What is one of the more on-the-fringe things you have done?
What is the furthest out you have gotten? What have you done that has shocked more people than anything else you have done in your life? Is it participation in a cult? Advocacy for an off-the-wall issue? What?
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Best I can think of at the moment is being part of a threesome with a married couple. On several occasions.
My mom and I allegedly (and accidentally, apparently) burned down a mountain.
Broke into an abandoned insane asylum with my girlfriend (last summer) and an old, abandoned beach house (where my boyfriend and I made out, next to an antique, metal bed frame). That’s it. Lame.
Jumped off a 3 story cliff into water. The water was so dark you couldn’t tell where the rocks were.
A few other crazy things as well but that is as fringe as I get. For those who know me, they never would’ve believed any of the things I tried without pictures.
Became a single mother by choice via sperm donation back when very few were doing it and most people thought the idea was somehow wicked.
I’ve walked on hot coals. I told everyone I was in love with a woman.
I had a one-night stand with a girl I met. Miss her =(
Changing my sex probably ranks right up there.
Yeah, @downtide , that certainly beats anything I’ve done! ;-)
I am a student of the occult.
Ok this is pretty embarrassing… I set a tree on fire… with 4–7 people in the branches. In my defense it was Halloween and I was young. I put it out almost immediately (47 seconds or so later). No one was hurt, but I scared the shit out of everyone. Sadly I scorched a 6” diameter mark (not through the bark though) on the tree. I feel pretty bad about it, even though it still makes me giggle.
Heard the thoughts of a dog; held the hand of a dying man as his soul passed and a bird sang…
Told my sister I believed she had a personality disorder, she disagreed, it wasn’t pleasant.
I still believe this
A friend and I spent almost 2 hours scouting for prostitutes and then eventually paid for one.
(I interviewed her; I was writing an ethnography for a class I was taking at the time)
I used our German Shepherd, Eric, to cheat at hide and seek when I was about 10 years old.
It was night. My brother and cousin hid across the street. I heard that dogs could track people by their scent. I thought this would be a great experiment to see if that was true. Good ol’ Eric led me right to them. :-)
My friend and I broke all the windows out of an abandoned house once. I went snorkeling once. That was pretty daring for me.
Had sex with a friend’s ex on top of a raised tombstone of someone who died in the 1700s in the second-oldest overgrown graveyard in Charleston,SC.
@ladymia69 that reminds me, that same halloween night, I forgot to mention this was in a graveyard and I promptly pushed over a tombstone after I put out the fire, on purpose… I hesitate to say I was sober as a judge this whole time. I guess that was a pretty interesting year of my life.
All of mine involve sex. Since my kids are here, you’ll just have to use your imagination. :p
Auggie, you are a devil woman!
@downtide beats me for being what I consider to be a “better” gender rebel. But, considering the massive offense that it seems to cause huge swaths of people worldwide – gay sex.
@iamthemob – surely you do yourself a grave disservice by accepting the ‘rebel’ label? Any sex can be ‘on the fringe’, matters of consent and imagination are the only limits. Is your state not rather ordinary really?
@auntydeb – in order to be part of the discussion, however, one must accept that activities are on a “fringe,” which also requires that there be a reasonably defined sphere of normative behavior.
The fact that we have normative identities of gender and sex doesn’t mean that one needs to admit to inherent correctness of those identities, or that normative behavior in any sense is “good.” I would argue that I would do myself a disservice in not recognizing that I could be labeled a “rebel” for my behavior – doing so illuminates a problematic social structure.
Fringe is self-defined for purposes of this question.
Hitchhiked from the central coast of California to Las Vegas with a friend of mine and an ounce of pot when I was 18.
Not sure if that’s on-the-fringe or just plain stupid. but there it is
@iamthemob it’s nothing to do with “better”, it’s just different. Don’t put yourself down. ~hugs~
My best friend and I hitchhiked to NYC from South Carolina in 1968. I then decided to live there for almost two years. Got a job on Wall Street, found a nice apartment in Gramercy Park, and told everyone to kiss my ass, I was doing what I wanted to do.
Other fringey kinds of things would be the volume and variety of drugs I tried in my youth. Nothing was off-limits and you didn’t even have to tell me what it was – put a pill or pills in my hand and in my mouth they went. I’m sure angels had to be watching over me. But we lived in a different culture then…
@downtide – I do nothing to put myself down in recognizing that you win. Just recognizing that it’s people like you who stand by who they are and push the envelope of what society should be thinking about in terms of gender that makes the lives of those of us who test the boundaries of it a little less drastically a little more easy. ;-)
I eat roadkill. Not only that, but I cook it gourmet.
I talk to non-humans.
I want to live as a hunter-gatherer-gardener, and I’m slowly approaching that goal.
@incendiary_dan – do you have an interest in shamanism? You sound like a natural :o)
@auntydeb No, but I have a slight interest in various forms of mysticism. I don’t like appropriating the term shaman: it’s a specific cultural word belonging to steppe dwelling people who probably don’t like Westerners misusing it. Anyway, I don’t consider listening to non-human people particularly mystical.
I guess I’ll add this to my list, since it’s related: I belong to a neo-Druid church (well, technically my membership just expired, but I plan to renew when I have money).
I don’t generally do shocking or outrageous things so I don’t think this really qualifies but I was walking through Boston Public Garden with my sisters. This man started to follow us and kept talking in a sort of threatening in your face way. He wasn’t going away and my sisters were just ignoring him. I thought he might be the type to flash us. I had that happen to me the first week I moved to NewYork City So I turned around and said to him in a loud voice “why don’t you just fuck off!!” My little sister’s jaw dropped open and she was really shocked. It was funny. That’s when I realized that New York had changed shy little me. My older sister said, “well I probably would have just told him to get bent!”
@incendiary_dan – sorry if the label was inappropriate! But, I don’t believe that Shamanism is so narrow; it has been practised in one form or another in almost every early culture and the label applies internationally. I don’t align myself with any specific form of spirituality or religion as such. I’ve spoken with and listened to (all of my remembered life); animals, insects plants… rocks… Mystical? No, I regard it as a simple set of skills that, as with any basic ability, is stronger in some than in others and improves with practice. ‘Science’ will eventually catch up. Religion may take longer…
@auntydeb No, Westerners apply the term to myriad spiritualities in an attempt to simplify their understanding of it. I studied anthropology for five years, and this misuse of terms has vexed me since then. Other cultures have their own terms, and if they adopt “shaman” it’s only because it’s such a convention in Western academia now.
@incendiary_dan – then I stand corrected. So, perhaps I should have asked if you were a Pagan? My intent is not to label, nor to get into an anthropological discussion – clearly you would have the expertise there. I was in fact, agreeing with you, with regard to ‘listening’ for other voices than our own. I have been doing just that in my garden for the last hour or so. I always inform my plants if I am about to prune them – the hydrangea seems happy – and make a practise of rehoming innocent bystanders whenever possible, ie slugs, snails, ladybirds etc. So, what do you regard as ‘Mysticism’? Whispers the one labelled ‘weirdo’by own family…
Put an ad on Craigslist (circa 2005 – before it became the Craigslist it is now) to meet a guy in California to show me around. I wanted to visit from Florida for a week or so and wanted to have some fun. :) titled my ad, “Not the girl next door”
I flew out alone, met a couple guys out of the over 200 responses I got, decided to hang out with one, had a killer time, and never talked to him again. (he was somewhat of a liar and a loser – imagine!)
Have just had a young man to visit with us, who has severe epilepsy. We gave him healing. We fed him, we chatted. He had 18 hours without a seizure, nice food, good company and a gentle boost to his confidence. Fair exchange, Wyrd is wonderful.
@incendiary_dan – poo to ‘hunting and gathering’, we owe it to our own evolution to embrace our world, find better ways of living in it and put our skills of Husbandry to more excellent uses.
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