On Perspective

“Deep in the human consciousness is a pervasive need for a universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic”.—Frank Herbert

I sit here staring intently at the computer screen and I feel… something. Something is stirring deep inside of me, and it is a race to try to get it all out in one heaving, gushing tide before it slips away. I have had this sensation repeatedly over the past week and a half, and yet it seemed like each time, the time or the mood or the place just wasn’t right, but now, finally, I have found the time and space to come together like some celestial convocation of the planets coming into synchronous orbit, and yes, the words are pouring out of me like the chanting of some foreign, forgotten spell. Perhaps I shall weave a tapestry of magic tonight.
Stick with me, and we’ll find out.
Let us begin with a synopsis of what has happened of late. Number one on my, mind were the events of the Red Party from which I recently returned, having trekked up to Montreal with my friends Tom and Erik on a truly wonderful weekend of dance. The record which spun in my head all along the road and while we were there was one which evoked a sense of cycles, of time and events coming full circle; of a great spinning wheel which had brought me and my erstwhile companions a passage which had come to a space familiar to me as if I had walked those halls for time immemorial.
In a way I guess maybe I had—the trio of us, it occurred to me—myself, Tom, and Eric was an adult reflection of another trio with the same monikers who traipsed the snow covered fields of my youth.
Indeed, my companions were a different Tommy and a different Eric, but then again, wasn’t I also a completely different Danny? Just one point that made me go, “Hmmm…” throughout the weekend.
The main event Saturday night was held at Metropolis, supposedly the largest nightclub in Canada, and a space of which I have normally been less than fond.
However, this evening I realized that I was enjoying the music, the lights, the performance, and indeed the club itself. The hall outside the downstairs bathroom where once upon a time I had kissed my betrothed Anthony and months later where I would console a brokenhearted Tom was now a cool place of respite for a feverish Dan, who found his way unerringly there through the pulsating crowd.
The live performance that evening recalled the Red Party of a year ago when Judy Albanese sang “You” to a crowd of cheering gay boys, many of whom had been there last year to cheer just as wildly when she sang “You used to hold me...” accapella after arriving in the midst of a blizzard only to discover her crew had lost her music.
Those of us who had been there previously laughed aloud and nodded our heads in shared memory. I thought as I danced there of the boys with whom I had attended last year’s party.
Five of us had packed into my then-newly-purchased Toyota Echo and drove from Portland, Maine on an impromptu winter vacation. I really only knew one of them well, and had met the other three the week before, dashing off thoughtless invitations which were unexpectedly accepted, and thus, our journey was one of fresh, new stories as we all came to know one another. Weeks after our return I wound up in the hospital after an asthma attack, and lay deathly ill at home for a week later. All four of the other boys came to my succor, even though two of them had to drive all the way from Boston, and it struck me that I had never had better friends. And there on the dance floor at Metropolis, I was also struck by the bracing fact that I hadn’t spoken to any of them in months. Again the thought occurred to me of how fleeting are our friendships, and how apt is Stephen King’s comparison of friends to busboys in a busy restaurant. They come in and out of wildly swinging doors and most often only briefly stop at your table no matter how frantically we gesticulate at them from across the room. Rare indeed is the waitress or busboy with whom we build a lasting friendship, and to stretch the analogy out even further, rarer is the hotel coffee shop that remains open through the years and maintains that uncommon server in their employ with whom we connected tenuously.
And then, out of nowhere appeared Mark, and later his boyfriend Marcus, as if on cue to the patterns of my thoughts, and I laughed with a delight that I simply couldn’t explain even to them at that moment, what with all else going on around us, and somehow it was enough to just embrace them; these two unexpected friends of mine with whom I feel such a connection, and jumped up and down and squeal with sheer pleasure.
A note on this meeting: I had told them long in advance that I wanted to go to the Red Party, and I’d hoped they would join me there somehow from Toronto.
However, as the weeks passed, my attendance became less certain, and I received no word from either of them, and thus, when suddenly I became more able to afford the trip, I was fairly convinced that they wouldn’t be there, as I thought they were all tied up in Toronto trying to put on a circuit event of their own. Thus, it was perhaps one of the most pleasant surprises of my life to find them both there, grinning like a couple of egg-sucking dogs, if you’ll pardon the expression, with their friend Winslow in tow.
Reunions are rather special events, are they not?
Especially those that come so unexpectedly.
I have spoken elsewhere of how dear those boys are to me, so I won’t divulge the time just now to reminisce, but I would like to take a moment as we are on the subject of cycles to recap some of my thoughts with Mark about the magic of a circuit party and finding the “center” on the dance floor. Finding the center, as we call it, is one of the moments that makes life worth living no matter how dreary and mundane it is on the average weekday.
It is that moment of shining glory when all events come together in your mind, nay, in your soul if you can dig it, and you achieve a certain clarity that reveals all the other shit for just was it is: shit; that is, meaningless drivel that when all is said and done cannot amount to a hill of beans.
Buddhists might claim it is reaching enlightenment, particularly if you subscribe to their belief that life is suffering. It is a moment of transcendence when nothing else matters.
It is a moment of focus, of pure, uncomplicated joy.
It’s a moment of understanding and embracing the miraculous. Experiencing the numinous, my friends.
A moment of truth when you see the writing on the wall, and get the joke. Yeah, man, that’s what I am talking about. Getting the joke. And laughing!
Last summer I spent a great deal of time wandering the streets of Boston and asking God, Allah, the universe, or what-have-you a lot of questions. I painfully felt the weight of the world upon my shoulders, and I was frustrated and hurt, locked into a body wasted by my time in the hospital and struggling with a wide variety of soul-crushing problems. I won’t go into all that again, but let’s just say that I had enough on my plate to ask God if maybe I was the butt of some divine joke, and if so, maybe he would let me in on it sometime. And there, on the second night during the closing party at Stereo (my favorite night club in Canada) as I was washed in a sea of flashing red lights, surrounded by a milling throng of gyrating gay muscle boys, and as a wave of juicy flavor exploded in my mouth while I sucked on my sour apple Blow Pop, and I twirled two shimmering sequined flags like Salome’s veils about the figure of a silver-clad forty-five year old disco queen; there, there, on the dance floor as my senses were overwhelmed in a rush of color, sounds, caresses, flavors, and scents, I got it.
I got the joke!
And I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed...
I have talked in the past about the idea that some folks are more evolved than others; that some Homo sapiens have risen to become Homo ludens—some of the “people who know” are now the “people who laugh;” that it is no longer enough to just know about the world around us, to be truly evolved to the highest state of humanity, you have to take pleasure in that knowledge, to sit back and enjoy this great, and wondrous, often times very-fucked-up-but-always-entertaining wacky, wild world in which we live. And it occurred to me that as I shook my groove thing with the rest of the crowd: who better to exemplify the Homo ludens than the queers, nay, let me reiterate, the gays of the world. Or at least those gay boys and girls in that club, for in that moment, there was no other world outside the club.
It ceased to exist.
It never was, and for all we knew it would never be.
Four o’clock was a lifetime away; Monday morning incomprehensible.
We were there, that’s all we knew, all we had to know, and as I have noted elsewhere it is then, in that moment where time ceases to exist and space has no function that we are alive!
A lot of other stuff happened over the course of the weekend; I chipped a tooth, ran into a boy who paid for a cab ride home from the Black and Blue and whom I never got to thank properly, and as I learned how to dance with glow sticks at the Red Party the year before, at this one I learned how to flag—that is dance with silken, sparkling scarves specially weighted so that they flare out dramatically if you twirl them properly.
But what I got out of the weekend as a whole was a sense of perspective.
I have done a lot of writing over the past six months, and even more thinking, and I like to consider myself fairly self-analytical, to say the least, but when I have been struggling in the thick of things, it has been difficult to step back and look at the situations objectively, although I daresay I have done a better job than many would have if placed in my shoes. January was a difficult month, but February was a good time to rest and reflect and sort of let things settle in my stomach, mind, and heart.
I mentioned to Tom and Eric as we drove up that it was sort of crazy how so many people spend their lives struggling to make some impact on a world that ultimately cares not a whit about them. At the time I was gazing out across the Charles River at some particularly large warehouses and lofts and thinking that somebody had dedicated a significant portion of his life to design and build one of those, and at most all he really had to show for it was a plaque with his name on it on the corner stone, or maybe a mason had titled the building across the upper story with a “Fudderman Block” so that passersby twenty years later looking up might idly wonder “Who the hell was Fudderman?” and “Why did he have a building named after him?” Straight people make an impact on the world by breeding and spreading their genetic seeds across the planet. What easier way to achieve some sense of immortality than to pass a name on to your heirs? Buildings may fall and be plowed under; a commemorative watch will invariable get smashed or stolen; but to inscribe your family name onto countless generations of unsuspecting progeny, now that’s an achievement! And yet somehow we continue to strive to leave a mark, gay or straight, father, mother, or sterile and barren. Even in death it seems a large majority of us desire memorialization beneath a slab of marble with our name and some Hallmark eulogy inscribed upon it. Is it any wonder that Generation X has been followed by the “Why Bother?” generation? In the face of all that meaningless insignificance why shouldn’t we just throw in the towel, give up, and just focus on entertaining ourselves? This is where I start to get a little preachy, so brace yourselves, or go make some popcorn and skip this section when you return. It seems to me that we should just face facts: human life is really pretty transitory, and whether you are an optimist or a pessimist is what determines the types of transitions one makes. I don’t think it would be hard to acknowledge that those whose glasses are half full consistently seem to get all the lucky breaks and pretty much float through life enjoying every step of the way whereas the half empty lot invariably lives crises to crises, wallowing in their dumps and surrounding themselves with other pessimists inasmuch as misery loves company. We all know the types: the Ned Flanderses always seem to find twenty dollar bills in the gutters, while the bitter, cunty queens lash out at anyone they perceive as luckier than they, or worse, as miserable as they! I think I speak with some authority on this topic as I have been a resident at one time or another of both camps, and while I pity and even empathize with the half-empties, I consider myself blessed to have hopped the fence to a side where the grass is indeed much greener.
So, I wander through this life with my little perspectives and wonder if I really am in the know or just making a good show of it.
I, myself, often wonder why I even bother to write any of this down.
Some of you I know don’t read much of what I have to say. Some even disagree quite vehemently with my opinions, to which I respond “to each his own,”
There are even a few folks out there who have asked me not to send anymore of my ramblings as they take too long to download and/or they take up too much space on their hard drives. Hah! Nothing like getting smashed in the face with a cold dose of reality than being told that one’s opinions are less than useless to some members of the audience.
Oh well, at least I haven’t gotten heckled yet.
So why do I keep writing?
I suppose now that I have regular therapist, I write less as I have an audience of one who has to listen, or at least that’s what I’m paying him to do. I reckon that in my own way I am just like everyone else and want to leave my mark on the world in some small way.
Tucson and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts this afternoon and were suitably awed by the incredible creative forces which have spurred our species on to create the wondrous, hideous, and tacky.
We (or at least I) fell in love with the wing devoted to ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and Mesopotamian artifacts, brushed past the boring display on colonial silversmithing, and fingered our Adams’ apples (do dogs have Adams apples?) appreciatively when we got to the burnished, razor sharp samurai swords.
And despite the intense appreciation I have for the arts, and the highest esteem I hold for Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Degas among dozens of other painters, sculptors, and calligraphers, the implacable feeling with which I was left as we departed was one of the irrelevance of their efforts.
I had just spent three hours wandering the halls of a building which in itself was a magnificent work of art, and yet hours later, my mind had turned to the next thrill which as it turned out was culinary in nature.
I also got to thinking about the security guards who left more of an impression on me than the art which they protected.
It is with no small wonder as they languish in a semi-permanent purgatory of boredom that they pounce on almost any opportunity to exercise what might they can display when a young unassuming lad such as myself attempts to enter with (horror of horrors) a dog! I often try to figure what testosterone laden thrill this gives them when they assert in as manly a fashion as they can muster that “There are NO dogs allowed,” especially when it seems very plain to me and other casual observers that Tucson wears a service dog vest and harness adorned with an identification badge. All I have been able to come up with in answer is that they too have recognized the average daily uselessness of their positions, and seeing a spark of life approaching, they leap at the chance to flex their badges even if they do, in fact, see Tuc’s I.D. badge, or perhaps even because of it (damned handicapped people, they already take up all the parking, now they want to bring their mangy dogs in with them?! Hell no, not while I’m on duty!)
Sometimes I try to share my perspectives with them in the hopes of spreading the gospel and enlightening them, but then again, it really is easier to say, “why bother?” and just flash them with my I.D. badge.
On a funny side note, the other day a security guard tried to intercept me while we were entering the library and when I ignored his yells (selective deafness) and continued walking, he gave a rather half-hearted chase.
When it became apparent I wasn’t going to stop and wait for him to catch up (I was walking just a tad too briskly) he gave up, having almost broken a sweat on his pudgy brow.
I reckon he figured that the guards on the other side of the library would block our entry, which they also tried to do, but were foiled by my trusty badge.
I love fucking with them.
I’ve been writing now for about four hours, and I’m still not entirely sure I have managed to say exactly what it was I wanted when I began.
Oh yeah, perspective—that’s the point I am trying to make.
We need to have it, to keep it in mind, to come back to it when we stray off into right field.
Many people lack it, and I think it’s what really separates the half-fulls from the half-empties.
I know that little truth probably couldn’t be more self-evident, but I assure you it is incredibly easy to lose track of it.
Story of my life! (sigh)
I have a few more thoughts, and then I’m going to call it a night.
The first is that I am slowly staring to feel a bit wiser as life goes on. For Christ’s sake all of a sudden I am right around the corner from turning twenty-six, my hair is getting grayer by the day, and I sure as hell better have some wisdom to make up for it! The irony of it all is that many of my moments of lucidity of the last six months have come to me in a drug-induced state. I cannot attest that they were enabled by the drugs, although I daresay that sometimes the drugs have acted as catalysts to my little epiphanies, but the ironic thing is that while I and some few of you may recognize some of the wisdom, nay, the enlightenment, I have attained in such a state, mainstream society would disregard and invalidate my findings because they were not uncovered in a socially responsible fashion.
Funny, isn’t it?
On any given day I pump no less than 15 drugs, vitamins, minerals, and supplements into my body to sustain, maintain, and increase my body’s health and strength ostensibly so that I may go to work, watch sitcoms and “reality” TV shows, and contribute to the GNP on a daily basis, yet if I take one or two non-government sanctioned substances into my body on the occasional weekend away and happen to achieve a moment of lucidity I usually don’t come across on the typical weekday and record it all later, folks roll their eyes at the very least, and at worst disregard everything I have to say, sober or not.
Wacky stuff, humans.
Even wackier are the Homo ludens.
Anthropologist Lyall Watson writes about a group of early humans called the Strandloopers who lived on the beaches of the Ivory Coast in western South Africa. They are an anthropological curiosity as their bones show that they had unseemingly large heads attached to very small, child-like bodies. They left no lasting signs of civilization such as fortifications or much more than the most rudimentary tools, and yet he idolizes them. You see, he has a vision, which I rather like as well, in which these humans made an evolutionary jump far ahead than their contemporary Homo sapiens and became something else, humans with huge brains so large that they eliminated the need for crude tools and the objects of war. Instead they lived naked and free, playing on the beach and napping after simple meals provided by the fauna caught in rocky tide pools. They contemplated the world around them, and took pleasure in raising their small families peacefully under the warm sun and comforting stars. The Strandloopers disappeared without leaving much to account for their existence but a few graves here and there and the imagination of the occasional scientist and his students. The point he tries to make is that maybe humans have already reached the pinnacle of their evolution there by the seas, and after a brief bright speck of light in the evolutionary time line, it quietly burned out. I think back on my journey to the Island of Naxos far out in the Aegean Sea and the beautiful, sun-browned people I found there. My distant Greek cousins have a lovely perspective on life. All the young people are gorgeous; the women are lithe and willowy while the men are supple and strong. They all have a zest, a vibrancy for life, and they live their days fully, devoting equal portions of their time to work, rest, and play. Their island gleams like an incandescent lily in a turquoise sea, and their flocks of goats dot the craggy, flower-covered mountains like satyrs out of a myth. They eat their fill of sumptuous meals and drink and smoke and make merry. By their thirties they all shrink in height while they broaden in girth and no one seems to care a bit. They have perspective; a magnificent sense of perspective and my days there despite a horrible case of bronchitis and bad sunburn were some of my happiest.
Perhaps the Strandloopers, homo ludens are still very much alive.
In fact, I’m sure of it.