This is a blog post I published approximately around June 15th of 2024 on asherwolfstein.com. At this time I don’t have a more accurate date, but I will. This was pulled from this archive.org snapshot:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240615015130/https://wunk.me/but-what-do-i-know/
( This link may not work on mobile devices due to archive JavaScript. )
The Blog Post
In my previous somewhat-whiny, somewhat-snarky, somewhat-punk, somewhat-anti-social, somewhat– … Okay, in my previous SOMEWHAT-post that was an honest, raw, heartfelt mess that sprayed everywhere I mentioned my knowledge, and even kept repeating the phrase, “What do I know?”
What is that? Why would I say that? How am I saying that? What does that mean?
I’m saying it as the quiet, reserved person that no one notices a lot who gets underestimated because someone like them wouldn’t know (couldn’t know?) anything important about anything important that just finished explaining everything who then leans back, takes a drag of a smoldering fag, and says, “But hey, what the fuck do I know, right?”
What DO I know, though?
It should be pretty apparent from what I wrote earlier (and several places elsewhere) that, as a child, I didn’t have a lot of direction on much of anything. It might also be worth noting that sometimes people call me the “Master of Understatement.” I say it “should” be pretty apparent because, apparently, I have a lot more readers than I ever anticipated who have trouble reading between the lines and putting things together on their own.
I want to think I’m accurate when I say I don’t have this trouble most of the time. Not having a lot of direction on things (meaning I wasn’t told or handed anything about a shockingly large number of subjects, given my intellectual father) resulted in me developing quite the remarkable ability to infer. I’ve inferred a lot about a lot from sheer observation (and some involvement). It’s why I’m quite observant of people (despite what some might think), particularly in social situations.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder are known to be often able to pick up on non-verbal communication remarkably well, particularly when it comes to faces. Unfortunately, with faces, it’s often naturally overshot, and the conclusion becomes exaggerated and inaccurate.
And I did this from day one for several reasons. I wanted to understand other people because other people are fascinating. I also wanted to know, after some odd situations on the playground with the other boys in elementary where I ended up playing more with the girls than with them, what people might expect of me or how I might want to act if I wanted to be accepted by my peers. Eventually, that also extended to me trying to figure out how best to effectively (and authentically) communicate with others to get what I wanted (as everyone does).
I also observed stories, books, movies, situations, the news, history, anything, and everything to figure out just how the “world worked.” I learned to fill in gaps, make guesses, come up with theories, and even truss up whole abstract trees of potential possibilities and probabilities of things that may or may not be true and should be watched out for to be confirmed.
Some of it was incorrect and unhelpful, and I learned how that happened. Some of it turned out to be quite accurate but far ahead of its time in terms of personal development, sometimes causing frustration or getting me in trouble.
I felt compelled to do this to survive because it didn’t seem like anybody else cared enough to notice or remember to do it for me. If it wasn’t related to ranch life, 4-H, school, or, in other words, practical (or related to westerns, Trivial Pursuit, pool, or getting a girlfriend), it wasn’t really important.
I loved fantasy stories and fantasy games. I loved Nintendo. I loved Dungeons & Dragons when I learned about it (even though finding people to play was… difficult). I loved board games. I loved cartoons, particularly things like surprise surprise, Eek the Cat, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and anything that had talking animals, but when I randomly saw a bizarre, colorful animation about a magical girl in high school called Sailor Moon on morning TV before school… I also ended up liking “Japanimation.” I loved programming computer games on my Macintosh IIsi for hours and hours on end by myself, listening to Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick or Aqualung (when I could, or silence) in the library while everyone else played Trivial Pursuit in the kitchen. I loved technology and the internet, doing things on the internet (when I could), publishing websites (on GeoCities, of course), and listening to those cool sounds my 56k modem would make. I loved horror movies and inappropriate movies and watching them with my friends. I loved reading about Asimov’s robots and dreamed of being a Robot Psychologist. I loved getting into things I was clearly not “supposed” to get into. And… I was gay.
All this on a ranch I was forced to work at (as a farmhand) just outside of a small tourist town with generally small-tourist-town-minded adults (and their children) offering no mentorship (with things like programming) and no romantic opportunities (quite the opposite). I always wanted to live in the city. I was born a city boy at heart, much to my father’s homesteading lifestyle’s chagrin. I dreamed of living in the city and would look forward to visiting it because it was this dreamland where you could buy and do anything. We’d only visit the city for a livestock show (which was apparently romantic in some way to my parents, which is why I especially laugh when people think Betty White’s character Rose in The Golden Girls is kidding when she says her parents went to a livestock show as a romantic trip) or because my parents needed something or for Christmas shopping (thank god). I remember purchasing Final Fantasy III at Toys’R’Us for 90 freakin’ bucks. Otherwise, it was a place to be avoided, much to my chagrin.
So, after deciding to quit my insurance agent job in Tabernash (licensed in all four lines), that’s immediately what I did: I moved to the city to live with my now (US citizen) husband, his ex-boyfriend, and that ex’s new boyfriend (who, like his current boyfriend, was a piece of shit).
Anyways, I digress. What do I know? I know that I think I’m a fairly average person in the grand scheme of things, but that, like almost everyone, I have a few unique traits and issues. Honestly, if you strip away the Borderline, the furry, and the supposed intelligence, in the end, I’m pretty average. I don’t necessarily think those three things make me “special” in any superior sense; they are just different.
I don’t think of myself as superior in any way, shape, or form. I make that very clear in my previous post where I write that I’m a shit person, and the detritus of society, and a total failure. Why do I think that?
I wrote what I wrote above to showcase the ways in which I was different from other members of my family. My family is different (alcoholic dynamics and gifted intelligence), sure, but in many ways, a lot of the gist of it is pretty normal/white bread. They are definitely not furries, none are LGBTQIA+, and none share almost any of the same passions I do (being a writer/artist, except my older brother Asa, who wants/ed to be a movie actor). Three of them don’t live outside society’s normal expectations (good jobs/careers/business owners), two were valedictorians (I would’ve been if it wasn’t for the girls above me), and two finished college (the oldest, Ian, has a doctorate in electrical engineering).
It’s not that they’re mean to me in any way, put me down, hate on me, insult me, or harass me. They don’t even really judge me. Really! I’m just… not them, and they don’t understand.
That means that for most of my life, any idea I ever had about much of anything or expression was met by my immediate siblings and such with apathy, ambivalence, and sometimes critique and disdain for a number of possible reasons that usually revolved around my ideas not being able to be taken seriously.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Who would read that?”
And mind you… we’re talking about these kinds of things:
When I was thirteen (1996), I wanted to write a sourcebook about 101 dragons in a fantastical land, each with their own illustration, legend, artifacts, and magic, complete with the tale of the wandering adventurer who adventures far and wide to catalog them all. At the time, things like role-playing sourcebooks were still a niche hobby more known in urban nerd circles.
Ian said, “Who’d read that? You should do something that involves research.”
When I was seventeen (2000), and in the throes of The Clasheerian Order, I was yammering on in Asa and Aila’s bedroom while she was trying to go to bed. She kept trying to shoo me out, but I was oblivious because I was just too excited by my new idea! I kept telling her how amazing it would be if we made a video-sharing site as The Clasheerian Order. People could collaborate on videos, publish videos publicly, and do all sorts of things like a social network. This was before both Facebook (2004) and most importantly, YouTube (2005). Four and five years ahead, in fact, which I think, with humility, is pretty good.
Aila said, “Why would anyone want to post videos online? That seems stupid.”
And that was the end of it. She jokingly kicks herself now, but that’s real nice and easy to say after the fact. It doesn’t keep her or any of them from still not taking me very seriously on new ideas.
When building a fence in the scorching sun with Asa, Cliff, and me around the time I was fourteen/fifteen (1997/1998), I described this interesting multiplayer game styled like Final Fantasy III (6) (SNES), where people would log on and inhabit avatars, create content/spaces, and script their environment. “But what would you do?” I said you could do all sorts of things: roleplay, chat, do flag battles, adventure, battle monsters, or even hang out and do a watch party with in-game video (if the network bandwidth, like at school, allowed it). There wasn’t really a game; it was a game people could fashion themselves. Sound familiar?
Cliff and Asa said it sounded one, too difficult (okay), but two, like something people wouldn’t be interested in. Asa asserted it sounded cool, but only in concept because otherwise, it sounded like it’d be boring; people need to be given their entertainment, and with nothing immediate to do, they’d be bored.
Much later (2003), Cliff and Amy introduced me to Second Life, which Cliff was all enthusiastic about, of course, and much later, we also got Roblox and so on. What the hell was wrong with my idea? Oh yeah, I forgot, my furry gay idealistic dreamland ass came up with it. Sorry if that comes across as over-the-line sarcastic, but that’s how that shit feels when it goes down like that.
When I was living at home suffering from my absolutely debilitating depression (and atypical psychosis, real diagnosis), I said at the dinner table one night, “They should make one of these top-chef-contest-like shows, except it should be game developers participating in a long term game jam.”
Scott immediately said without missing a beat, “That would be so boring; who’d watch that?”
Of course, even though my mother genuinely helps and supports me in these endeavors, you have the fursuit thing. It wasn’t until Ian saw me in action at Tour De Fat that he actually “got it,” whereupon he said, “I get it now. When you wear this suit, you’re a freakin’ rock star!”
But… he couldn’t ever possibly understand that or believe what I said about things without seeing it with his own eyes that he couldn’t deny. And that’s what I’m pointing at. I’m not extended the same assumed credibility as others (I feel) because, for some reason, I don’t deserve it. I mean, I can also see it as simply being a victim of the fact that whatever it might be is strange, but it’s not always strange. Even when it isn’t strange, it seems to still happen, which is why I believe that.
I said something about the nature of men and men’s behavior and feelings regarding how they express themselves in large male-only groups, and my mother’s immediate reaction was, “That’s silly; men aren’t like that at all.” Part of my point is what men hide, and I had to turn to her and say, “Mom, I’m a man! You aren’t. Don’t you think I’d have a better idea at what men hide than you, maybe, possibly?” And she goes, “Oh… yeah, I guess so.”
It seems that I’m not afforded the same benefit of the doubt as others in these circles. People act like I am, but I notice it every time it happens. I’m really not. And, of course, when I complain about this, people apparently think it’s because I act too much like a “special egg” that’ll crack at the slightest trigger, so they have to treat me special because I’m too sensitive.
When I was suffering from my psychotic neurosis (atypical) along with my clinical depression for two years where, I would get triggered at the drop of a hat because I had untreated chronic awful, terrible, uncontrollable anxiety (to the point I’d throw up at random)… yes, that was true. But apparently, even if you get better, which I have (immensely), that’s what sticks, especially if you get annoyed and point out what they’re doing (which is not extending the benefit of the doubt or consideration but immediately dismissing me). Then suddenly, oh, you’re too sensitive again. Am I? Or are they?
That’s because… what do I know? I’m just the mentally ill son of an alcoholic loser that can’t make it in the cutthroat world of modern male society because he’s a faggot who dresses up like a dog to interact with children. What would someone like that know?
All of the above things, apparently. I don’t know, but I think all of those ideas that eventually came true from one young person are a little impressive. But none of them count, of course, for anything because people know that I’m an awful, idiotic person who isn’t worth listening to.
I get the impression that many people think they “really know” when it comes to me, and they “really don’t.” Most (in real life) people who think they “really know” me and everything they need to know about me to judge me and my life (which they always seem to end up doing) would never imagine certain things being present in my life even though they are. Sometimes, when it’s clearly illustrated they “really don’t know,” it can backfire because it leads some rather pretentious readers to think then that they “really know” whole new things that they “really don’t.”
I wouldn’t mind if people didn’t know, as in, they said they didn’t know. I don’t necessarily need things to be known in highly detailed, specific terms all the time. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not always the kind of relationship I want to foster with my readers because, well, I’m self-aware enough to know that quite a lot of details aren’t that interesting because they’re not all that special (even if I think they are personally special to me), and because not all of them are that great or appropriate and necessary for public consumption (like most people’s private lives.)
What I mind are the people who take it upon themselves to “really know” about me, whether it’s a middle school district child psychologist, one of my busy, well-meaning relatives, that one classmate who has to tell me about all my shortcomings so he can stand on my shoulders to feel better about himself, or people who like to affect extreme righteousness as an excuse to take pleasure in hurting others. I have yet to find a single individual who’s professed to “really know” enough about me to render some bizarre final judgment (which I seem to always evoke from these people) to actually have been aware of enough to “really know” what they would need to know. If someone did, trust my honest face, I’d say! What else could I do at that point, act like an idiot and deny reality?
But seriously, as this has happened multiple times, not one has appeared. Not one. Ever. In 41 years. And that’s fine by me. I don’t need the hassle of anyone I wouldn’t want “really knowing” doing any of that anyway, which is why it doesn’t happen. Despite what some people might think, I’d like to say I’m not an idiot.
And you know, I think more people need to realize that this is true for most people, not just me. That’s why being a self-righteous know-it-all who has to make lots of assumptions might be nice and flashy for some captive drooling audiences, but it doesn’t work in the long run for anyone with a brain (and heart) and actually looks really bad. And that’s because it is.
But hey, *takes a long drag from a smoldering fag and blows it out*, what the fuck do I know, right? *smirk*