Not feeling it.

Ages ago, well probably not ages since she's not that old, I promised Kid A I would write her a book about bunny superheroes.  It seemed like a good idea at the time but now I think I have put her off long enough and now it's time to write the book.

I am planning to write something or other during July's Camp NaNo because I am sick of the book I wrote last year and have been tinkering and fixing and tweaking for what feels like forever.  I need to step away and find a new outlet for that fiction bug that needles my brain all the time.  But, I promised my kid a book and it's not the one I want to write right now.  I want to write another fun book, probably about ladies falling in love or causing mischief or some combination of the two.  Instead, I think I will spend the month writing a story (or several probably if I am going to go for the 50,000 word goal) about bunnies.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the bunny story, whatever it ends up being.  But usually I get a story idea and it burrows in and it won't let me go until I have written it down.  I spend every minute thinking of how to structure the story, where the conflict is, how each character is going to be, the names, places, the everything of the story.  I do not have the same um passion for this story.  So this will be a new experience in writing when I just don't have the same passion or drive for a story.  I guess that's something, right?

I may want to write another book about people, but bunnies it will have to be I think because there is only so long you can put off doing something for your kid before you turn into the parent who breaks promises.  Ugh, no one wants to be that person.  Although he might make a fine character in my next book.

Going Back Again

Saturday night my wife and I went to dinner at my high school for my fifteenth reunion.  There were not too many of my former classmates there but we had a lovely time catching up with a few of them.  Most haven't changed too much, the serious are still serious, the nerds still nerdy (but perhaps funnier about it), and the clowns still funny.

My wife asked me how people would have described me in high school.  I said probably sarcastic, maybe a little mean.  But I don't really know.  I was surprised several year ago by a friend who met someone from my high school class telling me that according to my former classmate I was "nice" and "friends with everyone."  I don't know if this is a true perception or if classmate didn't want to be totally candid.  But it made me wonder if we ever have any idea of what others truly think of us.

Before we left for home we had to search out the ladies' room and I found myself standing in the hallway looking at the bulletin boards for several student organizations.  I lingered over the board for the gay-straight alliance.  In high school I was never a part of this club (or others, frankly, sports kept me more than busy enough) despite several of my friends belonging to it and trying to get me to join.  The fact is I was scared of the truth.  I knew, in spite of every attempt to convince myself of the contrary, that I was gay.  I knew it and I hated it.  I never wanted anyone else to know and I desperately wanted someone else to know.  Joining that club would have been like an admission that what so many people assumed about me was true.  I wasn't ready for that.

Maybe I didn't know what other people would have said about me but I would have been certain that many of them assumed I was gay (hooray, they were right!).  I spent four years trying to hide it.  I tried to hide from friends, teammates, roommates, anyone really.  I tried to hide it from myself, tried to convince myself that the feelings I had were "normal" and didn't mean anything.  The conflicting, twisted braid of feelings about never wanting any one to know the secret and wishing that even just one of them would see me for who I was.

Much of that high school time is spent trying to sort out who you are and when you have to sort part of that out in the dark, like fumbling in the dark room developing negatives, your hands grasping and trying to get everything fed in just right and knowing that if you open the door, or turn on the light too soon, that you will have blown it.  Everything will just disappear, and all anyone will see is a blank.  All nuance to who you are, obliterated by revealing your secret too soon, or in the wrong way.  Instead of the contours and shapes and light and shadow of the full picture of who you are, all that is left is one thing.  All that people see is the gay and they forget about the funny, or kind, or athletic, or artistic, or gentle parts of who you are.  You are reduced to one simple fact and some people never see more.

It was this fear that kept me from turning on the light.  I kept that part of me locked up, in that little bag you use to thread the negatives into the developer thing-ama-bob.  So, standing there, staring at the bulletin board for the group I refused to join, while waiting for my wife to come out of the bathroom I smiled to myself.  At fifteen or sixteen or eighteen I was just not ready.  I was scared that all the work I had done to be me would be wiped out by one admission.  Fifteen years later, I know that's not the case.  Certainly not for the friends I had in high school (or after).  Maybe they wouldn't have been the same to me back then.  Fifteen years is a long time.

I often find myself not feeling like high school is that far away.  But this weekend, I felt that distance.  Not just because I have kids, not just because I am married, and not just because I write for the gayest website around.  I understand the person I was then, and I feel for her.  I can still slip back into her shoes, feel her pain and longing and loneliness.  Fifteen years isn't long enough to erase my connection to that girl, to make it impossible for me to not just remember but to experience those feelings again.  But fifteen years is long enough to realize that turning on the light isn't any scarier than living in the dark.

I love you, Alex Archer

Tomorrow is my fifteen year high school reunion.  I have mentioned before that I attended boarding school for four years and could probably spend the rest of my life writing about it.  I loved it.  It was the perfect place for me.  This doesn't mean that every minute was fun and games and laughs and that there were no moments that sucked or filled with heart ache.  I had plenty of that. Plenty.

I was going to try to pick a book I read in high school that I loved for this week but I couldn't think of one.  Sure, I can be glad that once I read Paradise Lost but I'm not going to recommend you run out and read it.  So instead I am picking a book I read in eighth grade (so close!) which I loved at the time and still love now.

In Lane Three, Alex Archer by Tessa Duder is one of my all-time favorite books.  Alex is a swimmer, she's a really good swimmer, but she keep losing to Maggie.  Alex and Maggie end up in a bizarre rivalry, spurred on by Maggie's jerk of a mom and the fact that Alex keeps just coming in second.  Alex is the more well-rounded of the two.  While Maggie focuses just on swimming and swimming and some more swimming, Alex plays field hockey, she's in the school play, she's got loads of nonsense going on at home.  She even has a boyfriend!

I loved this book so much and thinking of my high school made me think of it because I was lucky enough to attend a school where people were a mix of everything.  We had jocks who did plays and wrote poetry.  The captain of our football team went to MIT.  We had kids who played hockey in the winter and wrote on the school paper all year round.  It was a place where it was okay to be in multiple groups, hell, you were kind of an anomaly if you stuck with just one.

Alex is that kind of kid and you'll have to read the book to find out how it works out for her against Maggie, the super swimmer.  Meanwhile, I'll be having awkward conversation with people I haven't seen in five year.  Wish me luck!

Hope you all have excellent weekends.

Quiet, please.

There are so many things that are hard for me as a parent.  I suck at at least half a dozen things everyday, you can set your watch by it.  But lately, the thing I have noticed being the hardest is the lack of quiet.  I am an introvert.  In a big way.  In some ways I am the most "me" when I write, but you probably would be surprised by what I am like in person.  You'd probably be disappointed.  I'm better on paper (or the internets).

Anyway, what does this have to do with being a parent? Kids are loud.  Sure you know this before you become a parent, but sort of like you know that Africa is made up of a bunch of different countries you, mostly, can't name, or that tapioca pudding isn't just regular pudding made by someone too lazy to stir out the lumps.  It's all theoretical until they are shouting at each other about the color of a particular toy like they are doing the rowdiest, most dysfunctional Model UN.  They never stop making noise.  They even talk in their sleep, sometimes, and often wake up screaming about something you can't understand because they are screaming and the words come out all smashed together and at a pitch only dogs can hear properly.

So what does that have to do with me being an introvert?  I need quiet.  I knew this from experience, and I confirmed it with that Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Just Can't Stop Talking book I read a while back.  Introverts, according to the book, thrive on quiet time with little stimulation.  We can get away with not very much, way less than extroverts, and do just fine.  It's why people like me want to leave a party after fifteen minutes.  We've gotten all the stimulation we need.  We get a little nutty when we don't have those quiet moments to recharge.  Lately, I have not been getting enough of those (or enough sleep) because my kids, quite frankly, never shut up.

They yell for me when they wake up, B is now yelling at night again until she falls asleep.  I have just come to the realization that it's all this noise that might be putting me on edge so much these days.  Sure, I knew already that the noise and the constant requests was driving me batty but I finally connected it to the idea that being a parent, which is inherently noisy, and being an introvert and extra sensitive to noise is a bad combination.

I am sure for centuries introverts have found a way to cope.  But, wow, not a match made in heaven at all.  I'm not sure there is a solution, other than finding times to take a break because the noise makes me a worse parent, it makes me snippy, impatient, and kind of terrible to be around.  B is screaming as I write this (she is supposed to be going to bed but has decided to try every trick she can to get us to come tuck her in for the 57th time).  I know that writing while she yells is next to impossible.  My thoughts get jumbled by the noise, the pitch of it, the incomprehensible words.

I don't know which of us is the immovable object and which is the unstoppable force.  I don't think I am apt to stop being an introvert any time soon, so we can only hope they grow out of all the noise.  Otherwise, I am going to need a trip to a cabin in the woods or something pencilled in to my calendar at regular intervals.  For now, I'll just hope for a few quiet moments.

Sorry, Tired Post

I am exhausted from recapping The Fosters until way too late.  So I don't have much to offer in terms of my own thoughts today.  But I can offer you this interesting map of how the folks in the United States say the same word, or have regional words for the same object.  It's fun, it's weird, and it's likely to cause some fun arguments.  My wife pronounces "syrup" as only those from New Jersey do.  I, of course, pronounce it correctly.

Go on, read up, and pick your own fights with the people around you.  We're a weird, wacky, country.

Could Not or Chose Not To

At the tail end of last week I read a piece that I have now gone back to a couple times.  The piece, written by Kiese Laymon, for ESPN discusses his openly gay teammate, an evangelical teammate, and his changing understanding of both, the nature of the locker room and about a million other things.  It touches on racism, homophobia, the rush to have minorities assimilate, and places where we miss in society by not talking about tough issues.  Look, I am not doing justice to the article here.  It's so well written, so chock full of ideas, that even after reading it a couple times I still don't feel that I have a handle on its sweep.

There are a couple points that stood out for me.  The first was his connection between his gay teammate and a class he took in which he read James Baldwin.  Rather than butcher it I'll quote from the piece.

In one of my classes later that semester, I read a story on American racial progress by James Baldwin. In an essay called "On Language, Race and the Black Writer," Baldwin wrote, "The idea of American racial progress is measured by how fast I become white." As a black boy from Mississippi, occasionally patted on the head by white folks for being "articulate" and often disciplined by the same folks for being "too much like my kind," Baldwin's work gave shape and definition to something I'd felt for years.Even though I understood that the history, assumptions and public policy undergirding race and sexuality in the nation, should never be conflated, I left that class thinking about how, for the duration of our basketball season, American progress amounted to allowing Le Mont to show and prove that he was really like us, without ever asking ourselves, "Morally, who the f--- were we to be equal to?" 

The part at the end in which he wonders how ridiculous it was to assume that he and his teammates were some ideal to which Le Mont should try to strive, to try to bend his actions to fit. 

The second point that stood out was a discussion of the difference between being comfortable enough to talk about something and choosing not to and being unable to discuss something.  The choice is crucial.

Unlike every other young man on that team, Le Mont could never talk honestly about sex in our locker room. He could never talk about how religion helped or hindered his understanding of sexual intimacy. He could never talk about the difference between loving someone and loving how someone made him feel. This is where the difference between "could never" and "chose not to" means everything, and nothing at all.

Instead of patting themselves on the back for being so forward thinking Laymon points out that clearly they weren't creating the kind of welcoming space that would allow Le Mont to be himself.  There is a big difference between being able to say something but making the choice to hold back and knowing that you cannot share something.  There is a toll in knowing you don't have that freedom, and maybe that's part of what Le Mont felt.

The entire article is rich and interesting and full of thought-provoking ideas.  It's challenging and a bit dense at times but I wanted to pass it on because it brings up so many intersecting and competing ideas that surround the notion of what it means to be a gay athlete and what it means to be a teammate and what a locker room can or should be.  If you have a few spare minutes I think it's worth your time.

"What do you mean it's been 10 years?"

We had a fun weekend full of adventures but I was surprised to find the same topic coming up over and over.  At a cook out at the home of one of my wife's bosses (well the boss's boss's boss, probably) someone found out that I played hockey in college.  They asked where and then came the deluge of questions (and a certain amount of awkward awe, they thought it meant I was really good.  I wasn't really good, just on a good team.  There's an important difference).  Anyway, we got around to the question of whether I still play.  They all seemed shocked that I don't and that I haven't played in a game since college (I have been on skates a couple times with my kids).

This group seemed rather affronted by the notion that I haven't played and the boss tried to hook me up with an opportunity to play.  I felt rather awkward trying to explain why I don't play (combination of lack of time, equipment is at my parents' house, and I can no longer get by without my glasses so seeing the puck is a challenge).  They pooh-poohed all my attempts to deflect the conversation without resorting to explaining that I don't have much of a desire to play anymore.

They could not imagine someone who had been "so good" (again, I swear I wasn't, I sat on the bench A LOT) wouldn't keep it up.  I had a similar experience at my mother's college reunion where everyone wanted to know why I don't still play.  I wanted to point to my kids and say, "the little ones keep me rather busy at the moment" (although I did tell my wife's colleagues that being married to a doctor is terrible for having any semblance of social life. They shouted me down.  But they are wrong, or childless).

Anyway, I found it so interesting to meet strangers (or near strangers) who were much more invested in me playing a sport I haven't for more than a decade.  What gives?  I don't know if they thought it was sad to retire from a sport I played for so long.  Or maybe that I was wasting all the effort I put in over the years.  Mostly I think anyone who hasn't done that level of sports for such a long time (in college it was like having a full time job on top of school) can appreciate the burn out.  It's strange how things become so important to other people when I could care less that I haven't skated in years.  I don't really miss it, it's weird to me that they all seem to miss it for me.