I read a week or so ago about the Nineties electronica musician Moby--- a long string of mocking and hostile pieces about his just-released memoirs. I hadn't thought of Moby in years and years. I recall liking a song he did called "South Side". I liked the video, too--- Gwen Stefani made a great appearance in it. But I hadn't heard anything he'd done in...well...easily a dozen years. Likely more. But his memoirs have just appeared, and he was attacked all across social media.
It seems that Moby had some sort of relationship with the young Natalie Portman when she was eighteen and he was twenty years older. He described it as "dating". She responded that they hadn't "dated", that he was just some creepy older man who'd hung around her.
It also seems that he dated the young Lana Del Rey a few times, and she spent time mocking him as just another middle-aged white man who was too moneyed, too creepy, and too old. At some point she laughed at him and told him that when the revolution came, he'd be amongst the guillotined. I had to laugh at that, of course. The young Lana Del Rey telling me she'd have me guillotined? That's an unexpectedly hot image. LDR threatening me with the guillotine? I'd count that as a successful dating moment.
What bothers me is the sheer rage out there about age differentials. So many women on social media were savagely angry at Moby for daring to feel desire for someone younger. Any attention from anyone older, they insisted, was by definition creepy and disgusting.
My own tastes run to Young Companions. That's been true since ever I was in my later twenties. It's true now and it'll be true when I'm eighty. That won't change.
Now I have been lucky. I've known a fair number of lovely girls who've found my age to be either irrelevant or a plus. I've been fortunate about that. I have no idea how many girls out there are members of what a friend at McGill in Montreal used to call the Secret Tribe. I'm all too aware that it's a niche thing. Nonetheless, I've had young companions in my life, and I hadn't been exposed to any of the anger and disdain showered on Moby. Girls have said yes or no, gone out with me or not, slept with me or not. But none of them ever looked at me with anything like the hostility and contempt in the tweets and blog entries about Moby and Ms. Portman.
I did phone a couple of the girls I knew when they were beginning undergraduates. Both were a bit exasperated. Both told me that if I'd been repulsive or creepy when they first met me, I'd have been made very, very aware of it. One made it very clear that I'd been her choice exactly because of my age, that she expected me to do certain things--- teach her things, bring her places, make her feel daring and wicked ---and that it was my age that enabled me to do them with her. Both reminded me that they'd known me since the early Noughts and that they were still speaking to me, which should be a clear sign that I had some value then and now.
That should've made me feel better, but somehow it didn't. It wasn't that I didn't believe them. They're both fiercely bright and straightforward and self-aware, and I should've been proud that they thought of me even now as a good memory. I'm somehow not, though.
It's probably some complicated cocktail of vanity, self-loathing, and fear for the future. I've had lovers who were amused and intrigued by my age and the things that went with it. That's luck--- it really is. And right now I'm terrified that my luck will run out, that the niche girls I've met and loved all these years will vanish. I'm terrified that any time I speak to a lovely girl at the next table or the next barstool she'll recoil in disgust. I'm terrified that from now on, my touch will be regarded with derision and contempt.
I can't imagine life with the ability to flirt and play, the chance to move through the rituals of romance and seduction. But in some access of sexual hypochondria, I can't imagine that my presence and touch aren't as appalling as the women attacking Moby believe. I don't know what to do about that except give up any belief that I might have value to niche girls, any belief that I might be a valued lover.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Two Three Six: Interlocutors
I ran across an article the other day lamenting that men, because they have no male friends or social support networks, rely on their wives and girlfriends and partners to keep them emotionally stable, that they burden and wear down their significant others with their psychological needs. A persuasive article, mind you. And it made a real point--- masculinity as defined in contemporary North America leaves no real place for men to develop support networks amongst themselves.
I've said that before at this site. A North American male--- straight, white ones certainly ---past about twenty-four or twenty-five is socially discouraged from maintaining any close male friendships. Having close male friends past that point leaves one open to accusations of being closeted gay or else a man-child who can't commit to a "real" relationship. You know the term I use: either a Peter Pan or a paederast. And so men throw all their psychological needs onto their girlfriends or partners--- one more weight for the women in their lives to carry.
The article made very good points. There's no denying that. Still, though--- it is disheartening. Dispiriting, anyway.
I sat at my office desk reading the article and felt vaguely guilty. Vaguely empty, too. Truth to tell, I can't think of any male friends with whom I'd discuss anything personal or emotionally deep. There are a few people with whom I'd trade stories over drinks--- tell tales from books I'd read, bring up odd bits of information on line, talk about films ---but none with whom I'd discuss anything approaching within cannon-shot of intimate. If I told any stories about myself, they'd be the kind that fall into the category of once-upon-a-time about places gone or adventures in my university days.
So there's that much truth in the article. There's no one I'd invite over for drinks, no one whom I'd call and suggest going anyplace. If I made a list tonight of people I'd count as friends, there's not one who's been to my flat, not one whose home address I know. I have female neighbours who run back and forth between apartments--- cooking, having drinks, sitting outside and talking 'til midnight. That's just not something I can do.
The article also made me vaguely ashamed of ever thinking of long conversations with girls who've been friends-and-lovers. I read the article and found myself deciding not to send emails or make phone calls or send texts. For much of my life friends-and-lovers and I spent long nights on the phone, talking and flirting and having extended, complicated, random conversations about anything and everything. Looking back, I feel somehow guilty. I feel guilty about being an emotional burden, or about taking up someone's time or emotional energy.
I'd always thought that one of the key reasons for having a girlfriend, a lover, a partner was that you'd have someone to be part of those late-night talks. I'd always thought that being able to have an interlocutor, a confidante, a late-night voice was a key part of a relationship. Late-night conversations made so many things better, offered a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort and safety and value. Sharing confidences, sharing stories, offering support and belief--- those things were so much of why you wanted a lover, a partner, an affair. I treasured those conversations, and now I feel ashamed of them. Nowadays those long late-night talks sound more and more like an imposition, like a burden and an emotional drain. Asking for time at all sounds like coercion.
So here we are: unwilling now to contact anyone, to call or write or text or do anything that could be construed as asking for anyone's time or energy. I find that I can't do that, and I can't contact anyone, especially someone who's a friend-and-lover. I won't be a burden, and asking for time, advice, support, sympathy--- that's no longer acceptable. Unburdening oneself is a burden to others; sharing one's intimacies is an imposition. I can't--- won't ---do that.
I've said that before at this site. A North American male--- straight, white ones certainly ---past about twenty-four or twenty-five is socially discouraged from maintaining any close male friendships. Having close male friends past that point leaves one open to accusations of being closeted gay or else a man-child who can't commit to a "real" relationship. You know the term I use: either a Peter Pan or a paederast. And so men throw all their psychological needs onto their girlfriends or partners--- one more weight for the women in their lives to carry.
The article made very good points. There's no denying that. Still, though--- it is disheartening. Dispiriting, anyway.
I sat at my office desk reading the article and felt vaguely guilty. Vaguely empty, too. Truth to tell, I can't think of any male friends with whom I'd discuss anything personal or emotionally deep. There are a few people with whom I'd trade stories over drinks--- tell tales from books I'd read, bring up odd bits of information on line, talk about films ---but none with whom I'd discuss anything approaching within cannon-shot of intimate. If I told any stories about myself, they'd be the kind that fall into the category of once-upon-a-time about places gone or adventures in my university days.
So there's that much truth in the article. There's no one I'd invite over for drinks, no one whom I'd call and suggest going anyplace. If I made a list tonight of people I'd count as friends, there's not one who's been to my flat, not one whose home address I know. I have female neighbours who run back and forth between apartments--- cooking, having drinks, sitting outside and talking 'til midnight. That's just not something I can do.
The article also made me vaguely ashamed of ever thinking of long conversations with girls who've been friends-and-lovers. I read the article and found myself deciding not to send emails or make phone calls or send texts. For much of my life friends-and-lovers and I spent long nights on the phone, talking and flirting and having extended, complicated, random conversations about anything and everything. Looking back, I feel somehow guilty. I feel guilty about being an emotional burden, or about taking up someone's time or emotional energy.
I'd always thought that one of the key reasons for having a girlfriend, a lover, a partner was that you'd have someone to be part of those late-night talks. I'd always thought that being able to have an interlocutor, a confidante, a late-night voice was a key part of a relationship. Late-night conversations made so many things better, offered a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort and safety and value. Sharing confidences, sharing stories, offering support and belief--- those things were so much of why you wanted a lover, a partner, an affair. I treasured those conversations, and now I feel ashamed of them. Nowadays those long late-night talks sound more and more like an imposition, like a burden and an emotional drain. Asking for time at all sounds like coercion.
So here we are: unwilling now to contact anyone, to call or write or text or do anything that could be construed as asking for anyone's time or energy. I find that I can't do that, and I can't contact anyone, especially someone who's a friend-and-lover. I won't be a burden, and asking for time, advice, support, sympathy--- that's no longer acceptable. Unburdening oneself is a burden to others; sharing one's intimacies is an imposition. I can't--- won't ---do that.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Two Three Five: Identities
Now's here's a complicated and odd tale I heard today--- a long email from an old friend in a distant city. She has a long-term friend there, someone male, someone of a certain age, someone whom she's known professionally and quasi-romantically for years. Quasi-romantically meaning that she's slept with him a few times over he years. I've never met him, though I've heard her mention his name before.
She'd written me about him back a couple of years ago to say that she was amazed, that her friend had taken her to a very expensive restaurant, ordered the kind of wine I'll never be able to afford, looked at her with grave intensity, and told her that all the time he'd known her, all the way back to high school, he'd had a Secret Life. She was amazed. She prides herself on her gaydar, and while the circles she moves in socially have a substantial number of gay men, she'd never guessed that her friend was among them. Well, he told her about all the byzantine details of his Secret Life: adventures, encounters, older (and moneyed) lovers when he was quite young, haut-gay clubs and parties. She didn't know the name, but I'd have said it was all very like early Andrew Holleran, very "Dancer From The Dance" (the Seventies novel that was tagged as "The Gay Gatsby"). Great stories, apparently. She was entranced by it all, and spent hours on the phone late at night listening to his memories, commiserating with him about older men he'd loved and lost as a boy, sighing over his memories of a time thirty-odd years ago when being gay still had an air of the forbidden.
There was just one small thing, she told me. She'd found out this week that...well...he'd been lying all along, that he'd never had a life amongst the gay demimonde. She wasn't clear that he'd ever been gay or had a gay (or bi) life at all. As best she could tell, it was all a complete imposture.
The question she had was...why? Why had he done it? Was he hoping she'd introduce him to a chic gay world he'd been too afraid to join on his own? Was it some ploy to get her (or other girls) to sleep with him to, well, reclaim him for the Home Team?
My own understanding is that he's gone to ground: blocked her number, vanished from social media, disappeared from the places she thought she might find him. That's almost as strange as the imposture. My friend and I have both known people who pretended to be rich, or Ivy-educated, or British, or artists. We've certainly known gay men who pretended (even now, in the Year Nineteen) to be straight. But this was new. I'd known girls who pretended to be lesbians to ward off unwelcome male advances, but that's only tactical and temporary, not like creating a whole life, complete with named lovers. And I'd never run across anyone male pretending to be gay when they weren't, even in the here-and-now.
I've always been a fan of literary impostors (Fr. Rolfe, Kurban Said, Sir Edmund Backhouse), but I don't understand quite what his pay-off would've been. Party invitations? He already had those professionally. Entree to chic events? He had those, too. A baroque way to leverage presumed gayness to get girls? That would just be awfully complicated. Some weird fetish about imaginary gay sex? That would be even more complicated, although he did spend lots of time telling her all about the details of encounters and adventures back into his early teens. Maybe it was just boredom and frustration with a haut-bourgeois life edging its way into his fifties.
Maybe--- maybe ---it was a life he'd longed for, or one that he'd created and come to believe. That happens, I suppose, with lots of complex impostures. There's a question--- how far did he take the imposture? Did he ever take a male lover? Was there ever someone on his arm--- and if so, did his companion know or suspect what was happening?
My friend told me that she thought I could tell her something, that all those biographies and thriller novels I read about people who've taken up masks and new lives would give me some clue as to why her friend had done this. She's hurt as much as anything else, hurt and puzzled and halfway afraid that her friend is having some sort of dissociative breakdown.
My own questions here are probably self-evident. How did he craft the stories? Where was he getting the names and places? And, too...how did my friend find out? How and when did she see through the imposture? I'd really like to know that. Did he tell her? Did she find out on his own? Did friends of them both reveal something to her? What gave the game away?
I am perplexed by it all, and saddened for my friend. If you're out there anywhere over the aether, read this and tell me what you think. Why this imposture? What does it mean? What would the backstory be? I'm hoping someone out there has thoughts on this.
She'd written me about him back a couple of years ago to say that she was amazed, that her friend had taken her to a very expensive restaurant, ordered the kind of wine I'll never be able to afford, looked at her with grave intensity, and told her that all the time he'd known her, all the way back to high school, he'd had a Secret Life. She was amazed. She prides herself on her gaydar, and while the circles she moves in socially have a substantial number of gay men, she'd never guessed that her friend was among them. Well, he told her about all the byzantine details of his Secret Life: adventures, encounters, older (and moneyed) lovers when he was quite young, haut-gay clubs and parties. She didn't know the name, but I'd have said it was all very like early Andrew Holleran, very "Dancer From The Dance" (the Seventies novel that was tagged as "The Gay Gatsby"). Great stories, apparently. She was entranced by it all, and spent hours on the phone late at night listening to his memories, commiserating with him about older men he'd loved and lost as a boy, sighing over his memories of a time thirty-odd years ago when being gay still had an air of the forbidden.
There was just one small thing, she told me. She'd found out this week that...well...he'd been lying all along, that he'd never had a life amongst the gay demimonde. She wasn't clear that he'd ever been gay or had a gay (or bi) life at all. As best she could tell, it was all a complete imposture.
The question she had was...why? Why had he done it? Was he hoping she'd introduce him to a chic gay world he'd been too afraid to join on his own? Was it some ploy to get her (or other girls) to sleep with him to, well, reclaim him for the Home Team?
My own understanding is that he's gone to ground: blocked her number, vanished from social media, disappeared from the places she thought she might find him. That's almost as strange as the imposture. My friend and I have both known people who pretended to be rich, or Ivy-educated, or British, or artists. We've certainly known gay men who pretended (even now, in the Year Nineteen) to be straight. But this was new. I'd known girls who pretended to be lesbians to ward off unwelcome male advances, but that's only tactical and temporary, not like creating a whole life, complete with named lovers. And I'd never run across anyone male pretending to be gay when they weren't, even in the here-and-now.
I've always been a fan of literary impostors (Fr. Rolfe, Kurban Said, Sir Edmund Backhouse), but I don't understand quite what his pay-off would've been. Party invitations? He already had those professionally. Entree to chic events? He had those, too. A baroque way to leverage presumed gayness to get girls? That would just be awfully complicated. Some weird fetish about imaginary gay sex? That would be even more complicated, although he did spend lots of time telling her all about the details of encounters and adventures back into his early teens. Maybe it was just boredom and frustration with a haut-bourgeois life edging its way into his fifties.
Maybe--- maybe ---it was a life he'd longed for, or one that he'd created and come to believe. That happens, I suppose, with lots of complex impostures. There's a question--- how far did he take the imposture? Did he ever take a male lover? Was there ever someone on his arm--- and if so, did his companion know or suspect what was happening?
My friend told me that she thought I could tell her something, that all those biographies and thriller novels I read about people who've taken up masks and new lives would give me some clue as to why her friend had done this. She's hurt as much as anything else, hurt and puzzled and halfway afraid that her friend is having some sort of dissociative breakdown.
My own questions here are probably self-evident. How did he craft the stories? Where was he getting the names and places? And, too...how did my friend find out? How and when did she see through the imposture? I'd really like to know that. Did he tell her? Did she find out on his own? Did friends of them both reveal something to her? What gave the game away?
I am perplexed by it all, and saddened for my friend. If you're out there anywhere over the aether, read this and tell me what you think. Why this imposture? What does it mean? What would the backstory be? I'm hoping someone out there has thoughts on this.
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