Short Circuits

by Dorien Grey

  Eastern cultures are not nearly so concerned with the need for constant comparison; their philosophical bases are very different from ours. They tend to see the world as a level playing table. Western cultures are more likely to see the world as a ladder. It’s in our nature to look up the ladder to the next rung. Whatever we have, there’s somebody who has more: more money, more talent, more possessions, more power. And we’re never happy until we have it, too. (And then when we get it, the cycle repeats itself endlessly.) Comparisons, by their very nature, lead to dissatisfaction.

  Our society is pretty firmly rooted in greed, and as a result, the deck is stacked against the person doing the comparing. We seldom compare ourselves, or even give any consideration to—though we should—people who are a few rungs beneath us on the ladder. For far too many people, it’s not what we have, it’s what we want.

  When it comes to comparisons and the resultant problems of low self-esteem, the negative power of television has no equal. Everyone on television—both women and men—is young and beautiful, and rich, and knows exactly what to wear and how to act in any given situation. Stare at any primetime soap opera for an hour and then take a look in the mirror. Recent studies have shown—stop the presses!—that low self-esteem and many of the serious problems affecting young women, from anorexia to bulimia and on down, can be traced to the false ideals of “attractiveness” they’re constantly exposed to on TV. Wow! Talk about an “I didn’t see that one coming” revelation!

  And men are not immune. Why do you think spammers make fortunes on products guaranteed to “make her scream with pleasure” (pardon me while I projectile-vomit)? That men love porn is hardly a revelation, yet even though the men in porn movies are not the intended focus of attention, they always seem to be far above average in the “endowment” department. How can poor Sam Schlub, after watching a porn flick, expect to compete?

  Comparisons are an integral and important part of life…they act as a sort of compass guiding us through existence. But it is time we began putting things in perspective. We can start with the simple realization that each of us is only one human being trying to measure ourselves against nearly seven billion others. And with those odds, there’s absolutely no contest: you’re gonna lose. A little more self-acceptance would vastly relieve all the unnecessary grief we put ourselves through every day, and greatly simplify our lives. Then we can switch our attention to things that really matter, like whether Tiger Woods will reconcile with his wife, or whether Paris Hilton will survive her brave battle with her most recent hangnail.

  THE HUMAN FACTOR

  PHIL

  Odd how the memory of someone you’ve not thought of in years will suddenly be sitting patiently on the front steps of your mind, as though they’ve just dropped in for a visit, and you are surprised at how happy you are to see them.

  This happened with me last week when I suddenly found myself thinking of my immediate boss at Duraclean International, Phil Ward. My job at Duraclean, then located in Deerfield, Illinois, was one of the longest jobs I ever held...from 1960 to 1966. Duraclean sold franchises for a carpet and upholstery cleaning system which involved the franchisee getting down on his hands and knees and actually scrubbing the carpet. The secret to its success was in the cleaning foam, which for some reason could not be applied mechanically. I never could really understand how anyone would be willing to do it, but the company was quite successful.

  The staff was small and a really nice group of people with whom I enjoyed working. One of my most vivid memories of working there, though, was one day in…what?…1961?…when the president, Grant Mauk, who later went on to run IHOP, came around to each of us saying that the company was planning to hire a black secretary and asking if we might object. Frankly, I was astounded by the question, but the early 60s were a very different time. She was of course hired and immediately became one of the family.

  But I meant to talk about Phil, here. Phil was a very large man, heavy set, thinning hair, glasses, and a gap-toothed smile which he used often. My job at Duraclean was to put out the Duraclean Journal, the company’s trade publication for its worldwide franchisees. I was technically the Assistant Editor under Phil. I can’t recall ever having a nicer boss.

  I remember going to him one time with an article for which I couldn’t find a finish. He looked it over and said: “Have you said everything you wanted to say?” When I said “Yes,” he replied: “Then it’s finished.”

  Phil loved stories, and he had a wealth of them. He once told me of a job he’d had in which he had written an impassioned article on something or other, and titled it something like: “Framostats: Wave of the Future? Yes, say Experts.” He turned it in to his boss who so totally rewrote it that it came out with the title: “Framostats: Wave of the Future? No, say Experts.”

  Phil had an absolutely charming, very attractive wife, Shirley, and a young daughter, Pam, and Phil doted on both of them. He announced proudly one day that Pam had learned to write her name, and a week or so later said that Pam had written a letter to her grandparents. A little puzzled, I asked: “What did she say?” He looked at me calmly and replied: “Pam.”

  A year or so later, he announced that he and Shirley had gotten Pam a kitten. “It’s not much right now,” he said, “but you give it six months or so, and it’ll be good eatin’.”

  Phil’s one quirk was that he could not use the restroom without turning on all the faucets in the sinks first. And he often forgot to turn them off when he left. I have no idea why, and I never asked, of course. I figured he was entitled to an eccentricity or two.

  Having opened my own faucet of memories of Phil and Duraclean and the wonderful people who worked there and of who I was then and who I am now, I find myself tempted to just let it run. But I think I’d better turn it off for now, lest it overflow the sink and keep pouring out memories until they sweep me away.

  * * *

  SIMPLE DELIGHTS

  Yesterday I received an email. Not exactly “Stop the Presses!” news—I just checked and see that my Gmail “in” box contains 24,441 of them—but this one triggered both my Little-Boy-delight and The-Past-Is-Now buttons.

  The email was from Diane Kopp, a girl I worked with at Security Mutual Insurance Company…the second job I ever held after leaving college. Diane and I hit it off right away. She was charming and funny, and we became good friends. On a couple of occasions she joined Norm and I and some other friends on weekend trips to my parents’ cottage in Wisconsin. But as our friendship grew, I became concerned—probably wrongly—that I might be conveying the wrong signals to her, and so one day I told her that Norm and I were more than just friends. She was the first straight person to whom I admitted being gay…and I was 26 years old! (To reread that last sentence and see the word “admitted,” as though I was confessing to being an axe murderer or child molester, gives you an idea of the times in which gays and lesbians then lived.)

  Diane took it all in stride, and we remained friends after I left Security Mutual, but when I moved to Los Angeles in 1966, we lost touch. I thought of her frequently throughout the years, wondering what had happened to her, whether she’d married and had a family. But there was no way I could get in touch with her...until, 50 years later, I got her message. And once again, the fraying ties to my past were reinforced.

  I wrote her immediately, and hope we may pick up our friendship where it left off so many years ago.

  We each have special people in our lives; people who hold a unique place in our minds and hearts even though we can’t pinpoint exactly why. Diane is one of those people, and I find it hard to describe how happy I am to have heard from her. I have been, in fact, extremely lucky to have had two other such reestablishments of friendship in the past six months or so. Ted Bacino—with whom I was in Cub Scouts at St. Elizabeth’s Social Center in Rockford, Illinois, and with whom I continued being friends throughout grade school, high school, and my first two years of college before I left for t
he NavCads—and Effie Foulis, another founding member of my college “gang.”

  To reconnect with friends from long ago is, to me, indescribably comforting. It is a safety line in the increasingly blinding and frigid blizzard of years. And by clinging firmly to that rope, I can look back through the blur of years to see, however dimly, light from the windows of a world long gone, and feel the warmth it represents.

  Each reconnection with someone from my past sets off a falling-domino-like cascade of long forgotten memories. People, places, things, visual images, smells, and a myriad of tiny details spring to life. Being reminded of shared memories through the other person’s eyes also sharpens the focus. (I mentioned that Diane and I had worked together at an insurance company. It was in the Loop, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where. Diane’s note mentioned its being at Jackson and LaSalle. I still can’t picture the building, but you can be sure the next time I go to the loop, I will walk by Jackson and LaSalle and see if I can’t catch a glimpse of an oh, so much younger me going to work.)

  I’m so grateful to Effie, and Ted, and Diane, and for their friendship over all these years. There are so many more old friends out there, waiting to be found.

  It is the totally unexpected pleasant surprises, the serendipitous little pleasures and simple delights, which remind us what a precious gift we have in being alive.

  * * *

  FRIENDS AND TIME

  I had dinner the other night with my friends Franklin and Tom, with whom I have been friends for over 50 years. Tom was up visiting from Florida with his partner Mike and staying with Franklin while Franklin’s roommate is on his third or fourth trip to Thailand. Franklin himself divides his time between his condos in Chicago and Florida, and that I actually know people who casually flit off to Thailand and run back and forth between condos never ceases to amaze me.

  I met Franklin (he does not like to be called “Frank,” and I’ve actually never heard anyone do so) one weekend while I came up to Chicago from college. I was driving to a party with friends, and we got slightly lost when we saw Franklin standing at a bus stop. We pulled over and asked if he might know where the address was, and he said that is exactly where he was headed. And we have been friends ever since.

  When Norm and I moved into our apartment on Wellington (you can find a picture of it on my website, under “Photos”), we met Tom through another tenant of the building, and our little group of friends continued to grow.

  We never totally lost track of one another even in the 18 years when I lived in Los Angeles, though we saw each other very seldom.

  Franklin met his partner Ray during my first years in Chicago, and they were together for about 20 years. Ray was a great guy…tall, blond, a great sense of humor. He ultimately died after two failed kidney transplants and years of dialysis. He held the dubious distinction of being the longest-surviving patient to live solely on dialysis.

  Tom went through not one but three tragic relationships; one died in a car crash, one—another Ray—of a heart attack, a third of cancer. His current partner, Mike, is quite a few years younger than Tom, and we all hope for the best.

  Partners named Ray seem to be a common thread between us. And somehow, despite the physical distance that often exists between us, the bonds of friendship.

  Exactly what combination of events/circumstance made us friends to begin with is impossible to say, and how we have managed to stay friends after so many years, when so many other friends have come and gone, is impossible to say.

  But oddly, friendship has the qualities of both rubber bands and stones: rubber bands in that the strongest stretch the farthest; stones because they help form the very foundation of our lives. For the most part, friendship is immune to the ravages of time, which reflect themselves only in a mirror.

  I have well passed the point where some of my friends have been part of my life longer than my own parents. Incomprehensible, but true.

  For those of us without children, parents, or siblings, friends take on a special importance in that they fill the gap left by the deaths of those biologically closest to us. Friends become, in effect, family, and as I treasure my remaining biological relatives…down from parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts to cousins…I also treasure my friends, and can’t imagine what I would do without them.

  I would sincerely hope that each of you not only has your own network of a few good friends, but appreciate their value to your life.

  * * *

  A LETTER TO NORM

  I hope I might have the courage to read you this letter before it is too late, though it is far easier to write a blog for the whole world to see than it is to speak directly to the one person for whom it is intended. But to do so is to admit to myself and to tell you that I know that you are dying…which we both of course know. But avoidance is one of the silly games we humans play.

  I wanted to let you know how much you have meant to me these past 52 years, and how integral a part of my life you are.

  I remember the August night in 1958, two months out of college, when I first saw you at the Haig, a bar near Chicago’s Lawson YMCA. We didn’t speak in the bar, and you left before I did, but when I walked out, you were standing there waiting for me. We moved in together less than a month later.

  I remember how we built our couch from plywood—we painted it a high-gloss black, and used a foam pad, for which we had a cover made. I remember visiting thrift shops to buy tables and a dresser…the dresser I still use today. And I remember the 3-foot harlequin lamp we both loved when we saw it in a shop window, but could not afford it, and how, serendipitously, we found exactly the same lamp in a thrift store, its base shattered, and how we bought it and remolded the base. I had it, too, until I moved from Wisconsin to return to Chicago. I remember the small faun’s head I bought you one Christmas, which you still have.

  I remember the party we had to which I invited everyone with whom I worked at Duraclean International, and how I broke my toe while we were all dancing the hora, and how we ran out of liquor and Phil Ward drank the juice from a jar of olives.

  I remember how my parents adored you, and the time shortly after we got together when we all went to Maxwell Street and, as you and Dad were walking ahead of Mom and me, I realized “Hey, I think I love this guy.” I remember our trips to the cottage on Lake Koshkonong with our friends, and how we helped Dad build an apartment for us above the garage. I remember water-skiing, and ski trips, and the time, coming back to Chicago from the lake in my then-new red Ford Sprint convertible, you spent most of the trip rummaging through a huge bag of potato chips looking for the perfect chip.

  I remember evenings of cards and games with friends. And the one thing I remember most is that we never, in our six years together, had a really serious argument.

  Of course I also remember that it was not all idyllic. Your job took you on frequent business trips, often several weeks at a time, during which we both, being young, were promiscuous, which inevitably contributed to our parting of the ways. I remember your never wanting us to take vacations together on the basis that we were together all the time, and that I could never understand that.

  And after we broke up...it was me who broke it off because my promiscuity got out of hand…I spent, literally, the next ten years kicking myself around the block for having hurt you, because I know it did, deeply. We had little contact over the next 25 years or so, seeing one another occasionally, exchanging Christmas cards, but it was awkward for both of us.

  Yet you remained close to my parents, and were there for my dad’s funeral, but were away somewhere when Mom died and I couldn’t reach you.

  And then when I decided, after nearly 40 years, to return to Chicago, I naturally moved in with you until I could get my own place, and our friendship, minus the romance, resumed.

  You have been one of the largest stones in the foundation of my life, and I love you in a way impossible to put into words. You are my family and it is
important for you to know that. But I fear I will not be able to bring myself to say so directly to you, because to do so would be to release you, and I simply cannot do that. You’re part of who I am, and will always be.

  I will try to let you know. I promise.

  * * *

  AFTERMATH

  My friend Norm died at 12:35 a.m. Thursday, February 18. Despite explicit instructions to notify me immediately, I did not learn of it until I showed up to visit him at 2:30 in the afternoon. When I went to sign in on the visitor’s register and the receptionist could not find his name, I pretty much knew what had happened. When she went to check with a supervisor, who came out to tell me he had “passed away” (good LORD, how I detest that term!!!) I demanded to know why I had not been notified. She called the nursing supervisor, who was of course all apologies, saying “We called his brother” (in Wisconsin). That’s all well and good, lady, but you did not call me despite my having seen them write a note and my phone number as his Power of Attorney on the face of his chart.

  I later called his brother, who apologized for not having called me himself, but said he was sure they had called me. He had indeed been called at 2 a.m. and asked “what do you want us to do with the body?” He told them that I had Norm’s P.O.A. and had made all the arrangements in advance, and told them to call me. He gave them my phone number once again. They did not call. Their explanation was that the Power of Attorney had ended at the moment of his death and I therefore had no legal right to do anything at all…which apparently included being notified of his death.