Personas
I don't remember when I first started being aware of the various aspects of my personality I call my personas, or when I started seeing them as aspects of myself that I could deliberately step into and deliberately develop in ways that seem useful or interesting.

It was certainly not that many years ago.

Being aware of the personas and sometimes deliberately taking them on deliberately sometimes gives me a great sense of freedom -- [Photo by Dale Myers] the freedom not to have to be me, to just let all my usual limitations and inhibitions be irrelevant, because for the moment I'm this other person.

The Bad-ass Biker was probably the earliest one I was consciously aware of. It was an aspect of me that came out sometimes in Anna Bannana's (a bar in Honolulu near where I live), where a lot of real bikers used to hang out. People sometimes said they thought I might be a biker, although how anybody could imagine that a guy wearing Birkenstocks could be a biker is more than I know.

I didn't think of it as a persona, at first. But it was sometimes a bit of a game to pretend to be a biker. For one thing, it was a role which seemed to fit in with my steadily increasing weight. I had realized that I was starting to sometimes think of myself as a fat man, and to move more like one, and I didn't like that at all. But when I learned that I could pretend to myself to be a biker, then the weight seemed okay.

After I bought my leather jacket in San Francisco, the Bad-ass Biker became an even easier role to take on. And now it would happen much more often that people -- especially women -- would ask ``Do you ride a motocycle?'' Despite the Birkenstocks. [Photo by George Bergman]

The Bad-ass Biker is a useful persona to take on when walking through bad parts of the city. (More in San Francisco than Honolulu.) When I become the Biker I become bigger and heavier. (This is my own illusion, of course, but people do actually perceive me differently.) The weight moves more up into my upper trunk and there's a lot of power in the shoulders and upper arms. The biker is definitely not someone you want to mess with. (Or at least so far no one has, which is definitely very lucky for me.)

The Biker is also very useful in flirting with young women -- big and powerful, and at the same time gentle and very courteous. And being the Biker helps me not be Mr. Nice, who doesn't have much success with women at all.

I'd bought the leather jacket a month or two after I started living in San Francisco, because after seeing all the people on the streets there I figured if I didn't get one soon they might try to 86 me from the City. I had a fantasy of this big burley bouncer-type guy coming up to me on the sidewalk and saying, ``Excuse me, Sir, but we have a dress code in this City. If you don't get a leather jacket soon, we're going to have to ask you to leave San Francisco.''
I think that the North Beach Hipster was the first persona I really identified as such. I would become aware of him when I was walking around North Beach (San Francisco) at night, especially on weekends when there were lots of tourists. [Photo by Sarona] The Hipster had a way of moving that was very different from the Biker. There was a touch of dancing in his movement, gliding through the crowds and slipping into a bar or into City Lights bookstore. He didn't get annoyed at all the tourists blocking his way, because to him they were an artifact of the city. They were poor dumb sheep, wandering around lost with their mouths open and their cameras ready, not understanding anything of what surrounded them. They were tourists in their own life.

The Hipster was a creature of the night and a creature of the streets, a cat who knew where it was at and what was going down, and his leather jacket was just another aspect of his perfect blending with his environment.

It was also in San Francisco that I became aware of the Zen Master, who is sometimes a very useful persona. What the Zen Master understands above all is the rhythm of time -- the fact that there is a time and a [Photo by Sarona] season for everything, and one needs to sync with that rhythm instead of opposing it.

I think I first started to notice the Zen Master one time when I was trying to patch up a quarrel between my friend Brenda and Diane, one of the owners of the Lost and Found Saloon -- two people who could each be very difficult. I would go into the Lost and Found when Diane was working, to give her some information that I hoped would influence her.

But you can't just walk into a bar full of people, stand at the bar and say ``Diane, I have something I think you should know.'' I understood that that's not the way it's done, and I understood that my understanding of that would increase my influence on Diane.

You have to sit down at the bar, order a drink, pay your money and sit there being a part of things. Joke around with Diane and with the other customers. Maybe you have to finish that drink and order another one before the moment comes. [Photo by Gretchen Cole] But the moment will come -- you have to have faith, it will -- when Diane will have nothing she needs to attend to for a few moments and she will come down to where you are sitting, open to random conversation. And that is when you begin to deliver your message, just letting it slip in as part of the small talk. And Diane will realize that the conversation has momentarily moved into a more serious mode, and will answer something serious in turn. And then probably move off to deal with someone who needs a drink or answer the phone or take care of some other business.

And then you wait. That's important. Diane knows now that you have a serious conversation to finish with her, but it's important to let her know that you're not going to gauchely force her to break stride in taking care of all the other little things required of her in order to be Diane the Bartender.

And when she has to walk away before you get a chance to say something, sometimes you can manage to say a sentence while she is joking with a bunch of other customers. So that she understands that what you said is part of your conversation with her, but to all the other customers it sounds like you're just joining in with the general joking around. [Photo by Edward Brooks] And that's important, because it shows that you and Diane are sharing a secret, which helps put her on your side, and it also shows that you know how to keep things private.
(This is strange, sitting here now listening to Pink Floyd -- a little earlier it was the Rachmaninoff piano concerto -- and writing these words, after finally puttering around doing everything but write for a mere three hours. What I'm writing now is nothing at all like what I used to consider fiction. But it is fiction, which is great because it means I get to lie.)

(I guess that for me, writing fiction has also always been a matter of stepping into a particular persona -- taking on a certain voice which was the style for that particular story. This style right now is a very old persona, though, so it's much more me than the styles I usually choose for writing, and yet at the same time it's some fantasy version of me.)
[Photo by Mark Cole]