Unterseeboot Frankenstein

"You need to be loved" she said with conviction, she was like that, a strong women (not in the circus woman type of strong but strong willed) which was also part of the problem she also said "that I need a weak woman." She seemed to have definite opinions concerning me, and they seemed to be less than positive. The irony, in the American sense of the word, was that the "you need to be loved statement was made moments after her telling me that she "no longer loved me." Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway this was quite distressing, both the no longer being loved and her opinion about my needed to be loved. I have been accused, I prefer to think of it as an accusation, of being a romantic by numerous people before, and I always replied that when my name is mentioned in the same sentence of Byron, Coleridge, Shelly and Keats, then I would own that title. That has yet to happen, and I fear it will never happen, at least while I am still wasting my breath on this planet.

Maybe, just maybe, she and the others offering this opinion are correct. Maybe a part of me is a romantic in search of his muse. I have had muses before, and most of them ended in tears, as these things are wont to do, and each time a little of the romantic in me died. Therefore, I became a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, a dual person. After the last Titanic like disaster (nearly three years ago), I shut down the emotional side of myself (the monster). Frankenstein is the scientist the rational thinking, logical side that merely wants to see if creating life is possible. He also possess a god complex, but that isn't important to this particular story.  He creates his monster, only called such  because of his appearance, I guess being sewn together from the human scrap heap makes you less easy on the eyes.

Creating that monster took massive amounts of energy of various types, and once created the monster could not be controlled. That was where the good Doctor failed, in attempting to control what was in effect his other half. The monster, despite his appearance, is not evil or bad. He is, in fact, quite gentle and just has a bit of a problem being accepted which leads to the fatal misunderstanding that makes the tale the tragedy that it is.  The monster part of me, i.e. the romantic/needed to be loved also took a lot of energy of various types to create. A lightning storm was not necessary, and I had only one brain available my own, which may be part of the problem. I am only one man, whereas Frankenstein had his monster to create his emotional doppelganger, I am stuck in the one body that I have possessed since the wolf that raised me brought me into the world in the more conventional manner.

Recently the above mentioned strong-willed woman helped to bring the emotional/romantic/monster part of me 'back to life' as it were, and it also took a lot of energy, both physical and mental. It wasn't exactly an "It's alive!!!" type of moment but it was fairly close. Parts of me that the logical/doctor/asshole side of me swore were dead and buried experienced a revival, and were quite happy to be back in the game. That monster part of me wasn't nearly the gentle giant that the real monster was, but he was still a lot more of a sympathetic character than the other side of me. Once alive the monster side of me took as much advantage of his time as he could, even he knew somewhere back in the dark recesses of his underused mind that his time was probably going to be very limited.

He didn't ransack any villages, nor was he blamed for the death of any small children, but he still managed to make enemies. I understand this analogy isn't perfect, few are. That the real Frankenstein's monster did some horrid thing that were quite obviously criminal. The argument there is that he was driven to them by the rejection, based upon his looks, by his fellow man, those details need not detain us here. Sometimes being happy is an affront to Mother Nature (the bitch) and/or the gods, and they conspire to ruin that happiness in a fit of fickleness that boggles us mere mortals minds. The monster side of me probably created, or was at least present for most of his own problems. Again not being a fictional story, I only have the one body/mind, and even when he is running rampart, the monster doesn't exactly have full control over the train wreck that is me. We are both manning the controls the monster and the doctor, and sometimes we have very divergent opinions about where the ship of our state should sail.

To mix an analogy, and to help make the title of this post make at least some sense, we are like a U-Boat with two captains. Any sailor worth his salt, will tell you that any boat U or otherwise can only have one captain. Captains are gods on the quarterdeck, or on the con, and just like most religions these days, there can be only one god. There is not room for dissent, and little or no room for discussion. The captain's word is law, and that is just the way things are, accept it or get the fuck off the boat. Hope you enjoy your swim home.  These two captains are of two minds, does one hunt in a wolf pack, and take advantage of the safety in numbers theory, or does one go it alone, forever a lone wolf on the fringes of society, and sailing very close to the wind? It is a conflict that can only end badly, and it has on more than one occasion.

The crux of the problem is that once created, once the switches have been flipped to bring the emotional side of me (back) into existence, it become increasingly harder to flip those switches back and bring the logical side alive again. This dichotomy is not a pleasant experience either for me, or I suspect, for the few people unlucky enough to see the struggle. It is brutal, it is not pleasant, and people, besides myself get hurt. That crime for which both sides of me should be brought to book for, is the most hideous part of this battle. Hurting one, or both parts of the house divided that I've become is fair play, but other, mostly innocent, bystanders should not have to suffer because of my permanent state of idiocy.

Frankenstein's end comes,fittingly enough, at the North Pole. He has chased his creation to the absolute ends of the Earth, and there he dies of exposure. His monster finally comes to some sort of self-actualization, maroons himself on the ice floe that is the doctor's funeral pyre. It is a good death, it is our kind of death, and it is, for the doctor and the monster at their point in their shared story the only solution left. Just like a U-Boat captained by two diverse personalities is bound to be sunk by the depth charges of the destroyer above, Frankenstein and his monster sink into the cold, dark water. And as that cold water engulfs them, as the dark ocean floor that is to be their tomb comes into focus below those waves, they come to the same realization that struck me at the end of the above conversation, they have lost the woman they loved.