Short Circuits (9 page)

I have never in my life begun a project involving physical labor which, ten minutes into it, I wish to Heaven I had never started, and I too often, as a result, end up with a slipshod result simply because I was too impatient to take all the time to do it the way it should have been done.

When I go to bed at night, I look forward to dreaming, even if I can't specifically recall the dreams the next morning, and should a night pass without my awareness of there having been dreams I feel cheated. I've been told, and firmly believe, that death is very much like a deep and dreamless sleep. Well, like being a part of nature, I can wait. And in the meantime I prefer lots and lots of dreams, thank you.

I am terrible at waiting. If I have to schedule an appointment, I want it to be scheduled for no further in the future than the time it takes me to get from here to there. Sitting in a waiting room without a book or magazines is torture. Telephone calls which involve my being put on interminable hold by mega-corporations who lie through their teeth when they soothingly reassure me, every 30 seconds, that all their operators are still busy with other customers and that my call is very important to them send me into apoplectic fury.

My impatience has gotten me into more trouble, over the years, than I can possibly remember, let alone recount. I constantly say and do things that, on reflection, I wish I had not done or said, but I simply do not/cannot have the patience to think things out before I react. I tend to be one gigantic knee-jerk reaction.

Often, of course, time does not allow for patience. How often have we, ten minutes after the fact, come up with a really brilliant retort to something someone said, which left us at the time merely muttering something inane or stewing in silence? That's one of the good things about writing: I control the time in my characters' world. I can eliminate the gaps between the comment and the retort, and therefore be far more clever than real-time permits.

I've been told endlessly that I should practice patience, and I really should. But I just don't have the time.

* * *

MY GARDEN OF PHOBIAS

We all have phobias…things which inexplicably and irrationally frighten or repulse us. I admit that I'm somewhat protective of mine. I'm not overly fond of snakes, for example, though I've gotten far better about being able to look at them from a safe distance. But that's pretty much a garden-variety phobia, shared by probably the majority of people on the planet, so I can't take any special pride in that.

I don't like tattoos or body piercing. The former I've come to grudgingly accept since so many people nowadays have them. But it had been my personal experience with people sporting tattoos that there seems to be a definite correlation between the number of one's tattoos and the number and severity of one's emotional problems. One tattoo is fine; a couple are okay, but beyond that…uh…, no thanks. Body piercings give me a severe case of the crawlies and are a slamming-door turnoff.

I have a phobia against using a bar of soap other people have used. (I know—it's
soap:
soap kills germs. Yeah, but wet soap can be kind of slimy, and I don't like slimy.) I don't like tasting food from other people's forks or spoons or plates, or drinking from the same glass, can, or bottle—though I will do it if necessary in order to avoid appearing rude.

Okay, so a lot of my phobias are, indeed, fairly tame and shared by a lot of other people. But I claim to one phobia which sets me far apart from anyone else. I really hope my explanation of it will not convince you that I am totally ‘round the bend, though I am aware it might well offend some, and if so I am truly sorry. But the purpose of this blog is something akin to a pre-mortem autopsy, exposing parts of myself which may well better have been left unexposed.

I hate rings. My totally irrational antipathy towards them ranges from distaste to downright revulsion. This, if you will, is my prize hot-house orchid of phobias. To this date, I have never encountered another human being who shares it with me…though I'm sure there have to be some, somewhere. My reasoning may be seen as teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis, but, hey, it's mine and I'm stuck with it. Let it suffice to say that to me, the combination of ring and finger represents heterosexuality, and as a homosexual, I rebel against that concept.

For those who doubt my admittedly strange reasoning, I refer you to the wedding ring. Nothing more clearly albeit silently screams: “Heterosexual” to the world. Madison Avenue is painfully aware of the message of this symbol and uses it at every opportunity to subliminally say: “Hey, you can trust me! I'm
just like you!”
The number of men displaying wedding rings in commercials is far out of proportion to the number of men who actually wear them. And you will
never
see a TV commercial in which a man is shown to be alone with a small child unless he is wearing a wedding ring. Doubt me? Watch.

Which brings us to a little epiphany which came when I wrote the sentence about teetering dangerously on the brink of psychosis. I realized for the first time that my biggest, totally irrational and inexplicable phobia—the one which has fundamentally affected my life—is: heterosexuality. I mean no offense to the 9 out of every 10 people who happen to be heterosexual. I in some odd way fear it and look upon it as some sort of threat (which, given the historic treatment of homosexuals by heterosexuals, is not unjustified). I react to it, I realize, somewhat less strongly than I react to rings, but I have never understood it and am as generally uncomfortable around it (with the exception of my heterosexual friends and family) as many heterosexuals are around homosexuals. It's not something I'm proud of, but the fact is that it exists, it's an integral part of who I am. And now, thanks to this blog entry, I know it.

And now you know, too.

* * *

PHOBIAS REDUX

Probably everyone has phobias: things they fear or which repulse them to one degree or another. There are almost as many phobias as there are things to be phobic about, some of them very exotic and exotic-sounding. (I love “triskaidekaphobia”—fear of the number 13—for example.)

Some are very common, though we may not immediately know their names: Arachnophobia (Fear of spiders), Pteromerhanophobia (Fear of flying), Atychiphobia (Fear of failure), Catagelophobia (Fear of being ridiculed), Cynophobia (Fear of dogs), and Dystychiphobia (Fear of accidents) among them.

Other phobias range from the truly strange to the downright bizarre: Ephebiphobia (Fear of teenagers), Bibliophobia (Fear of books), Anthrophobia (Fear of flowers), Chromophobia (Fear of colors), Genuphobia (Fear of knees) and the “duh” of phobias: Phobophobia (Fear of phobias).

I only have three that I can think of, two of which fall into the second category, though I don't know their Latin names, if they have one: I will not use anyone else's toothbrush, and assume I'm in the vast majority on this one. But I also won't use bar soap anyone else has used. (I know…it's soap, for Pete's sake: there aren't any germs on it. No, but when wet it is slimy and I do not like slimy.)

But my primary phobia, and one in which I take some sort of perverse pride in its uniqueness, is against rings. I shudder even to think of them. I'm fully aware that hundreds of millions of people wear them, and I don't mean to offend anyone who does. It's just the way it is for me. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only person in the world to have such a phobia.

Exactly how and why people develop phobias is pretty much a mystery. A lot of them, of course, are based on some traumatic personal experience with the object feared, but how and why dislike turns into a phobia isn't clear (at least not to me).

I figured out long ago that my fear/abject loathing of rings is deeply rooted in and related to my rather odd views on human sexuality. I don't think I have to explain that to my mind the finger is the…uh…and the ring is…well, you know…and I am so totally homosexual that the very thought of heterosexual sex makes me mildly nauseous. Again, apologies to anyone that statement might offend, and I realize that it makes me just as bigoted as those heterosexuals who express revulsion over the idea of two men having sex. I will definitely resist that inane cliché: “Some of my best friends are straight.” As are all my relatives, most people I see on the el, and nine out of every ten people on the planet. So considering those odds, sometimes I think I put a little more of me out there than you might be comfortable in seeing.

My phobia against rings was with me long before I figured out the symbolism. On my 17th birthday, my dad bought me a very nice ring. He knew how I felt about rings before he bought it, and he was deeply hurt when I refused to wear it and he had to take it back. I remember that when I first saw it, my initial reaction was embarrassment and shame. To my subconscious, I'm sure it implied he thought I was straight. I really felt bad for hurting him, but…well…he
knew
.

So phobias are just another of the myriads of little bits and pieces that make us all human, and which differentiate us, one from the other. Back to you, Dr. Freud…

* * *

EMBARRASSMENT

Mark Twain pointed out that Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs to. Being embarrassed is one of Man's odd little traits, and usually results from our being placed in a situation that challenges our self-confidence. Therefore, those of us who don't have much self-confidence to begin with are particularly vulnerable to it. I find myself being embarrassed far more than anyone could possibly be comfortable with.

There are, of course, many degrees of embarrassment, from mild to severe. Mine sometimes surpass severe to excruciating. And I have the annoying tendency not to be satisfied with merely being embarrassed over the things I do, but for others.

Our beloved former President George W. Bush regularly did things…other than putting his foot in his mouth with astoundingly stupid remarks…that made my skin crawl with embarrassment: his insistence on doing little dance numbers to show he's “cool” and “with it” is a frequently-repeated example.

But sometimes my embarrassment on the part of others is considerably more benign.

When my parents and I were in Hawaii, we took a boat trip up Hawaii's only navigable river, heading for the famous Fern Grotto. Now, my mom and I were very much alike in many ways, one of which was the intense dislike of doing things simply because we are told to do them, but go along with it rather than stand out as being a party pooper.

Anyway, the gratingly effervescent guide (I think being effervescent is a job requirement), as we were gliding up the river, declared that it would be great fun for all the women on the boat to learn the hula.

Mom loved to dance, but she did not want to learn the hula. Still, she stood up with all the other women and followed the guide's extended-arm, hip-swinging motions. I could see on Mom's face that she hated it, and I was embarrassed for her.

I am frequently embarrassed for various performers who really are not very good at what they are doing, or for people who are, like Mom was, called upon to do something they really, really would prefer not doing.

A primary source of embarrassment for me, other than my total refusal to think before I say or do something I never would have said or done had I thought first, is in doing things I would truly love to do but can't—such as anything requiring physical dexterity or grace. Probably the primary example of this is dancing. There is nothing more beautiful than watching someone who knows how to dance. But I simply cannot and will not do it (well, a slow dance with a good partner may be an exception).

At least I know the source for this particular problem. When I was about eight, I went to a birthday party of a girl in my neighborhood, and her mother announced that we would all now dance. Dance? I had never danced in my life! I was horrified. And when she started pairing up all the guests…all the worse, it was boy-girl…I was well-past embarrassed, and several stages beyond mortified. It was a truly horrific experience, and I'm sure it affected the rest of my life.

Like my character Dick Hardesty, I often have little voices in my head (no, no, not that kind of voices). One just chimed in: “Oh, for Christ's sake, Roger, get over it!” I wish I could.

* * *

ON BEING BUBBLY

I tried out for a game show once, when I lived in California. I answered all the questions correctly and even got a call-back. But I didn't make it because I was not “bubbly” enough. Well, they certainly had me there. I am definitely
not
the “bubbly” type. Perhaps it's my Norwegian heritage. Norwegians don't tend to bounce up and down and scream and wave their arms a lot.

I am often excited about things, and sometimes elated. But even then I am not “bubbly.” Something there is in me which insists on keeping the cork in the bottle.

I am also aware that my non-bubbly-ness has often been a drawback. There are times when I would truly like to let my inhibitions go. But I don't, and I can't. I remember going to see
Matthew Bourne's
Swan Lake
on Broadway seven times, which involved two separate trips from Wisconsin. Every performance got a standing ovation, and I wanted more than anything to yell “Bravo!” like so many others were doing, or simply shouting. I even opened my mouth and tried to let something out. But I could not. I clapped. And I deeply resented myself for being such a dud.

Being excruciatingly self-conscious makes it difficult to be bubbly.

I used to go to the dance bars in L.A. when disco was king—always with friends and always at their insistence—and I could never get out there and dance. When I was on occasion physically dragged out on the floor I was excruciatingly embarrassed. “But nobody is watching you!” my friends would say. “I'm watching me,” I'd reply.

But as for hands-over-the-head-clapping-and-swaying-in-time-with-the-music, forget it. Even at gay pride parades, where the enthusiasm is almost palpable and everyone is more animated than ten Pixar films, I stand there like a statue. I'm loving it, but I'm not showing it.