What the ----?

Dammit, I've been tagged again. List five obsessions. Huh! Thank you, Anna MR. Not. I shall sulk in the corner of the playground after this one.

First, I don't think I have any behaviour that would be psychologically labelled as obsessive, though I am pedantic on occasions, for sure. And I do get moody about certain things. So I will transmogrify this challenge (because I can, because it's my blog) into five things that I dwell on a little more than is healthy for me. That's close enough to the Oxford definition of obsess, which is "preoccupy continually or to a troubling extent."

1. Words
I spend a lot of time trying to find the right ones, and often getting them wrong. Read the paragraph above as an example. Go to the poetry label for other evidence. I also read far too much into what other people write to me. No further discussion at this point.

2. Theatre
I do it because some force that I don't quite understand compels me. Do I enjoy it? Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't; often I really don't know. Go to the theatre label for evidence. No further discussion at this point.

3. Crewe Alexandra Football Club
The obligatory professional male sports entry. It's the football club in the town where my family lived when I was young (aged 4-9). It's the club to whose matches my brother, seven years older than me, was taken as a spectator. And the club to whose ground I was not taken. And thus, to prove that I never got over it, the club whose results I look for first when I get the chance, and whose first eleven I could almost recite by heart. But won't. Because I'm not obsessed.

4. Seeing Tony Blair tried for crimes against humanity
No, I don't know what the outcome would be. Law, and especially international law, is complex. But he personally sanctioned a military invasion of Iraq without a mandate from the United Nations (the Secretary-General felt it was "probably illegal"), and without a proven clear and present danger against his own country, resulting directly or indirectly in the deaths of uncounted hundreds of thousands of people. The legal precedent that arises from this must be decided by the international community, and not by one or two individuals who are more concerned with lining their own pockets and covering their own backs. Whichever way the argument goes, the argument must be had. Or the same mess will happen all over again.

5. Not being a creep
Alright, I've saved the worst until last. This is the one that you've been waiting for. And it's partly the difficulty of proving a negative. Because if Tony Blair turned up at my door and asked me to prove that I don't have weapons of mass destruction, I just don't have the necessary paperwork. And if the Thought Police turn up and ask me to prove that I'm not a creep, well, I'm not sure if I kept the certificate.

But why should I be worried about this in the first place? Could it be that, as an averagely sensitive and fairly observant guy, I've just seen too many examples of deep-creep displayed by members of my own gender? There are, let's face it, plenty of blokes out there who have 'chat-up' techniques that would turn milk if used at the breakfast table.

Or is it that through some coincidence of cultural experiences (formative decade, country, class, religion, literature), I have just been inculcated with the idea that a male who rather likes a female and says so is automatically a predatory, sexually harassing fiend who ought to have his balls Bobbitted? After all, I grew up in the time of the 'all men are potential rapists' mantra. And it took me a depressingly long while to realise that many women actually like being with a man, and may even go so far as to not find consensual sex to be a hideously disgusting war crime.

What is more, let us refer again to the theatre thing. I seem to have found a nice line in stage portrayals of just the sort of creep that I detest (or fear, for whatever reason). The ruminatory role of Father in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is a case in point. He went to a brothel and found his stepdaughter working there. The exact point at which he discovered that it was his stepdaughter, and what he did when he made this discovery, remain shrouded as elements of an incomplete theatre text. Secretly, he probably enjoyed a lot of the experience and subsequently loathes himself for it, amid his frequent and rambling self-justifications. Now there is an obsessive.

Anyway, the point here is that, having expended a large amount of physical and emotional energy on creating a stage character like that, it is difficult to just shake it off. At one point during our run of Six Characters, I almost felt as if Father was real. It is a huge role in terms of lines, and the level of concentration that I found necessary as an actor meant that I sank into quite dark areas of my mind. For maybe an hour, Father came in and took over the rest. Such an experience must have an influence on an actor. I don't mean in the way of becoming more like the character, but in the way of having to understand and analyse the sort of emotional life that the existence of the character brings to light.

So. I don't want to be one of those creepy guys who hang around certain sorts of pubs, clubs, and public transport. I don't want to be a potential rapist. I don't want to cause anyone any physical displeasure or emotional trauma. I don't want to be the sort of person who leaves a room to a chorus of sighs of relief and embarrassed giggles. And while there must be a way for a male to be sexy and attractive, and to make a legitimate romantic approach in a clean, non-creepy, non-predatory, non-aggressive manner, the fine line between what people consider appropriate and inappropriate is a damn difficult one to judge.

And trying too hard not to be creepy can just make you ... well ... creepy.

There you have it.

Now, as promised, I'm going to sit on my own in a quiet corner of the playground and not bother anyone for a while.