The Angels of Our Nature

I read the final two chapters of The Fault in Our Stars in a bookstore once out of simple curiosity. This is the book that has reduced readers the world over to tears, inspired a blockbuster movie, and as far as teen romances go, definitely captured the cultural zeitgeist. It’s probably a good book. People whose opinions I respect have very positive things to say about it. I guess I just wanted to know if it ended with both of the young lovers dying. (SPOILERS follow.) It doesn’t, which makes sense, because you still have to have somebody to narrate the story. The writing is perhaps a little manipulative, especially the way that Gus describes himself as a “shitty writer” before writing a lucid, eloquent letter that perfectly sums up the story’s main themes. In fairness to John Green, capturing the messiness of colloquial speech, with all of its “likes”, “you knows”, and grammatical errors while staying coherent, is pretty damn difficult. Essentially, the young hero concludes that the only true measure of a person’s life is the other lives that they touched, and that while everybody dies, a person’s lifespan has little to do with the impact that they have. Fair enough. (End SPOILERS.)

I learn that John Green is an Episcopalian and was at one point a chaplain in a children’s hospital. I have heard from other people who have done this that there is no faster way to despair of ever finding any meaning in life or making sense of our cruel, chaotic, capricious universe that to try giving comfort to people (especially children) with cancer. I don’t doubt that. People die having never fulfilled their last wish, be it to meet their hero, fall in love, or even just finish the fucking scarf that they were knitting for their kid as a keepsake. It’s rough. I don’t have any real conclusion there, I’m just saying it’s rough. Then again, do we always have to think of children as such delicate flowers? I think of children as younger people, nothing more, nothing less. It’s probably a bigger tragedy when a teenager dies than a senior citizen, but it’s still death, and that is a fact of life. Maybe the reason I didn’t see the movie when it was in theaters was that I felt like Green was mythologizing adolescence, as if there is nothing in the world as perfect as young love. But I haven’t seen the movie or read the whole book, so what do I know?

Our culture is obsessed with youth. That’s nothing new. It’s why I often feel old even though I am in my mid-twenties and have to force myself to live in the moment and not worry overmuch about my future. There’s the usual factors holding me back: finances, friends (or lack thereof), my complicated relationship with my parents (moving out helped, but it didn’t solve everything, and how could it?), my own neuroses, you get the idea. It’s amazing how much time I can spend obsessing over something that I know perfectly well is a waste of time. That’s the thing about douchebags. It’s not so much that you can’t see that there is something wrong with them so much as that you can’t stop yourself from thinking that if you could get them to listen, they would learn to act a little nicer. I don’t like the divide the world into good and bad people, but there are a lot of people out there who are simply assholes. They’ll die having accomplished nothing of value, and even at their wake, people will be struggling to find positive things to say about them. I’m sorry, but that’s just a fact. I don’t know why.

My roommate spends very long periods of time sitting in front of the TV or doing other shit with it on. I guess he just likes background noise. He’s a painter, so he spends most of his time in the living room painting or watching TV and frequently falls asleep in front of the TV. There are times when I wish he would leave or go to his room so that I could hang out in the living room, but whatever. I’m actually more amazed by his ability to be vegetative for so long than anything else. Seriously, how do you fucking do that? I’ve tried that, but even I can spend only the entire morning playing computer games or something before I think that I should find something else to do with my time. I guess I never learned how to goof off.

There are few things that increase my blogging frequency more than having nothing to do all day. I don’t mind watching TV or reading or doing some other sedentary thing for a while. The problem is that I usually feel like I’m doing it because I have no idea how else to pass the time. I have the good fortune to leave near a shopping center, so I can always go wander around for a while if I need to get out of my apartment. Also, I can walk to work now. It’s not a short walk, but still. And I get a free dinner every night I work, which cuts down on my groceries and means I’m less inclined to go out to eat a lot during the week. Yay. Now I just have to find a second job. Because my bank account is dwindling fast.

It’s no good to sit around all day waiting for the phone to ring. So I try to turn it off or leave it behind when I can. Maybe I will miss a phone call or text, but anybody who can’t wait isn’t worth hearing from anyway, right? Oh well, at least I have other shit with which to distract myself. I feel the need to reconnect with nature.

Things I Hate Doing, Part 7

5. Getting Old

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody watches television anymore. Seriously, do you watch TV? Of course you don’t, because you’re on the internet. And the internet is the only valid means of media distribution right now. Even if you do watch TV, it’s probably on the internet. And you’d rather watch internet anyway. But seriously, at least one study has shown that kids these days recognize YouTube personalities more easily than movie stars. That’s not actually that surprising for anyone who spends much time on YouTube. Tyler Oakley has 4.5 million subscribers, last I checked. How many people saw the last Sin City movie? (Okay, maybe that’s an unfair example, because that movie really tanked. I mean, it’s not like I was going to see it, but I thought it would have at least cracked $20 million.)

L to R: douchebag, douchebag, douchebag

The point is that YouTube and social media are, as much as it pains me to say it, becoming as popular a means of consumption as the ones I grew up with. That might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it does leave me feeling a little out of place. A lot of YouTube personalities are around my age or younger. (If we broaden it to stuff like Vine, you get people like Nash Grier. Fuck that guy.) The average YouTube subscriber is almost certainly younger than I am. Of course, the majority of YouTubers are a walking case for eugenics, but that could just be an illustration of Sturgeon’s Law. I still remember shrugging when I realized that podcasting was becoming a popular medium. There are a few that I listen to, but overall, it just doesn’t interest me. I already read books, watch TV and movies, and occasionally see plays or concerts. I don’t need to be an expert on all forms of media. And sometimes, I think that the real problem is just the way that we let the 18-24 year-old demographic dictate the direction of our culture. Maybe that’s because they don’t know any better, which makes them easier to manipulate. But what do I know? I’m a blogger. Who the fuck reads blogs anymore?

4. Having Neuroses

It occurred to me recently that I have only once or twice in my lifetime had anything resembling a stable home life. From my well-documented issues with my parents and occasionally the rest of my my family to my also well-documented roommate issues, building a home that is worth returning to every evening definitely seems to be one of my weak points. I’m not sure what to do about that, but the result is that I have any number of habits and insecurities that I can’t stop myself from having but hate myself for. The best living situation I’ve had so far is that one spot I stayed in Manhattan for the latter half of my time there. The landlord did have one weird rule requiring us to pay our rent in cash (I think he’d gotten stung by somebody passing him bad checks before) which meant that once a month, I had to walk down to Wells Fargo, withdraw a large amount of money, then walk back with it in my pocket, but if that’s your biggest complaint, you’re probably doing okay. The only answer here, I suppose, is what RuPaul would say: learn to love yourself. But I could really use a leg up.

3. Not Being Able to Express Myself

I would like to take this instance to sort of defend J.J. Abrams. Most of my nerd friends don’t much like him. I can see why: Most of what he does is just a rehash of other stuff. Cloverfield was basically Godzilla-minus-Godzilla-plus-found-footage-gimmick. Still a decent movie, in my opinion. Super 8 tried really hard to be E.T., but abrupt ending aside, it wasn’t too bad. And then there’s his Star Trek films. Into Darkness had…issues, but it didn’t make me angry, which is saying something. Honestly, what is the harm in rehashing old shit just with a shinier presentation? It’s not going to be particularly good, but it’s not exactly harmful either.

I know I rag on Steven Moffat all the time, but bear with me: In The Day of the Doctor, he added a sub-regeneration between Doctors 8 and 9, now leaving it to us to debate whether Peter Capaldi is really the 12th or the 13th Doctor. Except that there is no debate: He’s the 12th Doctor. You could maybe call John Hurt Doctor 8.5, but that’s exactly what pisses me off. Why did we need to see what happened between Doctors 8 and 9? Even if the only reason they came up with him is that they couldn’t get Eccleston back, the rationale for doing this seems to be that nobody explicitly said there wasn’t a sub-regeneration between Doctors 8 and 9. And that’s not a good reason for doing anything. But as usual, nobody will listen to me. So, you know, I’ll keep howling into the wind.

2. Being Out of Touch from the Moment I Was Born

Let’s return to YouTube for a second. I probably spend more time on there than I should, but the thing is, I’ve been yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn since I actually was a kid. So I might be able to offer a little bit of perspective on the whole thing. When I was in middle school, one of my best friends told me that XXX was an awesome movie and that he couldn’t wait to see it again. He was a great guy, and probably does not feel the same way about the movie today. Then again, let’s be careful as to what we will excuse in children as a result of their age. Even when I was sixteen, I did not yell “fag” as indiscriminately as Nash Grier does. Never mind that, I didn’t even do that when I was ten. And his apologies are all half-assed “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was saying” nonsense. Yes, you did. If you can use the internet, you can go to Wikipedia and read about the AIDS epidemic. I was lucky enough to have missed it, but I’ve seen The Normal Heart, and let me tell you, that shit is terrifying. You have to at least try to learn from your mistakes. Try.

1. I Don’t Know What to Call This One, So I’ll Just Get Right Into

I think part of the issue here is that YouTube and social media cut out the middleman. Miley Cyrus may be headed for a meltdown, but that’s just because she’s surrounded by agents, producers, and possibly friends and family telling her that what she’s doing is a good career choice. Is it better when anyone with a camera can just upload a video and let the world hear their unfiltered thoughts? I’m not sure if I can make that call, but I expect YouTube, Vine, and all that other shit to become a lot more like the music and movie industries in the coming years. They’re too lucrative not to. If you’re a big star on YouTube, you are legitimately a celebrity, even if nobody over 35 has any idea who you are. How long do you think the current model will last? It’s already changing: The big stars on YouTube get bussed around at conventions, assigned a security detail, and mobbed by screaming girls if they dare to step out alone. So really, the content hasn’t changed, just the medium.

It’s nothing new.

There are some child and teen stars who grow up to be well-adjusted people. Mara Wilson was one. She’s a talented writer, an accomplished humanitarian, and as far as I can tell, a nice lady. In her case, that’s probably because she was blessed with a supportive family and smart enough to get out when she realized that Hollywood was through with her. If there is one thing that separates the flash-in-the-pan stars from the ones who just might stick around, it’s the ability to recognize that all of this attention can’t last forever. If you want to stay relevant, you have to be willing to change with the times. Joan Rivers stayed relevant for five decades in showbiz. Regardless of whether you find her funny, that’s some kind of miracle. Her jokes didn’t change all that much, it was just that she never took anything for granted. Smart woman, that one.

When I was in college, some people suggested I start a YouTube channel or something similar instead of writing a blog. I guess they just wanted to hear and see me instead of reading me. I’m glad I didn’t. Even if I had, I would certainly never have gotten all that famous or popular. Because I’m a weirdo. But I like to keep my ear to the ground, and I flatter myself that I have a clearer idea of what’s going on in pop culture than many so-called experts. Let’s face it, nobody is going to know who most of these people are in another twenty years.

Clear Away the Barricades and We’re Still There

I’ve got a killer idea for a Halloween costume. How about Sexy Hitler? I don’t think it’s been done before. For good reason.

Just add a mustache.

I’m in a state of perpetual anger these days. I know the feeling. I’ve been here before. It’s what it feels like when you think you’re getting a bit too comfortable, and are stumped as to what you should do in order to take your life to the next level. They seem to like me at the coffee shop. Given time, I might be able to save up enough money from that job to move back to New York, although I don’t want to get ahead of myself. The manager keeps stressing that they need to get me ready for the holidays, as those are the busiest time of the year. That’s fine. I’m just trying to figure out why blog traffic has stalled lately. It experienced a slight revival over the past few months, then dropped back down again. If this keeps up, my total page views for 2013 will not equal my total page views for 2012, which is saying a lot when you consider that I didn’t start blogging until late February of 2012.

I don’t always get along with my father, but he said something years ago that I found helpful. When I was frustrated at my lack of success at canvassing despite being talented and driven, he said that talent and drive do not equal success. I might be brilliant, but so what? I’ve met a lot of people who seem to think that convincing themselves is as good as convincing me. They lay out their argument, which is so riddled with holes that a toddler could refute it, yet has a perverse kind of logic, then present it as indisputable fact. Um…I’m not you, jackass. That I did not explicitly tell you that you are wrong is no reason to assume I agree, and in some cases, I have told them that they are wrong, and they ignored me because they hear selectively. I’m not interested in their rationalizations. Anytime you tell me that I just didn’t hear you and need to accept that I know, deep down, that you’re right, you lose every bit of respect that might have had for you. But whenever bigots are called out on their bullshit, they backtrack, pretending they said something different that is not that different. It’s annoying. Usually, I just stop talking to them. The only leverage that I’ve got is my presence, and as long as they have that, they’ll still think they’ve won.

As regular readers might know, I have a fascination with gay YouTubers. They’re kind of an incestuous group, to tell you the truth. Yes, they seem like nice, supportive people, but it seems almost too easy to make friends with them. Basically, all you have to do is be gay and make YouTube videos. It reminds me of this one LGBT group that I was semi-involved with for about six months the year after I got my B.A. They were about as friendly and welcoming as you could imagine, but all they wanted to do was talk about gay stuff. (Understandable, sure, but there’s a whole lot more to life than that.) That lifestyle starts to feel very enclosed after a while. Yes, being queer is an essential part of who we are, but why does everything have to be filtered through that lens? A lot of these people strike me as people who came out, then never got over the terror of coming out. You have to move on, and that means accepting your sexuality as a larger part of your own identity. I don’t want to come down too hard on these guys. They’re nice. If I met them, I’d probably get along with them. I’m just saying I don’t want to be one.

If it looks like there is a lot of overlap between these posts in terms of subject matter, it’s because I’m having trouble condensing my thoughts into 1,000 words or so. I can’t just post cat pictures like some people can. I’d say this is my diary, but a diary is a tell-all, and believe me, there is a lot of shit that’s getting left out. It feels like my fears and insecurities have been compressed into a diamond in my chest and I wish I could just rip it out, but I have to chip away at it, piece by piece. I spend much of my time trying to decide what to do next.

I hate it when people say that it feels like childhood was just yesterday. I’m in my mid-twenties, and looking back, I think a lot of crazy shit has happened since then. The one respect in which nothing has changed is that I have much the same problems now as I did then. It sounds like whiny teenage bullshit, but too many people just don’t get me. They may mean well, but so what? That doesn’t help me. So I turn the same events over and over in my mind again and again, trying to figure out how to let go, how to let the person that I once was inform the person that I am today, but I can’t tell if I’m dwelling on past mistakes or actually making progress. I guess at a certain point, it doesn’t really matter.

Really, I’d settle for being able to sleep a little better. My memories are packed together in my brain like files in an accordion folder, and every time I lie down, they spill out onto the floor, with people I met in elementary school and haven’t thought of since then mingling with high school crushes and fictional characters I admire. It’s pretty crazy, and it happens every. Single. Night.

I don’t have a conclusion, so I’ll leave you with this. Wish me luck. I’ll just keep hanging on.

Being Single

I must confess to having a soft spot in my heart for this song. It’s not good, exactly, but when I was in high school, I saw a choir at a friend’s school perform it, and their delivery, coupled with the unabashedly sentimental nature of the song, got to me. I was writing about it for my own choir (our director required us to see another performance and write about it once every semester), and I paid special attention to “One More Night”. This American Life fans might remember a wonderful episode in which a writer who had recently been dumped by her boyfriend enlisted Phil Collins to help her write a good breakup song. His advice–which is useful for writing about most things but especially pertinent to anything dealing with love–was not to try to capture the totality of a breakup in this song, but to focus on one small part of it. She played him the song she had written, and he told her he liked it, being sure to add that he was not just saying that to spare her feelings. If anyone is curious, you can download that episode here. It’s quite good.

I got over my bitterness at being single a long time ago. Basically, I just want two things: good conversation and good sex. My views on romance tend to be fairly low-key. I never had a Romeo & Juliet-type infatuation in my youth during which I was convinced that the other person was the most perfect human being ever created and I could never be happy without them. Shakespeare was, I’m fairly certain, poking fun at that sort of relationship as much as he was celebrating it. How else to explain that the two young lovers both kill themselves over what turns out to have been just about the silliest and most contrived misunderstanding imaginable?

I like to think that when I finally do find someone, not much will change. I’ll be having regular sex with someone I care about, but aside from that admittedly significant change, I’ll just go on as before, right? Most people know this already, but it bears repeating: A partner does not define you. Anyone who wants a girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever just to have one is missing the forest for the trees. I say this because–and maybe I’m jinxing myself by saying this, but whatever–I think my time is coming. It could be a while yet, but if I don’t get a boyfriend relatively soon (I won’t set a deadline because I will certainly not meet it), I’ll have no choice but to swear myself to a lifetime of celibacy. Honestly, I’ll never be this handsome again, and if the 20-plus years I’ve been alive isn’t long enough to wait for my first serious relationship, maybe boyfriends just aren’t worth the effort. It’s not like I don’t spend every waking moment complaining about it to everyone who will listen.

Roald Dahl was one of my favorite authors when I was a child. There are a only a handful of talented artists I can name whose work accurately portrays childhood. Hayao Miyazaki, Bill Watterson, Dr. Seuss, probably a few others. The point is that there are many things about the adult world that, to a child, appear baffling. Having a job is one. When I was little, “work” was something that every grown-up went to every day. I knew nothing about it except that it involved dressing up and sitting in a drab office all day. To this day, I still know only a little about what my parents do. I’m not sure if children will think the same way about me once I have a steady job. My father insists that I take after my mother. My mother, though she has not said so explicitly, probably thinks I take after him. I like to think that I will become less and less like both of them the older I get. There is a lot that I can learn from them, but I really don’t want to have the life that they do. It’s ironic that I’m a fag, since my ideas about family are quite conservative. I like the idea of committing to one person and having monogamous sex with them for years or decades on end. Maybe part of the reason that I’ve never even been on a date is because finding someone who meets my criteria is fairly difficult in this day and age. But I’m willing to settle. I never get my first choice for anything, and since my first choice for a husband (or boyfriend, since I’m still so young) would be Brad Pitt or Jon Hamm, it’s a safe bet that I won’t get to be with my ideal man.

I used to think that being in a relationship would solve all my problems. This is, of course, silly, but it took a while to accept that it isn’t my only reason for being alive. Good things don’t happen to me all that often, but when they do, they stay with me. A friend of mine used to bring up my sexuality way more often than was necessary. We’d be discussing music, and suddenly he’d say, “Wow, you’re so non-stereotypical!” Right, because only straight people are allowed to like Arcade Fire. He got over that slowly, and now at least tries not to treat me like another species. Most people know there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality, but they still don’t know what it is. I’d like to say that I’ll know what it is when I find someone, but it looks like I’ll have to figure it out first.

Homeland, Part 1

My life is moving too fast. I’ve been living with a handicap for the past month and a half–namely, the lack of a stable housing situation. That has caused me to fall behind in almost all of my classes and forced me to play catchup while hoping teachers and administrators will cut me a little slack. As of this writing, I’m not sure how far that’s going to get me. I don’t mean to make excuses, but even so, being homeless is a pretty good one, isn’t it? I’m not looking for a handout, just a hand up, or whatever it is that the 47% of students who think their school owes them financial aid, housing, and a decent education want. I’m just like you, except that I’m not, is what I’m trying to say. Perhaps if I just post this picture of one of my favorite historical figures, you’ll understand.

I don’t think I can properly put into words how difficult my apartment hunt was. I’ve lost count of the number of places I’ve slept at over the past one year-plus. It split my life apart at the seams, and honestly, there were times during my hostel and couch-surfing days early in the semester when I wondered why I didn’t just go the airport and book the next flight to San Francisco. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that no matter how much I hated life in New York, it couldn’t be any worse than life in California. I tried to make things work in that state, but it kicked me out. It didn’t want me, denying me suitable long-term employment and any real prospects for the future. When I told my therapist that the only downside to getting into Columbia had been my knowledge that it was going to be a long time before anything that good was going to happen to me again, he told me that it didn’t have to be that way. Of course, nothing that good has happened since I read the letter back in February, but I take his point. I don’t believe in the power of positive thinking. For me, pessimism is not a defensive crouch; it’s just the natural order of things. Most of the time, everything sucks. Every so often, things stop sucking for a moment. I guess what my therapist was trying to tell me was that that pattern is not set in stone, even if it’s the way that things usually work out. I hope he’s right.

(I’m posting this video partially because Dan Savage is my God, and partially because it’s the closest any ad has ever come to making me cry. Every time I get to the cop saying “You are perfect and wonderful exactly as you are”, I just about lose it.)

I didn’t sleep very well last night. If there’s one thing that’s been weighing me down these past couple years, it’s my inability to get a good night’s sleep. Once in a blue moon, I wake up not feeling like shit. And I used to be so good at that.

Most people seek a certain amount of stability in their lives. I seek sustainability, the knowledge that I can more or less carry on as usual without hurting anyone, myself included. It’s difficult, extremely difficult. By now, I have at least figured out that whatever the problem is, it’s not me. So that’s something.

This is completely random, but I recently became aware of British boy band One Direction. Something about them struck me–not that they’re good, exactly, but that they aren’t punch-yourself-in-the-face terrible. Most teen idols make me want to kill myself. (Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, I could go on.) What irks me isn’t just the generic nature of tweenybop music, but its sanctimony. Most of it is so smothered in sugary girl-I-want-you-so-bad false sentiment that it almost makes me retch. One Direction’s music (well, the one song I heard, which seems fairly ubiquitous by now) is bland, but not smarmy. They’re just late-teens/early twentysomethings who like to sing about girls, being young and, well, girls. If this is the next stage in the evolution of prepackaged pop music, color me impressed. In another thirty years, there may even be a teen sensation that I can actually enjoy. (Not that I’m in the target audience, but I don’t see why I couldn’t enjoy that stuff. I just never have.)

(And since somebody is probably wondering, yes, I would totally hit that. Generally, I like my men just a tiny bit more mature, but I have been known to enjoy barely-legal twinks every now and then, and it doesn’t hurt that the boys from One Direction, unlike most of the other teen idols I can name, don’t seem to mind parading around in their underwear or even being caught naked. So sue me, I’m only human.)

There is a subgenre of fiction that caters to closeted teenage boys. If there is an equivalent subgenre for lesbians, I am not aware of it. It consists of movies and literature in which the shy, nerdy boy gets assigned to tutor the captain of the football team and discovers that (gasp!) he has a secret. And a ten-inch cock. Those are rare even in porn, but some of the stories I’ve seen have a virgin taking all of that at once, which is more fantastical than anything George Lucas ever dreamt of. How is this different from the Mary Sue escapism of, say, Twilight? It isn’t, except that there’s more sex. It is targeted at teenage boys, after all. One or two of these movies/books are actually decent. Most suck. One in particular (that I will not link to or even name) had the nerd get dumped by the jock after the jock’s mother caught them in bed together. The nerd runs off with a surfer (who, in a twist more implausible than finding out that the half-man, half-machine scoundrel you’ve spent the last two movies fighting is your own damn father, turns out to be packing eight fucking inches), then returns to the football player the instant he comes crawling back to the nerd. What a fucking asshole. I never got that lucky. Maybe that’s for the best.

I’ll post part two as soon as I’ve finished it. In the meantime, enjoy this lovely gif and guffaw at this article, which is one of the funniest things I’ve read in recent memory. Until next time, everyone. This hero’s journey is just getting started…