Author’s note: what you are about to read is heavily redacted from the version originally written. Sober but drunk on the exposure to a creative genius, I unspooled like a ball of yarn and wrote everything down. I have those thoughts, still, and it accounts for at least double what follows, but removed and put into my journal, where it belongs. I don’t say that to taunt but to confess. I had more to say that was far more personal than I am willing to share, even with the people who read this newsletter, most of whom I know. It’s not embarrassing or confessional, but it was raw, and I prefer my ideas to be, at least, a bit seared.
I just listened to Fiona Apple’s new album, Fetch the Boltcutters. Anyone who knows me or has read these newsletters is probably surprised that it took this long, because that album is extremely in my emotional wheelhouse, not just in general but for this particular moment. It is also an album that is of the moment, the quarantine, the COVID nightmare (and it it less about the other monumental moment occurring right now, though one could still probably draw some parallels — that is not for me to say).
Sorry. Back to what I was talking about: being middle aged, being single, having no children, and feeling lots of big feelings. This is Fiona Apple’s burden as well as my own. I love pulling my feelings out of my body and holding them up and looking at them from every angle, and sometimes I do it in the presence of someone else and they’re not comfortable with it at all and they don’t want to be around me anymore. I’m like the kid who picked his nose on the playground. Everybody’s watching you, dude. Can you not?
You’re making us all uncomfortable.
I’m doing it right now. I’m examining myself in real time. There are no earth-shattering revelations to be had here, no moments of revelation.
I’m going to throw a quote at you.
My friend Andrea, who has examined some of my feelings with me, showed me this link, which is Fiona Apple explaining her songs. There’s no opaque “I prefer my audience to figure it out what it means for themselves” dissembling from Apple. These songs are about her life, about the women and the men who have joined her orbit, and even the dogs they bring along with them, and while she is kind enough to the subjects of those songs not to share with us, the motley public, who she’s singing about, she thinks the people she’s singing about sometimes don’t even know that they’re who she’s singing about.
It’s refreshing to know that even somebody as rich, famous, and talented as Apple still has to contend with narcissists and petty men, and that even the great among us still have to suffer to be among us, and themselves, and each other.
We’re all in this together and none of us is getting out alive.
I know for a fact that I have made people uncomfortable by simply being me. I constantly walk on the knife’s edge of losing all of my friendships because I will do that one unconscionable thing that they cannot forgive, and I will have stumbled into it blindly and with good intentions, which only makes it worse because that means I won’t learn any lessons from it, and I will be back to being myself, except by myself this time. That’s the fear, anyway. Like most fears there’s a bit of truth to it, but hiding under that truth is a vast iceberg of doubt and self-recriminations.
As we get older, we sift our friendships.
The easy ones pass through the sieve like sand, while the harder ones, the big rocks or cigarette butts or chunks of concrete bounce around on the top until you get sick of trying to get them to fit into your life and it’s not worth the struggle anymore.
Good luck finding someone who thinks you deserved a second chance. You got that chance. We’re on seventh and eighth chances now. If you’re not going to pass into our lives easily, then you’d better be worth it.
Oh, right. The quote.
“It’s almost a matter of luck, if your chemistry happens to bump into the chemistry of somebody else, then it might just work, because you react to each other in different ways. I did have hope when I was writing that song, and honestly, there’s absolutely hope that I could find a relationship. But I don’t really want to. I really just don’t want to. I like my life how it is, and I don’t feel very romantic these days.”
She’s talking about her song Cosmonauts, which is one way to look at a relationship: two people trapped together, in space, getting sick of each other. Maybe the bitter aftertaste of a failed relationship is the wrong time to be thinking about these things but it’s at the top of mind because while everything else is happening in the world right now, we’re still in the middle of #MeToo. I don’t want to reduce someone else’s experiences into a hashtag, but it resonates with me because it is absolutely true. Just as white people are due to come to grips with the pain they’ve caused, even unknowingly, men have had to reevaluate themselves, also.
Any man who says he has never made a woman uncomfortable is either lying, joking, or is hopelessly lacking in self awareness. I mean heterosexual men, those of us who have had the privilege of our patriarchy and the sexual proclivities to treat women differently from others. Again, to dismiss this as woke virtue signaling is to avoid the question, because the answers are uncomfortable.
Yeah, you made that girl feel weird to be around you once.
You did it. It happened. You probably realized it much too late, long after you did it, long after anybody remembers it, but she probably does remember it and now you suddenly do, and you want to reach out and apologize but you’re a better person now than you were then and you know that to readdress that awfulness is in service only of your agenda, not hers. You want her to tell you that it’s okay, you didn’t know any better, and she will say that because she has been forced to treat men like babies with soft feelings that are vulnerable and need to be protected. So you keep your mouth shut, because you did enough damage already. Leave it. Just try to be better next time.
When I say you, I mean me. I mean I. I did those things. But so did you. Maybe the men who come after us will be better.
“It was a challenge, because he wanted me to write a song about two people who were going to be together forever, and that’s not really a song I’m equipped to write because I don’t know if I want to be together with anybody forever.”
That’s another quote about the same song. I’m feeling this album very hard. I have to set it aside and glance over at it and not listen to it for a few days, because the truths in it are too true. They’re like staring into the sun, or, worse, looking into yourself. Myself. This is about me.
I, also, have made women feel weird, but not in a long time. I’m better at it. I’m better at knowing boundaries. It’s easy to be better and it doesn’t take much.
How to be a better man, in three easy steps.
-
Treat women like they don’t have gender. Don’t treat the women in your life differently. You probably don’t talk to your sister differently from how you talk to your brother — same idea. This approach will never steer you wrong, because you’re treating everyone the same. At work, on the bus, everybody is an independent human being with goals, desires, and opinions. Their bodies are none of your business. Their activities are none of your business. You are ships passing in the night. Smile at the men and smile at the women. You are a cloud moving through the sky, among other clouds.
-
This doesn’t apply to some very small selection of specific circumstances when the gender difference is, intentionally, at play, when you and the object of your affection are alone or at least alone together. These times of closeness are sacred. A woman allowing you to join her in close proximity is a person who is trusting you to be safe, to not demand anything she is not offering, to respect the boundaries she creates. You have to assume those boundaries are there, and ask permission to cross them. You’re not ruining the mood. You’re being a better man.
-
Don’t assume anything. If you’re not sure, ask. Take no for an answer. Dear lord, if you don’t take No for answer, delete yourself from my life.
These are lessons I learned and lessons I figured out. There are general guides to life embedded in the above, and in my worldview, and they all kind of mesh together. All life deserves respect. All humans deserve perfect happiness. Trust first, and decide later.
I don’t know if I want to be with anybody forever. I don’t know if I want to be with anyone, period. I don’t feel badly about it. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I feel like I’ve given chances, and chances have been given to me, and the dice of the universe have been cast, and I will continue being me. If my future is one of asceticism, it is willing.
“I like my life how it is, and I don’t feel very romantic these days.”
I’m in good company.