What We Talk About When We Talk About Alienation

This weekend I read a book of essay/memoirs, If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter, published by Sarabande Books in 2011.  I think I must originally have learned about it from one of Band of Thebes's annual lists of the best LBGT books, and time got away from me.

Van Meter was born in 1975 and grew up in Missouri, moved to Chicago after college to come out and spent several years there, and as of the date of publication was teaching in San Francisco.  He's had a moderately successful life as a writer, with numerous publications and awards.  I was curious to learn a little about what it's like to grow up gay in the Midwest a quarter-century after I did.  We hear so much about the great changes that have taken place, so how much has really changed?

Not a lot, it seems.  Van Meter, like me, was a sissy, played with girls, hated sports.  (One of the essays describes his poor father's attempts to get him interested in baseball, which resembled my own experience in that area.)  Unlike me, he managed -- most of the time -- to convince himself he wasn't gay until he was out of college, despite ongoing and intense crushes and bursts of lust for other boys.  Although he's a writer, he seems to be a lot less bookish than I am; whatever reading he's done doesn't really make an impression in his memories.  The library seems to have been more of a hiding place for him than a source of information and hope; one important use of reading for me, as for many other bookworms I've heard about, was to reassure myself that there was a world out there more interesting than the one I grew up in, and that in time I'd escape to it.

One important difference between us: Van Meter grew up in the age of AIDS.  He remembers early TV news reports on the epidemic when he was seven or eight years old, which quite reasonably terrified him.  It made it easier for him to persuade himself that he wasn't gay when he chose to let "gay" mean dying, wasted men.  Still, as terrible as that was, my own generation had its own terrors and incitements to denial.  In retrospect I suppose I'm the odd one, because when I learned the word "homosexual" at the age of about twelve, I knew I was homosexual because I was attracted to other boys, and though I hoped those attractions would go away by themselves in time (thanks to other books that assured me homosexuality was often a phase to be outgrown), as long as I had them, I never doubted that the label applied to me.

One sentence jumped out at me, on page 161: "... I didn’t know I was gay, but I knew I was different, and I didn’t want to be that either."  This broke my heart, though it also annoyed me.  I knew I was different too, because I was smarter than most kids, and that was why I didn't fit in.  I now realize this might have been a tactic of denial on my part, displacing my difference from my homosexuality to my intellectuality, but I don't think so.  The fact that I would rather read than watch the Superbowl has little -- maybe nothing -- to do with my homosexuality.  I've known heterosexual males who had the same priorities, and I've also noticed that alienation is much more common among the young than seems to be generally recognized by people who want to see homosexuality as the only difference that counts.  (If you always felt like a misfit, you must have been gay.)

Some of the credit must go to my parents, who probably weren't very happy with my being a sissy but never discouraged my intellectual differences -- and other differences too: it is probably significant that my mother, who was also left-handed, was determined that I would not be forced into right-handedness at school.  So I grew up confident that being different wasn't itself a bad thing.  Several of my teachers were helpful too.  Some, it's true, were determined to force me into conformity, but others encouraged me to be different.  (Little did they know all my differences!)  Van Meter mentions, by the way, that his father was not only a jock but a serious reader himself; he seems to be a more complex person than the son wants to recognize.

I don't condemn Ryan Van Meter for his wish not to be different, but it seems to have made his life harder and more hopeless than it need have been, and I'm not sure he's gotten over it yet.  It may help to explain something else I noticed about his writing: its lack of anger.  Also of humor, which is probably connected when I consider the component of aggression in much humor.  The combination made If You Knew Then What I Know a slog to get through.  A lack of anger in minority writing produces a glum mush, because it accepts that being different is bad, deserved, and punishable.  Anger can be difficult to manage, but for gay men as for straight women it's important to learn to manage it.  Especially for writers.

Luckily, he's had good luck in relationships: he found a boyfriend fairly soon after he came out, and they stayed together, apparently pretty happily, for eight years.  After the first one dumped him, he found another one fairly soon.  Not bad.  In the last essay in the book he asks several of his friends, "So how do we learn to be in love?"  He reports the varying answers of several of them, most of which make good sense.  One doesn't:

Kevin … thinks it pretty ironic that pretty much the only time we get to see two gay men doing anything together is in porn, and those construction crews and corrals of cowboys just aren’t very affectionate [207].

What do you mean "we," girlene?  If Kevin "pretty much" only sees gay men together in porn, that indicates he's watching too much porn and ignoring alternatives.  There have been many non-porn same-sex love stories in cinema and literature.  None of them is the answer to Van Meter's question, but it's to his credit that he admits that there may not be one answer to it.  Kevin exhibits the same willed tunnel vision that watches a Gay Pride Parade and ignores everyone but the leathermen in assless chaps.

Who Watches the Watchers?

I went to a Latin dance party at a local restaurant/club last night, and continued a pattern that for me goes back to high school: I don't really don't know how to dance Latin style, though I like the music and I enjoy the crowds. So I watch the people who do know how to dance, have some conversation with an acquaintance or two, sometimes meet new people. I generally enjoy myself, and last night was no exception, despite a smallish crowd because of the bad weather. (The blizzard that hit the northern Midwest didn't arrive until today, but temperatures dropped and there was some snow; plus we're on the eve of Finals Week, and the town wasn't all that active last night.) It's a lot better for me than it was when I was a kid, partly because I have a lot more social experience (and, I hope, somewhat better social skills), which gives me more confidence, and partly because I'm out of the closet and no longer worry about what people will think about me.

Still, I kept thinking of a passage from Colm Toibin's 1999 novel The Blackwater Lightship, which I read last week. It's mainly the story of an Irishwoman named Helen, married with two kids, alienated from her mother (her father died of cancer when she was about 12), struggling to keep up connections with people, but not unhappy on the whole. Abruptly she learns that her younger brother Declan is seriously ill with AIDS. She'd long known that he was gay, but the diagnosis takes her by surprise. Declan wants to stay with their grandmother, who lives in a cottage near the sea, but he also calls in a couple of gay friends who've been among his main caregivers for several years. Helen has to tell both their mother and their grandmother that Declan is dying, and of course all sorts of conflicts and reconciliations take place.

One thing I liked, parenthetically, is that Declan's friends, Larry and Paul (they're not a couple, though Paul has a partner of many years), are not at all apologetic about being gay, or about being odd men out in the gathering at Granny's house. Declan's mother Lily is normally homophobically bigoted, and there's a great exchange between Lily and Paul when Declan shits his bed and Paul chases everyone out of the room to give him privacy during the cleanup.

‘How dare you speak to me the way you spoke to me in there!’ Lily stood up and faced him. ‘I don’t know what you think your place is here.’

‘Look,’ Paul said. ‘I knew as soon as I came in that Declan felt humiliated and I decided that he needed privacy and I didn’t notice him saying that he wanted you all back in when you left.’

‘As far as we are concerned you have no business here,’ Lily said.

Helen sought to interrupt her, but Lily continued. ‘Maybe it’s time you and your friend thought of taking yourselves out of here.’

‘Like now, immediately?’ Paul asked patiently. ‘Just because you want us to?’

‘As soon as you can, yes,’ Lily said.

‘And just because you want us to?’ Paul asked again.

‘Well, I do live here,’ Lily said.

‘No you don’t,’ Helen interrupted.

‘It is my mother’s house,’ Lily said.

‘Declan asked Larry and myself to come down here,’ Paul said. ‘We have, Larry more than me, the two of us have been looking after him during very difficult times when I didn’t notice his family around.’

‘We weren’t around because we were told nothing,’ Lily said.

‘I wonder why you were told nothing. Maybe you could ponder that, instead of getting in the way and making pointless arguments,’ Paul said.

Helen felt that he had gone too far, but he remained placid and in control, weighing each word he said.

‘I wasn’t in the way,’ Lily said.

‘Well, it looked that way to me,’ Paul replied.

‘I’m his mother!’ Lily shouted.

Paul shrugged. ‘He’s an adult and he has got a bad headache and he needs a drink and there’s no room for this sort of hysteria.’

‘So are you going to leave?’ Lily asked.

‘Listen, Mrs Breen,’ Paul said, ‘I’m here as long as Declan is here and you can take that as written in stone, and I’m here because he asked me to be here, and when he asked me to be here he used words and phrases and sentences about you which were not edifying and which I will not repeat. He is also concerned about you and loves you and wants your approval. He is also very sick. So stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mrs Breen. Declan stays here, I stay here, Larry stays here. One of us goes, we all go, and if you don’t believe me, ask Declan’ [222-23].

I'd love to see this story staged or filmed; I think this scene would play very well if it was properly done.

But as I say, this is parenthetical. What I was thinking of last night was this, Helen recalling her father-in-law's funeral:

No one in Hugh’s family watched things as Helen did. She looked out for a niece or nephew or cousin or aunt or brother or sister who watched everything, who took everything in as though it were not happening to them. But there was no one like that except Helen herself at this funeral; they were all involved in being themselves, and this surprised her and impressed her. She wished she had been like that at her father’s funeral instead of watching everybody, instead of observing her mother as though she were someone she had never seen before. And she wondered, as she passed the ball-alley on her way into Blackwater, how different she would be now if she had spent those days after her father died openly grieving for him. Would she be happier now? [219]

I immediately identified with Helen as I read this. But then I backed up a little. I think it's possible -- at least, I think it's possible for me -- to be both watcher and to be involved in being myself. Being one who watches everything is part being myself, after all. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with it, and I've been helped by many people who saw me watching and came to talk to and befriend me. It may be one of my strengths that I don't repel them (as Helen would have, though she too appears to be outgrowing it), but accept the attention. I still usually find it difficult to take the initiative in talking to people, though I'm getting better about that too; by the time I'm 90 I should have it all together). But those who can approach others need someone to approach, and I've been lucky that so many people have reached out to me.

Would Helen have been happier if she had openly grieved for her dead father? In the context of the novel it's hard to say. He died of cancer when cancer was still unmentionable, at least in Irish society, and even in our tell-all American society (which on the whole I prefer to the repressed tell-nothing society Helen grew up in, as did I) parents might be reluctant to tell their children about a terminal diagnosis. Helen was only about twelve when her father died. Her mother dropped the children off with Granny without explanation when he first got sick, which understandably led them to feel abandoned. Some children are more resilient and even resistant, but the fear and confusion of such a situation would derail many. The novel is hopeful about Helen's prospects for opening up in the ways she wants and needs, thanks largely to her husband Hugh and the relationship they work quite consciously at maintaining. Whether she'll make real peace with her mother is left open at the novel's end, though they've made progress. It's an interesting novel that gave me a lot to think about it. I will have to read more of Toibin, whom I've been hearing great things about for some time now.

Everybody's Unique -- Except Me

I've begun reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. Yes, the megabestseller; your Promiscuous Reader will read almost everything. Aside from the irony that the heroine/narrator announces at the outset she she's not "what anyone would call verbose" -- at the beginning of a 500-page book! -- it's going well enough. But something occurred to me.

One of the early warning signs of gayness, everyone agrees, is feeling different from other children from a very early age. This is even cited as evidence for homosexuality's being somehow inborn. But Bella tells us right away that she didn't fit in, that she'd never found a place where she belonged. The Twilight books are huge bestsellers. Many thousands (millions?) of young women identify with Bella and her alienation. Many thousands (millions?) of readers also identified with the alienated, isolated Harry Potter. So what's unusual about feeling different? If anything, it's a sign of being just like everybody else.

(Image credit -- the whole story is posted there. Click on the image above to enlarge it and make it more readable.)