at least one, if not more than one empty bottles of red wine around you. Usually this will be an old vine Zin or maybe even a Pinot and even more recently a Carmenere.
2.) You have just broken a piano. Basic technique for breaking pianos during a KOL Freak-out is to try and throw as many Gin Gimlets into inside of the instrument as possible before getting punched.
3.) Buy all the flowers from the street merchant at once and give them to whomever the rotating third factor is at the moment.
4.) You are crying.
Variations abound and the only constants are wine and KOL. General rakishness is often associated with the KOL Freak-out, as are Camel No. 9 Menthe 100s. The true aficionado can even peak a freak-out with dirty gin martinis in place of the wine; recovery periods are subsequently longer. I have been able to do it with just exhaustion and the song “Cold Desert” or “Knocked Up.”
Less important are the logistics than the overall experience, the affect, the next day recollections. I dont think I have ever ever woke up the next day feeling anything other than soothed or recovered or I guess refreshed; certainly not physically but instead considerably lighter emotionally. It would be a mistake to associate it with any type of Judaeo-Christian biblical awakening; some modern spiritual prowess bestowed upon the young man and his soul but we all know that art and chemicals have done some pretty amazing things for people. I dont feel the need to pretend to be a purist.
Ultimately that emotional release makes the KOL Freak-out a viable therapy. One cannot, without experience, grasp this; no matter how much I may try to describe it. It can easily be compared to post-orgasmic clarity. The KOL Freak-out is more or less the same as extending that feeling over the course of an evening. I clarify; I am not comparing it to the euphoria but instead the clearness of mind that comes subsequently and is quick washed away with the next surge of hormones. When I became accustomed to the onset of the KOL Freak-out I was then able to force out or dissect the experience in an even more practical manner. The behavior became less sporadic and uncontrolled and the effect therefore more ethereal (thus the lightness previously described). I am a proponent, a fan. I want everyone to taste and see. The KOL Freak-out allows us to reach for those far out feelings and make them ache up close and if need be, we can then, keep that feeling or discard it as truly hurtful.

Kerouac's Crack on French Writers

“…and with me sitting in front of this imperious secretary…. were a half dozen eager or worried future writers with their manuscripts all of whom gave me a positively dirty look when they heard my name as tho they were muttering to themselves ‘Kerouac? I can write ten times better than that beatnik maniac and I’ll prove it with this here manuscript called ‘Silence au Lips’ all about how Renard walks into the foyer lighting a cigarette and refuses to acknowledge the sad formless smile of the plotless Lesbian heroine whose father just died trying to rape an elk in the Battle of Cuckamonga, and Phillipe the intellectual enters in the next chapter lighting a cigarette with an existential leap across the blank page I leave next, all ending in a monologue encompassing etc., all this Kerouac can do is write stories, ugh’ –’and in such bad taste, not even one well-defined heroine in domino slacks crucifying chickens for her mother with the hammer and nails in a “Happening” in the kitchen’” –agh, all I feel like singing is Jimmy Lunceford’s old tune:

“It aint watcha do, It’s the way atcha do it!”‘