Meet Travis Bickle

From DimFuture

05/29/99

In which the author says things he'll probably regret later.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this experience. The information age has brought us the ability to connect with people as never before, including those people we often regret connecting with at all. If these were people we were meeting in ordinary, everyday, temporal life, we could satisfy ourselves with merely avoiding their phone calls, and pretending to be busy when we run into them. But in the electronic world, it's often a little harder to avoid that occasional personality who decides to make a pest of himself.

That in mind, let me tell you about Travis Bickle. That's not his real name, of course; it's Robert De Niro's character from Taxi Driver, who is, like this guy, isolated, misanthropic, and generally removed from the social conventions that make communication between two human beings possible. Also, both individuals used the phrase "no more polluting my body."

Let me say, first of all, that I do not hate Travis Bickle, nor do I think he is a bad guy. He is, in fact, very intelligent, rather amiable, and would probably be an okay guy once you got to know him in person. He's also a teenager, which also gives him a little leeway in my book -- being a teenager sucks, no matter how much bullshit people spew about it being "the greatest years of your life," and I know that as well as anybody. So, please don't think I despise the man, because I don't.

I first met Travis Bickle in an online community which I frequent, but shall not name here, for the sake of preserving his anonymity. Our first few conversations were the usual stuff: music, movies, microcode... he told me a particularly horrifying anecdote about his parents, who (I will admit) seem to be bugfuck insane, and I expressed sympathy, but didn't think much about it. We chatted for awhile and logged off.

The next time I saw him, he started telling me about his butterfly knife. And I don't just mean "hey, I got this cool butterfly knife." He briefed me on its length, width, sharpness, make, model, and craftsmanship. He gave me URLs of the knife vendor's site and a URL to a picture of it. I acknowledged the fact that he did, in fact, have a butterfly knife, even though I really didn't find it that interesting. Unfortunately, Travis Bickle has no interest in what does or does not interest me. I exist only as a sounding board for his endless talk about knives and (as I would later learn) guns, bombs, kickboxing, exercise, knives, bombs, guns, kickboxing, bombs, guns, knives, and bombs.

This would be best illustrated by example. Below are a number of conversational excerpts from my time spent with Travis Bickle. Look closely and you may see a certain leitmotif running through them.

EXCERPT NUMBER ONE

Commentary: This is typical of my conversations with Travis Bickle. His interest in my well-being is merely a prelude to his talking about guns, knives, and / or bombs. Notice also that the talk about guns / knives /bombs is the immediate answer to "what's up with you?"

Travis Bickle: Hey, what's up?

Me: Not much, what's up with you?

Travis Bickle: In english a kid showed me his locking-blade serrated shanking knife. We discussed proper shaking technique, and then the convo moved on to firearm selection. We got into a neat little debate about the merits of nine millimeter before the hour ended.

EXCERPT NUMBER TWO

Commentary: Another typical Travis Bickle conversation. He starts off with a horrifying anecdote about his crazy parents, then moves on to another topic, then talks about fighting and guns. Granted, I'm not exactly bowling him over with long-winded conversation here, but that's only because I get the feeling he could be having this conversation with anyone, including himself, and my presence is purely coincidental.

Travis Bickle: Hey, I'm back. Mother tried some seriously uncool mind manipulation on me. She equated me using two napkins during dinner to me wasting money to me destroying her hopes of retirement to me hating her. WTF.

Me: Well, that's pathetic.

Travis Bickle: 'Ballroom Blitz' is a neat song; I just grabbed the sweet version from mp3.lycos.com

Me: Cool.

Travis Bickle: So how have you been?

Me: Been fine...

Travis Bickle: I've found an incredible workout, better than tae bo, better than running. Can you guess what it is?

Me: Uh, no.

Travis Bickle: Fighting. :) Seriously. Most strenuous thing I have ever done.

Me: Yeah, I had a feeling it would be something like that.

EXCERPT NUMBER THREE

Commentary: I do need to stress that I don't really dislike Travis Bickle, I just worry a little about someone who seems like an okay guy otherwise, but seems to have some... issues. After saying a few mean-spirited things to him, I attempted to atone by delivering an honest compliment, and I get this:

Me: I give you shit, but I do admire your drive and ambition. Even if it does seem to cross over into obsession / compulsion a little too much sometimes.

Travis Bickle: Yeah, my grip on reality is a bit.. liberal at times. But that is just the thing that is so disarming about people like us. We strike when you least expect it. The harmless babbling idiot suddenly gains a glint of intelligence in it's yellowing, maddened eyes and strikes with terrible ferocity. Those that mocked, the unwary.. dead before they hit the ground.

EXCERPT NUMBER FOUR

Commentary: This is perhaps the most amazing specimen of all of them. Note the complete lack of transition from one conversational topic (his inherent superiority to his father) to the other (guns) without any acknowledgement at all that I'd said anything, or indeed any transition at all.

Travis Bickle: Yeah. The bad part is, my father is irritated at me because of my easy fitness success. You see, he has been trying to lose weight for some time but can't quite seem to do it. I drop twenty five pounds of body fat in three months and add a whole lot of muscle (I never thought I'd see the day where I have rippling abs.. but.. heh. It snuck up on me). At any rate, I suffer his dirty looks. The one time I tried to explain to him that he had to exercise in addition to diet, he got even MORE upset, so I've resigned myself to leaving him on this course.

Me: Well, you're a teenager, how old is he? Try doing what you're doing at thirty or forty and you won't get so far so fast.

Travis Bickle: .44 magnums are not the most powerful handguns in the world :) Two guns beat it. The .357 full length magnum cartridge, and the good old fashioned desert eagle action express .50, with ten inch barrel. Gold finish. With the rubber grip and bas-relief etchings.

I've since been frequenting this particular online community a lot less, merely because I don't want to be rude to Travis Bickle, but talking to the guy is just such a chore. It's not that he's intolerable, he just doesn't seem to recognize that the people on the other end of the line actually have interests and ideas of their own. They seem to exist solely as a means for him to talk about his knives, guns, bombs, and parents. He seems intelligent enough to take care of himself, and he's certainly got the self-defense thing down cold, but... damn. Some days, when I talk to the guy, all I can hear is a ticking time bomb. I hope someday that I can have a real conversation with the guy, not another automated bot-conversation about weapons of mass destruction. Somewhere beneath that goth / Soldier of Fortune veneer there's an intelligent person struggling to get out, I know it, and I hope that when he finally weathers the storm of high school and gets out of his home environment, he rounds out a little.

Then again, I could just be a complete and utter bastard. Which is more likely the case.