Tag: politics

Loosing Elasticity

~ Harlan Didrickson

It seems that my mind is like a farmer’s field: memories, like field stones continue to break ground.  And like the farmer, which stones I remove and which stones remain is largely one of effort: some stones rise wholly like a new moon; others merely crack the surface, their real mass remains solidly rooted; these unearthed boulders are marked like land mines.  But unlike the farmer who can adapt to the obstacle, I am intrigued by the coincidence of its appearance.  So I am willing, on occasion, to recall an incomplete memory: as a writer of a particular age I no longer rely on the creative end of creative writing.  Instead I dip my hand into the cold creek of memory where most recollections lay scattered, scoop up what my numb fingers can manage, and attempt to detail, at best a mosaic of my memory.  For instance:

Not yet school age, one early afternoon I watched my mother organize her ironing station in front of the television in anticipation of the daily broadcasts of her favorite soap opera’s  No more than three minutes into the first program the telephone rang.  My mother, hypnotized by her program, allowed the  phone to ring six times before answering.  I vaguely recall the immediate change in my mother’s telephone voice (from pleasant to pointed) she confirmed leaving a message, and agreed to hold for that department.  Moments later she was complaining to a sales clerk in the lingerie department at Gimpel’s that the bra she’d purchased three months earlier had lost its elasticity, which without, failed to uphold its purpose.

The clerk understood my mother’s tone immediately and transferred the call to a junior manager who was, I gathered, an obstinate, pushy and unapologetic salesman who strongly suggested that my mother purchased the wrong size.  Speechless, my mother put the phone down and stormed to her bedroom.  I picked up the receiver just in time to hear the insolent salesman male suggest to one of his minions that my mother might wish to engage my father’s help in gauging her size, as he (the salesman) was quite certain your husband (my father) was absolutely certain as to the size of her breasts.  At that moment my mother yanked the phone from me: I repeated the salesman’s suggestion: pause: slam!

Ten minutes later my mother was dragging me in one hand and her bra in the other uptown to Gimpel’s.  Never before and never since have I heard my mother use so many words in such a short period of time in such a loud voice which naturally attracted female shoppers, then clerks from other departments, department managers, and finally three men in dark suits that parted the crowd like royalty, and in a vain attempt tried to interject while my mother’s consternation whirred on like the blades of a window fan.

We rode home in the back seat of a large black sedan, just my mother (who actually radiated a self-confidence and fragrance (thanks in-part to a gift from Chanel), and I.  And at our feet were bags and bags and bags of bra’s compliments of the three dark suits; Executive’s, my mother said proudly; Chief Executive’s, the chauffeur added with a little laugh.

Hey! Who’s Got the Key to my Closet?

~ Harlan Didrickson

When I was a junior in college I made the conscious decision to climb off the fence and declare, for the indeterminable future, that I was going to live my life as a gay man.  *(Included with membership was: style, wit, fashion awareness, detail, grooming, manners, art, martini, and the male girdle appreciation, secrecy, caution, abuse, scandal, misunderstandings, stereo-types, profiling, and a great number of acronyms: DINKS, A-GAY, GLB+T+Q+. . ., GUPPIES and, of course, your very own fruit fly selected for her precise complementation of my pointed wit, sarcasm, design style, performance art preference, iPod playlists, and ultimately her unconditional allegiance to all things me!)

But gay by choice not by default.

I have several friends that have absolutely no sexual or romantic interest in women.  They do not find the female body (and it’s intimate components) curious or alluring.  A few stumbled into confronting and compromising degrees of sexual exploration and determined that (while rounding second base and signaled to slide face-first into third base by Coach Conventionality) instinct was missing supplanted by determination.  How fun might determined sex feel as opposed to instinctual sex?  When I say “instinct” it includes a deep, gnawing curiosity; hunger that causes selfishness, self-concern, and manipulation; desire under pressure like a shaken can of pop.  Most of my gay friends have profound respect for and completely empathize with the daily struggles women face in our culture today.  They just lack any degree of sexual interest.

I, on the other hand, was different.  The exploration of a woman’s body was like walking through a dense green forest, lush, abundant, enchanting, and yet dangerous, secretive, thick canopies cripple directions, and customary trails challenge the most experienced — twisting and turning and vanishing into a thicket.  A man’s body isn’t explored, it’s an ascent, with carefully calculated base camps strategically dotting the vista; a man’s body like a mountain is built of craggy rock, covered by a dense base of snow, hardened like iron, ancient, as though Hannibal crossed it; age, like summit storms, blankets the snow pack with uncertainty; simply put, both man and mountain, there’s but one direction, up, and it’s the peak which they all seek to conquer.

And it was back in college that I failed horribly at coming out of the closet.  And not for any of the reasons most gay men site: fear, ridicule, retaliation, physical harm.  I failed at coming out because I fell madly in love with a wonderful woman.  My sexual attraction was clearly stronger for men, but every time I attempted the summit, I found myself lost in the enchanted forest.  While my roommates hopped from bed to bed like Goldilocks, I was stepping deeper and deeper into the gloomy and impervious forest sensing that the clearing would soon disappear and so would I, the real me, into a world which was pleasant and decent and impossible to promise fidelity.

What I determined was that I could easily marry a woman, but I couldn’t promise fidelity.  No matter the depth of my love for her, a strong chin, broad shoulders, narrow hips would always catch my eye.  And even though I never had the chance to fall madly in love with a man, I was absolutely certain that when I did fall in love with a man, I could promise fidelity because my desire for women was lower than my desire for men.

Above all I refused to live a life of avoidance, determined to be faithful, and desperately trying to deny my fundamental identity.  I wanted a life of unrestricted expression and a promise which I would never break.

(POST NOTE:  3 years later I met Nick and fell madly and deliciously in love.
28 years later; promise intact.)

Self-Interest: Corruption Guaranteed

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 4 Comments

I think it happened during the Reagan years.  It was around the time of power ties and the advent of cellular technology.  That was when the i in America became more important than any group pronoun such as us, we, our, them.  When self-interest became an ideology was precisely the moment that the we as a nation became a dirty word.  America’s current woes stem from an obscene degree of entitlement, a self-indulgent morality, and a despicable depth of greed; the sum of which creates an environment of distrust which is fed a diet of impossible promises by leaders (edited and misrepresented by news outlets (who themselves have self-interest)) and the disintegrating pride to be a citizen of the United States of America.

It’s not a coincidence that the dawn of the internet was cloudy at first; mainstream America had little use for its content.  But what ignited the web’s wildfire was the moment that disparaged and isolated men and women of many sexually divergent activities discovered each other through unmoderated global chat rooms; next to stumble through the door were the curious; then, like Alice following Rabbit, children handily navigated the new technology (like a game) and dropped dead-smack into chatrooms like raw meat tossed into the cages of nasty predators.  Adults indulged their reputations too long; their admission of ignorance and thus training in the technology of the internet might’ve invoked authorities to act, to infiltrate and prosecute, to protect; but it took adults way too long to grasp who exactly their thirteen year old sons were meeting at the arcade.  It’s an example of self-interest both on the part of the child predator and the narrow-minded adults.

The introduction of wickedly-fast download speeds, the steep decline in popularity of “graphical user interface and proprietary software” (think AOL), the advent of simple on-ramps to the internet cable or DSL, and of course the introduction of Yahoo! and CompuServe’s email system provided accessibility to a font of information and instantaneous communication.  All this access produced a phenomenal sense of urgency, a global reach, and a sense of self-importance which exponentially exploded once Facebook emerged and quickly became the equivalence of your Christmas Card List.  Overnight America went from millions and millions of nobodies to millions and millions of nobodies with friends.  And friendship is oft borne by common interests.  And conversations around common interests tend to illuminate injustice.  Voila!  Self-Interest is born.

But what happens when no one outside of your common interest group gives a crap about your injustice?

Deadlock.  Lame Duck.  Non-negotiable.  Blame.  Intolerance.  Even insurrection, anarchy, bloodshed.

Unfortunately we’ve become a country of individuals corralled in to two political parties neither of which we feel particularly expresses how we really feel.  And there we sit, millions of disenfranchised voters waiting for November to express our citizenship by voting for one of two people (our right to vote coerced like a false confession), but neither really represents me.

But maybe, maybe it’s not about me, maybe it’s about us, us with common interests like freedom and liberty and a free market and rights and that once cherished but now forgotten or a provincial joke, the American Dream.  Our America will collapse if its forced to support millions and millions of fractious self-interested citizens.  We’ve got to agree to disagree; to stop feuding; to reconcile our differences; and to stop the pettiness of self-interest.

We’re in a disaster and we need everyone to come together; it’s called brotherhood.

Rights are Blind

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

I am not a fan of convention.

Convention was the double-barreled shotgun pointed at my mother and father back in April, 1955.  Convention forced them to marry.  And I suppose convention could be held partially to blame for my mother’s black-eye’s, broken nose, bruised ribs, cut lips, broken dishes, thrown plates, kitchen walls stained by brown gravy as the thrown pot-roast stuck then slid to the linoleum floor.  Yes, I suppose convention could be held partly to blame for decades of humiliation, abuse, eventual divorce, and questions my mother never had answered as to why convention revoked her right not to marry.

Convention is simply a thoughtless reaction designed to uphold order.  Marriage has been painted as the villain recently when the “have’s” and the “have-not’s” start arguing.  But it’s not Marriage we’re defending or demanding, it’s Convention.

There are lots of people willing to go to great lengths to defend Convention.  I am not interested in Convention.  I was sucker-punched by Convention once, as a child, when it told me to do as I was told, even if it seemed odd or strange or painful.  And yes, Convention said, Priest’s are adults.

Keep your Convention.  Here, take mine; it’s never done me any favors.  I have lots of friends who’ll gladly off theirs.

I just want what Convention thinks it is.  What I want is quiet, firm, loyal, blind, and the most powerful tenet of American Citizenship.  I want my Rights.  I don’t want better or different or bigger or smaller.  I just want my equal rights. And if there are fellow American Citizens that are afforded rights which are different than mine, then the Declaration of Independence is a lie from the very beginning.  We’re not all created equal.

And if the foundation upon which all our rights are built upon is fundamentally a lie, then not one American Citizen has a right to anything.

Tell that to Convention.