Down Boy

It's really no wonder I'm drinking tea and honey by the litre trying to shake off nerves. Leisure time has become something of a swelling up of some of the more sensational anxieties I have living in this environment at this point in my life. But before I digress into the reasons and causes for my still being here after exactly one year I'd rather take a moment to comment on, try to bring words to, what I have so much trouble explaining to my family and a few of my friends. The actuality of human displacement and the gross occupancy of so much space by corporate convenience marketing, chemical landscaping, and the general homogeny of human experiences in media (with the absence countercultures creating an entirely new public "reality" people breathe, buy, and poop in here in Suburbia). In other words, feeling left out in the midst of CVS, TruGreen Lawn Care, and family movie night with Comcast On Demand.

Last winter I tried writing about what seemed to be the most obvious demographic being sold to via Holiday TV commercials. I actually watched television for the purpose of making notes on the advertisers' manipulation of images, cast ethnicity, and historically capitalist notions of the American Dream mainly in order to determine if (and subsequently how and what) gays were being sold to. No significant piece of writing came from the exercise but I know that it was spurred by the sense of being alienated in every context I had available to me living in a middle-upper class town where gay community must be logged into with a name and password on the internet. And it was no wonder that that dark, callow, fiber optic space did little to palpitate any part of me looking to pulsate a little. I also remember feeling conflicted about my status as a white mid-twenties male with a college diploma and slew of past experiences made easily attainable due to unearned privilege. I did not, and still don't, want to approach criticism of the world around me with the name tag of "Victim" and I especially do not want to exaggerate my experiences, reactions, and sense of displacement knowing full well that mine is FAR from the saddest story. But I also maintain that being part of a privileged demographic often does not mean that the privileges/acceptance of that group means shit. Ultimately, I think I never wrote anything very intelligent about Christmas Commercials and the Gays because I ultimately didn't care that I didn't see queers being sold diamonds, folgers coffee, and cars.

So here I am, a few months later, not exactly concerned with having no sense of place in the midst of chemical lawn applications but lonely as hell and somewhat incapable of explaining to my family that I love them and I love that they love me but that I am grossly dissatisfied with the reality they participate in and the reason we cannot agree on what movie to watch is because it makes me sick to my stomach to see another disgusting portrayal of human experiences as told through heteronormative, classist, racist, and sexist paradigms of mainstream cinema. They think I'm extreme in my politics enough that I'd probably just alienate them further from the common ground I'm struggling to create by explaining that I'm sick and tired of the male hero, white people, heterosexual love stories, the re-imagining of history with blatant western capitalist undertones, and violence that is unrighteous, loveless, and practised not for saving the world but for saving the American notion of the world (save the nuclear family, save Jesus, save Constitutional freedom). So I end up playing the Hammond Organ while they turn on the Red Sox.

This whole situation has recently been exacerbated by a brief stint in Maine where I felt more myself than I have in months. Friends old and new offered conversation that made absolute sense to me and I didn't even need to explain something like patriarchy or the word queer in order to begin, rather I had the enormous pleasure of being around people I can learn from which, for me--it doesn't really get any better than that. I turned good dirt and I wasn't shy my nails were dirty and it was somewhat like being back one year ago when I was in a position to feel like there was ample room for me to exist, coexist, and evolve without hesitation or restriction. My family accepts me unconditionally. My friends accept and understand me unconditionally. The difference is significant at a time when I'm itching to evolve and talk about books and music and vegetables and men and women and cocks and fire.

Where will I go from here, where I am at this hour. I'm not sure. Maybe a co-op but they haven't written back since our first exchange and I don't know enough about them yet except they're all vegetarians too and make lovely dinners. That's it for now.