Short Circuits (4 page)

To this day, despite the futility, I still occasionally fall in love, but it is always from a distance and never…can never…be requited. It's sort of like wanting so terribly to sit down to a huge plate of fried-crisp pork chops, mashed potatoes, and gravy and eating everything on the plate in one sitting: I want it with an intensity difficult to describe, and I would give anything if I could have it, but I can't.

I've often told the stories of a friend whose romantic focus was on young men between 18 and 21. He ached for them, and loved them deeply, and had many in his life. But as soon as the object of his affection neared 21, he lost interest and moved on to the next.

One of my best friends of my life was rock-solid in his beliefs and convictions. He brooked no nonsense from anyone. He was the poster boy for self discipline, and was, to those who did not know him as I did, quite intimidating. He never had a relationship, though he badly wanted one. His problem was that he wanted someone stronger than himself, and yet if anyone tried to be, he would tell them where to go in no uncertain terms and walk off.

It is only natural for one human being, regardless of sexual orientation or other real and imagined limitations, to want to feel wanted, and loved, and special. It's far easier for heterosexuals to do this, since ours is a heterosexual-dominated species. Gays, and especially gay men, have a far harder time with this since we are even more prone than the heterosexual population to seek youth and beauty. The struggle for gay marriage is just one example that gays and lesbians need the same social protections that heterosexuals have always simply assumed was their birthright.

And so, as for myself and millions more like me, the search for requited love grows less realistic with every passing moment. Like most of those in my position, I deal with it. And I look at all the beautiful young men passing me on the street, to whom I am invisible, and think of Echo, the nymph who so loved Narcissus that, when her love went unrequited, she faded away until only her voice was left.

And the ultimate irony is that those same beautiful young people to whom the aging are invisible have absolutely no idea that, unless they are lucky enough to find someone with whom to grow old, they will be in exactly the same position as I. There is no comfort in the thought.

In my friend Norm's final weeks, I would visit him and he would reach out and take my hand. We once had the kind of love I wish I could still have, but we were now less than partners, more than friends. I hope holding his hand gave him some comfort; some sense that he was not alone.

But the wonder is that, even as the darkness of the long night approaches and the cold, harsh wind of reality blows ever stronger, there is within me and within everyone still a tiny, glowing spark of hope around which we wrap ourselves and find comfort in its warmth.

* * *

LAUGHTER

One thing I never have to concern myself with is a lack of things to concern myself with. They just sort of appear, like bugs on the windshield of a speeding car on a summer night. I was thinking just now about the fact that I don't seem to laugh nearly as much as I used to, and that I miss it. Laughter is one of life's greatest and most underrated pleasures.

I don't think it's a matter of things not being as funny as they once were, though a case could be made for that argument. Perhaps it's just that humor is a personal thing, and one's degree of appreciating and responding to it changes as one gets older. Things that send a five year old into peals of uncontrollable laughter don't seem quite so funny when one is ten. Fart jokes, all the rage in high school, lose their charm over time, and that is largely due to the familiarity that comes with repetition. The funniest joke you've ever heard loses some of its edge by the fifth time it's told, and by the twentieth it's stale beer.

Nevertheless, I do miss laughing like I used to: the kind of laugh that scrinches up your face and leaves you gasping for air: the kind of laugh that lasts so long your stomach hurts. They still come along from time to time, but with each passing year, one is exposed to more and more things, and more and more of them are repeats or variations of things you've seen or heard before. A good laugh sneaks up on you from behind and yells “BOO!”: when you can see it coming from a block away, you're pretty inured to it by the time it arrives.

I can still recall the source of one of my best and longest laughs: It was a (
Mad Magazine
?) spoof on high school yearbooks. In the section devoted to class photos, there were the usual, typical photos we've all seen a thousand times, each student's photo about 2 x 2 ½ inches, perhaps 24 to a page. A page of Seniors, a page of Juniors, two pages of Sophomores…all typical of annuals. Then turning to the Freshmen, there were what looked to be 10,000 tiny, 1/8 x 1/8 inch thumbnail shots. I went into hysterics the first time I saw it, and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

And of course, each of us has our own type of humor: things I find laugh-out-loud funny, you may stare at blankly…and vice-versa. Books have been written on what people find funny, and why. Mine tends to lean toward the totally unexpected, out-of-left-field slap up the side of the head, like the freshmen's page in the yearbook spoof. But I also go equally for humor that creeps up slowly, as is epitomized so often by covers of the
New Yorker
magazine. These are seldom guffaw-inducing, but they are incredibly satisfying. An example of that type of subtle humor is also epitomized for me in another
New Yorker
cartoon of a vase on a table under a mirror. The vase has two daisies: the one facing out into the room is totally wilted; the one turned to the mirror is picture-perfect.

Some humor escapes me totally. I never, as a child, found The Three Stooges—or slapstick in general—to be remotely amusing. I never cared much for Bob Hope, either. Maybe, again, it's a matter of preferring to have it sneak up on me; to have to think about it for a split second or two.

Scientific studies have shown the therapeutic benefits of laughter, and some even claim that the simple, physical act of smiling—even forcing yourself to grin when you don't feel like it—has definite health benefits.

It sometimes seems that humor is similar to our planet's other dwindling resources: and that nothing is funny anymore. But it's still there, if we take the time to look for it, and it is worth all the gold in the world.

* * *

IDENTITIES

Every human being has his/her own identity, formed over the years, which reflects the people and things with whom we ourselves identify. Our earliest exposure to other humans who provide keys to our eventual identity is, of course, to our parents, and we use this identity predominantly in a positive way. As we age we tend to become, with no particular effort on our parts, more like our parents. Rarely, we strive consciously
not
to be like them. But while it is they who primarily point us in the direction of who we will eventually become, they are not the only influencing factors.

Unlike circumstances beyond our control which shape who we become, the things with which we identify are largely a matter of choice and not some little effort, conscious or subconscious. And we tend to identify with them because at some point and for some reason we wanted to emulate them.

The books we read, the music we listen to, all the things we identify with become parts of our own identity. Each is like the individual colors on an artist's palette, and the portrait of who we are is created by them. The degree with which we identify with something creates the tones and shadings of our character.

Just a few of the many things with which I have always strongly identified include:

I identify strongly with all these things even while being painfully aware of how very far short I fall of really possessing any of them. Though I do take some small comfort in the knowledge that I try. I am eternally the small boy standing on the curb waving a tiny flag as he watches the soldiers and firemen as the parade passes by, wanting so very much to be one of them when he grows up.

* * *

PENNIES

Though I'm sure you haven't noticed from my earlier blogs, I have a very slight tendency toward egomania. I firmly believe that certain key elements of my emotional development hit a snag somewhere around the age of two and have never advanced beyond that point. I cannot help but believe, in my heart of hearts, that the universe revolves around me…or should. That evidence of that belief is sorely lacking (and in fact is overwhelmingly and consistently countered by reality) is, as has been the subject of several blogs, the reason I write. If the world won't conform to what I want it and expect it to be, I'll create my own world and ignore the real one as much as possible.

I bewail at great length those things which I do not have in the real world, or which I feel have been denied me. I resent, with a blinding intensity, growing older—though the only practical alternative is unthinkable. I resent not being, physically, the same person I was five years ago. I have a part-time job working weekends at a local shopping center, which contains a Bally's gym, and to watch the endless flow of physically perfect and beautiful young men who are completely unaware of what they have truly often makes my chest ache with longing.

T.S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” pretty much says it all. “I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they sing for me.”

And yet, even with all this gnashing of teeth and wailing and moaning and too-frequent plunges into fathomless oceans of self pity, every now and then I am yanked back to reality like a tethered dog which, racing at full tilt, abruptly reaches the end of its leash.

Yesterday, walking down the street with a friend and practicing holding my head as high as I physically can, I noticed that ahead of us was a severely handicapped young man in his late teens or early twenties. And I was instantly yanked back to reality and was deeply and thoroughly ashamed of myself for being so totally absorbed with my own relatively minuscule physical problems.

For me to pity that young man, or anyone with severe physical limitations, would be an insult to them and shame me further. Pity too often covers a conscious or subconscious sense of superiority. My admiration for people who simply deal with what life has given them is boundless. To realize that someone who deals, every moment of their life, with potentially isolating physical and/or emotional restrictions infinitely greater than my own puts my own overblown egocentrism into perspective.

I bewail being my age, until I realize that not one of those beautiful 20-year-olds I see and envy every day knows whether he will be so fortunate as to be given the number of years I have been given.

I cannot raise my head higher than being able to look passersby in the eye, and even then I can't hold that position for very long. My head is permanently bent forward due to changes in my neck vertebra caused by the effect of the 35 radiation treatments I underwent in 2003 for tongue cancer. But I am alive, and cancer-free and when rationality overcomes emotion I am infinitely, infinitely grateful for those facts.

And, hey, with my head bent forward I can more easily spot pennies lying on the ground. I pick them up, too.

* * *

THE LAZY PERFECTIONIST

It's hard enough, I'd imagine, to be a perfectionist under the best of conditions. But for me to aspire to perfection…as I continue to do despite stupefying amounts of evidence to the contrary, is a source of constant frustration and not a little bemusement. I know of many people who aspire to it, and a few who come relatively close. I'd like to think of myself as a perfectionist, but fall so far short of the goal I've just about given up.

I so want to be so many things, and might possibly even manage to come within a stellar nebula's circumference of attaining one or two of them were it not for the unfortunate fact that I much prefer to wish for something than to work for it.

Laziness has been one of the banes of my life. Somewhere I have notes from teachers stretched over the years, all saying in effect the same thing: “Roger's a relatively good student, but could be so much better if he just applied himself.”

I am sure that one of the reasons I was dropped from the NavCads was because I was simply too lazy to work at things. I remember with horror, now, that I never memorized the numbers of the various runways from which I was expected to take off and land…I merely followed the other planes. And one time I actually came within seconds of being killed when, during night flying exercises with a large number of other planes, we were carefully instructed to climb at a specific rate of speed, and to descend at another specific rate of speed. I got them confused and, in descending, suddenly saw the looming wing and tail lights of a plane directly in front of me. I pushed the stick forward just in time and looked up as I passed not more than 20 feet below the plane that had been in front of and was now directly above me. Luckily, being at night, no one who saw my stupidity could see my plane's ID number and I was not reported, as I certainly should have been.