There's a phrase that I've been noticing these last few months: "mediocre white men". I'm not sure where it began, though my own reading is that I first saw it applied to authors--- and then to figures in politics and corporate life. The initial usage, I think, was based on the idea that women writers, professionals, politicians were being ignored and overlooked in favor of less talented people whose claim to success was largely that they were male. There is also the idea that mediocre white men are likely to be angrily defensive and entitled about success. I've seen this as a mock prayer meme at Twitter and elsewhere: "Oh Lord, give me the boundless self-confidence of a mediocre white man".
I'm not commenting here on the political usage, or even on the usage inside professional life or the literary world. What I will comment on is how the term has been extended into social--- sexual ---life. I've been seeing the term--- "mediocre white man" ---appear at Twitter in tweets where women discuss their love lives and the men they're with or have been with. It seems that most male performance is rated as "mediocre", and male attempts at introduction and seduction are laughingly dismissed as mediocre.
I'll admit that the word terrifies me. I was brought up to believe that any grade, any rating, any judgment of my own performance that was less than outstanding was a failure and was totally shameful. And I was brought up to believe that a mediocre grade was worse than a failing grade. Not that, say, a 50/100 on a math exam was ever acceptable, but a 75/100 was somehow more shameful. Being a failure was bad, but just being someone in the middle of the pack was somehow worse. Call that one of the reasons why I've always shied away from things I knew I wouldn't be good at. Success was mandatory--- that's a given. But the real fear was ending up just being one of the faceless, nameless people who were just getting by, who weren't worth noticing.
There are a lot of things in that description that I still have to unwind. Let's just say for the moment that I am terrified of being judged 'mediocre'. Failing outright seems less shameful. If I took a girl to bed and experienced systems failure, if I couldn't achieve and maintain an erection, I'd be angry at myself, certainly, and there would probably be stammered apologies. But I'd have a Plan B. I'd know that I had a chance to redeem myself. If we had sex and the girl sneered at my performance as 'mediocre', I'd flee the bedroom and maybe the city. There's no coming back from having her tell all her friends (and maybe everyone on Twitter) that I was merely 'mediocre'.
Once upon a time, in a darkened bedroom in another city, a young companion and I were talking about how we came to our particular sexual interests. I confided in her that sometimes I thought that I found S/M attractive not just for its class markers (French novels, elegant chateaux, expensive accoutrements) but because it was something where I understood the criteria for judgment. I knew how to construct narratives and scenarios, I knew how to use blindfolds and candle wax and ice cubes and riding whips. I didn't have to be judged on my body or its performance. She had the grace not to say anything one way or the other about my flesh. She did kiss me and tell me she loved the stories I told, the stories I made her part of.
These days, here in the age of the gender wars, here as a gentleman of a certain age, I'm increasingly terrified of being dismissed as mediocre. And I'm not sure what the criteria are. I'm not rich, I'm not at the top of my profession, I'm not someone with any social presence or value. I've spent a long time thinking that I was a reasonably proficient lover. I'm good at intelligence work, at ferreting out information. So I've applied that to books and films and blog entries to find out what skills I need to hone. I'm not sure that's good enough now, and I'm not sure that it was ever good enough. I'm finding it harder and harder to think that I wasn't lied to all these years, that I was never any good and could never be any good.
I do not know how to avoid being tagged as a "mediocre white man". I don't know what the rules are, or what the criteria for judgment are, or how to avoid judgments that would keep me from trying ever again. Not ever trying again could very well be the best course. That's certainly something to consider.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Two Three Nine: Carriage House
I was at coffee this morning when I thought of someone from my past. I'll call her Ms. South Brooklyn--- the last place I recall her living. I haven't heard from her in a decade, and she must be in her mid-thirties now. She was once a fine writer, and she planned to finish a degree at Columbia and become a writer--- fiction, essays on culture and politics. I really have no clue as to what she's doing now. In some ways it's easiest to assume that she was abducted by aliens.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking of her today. It may be that I'm reading Susan Choi's new "Trust Exercise", and some of the scenes with precocious teens in an elite performing arts curriculum reminded me of Ms. South Brooklyn in her reminiscences of her own teen days. She told wonderful tales of her past, told them both to me and to readers of a 'zine she published long ago.
The heroine of "Trust Exercise" thinks at one point of the boy she's been obsessed with since freshman year in high school. His family is moneyed, and their house in upscale Atlanta has a detached carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn told me once that she'd had a boy she was obsessed with in her mid-teens who'd lived in a well-off suburb (Silver Spring?) of DC in a reno'd mansion with a carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn would go down by train from her father's house in Pennsylvania to her mother's place in Baltimore, and she'd make a point of breaking her return trip to dash out to Maryland and see the boy.
The boy himself means nothing, really. He used to be on the phone with Ms. South Brooklyn all night, having the long, complicated conversations bookish teens had in those days. They'd do phone sex, of course, but they'd also spin out plans for running off together to northern Italy or Tokyo. He means nothing to the story. What matters is the carriage house.
The boy refused to live under the same roof as his parents, and so he stayed in the carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn would visit him there. I'll assume it was more-or-less clandestine, with the boy's parents (parent, maybe--- I think divorced parents are a given here) kept nominally in the dark. They'd sit and drink wine by candlelight and read one another's poetry and stories. They'd have sex on the sofa--- on the sofa far more often than in the boy's bed. She told me that she'd spend a day walking through the little carriage house topless in skinny jeans or tiny running shorts, that being topless like that made her feel far more daring than being naked or wrapped in a bedsheet or a post-shower towel. She recalled standing bare-breasted at the windows of the carriage house and looking out at the trees and the street and wondering if she'd have the nerve ever to go outside like that with a wineglass. I don't know if she ever did that. I know that in late high school she took up sleeping naked in order to feel more "European" or "sophisticated", but being topless always made her feel far more sexual than being naked.
In a better world, she'd have told me many more stories of her days of exploration and discovery. She'd have told me how many of the autobiographical stories in her 'zine were actually true. She became very political while at Columbia, and I suspect that her interests these last ten years have all been about social issues and socialist organizing than about erotica. That's why I'm noting her stories here. They were lovely things, and full of alluring images. Imagining her topless in just a pair of faded skinny jeans or cut-off short shorts, standing at a French window or walking in late-summer sunlight under trees in the carriage house garden--- that's lovely. She makes a lovely character for stories or films. And so I do want her stories archived here, archived against some kind of distant future.
Now I will note that she told me other amazing stories, too. She told me a couple of versions of something that happened just after high school. She was staying at her mother's and had discovered a hipster vinyl store and become a regular there. There was a boy who worked there who became the one who recommended most of the music (ambient, often Scandinavian, electronica)--- mid or late twenties, tall, lanky, with just a touch of a West Indian accent ---on whom she developed a major crush. She told me that once she made a point of planning an encounter with him.
She went into the store on a morning where heavy rains were keeping most people home specifically to seduce him--- thank him, she said. She told the story in more than one version, of course. The rain was a constant in both versions. Heavy rain, with her caught by it just enough to make her auburn hair messy and wet and for her white singlet to show under her summer blazer that she was bra-less. In one version, no one at all was on the street on in the store other than the boy she fancied, and she thanked him on her knees in an empty aisle and then sat on a work table with her jeans off and wrapped her legs round him while he took her. In the other version, the boy was there with a co-worker who smirked and waved the two of them into the little store office where she went down on him, although the boy was a bit too nervous to risk full-on sex. Two versions, and I'm not sure how much credence to give to either. Easy enough to see either version as a film in my head, and I'd like to hope that one of the versions was true.
For reasons that anyone can figure out here in the current political climate, erotica may be the last thing people think about. With the republic collapsing into authoritarianism and social advances being undone, tales of sexual adventure don't seem important at all. But it is hard to give up the thought that tales of discovery and pleasure and adventure do matter and that they're worth archiving for future dreams.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking of her today. It may be that I'm reading Susan Choi's new "Trust Exercise", and some of the scenes with precocious teens in an elite performing arts curriculum reminded me of Ms. South Brooklyn in her reminiscences of her own teen days. She told wonderful tales of her past, told them both to me and to readers of a 'zine she published long ago.
The heroine of "Trust Exercise" thinks at one point of the boy she's been obsessed with since freshman year in high school. His family is moneyed, and their house in upscale Atlanta has a detached carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn told me once that she'd had a boy she was obsessed with in her mid-teens who'd lived in a well-off suburb (Silver Spring?) of DC in a reno'd mansion with a carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn would go down by train from her father's house in Pennsylvania to her mother's place in Baltimore, and she'd make a point of breaking her return trip to dash out to Maryland and see the boy.
The boy himself means nothing, really. He used to be on the phone with Ms. South Brooklyn all night, having the long, complicated conversations bookish teens had in those days. They'd do phone sex, of course, but they'd also spin out plans for running off together to northern Italy or Tokyo. He means nothing to the story. What matters is the carriage house.
The boy refused to live under the same roof as his parents, and so he stayed in the carriage house. Ms. South Brooklyn would visit him there. I'll assume it was more-or-less clandestine, with the boy's parents (parent, maybe--- I think divorced parents are a given here) kept nominally in the dark. They'd sit and drink wine by candlelight and read one another's poetry and stories. They'd have sex on the sofa--- on the sofa far more often than in the boy's bed. She told me that she'd spend a day walking through the little carriage house topless in skinny jeans or tiny running shorts, that being topless like that made her feel far more daring than being naked or wrapped in a bedsheet or a post-shower towel. She recalled standing bare-breasted at the windows of the carriage house and looking out at the trees and the street and wondering if she'd have the nerve ever to go outside like that with a wineglass. I don't know if she ever did that. I know that in late high school she took up sleeping naked in order to feel more "European" or "sophisticated", but being topless always made her feel far more sexual than being naked.
In a better world, she'd have told me many more stories of her days of exploration and discovery. She'd have told me how many of the autobiographical stories in her 'zine were actually true. She became very political while at Columbia, and I suspect that her interests these last ten years have all been about social issues and socialist organizing than about erotica. That's why I'm noting her stories here. They were lovely things, and full of alluring images. Imagining her topless in just a pair of faded skinny jeans or cut-off short shorts, standing at a French window or walking in late-summer sunlight under trees in the carriage house garden--- that's lovely. She makes a lovely character for stories or films. And so I do want her stories archived here, archived against some kind of distant future.
Now I will note that she told me other amazing stories, too. She told me a couple of versions of something that happened just after high school. She was staying at her mother's and had discovered a hipster vinyl store and become a regular there. There was a boy who worked there who became the one who recommended most of the music (ambient, often Scandinavian, electronica)--- mid or late twenties, tall, lanky, with just a touch of a West Indian accent ---on whom she developed a major crush. She told me that once she made a point of planning an encounter with him.
She went into the store on a morning where heavy rains were keeping most people home specifically to seduce him--- thank him, she said. She told the story in more than one version, of course. The rain was a constant in both versions. Heavy rain, with her caught by it just enough to make her auburn hair messy and wet and for her white singlet to show under her summer blazer that she was bra-less. In one version, no one at all was on the street on in the store other than the boy she fancied, and she thanked him on her knees in an empty aisle and then sat on a work table with her jeans off and wrapped her legs round him while he took her. In the other version, the boy was there with a co-worker who smirked and waved the two of them into the little store office where she went down on him, although the boy was a bit too nervous to risk full-on sex. Two versions, and I'm not sure how much credence to give to either. Easy enough to see either version as a film in my head, and I'd like to hope that one of the versions was true.
For reasons that anyone can figure out here in the current political climate, erotica may be the last thing people think about. With the republic collapsing into authoritarianism and social advances being undone, tales of sexual adventure don't seem important at all. But it is hard to give up the thought that tales of discovery and pleasure and adventure do matter and that they're worth archiving for future dreams.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Two Three Eight: Coffee
I do ask myself sometimes--- what do I want in a relationship? How do I see relationships working? I suppose that comes up most often on weekend mornings. My usual weekend morning begins with walking downtown to one of the coffeeshops near the river with a book and my notebooks. I'll sit and watch couples and try to imagine their stories. I've always tried to imagine the stories of lovely girls at other tables, to ask myself who they are and what they're doing and what brought them out so early. I do it with couples, too. Who are these people? What did they do last night? What brought them out this early? What are they talking about? How long have they been together? What's the nature of their relationship?
The ones I may envy most are what I've always called Laptop Couples. A couple in their mid or late twenties, there at a table with their laptops or tablets, talking to one another over coffee, looking up to trade stories from whatever each has on screen. Twenty years ago they might have been at the same table, but with sections of the Sunday New York Times rather than devices. With straight couples, the guy is inevitably stubbled. The girl is in short shorts or leggings and a rumpled man's shirt. I somehow imagine both in reading glasses.
Are they married or living together? I'd like to think of them as partnered rather than married. I'm old enough to remember when living together had a certain edginess about it, and that still gives a hint of spice to relationships I imagine. Though sometimes I imagine them as simply dating for a while, and becoming used to spending weekends together while going back to their respective flats on Sunday nights.
Laptop Couples do inspire my envy. That's how I'd love to spend a weekend morning with a lover. Flat whites or chocolate cappuccino, buttered croissants or coffee cake freshly warmed. The girl in one of my dress shirts and black leggings or tiny running shorts. Each of us surfing the web or reading on our e-book apps, the two of us exchanging stories we've found or commenting on what our Twitter feeds are showing that morning. Sometimes I imagine early-morning Mimosas, too. I imagine her asking me about clues in the crosswords she's doing or telling me about a book review she's found (a new Susan Choi novel, a new Sally Rooney short story). We'd grin at each other and pass stories back and forth: have you seen this? have you read this column, this blog? We'd still be thinking of waking up together, of walking together down to a cafe.
It's a quiet image, and one that focuses on things I care about: reading, conversation, a sense of one another's presence, the soft haze of a morning-after. I've dreamed of being part of a Laptop Couple for a long time. It does sometimes leave me empty when I watch couples interacting with a quiet ease over their MacBooks. Coffee and a book all on my own--- I am used to that. But I miss the idea of a Young Companion who'd share a morning and what's out there over the aether with me.
The ones I may envy most are what I've always called Laptop Couples. A couple in their mid or late twenties, there at a table with their laptops or tablets, talking to one another over coffee, looking up to trade stories from whatever each has on screen. Twenty years ago they might have been at the same table, but with sections of the Sunday New York Times rather than devices. With straight couples, the guy is inevitably stubbled. The girl is in short shorts or leggings and a rumpled man's shirt. I somehow imagine both in reading glasses.
Are they married or living together? I'd like to think of them as partnered rather than married. I'm old enough to remember when living together had a certain edginess about it, and that still gives a hint of spice to relationships I imagine. Though sometimes I imagine them as simply dating for a while, and becoming used to spending weekends together while going back to their respective flats on Sunday nights.
Laptop Couples do inspire my envy. That's how I'd love to spend a weekend morning with a lover. Flat whites or chocolate cappuccino, buttered croissants or coffee cake freshly warmed. The girl in one of my dress shirts and black leggings or tiny running shorts. Each of us surfing the web or reading on our e-book apps, the two of us exchanging stories we've found or commenting on what our Twitter feeds are showing that morning. Sometimes I imagine early-morning Mimosas, too. I imagine her asking me about clues in the crosswords she's doing or telling me about a book review she's found (a new Susan Choi novel, a new Sally Rooney short story). We'd grin at each other and pass stories back and forth: have you seen this? have you read this column, this blog? We'd still be thinking of waking up together, of walking together down to a cafe.
It's a quiet image, and one that focuses on things I care about: reading, conversation, a sense of one another's presence, the soft haze of a morning-after. I've dreamed of being part of a Laptop Couple for a long time. It does sometimes leave me empty when I watch couples interacting with a quiet ease over their MacBooks. Coffee and a book all on my own--- I am used to that. But I miss the idea of a Young Companion who'd share a morning and what's out there over the aether with me.
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