The Bliss of Ignorance...

A woman rushes through her front door, sweat brimming upon her forhead, knuckles still white from the speeding commute from her office. She zips about the room, connecting the dots of mess to mess in a hurried attempt to make her home presentable. Her head snaps up from the straightening of magazines on the coffee-table at the sound of the front door opening.

In walks a man in a suit. As he's putting his keys in the dish by the door she asks, "H-Hi honey! How are you?"

"Tired and hungry" he replies as he loosens his tie and takes off his suit jacket. "What's for dinner?"

"Oh... well, um, I was super-busy at work today and I only just beat you home myself." She throws out the words as if they were paper towels about to soak up a mess she'd yet to make. "I was just going to throw in a couple of frozen dinners..."

At the word "dinner" his face steels from the annoyed frowning at the selection of feminine magazines into a bit-lip stare. "Frozen dinners?" he asks coldly. "So lets see, I get to spend 8 hours at work, plus an hour commute, because, you wanted to live close to your mother... And frosen dinners is what I get to come home to? That's great, Diana. That's just awesome."

"I'm sorry, honey let me just go warm up the oven" she says with half a turn to the kitchen.

"No." he interrupts, "Its okay. I don't care. You know why? Because you're fucking worthless." His sneer freezes her into place. "I make all these sacrifices around here. And for what? What? What the fuck is this?" he growls, barely audibly, as he picks up a peice of trash she was unable to coral. "You can't even keep a clean fucking house?"

He throws the offense at her feet.

"I'm sorry, honey. I didn't see-" her words are cut off by his hand at her neck pushing her back into the wall. Her heels totter as they try, desperately, to keep from getting lost in the backpedaling.

"Diana" he coo's, "what did I tell you about talking back? Hmm? DON'T. TALK. BACK-TO-ME!" he screams, finally, as he hits his fist into the wall, inches from her head. "I am the man, of this house. -And I deserve respect. And I will get respect if I have to BEAT-IT. OUTTA-YOU!" he finally screams, his nose nearly touching hers, punctuating the last phrases with two more punches to the dry-wall by her ear.

"I'm sorry, baby, you know I respect y-" her last words are cut short by his knuckle to her jaw. She crumples to the floor, sobbing, hair sheilding her eyes from his horror-struck expression.

Tears begin to well in his eyes as he falls to his knees. "I'm so sorry baby! I'm so sorry. Don't cry."

Her shoulder recoils from the touch of his outstretched hand.

"You know I love you, baby. I love you so much." he says, voice cracking behind the weight of guilty tears. "You just... you just make me so crazy sometimes. Please don't cry."

Her shoulders continue to shake, like a car on its last ounce of gas.

"STOP crying." He suddenly says, devoid of emotion. An instant later he rises and pushes her away from him.

"Fuck it. Clean this shit up and make me a real fucking dinner." The door slams behind him. Her shoulders continue to shake.

Slowly, her hand reaches out. And begins to pick up the trash.

The previous story, was written by myself and based upon a loose script for something Baylor University puts on, called: "The Tunnel of Oppression." This program, made up of a circuit of vignets in different rooms, each one designed to illustrate a different form of oppression -from racial, to sexual, to domestic-, is unlike any experience I've ever encountered.

Last year, I was asked to fill in for an actor in this very skit. I'll spare you the details, but I had trouble doing it. Litterally. I had acted before, but I had never acted like this. Never screamed in a woman's face. Never punched a wall by a woman's head. Never hit a woman. And each of these "never's" were taken from me in turn. And again. And again. And again.

But let me tell you the ugly truth. I was good at it. I was very good at it.

We all have thoughts. Malicious, dark, devient thoughts. We've all held a knife and wanted, if only for an instant, to stab the cutting board. We've all held a razor and wondered how hard we could push. But these are thoughts we beat down as soon as they arise, like the gopher game at Chuckie Cheese's. But what is it like to not only, hold ourselves back from hitting these gophers down, but inviting them up, examining their features and feeling their curves and grooves?

I know it sounds cliche' but for an instant, I became that man. And it hurt me to know that "that man" wasn't so hard to find. It was sort of like singing obnoxiously in a room you thought was sound-proof only to walk out and hear someone else doing the same thing. The walls are much thinner than we'd supposed.

I realized quickly, that I am no better than any wife-beater, or abusive uncle. We are both fallen, and for different circumstances... well, that's a gopher I choose to beat down.

When I wrote the part of the script, where the man starts to cry and apologizes to his wife, I could hardly believe what I was thinking. And the first time I said it, I nearly vomitted all over the poor actress receiving my abuse. I guess that made me feel a little better. But in the end, it was still me, looking straight into the face of that of which I am capable, the malice and anger in me.

In the end, I told my fellow actors how, yes, it was hard. But that we had a real chance to do some amazing good. And if the better we were, the more likely we were to touch people, to wake them up, to rob them of the indifference allowed them by their ignorance. And that if we put ourselves, our words, our minds into God's hands, and begged him to make the words we speak to be the words he would have of us, he would heal our hearts and make us stronger at the break.

And while I may have been sort of talking out of my ass, perhaps I've since realized that perhaps God can sometimes use my ass to say some pretty smart things. (Yes, Dad. I just said that God sometimes speaks out of my ass.)

I've spent some time with my dark side. And while I doubt I'll ever be comfortable with that "Neil", maybe I'll at least be able to remember not to sing too loud, because the walls can be thinner that we think.