Perhaps the characters in a story about a violent struggle for control of a galactic empire who rely on martial arts, subterfuge, treachery, and manipulation are not the most ideal role models for a thirteen-year-old junior high school student, but then again. After Walt left I was a hot mess. I had always allowed my emotions to flow outward on clear display and it had gotten me into a lot of trouble. In class I tended to blurt out whatever came into my head, which meant a lot of quality time spent in the hallway on time-out. While I craved the attention these antics brought, it was doubtless slowing me down academically. Adults found me alternately delightful and threatening. Walt had attempted to break my spirit by literally beating the gay out of me. I struggled spiritually, having read the Bible from cover to cover when I was twelve and finding it utterly horrifying. I never told anyone about it at the time, but I will write about it in a separate post. The fact that Walt was supposedly a man of God, an ordained Methodist minister who was as bad an example as I can imagine, left me deeply conflicted. Once I started reading philosophy I quickly became an atheist and turned to science fiction and fantasy literature for usable myths. Dune really hit the spot with its deeply humanistic material. The character Paul Atreides, fifteen years old at the start of the story, was a role model for me. The product of centuries of selective breeding, he was also in the process of receiving deep training in mind control techniques, martial arts, and politics. I found the litany against fear to be incredibly useful in helping me control my own hysteria, the product of post-traumatic stress. It was the perfect formula to encapsulate the lesson of the story of The Mummy Box:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I committed this to memory and recited it to myself whenever I felt anxiety. Inspired by the references to gestalt in Dune, I read “Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing” by John O. Stevens, a collection of exercises based on the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls. I began training myself. Paul had trusted teachers guiding his training to prepare him for his future role as Duke. I had Steve (my therapist), my band directors and my piano teachers who I came to see as mentors. I embraced the idea of human potential and became committed to the idea of training myself to the highest possible degree. I became cagey about my true intentions and motives.

I began to observe myself, imagining a hidden camera in a high corner of the room. How did I appear to people, how did this scene “play?” So while outwardly I was still open, honest, emotionally present, behind the scenes there was another me, a director orchestrating secret plans. After Walt I was a person with many dark secrets. I managed those secrets in layers. I cultivated friendships based on trust earned through layers of self-disclosure, carefully listening to the revelations I would receive in turn, reflecting and offering insight where I could. Several young men wanted to be considered my “best friend,” the person to whom they could tell anything and have the confidence protected. They were jealous of each other, competing for my attention. All of them felt they knew me better than anyone else, but none of them ever achieved the security clearance of “above top secret.” There were things I would never tell. Eventually, through reprogramming my own mind using the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics, my deepest secrets were hidden even from myself. My true self and my true history became buried under layers of artifice, and I lost my core. But I had become very adept indeed.

Dune was teaching me how to be a gifted youth in a world of adults. I was learning how to play them, telling them just enough to win them over, but always holding something back. I remember one particular interaction that has stuck with me. I had a friend named Alan, a year older than me and not part of my school friend group. We had met when I was in fifth grade (my fifth grade class was combined fifth and sixth graders). Alan was a real nerd, obsessed with airplanes and also with the book, Airport by Arthur Hailey. Alan’s mom was the librarian at my seventh grade junior high school. Alan had an older brother who alternated living with his father and his mother, who were divorced. When I was still twelve I had a sleep-over at Alan’s house. As is customary in pre-teen sleep-overs we stayed up late. Somehow the conversation turned to time travel. Alan’s brother Jeff, who was a genius but also mildly schizophrenic and probably autistic, took an interest. As the conversation went down the rabbit hole of time-travel paradoxes, Alan lost interest and went to sleep. Jeff and I continued the conversation until dawn. I was trying to convey the idea that if sometime in the future you were able to travel to the past, then whatever you do/did in the past is already part of the history of the present, so it is impossible to “change” the past, even in principle. He insisted I draw up a flow chart, which I had never heard of. So we spent a lot of time trying to get me up to speed on flow charts. By the time he fully understood what I was trying to say, the sun was coming up. Satisfied, he retired to bed, but I was wide awake: it was the first time I had ever stayed up all night!

Their mom came out to brew coffee and start breakfast, surprised to find me at the kitchen table with a paper and pencil in front of me. We got into a conversation that meandered through several subjects, but landed in the realm of philosophy, which I had been exploring recently. At one point she asked me if this map of the universe I was building in my mind had any room in it for the possibility of God. “That’s complicated,” I replied. For the next hour I unrolled my view of the subject, which was agnostic, but probably close to Spinoza’s views of a rational core knitting the universe together. Alan eventually woke up and came out to inquire about breakfast, so we had to wind things down. But how she closed the conversation has stuck with me. “Well,” she said, “I can’t believe I have learned so much from a twelve-year-old. When you become an adult, if you ever decide to start a religion, I would like to become a member.”

That night and morning of deep and stimulating conversations with older brilliant minds left me with a quiet sense of awe and caution. I was awakening to the possibility of the influence I could have on people and I knew this would bring with it certain ethical responsibilities. I remembered the story of the temptation of Jesus on the mountain top. Such powers can easily lead to evil. I resolved to be humble in my goals even as my ego swelled. I came to see my potential as a world-maker and a leader, but it scared me. So through high school I made sure that my growing influence as a trend-setter and social locus was always directed towards good ends. At least, that was my intention.