The Mask of Zorro

I stood in the dark basement in front of the washing machine, guzzling an upturned bottle of Thunderbird wine I had stashed away for emergencies — when my wife walked in and flipped on the lights. She looked at me and blinked several times—as if to make sure she was not seeing things. Her face fell with that familiar look of dejection, of sadness, and of stark emotional fatigue—the look that said “I am not surprised, but I am hurt, and I am done.” Turning around, she walked out.

I was five years old when I put on my first mask. It was my birthday. I sat on the couch in our small home, surrounded by my three sisters and brother. Mom handed me a large wrapped box. I opened the present, and found inside a black mask, a black cape, and a long leather whip. It was the costume of my hero Zorro.

Each week I watched Walt Disney’s Adventures of Zorro. I was captivated by the way Zorro transformed himself from a mild-mannered, urbane aristocrat, to a bold and courageous champion of the poor and marginalized—simply by putting on a small mask and cape. It was not so much the actual costume that mesmerized me, but it was the change that came over him once he put it on. I remember thinking how magical it all was— to become someone else, and all that was required was the right mask.

To become someone else. That is what I really wanted.

Already I felt life as tentative, unpredictable, and riddled with dangers—as if there was a bubbling stream of low-grade anxiety running just under the surface of my skin. With each new day, I felt like the first kid to walk out on the newly-frozen pond to see if it would hold.

But when I put that black mask on my small face, and wrapped the cape around my shoulders, strapping the whip to my belt loop–I felt the world around me change. I was not afraid of it. I had power, confidence, and abilities that moments before were beyond me.

My parents looked at me in my new costume and said “Bobby, you look so strong and brave!” I responded “I’m not Bobby—I am Zorro!”

At that moment, a notch was etched into the neuropathways of my brain. This tiny memory-mark  repeated to me over and over, “you can change the way you feel about yourself and the world around you, if you pick the right costume”. So, I went on for years looking for just the right mask for each situation I was in.

When the Zorro mask no longer fit, I had to look for others. I later discovered in high school that alcohol and drugs would do the work of the mask.  With a couple cans of beer or puffs of pot my underlying low-grade anxiety would slip right off. In seconds, I became smarter, wittier, bolder, stronger, a better conversationalist, and more attractive to women— like the five-year-old who believed he was Zorro simply by putting on the mask.

The Carnival Mardi-Gras is built on this primal desire to be someone or something else. Mardi Gras is that festival dedicated to acting out our fantasies, to laying down our inhibitions, and experiencing another side of ourselves—another dimension of life. However, it is meant to be temporary pretend-fun. For these few days of Mardi Gras you can be whoever you want to be.

Mardi Gras precedes Lent, which is itself the appropriate response to a life of wearing masks. Lent is the season of turning away from pretending— a time to re-commit to a life based on reality. A time to embrace the true self within the true conditions of the world.

My Lent was a long way off.

I continued through high school and college choosing various masks to hide my feelings of incompetence—masks I carefully chose to impress others. But here’s the problem with masks—they never completely convince everyone. There will always be those who can sense something not quite right – not authentic. Like “Mardi-Gras” masks that cover just a portion of the face, the booze and drugs, and all my little pretensions fooled only myself.

Recently I was re-watching the movie Easy Rider. Peter Fonda, playing a west coast biker traveling to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with his friend Billy, asks Billy “Have you ever wanted to be someone else?”  Billy replied “Sure, hasn’t everyone?” Peter Fonda replies “Not me, man. Not me.”

I don’t quite buy this. Fonda’s character has assumed the moniker ‘Captain America’. He is riding a chopped Harley across the country—incidentally, headed for the national festival of pretending – Mardi Gras. He wears his chosen costume— a helmet painted like the American flag, and a jacket with the American flag sewn on the back. It seems to me he is looking for something other than what he is, where he is, or what he has.

Near the end of the movie, he is shown in a psychedelic trance, hugging a female statue, crying “I hate you mother—I love you mother”. Clearly, Captain America had not found himself. He had things he was running and hiding from.

Who hasn’t wanted to be someone else at times? Who doesn’t wish to be a little smarter, a little more confident, a little more competent, and just a little more charismatic and attractive? The question is to what lengths will we go to perpetuate the charade.

I am a daydreamer. While working on a mindless task, like jogging, mowing the lawn, or painting a room, I find myself— like ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’—accomplishing spectacular feats in front of admiring audiences; winning a marathon, speaking to thousands, saving a drowning victim or intervening in an active shooter situation –and walking away as if it was nothing. “I was just doing what was needed” I would humbly respond.

Then, abruptly I would snap out of this fanciful daydream and realize what I really need to do was get to my conference call in time, or go by the bank and pay that bill, or change my oil.

As the years went by I continued donning different masks; pretending I was tough boxer and wrestler, that I was fast on the track team, that I was a pastry chef, that I am a writer, and the biggest one of all, that I am really an adult—a bonafide grown-up. I was not sure what that meant, but I never felt like one.

This age is often referred to as “The Age of Anxiety” by sociologists—not because it is any more dangerous or troubled then past generations.. It is anxiety without a direct cause, and with it has come a whole new set of experiences, psychological conditions.

One of them has become known as ‘The Imposter Syndrome’. Initially, it may simply be a case of “putting your best foot forward”. For many it progresses to compulsive efforts to convince you we are someone else.  The ‘Imposter Syndrome’ arises from a core belief that in certain times or situations, I am not enough, I am over my head, that even though there is no real evidence to support it, I am not up to the task or situation in front of me, and I am going to be found out as a phony— an imposter. The mask is going to be ripped off Zorro, and I will be seen as an incompetent, bumbling fool.

Capable and talented people suffer from this experience from time to time. It can develop gradually from periodic episodes that are situational only, into a general orientation towards and perception of life. This is the common underlying element of the alcoholic and addict. They cannot tolerate life as they perceive it without the aid of chemicals—chemicals that mask alternating feelings of inadequacy and delusions of grandeur —a mask that slips and won’t stay on, that fools only themselves.

For them, this need to be perfect, to avoid mistakes or failure, has a controlling effect on what they do or don’t do. They may avoid taking reasonable risks or, putting themselves and their talents out there, even when they have been told they have something valuable to give. So, life becomes small and limited, bound up in their anxieties.

Until—if one is so graced—you get tired of your many masks, and all your many efforts to convince others of something you are not, and you tire of hiding your true self, which is the only gift we come here with.

Bob Dylan saw this same tendency in us all to pretend, and wrote of it in his song “When He Returns”. He discovered the answer was grace—the grace of trusting and relying on Christ.

Surrender your crown on this blood-stained ground, take off your mask
He sees your deeds, He knows your needs even before you ask
How long can you falsely and deny what is real?
How long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal?

That moment in the dark basement—with the wine bottle turned up to my lips— was my moment of grace. It was the moment I gave up the charade and accepted my nakedness. That moment my wife turned away from me was the moment I made the choice to get help.

As I progress in my own change and growth in recovery, I am learning a little about what it is to become a grown-up. Grown-ups accept life as they find it. Grown-ups accept themselves as they are, and they are at peace with both. They do not continually wish they were someone else, with someone else, doing something else. They do what they can with what they have for those with whom they are around. Pretending to be a grownup was keeping me from becoming one.

In his book “The Spirituality of Imperfection”, Ernest Kurtz writes about “Alcoholics Anonymous”, and how total and permanent recovery from addiction begins with letting go of the delusions that we must be perfect, that we must be more of this or that to be enough.

Home is the place where we can be ourselves and accept ourselves as both good and bad, beast and angel, saint and sinner. Home is the place where we can laugh and cry, where we can find some peace within all the chaos and confusion, where we are accepted and, indeed, cherished by others precisely because of our very mixed-upedness. Home is that place where we belong, where we fit precisely because of our very unfittingness. Humility allows us to find the fittingness in our own imperfection.” Ernest Kurtz

It has taken me many years—from that day I put on my Zorro mask, until months after the basement moment— to come to a place of peace and acceptance about who I am and what I have to add to the story of life. We all have our contributions to make, but the masks must come off to discover what those contributions really are.

In this process of growing up I received a gift—the gift of faith. Not of the religious kind, but an experiential, existential faith. A faith that the universe is governed by a benevolent power that is on my side. This power is like a loving parent who looks down on my foibles and mistakes with tender amusement, compassion and a certain amount of pity. With this faith, I experience my own value simply because I breathe. I have no more, and no less value than any other breathing human.

With this gift, I discovered that I could safely remove my masks. I could laugh at myself and with myself. This resulted in me taking more reasonable and calculated risks in my job, and in my relationships. I engaged in new interests and long-held dreams. I began to grow up.

From time to time I am faced with my old habits of mask-donning pretention. Growing up is a slow, ongoing process, and I have been playing catch-up.

I was attending a poetry workshop, and had just shared one of my poems with a group of poets. As we went around the table, one by one I was given very positive feedback, until it came to an elderly man, an experienced poet, who said “The poem is fine, but it sounds like you are working hard to impress your reader”.  Once more, the mask had been pulled down.

What is our infatuation today with masked superheroes, with Marvel Comics movies and remakes and endless sequels? Is it a cry to escape what seems to be an out- of -control world? Regardless, the world does not need superheroes. It needs men and woman who are authentic, who know who they are, what they are here to do—men and women who can validate themselves and their roles, without the need for the validation of others. Men and women who are not afraid to make mistakes, who refuse to be stymied or paralyzed by what others will think. It is none of my business what others think of me, but it is my business to do what I can with what I have for others.

When Halloween or Mardi Gras comes, and I put on whatever mask I choose, I know that I am pretending. I know, even with the mask, who I really am underneath. I am not confused about that. In fact, I am comfortable with that, which has made all the difference.

It has been years since the basement experience, and yet I am still a mistake-prone, stumbling, limited man—who is perfectly OK with that. I am no longer afraid to take reasonable risks, or to look at something new that needs changing in myself.

And, most importantly, it has been that long since I saw that look on the face of my wife. That is good enough for me.

Kind Regards,

Bob