History

I catch a cold every single time I get on an airplane. Must be the little packets of pretzels-n-viruses they hand out in lieu of actual food these days.

This was the trip I’ve described to people as “visiting my hippie friends.” I didn’t think of it until I was already there, but they’re also by a fairly wide margin the oldest friends I’m still in contact with: I’ve not been good at keeping close to people I’ve moved away from, and I’ve moved a lot. So these are the two people on earth who’ve got the longest view of me, who can best see how I’ve changed — or not — in the past omigod sixteen years.

They’re also, in a way, a touchstone for me, a way for me to see what I’d be now if I’d never moved from the west coast, if my number hadn’t come up in the dot-com lottery, never saw the tribe, never met my wife. They’re my “what if?” scenario.

They’re probably better described as my grad-student friends, now. Carter is all but done with a Ph.D. in queer theory; he’s writing his dissertation on homoeroticism in the films of Kevin Smith. No, really, he actually is. He’s about 80% of the way out of the closet at this point. He’s developed a substantial pot-belly, and grown a beard. When he finally trades in the rock t-shirts for tweed, he’ll look quite the academic.

Emily has been studying mythology, will be switching soon to ethnomusicology. She’s a drummer: kit drums for the band, djembe and doun-doun for fun, classical tabla (which she’s startlingly good at) for her studies. She’s one of those bendy yoga people. Also happens to be the best photo model I’ve ever worked with: has that unexplainable talent for finding the right position for the right amount of time, mind-reading my vague “turn your arm a little bit” directions, and looking natural and comfortable and real the whole time. She looks much as she always has; she’s one of those rare people who looks better as she ages.

I’ve always had a little bit of a crush on Emily. Carter’s always had a little bit of a crush on me. Their relationship is a mystery to me: they’ve been married for years, but recently moved to separate apartments, but still spend most of their time together. So there was a delicate sexual tension between the three of us all the way around, which we dealt with by quietly pretending it wasn’t there. Which is perfect, it gives just enough spice to keep things interesting, and if any of us ever did anything about it the balance would be spoiled. It’d be like those television series that depend on the Long Unresolved Sexual Tension formula, when the writers finally give in and let the characters get together at last, and everything goes flat and boring from then on.

Here’s the part where I make it All About Me:

Carter’s an instigator. In the same sense that I think of Beth as an instigator: they both are natural at pushing groups of people farther than they would otherwise go... not pushing, actually, that wouldn’t work; it’s just that around people like that, weirder things make sense than in their absence. You know what I mean. He’s a natural collaborator, always managing to get large groups of people involved in some silly project of his devising — after which he always takes the smallest background role possible, sits back and lets things unfold.

(At the moment it’s Spidertron, a zero-budget science-fiction film that he’s inexplicably got at least a dozen people volunteering on, raising money and scouting sets and finding actors. All he’s doing is writing part of the script, and he’ll be the guy on set holding the microphone; the rest is up to the students and waiters and other random residents of Eugene he’s drawn in. There are no spiders in it.)

I’m, well, not. I’ve always been a side figure in someone else’s social circle: Carter’s, for years, then when I moved east it was basically Ethan’s world I moved into (most of you reading this I know directly or indirectly because he decided I was worth getting to know, and set out to do exactly that. For which I’m grateful, of course.) Point is I’m a spoke in the social network, not a hub. If I tried to get a zero-budget movie together I’d be so worried about making sure the idea was worth everyone’s time, I’d agonize so much over the potential roadblocks that I’d never actually get started. (Evidence of which is that I’ve been thinking vaguely about it for years and haven’t actually done anything about it yet.)

This is something I’ve known about myself for a long time, and I’m mostly fine with it. Really. I don’t want to be a hub, I don’t have the patience for it. But at some point during this trip I decided that I’ve let myself slip too far in the other direction; I’ve become way too shy about throwing ideas out there and seeing where they land. Even something as simple as pointing a camera at someone feels like too much of an imposition.

When this has happened in the past — and it has — my solution (subconsciously selected) was to skip town, find some excuse to start over someplace else: the double benefit of shaking me out of my rut, and of forcing myself to find a new circle to settle into. That’s not really an option anymore. I’m going to have to find some way to get myself out of the house, get myself moving again, without literally moving. So that’s item one on the agenda. (I knew this already, of course. But something about this trip just pounded it in a bit more firmly, reminded me what the rewards are for going outside and taking risks.)

Point the second: I have to have to have to get past this notion that grownups are necessarily less fun. Back up a bit to explain this one, which really didn’t click for me until after I got back. Here’s the thing: I sat in on this Spidertron lunch meeting, and it was all these cool, creative people, and I was really into it, really wanting to take part in the project and in the conversation and in just getting to know these people. I get back home, we go to this gallery opening at the Eclipse Mill, where I’m surrounded by all these cool, creative people, and I’m struggling to make conversation and all I really want to do is go home. The only difference between these situations, the only thing I can figure that makes me react so differently, is that the people at the mill are grownups: they’ve got houses, some of them have children, some of them have gray hair. The people in oregon were students, hipsters, not grownups. (It’s only partly an age thing; some of the grownups are probably younger in years than some of the “kids”.)

This is a problem because, frankly, I’m a grownup. I’ve got a house, I’ve got gray hair, my friends are starting to procreate, I can’t plausibly hang out with college kids much longer. But when I meet someone I perceive as more grownup than I am, I still react as though it’s one of my mother’s friends talking to me, it’s all polite surface conversation: I don’t know how to get deeper than that, or I don’t remember to try. That’s not going to work in the long run. I don’t want to be the old guy still hanging out at the nightclub. I don’t even like nightclubs anymore.

Okay, I’ve been writing this for about four hours now, and it’s gotten long enough that I don’t expect anyone to actually read it anymore. (You don’t have to. Mostly I’m just sorting things out for myself, here.) I always feel obligated to wrap up posts with some sort of grand conclusion, it doesn’t feel enough to just say these are some things I’ve been thinking about, here they are. Too much training in the five-part essay format.

In conclusion, I liked this vacation, and I think anyone who likes social network theory, marijuana, and kvetching about the aging process would like it too. Besides, Frank just came to the door with mud on his nose and a mole in his mouth, so I’m going to have to fill in the hole and dispose of the body now.