The Alter Ego

This post is weird…I know. Let’s face it, the whole Urban Samurai thing is a bit weird.

I never intended for this to be an alter-ego. I didn’t even realize that was what was happening. It didn’t occur to me until someone emailed me about wanting to post my Perfect Parenting letter on their web site. But he didn’t want to post it unless I signed my real name because, “Using an ‘alter ego’ or whatever seems to invite a lot of questions or suspicions to the whole author/reader relationship.”

So, while I never thought of it that way, I guess that’s kind of what it is. And to be honest, and this is where it gets strange…I kind of like it.

It’s oddly freeing. I can do almost whatever I want behind the mask of the Urban Samurai. And I walk around the city with a smirk on my face. Like I’m let in on a secret, that no one else knows.

Because nobody knows I am the Urban Samurai. Trust me, it’s pretty cool.

I now get why rapper Shock G put on the big nose and became Humpty Hump. I get why Chris Gaines tried to ruin Garth Brooks’ career, or vice versa. That same exhilarating energy that kept a ‘secret lover’ relationship I had in high school going for far longer than it ever should have. I never had any idea why anyone would be into cross-dressing…maybe this is it.  There is an excitement about knowing a secret.

I walk around the city at night envisioning myself stalking the streets with my sword, ready to take down some thugs who are terrorizing some helpless elderly man. Ready, in disguise, like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. But it’s better. It’s like Ed Norton’s character from Fight Club. Through the course of that movie, Norton became his alter ego. That Brad Pitt side of him took over and embodied his whole personality. Hopefully, minus a few bloody noses and one self-inflicted gunshot to the head, but that is what should happen here. The Urban Samurai will take over my whole persona over time.

Now, a bunch of my friends and family know. A few of my friends emailed me after they saw it and just heard my voice through the writing. I just emailed it to some others, because it would be weird for me to do this without them knowing. I didn’t plan on telling anyone. But after a conversation with one of my brothers, it just started to make sense. This is for me. So, do I really care what anyone else would think?

But still not everyone knows. It’s not the kind of thing I lead with in a casual relationship with someone I only have a middling relationship with. And it’s not like I’m announcing this at my first kendo session at the dojo. If I did, so many bamboo swords would want to strike my head that I’d probably walk out of there with a concussion. So there’s a whole group of people that won’t know.

So for now, this is somewhat of a double identity. A double life. And it’s pretty cool.