Short Circuits Page 9

  I only have three that I can think of, two of which fall into the second category, though I don’t know their Latin names, if they have one: I will not use anyone else’s toothbrush, and assume I’m in the vast majority on this one. But I also won’t use bar soap anyone else has used. (I know…it’s soap, for Pete’s sake: there aren’t any germs on it. No, but when wet it is slimy and I do not like slimy.)

  But my primary phobia, and one in which I take some sort of perverse pride in its uniqueness, is against rings. I shudder even to think of them. I’m fully aware that hundreds of millions of people wear them, and I don’t mean to offend anyone who does. It’s just the way it is for me. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only person in the world to have such a phobia.

  Exactly how and why people develop phobias is pretty much a mystery. A lot of them, of course, are based on some traumatic personal experience with the object feared, but how and why dislike turns into a phobia isn’t clear (at least not to me).

  I figured out long ago that my fear/abject loathing of rings is deeply rooted in and related to my rather odd views on human sexuality. I don’t think I have to explain that to my mind the finger is the…uh…and the ring is…well, you know…and I am so totally homosexual that the very thought of heterosexual sex makes me mildly nauseous. Again, apologies to anyone that statement might offend, and I realize that it makes me just as bigoted as those heterosexuals who express revulsion over the idea of two men having sex. I will definitely resist that inane cliché: “Some of my best friends are straight.” As are all my relatives, most people I see on the el, and nine out of every ten people on the planet. So considering those odds, sometimes I think I put a little more of me out there than you might be comfortable in seeing.

  My phobia against rings was with me long before I figured out the symbolism. On my 17th birthday, my dad bought me a very nice ring. He knew how I felt about rings before he bought it, and he was deeply hurt when I refused to wear it and he had to take it back. I remember that when I first saw it, my initial reaction was embarrassment and shame. To my subconscious, I’m sure it implied he thought I was straight. I really felt bad for hurting him, but…well…he knew.

  So phobias are just another of the myriads of little bits and pieces that make us all human, and which differentiate us, one from the other. Back to you, Dr. Freud…

  * * *

  EMBARRASSMENT

  Mark Twain pointed out that Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs to. Being embarrassed is one of Man’s odd little traits, and usually results from our being placed in a situation that challenges our self-confidence. Therefore, those of us who don’t have much self-confidence to begin with are particularly vulnerable to it. I find myself being embarrassed far more than anyone could possibly be comfortable with.

  There are, of course, many degrees of embarrassment, from mild to severe. Mine sometimes surpass severe to excruciating. And I have the annoying tendency not to be satisfied with merely being embarrassed over the things I do, but for others.

  Our beloved former President George W. Bush regularly did things…other than putting his foot in his mouth with astoundingly stupid remarks…that made my skin crawl with embarrassment: his insistence on doing little dance numbers to show he’s “cool” and “with it” is a frequently-repeated example.

  But sometimes my embarrassment on the part of others is considerably more benign.

  When my parents and I were in Hawaii, we took a boat trip up Hawaii’s only navigable river, heading for the famous Fern Grotto. Now, my mom and I were very much alike in many ways, one of which was the intense dislike of doing things simply because we are told to do them, but go along with it rather than stand out as being a party pooper.

  Anyway, the gratingly effervescent guide (I think being effervescent is a job requirement), as we were gliding up the river, declared that it would be great fun for all the women on the boat to learn the hula.

  Mom loved to dance, but she did not want to learn the hula. Still, she stood up with all the other women and followed the guide’s extended-arm, hip-swinging motions. I could see on Mom’s face that she hated it, and I was embarrassed for her.

  I am frequently embarrassed for various performers who really are not very good at what they are doing, or for people who are, like Mom was, called upon to do something they really, really would prefer not doing.

  A primary source of embarrassment for me, other than my total refusal to think before I say or do something I never would have said or done had I thought first, is in doing things I would truly love to do but can’t—such as anything requiring physical dexterity or grace. Probably the primary example of this is dancing. There is nothing more beautiful than watching someone who knows how to dance. But I simply cannot and will not do it (well, a slow dance with a good partner may be an exception).

  At least I know the source for this particular problem. When I was about eight, I went to a birthday party of a girl in my neighborhood, and her mother announced that we would all now dance. Dance? I had never danced in my life! I was horrified. And when she started pairing up all the guests…all the worse, it was boy-girl…I was well-past embarrassed, and several stages beyond mortified. It was a truly horrific experience, and I’m sure it affected the rest of my life.

  Like my character Dick Hardesty, I often have little voices in my head (no, no, not that kind of voices). One just chimed in: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Roger, get over it!” I wish I could.

  * * *

  ON BEING BUBBLY

  I tried out for a game show once, when I lived in California. I answered all the questions correctly and even got a call-back. But I didn’t make it because I was not “bubbly” enough. Well, they certainly had me there. I am definitely not the “bubbly” type. Perhaps it’s my Norwegian heritage. Norwegians don’t tend to bounce up and down and scream and wave their arms a lot.

  I am often excited about things, and sometimes elated. But even then I am not “bubbly.” Something there is in me which insists on keeping the cork in the bottle.

  I am also aware that my non-bubbly-ness has often been a drawback. There are times when I would truly like to let my inhibitions go. But I don’t, and I can’t. I remember going to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake on Broadway seven times, which involved two separate trips from Wisconsin. Every performance got a standing ovation, and I wanted more than anything to yell “Bravo!” like so many others were doing, or simply shouting. I even opened my mouth and tried to let something out. But I could not. I clapped. And I deeply resented myself for being such a dud.

  Being excruciatingly self-conscious makes it difficult to be bubbly.

  I used to go to the dance bars in L.A. when disco was king—always with friends and always at their insistence—and I could never get out there and dance. When I was on occasion physically dragged out on the floor I was excruciatingly embarrassed. “But nobody is watching you!” my friends would say. “I’m watching me,” I’d reply.

  But as for hands-over-the-head-clapping-and-swaying-in-time-with-the-music, forget it. Even at gay pride parades, where the enthusiasm is almost palpable and everyone is more animated than ten Pixar films, I stand there like a statue. I’m loving it, but I’m not showing it.

  Of course, being bubbly has its limits. Natural bubbliness is admirable, indicating a genuinely happy openness. But we all know people whose effervescence is about as natural as the audience response on a TV infomercial, and it is only with great effort that I am able to resist reaching out and throttling them.

  It goes back, I suppose, to the fact that I expect so much of myself. I want to be bubbly. I want to be graceful. But I am not and never have been. Rather than try, and make a fool of myself in my own eyes, I do nothing and thereby risk making a fool of myself in the eyes of others. I have always been terrified of standing out in a crowd. Yet when 10,000 people are dancing and swaying and clapping and one person is not, guess who stands out?

  I know
this sounds either like I’m feeling sorry for myself or asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m not. It’s simply peeling back another layer of the onion. I may not like it, but I accept it. And besides, I’m bubbly on the inside, so why should I care? To quote my friend Popeye, “I yam what I yam.”

  * * *

  GOD’S SNOWFLAKES

  I was waxing poetic the other day, as I am wont to do from time to time, pondering possible subjects for this blog. As always, I focused most strongly on myself, and considered doing a steeped-in-humility one about just how very special I am. Smugness was about to set in when one of my little mind voices (one of the many traits I share with my series protagonist and alternate-universe me, Dick Hardesty) casually observed, “Yes, you are indeed one of God’s snowflakes.” I don’t know if it was being sarcastic; as with Dick, my mind voices seem to be there mainly to bring me down a peg when I need it, and this little observation was yet another reality check.

  I am indeed as unique as a snowflake. But then I epiphanied (it is so a word! The dictionary just left it out) that I am only one of seven billion-plus unique snowflakes. It’s been important to me, all my life, to think of myself as being somehow special, to counter the overwhelming evidence presented daily by the world and myself that I am in fact nothing much. This is a reluctant acknowledgement rather than a realization, and long before the epiphany I had often questioned whether I am really as special and unique as I think I am. Logic has always strongly dictated that the answer to that question is a resounding “no.” And whereas I carefully chose the word “special” to describe myself, I’m well aware that, in my case, at least, there are any number of other words which could be substituted for it—“strange” or “weird” being among the more charitable.

  People with self-esteem issues, among whom I of course number myself, seem to have a very real need to think of themselves as special as a shield against the world. For me, it validates the feelings I have had since I was very small—and I will take validation anywhere I can find it. Of course to feel special is more than a little frightening, in that it isolates me even more than I already am from others. Ours is a species which finds comfort in belonging, and part of my feeling special stems from my need to compensate for the feeling of never belonging. Being special enables me to choose with whom I am close, thereby lessening the sting of being the last kid chosen when sides were picked for games. Largely, I have chosen the ones to whom I feel close: family, a few good friends. But in almost any large group of strangers I am very much aware of being an outsider, and it is not a comfortable sensation.

  I’m quite sure that having been gay from such an early age undoubtedly underlies these feelings. I, and all homosexuals, live in a world of heterosexuals, and with majority comes power and arrogance. Heterosexuals, consciously or subconsciously, simply assume superiority over those who are not heterosexual, and never let anyone forget who rules the roost. Yet though I have been, since the age of five, overwhelmed, battered, inundated, and all but drowned in a raging, roaring sea of heterosexuals, to this day I do not understand them, just as many of them do not understand me. But then, since they are the vast majority, they don’t have to understand me.

  One of the negative aspects of feeling special is the realization that if I were indeed as different as I think I am, I’d be better able to control those things over which I have no control: time, for example. I have always had an obsession with time. I am always excruciatingly aware of its passing and that, much as I may deny it, my days, like everyone’s, are numbered, and one day time will cease for me. Therefore every second when I am not doing something I consider constructive is one I consider wasted. As the past piles up higher and higher behind me, containing more and more of the people and things which were so fundamental a part of my existence, I become more and more frantic. (Listening, as I am at the moment, to music from my childhood, only acerbates the feeling.) Nearly every time I play computer solitaire, as I was just doing, I become increasingly aware that the moments I spend on it were lost forever, and I had to stop playing and begin writing this.

  So I totally ignore the fact that I am only one snowflake among a blizzard of others, and concentrate on the unarguable fact that I am indeed unique and therefore special.

  * * *

  WHY?

  Why is there so much I do not understand, and so few things I do?

  It is Sunday morning, as I write, and I have retreated to the computer to find refuge from all the screaming, shouting, arm-waving, jumping-up-and-down and “Wow! Oh Boy! Whoopee!” surrounding some sort of organized sports activity apparently going on later today. Why is it that I simply cannot comprehend what all the hoopla is about? Why is it that I don’t care? In all fairness, I must admit that I can indeed get all enthused seeing Brett Favre and Tom Brady when they are not anywhere near a football field, but my enthusiasm has nothing whatever to do with sports.

  How is it that I cannot understand how, when one person in a crowded room suddenly begins making a fool of him/herself, everyone else is embarrassed or cowed, but does nothing to interfere? Why don’t I?

  Why do far too many people seem to find it impossible to think for themselves, opting instead to swallow whole the illogical, irrational, and often harmful nonsense regurgitated by people whose right to do so is in itself not understood? Why should I do or think something simply because I am told to do or think it?

  How is it that masses of people hang on every belch or hissy-fit thrown by some drug-addled “celebrity” as though it had any real meaning to the survival of the world?

  How is it that people can tell you what Lindsay Lohan had for lunch, where she ate, and with whom cannot find China on a map?

  Exactly who told those countless number of evangelical Christians, radical Muslims, and other religious extremists that they were empowered to speak for God? I rather doubt it was God, but you’d never know that from the reactions of the extremists’ followers.

  Why, on a more personal level, am I incapable of dealing with any device having moving parts? Why are all instruction manuals completely unintelligible to me? Why do I so often insist on speaking first and thinking later? How can something I had in my hand 30 seconds ago suddenly completely disappear and be impossible to find?

  Why am I not the person I so desperately want to be: kind, generous, and thoughtful, rather than being ruled by selfishness and egocentricity? Why do I spend so much time living in the past rather than living in the present? Why do I want so much from life and yet seem incapable of giving back to it?

  When presented with four or five opposing views, why am I so often unable to pick one, instead of sometimes two or three?

  Why do I firmly believe that life is far too short to worry about the vast number of things most people worry about? And why can I not take my own advice?

  Please submit your answers to any or all of the above to me at your earliest convenience. I will be most grateful.

  * * *

  ON DREAMS

  I’ve devoted several blogs to dreams, and how much I enjoy them. I particularly like story dreams, or musical dreams, or flying dreams, or those which seem terribly profound at the moment. Well, last night I dreamed of toasters. All night. Nothing else. Just toasters. Waking up for a bathroom break, or from a loud noise outside didn’t interfere. The minute I went back to sleep, it was back to the toasters.

  I can’t even say I spent most of the time contemplating the history and cultural impact of toasters. I didn’t. Just the two basic types of household toaster with which I am familiar: the old-fashioned kind where the side flipped down to allow you to put the bread in (and which only toasted one side at a time), and today’s slot-type. I’ve not seen a fold-down toaster in many, many years, so perhaps, in reflection, it might all have represented some deeply subliminal longing for the past, in which my mind spends so much of its time. Possible, but I think it was just about toasters.

  There was a building in there at one point�
��a huge, solid, windowless circular building like one of those gigantic gas storage tanks, with a wide and ornate band of decoration (Corinthian column caps and elaborate bas-relief scroll-work of some sort) at the top, painted bright purple and green and silver. (I am nothing if not stylish, even in sleep.) What it had to do with toasters or anything I of course haven’t a clue, but it was there, so assume it had its own reasons for being there. That I have/had no idea of what that reason may be is irrelevant.

  Other than that, there was no story, no plot, no people, no music, no sound at all. No particular emotions…frustration, boredom…associated with them. Just toasters.

  I have friends who claim they never dream, which of course is impossible, and friends who claim they never remember their dreams. I feel rather sorry for them. Dreams are among the greatest of mankind’s gifts, and reflecting on them and their meaning is a form of active relaxation I truly enjoy. And given my already tenuous relationship with reality in any form, reflection on dreams is perhaps more important to and common with me than with others.

  Dreams are a form of game the mind plays with itself, made the more interesting by the fact that the game has no rules.

  Of all the things I do not understand—and the list is endless—how and why the mind works the way it does is pretty high up on the ladder. And to consider that there are six billion or so people on earth (Go, Breeders!!), each one assumedly with his or her own dreams, remembered or not, gives depth to the phrase “mind boggling.” But again, it’s fun to speculate on.

  And now it’s time for breakfast. Not sure what I’ll have. Toast sounds good.

  * * *

  QUESTIONS

  I always ask questions for which there are either no answers, or which there are answers which can never be known. I was wondering this morning just how many words I’d written over my lifetime. There is an answer to this one, obviously, but who would/could take the time to track them down and count them all? How many times have I said “I love you”? And to how many people?