The Crossover in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

Last night I continued my long-stretch of homework overload. I have so many things to do that I literally am drowning in it. I cannot explain it, but there I was sitting at the bar with all of my textbooks and laptop trying to simultaneously write a paper on real estate conflict and conduct research on the bar patrons. The amount of work I’m doing right now is such that I cannot seem to find a way to string it all together into a coherent mass.

At the bar it was the same old group of people I know. Dave has become really distant lately and I’m not the only one who has noticed. I think that he feels that he is someone of whom the group has taken advantage. I’m not sure I can disagree with that sentiment, but it’s sad that someone with whom I was once so close has now become just another shell of an individual.

This same group of people seem to revisit the same conversations. It’s some kind of social rut. Daniel will walk up to me and awkwardly ask how I am doing, cross-examine me about the status of our friendship, and at some point, when I am forming a new acquaintance, he will rudely interrupt by hovering over my shoulder causing me to leave and break the acquaintance. Erika, whom I love, will inevitably show me far too many pictures that I have already seen because she has posted them on Facebook, and will probably bitch about Julie. The change was that last night was Julie’s birthday so she was drunk enough to be tolerable. David will have had some personal crisis which has probably got him depressed, and if he isn’t depressed when he gets there, he will be by the time he leaves and vow never to come back again.

These same patterns have repeated themselves for the last year, at least, and they are endlessly boring.

I am not without blame. I myself perpetuate these social patterns, although I tend to be a little more adaptable in the sense that the person with whom I pass the evening will vary from week-to-week. Daniel and David are almost always paired unless Daniel has found some person he is going to attempt to hit-on. Erika is always with Jimmy. I fit myself into these social cliques rather easily. Never necessary, always welcome.

Last night, though, my friend Lance came in. He’s a friend from another bar across town and he told me that his friend was coming. He warned me before hand, “My friend is straight, though, and he’s never really wanted to come here because he’s not sure he’d be comfortable with guys hitting on him.”

Eventually the friend got there and immediately I started fake hitting on him in an over-the-top manner. Lance got really defensive but his friend knew where I was coming from, knew that I was just kidding and we started laughing super-hard. Throughout the night, Lance kept apologizing for my behavior, but his friend and I got along famously the whole night.

I don’t know how to explain how it made me feel to finally have new energy. It felt like The Wizard of Oz, finally crossing over from a world of black & white to a world of color. Maybe the reason I haven’t invested heavily into people I’ve met here is because I haven’t found the right dynamic amongst the people with whom I associate. That sounds bad because I have met some truly remarkable people… but what if they’re just not my people?

Lance’s friend was a very interesting kind of heterosexual. He was originally from Watts, back in the day when it was still a very bad part of town. He had been in a gang, but not like my obnoxious roommate who tells his gang stories like Betty White from Golden Girls tells her St. Olaf stories. There was no pride in his recollections, there was a sinking-in of the eyes. I don’t know how to explain it, and he didn’t brag about it. It came up casually when I mentioned the environment in which I was raised.

I’m sure not many of you recall that when I lived in Sacramento, I used to spend most of my time with straight people. In fact, I rarely went to gay bars or even hung out with gay people. That changed when I moved down here… and I reacted badly when one of those straight people mistreated me and so I shut them all out. I’m not good at dealing with the cultural power struggle that is heterosexual privilege… (and just for the record, I really hate saying using a descriptor followed by “privilege,” but it’s the only way I can frame it for my mind to comprehend the dynamics involved.)

I have such a strange relationship with heterosexual men. It seems like I’m always seeking validation from them. But a very specific type of heterosexual, versions of the ones who mistreated me in my youth. I’m trying to rebuild levees that were broken in my childhood, but just because I rebuild the levee doesn’t mean I can put back the flood waters. There are no barricades that can hold back that depth of pain.

But if you look at all my relationships, they have all been extreme. There’s something just inherent within me that demands the odd. It really does start with my first relationship, with Joe. I know it sounds awful that I keep bringing that up, but I’m not sure too many people can comprehend the impact of a situation like that. We were five years apart; it was a felony for him to have a relationship with me. And then he died. When relationships have such forbidden sanctions imposed upon them, the relationship itself becomes something more than just the interaction of the two people. It crosses over and transforms into a radical statement against everything around you that condemns who you are, and in 1999, that was pretty much everybody. It becomes a drug. The person is not the high; the existence of the relationship in and of itself is a high that becomes a void when the relationship ends. The fact that he died means that I didn’t really get a chance to taper off; I had to stop cold turkey.

I have spent the rest of my life forming relationships, not with compatible people, but with incompatible labels so that I can feel that high.

Jeff the Jew: someone who didn’t want me from the beginning.
Nick the Mormon: the condemnation of our relationship by his family
Adam the littlest Christian: he needed me to save him and I got excommunicated because of him
Edgar: the confused heterosexual in Paris and for whom I fought (much to his indifference) to keep the relationship a secret

Look at all of these. You people think Carrie Bradshaw is fucked up? Look at my dating history. I am nearly always dating someone who needs saving in a relationship dynamic that challenges societal norms… just so I can feel more progressive.

The probable reason for all these things is because I am the one who needs saving and because I am not progressive. I am probably a boring guy who needs to buy a house, settle down, raise children and just be another American schmuck.

All these thoughts came about because of my thinking about my own erratic behavior regarding straight men (sometimes I hate them, other times I feel like they’re the only people with whom I actually connect) and because I watched this movie called Adore. It’s a French-Australian production with Naomi Watts, Robin Wright and Xavier Samuels which deals with some rather uncomfortable relationships. I had seen the movie previously, but I watched it again on a whim. I had recently read some reviews that were extremely critical and even called it “smutty.” That’s when I realized that, although I have not had personal relationships EXACTLY like those depicted in the film, my own relationships parallel them. The critics don’t seem to understand the intensity and strangeness of relationships like those.

Going back to my previous metaphor, it’s like Oz. Everything is bright and shiny and life-or-death, and while that doesn’t make life calm or even stable, it certainly makes the drabness of the black & white world seem unworthy of the crossover.

That’s what is wrong with me; I need color back in my life.

Last updated November 26, 2014