Bind Chaos in a Pair

¶ … bind Chaos in a pair of striped tights

The tight-browed woman glared at him, "Why are you dressed like that?" Ki grinned, his black-painted lips opening in an inhumanely large smile. "It's a social breaching experiment." For the next fifteen minutes he stood in a supermarket line explaining the theory of unspoken sociological behavior contracts and cultural norms. "I don't obey a bunch of rules," she began, though by the end she seemed to understand a little of what he meant. It might, Ki expressed hopefully later, be a moment that planted some seed of social unrest in her. it's a social breaching experiment, Ki had said -- but of course, he always dressed like this. If there were one abstract quality that one would never quite expect to take human form and go skipping about a supermarket, it would be Chaos. That dark undertow in the universe, that flip side to the order of creation, is vastly underrepresented in human society. Even in our crimes and our social unrest, we more often follow unspoken rules and patterns than live by sheer whim and chance. Yet if there were one abstract quality embodied in Ki, it would be the quality of living Chaos. it's a quality that is often under-appreciated in general, and in him. Chaos is generally viewed in our society as negative, and yet Ki shows that it can be both transformative and creative.

Ki tends to wear his chaos on the outside, though that's only the beginning of his deviance. If anything he is more frightening when he is actually dressed normatively and trying to blend in -- because that's the moment when his internal chaos is about to come bubbling out. Most of the time, however, the boy looks as if he walked out of a fantastical anime. He wears gigantic "stompy" boots, multiple layers of ripped and striped tights on top of one another, alternately under "combat" shorts or black leather miniskirts, topped with any variety of shirts. One day it's fishnets and Dr. Seuss baby doll shirts; another day it's a leather jacket; another day he's dressed in shredded pseudo-Victorian dresses or a straightjacket. He never holds down a single job, though he frequently pretends that he's going to do so sheerly for the sake of a day or two's pay and the right to wreck havoc on the world. His longest running job was with a psychic friends network, which he claims to have lost only after his advice apparently led someone to kill their abusive husband with a chainsaw. Instead, he pursues a variety of "job-like activities," such as selling artwork, performing on street corners and in clubs, stripping, panhandling, and mooching from friends, lovers, and tourists. (Living in New Orleans contributes significantly to his success in these fields) His personal needs are relatively minimal, he is "voluntarily dispossessed" and lives in an abandoned warehouse. This might all seem somehow sad to the bourgeoisie sentimentalist, but his bohemian nature seems perfectly at home with it. He is always slightly bipolar in a non-clinical way, vacillating between moodiness and ecstasy, full of whimsy and sarcasm.

Ki is a puzzle to all. What brought about his odd lifestyle? The answer is as chaotic as he is. One day he will claim he has been this way since childhood, and that he was born a rebel-rouser and a nut case. Another day he will speak of choosing this path in adolescents, of having a vision from the Thunderbird who changed his life. Other days he claims he just decided yesterday to be this way. What is the significance and quality of his life? He is a little like a force of nature, a little like a trickster god, a little like a criminal... his activities make his like and that of all those around him at once interesting and uncomfortable, and every day he challenges those around him to change and renew their lives.

To understand how his behavior itself is and creates chaos, one can just glance at a few of his reported activities. I wrote to him just a few days ago, asking him to tell me a few of his newest stories -- as always, they were full of humor and insight. Once upon a time, he said, not long ago, this little girl came up to him. "Are you a boy or a girl?" He grinned at her, leaned in close, and said: "I'm a radical gender*****." "What's that?" He looked up to see her tourist mother hurrying towards them, "Better ask your mother." As they walked away, he heard her bright cheerful voice: "Mommy-- what's a Rabbinical Gender*****?" Now what possible good does that do, I asked him. He brightly admitted that it may have done no good whatsoever. On the other hand, maybe he made just a tiny blow that day to the binary gender system --one major blow for humorous chaos, one little blow for feminism. Another story he told me involving a fancy restaurant and a pretty Japanese restaurant. In his full attire, he went in for Sushi. He happened to have money that day (he'd sold a short animated film for a television commercial), so it was an expensive restaurant. He went through a thousand whispers and stares and rude comments... And then left a 100% tip. Sure, he looked like a street punk in the black tie restaurant, but he was the only one to tip like that -- so what did that teach people about prejudice and look-ism? All right, he said, that's not the best example. What about the time he got a temporary job with a children's entertainment business? He dressed up normatively, and tried his best, until the day he was ordered to bring three buckets of chicken to a party. He showed up with three KFC buckets with five or six baby chicks in each one. "What a tremendous lesson about compassion," he said, "to have a chance to explain to those little kids that these were the same kind of chickens they ordinarily ate."