Being Dexter Morgan

I feel like Dexter Morgan.

Are you familiar with "Dexter Morgan"? He's the main character in Jeff Lindsay's series of novels, and most notably now the famous main character in the Showtime runaway hit, Dexter. 

For the uninitiated, Dexter was scarred so deeply by the childhood event of witnessing his own mother's gruesome murder that is caused him to forever have this insatiable blood lust; He must strategically murder people (whom he deems to deserve it) at frequent intervals to stave off the increasing risk that he'll lose his sanity and go on a killing rampage.

Let me just step back and clarify my first statement. I want to point out that it's not his deadly nocturnal expeditions that I relate to in any way shape or form. Although, if I was ever close it'd be when dealing with Customer Service. 

Again, let me reiterate; I do not have homicidal tenancies.

I'm referring to a different aspect of Dexter Morgan; his disconnect from human emotion. Now, don't get me wrong; I have emotions; strong ones. All people do in one way or another. In the book series, Dexter often questioned whether or not he did, in fact, have emotions. He has the realisation that yes, he has emotions... but often misplaced.

The similarities that I share with Dexter are in this; Misplaced emotions, and feeling completely out of place. Allow me to explain. 

In every day life, most people are forced to interact with other people. Be it at school, work, or a social event, the convention is that you converse with others. I don't have a fundamental problem with this; I can interact with people quite amicably in fact. 

The truth is though, I feel like I'm pretending to be human. I question myself constantly, "Am I like them? Are we the same?", and the answer (in my own head) seems to be: No. 

I go to work and talk with people, but it doesn't feel quite right. It feels like I'm putting on a façade; That nobody has ever met the real Cloaker Josh aside from me. I never quite know how to act. 

A colleague will bring in their infant son into work, and I know I'm supposed to act a certain way on these occasions. But... what is the expected way?! I rack my brain, trying to tie the experience back to a reference point of some kind; A possible past event that transpired in approximately the right way. As usual, I'm unable to source any sort of guidelines to follow and try winging it.

"Oh, how cute! How old is he?" Okay, so far, so good.

"Aww thanks! He'll be 13 months next week." Wow, she's totally buying it! First gauntlet passed. Okay, quick math: What's 13 months in years? Almost 1 probably. Oh, crap! What are they supposed to be doing at that age?!

"Oh wow... can he, uh... talk yet?" A slight look of confusion crosses her brow. She responds.

"Ah... no. Not yet, plenty of time for that." Oh crap, I undershot the mark. She's starting to see through my camouflage.

"He's... uh... a big boy!" I silently pray that the statement is approximately accurate.

"He weighed 9 pounds, 3 ounces when he was born!" Damn, my nemesis rears it's ugly head. The Imperial System. Haven't they converted baby meat to Metric yet?! I literally have no idea what this number means. As her inflection had an air of pride to it, I'm inclined to believe that it's a big number, but I'm no positive so I continue tentatively.

"Wow, that's impressive. Such a cute little guy!" I manage to splutter out a non-committal response. I ruffle his hair, and turn to walk away. Oh Godzilla! You're not supposed to touch babies heads, are you? Haven't they got some sort of self-destruct button there somewhere?! I slowly walk away, and listen out for anomalies; Some sort of clue that I messed up. She returns to conversation with another colleague, and the baby makes a gargling noise. She doesn't react; It must be a normal. I exhale a deep sigh of relief... That was too close.

Another time I feel completely out of place is at a family barbeque. Every where I turn, there are a whole bunch of relatives; I somehow don't know half their names.

"How's life treatin' ya, Josh?" A vaguely familiar older gentleman strolls over and places his massive hand on my shoulder. Is that a normal greeting between relatives? Do I reciprocate? I decide not to, and shoot out an auto-reply.

"How am I treating life, you mean mate?" Mate is my default moniker for people whom I do not immediately recall the name of. 

"That's it, ha ha!" He laughs, and takes his hand off my shoulder. He takes a sip of his beer. Damn, he's still standing there! You're not giving me anything to work with here, buddy! I have a long sip of beer while I struggle to conjure an appropriate question to ask. Ah, here we go!

"How's the family?" I swear I detect a micro-expression of a furrowed brow. How can that be the wrong question? He enlightens me.

"Ah... well. It's different now that Marcy's not around... Paul visits from time to time. He's doing well, you know. He's just had another child, a daughter this time."

Damn, I've asked about his deceased partner, question failure. Paul must be his son. He's probably my second-... something.

"Oh mate, you'll have to pass on my congratulations!" I take another swig of beer, and try to come up with a getaway plan. Ah, the toilet! He doesn't know I only just returned from there, I could've been anywhere. "Excuse me mate, I just gotta go hit the head." With any luck, when I return he'll be deep in conversation with somebody else and I can latch on to one of the familiar cousins.

Situations like these are the ones that make me feel like Dexter. It feels like humans were born with the ability to handle these in an automatic manner, whereas I'm running custom firmware.

Now, I'm going to take a stab (pun intended) in the dark and call out the rest of you. There's no way that I am so unique that nobody feels the same way; in fact, I would go so far as to say there are possible thousands, many even hundreds of thousands that feel the same way. Millions? Maybe.

So, logic dictates that I'm not alone; I know there's more of you out there. Question is, have you got the guts to admit it?

I can see my name up there; Where's yours?