Short Circuits (3 page)

* * *

EMOTIONS

Like almost everything else in my life, I do not respond to emotions in the way most people do. For the most part, emotions run roughshod over me. I tear up to music, and to anything I consider truly touching or sad…or joyous. I “wear my heart on my sleeve,” as they say, and I puddle up at the most inopportune moments. But interestingly, while my emotions feel free to run my life—especially anger, rage, and frustration—they refuse to respond when I really want them to. I seem to have a built in “kill switch” within me, which totally ignores me when I
want
to show them.

With every single curtain call of
Matthew Bourne's
Swan Lake
, which I've now seen ten times, I rose to my feet with the rest of the audience and wanted nothing more than to shout my approval as many others were doing. But I could not. Clapping wildly was as far as my emotions would let me go. At any number of public events, when the rest of the crowd is rocking back and forth, and waving their arms, I stand there. Just stand there. I want more than anything in the world to do as everyone else around me is doing, yet I cannot.

I weep, but I do not cry. My heart and soul respond, but my body refuses.

A friend just forwarded me a video of an English boy's chorus singing “Going Home.” I watched it, knowing, in light of my friend Norm's recent death, what my reaction would be and sure enough, with the first chords, I started to cry. “Started” being the operative word. I wanted to cry; I really did. I
needed
to cry…I needed a wracking, shoulders-shaking, uncontrollable, gasping for air cry, to wash out all the suppressed sadness and terrible sense of loss, not only for Norm but for all the losses of my life; for all the times I've wanted and needed so badly to really, really cry. But I couldn't. Something inside my brain slammed the door shut on my emotions, and that was it. I stopped crying.

The last real, real cry I can remember was at the funeral of my beloved Uncle Buck, my mom's brother. It was 1953 and I was in college. I got through the funeral with no problem until we got up to file past the casket. I didn't make it to the end of our row before I literally fell apart. It was soul-wrenching, and I've not had another like it since.

When my dad died in 1968, as I was flying back to Rockford for the funeral, I wrote a eulogy for him, and the tears ran down my face, but I did not truly cry. I was in a public place. Crying is not permitted. Men don't cry. (Of all the lessons our society teaches us, the inviolable rule that “men don't cry” is without question one of the most foolish and inhumane ever conceived.) I am fascinated when I see men crying on the news. I empathize with their loss, while I envy their ability to do what I cannot.

When my mom died, I returned from the hospital and went on with my day. When my roommate/then partner came home, I told him in almost an “oh, and by the way” manner, and we had dinner and watched TV and went to bed. After a few minutes I got up and went into the other bedroom, and I cried. This was my
mother
, who I loved more than anyone else in the world. And yet even then the door soon slammed shut on my grief, trapping the tears inside, and try though I might, I could not reopen it.

When my “second mom,” Aunt Thyra…Uncle Buck's wife…died in 1973, I don't remember whether I cried or not. Probably a bit, but far more on the inside. I remember my cousin Tom, about 12 years younger than I, leaning against his car and sobbing uncontrollably. I felt for him. I understood him. But I could not join him.

To this day I have not really cried for Ray, whom I consider, through the softened light of time which blurs the sharp edge of reality, to have been the love of my life. Nor have I cried for Norm. I do wish I could.

* * *

SOFTIE

A friend sent me a video taken from YouTube…a Budweiser commercial which aired only once, during the first Super Bowl game following 9-11. It shows the Budweiser Clydesdales...magnificent animals...pulling the Budweiser wagon through farmland and into New York City. Framed against the skyline, the horses bow toward the space where the twin towers once stood. Lump-in-throat time.

I regret I cannot recall the sponsor of what is, to me, the most powerful commercial I've seen. I may have mentioned it once before: a young boy is with his father in a dog pound, looking into the cages at various strays in eye-level cages. The boy points to one and says, “I want that one.” A close-up of the dog shows it is missing an eye. “You don't want that one!” the father says. “Get a normal one.” The final scene shows the boy and his father walking out of the shelter, the father holding the disfigured dog while his beaming son walks beside him with crutches and leg braces.
Big
time heart grabber!

Patriotic songs. Broadway show tunes (“Impossible Dream,” “I Am What I Am,” “Maybe This Time” and countless others), full orchestral music, movies and plays with powerfully uplifting endings (I cried at not one but three points in
E.T.
, twice near the end of
Man of La Mancha,
and had my heart torn out every one of the eight times I saw
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
).

People's bravery under the unfathomable stresses of a major disaster fill me with both sorrow and wonder for what it shows about the nobility of the human condition. Seeing men cry on television frequently brings me, too, to tears. Gratuitous acts of kindness move me.

I sometimes cry when I am writing dramatic passages in my books. I can easily cry when I think of those people I loved (and still love) who have died…which is why if I start to think of them, I have trained myself to think of other things.

I'm not a blubberer who can burst into tears at the slightest provocation, but when things move me deeply I do get a tightness in my chest and a lump in my throat. I shed tears of joy and wonder as often as tears of sadness. And like most men, I cannot recall the last time (if I have ever done it since turning six years old) I cried in public…which is probably why I am moved to tears by television coverage of events in which men are shown crying.

I turn to mush around babies of all species, except possibly reptiles.

As to how or when I became such a softie, it's a classic “the-chicken-or-the-egg” situation. I am and have always been an incorrigible romantic, so it's impossible to say whether I'm a softie because I'm a romantic, or a romantic because I'm a softie. Not surprisingly, I generally tend to be a Pollyannaish, Dr. Panglossian heart-on-my-sleeve liberal, for which I make absolutely no apology despite there being mounds of evidence pointing to life's ample negatives. For me, the glass is half full rather than half empty, and I choose to see the world as three-quarters good rather than being three-quarters hopeless.

Have I mentioned that I also choose to largely ignore reality?

* * *

PUCK WAS RIGHT

I don't know…it has to be a missing “comprehension” gene in my DNA. Other people glide so easily through life, fully aware and accepting of everything that goes on. They are never confused. They accept things which strike me as sheer idiocy at best or totally incomprehensible at worst. Shakespeare had it right when he had Puck say: “What fools these mortals be.” And Shakespeare lived long before the advent of cyberspace, the cell phone, and George W. Bush.

I am truly sincere when I say I simply cannot understand so many, many things. I see that Prince William may have broken up with his girlfriend, which apparently sent tsunamis of shock and deep concern across the face of the earth. And they have at last (oh, thank GOD!) determined the father of Anna Nicole Smith (...who?)'s baby. And Brad and Angelina are adopting their 45th third-world baby (apparently there are not enough orphans in the United States)! Singing and dancing in the streets!! And what about them Bears? Did you see last week's Big Game? I mean, like, wow!!! But my question is always the same: how could anyone not a friend or relative of these people possibly,
possibly
care?

Canned cat food comes in gourmet flavors (“Sliced Roast Guinea Hen in a delicious Béarnaise sauce”), and people stand in line to shell out good money to buy it. They're
cats
, people! They eat
mice
, for Pete's sake! Do you really think they
care?
I recently saw a news item (I swear, it was a
news
item!) on people who pay $3,000 to have their cats painted in designer patterns and colors. Of course, the paint job only lasts a couple months, but it's so...well, just
precious!!
And these people taking Fluffy in for a $3,000 touch-up may have to step over 20 homeless people to get to the paint shop, but who cares? And that is the Question of Questions: Who cares?

I have for the past three years been getting vital email messages from a number of people of whom I have never heard, let alone met, who apparently consider themselves my dear friends and therefore entitled to intrude themselves into my life. They are constantly informing me of astounding advances in medical science designed to improve my sex life (“Make your girl scream for more!” “We cure all disease!”). You'd think after three years of my hitting “Delete Spam” they might get the idea. If they don't know by now I'm gay—perhaps they're just in denial—and that I somehow doubt that they can cure a belch, I can't help but question the true basis for our relationship.

Whenever I sign on to something on the net, I must approve the conditions of membership, which generally consist of a five-minute scroll down page after page of legalese to which I will be bound should I hit the “I Agree” button. I am considering starting a website and doing something similar, and slipping in a line somewhere: “I agree to give up my firstborn child or, having no children, to turn over the entire contents of my bank account (including savings accounts, CDs, IRAs, contents of any piggy banks in my possession, etc.).” Perhaps that is already in those “I Agree” contracts I've already signed. Who would know?

I do not comprehend why we are sheep. Why, when served cold food in a restaurant, we do not send it back? Why, when we are treated with utter contempt by some petty civil servant, we do not demand to speak to a supervisor then and there and, while doing so, demand the name and addresses of the supervisor's supervisor? We are so often taken advantage of because we
let
ourselves be taken advantage of, and if that is the case, then we deserve what we get.

I have not run out of material for this subject, you can be sure…just out of space for now. I'll be back.

* * *

THE POWER OF TOUCH

Whenever my dad and I were sitting side by side on the couch, he would, at some point, always reach over and squeeze my knee, which always made me jump and say “Jeez, don't
do
that!” Why could I not see that this was his way of showing affection...which was always very difficult for him to do?

The need of human beings to touch and be touched by other human beings is probably one of the least understood but most elemental of human needs. It has been tragically documented that newborn babies not held or caressed or touched grow up severely stunted, emotionally. And while this need may lessen or be sublimated as we grow, it never goes away. Handshakes, hugs, pats on the back, playful punches to the arm, tousling of the hair, an arm around a friend standing beside you, reaching out to touch someone lightly on the arm, all are examples of how the need for physical human contact never goes away.

And toward the end of our life, the need grows even while the opportunities diminish. As loved ones and close friends slip away, so does the opportunity for physical contact. And while it is natural to make a physical fuss over children, the old without immediate family find themselves increasingly deprived of this essential need.

I don't mean to preach, or pontificate, but this is, to me, simply the way things are, and it is one of the many things to which we should pay far more attention than we do.

Like that “food groups pyramid,” there is also something of a “touch pyramid” to categorize the importance of the different levels of touch. At the very top is the touch of a partner, someone one loves on all levels. Directly below that is the touch of parents; below that the touch of siblings, other relatives, then the touch of friends.

I've told this story before, I know, but when my mom was dying, she came home briefly from the hospital. That same night, she had something of a minor stroke and could not speak. Horrified and heartsick, I put her in the car and headed for the hospital. She could not speak, but she reached over and patted my hand. She was comforting me.
She
was comforting
me
! I cannot think of that simple gesture, even now, without crying.

The value of touch is in direct proportion to its sincerity. We all know the effusive “huggsies and kisses” type, and when I talk of the importance of touch, I do not include them. And I know some of us are for whatever reason basically undemonstrative, and that is fine. But when you sense a need from a relative, friend or even an acquaintance, don't hesitate to place an unobtrusive hand on their shoulder; lay a hand gently on an arm, or do any of a number of things which involve gentle physical contact.

It is only the gestures of kindness, love, and affection not made that are later regretted. Make the gesture while you can, and appreciate those given you for what they are meant to be.

You have no idea what I would give to have my dad squeeze my knee.

* * *

REQUITED LOVE

Groucho Marx once quipped: “I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

Human nature encompasses a wide range of perversities, each of which has its own range of intensity. One of the more common of these perversities is the predilection for deliberately sabotaging ourselves by assuring that we can never have what we want most.

Of all the things age has taken from me, one that I most deeply resent is the loss of the chance for true, romantic love: for having one individual whom I can adore on all levels, and who would adore me in the same way. I have no doubt that I could find someone my own age who might love me in this way, but the fact is that I could not return it, since I can't conceive of loving someone my own age. Perversity, anyone?