Short Circuits Read online

  We all tend to waste an awfully lot of time on anticipation, which often does not live up to its press, particularly when it is anticipation of something unpleasant. The time and unhappiness we put into anticipating a visit to a dentist is almost always far out of proportion to the actual visit itself. But even realizing that doesn’t seem to have any effect on the fact that we will do it anyway.

  I had a friend who had frequent attacks of severe heartburn, and each and every time he had one, he was convinced he was having a heart attack. The fact that the last 47 episodes had passed without incident did not forestall him from the certainty that the 48th was a heart attack. I always tended to be derisive of him. But then, he wasn’t going to Mayo for a checkup.

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  FRUSTRATION

  I do not handle frustration well. I do not handle many things well, but that’s fuel for a future blog.

  One would think that having spent a great portion of one’s life being frustrated, one would become used to it. One would be wrong.

  I’m sure 20 years or so on an analyst’s couch, sorting though the myriads of colorful and sometimes odorous details which make up every minute of my life, would produce the conclusion that my problem rests with my absolute conviction that the universe revolves around me, and that therefore I should have complete control over everything at all times. Well, we can save the 20 years because I know that already.

  The problem lies in recognizing something on an intellectual level and acknowledging it on an emotional level. My logic and my emotions are continually in a pitched battle over which will have control. Were I you, I would not place much money on logic.

  Logic tells me I am a reasonably intelligent human being, and with that thought comes loud and raucous laughter from my emotions. The simple fact is that I have never, ever been in complete control of my emotions, which as I have often said never really got beyond the “terrible twos” stage of development. When I want something, I want it, and I want it now and can see no reason why I cannot have it.

  That I have never understood life, my place in it, or how I am expected to react to also plays a large role in my own little civil war. I see the world, emotionally, pretty much as a toddler sees it. If it’s pretty, I want it. And I do not take “no” for an answer. My logic, which spends a great deal of its time shaking its head sadly and sighing, does its very best to explain what it has learned of the world through reading and observing other people. My emotion totally disregards it. I’m the center of the universe, fer chrissakes! How can things not go the way I want them to?

  How can everyone else on the planet with 1/10th my intelligence (ego, anyone?) do things with total, effortless ease, get it right the first time and, most insulting of all to my emotions, not think a thing of it? They wouldn’t write instruction manuals, or give careful, full-color illustrated “Insert Tab A into Slot B” directions for assembling a cardboard box if anyone else but me could not understand them.

  And once something…anything…triggers my frustration response, all bets are off. My mind totally shuts down to the point where I would be hard pressed to tell you my own name. All rational thought ceases.

  I know full well that frustration is a part of life…I’d imagine even you experience it from time to time. But everyone else seems have a built in mental safety switch which I do not have, and which kicks in, allowing them, after perhaps a moment or two of distress, to recover, calm down, and get on with their lives. I can best describe my reaction to frustration by comparing it to pictures of the World Trade Center collapse. Total, utter, instantaneous destruction with no hope for anyone’s survival.

  I find it ironic that my totally disproportionate emotional reaction to things which trigger my frustration is directly related to my totally disproportionate sense of my own importance. Because I am the center of the universe, how can this be happening to me? How can I be so stupid? My frustration quickly, like the falling towers, dissolves into rage and self loathing so intense it often, and sincerely, frightens me.

  It just struck me that this blog may be an attempt by my logical side to subtly convince my emotions not to overreact so strongly. Unfortunately, it’s never worked before, and I wouldn’t hold my breath on its working this time, either.

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  SECRETS

  I find it amazing, with six billion people in the world, that there is still room for secrets…that there is sufficient privacy for things no one else ever knows, or sees. Yet we all have our secrets, great or small, which we guard zealously.

  I have one or two which I would/can never share, but I came across a couple I’ve been holding onto for 60 years or so that I might as well ‘fess up to.

  Ever since a little girl jumped on and broke my leg when I was five, I have gone to great lengths to avoid anything that might result in physical pain. I have also mentioned that as a motor moron, I have always loathed and avoided sports, probably partly due to the same fear of being hurt.

  As a result, I dreaded gym class. When my parents bought a new house that necessitated my changing junior high schools I determined that I would do anything I possibly could to avoid having to take gym. On about the third day of gym class, I reported to the coach that I had couldn’t find one of my gym shoes. He told me I had to go find it and not to come back until I did. I took him at his word and never went back. I’m can’t remember what I’d do during the time I was supposed to be in gym, and I have no idea how I possibly got by with it, but I did. I never told anyone about it; certainly not my parents, not even my friends.

  And when I moved from junior high to high school, I had to come up with another excuse to avoid taking gym. The plan I came up with was actually pretty shameful and I’m still rather embarrassed by it today. And on reflection how I ever got away with it is still a mystery.

  I went to my family doctor’s office and told his nurse that I was corresponding with a pen-pal in England…which I was…and that since England had socialized medicine they were unfamiliar with the American system. I asked if I could have a couple sheets of Dr. Edson’s stationery and envelopes on which to write my friend.

  She gave them to me, and I took them home and composed a letter excusing Roger from gym class on the grounds that he had a rare form of bone cancer. I’m sure my “careful” forgery was patently obvious to anyone who even glanced at it, but for some reason, when I handed it to the school nurse, she accepted it, and I spent the hours I should have been in gym in the nurse’s office.

  How did I come up with these things? How did I get away with it? Who knows. And again in retrospect that I would have used cancer as an excuse to get out of gym is shameful.

  But again, I never told a single living soul until this moment. I think I was terrified that if anyone found out what I’d done, they would demand my high school diploma back. I’m glad they didn’t.

  My secrets, compared with those other people carry around with them, are totally insignificant, but it still amazes me to think of how stupid/naive we all can be, and how capricious life is in calling some of us out for a minor infraction while letting others sail through life on a sea of lies.

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  ROLE MODELS

  My parents belonged to the Moose Club, and when, on a Saturday night, they were unable to find a baby sitter for me, they would take me along. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about these forays, since there was very little for kids to do. I’d spend most of my time in the large reception room, doing what I cannot remember. There were never very many other kids there, if any at all.

  The large main room, where the adults gathered, had a bar and a dance floor with a constantly-playing juke box, and it always seemed to be crowded. I’d wander in only occasionally to ask my folks to get me a Coke or just out of sheer boredom.

  Now, I was probably nine or ten at the time and already was well aware that I was fascinated by young men and desperately wanted to be like them. And one night there were two young men at the club. They
may have been college boys or, since WWII was raging at the time, perhaps in the military: I can’t recall. What I can recall is that suddenly the dance floor had cleared and there, in the middle, were the two young men…dancing together! Not slow dancing, of course…jitterbugging. Everyone stood around clapping and laughing. I’m sure it was, to them, the equivalent of a truck driver dressing up as a woman at Halloween: really, really funny, you know? If anyone had thought for a nanosecond that the young men were dancing together because they really wanted to dance together, they would without question been ejected from the club and risked being seriously beaten.

  But to me…!…I had never seen anything more wonderful in my entire life. Two men! Dancing together!

  Children have and need role models. Most little boys want, at one time or another, to grow up to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a soldier or sailor…uniforms somehow seem to fascinate boys, probably because they represent authority, something every child subconsciously wants to have.

  But when it comes to specific individuals children can look up to and aspire to be—a sports star or actor or singer or someone in public life, until recently gay children have been completely denied role models—someone they knew was like them. To be identified as openly gay was the kiss of death for any public figure.

  When I was a child, the only time homosexuals were even mentioned was derogatorily, in a context of utter scorn or contempt. The only time they were portrayed on screen—and even then never specifically identified as being homosexual, but, then, they didn’t have to be—were as effeminate, prissy queens whose only purpose was for comic effect. (Sort of the equivalent of the few black actors allowed on screen…Stepp’n Fetchit-type visual jokes.)

  As late as the 1950s, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. Yet it seems to have occurred to no one that telling a gay child that to be gay was to be beneath contempt may very well have created exactly the mental problems they were accused of having.

  The slow but steady emergence of actors, singers, politicians, and even a very few sports stars (interestingly almost all lesbian) from the closet speaks well for the progress we have made. And yet that the same people who now accept us once scorned us leaves a bitter aftertaste.

  But we’ll get over it.

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  IMPATIENCE

  I think if I were to be a flower, I’d be an impatiens. I’m not sure I know what an impatiens looks like, but I do like the name, since it reminds me of one of my most outstanding characteristics: impatience.

  I’m sure it all stems from the fact of my raw-nerve awareness of the passage of time, and that every instant spent other than in doing what I want to do is time which will never come again, and brings me one instant closer to the moment when my mind, trapped as it is in a mortal body, will cease to function and all that will remain of me is what I have managed to put down on paper.

  I know that there is much to be said for the joys of quiet contemplation, but I’m largely incapable of it. I’ve mentioned before that I simply cannot do nothing. I cannot sit on a park bench on a sunny day and just enjoy the act of sitting and being part of nature. I’ll be a part of nature soon enough, and enjoyment will have nothing to do with it. Even when looking up at a blue sky filled with puffy clouds, I can’t be content with just observing: my mind insists on searching them to find faces and sailing ships and tanks and fish.

  I have never in my life begun a project involving physical labor which, ten minutes into it, I wish to Heaven I had never started, and I too often, as a result, end up with a slipshod result simply because I was too impatient to take all the time to do it the way it should have been done.

  When I go to bed at night, I look forward to dreaming, even if I can’t specifically recall the dreams the next morning, and should a night pass without my awareness of there having been dreams I feel cheated. I’ve been told, and firmly believe, that death is very much like a deep and dreamless sleep. Well, like being a part of nature, I can wait. And in the meantime I prefer lots and lots of dreams, thank you.

  I am terrible at waiting. If I have to schedule an appointment, I want it to be scheduled for no further in the future than the time it takes me to get from here to there. Sitting in a waiting room without a book or magazines is torture. Telephone calls which involve my being put on interminable hold by mega-corporations who lie through their teeth when they soothingly reassure me, every 30 seconds, that all their operators are still busy with other customers and that my call is very important to them send me into apoplectic fury.

  My impatience has gotten me into more trouble, over the years, than I can possibly remember, let alone recount. I constantly say and do things that, on reflection, I wish I had not done or said, but I simply do not/cannot have the patience to think things out before I react. I tend to be one gigantic knee-jerk reaction.

  Often, of course, time does not allow for patience. How often have we, ten minutes after the fact, come up with a really brilliant retort to something someone said, which left us at the time merely muttering something inane or stewing in silence? That’s one of the good things about writing: I control the time in my characters’ world. I can eliminate the gaps between the comment and the retort, and therefore be far more clever than real-time permits.

  I’ve been told endlessly that I should practice patience, and I really should. But I just don’t have the time.

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  MY GARDEN OF PHOBIAS

  We all have phobias…things which inexplicably and irrationally frighten or repulse us. I admit that I’m somewhat protective of mine. I’m not overly fond of snakes, for example, though I’ve gotten far better about being able to look at them from a safe distance. But that’s pretty much a garden-variety phobia, shared by probably the majority of people on the planet, so I can’t take any special pride in that.

  I don’t like tattoos or body piercing. The former I’ve come to grudgingly accept since so many people nowadays have them. But it had been my personal experience with people sporting tattoos that there seems to be a definite correlation between the number of one’s tattoos and the number and severity of one’s emotional problems. One tattoo is fine; a couple are okay, but beyond that…uh…, no thanks. Body piercings give me a severe case of the crawlies and are a slamming-door turnoff.

  I have a phobia against using a bar of soap other people have used. (I know—it’s soap: soap kills germs. Yeah, but wet soap can be kind of slimy, and I don’t like slimy.) I don’t like tasting food from other people’s forks or spoons or plates, or drinking from the same glass, can, or bottle—though I will do it if necessary in order to avoid appearing rude.

  Okay, so a lot of my phobias are, indeed, fairly tame and shared by a lot of other people. But I claim to one phobia which sets me far apart from anyone else. I really hope my explanation of it will not convince you that I am totally ‘round the bend, though I am aware it might well offend some, and if so I am truly sorry. But the purpose of this blog is something akin to a pre-mortem autopsy, exposing parts of myself which may well better have been left unexposed.

  I hate rings. My totally irrational antipathy towards them ranges from distaste to downright revulsion. This, if you will, is my prize hot-house orchid of phobias. To this date, I have never encountered another human being who shares it with me…though I’m sure there have to be some, somewhere. My reasoning may be seen as teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis, but, hey, it’s mine and I’m stuck with it. Let it suffice to say that to me, the combination of ring and finger represents heterosexuality, and as a homosexual, I rebel against that concept.

  For those who doubt my admittedly strange reasoning, I refer you to the wedding ring. Nothing more clearly albeit silently screams: “Heterosexual” to the world. Madison Avenue is painfully aware of the message of this symbol and uses it at every opportunity to subliminally say: “Hey, you can trust me! I’m just like you!” The number of men displaying wedding rings in commercials is far out
of proportion to the number of men who actually wear them. And you will never see a TV commercial in which a man is shown to be alone with a small child unless he is wearing a wedding ring. Doubt me? Watch.

  Which brings us to a little epiphany which came when I wrote the sentence about teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis. I realized for the first time that my biggest, totally irrational and inexplicable phobia—the one which has fundamentally affected my life—is: heterosexuality. I mean no offense to the 9 out of every 10 people who happen to be heterosexual. I in some odd way fear it and look upon it as some sort of threat (which, given the historic treatment of homosexuals by heterosexuals, is not unjustified). I react to it, I realize, somewhat less strongly than I react to rings, but I have never understood it and am as generally uncomfortable around it (with the exception of my heterosexual friends and family) as many heterosexuals are around homosexuals. It’s not something I’m proud of, but the fact is that it exists, it’s an integral part of who I am. And now, thanks to this blog entry, I know it.

  And now you know, too.

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  PHOBIAS REDUX

  Probably everyone has phobias: things they fear or which repulse them to one degree or another. There are almost as many phobias as there are things to be phobic about, some of them very exotic and exotic-sounding. (I love “triskaidekaphobia”—fear of the number 13—for example.)

  Some are very common, though we may not immediately know their names: Arachnophobia (Fear of spiders), Pteromerhanophobia (Fear of flying), Atychiphobia (Fear of failure), Catagelophobia (Fear of being ridiculed), Cynophobia (Fear of dogs), and Dystychiphobia (Fear of accidents) among them.

  Other phobias range from the truly strange to the downright bizarre: Ephebiphobia (Fear of teenagers), Bibliophobia (Fear of books), Anthrophobia (Fear of flowers), Chromophobia (Fear of colors), Genuphobia (Fear of knees) and the “duh” of phobias: Phobophobia (Fear of phobias).