challenging but important
My readers may know how I've struggled to finish books, how I've made it a priority to actually finish books instead of continually grazing from the hundreds of unfinished books in my Kindle or piled around the house and condo. I've tried to set a goal that I finish two books per month, calling them my Books of the Moon. This goal has been difficult to stick to (much like my meditation so-called habit), but I do keep trying. It seems that finishing books is more difficult when I'm dealing with work stress, or recovering from a car crash.
Sometimes I try to prioritize finishing a book that somebody gave me as a gift. This weekend I finished Department of Truth, Volume 1: The End of the World, a gift from Moose for my birthday. I'd made it my Metro read, finishing one chapter each time I rode Metro, having recently returned to riding Metro. So, technically not a Book of the Moon, but a Book of Metro, heh. I did finish more books back when I had the daily Metro commute.
But this weekend I also finished my designated Book of the Moon, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, by Allan D. Hunter. I'd decided to prioritize finishing a book written by somebody who I follow and interact with here on LiveJournal. This book had been sitting in a pile in my bedroom, with so many other books, but to actually finish it I also purchased the ebook, and now I've given the paper copy to T -- I've been discussing the book with T as I've been reading it.
-----
Sometimes work stress keeps me from finishing a book, because I don't want to concentrate, or don't have the energy to concentrate. But I'm also deterred from finishing books for other reasons. There's a particular book I love, that I start over and over because I love it so much, and I may never finish it because I love it so much. There have been similar books that I love so much that I deliberately read them slowly, a few pages at a time, with days or weeks in between.
But other books slow me down because they make me think, or even because they trigger memories from my own past, or because I need time to process the thoughts and emotions they raise -- these three reasons can overlap, of course.
GenderQueer was the kind of book that slowed me down for these latter three reasons. I had to read the first 15% over again from the beginning, because it took me so long to process that I lost track of the story and wanted to start over.
It's a memoir, beginning with childhood and progressing into the college years, with an epilogue that jumps ahead to more recent times -- written by someone who is a few years older than me, but close enough to my age that a large portion of what he writes about reminds me of my own youth. As I wrote in here before, I often felt I was reading two stories, the story on the page and the story of my own life in parallel.
The details of his memories are surprisingly deep and concrete, challenging me to recall similarly deep and concrete memories, except that the details I retain are of a different kind, I would not be able to write a memoir like this one, I think, my memories are not so detailed ... except ... what if I were to pull out all those journals I kept in high school and college, those handwritten journals, how much detail might I find?
But it isn't merely the factual details the author remembers and conveys, but the emotional details. These, I can also remember, these I can empathize with, I'm reminded of specific kinds of emotional pain that I haven't felt in decades, feelings of social isolation and loneliness. Feelings of sexual frustration. Encounters with bullies, thieves, and swindlers. People thinking I'm gay even though I don't think I'm gay (before I came out to myself).
What it felt like to have dropped out of college, moving back in with parents, working at minimum wage jobs. Throwing myself at random social situations with complete strangers, because I had nothing else to do and no friends. Writing heartfelt letters to people who didn't return my feelings.
Our childhoods were not the same, I had older sisters who physically and emotionally abused me, for example. And there was a lot more sexual assault and sexual abuse among my family, friends, and schoolmates (even more than I realized at the time). I grew up in a large family, we moved around a lot as I grew up. And I got crushes on other boys, not girls.
And then after I did come out, nearly all of my friends died of AIDS.
-----
If I were writing a memoir, what would be my purpose? I've been doing online diaries for a long time, they're sort of a hybrid of writing for myself and writing for the public, but mainly writing for myself -- I'm not trying to build an audience or a brand. As one former reader told me as she stopped following me, I'm just an "armchair politician", not a real activist (although in my defense I'd say my fucking day job is helping to run your sucky country LOL). A bunch of people who'd stuck around after the "Oh No LJ is Russia now" panic, finally stopped following me when I wrote openly and often about getting fisted, sometimes by multiple guys per day, back before the pandemic shut down much of my sex life.
But if I were writing a memoir, hopefully I'd have some sort of purpose, some sort of message, some sort of goal.
The messages of GenderQueer appear to be:
(1) Growing up there were definitely different roles for boys and girls, and these roles were ruthlessly enforced by everybody of all ages.
(2) If, as a boy, you didn't play the boy role well enough, people assumed you were gay. This assumption led other boys to see you as easy prey for emotional abuse and physical violence, and authority figures wouldn't intervene to protect you.
(3) But sex, gender, and sexual orientation are all complicated, and separate, dimensions along which a human may develop. In one case (the author's), sex = boy, while gender = girl, while sexual orientation = boy-wants-girl.
(4) Asserting this complexity openly and fearlessly can get you involuntarily committed to a mental hospital!
(5) But eventually, by asserting your true identity, you can find your community.
-----
I've sometimes wondered whether it is ethical to write about difficult emotions without showing a way out, I don't want to lead my readers into an empathy trap. But maybe there's not always a way out. Maybe part of growing up, part of being a human, part of our existential inventory, is that there's not always a way out. And maybe we cannot all make peace with that. Maybe for some of us, screaming at the end of the road and then perishing is what we must do with this life.
But GenderQueer does eventually show the way out, at least the way out for this author, and illustrates a road to follow for people like him or similar enough to him. In the manner of the "It Gets Better" genre, which got way overplayed, but for those of us who actually lived through gender and sex discrimination, those of us who thought there was no way out, those of us who nearly killed ourselves in despair, showing people that it got better for us can help.
We're living in an age of epidemic youth suicide. Talking openly about despair, and how we survived it, could be important to the younger generations. And maybe also to the older generations, because we're not done yet, and we may yet face despair again. And the answer to despair at any age is -- believing in yourself, asserting your personal truths in the face of an uncaring culture, and searching for your own community however long it takes you, no matter how far you must travel, no matter how often your trust is violated -- because you are not alone. You just haven't found your people yet. Keep looking.
Sometimes I try to prioritize finishing a book that somebody gave me as a gift. This weekend I finished Department of Truth, Volume 1: The End of the World, a gift from Moose for my birthday. I'd made it my Metro read, finishing one chapter each time I rode Metro, having recently returned to riding Metro. So, technically not a Book of the Moon, but a Book of Metro, heh. I did finish more books back when I had the daily Metro commute.
But this weekend I also finished my designated Book of the Moon, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, by Allan D. Hunter. I'd decided to prioritize finishing a book written by somebody who I follow and interact with here on LiveJournal. This book had been sitting in a pile in my bedroom, with so many other books, but to actually finish it I also purchased the ebook, and now I've given the paper copy to T -- I've been discussing the book with T as I've been reading it.
-----
Sometimes work stress keeps me from finishing a book, because I don't want to concentrate, or don't have the energy to concentrate. But I'm also deterred from finishing books for other reasons. There's a particular book I love, that I start over and over because I love it so much, and I may never finish it because I love it so much. There have been similar books that I love so much that I deliberately read them slowly, a few pages at a time, with days or weeks in between.
But other books slow me down because they make me think, or even because they trigger memories from my own past, or because I need time to process the thoughts and emotions they raise -- these three reasons can overlap, of course.
GenderQueer was the kind of book that slowed me down for these latter three reasons. I had to read the first 15% over again from the beginning, because it took me so long to process that I lost track of the story and wanted to start over.
It's a memoir, beginning with childhood and progressing into the college years, with an epilogue that jumps ahead to more recent times -- written by someone who is a few years older than me, but close enough to my age that a large portion of what he writes about reminds me of my own youth. As I wrote in here before, I often felt I was reading two stories, the story on the page and the story of my own life in parallel.
The details of his memories are surprisingly deep and concrete, challenging me to recall similarly deep and concrete memories, except that the details I retain are of a different kind, I would not be able to write a memoir like this one, I think, my memories are not so detailed ... except ... what if I were to pull out all those journals I kept in high school and college, those handwritten journals, how much detail might I find?
But it isn't merely the factual details the author remembers and conveys, but the emotional details. These, I can also remember, these I can empathize with, I'm reminded of specific kinds of emotional pain that I haven't felt in decades, feelings of social isolation and loneliness. Feelings of sexual frustration. Encounters with bullies, thieves, and swindlers. People thinking I'm gay even though I don't think I'm gay (before I came out to myself).
What it felt like to have dropped out of college, moving back in with parents, working at minimum wage jobs. Throwing myself at random social situations with complete strangers, because I had nothing else to do and no friends. Writing heartfelt letters to people who didn't return my feelings.
Our childhoods were not the same, I had older sisters who physically and emotionally abused me, for example. And there was a lot more sexual assault and sexual abuse among my family, friends, and schoolmates (even more than I realized at the time). I grew up in a large family, we moved around a lot as I grew up. And I got crushes on other boys, not girls.
And then after I did come out, nearly all of my friends died of AIDS.
-----
If I were writing a memoir, what would be my purpose? I've been doing online diaries for a long time, they're sort of a hybrid of writing for myself and writing for the public, but mainly writing for myself -- I'm not trying to build an audience or a brand. As one former reader told me as she stopped following me, I'm just an "armchair politician", not a real activist (although in my defense I'd say my fucking day job is helping to run your sucky country LOL). A bunch of people who'd stuck around after the "Oh No LJ is Russia now" panic, finally stopped following me when I wrote openly and often about getting fisted, sometimes by multiple guys per day, back before the pandemic shut down much of my sex life.
But if I were writing a memoir, hopefully I'd have some sort of purpose, some sort of message, some sort of goal.
The messages of GenderQueer appear to be:
(1) Growing up there were definitely different roles for boys and girls, and these roles were ruthlessly enforced by everybody of all ages.
(2) If, as a boy, you didn't play the boy role well enough, people assumed you were gay. This assumption led other boys to see you as easy prey for emotional abuse and physical violence, and authority figures wouldn't intervene to protect you.
(3) But sex, gender, and sexual orientation are all complicated, and separate, dimensions along which a human may develop. In one case (the author's), sex = boy, while gender = girl, while sexual orientation = boy-wants-girl.
(4) Asserting this complexity openly and fearlessly can get you involuntarily committed to a mental hospital!
(5) But eventually, by asserting your true identity, you can find your community.
-----
I've sometimes wondered whether it is ethical to write about difficult emotions without showing a way out, I don't want to lead my readers into an empathy trap. But maybe there's not always a way out. Maybe part of growing up, part of being a human, part of our existential inventory, is that there's not always a way out. And maybe we cannot all make peace with that. Maybe for some of us, screaming at the end of the road and then perishing is what we must do with this life.
But GenderQueer does eventually show the way out, at least the way out for this author, and illustrates a road to follow for people like him or similar enough to him. In the manner of the "It Gets Better" genre, which got way overplayed, but for those of us who actually lived through gender and sex discrimination, those of us who thought there was no way out, those of us who nearly killed ourselves in despair, showing people that it got better for us can help.
We're living in an age of epidemic youth suicide. Talking openly about despair, and how we survived it, could be important to the younger generations. And maybe also to the older generations, because we're not done yet, and we may yet face despair again. And the answer to despair at any age is -- believing in yourself, asserting your personal truths in the face of an uncaring culture, and searching for your own community however long it takes you, no matter how far you must travel, no matter how often your trust is violated -- because you are not alone. You just haven't found your people yet. Keep looking.