My Fortress

Saturday, July 16, 2022

We all have ideas about what home means to individuals, but for me, a home needs to be a fortress.   As one gets older, I find the external life outside my home distasteful.  I’m consistently repulsed by how humans interact with and among themselves.  Ever since I was a child, I have enjoyed the idea of having space where my enemies can never find me.  When living in Beverly Glen, I had a secret hideout under a tree with full limbs of leaves hiding a vacant area, where I could clearly conceal and even put some of my favorite toys and books.  I remember placing my favorite books there, but I would protect them by covering them with a plastic bag.  I often sneaked out of my family home into a world of my own making, which was under the tree, that was, in reality, in my backyard.  But as I got older, I found other locations to hide out in, and what was important to me was a shaded area with no foot traffic going by it.  

As an early reader of comic books, the one thing that impressed me about Batman was his Bat-Cave.   Here he can work in secret with his various tools to fight crime.   I was intrigued by his laboratory and quite impressed that even while working in the bat-cave, he would wear his full costume.  In other words, he had a work uniform. Even though he was self-employed, his boss in a sense, he kept the appearance of working by wearing his costume, even though no one was around to watch him work - except for us invisible readers of the comic book, which gave me the idea to wear my work uniform, which was a lab coat that I got from my parent’s closet.   I stashed it under the tree among the books and toys.   Once I entered the enclosed area, I would put on my lab coat and do some work.  Which at that time was to play with my toys and do some reading.

As I got older, meaning when I became an adult, I was fascinated with Marc René, marquis de Montaiembert, an 18th-century French military engineer and writer. He was famous for his work on fortifications and wrote a classic book, “La Fortification perpendiculaire, ” which was his theory on making forts suitable for modern conditions of warfare.   He was very much inspired by Vauban, a Marshal of France, who designed the fortifications, but he also wrote about how to break into a fort.  One of his contributions was to make a radical suggestion of giving up some French land that was indefensible to allow a more robust border with France’s neighbors.

When I was looking for a house to buy and live in, I for sure wanted something like a fort that would keep the outside world ‘out’ and me being me, separate from a population I don’t care for.  Israel appears to me to be more like a fortress than a country.  Which technically I find pleasing. The restrictions of space, time, and borders to keep out a population is understandable to me.  It inspired me when I got my home.  I have security cameras and alarms and two-way mirrors where I can look out, but no one can look in.  Also, besides having standard locks, my doors have a series of codes that are changed once a month.   Once secured in my world, I can let my imagination roam and create my unique landscape of dreams and desire.

I was very much taken by the home of Turner in the film “Performance.” James Fox’s character is on the run from his fellow gangsters, and he finds his fortress right in the middle of London.  Inside this house, it had its own rules and logic, which were not only an erotic turn-on for me, but also I loved the separation of real life that was out there and the life that was being performed inside the structure.   In such a place, I can explore my sexuality, art, and desires all in one spot.