Too Close to Call

Once again, no exciting narratives of my personal life. Sorry to disappoint you. Instead, I present the RealAudio archives of all of National Public Radio’s Election Night 2000 coverage, all ten hours of it. I can’t believe I didn’t know until today that this stuff was out there. (I’ve been hoping to find a videotape of NBC News’s election night coverage for a while.) You may think this is weird of me, but I love this stuff — I love reliving exciting events in the news, experiencing them again as they happen, minute by minute. I’ve always been interested not just in the news but in the coverage of the news. And I salivate every four years as I anticipate settling in front of the TV on election night, so you can imagine how excited I was this past November. I stayed up until 5 in the morning through all the twists and turns, my eyes glued to the TV, my stomach muscles twisted into a pretzel.

Listening to these archived NPR broadcasts, I can feel a mid-autumn chill once again as the days get shorter. I can see the brown crunchy leaves on the ground and the blue and red campaign placards mixed in with orange and black Halloween decorations on front lawns. Once again I remember how in October and into early November I’d check the Reuters tracking poll online every morning, having hoped that the debates would give Gore a boost, but in vain, seeing the candidates remain in an unmovable tie; but then, in those final three or four days before the election, hearing about Bush’s old DWI arrest and learning that undecided voters were tending to settle on Gore, and thinking to myself, holy crap, maybe he’ll actually win this thing after all; and then, on election night, seeing Gore win the coveted trifecta of Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and feeling happy and excited. Now that we’re six months into the Bush administration, it’s hard to remember that on November 7, Gore had an even chance and this thing could have turned out either way.

It’s amusing to hear Robert Siegel on the East Coast tell Elizabeth Arnold on the West Coast that she’ll still be reporting at midnight California time, while on the East Coast, he’ll be fast asleep by then. Hahahahaha. If only he knew.

Oh, by the way, if you’re thinking of running for president in 2024, you’ve already got competition. (Scroll down.)

Katharine Graham and Watergate

Why is it that people loom largest in our culture only when they die? Katharine Graham, the legendary, classy former doyenne of the Washington Post, died yesterday at 84. And one day later, her Pulitzer-Prize-winning memoir, Personal History, is ranked #1 on Amazon’s best-seller list. I placed my order today. Should have placed it yesterday, I guess. If there were a bookstore near my office, I’d look for it there, but I’m sure the bookstores are already out of stock anyway.

Unsurprisingly, the Post’s website has set up a tribute page about her, containing her obituary, lots of coverage from today’s issue, excerpts from her book, and a few special articles she wrote for the paper. I’ve always been fascinated by the newspaper business and particularly by Watergate, so two sites are particularly interesting to me: her story of her experience leading the Post through Watergate, and a website the Post set up for the 25th anniversary of the Watergate burglary in 1997. What I particularly enjoy is the you-are-there feeling you get from reading some of the original Post articles covering the scandal. I love this one, in which the Post famously quotes former Attorney General John Mitchell saying, “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.” The quote was cleaned up a bit for the paper to read, “Katie Graham is gonna get caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.” Hee hee hee.

Almost makes me want to become a journalist.
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Biosphere Boy

I met up for dinner last night with a guy whom I hadn’t seen in over a year.

During the winter break of my third year of law school, I was at my parents’ house in New Jersey, spending a lot of time on IRC — Internet Relay Chat, a form of online chatting. One evening I checked out this one guy’s profile and was instantly smitten. He was a very cute 21-year-old Ivy League college student and a Westinghouse Scholar to boot; a scientific genius, practically. Back then, overachievers turned me on. But I was too shy to open up a chat window with him. A few minutes later I forgot about him, and eventually I went back to school and months passed. In the interim, I graduated from law school and studied for (and took) the New York Bar Exam.

On August 4, 1999, I left Charlottesville for good after eight years and came back to my parents’ house. That night, I was hanging out in a gay chatroom when I got an ICQ message from someone. It turned out he’d seen my profile online, and since it contained my ICQ number, he decided to write me that way. It turned out it was the same guy. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been interested in him, and yet he’d contacted me. We wound up chatting until 4 in the morning and decided to meet up the next night.

He was only about 40 minutes from my parents’ house, so I drove to his town to meet him. We got coffee, we sat and talked, and then we went back to his parents’ house to get his telescope. We took it out to an open field and he set it up, and on that cool August evening, we peered up at the stars. I was falling for him; I was feeling things that I’d never felt for any other gay man before. He’d even spent a semester studying in the Biosphere, for goodness’ sake.

We became friends, and I kept wondering if he felt the same way I did. I was constantly looking for hints. I wound up telling him how I felt, and he said that although he wouldn’t say that it would never happen, he didn’t feel the same way about me. He told me that he usually liked to get to know a guy before he started dating him. I grabbed onto that tiny shred of hope and kept holding it. It was a painful few months — we kept hanging out as friends, and I kept hoping that something might happen. But nothing ever did. Not even a kiss. It was completely platonic.

We had a few misunderstandings, and then he began dating someone whom he’d known for two weeks. I felt hurt. He invited me to hang out with him and his boyfriend and a few other people for the millennial New Year’s Eve, but I really didn’t want to meet the boyfriend, so I declined. We lost touch with each other and months went by without any contact. I realized that although he was cute and smart, we didn’t really click in important ways. I was okay with that.

In June 2000, I had just broken up with someone else, explaining to him that I just wanted to be friends, and we decided to conclude the evening by having coffee. We were sitting at the coffee shop, and who should come in but Biosphere Boy and his tall blond boyfriend. We briefly said hi, and that was that. More months went by, and then around last Thanksgiving he found me online, and we chatted for a little bit. A few months later the same thing happened. Then last week it happened again, and we decided to have dinner.

So last night we went to a chain Mexican restaurant and had fajitas and caught up. He has another boyfriend, someone he’s been seeing for seven months. He’s finished college and soon he’ll be going off to grad school. Still cute. I’d forgotten how cute he was, and in fact at first I felt an old pang for him. But that was it. I seem to have become immune. Or maybe I realized it just wasn’t worth wasting the energy on someone whom I’d previously come to realize wouldn’t have been right for me anyway.

There’s always been this wall between us, this stiffness. Oh, he’s always had a surface charm. But something has always been missing. He’s always seemed to be holding something back. Rarely have I ever heard him say something self-deprecating, or express self-doubt, or exude imperfection, or display a hint of real human warmth. He’s never delved into human emotions, or at least he’s never displayed them in front of me. He never seems to have questioned himself. Too perfect — a perfectly scientific android. He seems as hermetically sealed and impervious as the Biosphere itself.

We had a perfectly nice time last night, and after dinner and coffee, he drove me home to Jersey City. We said we’d hang out again before he goes off to grad school. He’s an intelligent and charming conversationalist, and I’d probably hang out with him again. But I can’t talk about deeply emotional or insightful things with him, because there’s no organic response from him. We just don’t click that way. We’re speaking English from different centuries; we can communicate, but only up to a certain point.

So two years ago I fell for Biosphere Boy, and a year later I fell for Nick. There’s a common thread here: both are charming, very intelligent, high-achieving guys who look great on paper but lose their luster once they’re exposed to the open air.

(On the other hand, neither of them ever wound up being interested in me. If either of them had been interested, maybe I’d be singing a different tune today. But maybe not.)

I’ve often looked for someone who was larger than life, someone better than me, someone whom I aspired to be, someone whom my parents could be happy with; if my parents couldn’t be happy with me, at least they could be happy with my boyfriend, right? And if I could find the perfect guy, maybe some of that perfection would rub off on me. Or at least I could show my parents that I had good taste.

In slightly different ways, Biosphere Boy and Nick are both the guy whom I’ve aspired to be at some point in my life. But I think I’ve learned to stop chasing the guy whom I aspire to be. The guy whom I aspire to be is hiding right here (tapping my chest).

If I keep chasing guys who are larger than life, it’s only going to make me feel smaller. So I want someone who impresses me — but not someone who’s perfect. Someone who’s self-deprecating — but someone who has self-esteem. Someone who’s talented — but someone with a hint of self-doubt. I do want someone who’s exceptional, yes — exceptionally human.