I woke up today without a weight that I didn't know I carried. I opened the blinds for the first time in days. Temperatures will reach the 60's on this final day of January - unheard of for Kansas. I feel myself - only lighter - for the first time in weeks. And I may have relocated the balls that have sustained me for so many years.
Those who have stuck with me through this public catharsis will get it. While I am sorry for my grandfather that his dreams of me mounting the pastoral pinnacle in his church were dashed, I am not sorry that I discovered who I am and have lived it without shame or apology. While I am sorry that my father was not the man he is today when I needed him most, I don't bear the responsibility or the guilt for how those years played out. I don't have any reconciling to do. I am reconciled to myself. The truth of my life is not fulfilling of grandpa's prophecies and dreams nor my father's unfounded expectations of what sons are. But it's who I am. And I like it.
Being gay isn't just an asterisk to my existence. It's a blessing that is inconceivable to those who don't receive it. And not just being gay, but living in it, revelling in it. The freedom to don a feather boa should the urge hit, to wear a Speedo past the age of 30, to be young and free past the age when your hetero counterparts have coupled, parented and grandparented, to have as your birthright the blessing of freedom from convention....these are things for which I do not apologize. Quite the contrary: I give thanks.
I am thankful to the queens who stood up at Stonewall on my 5th birthday (no, really). While I had my sights set on kindergarten, they were creating a future for me that I might not have had the courage to build for myself. I am thankful to the Castro Clones and the Village Queens and the campy, bitchy, witty, bitter things who held court on bar stools in clandestine corners of society. I am thankful for having inherited a culture that values honesty, integrity, self-exploration, and the range of personas from butch to femme, leather to haute couture, drag to dyke, cowboy to opera queen. I am thrilled to be a part of a people. I feel honored to know the semi-secret vocabulary that I learned at 22 on the passenger side of a Grand Am.
I am pleased to not be in the dark about tricks, bath houses, tea rooms, tea bagging and tea dances. I remember being inexplicably overcome with emotion the first time I crossed the Bay Bridge and entered San Francisco. I recall so clearly the feeling that I had returned to a motherland, of sorts, where so many people had done so much for people they would never know. I remember touching the plaque in the sidewalk where Harvey Milk's camera shop once operated. I walked Folsom street and breathed in the sleaze and the filth and the history and the erotic inheritance that was mine. For all of this that has been passed down to me and will be passed on again and again, I do not apologize.
If the history of my people and the truth of my life has posed a surprising or disappointing dilemma for those who wanted different from me, I wish you reconciliation. But I am reconciled. I can stand up and say that I look back with clarity, I look around with honesty, and I look forward with hope that come hell, high water, or big man with a big gun, I am OK. Marlo Thomas would shit herself I am so OK. And she's OK, too.
AIDS has not killed me. My grandfather's dashed hopes will not limit me. My father's understandable failures do not hinder me. I can love those men and honor them as flawed people who did what they knew to do. Now I can carry on their tradition - do what I know to do - and merge it with the knowledge of who I am. It is not news to me that I am gay. But it seems to be news that I don't have to silently apologize for it by seeking relationships with men who would punish me with silence, distance, lies, broken promises and humiliation. Maybe that's the answer I was looking for.
So what? That's what I asked yesterday. I think the answer is that I can stop beating myself over the head with men who don't and can't care for me. I don't have to prostrate myself at the feet of men who are incapable of love. I can identify, today, that those Bad Boys are not men who love themselves. So there's no way they could love me. No matter what I do or who I am, they are married to their own myth. I choose to divorce myself from that myth.
I am, without arrogance, worth more. Intelligence, humor, wit, and the newly acquired willingness to be brutally open and honest about my deepest longings....these make me worth more. If the next 10 years don't bring Mr. Right along, I'll at least know that there are a handful of red flags that I used to ignore that I can't ignore any longer. If this disease takes me before I have that experience of partnership, it will take me with my integrity intact. And I'll be OK.
Thank you Sam. Thank you Jerry (you prick). Thanks to Dad and Grandpa and "Uncle Joe". Thanks to Harvey Milk, who died before I knew that I should know him. Thanks to the drag queens who showed me that outrageous is good and expectations can be upended in a beautiful spectacle. Thanks to The Boys who grinned and nodded while I dug at my core with a dull spoon trying to figure out why I was so unhappy. Thanks to Marlo who told me when I was 8 that I was OK, even though I didn't buy it until I was 41. I know that I don't get it all. But I've gotten enough that I'm not miserable today. And that makes today a good day.
A day with no apologies.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
Stuck
I think I see something. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but through the haze and from a distance, I think I see answers. They have an inexact form and I'm not sure what they are, but in writing about my father and grandfather just 24 hours ago, something clicked.
These two very important men in my life each experienced a redemption of sorts. My Grandpa grew up with a difficult father, was a distant and harsh father to his children, and became a beloved man to his grandchildren. My father grew up with that harsh man, mimicked that pattern with his own children, and has become a beloved soft place to land for his grandchildren. I have no children. I won't have, in all likelihood, any children. And without grandchildren, my chance to redeem myself two generations hence is not an option. If I'm to become a loveable presence to anyone in this lifetime, I have to do it without benefit of the passage of time and without screwing up an intermediate generation. Just in the saying of it, I perceive a tough row to hoe, as we say in Mayberry.
Days from now, one of my cousins will become the first of my generation to become a grandparent. That won't be my reality. I see, I think, that I've continued to look up the generational ladder for that redemptive sigh and that validation that my dad and my Pappy found in their grandchildren. Neither man seems to have ever truly reconciled the past with his own children. And they're not interested in reconciling with their own kids...why would they? They have the grandbabies for that. Instead, they got a fresh chance to start over and "do it right" when their children's children came along. It's probably not unique to my family. I'm sure most people see the difference in how their parents behave toward grandchildren in contrast to how those same people parented. If dwelled upon, that has to be frustrating to the point of distraction. But where do you go if you don't have children to connect back to your parents?
I'm beginning to see how the Big Man Silhouette mimics the larger-than-life persona of my Grandpa. And how the Bad Boy Image mimics the tough exterior of my childhood's father. Put them all together, shake well before using, and out comes a screwed up attempt to reconcile with the father who didn't like me and the grandpa I disappointed.
I confessed to The Good Doctor (I hate that word. It sounds like I had something bad to reveal.) that I looked at the Big Man Silhouette and saw strength and power and protection. Upon being questioned, I said that the Bad Boy spoke to me as a rule-breaking, authority-defying, devil-may-care version of strength - a faux strength, a dysfunctional strength, a strength that disintegrates under the slightest scrutiny - but strength all the same. When I tried to squeeze attention, affection, time or - gasp! - love out of myself for these men I chose, it failed. When I tried to get the same from them, it failed. And 41 1/2 years later, there is a string of failures to prove the point beyond all debate.
So what? That's where I'm stuck. And, I'm sure...that's where the next 50 minutes with the Good Doctor will take us. Now I have a question. Up until now, he's had all the questions and I've had a pat collection of well-rehearsed monologues. All the comments and questions I found half-insulting previously are starting to form into an arrow that points directly toward an answer that I can't quite grasp just yet. But I think I've identified the question.
"Retarded when it comes to being in love" - stuck with trying to apologize to the Big Man and get Dad to love me through men who knew neither and didn't understand how they were being used, however sub-consciously.
"Slept with a lot of men?" Sure. When you're looking for redemption in a haystack, you have to move a lot of hay.
"Alcoholic" No. But I can sure as hell see where, if I'd ever given up hope, the bottle would have been a handy refuge from the storm.
"Prick" Probably...at least some of the time. Anger for sure. Without feeling entitled to direct it up the family tree at people who did the best they could with the tools they had, I've found a lot of easy targets to take it out on. On weak people, mainly. People who didn't have the intellect or the verbal skills to hang in the fight. People, like my dad, who didn't care enough to engage the fight to its possible victorious outcome. Therefore, weak people are nauseating. They can't help. They're not the strong men whose love I missed out on or pissed away and with whom I'd give my life to reconcile.
Where's a therapist when you need him? I'm stuck between a question and an answer and I could sure use a Good Guy at the crossroads to shine a light in this direction or that. Pappy was there in childhood. Sam was there at 16. Jerry was there at 22. (Lest he achieve sainthood by being included in this list, he did say to me, "I was really only interested in you because you were a virgin.") The man I called "Uncle Joe" mentored me through my career, assuring me that I was peerlessly gifted.
Pappy gave me hope. Sam gave me my voice. Jerry helped me find my identity. Ol' Joe helped me earn enough money to be comfortable in these years of disability. None of them can help today. It looks like it's up to me...and The Good Doctor. Oh.....and note to Jerry.....I wasn't a virgin. Snap!
These two very important men in my life each experienced a redemption of sorts. My Grandpa grew up with a difficult father, was a distant and harsh father to his children, and became a beloved man to his grandchildren. My father grew up with that harsh man, mimicked that pattern with his own children, and has become a beloved soft place to land for his grandchildren. I have no children. I won't have, in all likelihood, any children. And without grandchildren, my chance to redeem myself two generations hence is not an option. If I'm to become a loveable presence to anyone in this lifetime, I have to do it without benefit of the passage of time and without screwing up an intermediate generation. Just in the saying of it, I perceive a tough row to hoe, as we say in Mayberry.
Days from now, one of my cousins will become the first of my generation to become a grandparent. That won't be my reality. I see, I think, that I've continued to look up the generational ladder for that redemptive sigh and that validation that my dad and my Pappy found in their grandchildren. Neither man seems to have ever truly reconciled the past with his own children. And they're not interested in reconciling with their own kids...why would they? They have the grandbabies for that. Instead, they got a fresh chance to start over and "do it right" when their children's children came along. It's probably not unique to my family. I'm sure most people see the difference in how their parents behave toward grandchildren in contrast to how those same people parented. If dwelled upon, that has to be frustrating to the point of distraction. But where do you go if you don't have children to connect back to your parents?
I'm beginning to see how the Big Man Silhouette mimics the larger-than-life persona of my Grandpa. And how the Bad Boy Image mimics the tough exterior of my childhood's father. Put them all together, shake well before using, and out comes a screwed up attempt to reconcile with the father who didn't like me and the grandpa I disappointed.
I confessed to The Good Doctor (I hate that word. It sounds like I had something bad to reveal.) that I looked at the Big Man Silhouette and saw strength and power and protection. Upon being questioned, I said that the Bad Boy spoke to me as a rule-breaking, authority-defying, devil-may-care version of strength - a faux strength, a dysfunctional strength, a strength that disintegrates under the slightest scrutiny - but strength all the same. When I tried to squeeze attention, affection, time or - gasp! - love out of myself for these men I chose, it failed. When I tried to get the same from them, it failed. And 41 1/2 years later, there is a string of failures to prove the point beyond all debate.
So what? That's where I'm stuck. And, I'm sure...that's where the next 50 minutes with the Good Doctor will take us. Now I have a question. Up until now, he's had all the questions and I've had a pat collection of well-rehearsed monologues. All the comments and questions I found half-insulting previously are starting to form into an arrow that points directly toward an answer that I can't quite grasp just yet. But I think I've identified the question.
"Retarded when it comes to being in love" - stuck with trying to apologize to the Big Man and get Dad to love me through men who knew neither and didn't understand how they were being used, however sub-consciously.
"Slept with a lot of men?" Sure. When you're looking for redemption in a haystack, you have to move a lot of hay.
"Alcoholic" No. But I can sure as hell see where, if I'd ever given up hope, the bottle would have been a handy refuge from the storm.
"Prick" Probably...at least some of the time. Anger for sure. Without feeling entitled to direct it up the family tree at people who did the best they could with the tools they had, I've found a lot of easy targets to take it out on. On weak people, mainly. People who didn't have the intellect or the verbal skills to hang in the fight. People, like my dad, who didn't care enough to engage the fight to its possible victorious outcome. Therefore, weak people are nauseating. They can't help. They're not the strong men whose love I missed out on or pissed away and with whom I'd give my life to reconcile.
Where's a therapist when you need him? I'm stuck between a question and an answer and I could sure use a Good Guy at the crossroads to shine a light in this direction or that. Pappy was there in childhood. Sam was there at 16. Jerry was there at 22. (Lest he achieve sainthood by being included in this list, he did say to me, "I was really only interested in you because you were a virgin.") The man I called "Uncle Joe" mentored me through my career, assuring me that I was peerlessly gifted.
Pappy gave me hope. Sam gave me my voice. Jerry helped me find my identity. Ol' Joe helped me earn enough money to be comfortable in these years of disability. None of them can help today. It looks like it's up to me...and The Good Doctor. Oh.....and note to Jerry.....I wasn't a virgin. Snap!
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Losing Pappy
This is the only post that I ever considered not making. The self-indulgent catharsis I've experienced in this process for a week has been interesting and hopeful and raw. But it's never required anyone else identifiable to be a part of it in any negative light. I have to change that today.
Yesterday, I posted about one of the original Good Guys in my life, Mr. Sam Johnson, who changed my life and set me on a course that I never envisioned for myself. He wasn't the only one who met me at various crossroads and offered a light in this direction or that. The first tower of a man I knew was my grandfather, my Pappy. His name is Louis. And he's mostly gone now. Whether it's dementia or Alzheimer's or just plain craziness catching up to a man who's slowing down, my grandpa is all but gone. Oh, he's still here - mostly fit, older for sure, but, as we say, with one wheel stuck in the mud.
I know enough about my family's history and people, in general, to know that my Grandpa wasn't the same man who fathered my dad. He is my father's biological father. But in that way people have of changing when grandchildren and Jesus arrive, he wasn't the same person. No nominations to sainthood here...but to me, this guy was as close to God as you get without a really good ladder.
If I were very kind and very honest about my own father, I would say that we didn't care much for each other from a very early date. I could offer a handful of reasons why that is: he was football, I was choir; he was construction, I was reading; he was athletic, I was slight; he was good looking and able, I had a hare lip (as they called it in the old days) and was forbidden to play baseball or the trumpet. We still don't know each other all that well, but we get along pretty well. I enjoy spending time with my dad now that he's retired. But he's not the same person I lived with growing up. He's mellower now and, I think, more forgiving of our differences. And he'd be right in saying the same about me. But in that gap during childhood where we find SOMETHING to latch onto -- ANYTHING to hope towards --ANYONE to vaidate us, there stood My Grandpa.
Family folklore has it that my Pappy was a moonshine-making, cigarette totin', foul-mouthed lout who had quit school in the 7th grade, hopped trains and made a life out of practically nothing. My grandmother says she's loved that man since she was 14. And I'd lay my life on the table that My Grandma has never lied when it mattered. That woman.....she's as close to a saint, in my mind, that you can get and still have people want to be around you. Grandpa and Grandma Found The Lord, as we say in these parts, while my daddy was off in the navy. My dad tells the story that he returned on leave with a 12-pack of Bud to share with his dad and was met, instead, with a Bible and an invitation to meet Jesus. Imagine how stunned you'd be.
So the Pappy I grew up with wasn't the same guy my dad knew. But my grandpa was HUGE. He wasn't fat. He was just HUGE. He isn't tall. But he filled every room from the smallest crease in the floorboards to the slighest crack around a door. If he walked outside, outside got a lot smaller because he was in it. And my Grandpa taught me about Jesus.
We lived about 2 hours from Grandma's House. It was always Grandma's House. I supppose that's only fair since she did all the work around it. Pappy had his Machine Shop in the backyard where he'd supported his 3 kids and wife forever, it seemed. But the house....that was Grandma's. In a way, it seemed nice of her that she let Grandpa stay there, too, because it made things so much easier when we'd come visit. We visited every-other-week faithfully. Every holiday (whether it fell on the off week or not) we were there. And every year, we spent 2 weeks at Grandma's House. For fifty weeks of every year - and for a few years after I got too old to be invited - I waited for 2 weeks at Grandma's House. Taking nothing away from my Grandma, who I love beyond description, it was all about seeing my Pappy.
My Pappy took me fishing - in the strip pits. The strip pits are mining left-overs rife with snakes and snags and things that make fishing a pain in the butt. But Pappy was happy to take me. Just me. I was #1. I know because he told me. "Number One Grandson" He called me that until he forgot that he used to call me that - which is recently. My Grandpa would take me to The Donut Shop. I believe, outside of church and his Machine Shop, The Donut Shop was his happiest place on earth. My grandpa held court in The Donut Shop daily. And on the days when I joined him, I was introduced as "my number one grandson." I think he knew that I had some catching-up to do on the self-esteem. He wouldn't have called it that. But it had that effect. For two out of fifty-two weeks for a LOT of years, I was a prince on a soft pillow. I would sing out into a tape recorder with my cousins the songs we learned in Vacation Bible School. My grandma stopped me cold a few months ago when she produced from her pocket a yellowed cassette tape marked, I believe, 1972, and played for me the sound of children's voices - mine the most prominent - singing,
"The Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Build it out ofGopher Barky, Barky, children of the Lord."
For as long as there was tape we sang at Grandma's kitchen table and re-affirmed that we had learned the lessons of Bible School. For two weeks out of every fifty-two, I was saved. "Saved to the Uttermost", as the old hymn says. That sort of thing did not play well the other 50 weeks. So I knew that being Saved was something best reserved for Grandpa. And I knew that being Number One and soft purple seats on little royal thrones didn't exist where I really lived. I have one memory of clinging hopelessly to my Grandma's legs at one visit's conclusion, throwing caution to the wind and begging not to be sent back to the land of hare lips and speech therapy and no baseball and violin-instead-of-trumpet. I wanted to stay here where swimming pools were for all day and the worst thing that might happen is Pappy "thumping" you on the top of your head for some misdeed. (Never a spanking. Pappy thumped. He'd take his seemingly massive forefinger and flick the nail-side on the crown of your head. The sting of having provoked him was worse by far than any pain it inflicted. But message received. I don't remember getting thumped for the same thing twice.)
When I went to college, I ignored a scholarship offer from the largest and most famous university in our state in favor of the one down the street from my Grandma and Pappy. I made the decision so late that I was excused from the requirement of Freshmen Live In Dorms and was allowed to live with family....naturally....my grandparents. Now for 7 days out of 7, for 52 weeks - give or take - I was Number One Grandson. It was all soft purple cushions. No hare lips here. I could sing...really sing. They told me so. And they never lied. I could speak, so I preached. I knew I could. They told me so. They showered me with what must be unconditional love and I ate it up with a spoon. You'd have thought they plucked me out of the ash room of an orphanage. I don't believe I was ever abused a day in my life. But in most families, I think, there is simply no competing with Grandma. I hope everybody had a Grandma and Grandpa like that. At least one.
I never heard my grandma or grandpa cuss, though I heard stories that they did once upon a time. I never saw them drink for all those years, though I heard stories that they had once upon a time. I never saw them fail to squeeze and kiss and shower us with rose petals and palm branches and hail us as conquering princes and princesses returned from far off journeys where we'd conquered dragons and demons. But I heard stories of when they hadn't done so. God forbid I should ever...ever...ever....do anything that might separate me from this position of prominence in the eyes of my Pappy.
Pappy ran a church. He wasn't the pastor. He ran the pastor. Sometimes - usually - he ran the pastor off. Once, he employed my cousins to haul the pastor off. Pappy ran a church. I played the piano, sang, led what we simple people called "The Song Service", preached on occasion. It was clear to everyone but me, perhaps, that I was being groomed to be the Pastor he wouldn't run off. All of the other ones - except for one, I think - were gap fillers. He was waiting until I was ready to take my permanent place on a real purple cushion at the top of the front of the church.
On the same day in 1987 that I met the first man I ever loved in a Gay Bar in Lawrence, Kansas, I knew that I had cracked the perfection of the reflection my Pappy saw in me. I knew, somewhere, that hare lips and skinny legs and lack of Little League Experience would never keep me from the love of Jesus or Grandpa....but this.... This was probably a different story on both counts. So I started keeping my distance from them: Jesus, Grandma and Grandpa. No sense stirring pots that didn't need stirring. No sense tarnishing the part of my childhood that gleamed like pure gold in my memory. When I met Jerry, I told my parents immediately that I was gay - mostly out of spite. I told everyone else because I just didn't give a damn. But I couldn't tell Pappy. That was a risk too great. So the gulf began.
A personal religious revival in my life at one time caused me to blurt out the fact that I had dabbled on that particular wild side of life, to which my Grandma replied, "I just don't believe that." And I believe her. I believe she sticks to that theory today. She's wrong, which makes her human...and a little less than what the 6 year-old in my head thought she might be. Pappy never referred to it. I think he knew.
Today, my Pappy is basically gone. Dementia, Alzheimer's, plain old age - whatever. He has delusions of being on the U.S. Border Patrol, being an Officer of The Court (permitting and all but requiring his input on all judicial opinions issued from every bench - can you imagine the sheer logistics?), believing that the Catholics and the Mafia and the folks at City Hall (one-in-the-same those three, mind you) are conspiring to kill him (most of those Catholics at City Hall are his grandchildren, married to his grandchildren, etc.). He issues profanity-laced tirades now at the woman who has "loved him since I was 14 years old." My pappy is gone. There is a very old man who lives where he used to live.
That old man knows who I am but doesn't remember that I once sat upon purple cushions and fished in the strip pit and spent all day long at swimming pools. That old man can't recall that I'm Number One, if not in sequence, then in importance. And he might never know that he showed me what God looks like and that sometimes God thumps you on the top of the head but never, ever stops telling the folks in the Donut Shop that you're Number One. He's not the same guy he used to be. If I'm to find out how I'm "Bad", as my therapist put it, I'm "Bad" because I disappointed my Pappy. I didn't take my place in the chair at the top of the front of the church. I liked boys. It's just that simple. And in a way, just that sad.
But my Pappy....he was one of the good guys, too. He was. And anybody who says different has never been to The Donut Shop or had a Dilly Bar after church or sat by the fire in the family room - not because there was fire, but because that's where Pappy sat.
I miss him already.......and he's not even gone.
Yesterday, I posted about one of the original Good Guys in my life, Mr. Sam Johnson, who changed my life and set me on a course that I never envisioned for myself. He wasn't the only one who met me at various crossroads and offered a light in this direction or that. The first tower of a man I knew was my grandfather, my Pappy. His name is Louis. And he's mostly gone now. Whether it's dementia or Alzheimer's or just plain craziness catching up to a man who's slowing down, my grandpa is all but gone. Oh, he's still here - mostly fit, older for sure, but, as we say, with one wheel stuck in the mud.
I know enough about my family's history and people, in general, to know that my Grandpa wasn't the same man who fathered my dad. He is my father's biological father. But in that way people have of changing when grandchildren and Jesus arrive, he wasn't the same person. No nominations to sainthood here...but to me, this guy was as close to God as you get without a really good ladder.
If I were very kind and very honest about my own father, I would say that we didn't care much for each other from a very early date. I could offer a handful of reasons why that is: he was football, I was choir; he was construction, I was reading; he was athletic, I was slight; he was good looking and able, I had a hare lip (as they called it in the old days) and was forbidden to play baseball or the trumpet. We still don't know each other all that well, but we get along pretty well. I enjoy spending time with my dad now that he's retired. But he's not the same person I lived with growing up. He's mellower now and, I think, more forgiving of our differences. And he'd be right in saying the same about me. But in that gap during childhood where we find SOMETHING to latch onto -- ANYTHING to hope towards --ANYONE to vaidate us, there stood My Grandpa.
Family folklore has it that my Pappy was a moonshine-making, cigarette totin', foul-mouthed lout who had quit school in the 7th grade, hopped trains and made a life out of practically nothing. My grandmother says she's loved that man since she was 14. And I'd lay my life on the table that My Grandma has never lied when it mattered. That woman.....she's as close to a saint, in my mind, that you can get and still have people want to be around you. Grandpa and Grandma Found The Lord, as we say in these parts, while my daddy was off in the navy. My dad tells the story that he returned on leave with a 12-pack of Bud to share with his dad and was met, instead, with a Bible and an invitation to meet Jesus. Imagine how stunned you'd be.
So the Pappy I grew up with wasn't the same guy my dad knew. But my grandpa was HUGE. He wasn't fat. He was just HUGE. He isn't tall. But he filled every room from the smallest crease in the floorboards to the slighest crack around a door. If he walked outside, outside got a lot smaller because he was in it. And my Grandpa taught me about Jesus.
We lived about 2 hours from Grandma's House. It was always Grandma's House. I supppose that's only fair since she did all the work around it. Pappy had his Machine Shop in the backyard where he'd supported his 3 kids and wife forever, it seemed. But the house....that was Grandma's. In a way, it seemed nice of her that she let Grandpa stay there, too, because it made things so much easier when we'd come visit. We visited every-other-week faithfully. Every holiday (whether it fell on the off week or not) we were there. And every year, we spent 2 weeks at Grandma's House. For fifty weeks of every year - and for a few years after I got too old to be invited - I waited for 2 weeks at Grandma's House. Taking nothing away from my Grandma, who I love beyond description, it was all about seeing my Pappy.
My Pappy took me fishing - in the strip pits. The strip pits are mining left-overs rife with snakes and snags and things that make fishing a pain in the butt. But Pappy was happy to take me. Just me. I was #1. I know because he told me. "Number One Grandson" He called me that until he forgot that he used to call me that - which is recently. My Grandpa would take me to The Donut Shop. I believe, outside of church and his Machine Shop, The Donut Shop was his happiest place on earth. My grandpa held court in The Donut Shop daily. And on the days when I joined him, I was introduced as "my number one grandson." I think he knew that I had some catching-up to do on the self-esteem. He wouldn't have called it that. But it had that effect. For two out of fifty-two weeks for a LOT of years, I was a prince on a soft pillow. I would sing out into a tape recorder with my cousins the songs we learned in Vacation Bible School. My grandma stopped me cold a few months ago when she produced from her pocket a yellowed cassette tape marked, I believe, 1972, and played for me the sound of children's voices - mine the most prominent - singing,
"The Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Lord said to Noah to build him an Arky, Arky. Build it out of
For as long as there was tape we sang at Grandma's kitchen table and re-affirmed that we had learned the lessons of Bible School. For two weeks out of every fifty-two, I was saved. "Saved to the Uttermost", as the old hymn says. That sort of thing did not play well the other 50 weeks. So I knew that being Saved was something best reserved for Grandpa. And I knew that being Number One and soft purple seats on little royal thrones didn't exist where I really lived. I have one memory of clinging hopelessly to my Grandma's legs at one visit's conclusion, throwing caution to the wind and begging not to be sent back to the land of hare lips and speech therapy and no baseball and violin-instead-of-trumpet. I wanted to stay here where swimming pools were for all day and the worst thing that might happen is Pappy "thumping" you on the top of your head for some misdeed. (Never a spanking. Pappy thumped. He'd take his seemingly massive forefinger and flick the nail-side on the crown of your head. The sting of having provoked him was worse by far than any pain it inflicted. But message received. I don't remember getting thumped for the same thing twice.)
When I went to college, I ignored a scholarship offer from the largest and most famous university in our state in favor of the one down the street from my Grandma and Pappy. I made the decision so late that I was excused from the requirement of Freshmen Live In Dorms and was allowed to live with family....naturally....my grandparents. Now for 7 days out of 7, for 52 weeks - give or take - I was Number One Grandson. It was all soft purple cushions. No hare lips here. I could sing...really sing. They told me so. And they never lied. I could speak, so I preached. I knew I could. They told me so. They showered me with what must be unconditional love and I ate it up with a spoon. You'd have thought they plucked me out of the ash room of an orphanage. I don't believe I was ever abused a day in my life. But in most families, I think, there is simply no competing with Grandma. I hope everybody had a Grandma and Grandpa like that. At least one.
I never heard my grandma or grandpa cuss, though I heard stories that they did once upon a time. I never saw them drink for all those years, though I heard stories that they had once upon a time. I never saw them fail to squeeze and kiss and shower us with rose petals and palm branches and hail us as conquering princes and princesses returned from far off journeys where we'd conquered dragons and demons. But I heard stories of when they hadn't done so. God forbid I should ever...ever...ever....do anything that might separate me from this position of prominence in the eyes of my Pappy.
Pappy ran a church. He wasn't the pastor. He ran the pastor. Sometimes - usually - he ran the pastor off. Once, he employed my cousins to haul the pastor off. Pappy ran a church. I played the piano, sang, led what we simple people called "The Song Service", preached on occasion. It was clear to everyone but me, perhaps, that I was being groomed to be the Pastor he wouldn't run off. All of the other ones - except for one, I think - were gap fillers. He was waiting until I was ready to take my permanent place on a real purple cushion at the top of the front of the church.
On the same day in 1987 that I met the first man I ever loved in a Gay Bar in Lawrence, Kansas, I knew that I had cracked the perfection of the reflection my Pappy saw in me. I knew, somewhere, that hare lips and skinny legs and lack of Little League Experience would never keep me from the love of Jesus or Grandpa....but this.... This was probably a different story on both counts. So I started keeping my distance from them: Jesus, Grandma and Grandpa. No sense stirring pots that didn't need stirring. No sense tarnishing the part of my childhood that gleamed like pure gold in my memory. When I met Jerry, I told my parents immediately that I was gay - mostly out of spite. I told everyone else because I just didn't give a damn. But I couldn't tell Pappy. That was a risk too great. So the gulf began.
A personal religious revival in my life at one time caused me to blurt out the fact that I had dabbled on that particular wild side of life, to which my Grandma replied, "I just don't believe that." And I believe her. I believe she sticks to that theory today. She's wrong, which makes her human...and a little less than what the 6 year-old in my head thought she might be. Pappy never referred to it. I think he knew.
Today, my Pappy is basically gone. Dementia, Alzheimer's, plain old age - whatever. He has delusions of being on the U.S. Border Patrol, being an Officer of The Court (permitting and all but requiring his input on all judicial opinions issued from every bench - can you imagine the sheer logistics?), believing that the Catholics and the Mafia and the folks at City Hall (one-in-the-same those three, mind you) are conspiring to kill him (most of those Catholics at City Hall are his grandchildren, married to his grandchildren, etc.). He issues profanity-laced tirades now at the woman who has "loved him since I was 14 years old." My pappy is gone. There is a very old man who lives where he used to live.
That old man knows who I am but doesn't remember that I once sat upon purple cushions and fished in the strip pit and spent all day long at swimming pools. That old man can't recall that I'm Number One, if not in sequence, then in importance. And he might never know that he showed me what God looks like and that sometimes God thumps you on the top of the head but never, ever stops telling the folks in the Donut Shop that you're Number One. He's not the same guy he used to be. If I'm to find out how I'm "Bad", as my therapist put it, I'm "Bad" because I disappointed my Pappy. I didn't take my place in the chair at the top of the front of the church. I liked boys. It's just that simple. And in a way, just that sad.
But my Pappy....he was one of the good guys, too. He was. And anybody who says different has never been to The Donut Shop or had a Dilly Bar after church or sat by the fire in the family room - not because there was fire, but because that's where Pappy sat.
I miss him already.......and he's not even gone.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Sam and Me
So my therapist asked, "Why now? Why do YOU think you're suddenly so preoccupied with never having had a relationship?"
"Other than being retarded and a wannabe prick, alcoholic, or sex addict?" I thought to myself. If anything will keep you from thinking aloud, it's therapy. So I said that being three years removed from my career probably gave me a lot more time to think about such things. He asked some other questions:
"Are you judgemental?"
"Hell yes. And about 90% of the time, I'd say my judgement proves true."
I talked about how, despite the grimmer aspects of my early years, there came a point where the pendulum of self-confidence took a decided swing to the opposite end of its trajectory and ultimately gave me some platform from which to fling judgements. Since the day it happened, I have continued to tell that story. It's the one that changed my life as much as Coming Out, a successful career, or even AIDS. It happened in 1981. His name was Sam Johnson.
I was a Junior in High School. I was in the gymnasium being humored by the gymnastics coach who let me flail around as part of the J.V. team because my cousin, who was REALLY good, was on varsity. And I didn't take up much space. My best friend, Trudy, showed up at the gym door one day and insisted that I come down the hall to read a part in a skit she was to perform for the school's Forensics Coach. Her partner had high-tailed it for some reason and she was due to prove herself capable for an upcoming tournament. (Forensics, for you novices, is the competitive form of speaking, acting, etc. - not high school-level autopsies.) Dedicated as I was to my flailing, I was excused to bail out my friend in need.
Now, I did not speak in public. I didn't speak a lot in private. Speaking was something that had not come easily to me and so I minimized its use fearing that I might exhaust the mileage on whatever I'd developed. I hadn't exactly understood that I was supposed to read - out loud - in front of a teacher - and whoever else passed by - the part of Adam in a cute little revision of he and Eve having a spat in the Garden of Eden. It didn't hit me until Trudy and I stood shoulder to shoulder and that man, Sam Johnson, stared me down and said, "Go." I have zero recollection of what took place in the ensuing moments.
My memory picks up with Sam Johnson leading me by the elbow to the school office where he commandeered a secretary and forcibly changed my next semester's schedule from Botany to Forensics. I wasn't quite sure what the future had in store, but it gave me a stomach ache for the next two months.
Taking my place in Forensics class, I was paired with a boy named Jamie (bless his heart) to perform a duet acting piece cut from the Monty Python skit "The Argument Clinic". I couldn't recite more than 5 words of that cutting to you today. But the five I remember would change me in a way that still boggles the mind. Now, in our school, Forensics was IT. Football was big, Basketball was cool, but the Arts had this weird prominence you don't see anymore outside of the few schools that specialize in them. Our Forensics class had approximately 60 people. And it was the novice class. Jamie and I memorized our bit and the day came where we were to perform it for the class. Two hard plastic chairs took their place of prominence at the front of this increasingly cavernous room and we took our places near them to begin...
Again, I cannot recite to you much of this piece, but it clipped right along until I said the line,
"Look! You just contradicted me!"
"Say that again?" came the polite request from Mr. Johnson at the back of the room.
"Look! You just contradicted me," I complied.
"One more time?" he repeated
"LOOK! You just contradicted me," and my mind began to melt into a primordial mush. The number of people in the room seemed to multiply exponentially by the second. And they all seemed really big and really close. Even the walls seemed to be tilting inward.
"AGAIN!", he boomed "And this time ENUNCIATE!" This was so far from a polite request that Mother Theresa would have caned him.
"LOOK! (huff, huff) You just con-tra-dic-ted me!" I exaggerated.
"AGAIN!"
If grown up words had been a ready part of my vocabulary at 16, he would have heard them all. Instead, I felt my face flush and that horrifying catch in my throat that signaled bad things were about to happen - at least from the neck up and quite possibly from the waist down.
"LOO..." and it happened. My voice broke and the dam behind my eyes gave way. My humiliation had reached its apex. I turned around, found the doorknob and gracelessly let myself out of the room. I sat along the wall in the hallway pondering how I would live the next year and a half having openly cried in high school. Sam let me stew for about 15 minutes. While I had my eyes closed wishing, the way you do, that time would turn back, that I would be magically transported to another country, to the perfect family, where I could do more than flail in gymnastics and had never cried in high school, Mr. Johnson sat down next to me on the wall. He didn't even have to speak. I hated him beyond all the evil I had ever wished upon my parents, the boys who had mocked my lack of manly interests and skills, the 3rd grade teacher who told me I would never be able to write cursive....all of them.
"You know..." he began. "You can hate me for a little while. But I want you to know something else, too. What happened in there...just now....changed you. You want to know why?"
"No," said a 16 year-old boy who'd already had enough humiliation to last a lifetime.
"I'll tell you why. Because that was the worst thing you could ever imagine happening in that situation. You finally got the nerve to do that in front of people and the only thing in your head was 'Please, God, don't let me humiliate myself.' Now that it's happened, maybe you can focus on what you're doing and not on what you're afraid might happen. Look....you're still here. And those people in there...those kids....they will only think more of you if you walk back in there and finish what you started."
So I did. I don't know why. And I don't know how. I went on to a long involvement in the theatre - amateur theatre. I became a student body leader with a flair for oratory in college. I became a teacher with a gift for communicating foreign languages. I traveled the world and sang as part of a small ensemble. I finished my career giving executive training sessions for one of the largest privately-held companies in the country. And Sam was right. It changed my life. My self-confidence soared and never faltered. The pendulum had swung to its polar opposite and stuck there...until just recently when it started inching its way back to stasis.
Sam? Sam Johnson? I don't know where you are right now. You told us when you retired that you had never owned a lawn mower, a subcription to Better Homes and Gardens and a bunch of other things that didn't make sense to 100 teenagers who couldn't imagine life without you. But I thought I owed you some tribute in this process as a man who made it possible for me to see through sadness and humiliation to a possibility that exists only by faith. If you did for anyone else what you did for me, may it come back to you 100-fold. And may some of your old magic help me through this time. Bad Boys have been the theme of late. But you.... You were the original Good Guy.
Thanks for that.
"Other than being retarded and a wannabe prick, alcoholic, or sex addict?" I thought to myself. If anything will keep you from thinking aloud, it's therapy. So I said that being three years removed from my career probably gave me a lot more time to think about such things. He asked some other questions:
"Are you judgemental?"
"Hell yes. And about 90% of the time, I'd say my judgement proves true."
I talked about how, despite the grimmer aspects of my early years, there came a point where the pendulum of self-confidence took a decided swing to the opposite end of its trajectory and ultimately gave me some platform from which to fling judgements. Since the day it happened, I have continued to tell that story. It's the one that changed my life as much as Coming Out, a successful career, or even AIDS. It happened in 1981. His name was Sam Johnson.
I was a Junior in High School. I was in the gymnasium being humored by the gymnastics coach who let me flail around as part of the J.V. team because my cousin, who was REALLY good, was on varsity. And I didn't take up much space. My best friend, Trudy, showed up at the gym door one day and insisted that I come down the hall to read a part in a skit she was to perform for the school's Forensics Coach. Her partner had high-tailed it for some reason and she was due to prove herself capable for an upcoming tournament. (Forensics, for you novices, is the competitive form of speaking, acting, etc. - not high school-level autopsies.) Dedicated as I was to my flailing, I was excused to bail out my friend in need.
Now, I did not speak in public. I didn't speak a lot in private. Speaking was something that had not come easily to me and so I minimized its use fearing that I might exhaust the mileage on whatever I'd developed. I hadn't exactly understood that I was supposed to read - out loud - in front of a teacher - and whoever else passed by - the part of Adam in a cute little revision of he and Eve having a spat in the Garden of Eden. It didn't hit me until Trudy and I stood shoulder to shoulder and that man, Sam Johnson, stared me down and said, "Go." I have zero recollection of what took place in the ensuing moments.
My memory picks up with Sam Johnson leading me by the elbow to the school office where he commandeered a secretary and forcibly changed my next semester's schedule from Botany to Forensics. I wasn't quite sure what the future had in store, but it gave me a stomach ache for the next two months.
Taking my place in Forensics class, I was paired with a boy named Jamie (bless his heart) to perform a duet acting piece cut from the Monty Python skit "The Argument Clinic". I couldn't recite more than 5 words of that cutting to you today. But the five I remember would change me in a way that still boggles the mind. Now, in our school, Forensics was IT. Football was big, Basketball was cool, but the Arts had this weird prominence you don't see anymore outside of the few schools that specialize in them. Our Forensics class had approximately 60 people. And it was the novice class. Jamie and I memorized our bit and the day came where we were to perform it for the class. Two hard plastic chairs took their place of prominence at the front of this increasingly cavernous room and we took our places near them to begin...
Again, I cannot recite to you much of this piece, but it clipped right along until I said the line,
"Look! You just contradicted me!"
"Say that again?" came the polite request from Mr. Johnson at the back of the room.
"Look! You just contradicted me," I complied.
"One more time?" he repeated
"LOOK! You just contradicted me," and my mind began to melt into a primordial mush. The number of people in the room seemed to multiply exponentially by the second. And they all seemed really big and really close. Even the walls seemed to be tilting inward.
"AGAIN!", he boomed "And this time ENUNCIATE!" This was so far from a polite request that Mother Theresa would have caned him.
"LOOK! (huff, huff) You just con-tra-dic-ted me!" I exaggerated.
"AGAIN!"
If grown up words had been a ready part of my vocabulary at 16, he would have heard them all. Instead, I felt my face flush and that horrifying catch in my throat that signaled bad things were about to happen - at least from the neck up and quite possibly from the waist down.
"LOO..." and it happened. My voice broke and the dam behind my eyes gave way. My humiliation had reached its apex. I turned around, found the doorknob and gracelessly let myself out of the room. I sat along the wall in the hallway pondering how I would live the next year and a half having openly cried in high school. Sam let me stew for about 15 minutes. While I had my eyes closed wishing, the way you do, that time would turn back, that I would be magically transported to another country, to the perfect family, where I could do more than flail in gymnastics and had never cried in high school, Mr. Johnson sat down next to me on the wall. He didn't even have to speak. I hated him beyond all the evil I had ever wished upon my parents, the boys who had mocked my lack of manly interests and skills, the 3rd grade teacher who told me I would never be able to write cursive....all of them.
"You know..." he began. "You can hate me for a little while. But I want you to know something else, too. What happened in there...just now....changed you. You want to know why?"
"No," said a 16 year-old boy who'd already had enough humiliation to last a lifetime.
"I'll tell you why. Because that was the worst thing you could ever imagine happening in that situation. You finally got the nerve to do that in front of people and the only thing in your head was 'Please, God, don't let me humiliate myself.' Now that it's happened, maybe you can focus on what you're doing and not on what you're afraid might happen. Look....you're still here. And those people in there...those kids....they will only think more of you if you walk back in there and finish what you started."
So I did. I don't know why. And I don't know how. I went on to a long involvement in the theatre - amateur theatre. I became a student body leader with a flair for oratory in college. I became a teacher with a gift for communicating foreign languages. I traveled the world and sang as part of a small ensemble. I finished my career giving executive training sessions for one of the largest privately-held companies in the country. And Sam was right. It changed my life. My self-confidence soared and never faltered. The pendulum had swung to its polar opposite and stuck there...until just recently when it started inching its way back to stasis.
Sam? Sam Johnson? I don't know where you are right now. You told us when you retired that you had never owned a lawn mower, a subcription to Better Homes and Gardens and a bunch of other things that didn't make sense to 100 teenagers who couldn't imagine life without you. But I thought I owed you some tribute in this process as a man who made it possible for me to see through sadness and humiliation to a possibility that exists only by faith. If you did for anyone else what you did for me, may it come back to you 100-fold. And may some of your old magic help me through this time. Bad Boys have been the theme of late. But you.... You were the original Good Guy.
Thanks for that.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Riding The Short Bus
So my therapist says, "You're kind of retarded when it comes to being in love."
I know that's what he said because I wrote it down when he said it. "...retarded..." I instantly conjured an image of myself riding a shortened school bus, wearing a protective helmet and drool bib, on the way to the 7th Grade Boy/Girl Mixer. I think I know that he didn't mean retarded in that sense. But I have enough doubt about it that I'll dwell on it for the next week. At least.
He harkened back to some memories I'd shared in earlier sessions. They included snippets of events or recalled impressions from very early in my childhood: my mother grousing about trying to retrieve the "speech bulb" from my throat, being mocked for pronouncing the neighbor girl's name "Wanda" instead of her correct name, "Rhonda", and vague impressions that my disabilities - minor as they were - had imposed a bothersome inconvenience on all concerned. He referred to Freud and lack of mother-love and whatnot and I had to stop him there.
"I think that's a cop out, " I said. And I believe that. I've said a hundred times that people of a certain age have had ample opportunity to choose who they will be and how they will live -- either because of earlier events or in spite of them. And I chose, I had thought, to live in spite of them. No laying of blame. No avoiding responsibility. This is my show, I wrote it, I'm the star and if it flops, it flops because of me. I won't be a cliche of the 70's and blame my mother for what ails me. Nor will I lie on that damned couch. I do just fine sitting up, thank you.
We talked briefly about Bad Boys and his theory that we look for a part of ourselves in the people we date, so I must identify in myself something "Bad". "How are you bad?", he asked. I was bereft of a satisfactory answer, to be completely honest. I acknowledged that once upon a long time ago, I would have considered being gay, being sexually adventurous (to put it tactfully), etc. to be "bad" but that I certainly don't today. So he left me to ponder for the week how bad I am. Along with how retarded I am. This therapy thing is taking its toll.
I mentioned upon arrival that I had lost all semblance of a sex drive since beginning these sessions. "I don't know if it's YOU, the PROCESS or just the introspection," I said. But honest to Pete, I haven't even had the vaguest interest in some fairly decent offers over the past few weeks. This cannot continue for long or therapy is going to become a distant memory cast off in favor of a quickie with the first man who will stand still long enough to complete the act. "That's because this IS sex for you," he said. "Well, that's just creepy, " I replied and wondered, once again, if either one of us thought the other one was hitting on him. For the record, I haven't been called retarded during sex very many times, so something about this metaphor isn't working for me.
The Good Doctor posited his view that society imparts to us an expectation that coupling is the only way to fulfill one's life. He also volunteered that he, personally, does not share that view. "Nor do I," I offered. And for proof, I admitted to journaling (I did not admit to blogging, since exhibitionism is not yet a topic we need to inject into our 50 minutes of name-calling). I produced the last few paragraphs of the entry "Is This Hard?". I got exactly one and one-half sentences into reading when my voice cracked and I felt my heart filling my throat. By the time I'd finished, I was a mess and looked up to see The Good Doctor with a face full of salt water, as well. Great. Now I've sent my therapist into therapy. This can't be good. I warned him that it was on the outskirts of possibility that he could end up in a book. He assured me it was at least as likely that I would end up a case study in his own. Super. Now I'm screwed up enough to get a starring role in a shrink manual. It's becoming less and less a mystery why I'm still single.
I apologized for having lost it and explained that I just don't do that sort of thing. I hadn't cracked up when I wrote it. I hadn't teared up when I read it several times prior. And I hadn't even blinked when they told me that I had AIDS on January 2, 1998. He comforted me by telling me that this was, in all probability, my very own Midlife Crisis. Some guys get a convertible. Some guys run naked with a trophy wife. I get therapy and a blog. Screwed again am I.
In the final semester of college prior to my student teaching assignment, there was a required course named "Psychology of the Exceptional Child". The class explored the role of every teacher in the education of both the terribly bright and the sadly deprived when it comes to intellect. The first day of class, 40 of us sat there reminding ourselves that there are certain words we should remember not to use in Professor Nick's presence, since he was a PhD in dealing with "special" kids and all. The prof flounced into the room (he may be the first Obviously Gay Man I ever identified), set his books on the front table and pronounced,
I know that's what he said because I wrote it down when he said it. "...retarded..." I instantly conjured an image of myself riding a shortened school bus, wearing a protective helmet and drool bib, on the way to the 7th Grade Boy/Girl Mixer. I think I know that he didn't mean retarded in that sense. But I have enough doubt about it that I'll dwell on it for the next week. At least.
He harkened back to some memories I'd shared in earlier sessions. They included snippets of events or recalled impressions from very early in my childhood: my mother grousing about trying to retrieve the "speech bulb" from my throat, being mocked for pronouncing the neighbor girl's name "Wanda" instead of her correct name, "Rhonda", and vague impressions that my disabilities - minor as they were - had imposed a bothersome inconvenience on all concerned. He referred to Freud and lack of mother-love and whatnot and I had to stop him there.
"I think that's a cop out, " I said. And I believe that. I've said a hundred times that people of a certain age have had ample opportunity to choose who they will be and how they will live -- either because of earlier events or in spite of them. And I chose, I had thought, to live in spite of them. No laying of blame. No avoiding responsibility. This is my show, I wrote it, I'm the star and if it flops, it flops because of me. I won't be a cliche of the 70's and blame my mother for what ails me. Nor will I lie on that damned couch. I do just fine sitting up, thank you.
We talked briefly about Bad Boys and his theory that we look for a part of ourselves in the people we date, so I must identify in myself something "Bad". "How are you bad?", he asked. I was bereft of a satisfactory answer, to be completely honest. I acknowledged that once upon a long time ago, I would have considered being gay, being sexually adventurous (to put it tactfully), etc. to be "bad" but that I certainly don't today. So he left me to ponder for the week how bad I am. Along with how retarded I am. This therapy thing is taking its toll.
I mentioned upon arrival that I had lost all semblance of a sex drive since beginning these sessions. "I don't know if it's YOU, the PROCESS or just the introspection," I said. But honest to Pete, I haven't even had the vaguest interest in some fairly decent offers over the past few weeks. This cannot continue for long or therapy is going to become a distant memory cast off in favor of a quickie with the first man who will stand still long enough to complete the act. "That's because this IS sex for you," he said. "Well, that's just creepy, " I replied and wondered, once again, if either one of us thought the other one was hitting on him. For the record, I haven't been called retarded during sex very many times, so something about this metaphor isn't working for me.
The Good Doctor posited his view that society imparts to us an expectation that coupling is the only way to fulfill one's life. He also volunteered that he, personally, does not share that view. "Nor do I," I offered. And for proof, I admitted to journaling (I did not admit to blogging, since exhibitionism is not yet a topic we need to inject into our 50 minutes of name-calling). I produced the last few paragraphs of the entry "Is This Hard?". I got exactly one and one-half sentences into reading when my voice cracked and I felt my heart filling my throat. By the time I'd finished, I was a mess and looked up to see The Good Doctor with a face full of salt water, as well. Great. Now I've sent my therapist into therapy. This can't be good. I warned him that it was on the outskirts of possibility that he could end up in a book. He assured me it was at least as likely that I would end up a case study in his own. Super. Now I'm screwed up enough to get a starring role in a shrink manual. It's becoming less and less a mystery why I'm still single.
I apologized for having lost it and explained that I just don't do that sort of thing. I hadn't cracked up when I wrote it. I hadn't teared up when I read it several times prior. And I hadn't even blinked when they told me that I had AIDS on January 2, 1998. He comforted me by telling me that this was, in all probability, my very own Midlife Crisis. Some guys get a convertible. Some guys run naked with a trophy wife. I get therapy and a blog. Screwed again am I.
In the final semester of college prior to my student teaching assignment, there was a required course named "Psychology of the Exceptional Child". The class explored the role of every teacher in the education of both the terribly bright and the sadly deprived when it comes to intellect. The first day of class, 40 of us sat there reminding ourselves that there are certain words we should remember not to use in Professor Nick's presence, since he was a PhD in dealing with "special" kids and all. The prof flounced into the room (he may be the first Obviously Gay Man I ever identified), set his books on the front table and pronounced,
"On the first day of school, they hold an assembly where they recognize all the teams. Out come the football players - everyone cheers. Out comes the basketball team - everyone cheers. I think they should haul out the RETARDS so everyone can cheer for them, too."
Forty hands clutched forty imaginary strings of pearls. Forty mouths hung open. Forty gasps formed a Greek Chorus of horror at his having used the very word we had reminded ourselves never to use in his presence. Professor Nick explained, in so many words, "If you're ever going to help these kids, you need to get over your politically correct ideas of who they are and what they can do. They will drool. They can't read. They may pee in your class. If you can't handle the word "RETARD", how will you ever handle the reality of one? How will you help him learn?"
Well....Here I am... Football team to the left, basketball team to the right and me, The Love Retard.
Cheer, dammit.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Is This Hard?
So my therapist says to me, "I think you censor yourself when you're here."
No one who has ever been within 100 ft. of the sound of my booming voice has ever made such an observation. For better or for worse, I'm the person you consciously fear might say something about your vibrator incident when I meet your mother. Or who might tell the truth in a eulogy. Or who might object, during the traditional opening, as to why these two should not be joined in Holy Matrimony. Now, I have never done any of these things. But everyone who knows me well suspects strongly that they're in my arsenal of things I MIGHT do. So I don't censor myself. Much. Certainly not in this near perfect stranger's office.
As we say in Mayberry, "Them's fightin' words." So I took off my bifocals, for effect as much as function, and leaned forward to signal the Taking Off Of The Gloves. This was much less entertaining before I got glasses last year. One of the nice things about aging ungracefully is that your props get better. First it's the glasses. Then you might have a cane to knee-cap an offender, a walker to take someone down, loose dentures to stop a conversation, or even a hair piece to fling in disgust. So I like my new prop. And I use it frequently.
"OK," I said, "You want un-censored? Here goes..." It bothered me that he didn't appear menaced because I was doing my best menacing shtick. They must teach you in Therapist School that when someone takes off their bifocals, just stand your ground. "I came into this world with birth defects: something was wrong with my face. I was in speech therapy from the age of 2 and until I was 6, my family had to translate every word I said to outsiders. My 18 year-old mother had to feed me from a cup as an infant and for several years had to fish an appliance out of my throat that helped me speak. I was the small, vaguely effeminate and un-athletic child through school whose father had expected something entirely different when he saw the penis on the sonogram. In my 20's, I lost the hearing on one side of my head. And in my 30's, I joined the millions of people who learned what AIDS is about up close and personal."
I sat back, satisfied that I had laid out the litany of offenses not only in chronological order but without benefit of bifocals. I put them back on my nose and said, "But that's not the point." And it's not. The point, as I rambled on, is that I have seen these things in my day and came out on the other end a person I like. And that people seem to like. I offer up the litany not as explanation, but as a standard, I think. As I told The Good Doctor, I've managed all of this stuff and can carry it just fine on my own. I've decided who I wanted to be and I stuck to my guns. If the litany explains nothing else, it may shed light on why I find weakness in other people to be a thoroughly repugnant quality. If Mr. Right comes along, I explained to the Doc, he has to be at least THIS strong. I refer you to the words of a famous philosopher,
"I want a man to stand beside me. (Not in front of or behind me.) Give me two arms that want to hold me - not own me... I'm not lookin' for a fantasy. I want a man who stands beside me" (OK, JoDee Messina is not a famous philosopher, but she should be. And she has great hair.)
In the post-session re-hash with Joe and the boys, the wine flowed freely. Someone, Tremaine maybe, suggested that this is just an incarnation (gotta love them half-assed drunk Buddhists) where I explore frustration in love to its outer limits. He needs to not drink as much in re-hash, because that did not help things. Having imbibed my share, I think I blurted out something about how nice it would be to have somebody big and strong to help carry all the crap occasionally. Not a lot. Just a little. Because I'm getting older. And I'm tired. It's been 41 1/2 years (My Therapist Says that you can stop adding the halves after you're 10, but I use it for emphasis.) and not once have I managed to accomplish this most basic of mammalian tendencies: mating.
Oh, I have mated for a moment, an hour, an evening, a weekend, a few months at most. But not once have I done The Big One. And it's not that I'm too ugly. I see uglier people by far who are coupled. Ditto for the lame, the maimed, the halt, the dumb (both meanings), the deaf, the blind, the fat, the thin, the old, the young (often together), the stupid, the bright, the rich and the poor. I personally know some loathsome human beings who couple up as easily as one would pick a pair of shoes. So there is something about this act that seems so instinctual to everyone else that utterly and completely bewilders me. And it's getting tiring. I'm just tired. I would like this not to be so hard.
I explained to The Boys that I haven't always wanted to be half of a duo. In fact, most of the time, I've specifically avoided it. I just always thought that when I changed my mind, the opportunity would present itself within a reasonable period of time and I'd take my place in the pantheon of partners, buy more cardigans, look into adoption, and learn how to cook the perfect pot roast. The real hitch this time around, I gurgled through my wine, is that I'd always been able to find my way back to I Like Being Alone after an aborted relationship. But this time, the map is nowhere to be found and it's a little disconcerting. More than a little.
So if you're out there....now is a pretty good time to make yourself known. My cards are on the table. Deal, already. And it's about time you coughed up an ace or two.
No one who has ever been within 100 ft. of the sound of my booming voice has ever made such an observation. For better or for worse, I'm the person you consciously fear might say something about your vibrator incident when I meet your mother. Or who might tell the truth in a eulogy. Or who might object, during the traditional opening, as to why these two should not be joined in Holy Matrimony. Now, I have never done any of these things. But everyone who knows me well suspects strongly that they're in my arsenal of things I MIGHT do. So I don't censor myself. Much. Certainly not in this near perfect stranger's office.
As we say in Mayberry, "Them's fightin' words." So I took off my bifocals, for effect as much as function, and leaned forward to signal the Taking Off Of The Gloves. This was much less entertaining before I got glasses last year. One of the nice things about aging ungracefully is that your props get better. First it's the glasses. Then you might have a cane to knee-cap an offender, a walker to take someone down, loose dentures to stop a conversation, or even a hair piece to fling in disgust. So I like my new prop. And I use it frequently.
"OK," I said, "You want un-censored? Here goes..." It bothered me that he didn't appear menaced because I was doing my best menacing shtick. They must teach you in Therapist School that when someone takes off their bifocals, just stand your ground. "I came into this world with birth defects: something was wrong with my face. I was in speech therapy from the age of 2 and until I was 6, my family had to translate every word I said to outsiders. My 18 year-old mother had to feed me from a cup as an infant and for several years had to fish an appliance out of my throat that helped me speak. I was the small, vaguely effeminate and un-athletic child through school whose father had expected something entirely different when he saw the penis on the sonogram. In my 20's, I lost the hearing on one side of my head. And in my 30's, I joined the millions of people who learned what AIDS is about up close and personal."
I sat back, satisfied that I had laid out the litany of offenses not only in chronological order but without benefit of bifocals. I put them back on my nose and said, "But that's not the point." And it's not. The point, as I rambled on, is that I have seen these things in my day and came out on the other end a person I like. And that people seem to like. I offer up the litany not as explanation, but as a standard, I think. As I told The Good Doctor, I've managed all of this stuff and can carry it just fine on my own. I've decided who I wanted to be and I stuck to my guns. If the litany explains nothing else, it may shed light on why I find weakness in other people to be a thoroughly repugnant quality. If Mr. Right comes along, I explained to the Doc, he has to be at least THIS strong. I refer you to the words of a famous philosopher,
"I want a man to stand beside me. (Not in front of or behind me.) Give me two arms that want to hold me - not own me... I'm not lookin' for a fantasy. I want a man who stands beside me" (OK, JoDee Messina is not a famous philosopher, but she should be. And she has great hair.)
In the post-session re-hash with Joe and the boys, the wine flowed freely. Someone, Tremaine maybe, suggested that this is just an incarnation (gotta love them half-assed drunk Buddhists) where I explore frustration in love to its outer limits. He needs to not drink as much in re-hash, because that did not help things. Having imbibed my share, I think I blurted out something about how nice it would be to have somebody big and strong to help carry all the crap occasionally. Not a lot. Just a little. Because I'm getting older. And I'm tired. It's been 41 1/2 years (My Therapist Says that you can stop adding the halves after you're 10, but I use it for emphasis.) and not once have I managed to accomplish this most basic of mammalian tendencies: mating.
Oh, I have mated for a moment, an hour, an evening, a weekend, a few months at most. But not once have I done The Big One. And it's not that I'm too ugly. I see uglier people by far who are coupled. Ditto for the lame, the maimed, the halt, the dumb (both meanings), the deaf, the blind, the fat, the thin, the old, the young (often together), the stupid, the bright, the rich and the poor. I personally know some loathsome human beings who couple up as easily as one would pick a pair of shoes. So there is something about this act that seems so instinctual to everyone else that utterly and completely bewilders me. And it's getting tiring. I'm just tired. I would like this not to be so hard.
I explained to The Boys that I haven't always wanted to be half of a duo. In fact, most of the time, I've specifically avoided it. I just always thought that when I changed my mind, the opportunity would present itself within a reasonable period of time and I'd take my place in the pantheon of partners, buy more cardigans, look into adoption, and learn how to cook the perfect pot roast. The real hitch this time around, I gurgled through my wine, is that I'd always been able to find my way back to I Like Being Alone after an aborted relationship. But this time, the map is nowhere to be found and it's a little disconcerting. More than a little.
So if you're out there....now is a pretty good time to make yourself known. My cards are on the table. Deal, already. And it's about time you coughed up an ace or two.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
I'm The Hen
"That's because you're the hen," my friend said, in the spirit of imparting tablets hauled down from the mount.
"I'm the what?"
"The hen. He's the rooster and you're the hen."
"I'm not a hen. I'm at least a....well...not a hen," I protested weakly.
Joe elaborated on the notion that The Last One and I hadn't worked out because, while we apparently shared a genus and species (fowl, I take it), we did not share a vision. The zoological approach to finding Mr. Right hadn't ever really dawned on me. Bears I knew. Pigs I knew (and how!). And there's the ubiquitous Dog that we all have on our résumé. But hen? Had I not made a pact with myself not to be truly offended when I asked for honest feedback, I'd have really had my feathers ruffled.
Joe's Theory of Barnyard Fowl as it pertains to my most recent failed attempt at conjugation goes something like this: The Rooster feels entitled to have his pick of the hens...all of the hens...all of the time. The Hen is supposed to accept the fact that one Rooster can fulfill the Rooster Job Description in any coop by single-handedly nailing all the hens on a regular basis. Woe, however, unto the hen who objects to the extra-curricular roostering. That hen is put out of the coop. Or worse....doesn't get called back.
There is minimal foundation for this theory, so I continue to mull it. The Rooster had been trying to woo me for 2 years (not daily....refer to The Calling Plan) off and on while living with a Hen. I declined on the basis that I am, to continue the metaphor, a One Man Hen. So when the The Last One's Hen was revealed to have been entertaining other Roosters on the side, The Rooster himself was sent into therapy at the shock of the notion and The Hen migrated south (on Southwest, evidently, since we all know hens don't fly....much). Enter yours truly some months later. Wine and roses, empty promises and flat out lies ensued....and a few months later, the Rooster is on Southwest rejoining the Hen who would cluck around around on him and rejecting the Hen who just wanted to hang out for a while. I clearly do not understand chickens.
Nor do I understand why I must be The Hen. I don't feel like a Hen. OK, so I have a prominent nose that has been compared to a beak, I give you that. And I have been told that I have chicken legs. But not since the 80's have I stood my hair straight up at the forehead, so the resemblance stops there. But I know that I like the cocky swagger of a rooster and since roosters don't tend to mate with anything but hens, I guess I must be, on some level, a Hen. And Hens, Joe tells me, aren't supposed to notice or care that Roosters do what it is that Roosters do. They aren't supposed to point out that the Rooster hasn't called in several days, failed not only to attend the romantic getaway he suggested (but also failed to offer up his half of the rather expensive jaunt), or offered anything remotely resembling kindness outside the bedroom. Hens are to take criticism for their driving and should not offer to pay for meals because that bruises a Rooster's ego (even when the Rooster has no money and has said so twice on the way to brunch). Most of all, Hens who squawk about not having had contact in two weeks after letting the Rooster do "that" in "that" position that no other Rooster even got close to attempting.....are Hens to be put out of the proverbial coop.
It leaves me to wonder....if it's true at all... Once a Hen always a Hen? That would suck. Perhaps if I sit here in the back room and pluck feathers one-by-one (flash on Glenn Close clicking the light off and on), I can de-Hen myself. That should be attractive. I liked this story a whole lot better when he was just a creep and I was an unwitting, but fairly together, person who got caught in his dysfunctional crossfire. So to all my friends, for future reference....the animal comparisons cause me no small amount of pondering. I could use my time more productively. Whatever happened to good old commiserating where friends pick sides and agree that the other side should rot in the underworld from something slow, painful and debilitating?
"You're the Hen," Joe repeated, and went to get me another glass of wine.
"I'm the what?"
"The hen. He's the rooster and you're the hen."
"I'm not a hen. I'm at least a....well...not a hen," I protested weakly.
Joe elaborated on the notion that The Last One and I hadn't worked out because, while we apparently shared a genus and species (fowl, I take it), we did not share a vision. The zoological approach to finding Mr. Right hadn't ever really dawned on me. Bears I knew. Pigs I knew (and how!). And there's the ubiquitous Dog that we all have on our résumé. But hen? Had I not made a pact with myself not to be truly offended when I asked for honest feedback, I'd have really had my feathers ruffled.
Joe's Theory of Barnyard Fowl as it pertains to my most recent failed attempt at conjugation goes something like this: The Rooster feels entitled to have his pick of the hens...all of the hens...all of the time. The Hen is supposed to accept the fact that one Rooster can fulfill the Rooster Job Description in any coop by single-handedly nailing all the hens on a regular basis. Woe, however, unto the hen who objects to the extra-curricular roostering. That hen is put out of the coop. Or worse....doesn't get called back.
There is minimal foundation for this theory, so I continue to mull it. The Rooster had been trying to woo me for 2 years (not daily....refer to The Calling Plan) off and on while living with a Hen. I declined on the basis that I am, to continue the metaphor, a One Man Hen. So when the The Last One's Hen was revealed to have been entertaining other Roosters on the side, The Rooster himself was sent into therapy at the shock of the notion and The Hen migrated south (on Southwest, evidently, since we all know hens don't fly....much). Enter yours truly some months later. Wine and roses, empty promises and flat out lies ensued....and a few months later, the Rooster is on Southwest rejoining the Hen who would cluck around around on him and rejecting the Hen who just wanted to hang out for a while. I clearly do not understand chickens.
Nor do I understand why I must be The Hen. I don't feel like a Hen. OK, so I have a prominent nose that has been compared to a beak, I give you that. And I have been told that I have chicken legs. But not since the 80's have I stood my hair straight up at the forehead, so the resemblance stops there. But I know that I like the cocky swagger of a rooster and since roosters don't tend to mate with anything but hens, I guess I must be, on some level, a Hen. And Hens, Joe tells me, aren't supposed to notice or care that Roosters do what it is that Roosters do. They aren't supposed to point out that the Rooster hasn't called in several days, failed not only to attend the romantic getaway he suggested (but also failed to offer up his half of the rather expensive jaunt), or offered anything remotely resembling kindness outside the bedroom. Hens are to take criticism for their driving and should not offer to pay for meals because that bruises a Rooster's ego (even when the Rooster has no money and has said so twice on the way to brunch). Most of all, Hens who squawk about not having had contact in two weeks after letting the Rooster do "that" in "that" position that no other Rooster even got close to attempting.....are Hens to be put out of the proverbial coop.
It leaves me to wonder....if it's true at all... Once a Hen always a Hen? That would suck. Perhaps if I sit here in the back room and pluck feathers one-by-one (flash on Glenn Close clicking the light off and on), I can de-Hen myself. That should be attractive. I liked this story a whole lot better when he was just a creep and I was an unwitting, but fairly together, person who got caught in his dysfunctional crossfire. So to all my friends, for future reference....the animal comparisons cause me no small amount of pondering. I could use my time more productively. Whatever happened to good old commiserating where friends pick sides and agree that the other side should rot in the underworld from something slow, painful and debilitating?
"You're the Hen," Joe repeated, and went to get me another glass of wine.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Bad Boys
Once in a blue moon, something becomes clear that, when fully illuminated in the light of therapeutic mumbo jumbo, makes you feel damn silly that it hadn't occurred to you for less than $110 an hour. This is one of those things.
The Good Doctor and I have been exploring the fact that I tend to date a particular silhouette. No, really. As long as the silhouette of a man fits the cut-out in my mind, I will follow himmmm...follow him wherever HEEE may gooooo. (Apologies to Little Peggy March...and shame on whoever named her Little Peggy March.) The silhouette, as alluded to in the first entry, is about 6'4", 240 lbs, bald (shaving counts - and is a plus, in case I change my mind), goateed, reflective sun glasses, combat boots....you get the picture. It matters not if both eyes are on the same side of his head, if his nose is missing or if his toes outnumber his teeth. If the silhouette is intact, I'm a goner. This stereotype (complete with swagger and cigarette) is commonly known as The Bad Boy.
My closest friends will attest (I would ask them to swear on a Bible, but most of them don't own one or don't believe in it) that if you were to line up 100 men against a wall: 99 C.P.A.'s and 1 drug-dealing axe murderer, only the axe murderer would catch my eye. They're right, of course. I've proven it in public numerous times. And because the silhouette blinds me to all red flags that a normal person would see, I end up dating the emotional equivalent of an autistic dingo. After 20-some years, it has finally occurred to me....Bad Boys Are Really Bad.
I think on some level I wanted to believe that after a date in leather chaps and boots, my hefty hunk went home, slapped on a toupêe and a cardigan and resumed his quiet life as a librarian and would call about every-other-day just to check in. This does not occur. Bad boys don't call. If you call, that's OK. But if you suggest that it would be OK for them to call, say, once a calendar year, you are an emotional trainwreck unworthy of dating Bad Boys.
Revelation 1(b) about Bad Boys came not in therapy, but in post-therapy re-hash with my friends: Bad Boys will bring wine and roses on the first date if they think it will get them laid after 2 futile years of trying to bag you with a Bad Boy line. I didn't see that one coming. This has no effect whatsoever on the Bad Boy calling plan. Your agility, flexibility, creativity and general willingness to "go there" in the sack will also not change their calling plan. I know this because the last one had "unlimited long distance", which I thought referred to his telephone, but was revealed to be a reference to the space he wished to keep between us when we weren't having above-average coitus at his place.
Bad Boys will say and do anything to nail a conquest. While you're prancing through life trying to approach men and the world as an adult, they're picking off targets like a kid at a carnival booth. And after 20-some years of picking BB's out of your butt, the light finally goes on: "Hey! This isn't fun anymore! I think I'll try therapy!" So for $110 per hour, you pick insults out of your solar plexus instead of buckshot out of your heart...and hopefully the next time we pick better. Hopefully.
(Post Script and Disclaimer: If you happen to fit the above silhouette, do not let this deter you from approaching me with empty promises of phone calls and picking up the tab for dinner. I am not so far along in therapy that I wouldn't say yes. And I could probably still get away with it, since I'm a therapeutic novice and all... My phone number is 555-.....)
The Good Doctor and I have been exploring the fact that I tend to date a particular silhouette. No, really. As long as the silhouette of a man fits the cut-out in my mind, I will follow himmmm...follow him wherever HEEE may gooooo. (Apologies to Little Peggy March...and shame on whoever named her Little Peggy March.) The silhouette, as alluded to in the first entry, is about 6'4", 240 lbs, bald (shaving counts - and is a plus, in case I change my mind), goateed, reflective sun glasses, combat boots....you get the picture. It matters not if both eyes are on the same side of his head, if his nose is missing or if his toes outnumber his teeth. If the silhouette is intact, I'm a goner. This stereotype (complete with swagger and cigarette) is commonly known as The Bad Boy.
My closest friends will attest (I would ask them to swear on a Bible, but most of them don't own one or don't believe in it) that if you were to line up 100 men against a wall: 99 C.P.A.'s and 1 drug-dealing axe murderer, only the axe murderer would catch my eye. They're right, of course. I've proven it in public numerous times. And because the silhouette blinds me to all red flags that a normal person would see, I end up dating the emotional equivalent of an autistic dingo. After 20-some years, it has finally occurred to me....Bad Boys Are Really Bad.
I think on some level I wanted to believe that after a date in leather chaps and boots, my hefty hunk went home, slapped on a toupêe and a cardigan and resumed his quiet life as a librarian and would call about every-other-day just to check in. This does not occur. Bad boys don't call. If you call, that's OK. But if you suggest that it would be OK for them to call, say, once a calendar year, you are an emotional trainwreck unworthy of dating Bad Boys.
Revelation 1(b) about Bad Boys came not in therapy, but in post-therapy re-hash with my friends: Bad Boys will bring wine and roses on the first date if they think it will get them laid after 2 futile years of trying to bag you with a Bad Boy line. I didn't see that one coming. This has no effect whatsoever on the Bad Boy calling plan. Your agility, flexibility, creativity and general willingness to "go there" in the sack will also not change their calling plan. I know this because the last one had "unlimited long distance", which I thought referred to his telephone, but was revealed to be a reference to the space he wished to keep between us when we weren't having above-average coitus at his place.
Bad Boys will say and do anything to nail a conquest. While you're prancing through life trying to approach men and the world as an adult, they're picking off targets like a kid at a carnival booth. And after 20-some years of picking BB's out of your butt, the light finally goes on: "Hey! This isn't fun anymore! I think I'll try therapy!" So for $110 per hour, you pick insults out of your solar plexus instead of buckshot out of your heart...and hopefully the next time we pick better. Hopefully.
(Post Script and Disclaimer: If you happen to fit the above silhouette, do not let this deter you from approaching me with empty promises of phone calls and picking up the tab for dinner. I am not so far along in therapy that I wouldn't say yes. And I could probably still get away with it, since I'm a therapeutic novice and all... My phone number is 555-.....)
Monday, January 23, 2006
Judith, Mama and The Good Doctor
Having crested my 41st birthday with no discernible negative effects and believing I had my proverbial shit together, I went on approximately 5 dates with a man - the denouement of which sent me spiraling into therapy (a condition I had eschewed and mocked for approximately 41 years).
This entry occurs exactly three weeks after my first appointment, so is something of a catch-up edition. The title refers to the phone calls I typically make to family and friends within minutes following each appointment. They invariably begin "So my therapist says to me...." and are followed by some excruciatingly deplorable comment or question posed by him during my session. (For the uninitiated, an hour with a therapist is 50 minutes. This came as both a logical and mathematical surprise to me. But there you go.)
Session One included the unforgettable comment by him, "I find this charming....but most people wouldn't..." And in that increment of time where the thought you formulate is longer than the time it would take to utter it, I thought, "There is no way I come out looking good at the end of this sentence." The conclusion included a comparison of me to a school marm with ruler in hand ready to knuckle-whack anyone who disagreed with me. I couldn't disagree more. And if I had a ruler, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening.... So maybe he's right. Except that he's not. I know because I asked people. Assuming they're not in the category of intimidated, weak-spined creatures who fear knuckle assaults, they confirmed my suspicion that only insecure people would be intimidated by my manner. (It occurs to me only now that this, in itself, may be an insult.) That's what therapy does to you. He made a reference to inviting "transference" so that he could experience what it is that I inflict on the rest of the world in my futile search for a lasting relationship. I thought that to be the opposite of what one wants in a therapeutic relationship, but then again my psychology classes are 20 years in the past now, so maybe things have changed.
Session Two included the vaguely complimentary comment referring to my harried upbringing and subsequent traumas, "I'm surprised you didn't turn out to be a prick....or an alcoholic." If he reads this blog, he'll probably narrow that list by half. This is also the session where he recommended the book "Necessary Losses" by Judith Viorst, a psychoanalytical primer, of sorts, that he thought (in the space of 50 minutes-times-two) was apropos of my experience. I called Mama in The City to have her pick one up at the nearest B&N. They were out, so she ordered one online from work....from Wal-Mart (which I am boycotting)...to be delivered to her home (not mine). Well enough...and helpful, I suppose....except the first chapter is about how our mothers screw us up enough in the first 90 days of life to completely alter the remaining years. I just know she read that part. Now I'm truly screwed.
Session Three was odd. I had made an over-the-shoulder comment as I was leaving the first session that if he knew anyone 6'4", 240 lbs, balding, etc. that he should feel free to give them my contact info. Ha Ha. Bye. During Session Three he noted that he, himself, fit that description. The Good Doctor bears a striking resemblance to Alfred Molina, which must be an Australian compliment of the highest order, but is not what I intend. I wondered if he was hitting on me or (worse) if he thought I was hitting on him. All I heard the rest of the fore-shortened hour was "Wa wa wa wa wa" a la Charlie Brown's teacher.
Session Four: The most recent. So my therapist says to me, "Have you slept with THOUSANDS of men?" When my reeling mind snapped back into this dimension and I had discounted assault and battery as a response option, I countered with, "I honestly don't think I have that sort of appeal." (I don't. And I haven't.) "Would you say a LOT of men?" he asked. I responded "Haven't we all?" He unflinchingly said "No. There are men who have slept with less than 10 other men." "Oh," I said, "I don't know any of those people." So apparently he's surprised that I am also not a Sex Addict. I find it increasingly troubling that I should have been a Prick, Alcoholic or Sex Addict and managed to miss out on all three. I should get to choose two retroactively -- just so the story makes sense the next time I see a therapist: "Ahhhhhh....THAT'S why you're a Prick and a Sex Addict."
This entry occurs exactly three weeks after my first appointment, so is something of a catch-up edition. The title refers to the phone calls I typically make to family and friends within minutes following each appointment. They invariably begin "So my therapist says to me...." and are followed by some excruciatingly deplorable comment or question posed by him during my session. (For the uninitiated, an hour with a therapist is 50 minutes. This came as both a logical and mathematical surprise to me. But there you go.)
Session One included the unforgettable comment by him, "I find this charming....but most people wouldn't..." And in that increment of time where the thought you formulate is longer than the time it would take to utter it, I thought, "There is no way I come out looking good at the end of this sentence." The conclusion included a comparison of me to a school marm with ruler in hand ready to knuckle-whack anyone who disagreed with me. I couldn't disagree more. And if I had a ruler, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening.... So maybe he's right. Except that he's not. I know because I asked people. Assuming they're not in the category of intimidated, weak-spined creatures who fear knuckle assaults, they confirmed my suspicion that only insecure people would be intimidated by my manner. (It occurs to me only now that this, in itself, may be an insult.) That's what therapy does to you. He made a reference to inviting "transference" so that he could experience what it is that I inflict on the rest of the world in my futile search for a lasting relationship. I thought that to be the opposite of what one wants in a therapeutic relationship, but then again my psychology classes are 20 years in the past now, so maybe things have changed.
Session Two included the vaguely complimentary comment referring to my harried upbringing and subsequent traumas, "I'm surprised you didn't turn out to be a prick....or an alcoholic." If he reads this blog, he'll probably narrow that list by half. This is also the session where he recommended the book "Necessary Losses" by Judith Viorst, a psychoanalytical primer, of sorts, that he thought (in the space of 50 minutes-times-two) was apropos of my experience. I called Mama in The City to have her pick one up at the nearest B&N. They were out, so she ordered one online from work....from Wal-Mart (which I am boycotting)...to be delivered to her home (not mine). Well enough...and helpful, I suppose....except the first chapter is about how our mothers screw us up enough in the first 90 days of life to completely alter the remaining years. I just know she read that part. Now I'm truly screwed.
Session Three was odd. I had made an over-the-shoulder comment as I was leaving the first session that if he knew anyone 6'4", 240 lbs, balding, etc. that he should feel free to give them my contact info. Ha Ha. Bye. During Session Three he noted that he, himself, fit that description. The Good Doctor bears a striking resemblance to Alfred Molina, which must be an Australian compliment of the highest order, but is not what I intend. I wondered if he was hitting on me or (worse) if he thought I was hitting on him. All I heard the rest of the fore-shortened hour was "Wa wa wa wa wa" a la Charlie Brown's teacher.
Session Four: The most recent. So my therapist says to me, "Have you slept with THOUSANDS of men?" When my reeling mind snapped back into this dimension and I had discounted assault and battery as a response option, I countered with, "I honestly don't think I have that sort of appeal." (I don't. And I haven't.) "Would you say a LOT of men?" he asked. I responded "Haven't we all?" He unflinchingly said "No. There are men who have slept with less than 10 other men." "Oh," I said, "I don't know any of those people." So apparently he's surprised that I am also not a Sex Addict. I find it increasingly troubling that I should have been a Prick, Alcoholic or Sex Addict and managed to miss out on all three. I should get to choose two retroactively -- just so the story makes sense the next time I see a therapist: "Ahhhhhh....THAT'S why you're a Prick and a Sex Addict."
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