Average Joes
When I started this blog in January, I had ambitions of writing either insightful cultural commentaries or daily reflections on political events--or better yet--some combination of the two. What I have found, though, is that I haven't wanted to devote the time to churning out a constant stream of thoughts and reflections for an invisible and possibly nonexistent audience, so over the past year, my contributions have been almost nonexistent, as well. In the next month--and over the coming year--that pattern may begin to change. I'm increasingly of the opinion that as I am more inclined to create longer pieces than shorter ones, I should aspire to write regular (biweekly perhaps, and maybe eventually daily) reflections on one topic rather than many short, different ones. In other words, my blogging might be more consistent and of a higher quality if I aspire to be more like James Lileks or the writers at the Independent Gay Forum than if I aspire to be like Andrew Sullivan or Glenn Reynolds, with their constant ongoing commentary on all kinds of issues. By temperament, I am more of a reflective essayist than a pundit, but I think I forgot that when I started this blog. I still hope to do short commentaries on films, books, television, and so on, but first I must master the challenge of writing longer, more reflective pieces.

As a way into that, I would like to briefly consider one of my guilty pleasures during the past few months, the television program Average Joe. Viewers of the program will recall the premise, a new twist on those other "reality dating" programs: set a beautiful woman up with a group of decidedly average-looking (and in some cases, just plain unattractive) men and see if she can look past appearance to see the person inside. I'll spare recounting the twists and turns of the program. Suffice it to say, there was quite a variety of male characters on display, from the obnoxious jerk to the tender-hearted nerd to the quirky and somewhat funny (if slightly sophomoric) Wall Street Trader. And just when we thought we knew who the finalists might be, the producers threw three pretty boys into the mix, a model, a student, and I don't remember what the third one did. It all culminated in the final episdoe where Melana had to choose between Adam, the "Average Joe" Wall Street Trader and Jason, the pretty boy student from Irvine, CA. Although the big twist of the final episode was the revelation that Adam was actually a millionaire (while Jason lived at home with his parents), in the end beauty trumped bucks and Melana chose Jason over Adam. She tried to justify it by talking about how impressed she was with Jason's character and his goals and so on, but most of us watching wondered what she was talking about since--aside from his appearance--everything about Jason seemed decidedly average in a way that Adam did not.

In the past, I would have bemoaned this ending as an example of the "nice guy" syndrome, whereby women are always choosing the "bad boy" (who is often wilder, better looking, etc., etc.) over the "nice guy" who would make a better husband and father and so on. That syndrome was nicely summarized by a recent article in the New York Times which reported on some academic research that offered a penetrating glimpse into the obvious. When women are looking for a good time, according to the resarch, they'll chose the "cad" over the "dad," but when they're looking to settle down, they'll eventually choose the "dad." So far there's no news here. Now I'm not saying that Jason was a "cad." Unlike the creepy Zach--who Melana booted when he made all sorts of insulting comments after seeing her in a fat suit--Jason seemed like a perfectly nice guy, only one who looked much more attractive than your average Joe. The only troublesome part, I suppose, was that she tried to rationalize the obvious physical attraction by talking about it in other terms, as though Jason's character or ambitions were so impressive that his appearance was simply a bonus.

My viewing of the final episode, however, was colored by recent developments in my own life, developments that made me understand in a way that I hadn't before what it might mean or feel like to make such a choice. I recently moved to a new city, and since relocating here, I have tried various ways of getting to know new people in the hopes of establishing a new network of friends. On the Saturday before that episode aired, I decided to visit a place that I had been curious about for some time, and since then my life hasn't been the same. For not only was visiting this hangout a new experience for me, but much that has happened since then has also been new, although it has mostly been quite welcome. When I entered this new hangout, I felt rather odd, but I decided to sit down, relax, and see what happened. Rather quickly one person at the end of the room caught my eye. I wanted to approach him, and yet I felt uncertain, nervous and anxious.

Soon enough, another guy sat next to me and started talking, and within a short while he had introduced me to several other people, including the guy who had caught my eye earlier. I'll call the guy seated next to me C and the guy in the corner of the room R. As C and I kept talking, it turned out we had a lot in common, we shared a number of the same interests and we found many things to talk about. It turns out that C is quite successful, a leader in the community, someone who knows all kinds of people around town, including some folks at my workplace. I liked C, and I appreciated his friendliness. But I didn't imagine us being anything other than friends. I kept looking in the direction of the TV (which was also, as it happened, in the direction of R, though I didn't think he noticed my glances down towards him). Soon enough, though, R started making eyes at me, flirting across the room. A short while later, R got up and came over to sit down by me, reaching over to touch me on occasion. We started talking, and although I quickly came to realize that our backgrounds, interests, and so on were very different and that there were signs R might not be the most reliable person, I really liked him nonetheless. When C saw I was talking to R, he tried to warn me about him, but as C was also fascinated by me, I couldn't tell whether C was motivated by serious concern or simply jealousy.

This sounds idiotic, I know, like the musings of a shallow, stereotypical sorority girl reflecting on her love life. I will not deny the idiocy of it all. But that is also my point. Until that moment, I had never experienced anything like these feelings before in my life. Until that moment, I had almost always felt like the Average Joe, being rejected by those who considered me too dull or too unsuccessful or too plain-looking to capture their interest. Yet in that moment, and in some of the days since, I got a sense of what it might be like to be wanted, I got a sense of what it felt like to be desirable.

I am not writing these things to sound pathetic. I had turned down other kinds of suitors in the past: the eastern college which sent letter after letter asking me to come, only to have me reject it for a more glamorous and more competitive institution in the northeast; the graduate school that offered me an appealing fellowship, only to have me reject it for an institution with a bigger name. I have also had the experience of choosing one employer over another, or leaving an employer for a better job elsewhere. But until that moment at the local hangout, I had never known what it felt like to have two people on either side of me vying for my attention and interest because they both found me attractive and interesting. I wish everyone could know what that felt like.

While previously I might have been tempted to bemoan Melana's decision, therefore, I couldn't do so because in my own personal drama, I, too, was drawn more to the comely and easygoing R than to the accomplished and successful C. But unlike Melana, I will freely admit that my strong attraction to R is largely superficial, and even the remark C made disparaging him hasn't scared me away. R has not accomplished as much with his life as C has; R does not seem as cultured or as well-connected, and yet I still like him. I respond both to his appearance and to his energy. Our conversations are not deep or profound, but they are not awkward or strained, either. I have kept in touch with both of them during the past few weeks, though now things have changed a bit. I think I'll be friends with both of them, but I think that's all we'll be, even in the case of flirty R.

I suppose my reaction to the two of them may help explain the exasperation of some gays to those of us who consider ourselves bisexual. At this point, I am much more oriented towards men than towards women, and yet, if I had to choose whether to pursue a serious relationship with either of these fellows, I'd probably choose R, even though I also know that the chances for long-term compatibility might be better with C. I like C, and I think he's a great fellow, but I feel so little attraction towards him, it hardly seems worth the energy, the effort, and the enormous social and psychological costs to seriously pursue a long-term relationship with him. I know I'd have a good time with R, but in the case of C, I'm sure I'd find myself wondering if I wouldn't have been better off waiting for a more appealing woman to come along. Although I have trouble imagining myself in a long-term, committed relationship with a woman at this point in my life, I can't dismiss the possibility of such a scenario if it means not settling for a relationship with the wrong guy.

And so, perhaps it is that attitude that keeps me from being an "Average Joe" any more. I might not be the best-looking guy in the room, I may not be the smartest, and I'm certainly not the most effective blogger. But I am not desparate for a relationship in the way that many of the "Average Joes" on that program were.

Such a long time
I've been away from blogging for far too long, but I suppose I've never really gotten into the habit. That may be changing now, though, as I keep having issues and ideas pull at me, and I would like to write more about them.

Yesterday I went on a long hike (or at least long for me) in the mountains with a group of people I had just met. I had a great time and things were going really well until, sitting by an alpine lake, two members of my group started discussing politics. It turned out they were both pretty far left, which would not necessarily be a bad thing if they were able to engage in rational discussions about their views. But I had my doubts. One of them was saying that she had just read Michael Moore's latest book and she started repeating its questionable claims as though they were the truth. I was dismayed by this development, because I regard Michael Moore as a third-rate demagogue and propagandist. Moore might have received an Oscar for his so-called documentary, Bowling for Columbine, but if such a mishmash of untruths, distortions, faulty logic and propaganda can be considered a documentary--much less an award-winning one--then we really are in trouble.

For the most part, you'll find that I distrust extreme partisanship on either the right or the left, but these days I see it more frequently among those on the left than the right. In the current climate, the tone and extent of liberal puritanism is almost overwhelming. By "puritan" here, I mean that kind of self-righteous ideologue who can tolerate no dissent, and who regards dissenters as necessarily evil, venal creatures that must be overcome. That definition probably needs some work, and yet it seems to apply to extremists of almost any stripe.

Becoming A Man
And that leads me indirectly to my main cultural commentary for today. For some time now I have wanted to write about Paul Monette's award-winning 1992 autobiography, Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story. Although I read it several months ago, it has been on my mind again lately, since I met someone who reminded me ever-so-slightly of the persona Monette presents in the book.

While I could certainly see parallels and echoes between moments in his life and moments in mine, I can also see huge, glaring differences. There's all his promiscuity for one thing, from an early age onward, even during his supposedly "celebate" years. There's also his conviction, from a relatively early age, that he is gay--or at least that is how he tells the story. For me, the answer has never been clear in the least bit, which is one reason why I find some peace in the category of bisexuality. For him, bisexuality was a phase, a part of coming out as gay, a license to experiment in the wild years of the 1970s. For me, bisexuality serves to explain the reality of how I have fallen in love with women in the past, but also how I have always been attracted to men, even though I did everything I could do deny the reality of those feelings in adolesence.

As helpful or insightful as I found parts of the book to be, I was suspicious or distrustful of the kneejerk partisanship, the gay essentialism, and even the strong anti-Catholic bias. To his credit, he does seem wary about being too much of a gay essentialist--he equivocates or backs away from statements that seem too absolutely proscriptive--and yet, his story hinges on the realization that running from being out as a gay man was the source of most of his problems. Ending as it does when he meets his long-term partner Roger, the book seems rather like a big fairy tale (pardon the unintended pun) in which coming out is the magic device that enables him to meet Prince Charming and live happily ever after.

Pardon me, I want to say, but I doubt it's ever that simple for anyone. Although the book foreshadows his parents' possible difficulties in accepting this reality, he conveniently ends the book before he has to tell us how he integrated his new vision of his life with his life as it had existed previously. Many gay and bisexual people remain closeted because if they come out they might face not only familial rejection but economic consequences or social ostracism. Nor does it help when the most active or vocal people one encounters in the gay community are quite often pushing a political agenda which has little to do with gay rights or interests. As Andrew Sullivan would be among the first to argue, being gay or bisexual doesn't mean that one needs to support an inefficient welfare state, nor does it mean one should necessarily oppose current administration policy with respect to Iraq or Israel. Monette does not seem willing to accept that truths can be more complex than the story he tells suggests.

While some (including apparently, Monette) see bisexuality as a transitional phase or as an excuse to be promiscuous, for me is useful as a category for understanding the variety of my feelings. I refuse to cast them all into the category of self-delusion. And that's why I have so little patience with gay essentialism, or at least with what I've taken to calling gay essentialism: a theory that you're either gay or straight and that there is no in-between, and there is nothing you can do abut it. To my mind, that theory seems as ridiculous as the belief in the old south that people of mixed race were always black, no matter how small a fraction their black ancestry might represent. And just as the southern racial theories insisted on a (fictionalized) relationship between race and character, so gay essentialism seeks to perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes about sexuality and character (think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). Although for some gay might define a sensibility or a cultural style as much as a sexual preference or an orientation, for others it is not necessarily any of those things, and to insist that it is or must be strikes me as wrongheaded. In that respect, of course, it is rather like the "diversity" debate: seeing people as "representatives" of a group means expecting them to represent the views or characteristics of the group, rather than expecting them to be individuals. But groups rarely interest me as much as individuals do.

Statues Falling So many bloggers have had so many good things to say about today's extraordinary events that I feel at a loss to add anything new, worthwhile, or particularly insightful. I suppose I'm just relieved by the recognition that what I--and so many others--believed could happen as a result of military action in Iraq really has started to happen that I don't know what more to say.

I'm more intrigued by the reactions of the anti-war crowd now, as they try to backpeddle or deny or say that what we're seeing isn't really what we're seeing. A week ago, I heard a vehemently anti-war colleague whose office is across the hall from mine complaining that "it [the war] is so unjust." At the time, I had to bite my lip to keep from saying, "Well, I suppose you approve of putting people through shredders, feet first, then, or you think that we ought to impose even more sanctions so yet more innocent Iraqis will die." I noticed that she seemed curiously quiet today.

I'm not going to take on the issue tonight, but I'd like to explore it at some point in the future. For the time being, I'll link to Jeff Jarvis and let him take it from here. Of course, InstaPundit and Andrew Sullivan are worth checking out, as usual.

Long Time, No Blog So, I haven't written in more than two months. It's not that I've had any lack of things to write about. The reality is quite the opposite: I have been so caught up in following debates about so many things, that I haven't known where to start making my own contributions. I didn't want to regularly echo those whom I admire or agree with, but I forgot that in the long run it will be easier to define my own positions and my own distinct angle if I say more rather than less.

The Hours, again: As my previous post about this film made clear, I responded to this film partly because the bisexual angle resonated with me. I make a point of saying the "bisexual" angle rather than the "gay angle" or the "lesbian angle," because I am wary of what some might call "queer" essentialism, favoring instead a "bisexual" essentialism. That is to say, I fully believe in the Kinsey continuum. As a result, I believe that sexual politics and desire underlie more human interaction than we sometimes like to admit, that closeted same-sex desire is fairly widespread and that the number of people who are either completely straight or completely gay is overshadowed by the rest of us who fall somewhere in between. Men's Health magazine, which I discussed below, is only one example of the homoerotic in the service of the allegedly heterosexual. I mention it because, years ago I subscribed to that magazine, hoping to get more insight into the world of straight male culture which I have never fully participated in, but what I found was that, once I looked past the questionable claims about male and female essentialism (not quite John Gray, but close), I was interested in the fitness tips partly because I was turned on by the images of the guys throughout the magazine. I doubt my experience was all that uncommon. One needn't be Camille Paglia to recognize the sexual personae all around us. In fact, since today is Superbowl Sunday, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Alan Dundes' important essay "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football" (the essay is collected in his volume Interpreting Folklore, published by Indiana University Press). There Dundes examines football as a male homosexual fantasy game. Although his Freudian approach is not without its problems, he manages to explain a lot of details with much persuasive force.

My point is not to be so reductive as to claim that everyone is bisexual, although I can imagine trying to make the case. It is, instead, to suggest that where sexual orientation is concerned, the categories "gay" and "straight" are just that, categories: they're more useful as a kind of shorthand to use in understanding experience than as the definitive answers some think they are. Desire--both heterosexual and homoerotic--is part of the human condition, and what matters is how one reacts to it.

Returning now to the movie, one of the things that intrigued me about it is that in The Hours, Julianne Moore's 1950s housewife is in many respects the inverse of the character she plays in Far From Heaven. Where her husband's (Dennis Quaid) same-sex desire disrupts her character's life in the second film, in The Hours, her character struggles with many issues, among them same-sex desire. We don't know for sure how large a part that plays in shaping the decision her character makes in the film, but it is fair to think that it plays some part. At the end of the film, she tells us that, faced with unrelenting despair, she chose life. It is a profoundly moving moment. Her decision has been a difficult one for her, and it has come at a great cost to her and to her family. Although it might be easy for some to judge or find fault with the ethics of her choice, that choice is--however flawed--better than the alternative she faced in contemplating the abyss of despair she inhabited. May we all have the courage to find our way from the abyss if and when we face it.

The Hours: I saw this film on Monday afternoon, and I found it profoundly moving. It is certainly the most outstanding film I have seen in quite some time. Part of what you might infer from that--given that I just saw North by Northwest over the weekend--is that I value emotional and intellectual complexity, literary allusiveness, and good acting more than cinematic effects. Why else would I consider My Dinner with Andre among my favorite films? Like Andre, this film is philosophical and reflective, it is about art and the function of art, but it is also about making sense of life, coming to terms with pain and loss and moving on from there. Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf remarks at one point that one of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway has to die so that the rest of us will value life more. That line nicely expresses the whole function of this literary film: it is art as catharsis, the kind of drama which evokes not so much fear and pity, but an equally compelling range of emotions.

The acting in this film is quite extraordinary. Kidman's performance is most likely the best of her career (or what I know of her career), and if I were going to wager, I would say that it is easily the hands on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Actress. That's not to say that Kidman is the brightest star in this film, however. Though amazingly strong, Kidman's performance was eclipsed by that of Meryl Streep, who proves once again why she has earned her reputation as the greatest actress of her generation. As Clarissa Vaughan, Streep is as luminescent as her remarkable skin, which seems amazingly flawless, even though Streep is now in her early 50s. The other leading lady here, the lovely Julianne Moore, does her best work since her performance in Andre's little-known relative, Vanya on Forty-Second Street. Moore is likely to receive her Oscar nomination not for this film, but for Far from Heaven where she also plays a 1950s housewife. In some ways that's too bad, because her performance here is stronger. The supporting cast here--especially Ed Harris as Richard Brown--is equally remarkable.

I could write much more about this film, and I may yet do so, but before I close I wanted to say that at least one of the reasons that the film resonated with me as much as it did is that so many of the characters are bisexual. (The other night Jay Leno joked that in Far from Heaven, Julianne Moore learns her husband is gay when she seems him emerging from a movie theatre where The Hours is playing.) Although most printed reviews refer to Clarissa Vaughan as a lesbian and Richard Brown as a gay man, and while the odd review here or there might refer to some of Virginia Woolf's affairs with other women, I find it striking that reviewers seem to shy away from even using the term bisexual to describe the characters here, as though the category was somehow suspect or inappropriate. What I think this film illustrates, though, in a subtle and powerful manner is that love and sexuality can be intertwined in ways that the conventional language of sexual orientation doesn't always adequately describe.

North by Northwest:  I had never seen this Hitchcock classic until last night, but now that I have seen it, I find myself intrigued by its standing in the canon of film classics.  I could say much about what I perceive to be the shortcomings of the film, from its apparent inconsistencies (for instance: the large lake or river to the left of the westbound train in upstate New York for most of the journey, and the road along the water in Glen Cove which looks more like something on the California coast than like any road I�ve seen on the North shore of Long Island) to its overly pat resolution.  But I�ll leave it simply to saying that I�m not particularly impressed by the narrative of the film. In fact, as stories go, North by Northwest seemed almost familiar, but perhaps that�s a result of the fact that so much of what might have been original here has now become cliche:  the turns and twists of the spy drama have been played out so much since then, that it�s hard for me to tell where others owe a debt to Hitchcock and where Hitchcock�s film was itself derivative.  In general my reaction to it is similar to my reaction to Vertigo, another late Hitchcock film with a resolution that I find less-than-compelling.  Leaving aside the fact that both films feature scenes of people falling to their deaths from great heights near the end, the similarity that stands out in my mind is that both films represent what might be called �stylized Hitchcock.�  What stands out to me about both films is the look and feel of them, the composition of their images, and their masterful use of the medium.   North by Northwest is at its best in its use of camera angles, particularly the wide-angle shots and the many scenes shot from above.  I imagine that this film would be a very different experience viewed in a cinema than it was on my TV screen.  But it�s not just the camera work that is interesting, it�s the carefully-constructed style of the people, places, interiors, and objects in the film.  In many respects, the world of this film, though remarkably different from our current world, seems almost contemporary.

Of course the treatment of sex in this film is very far from contemporary, and yet it seems bold and daring for its age.  What strikes me is how far it goes and how much it suggests in the late 1950s, an era not known for casual encounters.   And it is the suggestion of sex rather than the depiction of it that makes some of the scenes between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint seem racy.  Where its two stars are concerned, I can understand and recognize their appeal, but in watching them, I feel no sort of reaction to either one.  Cary Grant exudes a cool charm; his character constantly makes wry, witty remarks and never really seems to lose his composure.  His cool lacks a certain heat of intensity, though, which may be why--despite the relatively racy content--some of the scenes alone with Eva Marie Saint struck me as almost forced rather than natural. Eva Marie Saint's character is certainly unusual: an active seductress who is neither vamp nor tramp, a would-be femme fatale who turns out to have a good heart after all. There's so much weight on her character to embody a positive moderation that it is almost too much. As a result, her character seems almost as composed, coifed, groomed and polished as her carefully-styled platinum-blond hair.

Another point about Grant is simply how the standards for men�s bodies in the movies have changed in the past four decades.  Grant is lean and fit, but not particularly muscular;  the scene where he has his shirt off in the hospital reveals a physique that probably wouldn�t provoke too much of a response from today�s film audiences, used to seeing pumped men who look more like Michelangelo sculptures than like the movie idols of long ago.  Maybe I'm over-reacting:  after all, Grant was in his mid-50s when this movie was made, and he was incredibly fit-looking for a 50-something man of that era.  (By a complete coincidence, it turns out that yesterday would have been Grant's 99th birthday, if he were still alive.)  Nevertheless, seeing Grant in this movie reminded me of an Annie Liebowitz book I leafed through in a bookstore a year or two ago.  What intrigued me in the Liebowitz book was simply how skinny so many of the male pop stars and artists from the 1970s seemed in her photos, and how much things have changed since even the early 1980s.  One wonders if the change is due simply to the increasing popularity of working out and to the increased flow of information about fitness in the mainstream, or if it is also partly due to the gay liberation movement.  In the 1950s, after all, muscle mags were a form of soft porn most often perused by gay and bisexual men, but today they are everywhere.  In fact, publications like Men�s Health are fascinating for the way they employ homo-eroticism to convey a message about what it means to be a man.  The content of Men�s Health is decidedly heterosexual, and yet, unlike Maxim, the �beer and babes� magazine, Men�s Health always features a grinning, muscularly chiseled man on its cover. Of course, the omnipresence of such images of sculpted male bodies is surely also related to the way the male body is used in advertising--from Jim Palmer in the late '70s to Soloflex in the '80s to Calvin Klein in the late '80s and early '90s to Abercrombie and Fitch today--but I would argue that it is not a coincidence that such images have proliferated at the same time that gay has become more a part of the mainstream. Whether it is a result, a symptom, or a cause, I cannot discern, but it is certainly a subject worthy of more reflection.