Good People leftover leftovers

(a follow-up to http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2015/03/good-people-leftovers.html)

All that paranoia and persecution for...nothing? Shattering, health-imperiling levels of stress that were ultimately...well, not a delusion, as there was indeed a vortex of negativity directed at me during the run of "Good People", but the message i got was entirely different from the one that was intended. When i was faced with all that indirect evidence of loathing, i dredged up some artifact of my past that could have been interpreted, given enough levels of remove, as the actions of a monster.
It was the only way to make sense of what was happening.
I now know it had nothing to do with that at all...and it only took me a year to find out.
I now know that a human whom i respected and admired shook my hand in friendship, while inside he was so offended by me that he couldn't even tell me he was offended.
What caused such a cataclysmic shunning?
You're reading it right now.
It was this website, this naked meadow. I put a link to it in my bio in the play's program, and someone found something so offensive that shunning seemed the only appropriate response. And yes, a year ago someone suggested that this might be the reason - good old mom, i pooh-poohed her and i meant it. It seemed inconceivable that theater people could be so reactionary. Theater people are generally more literate and progressive than the average jane.
Is this website provocative? Revolutionary? I hope so.
My writings can be polarizing. I get that. As a creator, i try to put it out of my mind, but i get it. Someone once described the honesty i employ as beyond what people reveal even in their own diaries. Combine with that my condemnations of this barbaric society and an uninhibited progressivism which is perhaps a century ahead of its time, and the result will be...polarizing.
Yesterday i got a note from someone from whom i'd not heard in a long, long time. Someone who acted with me in a couple plays when she was an adolescent, and developed a deep crush on me. I felt profoundly caring and nurturing toward her. More than a decade later, she finds on this site a memoir of that show, in which i write openly about her crush. She wrote to tell me i'm grotesque.
I get that too. I don't blame her. It can be jarring to be confronted with the kind of honesty i employ, even when it's NOT about you. Beyond that, she's a fundamentalist christian, so a website memoir in which i happen to mention that religion is a sham, next to a picture of two naked men, was NOT going to endear me to her even before she had her life opened up.
I get it.
This website isn't just polarizing between people, but within people. Some people are ready for certain kinds of progressivism, but not others. We all have blind spots. There are people who neither love nor hate my work, but both. Take that picture of the two naked men. I love that photo. It captures so brilliantly the spirit of this site. Colorblind humans reconnecting with nature (the one outside, and the one within), nakedly walking toward a better future. Not that the picture's perfect. I don't love that it's two men - i didn't want to reinforce the notion that this is a man's world. Of course, two women would have been wrong too - female nudity is far too tinged with objectification. The perfect photo would have three or four people, of different colors and sexes.
But this photo is great enough that progressive people get the symbolism.
Others, however...sometimes i have to remind myself how damaged we all are when it comes to nakedness. I know smart people who think the photo is too naked - or too gay. I don't mind daring someone to react homophobically, though. There has always been a part of me that doesn't mind being misunderstood...the provocateur in me almost courts it.
Total honesty, total nakedness. If we can't figure out how to manifest those qualities, we'll never lift ourselves out of our abyss.
How did i finally find out what happened in "Good People"? Through a friend who wasn't connected to the show, but has connections with the theater. And i'm perhaps not entirely blameless...i didn't realize until after the programs were made that Theatre Conspiracy doesn't own its own home. The artistic director has a landlord he must answer to, and thus probably finds himself occasionally caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, in terms of the material he can present. If I'd known that beforehand, i might have gone to the director or the A.D. to ask whether a website that combines the sensibilities of twain, thoreau, and lenny bruce would be too much for the program.
A new friend of mine is a new age christian. She came to love my words and understand the larger context of my work, before she'd read any posts that pertain to god or faith...and she hasn't changed her assessment of me. She calls me a bringer of light. I honestly don't think she calls me anything else under her breath.
Polarizing, though.
I get it.
Is it fun to be reviled? No. Especially when it comes from someone you cared for deeply. But that's a million times easier than being shunned by your new adopted family, in silence and mystery. Do i feel a bit betrayed that no one came to me to say, "this might be a problem"? Of course.
Polarizing. I get it.
But we can't stop. There's a world to save.