14th
Some new and sobering thoughts (see post below): It has since come to my attention that the human Neil Leeds gained some media attention during the course of an (eventually dismissed) harassment case against an employee he was apparently in love with. (I’m trying so hard not to make a dumb mattress joke that I think I just popped a vein in my head).
So poor, tortured, Neil fell hard for this woman…a little too hard, because then lawyers were involved. How could Neil ever love again??!!!!
The short answer: he couldn’t! So what better way to sublimate his thwarted, masochistic desires than through the creation of a harmless (?) grinning, gender-neutral innuendo-prone (s)elf?
The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (yes, I’m going there) wrote about an untranslatable concept called Duende. Think of it as a dark, profound creative feeling or muse. This force would likely be involved in the creation of such a flamboyantly split mind, no? Perhaps in making an androgynous shadow self, he has carved out a “safe” place between male and female where neither gender can hurt him?
Oh, also: the literal translation of “duende” is “ELF”!!!!!!!!!!!!
I rest my case.
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
-Dr. Samuel Johnson
