Short Circuits

by Dorien Grey

  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:

  1) The gay community. I know that one’s sexual orientation is only a part of one’s identity, but being a gay man (starting out as a gay child) is so much of who I am I cannot separate it from any other aspect of my life. It colors every part of my existence. I so strongly identify myself as a gay man, I am sure, as an act of defiance to those who assume superiority over me because I am not like them.

  2) Minorities and underdogs...as a direct result of #1 above, as long as they do not themselves advocate the oppression of others.

  3) Truth, honor, beauty, dignity, loyalty, bravery and all those uniquely human qualities which separate us from other animals.

  4) As a further extension of numbers 1 and 2 above, anyone with physical, emotional, or mental disabilities; the misfits, the misunderstood; all those who ache with the realization that their dreams will never come true and yet go on anyway, doing the best they can with what they have.

  5) Children, probably because I have clung too tightly to my own concept of childhood and I see myself (I would hope with some degree of accuracy) in their wonder and trust and assumption that the world is full of good things.

  6) Anyone who clings to hope in face of the hopeless.

  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.

  My total inability to grasp the workings of anything with moving parts or worse, should something go wrong with them, figuring out how to fix the problem, has provided me with endless frustration and resulted in childish fits of uncontrollable rage. But for those who say simply: “Well, did you check the manual?” my answer is invariably “No.” I once read the manual for a product made in China and was halfway through it before I realized it was written in Chinese. The English version made even less sense. I find it much easier just to have someone else do it for me, even if I have to pay them to do it.

  And yet none of that stops me from demanding perfection of myself. The fact, again, that no one is perfect in no way keeps me from expecting it. It’s okay for you to make a mistake, or do or say something stupid, or something you wish you hadn’t done or said, but it is not all right for me, and I hold myself in contempt for being so flawed. One of my self-deprecating mantras is: “If I can’t do something well, I won’t do it at all.” And one side-effect of that is that my heart aches when I see someone who does do something well. And that they do what I cannot/will not fills me with envy and fuels the fires of self-loathing.

  But I manage, somehow. I do what I can do, and take refuge in my own little world, wherein my Dorien side and the characters in my books can do all those things I cannot do. All in all, I consider it a fair trade.

  * * *

  DELUSIONS

  Over the years I have become something of an expert at self-delusion. I can honestly convince myself, short of defying the laws of physics, of almost anything. I hasten to add I am not so delusional that I am unaware that they are delusions, but they are harmless, and they give me a great degree of comfort.

  My chief delusion is that I am ageless…well, actually I’m somewhere…anywhere…under the glass ceiling between youth and maturity. This delusion is quite easy to maintain except for when I am in the presence of reflective surfaces, and even then I can sometimes convince myself that I have absolutely no idea who that person is. I adopted this particular form of illusion from Don Quixote, whose ultimate enemy was a mirror.

  Delusions are the armor many of us don to do battle with the world. The protect us…some to a greater degree than others…from the harshness of reality, and as long as they do no harm to ourselves or others, there is no real need to dissuade ourselves of them.

  I’ve often used the example of one of the characters from the play The Madwoman of Chaillot who, every day, year after year, read the same newspaper—the same newspaper—because she liked the news in it. What was really happening in the world neither affected or concerned her. I empathize with her completely. I often choose to simply ignore those things which I know would make me unhappy if I were to acknowledge them. I may be deluding myself, but what does it matter, really?

  Most delusions are restricted to the mind of the deluded, and it is only when they take physical manifestation do they normally call the attention of others. (The mental picture springs to mind of a 240-pound woman in a bikini, or the elderly man with a black toupee plopped atop the grey hair of his sideburns. And even then, they more often affect the viewer than the wearer.) We all see ourselves very differently than other people see us, but the more delusional we are, the greater the gap in perception.

  Like most things, delusions can be positive or negative. I constantly berate and belittle myself for every perceived imperfection and flaw, and for falling far short of who I feel I should be. Yet this is as unfair as deluding myself into assuming the possession of sterling qualities not in fact in
existence. I know I’m not…nor could I be…quite as worthless and stupid as I too frequently paint myself as being. But I do it partly out of disappointment that I am not living up to my own potential, or to what I perceive myself as being. And I have, as I’ve mentioned frequently, an odd compulsion to point out my failings as a first-strike defense against having other people do it for me. (“You don’t have to tell me how bad I am: I already know.”)

  I honestly envy some people their delusions—specifically those which lead them to believe they can accomplish things which reality clearly says is far beyond their reach. Their delusions encourage them to get out there and at least try for something they really want, even though the odds are clearly or even overwhelmingly stacked against them. They are far better off than people like me, who don’t try for something I am convinced I can never achieve.

  The wondrous thing is that many of the major advances in science and technology throughout history have been achieved by people everyone assumed to be delusional.

  I am really quite comfortable with my own delusions. They’re like an old robe or favorite pair of slippers I wear constantly. And I truly believe the world would be a happier and less stressful place if more people allowed themselves to indulge their own.

  * * *

  IF ONLY

  My favorite painting at the Art Institute of Chicago is Ivan Albright’s That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (subtitled The Door) I identify with it in some strange way, probably because I frequently find myself looking back on the closed doors of my life and saying: “If only I could go back and change things…do or say something I should have but didn’t; not do or say something I shouldn’t have but did; take an opportunity not taken; follow path A instead of path B.”