Are we not men?

Why am I so afraid to write? What makes me shudder at the thought of picking up a pen or putting my hands to the QWERTY grindstone? Is there some truth I'm afraid I'll dig up with the nib of the pen, some mystery that will be revealed by a certain combination of key strokes?

If so, what might I had locked away that I'm afraid to get too near all these keys for fear of its being released?

My biggest fear is that I am not who I think I am. Put another way, I might be exactly what I fear I am. Does anyone else feel like the wolfman, like Mr. Hyde, like Dracula, just trying to pass for normal most of the time? Do you fear your own desires, like they just might run you off the road, over the cliff, into on-coming traffic? Are we all Nosferatu at heart with a yen for a little sunlight? Do we all want a little pleasure chaser with our shot of pain?

Of course I am a monster. I'm a product of the laboratory of my own mind. I've got a Dr. Frankenstein slaving away over chemicals, electrodes, big levers and pulleys and machines that go zap. He's always fiddling with me, trying to connect all the pieces. He's not mad, though. He's just a little grumpy. Seriously, he wants what he think is best, but he's locked away in the gothic stone impervium of this consciousness. He's at work cooking up elaborate schemes under the cover of darkness, away from the eyes of the villagers. They don't know what he's up to and he likes it that way.

His vision is not entirely clear. It's like old maps of the world, during the age of exploration, when brave captains steered mutinous crews into the unknown, where the western edge becomes indistinct as though lost in a fog. My doctor has plans, but they are very vague and not very imaginative. They usually involve getting lucky or getting something to eat. Perhaps that is what I worry about most, that I am utterly typical.

In the movie "Say Anything" (yes, I'm dating myself [and I am a cheap date, Belgian beer is all I need]), John Cusack is talking about what he's supposed to do about a girl, as a guy. Lily Taylor, his guitar-playing emo folkie insists: "Don't be a guy. Be a man." I worry that despite all my (half-hearted, abortive, ill-conceived, never executed) intentions of being a man, I'm just a guy.

If I write, I might expose the bones of that guy. Should they then go on display for public viewing, everyone will know about the guy that thought he was a man.