Short Circuits

by Dorien Grey

  Anyway, I would ride the bus down town, go immediately to Woolworths’ soda fountain where I would have a chocolate soda (when was the last time you had a real chocolate soda? If you’re under 50, chances are you may never have had one. And is there, for that matter, a single real soda fountain left anywhere?). The soda set me back $.25, and I’d also have a hot dog (fifteen cents, if I’m not mistaken). From there I would move on to the theater of my choice, buy my ticket for fifty cents, and a order a huge bag of fresh-popped Manley’s Popcorn, which featured an elephant on the bag, for a dime. If I’d managed somehow during the week to scrape up an extra dime, I would have two bags.

  The only Coliseum seating then was found in Rome. The entire audience sat on one level, though there usually was a sloping of the floor to provide some slightly better view of the screen. Most theaters had their seats lined up directly in front of one another; only a few staggered the rows slightly so you could look over someone’s shoulder rather than at the back of their heads.

  And it was a wondrous and wonderful time, when a movie cost fifty cents and popcorn a dime.

  But as I sat in the SuperCinePlex in Rochester, Minnesota trying to get through a $3.25 bag of popcorn far smaller than the old Manley’s dime bag, and drinking my $3.25 coke and feeling very nostalgic for the old days, I remembered that back in those wondrous, magical, halcyon days, when you were diagnosed with cancer, you died.

  * * *

  TIME WAS

  My friend Gary gave me a video of the popular singing group, Il Divo, for my birthday. The fact that not only do they sing well, but two of them are achingly beautiful didn’t hurt. I was enjoying both the music and the…uh, scenery…when they launched into an Italian rendition of a song known here as “Unchained Melody,” and suddenly I was not sitting in an apartment in Chicago, watching a video, but sitting at a booth in a small bar near the beach in Pensacola, Florida, eating pizza and talking with my NavCad friend Harry Harrison and I realize the frustration of stroke victims aware of everything around them but unable to say or do anything.

  I’m really there, 54 years ago and I want so badly to let myself and Harry know that I’m there, but I can’t.

  While I can, and often do, conjure up vivid memories of the past, the most powerful of these journeys are those in which I am whiplashed through time without warning. All it takes is an out-of-nowhere thought, a totally unexpected memory, a song, a sound, a photo, and I am back with friends and lovers and family long gone.

  I’m home from college, sitting on the couch in my parents’ home on School Street in Rockford, Illinois, next to my dad, who reaches out and places his hand on my knee, giving it a sharp squeeze which evokes a yelp from me and a rebuke that “that hurts!” And I do not realize until years later that this was his way of showing that he loved me. I’d give anything to be sitting on that sofa right now, next to my dad. And this time, I would not complain.

  The sound of a passing single-engine airplane overhead will transport me instantly into the cockpit of an SNJ navy trainer, soaring over the top of a gigantic whipped-cream cumulus cloud and into a beautiful, clear valley surrounded by other clouds, looking down at the green patchwork of fields and roads and rivers far below, and I experience the same indescribable joy and wonder.

  Some of these travels back in time I make fairly frequently, but some, like the following, pop up totally unannounced after years and years. Norm and I are returning to Chicago from my parents’ cottage in my new red 1963 Ford Sprint convertible. The top is down, and Norm is sitting in the passenger’s seat, studiously rummaging through a large bag of potato chips, as if he’s looking for something. Apparently finding it, he smiles and pulls out one large, perfect potato chip, and hands it to me.

  I’m with my mother, visiting New York City sometime in the early 1960s. We are at the top of the Empire State Building, and I am being cruised by a very nice looking guy. My mother for some reason seemed to be my magnet for attracting handsome gay men, for I was never cruised more heavily, more frequently, or because of the circumstances of being with Mom and therefore unable to do anything about it, more frustratingly.

  I often refer, when looking at beautiful men, for example, to my chest hurting. And it does! It’s a combination of intense feelings of longing, too often mixed with the sorrow of the awareness of loss—that something once was and is no more, and can never be again.

  * * *

  GENERATIONS

  It’s interesting to think that each generation of mankind is a link in a chain that goes back to the beginnings of our species, and that only a few links can span a very long time.

  I think I mentioned in one blog that when I was just starting school in 1941 (probably a couple of links away in your own generational chain), a man I knew as “Mr. Bement” lived on the street behind ours. He was, as I recall him, incomprehensibly old in comparison to my then seven or eight years. He was, I believe, 90. Which meant he was born somewhere around 1853 and would have been old enough to remember the Civil War. My own grandfather Chester Fearn was born the year after the Chicago fire; my dad the year before the Titanic set sail. WWI had only been over 15 years when I myself was born.

  I think of these things and am awestruck. I am only two links in the chain of generations away from the Chicago fire. Astounding.

  Not one single person of the entire population of the planet living when Grandpa Fearn is alive today. Within a few years, the planet’s entire population when my parents were born will also be dead, and within 35 years, every single human being living on the face of the earth on the day I was born will be gone. Astonishing!

  Each succeeding generation overlaps the ones before it like the clapboard siding on a house, and the link-forming is a continuous event.

  I’ve spoken often of my fascination with cemeteries, and the sense of calm I feel when walking through one, reading the tombstones. I am aware that as I read the names on the older ones and wonder who they were, what they sounded and looked like, what they did for a living, their families, their friends, their hopes and an infinite number of other questions, that I am probably the first person in many years to have been aware that they even existed.

  I’ve occasionally, too, wished that I had somehow had children (artificial insemination only, thank you), only to realize that the main reason most people have for having children is to leave a legacy of themselves, and I do that with my writing. While children, and their children, and their children’s children on through time carry the genes of all who came before, individuals, with infinitely few exceptions, are totally lost to time within three or four generations. Family memories seldom go back beyond one’s grandparents.

  Every parent wishes the very best for his/her children. They want to protect them, and see them grow to be healthy, happy individuals. But it is inevitable that as they reach maturity, they wander off on their own and begin forming their own lives and families and histories. And it is here I feel I have something of an advantage—though the word “advantage” can certainly be questioned. The characters in my books are in effect my children, and they never change. Dick and Jonathan and Joshua are a loving, happy family, and they will remain so forever. They won’t grow old, or grow apart from me. They live in a world without time, and it is, again, time which is my principle enemy. I could not protect my real children, had I had any, from it, but I can do so for my characters, who are almost as real to me as flesh and blood offspring. And while I cannot hold them in my arms, I can hold them in my heart.

  STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

  WORST ENEMIES

  “Beat me! Beat me!” cried the masochist. “No,” replied the sadist.

  The concept of sadism, or of physical masochism, is utterly beyond my comprehension. To take pleasure from inflicting or seeking out physical pain is inconceivable to me. However, when it comes to mental masochism—to the constant and merciless berating of one’s self—I have been a lifelong practitioner, and I simply cannot break my
self of it.

  The origins of my mental masochism I’m convinced lie in my compulsion to be so very much more than I am or could ever possibly be. I began pointing out my flaws at an early age, as a rather warped means of beating other people to the punch. Rather than wait for someone else to say, as they inevitably would: “Jeezus, Margason, you suck!” I step right in and say it before they get the chance. I won’t give them the satisfaction of thinking I am not already aware of my shortcomings.

  And over time this self-deprecation became a way of life. Unfortunately, running myself down as a form of preemptive strike has, not surprisingly, been counterproductive. I’ve often told the story (and why wouldn’t I? It’s self-deprecatory) of seeing a letter one of my best friends in college had written another. In it, in mentioning me, he said, “You know, Roger keeps on telling everyone how worthless he is until eventually you begin to believe him.” That should have been a wake-up call. It wasn’t. More than 60 years later, I’m still doing it. How I have managed to get this far in life without an ulcer is a miracle.

  I’m not sure whether it could be called ironic, or perverse, or perversely ironic, but I see my self-loathing, as indicated above, as a form of reverse narcissism. I demand far, far more of myself than I expect of anyone else because…well, because I’m me! I am fascinated by—and take what, despite all my vehement protests to the contrary, has to be a…well, masochistic…delight in—my own flaws and failings. I am not fishing for denials whenever I say that I am incompetent; I truly and completely believe it, and past experience offers solid proof. Given 10,000 opportunities to do something right or to do it wrong—especially if the task involves anything with moving parts, electricity, or the internet, the odds are that I will do it wrong 9,955 times out of the 10,000. And that is a conservative figure. It is also irrefutable fact. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

  We live in an increasingly technological world. Yet when, after countless failed attempts to do something technological, someone (usually a long-suffering friend) takes me by the hand and baby-steps me to the point where I finally do it right, the chances are 9,999 to 1 that the next time I need to do exactly the same thing, I will have forgotten how to do it or, doing it exactly the way I did it before, it will not work. In fact, it is quite common for me to do even a simple task I have done without problem innumerable times before—press key A and then key B to get result C, for example. Suddenly, with absolutely no change in the way I have always done it, I will press key A and then key B and get result Z, H, R, or K…sometimes in combination. Despite the kindness of people who assure me I exaggerate my inability to comprehend the simplest of instructions, the fact is that they know not whereof they speak simply because they are not me.

  While it is sometimes difficult for most people to separate hyperbole from fact, I like to believe that I have raised incompetence to a new level…a statement perfectly demonstrating what I mean by reverse narcissism. “Nonsense,” my friends will tell me. “Everyone makes mistakes.” Yes, but the entire point of this blog is that they are allowed—even expected—to make mistakes. I am not. What I readily accept in them, I refuse to allow in myself. They are mere mortals, whereas I, while not sufficiently narcissistic to deny being mortal, am somehow…more. And if one’s value can be measured by the number of one’s flaws, I am “more,” indeed.

  So go ahead, take a look at your own flaws and failings, but don’t even try to compare them to mine: you haven’t the chance of a snowball in hell of winning.

  * * *

  THE LIKES O’ ME

  I take a certain degree of pride in the fact that I am not “normal.” I have never been “normal” and have never had the slightest interest in being so. I have, in fact, spent most of my life avoiding normalcy like the plague, and were anyone to refer to me as being “normal”—though no one ever has—I am quite sure I would be rather insulted.

  Of course, having been gay since I was five years old, I never really had much of an option. Society made it very clear that I was not like everyone else, and though I have never (until, perhaps, recent years) flaunted the fact, having witnessed what those who did flaunt it had to endure made self-evident the old saying “discretion is the better part of valor.” In the case of gays and lesbians, it was often a matter of “discretion is the better part of survival.” And because my sexual orientation is such a major part of my character, it is axiomatic that I would and never could feel “normal” in a world of people so different from myself.

  To be normal is to belong, and I have never belonged—again, largely through choice. My family, bless them, have always fully accepted me, even though they all knew I was gay long before I told them. I have heard far too many stories of individuals cast out from those they love and are supposed to love them, and every time I hear of this happening, my heart breaks for the outcast even while I am filled with renewed gratitude for having the family I have.

  There are so many things—many of them touched on in these blogs—that I honestly and sincerely do not understand, such as bigotry and hypocrisy and hatred, and blind acceptance of what other people say is right or wrong. How can people not question? How can people not see the utter lack of logic which underlies racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation prejudices?

  It is the “likes o’ mes” of the world—the outcasts, the ones who have been repeatedly told directly or indirectly but always emphatically, that they do not belong with “normal” folk…who push civilization forward. And I am embarrassed to acknowledge that while I, personally, share their attitudes and opinions, I am nowhere as brave as they in expressing them. I deeply admire and envy those who put everything on the line for the things they fervently believe in. I am not a barricade-stormer, or a flag-waver or soapbox orator. I do what I can far more quietly, through words on paper and computer monitors.

  Deeply held beliefs and how they are expressed are, like so much in life, a two-sided coin. The difference lies in whether the belief and its expression is inclusive or divisive, positive or negative. Any belief based on the denigration of others in any way is unequivocally wrong.

  I suppose, on thinking it over, that the constant strife that humanity has always endured…the wars, the conflicts, the diametrically-opposed belief systems—might be a calculated (by who or what we cannot know) means of keeping us sharp and alert as a species. Without conflict, agonizing though it often is, there would be only complacency. Conflict creates progress and keeps us moving fore.

  There must, therefore, always be people set aside for scorn and persecution, for it is they who initiate change. And it is “the likes o’ me,” I would truly love to believe, who, without shouting or fighting, can quietly hold up small arrows along the rough and twisted road to the future saying: “This way!”

  * * *

  NORMAL

  Normal, adj.: According to, constituting, or not deviating from, an established norm, rule, or principle

  Well, I’d pretty much scratched that one off my list of Things I Want To Be When I Grow Up by the time I was five. The last thing in the world I wanted, even then, was to be like everyone else, and I’ve subsequently worked very hard to avoid the pitfalls of normalcy.

  I have, perhaps unfairly to those people who are normal, always equated being normal with cookie cutters: to be normal is to do what everyone else does and think what everyone else thinks. That’s fine if being normal is an unconscious choice. But far too many people are “normal” not so much through choice but because they feel the necessity to follow the cardinal rule for normalcy: “Do what is expected of you and don’t make waves.” Again, that’s fine for those who are truly comfortable obeying rules. I do not like rules.

  Have you noticed how even social “rebels”—hippies in the 60s, rappers in the 90s and teenagers of every generation— try to prove their “difference” by looking and acting just like everyone else in their group? I have never felt the need—and certainly not the desire—to have my body covered in tatt
oos or have various body parts pierced or wear black eyeliner or spiked hair or, back when it was in vogue, a mustache, to call attention to myself. I know I’m different…I have no need to prove it to anyone. (Though, you’ll notice, I apparently have the need to tell people about it.) Not that people don’t notice I’m not quite like them, but I would hope they might have to give some thought to it before reaching the conclusion.

  I am sufficiently self-conscious not to want to be considered “abnormal,” or to be so far from what people might think of as normal that I might be pointed out in a crowd, though I am finding that the fact of aging is taking this option out of my hands: I do stand out simply because one look tells people I am no longer like them.

  Even within the range of “normal,” each of us is of course different in our own way, some through choice and some through circumstance. I vastly prefer “different by choice” to “different by circumstance.”

  I don’t consider my being gay makes me particularly “different.” For one thing it is not a matter of choice, and for another, though gays are in the distinct minority of the general population, the number of gays in the United States far exceeds the entire population of the continent of Australia. But undoubtedly being gay contributed to my aversion to the more blatant outward forms of demonstrating my lack of normalcy. Being part of a persecuted minority tended to create a deep-seated and understandable need to not be easily spotted.

  But my awareness of not being “normal” means I’ve never felt comfortable among groups of people I do not know well. Being surrounded by large groups of “normal” (read, for the most part, “heterosexual”) people can be particularly unnerving.

  If being normal is your choice, more power to you…I certainly don’t mean to be dismissive of those who freely choose normalcy. Life is infinitely easier for you, I’m sure. But there are far too many people who choose to be normal because it frees them of the need to ask questions—such as why things are as they are, or are not as they should be. To be normal is to be far more accepting of life than I am or have ever cared to be. I can and do respect normal people and perhaps even envy them a bit. But I would never, never want to be one of them!