Friday, June 1, 2001
Guilt!
I’m excited about my high school reunion that starts tonight. I look good. Last night I sat in bed, going through my high school yearbooks, looking at the pictures, reading what people wrote to me when they signed inside. I have to say that I sure did have a lot of hair on my head back then. Jeez! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me to get a haircut? I had such an afro.
It was touching to read what people wrote to me. Things like “don’t worry so much” and “the people at UVA don’t know what they’re in for” and “I’m sure you’ll be a success at whatever you choose to do.”
Whatever I choose to do. God, things seemed so simple back then!
This morning I was reading an article in the New Yorker — unfortunately, it’s not on their website — about Bruce Pandolfini, a man who makes a living giving private chess lessons to gifted children. He was apparently the model for the teacher in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer (which I haven’t seen). He’s lived in the same little one-room apartment in the East Village since 1976. Twenty-five years in one place! His stove is blocked by stacks and stacks of books and magazines and so on and so forth that reach three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. And he makes a very good living going from home to home, helping these child prodigies improve their chess.
I’m fascinated by the roads people take to get places, especially when they wind up doing something they love, and even more so when it’s not something that would show up on a career placement test. If Bruce Pandolfini had taken such a test, would it have told him that he should become a “private instructor of chess prodigies”?
Or look at Will Shortz, the New York Times’s crossword puzzle editor. Like me, he received a law degree from the University of Virginia. But instead of becoming a lawyer, he went to work for a puzzle magazine publisher. He even designed his own major as an undergrad at Indiana University; he is the only person in the world with a degree in enigmatology.
God, wouldn’t it be so nice to just blindly follow my interests and see where they lead me? But that’s so scary. I worry so much about coloring within the lines, and I worry about dying if I don’t.
Even debt makes me worry about dying. I have lots of debt right now — law school debt, and also credit card debt that seems only to be growing. But I desperately needed new pants, so last night I went to the Gap and bought a pair of jeans and two pairs of slacks. Charged $112 to my card. It was my first credit card charge in a month or so, but it still made me feel guilty.
Afterward I talked to a friend on the phone. “I feel like I should be punished for going into debt,” I said. “You are being punished,” he replied. “It’s called interest.”
True, true.
But I meant morally punished. Or mortally. I feel like my debt is going to make me die. I don’t know why I feel that way. But there’s got to be some incentive not to increase my debt, right? There’s always payback, right? Why not death?
I began law school with zero debt. I finished law school with thousands in loans, but no credit card debt. It was only about a year ago that I really started to carry a credit card balance.
I just want to be punished. Or I don’t want to be punished, but I fear I’ll be punished. Why, why, why? I’m torn between two philosophies — one is that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself and I should enjoy life as much as I can, and the other is that I need to be responsible and not do anything unhealthy such as carry debt. I always need some force to struggle against. I’m very good at creating obstacles for myself, real or imagined. Because without obstacles — well, what fun would success be?
Why do I feel like my imperfections are going to kill me when rationally I know they won’t? Maybe I want them to. Maybe I want to go through a purifying fire to kill off all my imperfections. Maybe that sometimes feels easier than having to deal with imperfections and shortcomings and shortfalls day after day.
Really, how do we cut ourselves so much slack and still feel able to live with ourselves?
What I mean is, how can you cut me so much slack and still like me? What have I done to deserve it, really? I wrote a couple of e-mails to Blogstalker the other day, trying to pep him up, and yet here I am feeling some similar feelings. The guilt I’m feeling right now at living in a too-expensive apartment and at carrying debt, the dissatisfaction with my neighborhood and with the fact that I haven’t eaten enough fruit lately, that I’ve been too lazy to go grocery shopping and so have been buying cheap dinners, the dissatisfaction with my job — why do I feel all this guilt?
I can understand feeling guilty about murdering a fellow human being or about cheating someone out of millions of dollars. But none of the things I’ve done have any negative impact on anyone else. So why the guilt?
Why do we feel guilty about things we shouldn’t feel guilty about?
Who appointed me moral exemplar? I never asked for this job!
1:59 PM | Comments Off Okay, I was whining in that last entry. I think things are just fine. I just had to get it all out of my system. It’s all good.
4:04 PM | Comments Off Saturday, June 2, 2001
Ghostbusting
Well, part one of the high school reunion went great. We met up at the bar in the hotel where most people are staying. I got there at around 5:45 in the evening and hung out with everyone until about 2 in the morning. Except for running across the street at some point to get some quick food en masse, we spent the entire evening in this lounge adjacent to the bar. We each were given a nametag that contained our name next to our high school yearbook photo. Kind of embarrassing, but since everyone had one, it was okay.
I think about 25-30 of us showed up last night — some much later than others, given the diverse schedules of airline flights. There was a surprisingly large number of people in from the San Francisco Bay area; I wouldn’t be surprised if San Francisco came in a close second in the vote for the reunion location.
There were some people I’d expected to see and others who were total surprises. Among those who showed up were Attractive Jockboy, the source of many a nighttime fantasy back in high school, and who I don’t think I ever had a single conversation with back then, but whom I wound up chatting with comfortably for quite a while last night. There was also Tall Cute Quiet Boy, whom I had a big obsession with/crush on back then, and who copied one of his mix tapes for me once (I still have it). Turns out he’s married. He lives in Brooklyn and he seemed sorta shy and uncomfortable last night. I think he barely cracked a smile.
There was also the guy whose older brother was a good friend of mine when I was a sophomore and the older brother was a senior; I idolized the older brother so incredibly deeply, and we acted in shows together, and we got to be really good friends that year. The older brother is about to move out to San Francisco with his wife and daughter, where he’s going to be a feature reporter on SF’s local NBC news affiliate. When I saw the younger brother last night, for a second I actually thought it was the older brother.
I was surprised by how much easier it was to talk with people last night, men and women both, than it was back in high school. For the most part, it seems that the cliques have melted away and we’re all adults now. For the most part. There were still moments when some of the formerly popular people were talking about things and looking at photos from 8th grade, which I couldn’t relate to at all, because we didn’t move to Japan until I was in 10th grade. (This wasn’t unusual — when you go to an overseas high school, there are always families coming and going.)
I feel like I exorcised many old ghosts last night. It felt wonderful and liberating.
We were going to meet up for a Central Park picnic this afternoon, but the weather is crappy, so instead we’re all just going to meet up at this restaurant for dinner, where we have a room reserved, and where we’ll eat and drink and look at a slide show of old school photos. It should be another blast.
1:56 PM | Comments Off Sunday, June 3, 2001
Belonging
Last night, part two of the high school reunion, was an amazing experience for me.
We all met up for dinner at 7:00 at Osso Buco, an Italian restaurant. They had set up a long table for us in the back. It wasn’t a separate room, but it was up half a flight of stairs, and as we ate, some of us could look down on the rest of the restaurant. There must have been fifty of us there, including alumni and a few spouses. It felt like the royal family eating dinner — one enormously long table. Wine and beer were included, and the meal was served family style — waiters would come and put down plates of food, and we’d help ourselves. All of the people from the previous night showed up, as well as a few others. We were going to have a slide show, but there was nowhere to project slides, so people just passed around photos and old yearbooks.
Two and a half hours later, the dinner was over. From there, most of us went to this dance club in Tribeca called Culture Club. What a place! The club was a paean to the 1980’s. The DJ spun nothing but 80’s tunes, one great song after another. The decor… well, let’s see. On part of one wall there was a painted mural of the cast of The Breakfast Club. Above one of the bars was a neon sign that said “Cocktail,” just like the sign in the Tom Cruise movie of the same name. Hanging from the ceiling were a full-size Delorean, with one of its gull-wing doors open, and a giant Rubik’s Cube. Another wall had a reproduction of the famous shot of Eliot riding his bicycle with E.T. in the basket, silhouetted against a giant moon.
We graduated in 1991, which wasn’t exactly the 80’s but wasn’t exactly the 90’s either. Post-Reagan, pre-Clinton, my high school years were defined by international events — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet satellite states, the Persian Gulf War. (Living overseas, international events loomed larger, and we were spared the gloomy American economic recession at home.) Pop music during my high school years was in a pretty sorry state: it was after the 80’s kitsch, yet before the arrival of Nirvana and the grungy “alternative music” that would come to define a decade, and we were stuck with the likes of Milli Vanilli, C & C Music Factory, and Vanilla Ice.
Life as an American teenager in Tokyo was pretty charmed; on the weekends, many of us would go out and party in Tokyo’s nightlife district, Roppongi. It didn’t matter that we were only 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. Either the Japanese bouncers couldn’t tell how old we foreigners were, or they just didn’t care, because they always let us in. While high schoolers back in the States were sneaking kegs into their parents’ basements, we were buying cans of beer from vending machines on the street and ordering our Moscow Mules and Amaretto Cokes at the bars, then getting onto the dance floor and dancing like crazy.
But I was pretty inhibited back then, and when I’d go out, I wasn’t really with the “cool people,” as I said the other day. I’d go out with some of my other friends, and I’d see the cool crowd and sort of aspire to be part of them, but I never really felt good enough to mix with them. And I wasn’t a very good dancer.
Last night was different. I was out there on the dance floor with everyone else, dancing my feet off. I’ve neglected to mention this, but none of the people whom I hung out with in high school showed up for the reunion. For the entire weekend this was great for me, because without them around — with me unburdened of them, if you will — I could finally be the guy I’d always wanted to be.
We were out there, dancing in a big crowd, sweating like crazy. (In the first two or three years after graduation, my dancing improved.) I was totally relaxed and pumped and enjoying myself. One great song after another came on, and I mouthed the words along with everyone else. It felt so great finally to be part of the cool crowd, to show people that I could dance, to show them that I knew all the words, to show them that I wasn’t just a nerdy smart guy after all.
We traveled back in time. It was 1990 and I was back in Tokyo, at Buzz, one of the hot Roppongi nightspots of the era. Hearing a song like “Funky Cold Medina” really enhanced the experience. I was completely immersed in high school memories. The past ten years since graduation had all been just a dream.
But then something strange happened. They started playing “Rock the Casbah,” a song that for me evokes late 1992 and early 1993, when I was in my second year of college. That year, one of the UVA a cappella groups performed that song and put in on their CD. I would listen to that CD over and over, desperately wanting to audition and get chosen for that group or one of the others. For about a year and half in college, I was obsessed with this goal.
So here I was on the dance floor, steeped in all this Japan-era high school nostalgia for 1990 and 1991, and suddenly I was wrenched a couple of years into the future to 1993. It was temporal whiplash! Paradoxically, 1991 felt so immediate in time but 1993 felt like years and years in the past. Here I was, at my high school reunion, suddenly being overwhelmed not by this collective nostalgia for high school but by an individual nostalgia for my first couple of years of college, for experiences and memories that none of these high school people dancing around me knew anything about, and all at once I felt an incredible pride in those private memories and incredibly protective of them. I suddenly realized how much had truly happened to me since high school graduation — and not in ten years, but just in the first two years after high school alone. I was overwhelmed with emotion, and I wanted to cry and laugh and dance even harder.
I realized how much I had changed and how much I had learned. The DJ played REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” and when they got to the appropriate part I shouted the words “No Beer, Cavalier!”, just like everyone used to do back at UVA to make fun of former president O’Neill’s crackdown on drinking. (UVA students are known both as Wahoos and as Cavaliers.) And none of my fellow high school alumni even knew.
The night went on and on, and before I knew it it was past three in the morning and there were only seven of us left: me, four former football players, and two women. One of the football players was Mr. Attractive Jockboy, whom I mentioned the other day, and another of them used to hang out with the intelligent and preppy and popular crowd. And there we were, all dancing together in a circle. I couldn’t believe I was out there with them, one of the last seven holdouts — it was so surreal and cool. At this point, some great things happened.
Great moment #1: I knew the words to every song, and every so often, Mr. Attractive Jockboy — whom I never, ever talked to in high school but whom I had a big crush on — would give me a big smile and stare at me with a wild crazy expression on his face and mouth the words along with me. At one point he even put his hands on my sides and mock-danced with me. (I don’t think he has homosexual tendencies, because he was majorly going after one of the two remaining women in our group, and had been doing so the night before as well.)
Great moment #2: One of the guys obviously knew that I was gay, because at one point when we were all on the dance floor he asked me, “So are you on the prowl? Any gay guys around here?” It was so great — not only was this former high school jock actually talking to me, but he was totally comfortable with my being gay as well. I was so happy, I felt like I was soaring.
Great moment #3: I left the dance floor for a while, and when I came back again, one of the guys gave me a big high-five.
Finally we were all worn out and it was time to leave. At 4:00 in the morning we stood on Varick Street outside the club. Some of them were going back to the hotel and others were going in other directions. Before I left to catch my train, we all said goodbye and they gave me big chummy handshakes and masculine hugs and pats on the back.
And so my ten-year reunion ended.
I forgot to mention that on the wall of the club — along with all the other 80’s paraphernalia — was a picture of the logo from the movie Ghostbusters, the ghost inside a red circle with a slash through it. And this weekend I accomplished exactly the goal I’d hoped to accomplish. I killed all the ghosts. Back in high school I’d often thought that the problem was not that these “cool people” didn’t want to hang out with me, but rather that I was too scared to hang out with them, to let them get to know me. If only I hadn’t been so shy and nervous and in awe of them — if only I’d got up the courage to hang out with them — they would have liked me. It had been all my fault.
Have you ever seen the movie Can’t Buy Me Love, in which — for a short time — the perenially geeky guy manages to transcend the social barriers and become one of the cool people? That’s how I felt last night. But it was even better than that, because I hadn’t had to sell my soul in order to do it. I had truly changed in the past ten years. I had changed myself for the better. We all had. That was the greatest thing about last night, and indeed the greatest thing about the entire weekend.
I was just being myself. And finally — yes, yes, finally — being myself was good enough.
11:54 PM | Comments Off Monday, June 4, 2001
Stealth Cutie
I forgot to mention Stealth Cutie. Have you ever known a stealth cutie — someone about whom you have said to yourself, “Why didn’t I realize until now just how cute this person is?” or “Why did my subconscious wait so long to tell me about this?” Well, I encountered a stealth cutie this weekend. He was a member of my high school graduating class. I always knew who he was — my class had only about 100 people in it — but for some reason it wasn’t until this weekend that I was fully aware of his adorableness. He wasn’t around on Friday night, but someone mentioned that he’d be showing up the following evening, and I thought to myself, “Oh really? Well, that would be terrific,” without even realizing that I was thinking it. But my subconscious must have known what was going on.
On Saturday night, there he was. He didn’t come to the restaurant, but he showed up at the Culture Club afterwards. He’s only an inch or two taller than me, and he has dark hair and dark eyes and eyebrows — Caucasian, but with sort of a Mediterranean or Italian or Eastern European look. He was wearing a pair of glasses with narrow tortoise-shell frames. And he looked adorable. I felt this instant visceral attraction to him, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I looked at him and I was in love.
Stealth Cutie went to law school, and now he works in Manhattan as a litigation consultant. He’s a really nice, soft-spoken guy. And… he’s married. To a woman, of course.
Damn.
Another gay member of my high school class, whom I’ll call Joe, was at the club, too, and at one point, over the din of the music, I shouted to him how incredibly cute and adorable I thought Stealth Cutie was and how if he weren’t straight I would totally marry him. I might have said something sexual, too, I’m not sure.
I got to talk with Stealth Cutie on the dance floor for a little while. And later, a few of us were taking a break from dancing and were sitting on some bleachers against a wall, and he came up to sit with us. Two of us were sitting at the top row with a space between us, and he sat right there between us. None of us really said anything — we just kind of sat there, relaxing, listening to the music and watching the crowd.
Later, back on the dance floor, when Stealth Cutie was shouting his goodbyes to everyone, he gave me his business card. I was flattered and moved and internally excited, because he didn’t give his card to the other people who were around at that moment. But hey, we both went to law school and we both live in the New York area, so maybe he felt some sort of connection to me.
And then yesterday I was talking with Joe again, because he’d invited me to go to Queens Pride with him and his boyfriend. (”Queens” as in the borough of New York City. Otherwise, the name would have been redundant.) And Joe told me that Stealth Cutie had overheard all my enthusiastic effusiveness about him. He’d been standing nearby, and I had been shouting because the music was so loud, but apparently I’d been shouting too loudly. I wasn’t even drunk. Anyway, I guess Stealth Cutie must have said something afterwards.
So Joe told me about this and I was mortified. He told me I shouldn’t be, that Stealth Cutie was probably flattered. I guess that’s true. It’s embarrassing, though! I tend to be a tad uncomfortable around straight guys who know I’m gay, because I’m afraid they’ll think (or know) that I find them attractive, and I don’t know how they’ll react to me. But I guess if a guy is secure enough in his heterosexuality, it won’t bother him. Obviously Stealth Cutie wasn’t bothered by it since he gave me his business card.
But it’s still embarrassing.
Oh, Stealth Cutie… I’d love to meet a gay guy who looks like you.
2:12 PM | Comments Off Tuesday, June 5, 2001
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
This always has, and always will, give me chills. And just the sight of the word Nazgûl makes me want to run and cower underneath under my blanket. Whatever you call them — the Nazgûl, the Black Riders, the Ringwraiths — they’ve always been the most terrifying beings I’ve ever read about.
I first read The Hobbit back in third grade. Soon after that, I began reading part one of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, but I never finished it. In fifth grade I started over, and this time I got halfway through part two, The Two Towers, but again I never got around to finishing it. Finally, ten years ago, during the summer after my high school graduation, I read the whole thing, all the way through the end of Return of the King, even though I’d seen the animated film and pretty much already knew how the trilogy turned out. Wonderful, wonderful. (Except for the last hundred pages or so, which seem so excruciatingly boring and anticlimactic.)
Last night, after reading the first part of Andrew O’Hehir’s exegesis of the trilogy in Salon yesterday, I picked up my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and began reading it again. (These are the versions I have.) I don’t know if I want to trudge all the way through Middle-Earth all over again, but it’s nice just to delve back into it and look at the wonderful names of characters and places. Who knows — maybe I’ll get sucked back in. The first half of Fellowship is a frightening masterpiece of tension and suspense. I can say that I eagerly await the release of the film version of the first book in December.
The road goes ever on and on…
10:52 AM | Comments Off Bush will not designate June as Gay Pride Month. You know, I feel like I shouldn’t be angry. I feel like after four and a half months I should be used to things like this. But I am angry. It’s not like it would have been such a big step to do this; after all, Clinton did it. In situations like this, I find it’s helpful to ask: If you substitute the word “black” or “Jewish” or “Asian” for “gay,” would the outcome be different? Asking this question usually reveals the truth behind all those cowardly excuses and subconscious rationalizations such as “[Bush] does not believe in politicizing people�s sexual orientation. That�s a personal matter.� Seeing as how Bush proclaimed Black History Month back in February (and rightly so), the answer to the above question is yes, which makes this reprehensible.
It’s not like Gay Pride Month is cancelled. (”Okay, guys! Send back all the Bud Lite!”) But it’s not the practical effects that are important here. It’s the symbolism. Symbolism goes a long way. Yes, I will grant you that Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and implemented don’t-ask-don’t-tell, both of which had more than symbolic repercussions. But on the other hand, the pathbreaking respect and attention that he gave to gay voters beginning in 1992 — even if you take the most cynical view that he did this only in order to gain the gay vote and appear compassionate and open-minded, a view I’m not sure I hold — really contributed to a sea change in this country’s perception of gay people and its discussion of gay issues. In light of this, Bush’s action here — or more appropriately, non-action — comes off seeming close-minded, reactionary, childish, snitty, and incredibly passive-aggressive.
I really don’t know how I’m going to get through the next 43 1/2 months — or, God forbid, 91 1/2 months — of this presidency.
12:08 PM | Comments Off Powers of Ten. Cool as hell! (link via swishcottage)
2:08 PM | Comments Off Wednesday, June 6, 2001
In today’s New York Times, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd tries to help spread a new catch phrase. I think Ms. Dowd jumped the shark herself a long time ago, probably around the time she wrote this.
10:25 AM | Comments Off Yesterday, circa 5:00 p.m.
RJReynoldsNYC: but what about you?
RJReynoldsNYC: how’s YOUR life?
RJReynoldsNYC: i haven’t checked your blog yet today.
TinMan25NJ: well, today’s blog-entries are non-personal…
TinMan25NJ: i’m in more of a linky-love mood today
RJReynoldsNYC: ahh. so what’s the word on you?
TinMan25NJ: oh, you know me. i think i need prozac.
RJReynoldsNYC: you probably do.
RJReynoldsNYC: time for therapy for you.
TinMan25NJ: tonight’s my therapy night…
TinMan25NJ: really, though, not to complain, but my life feels so EMPTY.
RJReynoldsNYC: yay! make em cough up the pills.
RJReynoldsNYC: well that means your life isn’t full.
RJReynoldsNYC: and you need to go on adding some stuff in.
TinMan25NJ: but i’m afraid of that
TinMan25NJ: i’m afraid of fear…
TinMan25NJ: damn that FDR
RJReynoldsNYC: ha ha
TinMan25NJ: seriously, though, i am…
TinMan25NJ: my mode lately has been so lazy
TinMan25NJ: i think i’ve been trying to un-learn my childhood high-stress life
RJReynoldsNYC: lazy as in depressed?
RJReynoldsNYC: or lazy as in comfortable?
TinMan25NJ: a little of both… i’m just so bored
TinMan25NJ: although, sunday afternoon, i actually did feel depressed.
TinMan25NJ: i don’t want to say i felt suicidal, because it wasn’t quite like that, but i couldn’t really see any hope, you know?
RJReynoldsNYC: oh but that’s SUNDAY afternoons. they ALWAYS suck.
TinMan25NJ: yeah…
TinMan25NJ: you know what’s weird? i feel like i need more chaos in my life
TinMan25NJ: well, more fullness, as you said
RJReynoldsNYC: more excitement.
RJReynoldsNYC: a little fun.
RJReynoldsNYC: a reason to live.
TinMan25NJ: yeah — i need new things…
RJReynoldsNYC: BESIDES fucking blogging.
TinMan25NJ: the blogging’s okay… but no bloggers ever really call me to get together
TinMan25NJ: all these great people but we never really socialize
TinMan25NJ: and my debt keeps going up
TinMan25NJ: since i can’t afford my apartment
TinMan25NJ: and if i get this new job, i have to live in new jersey
RJReynoldsNYC: OOO what job?
TinMan25NJ: unless i use my parents’ address
RJReynoldsNYC: oh yeah. that’s a better idea than living in NJ
TinMan25NJ: the government job… lawyering… not something i’m looking forward to
TinMan25NJ: i just feel so NEGATIVE though
TinMan25NJ: like, i’d be lying
RJReynoldsNYC: it sounds like you don’t like the job you have now, the job might get, OR the place you live.
RJReynoldsNYC: well THAT”S no fun.
TinMan25NJ: no, no, and no… you’re right
TinMan25NJ: and basically i can’t even concentrate at work
TinMan25NJ: and you know what? i don’t feel like i can get out of this by myself
RJReynoldsNYC: ahh.
RJReynoldsNYC: you’re waiting for a crisis to smack you awake.
TinMan25NJ: i need a drastic change in my life!
RJReynoldsNYC: well you’ll end up like [xxx], getting evicted.
RJReynoldsNYC: THEN you’ll feel better.
TinMan25NJ: i won’t get evicted
TinMan25NJ: i’ll just deeper into debt
TinMan25NJ: get deeper into debt
RJReynoldsNYC: oh that sounds fun. and hitting your parents up for more money.
RJReynoldsNYC: whirr.
TinMan25NJ: i don’t want to move further out into new jersey, i really don’t
TinMan25NJ: i want to live in NYC, in an affordable place
RJReynoldsNYC: then you shouldn’t.
RJReynoldsNYC: then you should.
TinMan25NJ: although i also wonder, it would be great to move to like, Taos, New Mexico
RJReynoldsNYC: HA HA HA
TinMan25NJ: i almost want to just tell my landlord i’m leaving, and force myself into action that way.
RJReynoldsNYC: i’ll call your landlord.
RJReynoldsNYC: tell him you’re a baby murderer.
TinMan25NJ: hehe… actually, he gave me a few extra days to pay my june rent
TinMan25NJ: and i’m getting a paycheck on thursday, which will cover some of my rent…
RJReynoldsNYC: not if you had dead babies in your fridge.
RJReynoldsNYC: then he’d want you out.
RJReynoldsNYC: poor kitten.
TinMan25NJ: i have baby carrots in my fridge
RJReynoldsNYC: close!
[snip]
RJReynoldsNYC: okay: anxiety is only the fear of more anxiety.
RJReynoldsNYC: panic attacks are all about having the next panic attack.
TinMan25NJ: i feel like anxiety will kill me.
TinMan25NJ: it makes me feel like i’m going to die… does that even make sense?
RJReynoldsNYC: what does your shrink say about that? shouldn’t you be getting what sounds like an anxiety disorder treated?
RJReynoldsNYC: the best thing you can do in therapy is take something to suppress the symptoms so you can get at the root of the problem.
[snip]
TinMan25NJ: i feel like i want to quit my job and do nothing for a few weeks…
RJReynoldsNYC: gee that sounds fun.
TinMan25NJ: but i can’t do that, right.
TinMan25NJ: that would be so incredibly irresponsible.
TinMan25NJ: and then people would look down on me or something.
RJReynoldsNYC: what people?
TinMan25NJ: bloggers…
RJReynoldsNYC: what fucking people? oh come on.
TinMan25NJ: ok, isn’t this weird? i care about what my readers think of me.
TinMan25NJ: too much.
RJReynoldsNYC: that’s lame.
TinMan25NJ: i blog to make friends.
TinMan25NJ: maybe.
RJReynoldsNYC: you do?
TinMan25NJ: well, no
RJReynoldsNYC: hmmm.
TinMan25NJ: i blog to be admired.
RJReynoldsNYC: no i don’t think so.
RJReynoldsNYC: ahhhh
RJReynoldsNYC: better
TinMan25NJ: and to meet people…
RJReynoldsNYC: sure.
RJReynoldsNYC: fair enough.
TinMan25NJ: but i do care very much about how i present myself
RJReynoldsNYC: oh i know.
TinMan25NJ: i mean, people apparently like the personality i present…
TinMan25NJ: after all, they read me…
TinMan25NJ: why fuck with it?
TinMan25NJ: story of my life…
RJReynoldsNYC: oh dear.
RJReynoldsNYC: people love rash decisions and drama too.
TinMan25NJ: i’ve spent my whole life trying to replicate the admiration i got from my kindergarten teachers.
[snip]
TinMan25NJ: ok, problem number one with me, right?
TinMan25NJ: fear of offending…
RJReynoldsNYC: right.
RJReynoldsNYC: fear of OTHER PEOPLE’S OPINIONS.
TinMan25NJ: yes…
RJReynoldsNYC: okay. the rule is:
RJReynoldsNYC: what other people think of you is none of your business.
TinMan25NJ: right!
TinMan25NJ: i’ve heard that before… i love it
RJReynoldsNYC: what’s your second worst fear?
TinMan25NJ: death is my worst fear.
TinMan25NJ: my second worst fear is pain.
TinMan25NJ: and anxiety.
RJReynoldsNYC: emotional pain? or do you focus on physical pain?
TinMan25NJ: i fear i will be homeless on the street with no money.
TinMan25NJ: and then i’ll get mugged.
TinMan25NJ: or drugged.
TinMan25NJ: or imprisoned.
TinMan25NJ: i’ll turn into a lunatic wandering around on the street and people will stare at me or arrest me or rob me
TinMan25NJ: and i will lose my personality, and all my talents will go to waste
RJReynoldsNYC: WOW!
RJReynoldsNYC: that’s incredible!
RJReynoldsNYC: HA HA HA
RJReynoldsNYC: what a fucking snowball!
TinMan25NJ: you wanted the truth…
TinMan25NJ: that’s what i fear, and that’s truly how my mind works
TinMan25NJ: i am so fucking scared of these things
[snip]
TinMan25NJ: thanks so much sweetie.
RJReynoldsNYC: oh sure pumpkin.
RJReynoldsNYC: i don’t like you being in pain.
RJReynoldsNYC: pain sucks.
TinMan25NJ: me no like pain either.
RJReynoldsNYC: when it’s over you’ll look back at this in shock.
TinMan25NJ: pain bad.
RJReynoldsNYC: you won’t believe you felt this bad for so long.
TinMan25NJ: yeah.
TinMan25NJ: hope!
TinMan25NJ: ok, i’m off…
RJReynoldsNYC: and blog about it!
RJReynoldsNYC: xoxoxo
TinMan25NJ: yes yes yes
TinMan25NJ: *hugs*
So I went into therapy and asked about medication. My therapist is a Ph.D. and can recommend me to an M.D. for medication, but she seemed reluctant. I guess she seems to think my problems aren’t chemical but situational. And psychological. I think they’re a little of everything.
Anyway, in therapy I just felt so frustrated. I felt like I was up against a wall, hitting it again and again and again. I wound up tossing my glasses on the floor and lying down on the couch instead of sitting on it like I usually do and I just spent the rest of the session in that position as we continued our conversation.
I told her I was so fucking tired of coming into therapy week after week and not having anything change. I go in and I talk about things and then six and a half days go by and nothing happens. I’ve been in a rut. I’ve realized I can’t make these changes on my own. I’ve never really been a self-motivator. I’m inextricably drawn to other things: books, online chats, being with friends. Distractions are so much easier. Change is scary. And I haven’t really known what steps to take, because the process seems so big and amorphous and confusing. So I’ve needed help.
By the end of it, we decided that I needed to set a target date for me to move. First we said July 1, and I’d just call my landlord and tell him he had to use my security deposit to cover my June rent. But that doesn’t seem like enough time to find a new place necessarily. As for finding a new place, we decided I need to get my mom to help me. I can’t do it alone, that’s pretty clear. I feel kind of embarrassed that I have to get my mom to help me, but that’s because my dad has often ridiculed me for just that. When I was a kid I remember him once making fun of me for “hanging on your mommy’s apron strings.” Hell. If I need help, I need help. Anyway, I think I’ve set a date of August 1 to move out of my place.
12:03 PM | Comments Off Thursday, June 7, 2001
According to Salon.com’s Jake Tapper yesterday, Bush has been “stumbling in the polls like Jenna at a kegger.”
I love Salon.
10:02 AM | Comments Off Resumé
Two weeks ago, I had my first interview for a position with the state attorney general’s office, which would begin in August, at the end of my clerkship. The man who interviewed me said that he’d send my file on to the director, who would decide whether there would be a second interview, and that if I hadn’t heard anything in two weeks, I should call him again. Yesterday was two weeks, so I called the interviewer again this morning. He told me that he’d recently sent my file up to the director but that the director has sort of a full plate right now, and that I should check back in another week or two.
He also said something that made me nervous. Now, there are two offices, one in Newark and one in Trenton. When, during the interview, he asked if I’d prefer any particular office, I said that I’d want to be considered only for the Newark office. (I sure as hell don’t want to move back down to central New Jersey and/or commute to and from Trenton every day.) During our phone conversation today, he told me that positions in Newark are actually kind of slim right now.
I do not, do not, do not want to work in Trenton. I have already decided that, damn the torpedoes, I’m going to move to Manhattan, and Trenton is an hour and 20 minutes by train from New York’s Penn Station. That’s in addition to getting to and from each train station. That commute really does not seem feasible to me.
So this is the point where I should start making contingency plans and look for a different job. One in New York or thereabouts. But I’m stumped. Nothing seems appealing: working for a law firm, working for a litigation consulting firm. It’s probably too late to get another clerkship elsewhere for the fall (though it wouldn’t hurt to try). I can say accurately that looking for a job is my least favorite thing to do in the world. I usually do it grudgingly, half-assed if at all, and with little or no motivation. This has usually worked to my detriment.
1990: Sixteen years old, the summer before my senior year of high school. Back in the States for the summer. The first summer that I didn’t go to camp or go away on some camp-sponsored program. But I didn’t have a job. I spent two and a half months lazing around my aunt and uncle’s house, with no friends in town, reading books and newspapers and going for aimless walks. I thought I was going to go insane.
1991: This was okay. My first job ever, I worked at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, doing data entry. Mind-numbing, but the embassy had a great library where I used to spend my lunch breaks.
1992: The summer after my first year of college. Came home from college with no summer plans. I had a job offer to work as a counselor at a sleep-away camp, but I didn’t want to spend my summer imprisoned at a camp, so I wound up working the cash register and the telephone at a small Japanese restaurant.
1993: Stayed at UVA in Charlottesville so I could take a biology lab course, which I needed for my pre-med requirements. Had a part-time job, my most embarrassing job ever, an experience I never acknowledge and usually try to repress. I worked as a fast-food cashier.
1994: (a) While other people seemed to have lined up impressive and enriching summer opportunities for their resumés, I ended the school year with no idea what to do. I wound up staying in Charlottesville again, where I wound up working for UVA’s catering service and also had two weeks of temp jobs. UVA Catering was actually kind of fun. Free meals, fancy parties, I could relate to the other employees (who were students like me), and I got to see parts of UVA I hadn’t seen before.
(b) The following fall I got a part-time job at one of the UVA libraries, shelving books. Mind-numbing, my brain had nothing to do but worry about my life. But the library stacks were peaceful. My boss, the stacks supervisor, had a Ph.D. in British history.
1995: (a) I graduated college with no idea what I was going to do. I spent the summer back at my parents’ house in New Jersey. Took a road trip to visit a friend in Colorado. Came back, spent several weeks in limbo. Made ten different plans and cancelled them all. Wound up working for a month at a data-entry temp job, this time in Chelsea (yet I never explored the area — what a wasted opportunity!). Actually, I quit after three weeks because the numbing mindless repetition made my brain focus on problems, and it was driving me insane.
(b) After a couple of weeks I decided I was going to move back to Charlottesville and find something to do there. I wound up finding yet another temp job, yet again doing data entry, this time at the UVA Health Sciences Center. Checking the ID numbers on patients’ medical records so they’d be properly filed. Inertia set in and the job stretched into five months. I couldn’t relate to any of my coworkers, and I was ashamed and aimless and again thought I was going to go nuts.
1996: A position opened up at the UVA Music Library in February 1996, and I was hired. It was a terrific environment, great people. The Music Department had been my second home at UVA. But the work wasn’t challenging, I wasn’t using my brain at all, and I spent much time on the Web. (Some things haven’t changed!)
I had applied to UVA Law, and I got in. I felt my life had a sense of direction again. I felt good about myself again. I felt like I was going to be productive once more.
1997: The summer after my first year of law school. I worked as an intern for a federal judge here in Newark, along with four other law students. It was without pay so I lived at home. The other students worked there only 3-4 days a week and had paying jobs (painting, library work) the rest of the week. Not me. I decided to work there 5 days a week. Didn’t feel like working in a retail-type job again.
1998: The summer after my second year of law school. While everyone else had been hired by a law firm for the summer, I hadn’t. I probably hadn’t made enough of an effort. I had interviews, but no firms called me back for a second interview. At the last minute I wound up getting a job as a research assistant for a UVA Law professor, which is typically a first-year summer job. The work was pretty boring and, well, my boss — I didn’t get along with her very well. And because I was largely unsupervised, I spent much time — you guessed it — on the Web. But it was great to be spending another summer in Charlottesville. C’ville in the summer is gloriously lazy and laid-back.
1999: The summer after my final year of law school. While everyone else had been hired for full-time positions after employment the previous summer, or was going to be entering a clerkship in the fall, I hadn’t secured a job for myself. But like everyone else, I spent that summer studying for the bar — in my case, New York (which I passed, yay!). At the beginning of August I went home to my parents’ house, tried to find a job. (Around that time I came out to my parents again, once and for all, which made things doubly rough.)
I managed to get hired part-time by a family friend for her Internet publishing company, down in bucolic central New Jersey, as a writer/editor. Four employees — myself, and three refreshingly liberal women who were into yoga and healthy eating. The office was in a Victorian house. But the work got old, and I often found myself — can we say it again? — surfing the Web.
That November I actually got a job offer from a very small suburban New Jersey firm, but the environment was sterile and I dreaded the idea of working there. It just wasn’t me. So I turned down that job and wound up moving to central New Jersey and increasing my hours at the Internet publishing job, though it still wasn’t full time. To supplement my income, I got a part-time job at Barnes & Noble. A guy with a law degree, working at Barnes & Noble.
2000: Out of the blue, last spring, this clerkship came up. The previous August, I’d sent my resumé to the New Jersey judiciary, and nine months later it had somehow found its way to this place. I interviewed, I got hired, and I moved back up here. For the first couple of months I worked diligently. But now, at work, I spend so much of my time — come on, you know! — surfing the Web! And writing blog entries!
So there’s my job history for you. Last-ditch acts of desperation, unsatisfying positions, false starts and stops. I’m not too enthusiastic about the possibilities for the immediate future. If this position in the Newark office of the AG doesn’t pan out, I don’t know what I’ll be doing come August.
In the past ten years, I have at different times wanted to become a doctor, a psychotherapist, a history professor, a journalist, a writer, a lawyer, a teacher. I have found problems with all of those ideas. I don’t know. I have no idea where my life is taking me. I’m so fickle, so easily distracted. I’m enthusiastic about things they don’t make jobs for. There has to be some sort of satisfying career out there for me. Probably something that I haven’t even thought of yet. I mean, look at some of you — gallery owner? HIV prevention counselor? Those types of things don’t show up on career tests.
3:39 PM | Comments Off Conan O’Brien’s Commencement Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000.
5:54 PM | Comments Off Friday, June 8, 2001
Pad See Yew, Too!
So much to write about today. I’m going away for the weekend. I’m going to West Virginia, of all places. I have this very close group of friends from college –we all moved into the same dorm at the beginning of my third year of school, and we all lived there for two years. We just clicked from the get-go. There are about ten of us, mostly male, some female, and they’re some of the funniest, most talented people I’ve ever known. A couple of the guys have arranged for us to rent a suite in Berkeley Springs, WV, and their e-mails to the rest of us have been sort of strange and filled with odd portents. I think they’ve concocted some sort of business venture in which they want us to take part. I’m just looking forward to renting a car and going on a road trip with my friend CanadaGirl, who’s part of this group. I haven’t done a road trip in ages. I’m looking forward to getting out of the New York area, I’m looking forward to being away from a computer and not being able to blog for a couple of days.
I think at some point I’m going to have to read this. Fascinating! (Thanks, Dean!)
I talked to my boss today and I’ve persuaded her to give this horrendously dreadful assignment to one of the other clerks. I’ve been working on this thing for about three weeks, or attempting to work on it, and I’ve made no headway. There are either four or five companies involved, and there are either four or five cases consolidated here, I’m not even sure. It involves solid waste and host community benefits and sole source facilities and transfer stations. I don’t really know what any of that means. I have this mental block against the whole thing. I can deal with people. I can deal with a human story. I can deal with someone suing for certain rights, or suing to recover certain costs, or an agency taking action against someone to get his or her (argh) professional license revoked, or even someone suing for Medicaid benefits, despite the confusing technical world of Medicaid. But this case has no human story. A city is suing four solid waste companies to get money from them because they take up space in the city. Or maybe just because the city was strapped for cash and thought this would be a good way to get some. Not even is there no human story; there’s no damn story here at all. I can’t wrap my brain around this thing. I try to read the briefs and my mind drifts off. It repels me. The papers and I are both northern ends of magnets.
I didn’t want to admit defeat, but this morning I decided it was finally time. I can’t take it anymore. And so my boss said she’d give the assignment to one of the other clerks and give me whatever that clerk is doing. It’s embarrassing. As lazy as I am, I’m not a person who likes to quit. Or rather, I don’t like the perception of quitting. Sure, I’ve never had trouble passive-aggessively surfing the Net and getting no work done, but actually giving up? But I guess sometimes you have to know when to quit. You are the Clinton health care plan. Goodbye!
Last night I had dinner with my friend Nick. For the second time in five days we went to Lemongrass and got Thai food. On Sunday we went to the Lemongrass on University Place, and last night we went to the one on Barrow Street. As I turned off Hudson onto Barrow, I realized that a movie was being filmed. Along Hudson there were these fluorescent green flyers that said “To the Set,” with arrows. So I walked along Barrow and there was a Citroen on the street and a Volvo behind it. A man was hosing down the street to make it wet. A handsome, well-dressed couple were sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant with spotlights around them. I asked a woman with headphones and a tanktop what they were filming, and in a European accent she said, “A commercial from France.” Oh. That’s all.
I met up with Nick and we had the same things we always get — he got Pad Thai and I got Pad See Yew. As I placed each broad noodle and piece of Chinese broccoli into my mouth with a pair of chopsticks, we talked about me and my stuckness. But see, I never feel uplifted when I talk with him. He says things that are meant to be positive and uplifting but for some reason he winds up making me feel worse. I think it just makes me think he’s much more capable a human being than I am. Nothing he said was making sense. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to let it make sense — maybe I should have let it just wash over me.
I think I’m going to send my resume to Lambda. Also, I think I’m going to look into finding a roommate in Manhattan. Nick suggested that to me. I said okay, even though I’m wary of roommates (I had a bad experience last year). But then he told me there were no right answers. I said okay, I guess you’re trying to signal that it’s better to find my own place? No, he said. Huh? I said. And it went on like that. He was talking about the fact that certain things require work and effort and I was saying that I don’t want to make yet another bad decision. I’m not even summarizing the conversation very well because I don’t really know what the point of it was. It was like going down the rabbit hole. Eat me! Drink me! Make me into a Mobius strip! The point seemed to be that I need to put more effort into making decisions but that I also need simultaneously to worry less about the consequences and yet also pay attention to the consequences. Make a choice that works for me, but don’t obsess about falling into a bad situation. Worry and not worry. Or something. I didn’t get it. He might as well have been talking about solid waste facilities. I couldn’t process what he was saying and I just felt worse.
Some of this has to do with Nick himself. There are certain people whom I meet and then find myself feeling really competitive with. When I met Nick back in September, I fell for him almost immediately. I thought maybe he was the one, or at least a one. We became good friends, and we spent almost every Saturday walking around Manhattan. I was enthralled by him. But I was never sure how he felt about me, and when I finally told him about my feelings, he politely told me he wasn’t looking to date anyone at that time, that he was recovering from a bad breakup. That was the truth, but a couple of months later he entered the dating scene again, just not with me. This upset me, and we were out of contact for a month or so. When we got back in touch, things were like new. My crush was gone — I’d realized he wasn’t the person I’d thought he was anyway. With my romantic yearnings out of the way, our friendship is much improved. We’re less guarded around each other now.
But I find myself envious of him and his success. For one thing, he seems to get all these dates through PlanetOut, while I can’t remember the last time I had one. But more than that, he’s such a go-getter. He works for a cable TV network and he’s the youngest management-level person in the company’s history. He just turned 25, and in two weeks he’s starting a job at a different cable network, where he’ll be making $80,000 a year. Just a college degree. He had a screwed-up childhood — an alcoholic, emotionally needy mother who’s on either her third or fourth marriage. Whenever I tell him that his life seems great, he tells me about how internally anxious and screwy he actually is. Yet at the same time he knows that this screwy childhood has given him strength and independence and worldliness. Instead of killing him it made him stronger. He has this manic energy that chaotically bursts out of him. He’s a great schmoozer, he’s a real people person, he knows how to work all the office politics, and on top of that he’s creative and energetic. He’s either going to be the next Jeff Zucker or he’s going to wind up jumping off a cliff to his death. My god, he can be exhausting to be around.
Sometimes I still see the world as an elementary school, where they give out just one award. Only one person can get it. If someone else gets the acclaim, then you lose. I’m just thinking of fifth grade, where my smart friend got the language arts award and the math award and the science award and he kept walking down the aisle to receive one certificate after another while I kept looking back at my mom with this upset look on my face and wound up getting nothing.
But really, the world doesn’t work that way. There are no awards, or if there are, they’re all just hype-fests propelled by big corporations. There are no Egyptian gods or pyramids to greatness here. We’re all just human beings scraping ourselves off the pavement. It’s just that some people happen to look really good while doing it.
Have a nice weekend.
2:10 PM | Comments Off Sunday, June 10, 2001
Shafts of Sunlight
I have returned from West Virginia refreshed and enlightened. A door opened partway this weekend, revealing shafts of light. I saw daylight, and now I know that the darkness I’ve been seeing in my life day after day is really only cloud cover. If you look higher, it’s actually sunny out there.
I started feeling great as soon as CanadaGirl and I hit the road on Friday. We met up at Newark Airport after work to pick up a rental car, and she volunteered to drive first. We got out onto I-78 and drove off west into the country. The route out to West Virginia was beautiful — we took I-78 into Pennsylvania, then I-81 south through Maryland, and then I-70 west into West Virginia. Green fields, rolling hills, farmland, the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, little roadside gas stations just off the highway. I’m very familiar with much of this route, having driven it back and forth between UVA and northern New Jersey many times during the last decade, so it was very nostalgic for me, and I felt a sweetness upon being on these roads once again. The sun went down and the stars came out, and although there seemed to be lots of vehicles on the road for a rural Friday evening, most of the land around the highway was dark. We listened to the radio, jumping among various FM stations, and finally, late in the evening, we turned to AM so CanadaGirl could find out the score of the basketball game. We picked up AM stations from Boston and Toronto and even from somewhere west of the Mississippi, which I knew because the call letters began with a K. Finally we picked up a fire-breathing Jesus preacher on the dial and listened to him for a while. It was amusing, but there was also something creepy about driving along a dark highway in the middle of nowhere and listening to this voice preaching fire and brimstone. It was like something out of Stephen King. Finally, at around 11:30 at night, we got to the town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia — known for its spas and hot springs — and found our way to the rest of the gang in the suite we’d all rented together.
There were seven of us this weekend. One person was the fiancée of one of the guys, and another person didn’t live in our dorm but has sort of been an honorary member of our little group. Two or three people couldn’t make it this weekend, but there were enough. I mentioned last time that these are all very talented people. They probably just seem like an abstract group to you, because you don’t know them firsthand. But each of us has a very distinctive and individual personality. We’ve known each other for almost eight years now. We lived together in the same small dorm for two years during college, and during that time we each garnered a nickname. We also have tons of in-jokes and catchphrases that have developed over time. We also play spades together. And collectively, these people make me laugh more than any other people I know. I don’t think I can explain the chemistry we all have together. I love their company. I think of us as a family, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to have met everyone in our little band of friends. I cherish these people.
It was nice to be the token gay guy this weekend — it was nice to hang out with a bunch of straight people for a change. (Except CanadaGirl. She’s the token gay girl.) These people are so accepting and supportive of me and of who I am. They like me for who I am. In fact, they like me because of who I am.
But back to the weekend. It was not just a relax-and-hang-out sort of weekend. This time, there was an itinerary. Two of the guys had organized the weekend in order for us to discuss our professional lives, with an eye towards eventually perhaps putting all of our talents and skills together to create some sort of business or other endeavor. There were two big easels, markers, pads of paper, pens. Friday night we hung out and drank beer. Saturday morning we got up at 8:00, and by 9:00 we were sitting on couches and chairs. We went around the room and each of us summarized the paths of our professional lives since graduation — what we’ve done, where we’ve been, and more importantly, what we’ve learned and what skills we’ve developed over the last few years. After lunch, we sat around brainstorming about different ideas. Nothing fully concrete came out of it, but I think we’ve hit upon some interesting ideas that will germinate, and maybe something will come out of this eventually.
Late in the afternoon we went out for a short walk/hike. Then we came back and talked some more. At night we made dinner together and drank beer. Afterwards we sat around drinking lots more beer, talking about everything under the sun, playing some wacky games of Hangman on the whiteboard. CanadaGirl put up a phrase and told us the category was “70’s show.” The answer wound up being “That 70’s Show.” One of the guys put up a phrase, and it turned out to be “I don’t want to play Hangman anymore.” Later on he did another one, and it was “Can we please shoot the person who started this game.”
I laughed this weekend. I laughed more than I’d laughed in ages. At one point on Saturday afternoon, when we were sitting around brainstorming, a few incredibly hilarious ideas were thrown into the ring at the same time, and suddenly we all burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. For about two minutes I was laughing so hard that my stomach muscles were hurting and there were tears in my eyes. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to take off my glasses and collapse against the couch and I still couldn’t stop laughing. It had been a few years since I’d laughed that hard. It was absolutely wonderful. If I can laugh like that even just a few more times over the course of my existence, it will make this whole life thing worthwhile.
This weekend I thought about some things that I hadn’t thought about before. We talked about the concept of a corporation, the reasons for it, whether it’s a useful concept or not. Before the weekend, these words and ideas and everything surrounding them — “team,” “management,” “incentive” — were anathema to me and my left-handed personality and right-brained mind. They just sounded so Dilbert. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve always been skeptical about the idea of joining together with people to create a business, or to create anything, really. And on Saturday, while we were talking about this concept, I realized why. It’s not just that I feel it would be constricting and claustrophobic, and it’s not just that I resent people telling me what to do. It’s that I’ve wanted to achieve things on my own. I’ve wanted to be an acclaimed individual. I’ve wanted to be praised and known for myself, for who I am, for my own special talents and abilities.
You go through school and everything is geared toward the individual. Individual awards. Individual achievement. Individual talents. You’re rewarded for who you are and for what you can do by yourself. And then you become an adult, and you see that many things in the world can be accomplished only in teams. It seems so simple, but until this weekend, I didn’t realize why everyone out there talks about teamwork and group motivation and so on and so forth. It’s still not natural for me to use all those corporate-type words, but at least now I know why people talk about things like this. It no longer seems only like a way for Evil Forces to quash the power of the individual and make the world a gloomy place. Sometimes it’s actually the best way to get something done.
My most important epiphany came after all of us had summarized what we’ve done and where we’ve been in the last five or six years. I realized that I’m not the only one who has drifted from one thing to another. One guy worked for a company in Arkansas, and then one in Georgia, and then went up to New Jersey a year ago, but he got laid off, and just recently he moved to DC. One guy went into the Peace Corps, got sick and had to leave, and then he got a master’s degree, and he’s been working at a job for a year, and he’s already looking for something else. CanadaGirl worked in a French bakery out in Seattle for two years, then got an MBA, and now she’s a consultant for one of the Big Five. (Or is it Big Six? I can’t remember.) Another of us has just completed a five-year stint in the Navy, and at the end of the summer he’s off to Paris for a one-year French MBA program.
I realized that none of us really knows what we want to do with our lives. I don’t feel like so much of a failure anymore. We’re all either 26 or 27, and when I look at where I am and where they all are, I don’t feel much different from them. And I see that if they can all be more accepting of their own imperfections, then I should be more accepting of mine, too. Anyway, I may be a slacker in my current job, but I did get a law degree and pass a couple of bar exams. It just means that my current job isn’t really for me. But I really do need to lighten up.
And I’m young! I’m so goddamn young. For some reason it’s so hard for me to get this concept firmly lodged in my head. I always worry that I’m squandering my time, that my peak years are passing or have passed, that it’s all too late, that nothing good will happen during the rest of my life. I tend to extrapolate the present into the future — to tell myself that things will Always Be Like This. But they won’t. This weekend showed me that it’s still possible to feel full and alive.
I thought about some other things, too. I wonder if New York is the place for me. I wonder if someplace like DC would be a little better. It would be so great to live someplace where I have sunlight streaming in through the windows, and a homey atmosphere, and a car, and easy access to mountains and fields and vistas. We were only about two hours from Charlottesville this weekend, and I realized once again how much I miss that place. I don’t just miss UVA — I miss the town itself sometimes.
So I’m going to have to make some major changes in my life. I have to think about things and start some things afresh. This weekend I saw that it’s possible to be happy. I experienced some joyful moments, and I experienced some people upon whose shoulders the world weighs much less than it does upon mine. There’s a lesson here. In fact there are tons of lessons here. It’s going to take me a while to process everything that happened this weekend.
10:25 PM | Comments Off Monday, June 11, 2001
UltraFun!
Today I actually spent most of my workday working. Perhaps it’s because I was rejuvenated after my weekend away. Perhaps it’s because it was embarrassing to tell my old college friends that I spend much of my workday surfing the Web. Perhaps it’s because my new assignment is more streamlined and less odious and onerous. Or perhaps it’s because I have a tighter deadline on this assignment. I’ve always seemed to work better under pressure.
After work I met up with the always erudite and charming Sparky for dinner. I waited for him outside Café Rafaella on Seventh Avenue, alternately reading The Fellowship of the Ring and looking up from my book at all the eye candy walking in and out of the New York Sports Club across the street or strolling past me on the sidewalk.
Sparky and I had a nice, long, rambling meal — we sat at a sidewalk table, ate, talked, watched the world go by, felt a smattering of raindrops. Talked about the latest news of the blogging world, as bloggers are wont to do, as well as myriad other topics. From there we wandered around the West Village, almost all the way to the Hudson River and back again. We stopped off at Creative Visions on Hudson Street and looked through some soft-core gay male erotic art books, one of which had a photo of one half of a well-known romantic blogging N’awlins couple. Lucky guys, those two are.
All in all, Sparky and I had a nice, intelligent evening. And it was refreshing to socialize on a weeknight for a change. I’m trying to get out of the rut I’d lately been stuck in, and I seem to be successful so far. Thanks to you, Sparky!
As for tomorrow night, it’s a night on the town with Bryan. I think we’re gonna paint the town pink!
10:07 PM | Comments Off Tuesday, June 12, 2001
Coming Distractions
On the ride home from Manhattan last night, I was sitting on the PATH train, reading The Fellowship of the Ring. Sitting across from me was an Asian guy whose hair was either highlighted or dyed blond. He wore a tanktop that showed off his defined arms. My gaydar went off, but I’m not really into Asian guys, and anyway, he seemed absorbed in his book.
More appealing was the guy sitting next to me, a white guy in a blue soccer shirt and orange athletic shorts. I love athletic shorts, particularly orange ones. He had thin, sinewy arms and toned, hairy legs. While looking down at my book I kept glancing over discreetly at his skin, and I was getting a little hard.
I got off at my stop, and he got off as well. So did the Asian guy, and so did a bunch of other people. My eyes lingered on the soccer guy’s legs as I was getting off the train, and I was still lusting after him when I heard, “Are you reading that because of the movie?” It was the Asian guy with the dyed hair, and he was saying this to me. Of course, being an ordinary gay male, I wondered if I was being picked up. I wasn’t particularly interested, but I told him that I was in fact reading the book because of the movie, and also because of the recent article on Salon, and that I’d actually read The Lord of the Rings before. He told me he’d read it seven or eight times. As we were walking up the stairs he told me about all the miniatures they have for sale that are based on the images from the movie. “Wow, already?” I said, seeing as how the first movie isn’t coming out until December.
We both took the same stairway out of the station and wound up walking along the same street, which I always take to my apartment. We were walking along and he was telling me all about who he’d heard was in the movie. I didn’t really want to know any of this, because I’m trying to avoid as much information about it as possible so I can watch it in December with a fresh eye. But then he mentioned that a particular twentysomething actress was in the movie, and that he’d seen pictures of her in costume. “She looks really hot,” he said, sounding exactly like a frat boy standing at a keg. “Oh really,” I said, laughing politely.
We walked on a little further. “Well, good night,” he suddenly said with a friendly smile on his face, walking into a parking lot.
“So long,” I said, continuing on to my apartment.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened to the soccer guy.
11:11 AM | Comments Off Wednesday, June 13, 2001
Oz
This morning I woke up in Chelsea. I’d stayed overnight with Bryan and his boyfriend after an evening of bar-hopping, and it felt pretty cool to walk out of their building at 8:15 this morning and be in the heart of gayville. It had been more than a year since I’d last been in Manhattan on a weekday morning; I felt like I was seeing a whole new side of the city. I felt like I was part of a privileged community of people. Even though the streets are pretty ordinary at 8:15 in the morning, it felt kind of magical.
Several years ago I read the first book in this fictional series by John Jakes about a man and his descendants establishing themselves in America. I read about the young Philippe Charboneau of France arriving in colonial Boston and transforming himself into the American Philip Kent. When I read that book, I was moved by the descriptions of a fresh, bustling, colonial American city, a brand new world bursting with secrets, a place that could give you the chance to make a new life for yourself.
How great it would be to come home to Manhattan on a summer night! Come home to my apartment, change my clothes, go back out into the world.
That’s what last night was like. After a good therapy session (much more upbeat than last week), I arrived at Bryan’s place with my work bag and a backpack of clothes. I’ve been inside so few Manhattan apartments in my life, and it’s always a shock to walk up the front steps and through the front door of a narrow apartment building, sandwiched between other buildings, and see its insides. There’s always the illusion of more space than there really is.
I changed into a t-shirt and shorts and then Bryan gave me a photo-and-video introduction to the world of flag-dancing. Then we went out and had dinner at the Bendix Diner on Eighth Avenue, a good, decent place with good, decent food where I’ve had several meals before, and we talked for quite a while. New York City. Getting established. Different types of relationships. The wondrousness of trying new things.
From there we went to Barracuda, where Bryan’s guy met up with us. Thence to Blu on 23rd Street, where we had a few drinks and talked of cabbages and kings. After the boyfriend went home, Bryan and I walked over to the Lure, a leather bar, for a brief visit, for reasons I won’t get into. It was my first time inside a leather bar, although it was a Tuesday night, so the place was pretty empty. But I saw some chains in the bathroom, and the bathroom walls were painted black. From the Lure we went over to XL, a pretty (and pretty new) bar in Chelsea that’s very shiny and fluorescent, like something out of the Jetsons.
By that point I was pretty tired. It was a weeknight and I’d had three drinks. So we went back to their apartment at about 12:30. The boyfriend was asleep, but there was a futon bed already set up for me, which was essentially in the same room as the bedroom. They have three cute cats, and I have to admit I didn’t sleep too well, but not because of the cats. Several times during the night the air conditioner cycled on and off, and whenever it came on, there was this loud noise that woke me up and scared the bejeezus out of me. On top of that I kept waking up from rather explicit dreams.
I got up at 7:30, showered, left their place at 8:15 and got to my office in Newark at 9:00. Not a bad commute at all. But I feel like I’m among the walking dead today.
What a weekend.
Did I say weekend? Well, it felt like a weekend. It was a little sliver of weekend snuck into the middle of my workweek. A nice way to break things up. And despite the fact that I’m in Manhattan several times a week, last night was new. In some ways I felt like I was visiting the city again for the first time.
That settles it. As soon as I’ve figured out what I’m doing job-wise, I’m going to look for a place in Manhattan. Even though I only live 20 minutes from the West Village right now, there really is a big difference. If I screw up, I screw up. I can always look for a new place if the first one doesn’t work out.
I flew out of JFK Airport with my family one warm summer evening when I was 18. We were going to Israel for two weeks. I had spent much of that summer coming to terms with my sexuality and daydreaming about being gay in New York. As we were sitting in the airplane on the runway, I could see the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline; the sky was purple and orange and I could almost see the heat rising from the distant buildings. I stared out the airplane window, stared out at the distant silhouette, my eyes fixed on the low valley of buildings stretching between the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Somewhere in that valley were the streets of Chelsea and the West Village. It was a Friday night and I started to imagine what all the gay men there would be doing that night; they’d be getting dressed up, getting ready to go out to all the bars and clubs, where they’d meet people and fall in love on a romantic summer night. As the plane taxied down the runway and we took off into the air, I stared and stared, trying with all my might to see the streets of lower Manhattan. But we were too far away.
Everything on the ground became smaller and smaller as we flew up and out over the water. We were off to a distant land. But at that moment I desperately wanted to go back.
1:16 PM | Comments Off Race and Ethnicity: An Open Letter to “Disappointed”
Someone wrote a comment in response to yesterday’s entry. He didn’t give an e-mail address, so I thought of responding to him in the comments section, but then I thought maybe this deserved its own entry.
To avoid unnecessary clickage, here’s what he wrote:
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Ugh. Don’t you just HATE it when Asian guys who truly and utterly don’t interest you at all, don’t get you hard and therefore merit no consideration whatsoever try to engage in some friendly conversation? I mean, an ASIAN guy, fer Chrissakes. As if he and an insecure, neurotic, short hairy guy could possibly have anything in common! Tinman, you can’t choose who you’re attracted to and should never have to apologize for what gets you off. OK, so he wasn’t your type. But you seemed unable to see beyond his Asian features and seemed more than eager to dismiss the facts that 1) you had something in common and 2) amiable banter on the PATH is somewhat of a rarity, given all our urban armor. I guess I just expected that someone both Jewish and gay would be able to see beyond overly-broad categorizations. We’re more than the sum of all the identities we adopt. Should I bump into you somewhere in the East Village, I promise I won’t get in the way of your cruising, or intrude into your sacrosanct circle of whiteness. Yet another GAL (Gay Asian and, yes, Lawyer).
disappointed - posted at 17:33 GMT 13/6/01
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Disappointed,
I’m sorry you were offended. But I think you’re reading things into my words that aren’t there. It’s true that the guy didn’t turn me on physically. I just don’t find myself particularly physically attracted to Asian guys, and as you say, I don’t need to apologize for who I am or am not physically attracted to. (At any rate, I have in fact slept with Asian guys before.) But just because I’m not physically attracted to someone, that doesn’t mean I want nothing to do with that person. At the risk of using a cliché, I’ve known and been friends with people of all different races in my life.
And, sacrosanct circle of whiteness? Unable to see beyond his Asian features? Eager to dismiss the fact that we had something in common? Jeez, I did have a conversation with the guy. I did see it as kind of funny — and weird — that a complete stranger enthusiastically struck up a conversation with me about a series of fantasy novels, because, as you correctly note, “amiable banter on the PATH is somewhat of a rarity, given all our urban armor.” Not only that, but as I wrote in my entry, the guy was going on and on about something I really didn’t want to know too much about. Maybe I’m weird for not wanting to know too much about this long-awaited movie before I see it; fine. This had nothing to do with his being Asian.
Are you saying I shouldn’t have described him in as much detail as I did? I was trying to be descriptive, and with all due respect, it’s not too often that I see an Asian guy with dyed-blond hair and wearing a tank top, at least not on the PATH train. And those are the attributes I used in describing him. Anyway, as someone who spent three years living in and travelling around Asia, immersing myself in unfamiliar cultures and thereby learning a great deal about them, I feel that I am, in fact, “able to see beyond overly broad categorizations.”
Again, I’m sorry you were offended, but no offense was meant.
Sincerely,
Tin Man
Now I’ll open up the floor. I think this brings up some interesting questions:
1) If you become aware of a person’s racial or ethnic background — if you are struck by it even in the slightest way — is that inherently racist? Or is it racist only when that difference causes you to judge or treat people better or worse than others? Or is it impossible to notice such a difference without evaluating it?
My thoughts: If you believe that we should ignore each other’s racial/ethnic differences completely, then I guess it can be seen as inherently racist to be aware of them. But in my view, there are different racial and ethnic groups in the world, and it’s natural to notice those differences, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making an evaluative judgment.
Read about what Psionic’s father used to say about “Phil, the black guy” (scroll down).
2) Physical/sexual attraction: If you’re not physically/sexually attracted to people of a particular race or ethnicity, is that racist? Or is it the same as basing physical/sexual attraction on height? Weight? Hairiness? Or are all of these bad? Or are all of these okay?
Or do people just tell themselves that they’re not attracted to a particular race when in reality they’re just uneasy about sleeping with someone of a different race?
Discuss.
Hmm, I wonder if this could go on Metafilter.
5:16 PM | Comments Off Thursday, June 14, 2001
More Thoughts on Sexual Pickiness / “Erotic Racism”
I’m borrowing the term “erotic racism” from Queerscribe, and it refers to what I wrote about yesterday — using race or ethnicity as a way of screening out potential sexual partners. But although it’s a nice and pithy term, it presupposes a particular view, and I think we can just as easily call the issue “sexual pickiness.”
There were some particularly good comments appended to my last post. And I’ve been thinking about the issue a lot since yesterday. It’s such a complicated issue, because it combines much that society (particularly American society) obsesses over: race, sex, psychology, the right to hold your own beliefs, the right to control what you do with your body.
First, some excerpts from e-mails I’ve received. One person wrote that this form of sexual pickiness comes from an “amalgam of personal taste, [social] conditioning, and trepidation.” Another person wrote that “rather than this being racist, I think it’s more because people of a certain race are bound to have similar physical characteristics, and it might just happen that those features are not exceptionally attractive to a certain person.”
Finally, “Disappointed,” who wrote the original comment, sent me a nice and rather friendly e-mail, in which he wrote in part:
I almost never use the word “racist” because I can’t really say I know what it means. For one thing, the impossibility of defining either “race” and “racism” makes the label problematic, too fluid. Inevitably, the question of what constitutes racism is reduced to a problem of semantics. Instead of asking “Is conduct X racist?”, which can never be answered sufficiently, I find it better to ask how race is deployed in all these different social and textual settings, whether racially-conscious conduct perpetuates white privilege.
Here are just some musings as I try to figure out what I think and feel about this.
Isn’t there a difference between societal discrimination and individual sexual pickiness? If someone is denied a job or a place to live, that’s one thing, because people have certain rights. But if I deny someone the opportunity to sleep with me, I’m not oppressing that person. (In fact — to channel the spirit of Brad for a moment — some might say I’m doing that person a favor.)
But perhaps sexual pickiness is really a symptom of latent racial prejudice. And perhaps one of the best ways to overcome such prejudice is by experiencing the most extreme type of intimacy possible — skin against skin. Perhaps having sex with someone of a particular race will wind up erasing a person’s latent prejudice against people of that race.
On the other hand, what’s more important — physical intimacy, or mental and emotional intimacy? After all, there are stories of racist white men who rape or have consensual sex with black women while remaining racist. You can be sexually attracted to people of a particular race while still holding racially prejudiced views of that race. Having sex with people of a particular race won’t necessarily remove one’s prejudice.
And anyway, who says that sexual pickiness is a symptom of latent racial prejudice? I like Mike’s comment: “I am not attracted to women in general. Some of them have features that I find sexy, yeah, but they just don’t turn me on. Too squooshy. Too vocally high-pitched. Not what gets me excited…. And I refuse to provide any further explanation or apology for the sake of political correctness. I want who I want.” (I particularly loved the word “squooshy”…)
I’ve thought about this as well. After all, I already spent enough energy in my life trying to conform to society’s ideas of whom I should or shouldn’t find attractive. “Have you tried sleeping with women? How do you know you don’t like them?” Part of me wants to say, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let people do this to me again.” (And let’s not forget this guy.)
If I don’t want to sleep with women, does that make me a misogynist? No. Just because I don’t want to sleep with women, doesn’t mean that I don’t respect women or that I’m prejudiced against women, right?
On the other hand, maybe you can say that this is all a false comparison, because, as many believe, sexual orientation is hormonal, and all men give off the same hormones, regardless of race, right? There’s more of a difference between a white man and a white woman than between a white man and a black man. Right?
Sex is one of humanity’s greatest mysteries. Lots of people have sexual hangups. Sex can be used to express intimacy. Power. Control. Revenge. Love. Pity. As a tool for procrastination. Sexual abstention can involve issues of health, purity, cleanliness, even self-discipline or autonomy. Many people are very conscious and careful of who they allow near (or in) their bodies. We don’t always understand our sexual desires. We can’t even pinpoint the exact cause of homosexual attraction.
So when it comes down to it, who are you to tell someone else what that person’s sexual criteria “really mean”? And is it really your problem? I’m not saying it’s not. Perhaps it’s our collective problem. Calling it “erotic racism” seems to imply a certain question, so I’ll get all Sex and the City now, and boil it down to one question typed across a computer screen:
Is screening one’s sexual partners based on race or ethnicity harmful to society?
Or, more succinctly:
Should we fuck for world peace?
4:07 PM | Comments Off Friday, June 15, 2001
Queerscribe responds, and eloquently so.