Live while you can.

Call Me By Your Name started streaming earlier in the week, and I began watching minutes after it was available. It now ranks as one of my favorite films. Beautifully shot, directed, acted and written. Incredibly subtle, true, honest and emotionally insightful.

I read the book a few months ago, so I was excited about the film when I first heard about it. But I was also apprehensive. The book is quite an experience in and of itself, and it mainly takes place inside of Elio’s head. We see everything from Elio’s perspective. We look out at the world through his eyes. But film is voyeuristic. We become an unseen observer rather than a confidant. So I wasn’t sure they could do the book justice, and after seeing the first trailer, I feared it would be an uninspired, cheap indie, an insipid flop. I feared many wouldn’t give the book a go if the movie was bad. But then all the positive reviews started coming in, and a lot of people were saying it was in the same league as Maurice, Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight. Now that I’ve seen it, I wholeheartedly agree. I loved every minute.

Some are saying that because Elio and Oliver so readily accepted their desires for one another without the need to question their sexuality or justify it or label it, we have reached a turning point. One review I read called it the first post-gay film, whatever that means. But I don’t agree with all that.

First of all, Elio and Oliver aren’t gay. They’re bisexual. And there is most certainly some serious angst going on. Both characters are cultured, well read, highly educated and sophisticated, so they intellectually know having a sexual and romantic interest for someone of your own sex shouldn’t be a big deal. They’re far ahead of their time for 1983. But they know the rest of the world isn’t quite up to speed, and they’re not quite there on a gut level themselves despite their backgrounds.

They are coy with each other in the first half of the movie in a way they wouldn’t have been if their attraction had been hetero. And once they establish a romantic physical relationship, they’re secretive about it. They don’t want people to know about them. And it’s not just that they’re demure or private. They’re afraid. They don’t hold hands, or kiss or dance together in public, but they both do all of those things with girls. And they don’t “come out” because for Elio the story takes place before he would come out. His attraction to Oliver is a revelation to him. He wasn’t expecting it. And he most certainly doesn’t want anyone to know yet. It took him weeks to find the courage to tell Oliver. As for Oliver, we don’t know who he’s told back home. Oliver is a guest in Italy. It seems unlikely he’d feel the need to rush all over the village telling locals he would never see again that he likes both men and women.

It’s not that they’re carefree and nonchalant about their relationship. I don’t understand where some are getting that. However, the story is primarily about their love and not about their fear. Maybe that’s what seems so new and fresh.

Like Elio, I was 17 in the summer of 1983, and by then I had known I liked boys for six years. I was desperately lonely and full of longing. My body ached to be touched. I needed both physical and emotional intimacy. I wish I could have spent that summer in northern Italy. Wish my family had a beautiful old house surrounded by a verdant landscape. Wish my father had been as accepting and wise as Elio’s. And I wish I had become friends with someone like Elio or Oliver. Or maybe Elio and Oliver.

There is a line in the book that didn’t make it into the film, Elio says he and Oliver might see two young men together when they’re old, and it will stir them. They will call it envy because to call it regret would break their hearts.

Some thoughts about theodicy

An explanation for the existence of evil from a spiritual or theological perspective is called a theodicy. There are many theodicies, but they tend to fall into a handful of categories. Sometimes an individual theodicy might combine several of these categories.

There is the idea that we’re being punished for our sins and that we deserve what we get. The flipside is that we’re blessed when we’re righteous. Karma is a variation on this theme, and so is the modern prosperity gospel. The trouble is we often see people who aren’t all that righteous being blessed while the good suffer. With karma, it’s easy to justify that. Those suffering did something in a previous life. How can you argue with that? And in the Christian tradition, there’s original sin. According to this viewpoint, we’re all worthy of damnation and that it’s only by the grace of God that some of us are saved.

Some claim that evil is necessary in order to accommodate free will. But what about disease and natural disasters? Those things cause a lot of suffering, but they have little to do with our free will.

Duality is another explanation. The world or some aspect of reality is fundamentally good, but there is an evil force at work mucking things up. In Platonism, there is a realm of perfect forms, but something happens in their material expression, and they’re polluted. In Zoroastrianism, a good spiritual god is in battle with a nasty god. They are, more or less, evenly matched, so the struggle is ongoing. At some point the belief in duality made it’s way into ancient Judaism, and this version of duality is generally called apocalypticism. Of course, this concept became a cornerstone of Christianity. Adherents readily admit that the present world is unjust, and that’s due to a cosmic battle being waged between God and his army and Satan and the forces of evil. Eventually God will win, and humans will be resurrected and judged. Those who were righteous will be rewarded in an afterlife, and the meanies will be dispatched to hell. You might suffer in this life, but that’s only temporary. The good times are on the way. Sounds pretty good, I suppose, but I can’t figure out why an omnipotent deity would allow demons and devils to run amok. I guess some would claim even Satan was given free will, and all this suffering is the price we pay until things are put right.

There’s also the claim that suffering is somehow redemptive and that we can’t appreciate fully our blessings until we know pain. That’s interesting, but I wonder why some would need to experience more pain than others.

The explanation that I find the most plausible is that life and the world is a mystery, and we can’t possibly understand or know exactly why things have to be as they are. The Book of Job seems to offer this explanation. Job wants to know why all these awful things has happened to him when he has led a righteous life. God seems to say that we don’t see things from a godly perspective and never will, so just shut up and deal with it. Isn’t this pretty much what parents often say to their children?

Another explanation is that evil is a human concept and the universe is what it is. We might suffer, but it’s nothing personal. Things just worked out that way.

War On Compassion and Common Sense

I’ve never been a social person, so when I was a teenager and young adult, I never hung out with the druggies or the stoners, and I wasn’t invited to many parties. I didn’t take my first drink until I was in college. Even though I drank to excess a few times, I never became a regular drinker. It just doesn’t appeal to me that much. I enjoy feeling tipsy now and then, but I don’t like the taste. It costs money, too, and I’ve never had much of that. I’ve never taken any illegal drugs. I’ve taken prescription tranquilizers off and on for years due to my anxiety. They help, but I like to be awake and alert, so that’s not something that’s all that alluring either. Same thing with prescription pain killers. I was given a steady supply for a year following my head surgeries, but I was happy to switch to ibuprofen when I could. For a long time, I’ve wondered if marijuana might help with my anxiety, and I’ve resented the fact I couldn’t try it without breaking the law.

So I guess I have been directly affected by the war on drugs, but not so much that I feel persecuted. However, I do think addicts have been seriously harmed by anti-drug laws and our society’s general attitude toward addicts. For years, I’ve believed addiction should be treated as an illness, not as a crime. I’ve also become increasingly aware of the racial aspects of the war on drugs.

I can’t say Johann Hari’s Chasing the Scream changed my mind about many things, but I was deeply moved by it. I’m now more convinced than ever that we have been making a bad situation worse for decades.

For me, the most striking part of the book was the personal stories of the addicts and the conclusion that these are mostly people who have faced some serious problems in their lives aside from addiction. Many were abused and traumatized as children. Many are paralyzed by depression, loneliness and fear. Most people who drink don’t become alcoholic, and most who take drugs don’t become addicts. So why do addicts get hooked? It might be that the physical dependence isn’t the clincher. Many if not most addicts might turn to drugs for the same reason we all do after slipping on ice, or getting a tooth pulled, or getting a head tumor removed. They want to kill the pain. Turning them into criminals and giving them records that make it difficult for them to get jobs, apartments or student loans only exacerbates the problem.

Prohibition does not eliminate drugs. It only pushes them completely out of the sphere of regulation so that criminals are the ones delivering them. The criminals typically sell to anyone with money, including children, and because they can’t rely on police protection, they resort to barbarism and terrorism to get their product to market. Users can never be sure of what they’re getting, and dealers also tend to sell the most highly potent form of drugs. Before and after alcohol prohibition, beer was the most popular form of alcohol, but more concentrated alcohol became prevalent in the ’20s, and many were poisoned. We’ve all heard the stories of coke in soda and allegedly medicinal syrups. Those doses were mild compared to what addicts today usually take.

Prohibition also drives up the cost, which means addicts often engage in criminal activity to pay for their habit. Some steal, some prostitute themselves. Many become dealers themselves so that in order to buy drugs, they recruit new drug users.

Chasing the Scream is illuminating and informative. Most of the information might not be all that shocking to those who have been paying attention, but there was one thing that did surprise me. Many addicts stop using on their own without any treatment. They simply grow out of it. Maybe they work through their personal demons. Maybe they found something that gives them hope. Maybe drugs are especially appealing when we’re young and filled with anxieties, and once we’re settled and have been around the block a few times, we relax. Who can say for sure? Hari believes one of the most important things addicts need is connection. They need to feel connected to other people and to the community at large.

Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death

Ernest Becker was part psychologist and anthropologist and part philosopher. I just read his book The Denial of Death, first published in 1973, and I’m pretty sure his insights are going to stay with me for a long time. This work is 45 years old, and Becker spends a great deal of time framing his theories in the psychodynamic model, so The Denial of Death can seem terribly dated now. His understanding of depression, schizophrenia and homosexuality seem quaint in the twenty-first century, and I don’t think I’ve ever slogged through more passages about penis envy, castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex in my life. But Becker does not simply regurgitate Freud and his peers and descendants, and he moves toward existentialist philosophy throughout.

Although Becker does not come right out and dismiss Freud’s claim that sexuality is the primary driving force motivating humans, he claims that this view is significantly incomplete. Becker believed that it is our finitude, our creatureliness, and specifically our awareness of our own mortality that’s behind most of what we do. One of the funniest and most perceptive comments was his claim that shit is a serious problem for humans. That’s because it reminds us daily that we’re a perishable object, and that one day someone will bury us in the ground before we stink up the place. Sex is only one bodily function that continually points to the fact that we’re flesh and bone.

Becker believed that humans needed meaning and purpose, and they have a strong desire to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves…because there’s always that nagging awareness that our bodies will not last. He claimed neurotics have difficulty functioning because they lack illusion. They are too much aware that life has no objective or provable meaning or purpose, and that’s why they find it difficult to go through the motions and why they’re so terrified. They see through the vanity of human institutions, customs and civilization. That struck me as an interesting idea because usually we operate on the assumption that dysfunctional people are screwed up in some way. In any event, the word “neurotic” isn’t used so much these days, and there’s a lot of scientific evidence that biological processes play a big part in mental illness…genetics, brain chemistry, etc. But I think there’s something to this notion that those who have a hard time facing the world—those like me—often can’t buy into society’s bullshit. And I’ve noticed many therapists push their clients toward conformity. Their idea of psychological health is “normalcy.” Why not? They see the vast majority are able to get jobs, get married and have kids, so maybe if their clients follow the pattern, they’ll find the strength to carry on, too. The trouble is, their clients aren’t like other people. They need a new game, something that will spark their imaginations. If they could conform, they probably would.

Becker theorized that the thing that gets us through our lives, knowing we’re going to die, is what he calls our causa sui project. Causa sui is Latin for cause of itself. It’s those things we latch onto and identify with that we believe or pretend or allow ourselves to believe are eternal. These are our passions. Religion is the most obvious causa sui project. Culture, nationality, race, ethnicity and tribalism can also be parts of our causa sui project. But almost anything can be…collecting antiques, sports, cars.

As we grow older, and our mortality sneaks up on us, we might become more strident in our devotion to tradition, law and order, our church and community. It is common knowledge that older people are generally more conservative than younger people. Becker’s theory explains this. And he warns that mere crotchetiness is not the worst of it. Those who believe their causa sui projects are their only hope of avoiding oblivion might, at any age, see anyone who challenges it as their mortal enemy. They might even be willing to kill those who stand against them.

The way to avoid becoming hopelessly fanatical and potentially violent is by consciously facing your mortality. Allow yourself to think about it rather than always pushing it aside. That doesn’t mean you’re going to give up your causa sui project, but on some level, you’ll know and accept that your physical existence and everything you were connected to while alive will eventually turn to dust. You can’t stop this. But you can find a reason to get up in the morning without wanting to kill those who believe and do things differently than you.

Alone

Alone in a universe trying to kill me,Among a species always looking for a scapegoat.
I am the detestable one, the despised one, the other.
It is all my fault.
No excuse, no forgiveness.
I feel shame, guilt and fear.
And that is used against me.
This is my life,
And time is running out.

 

The Benefits of Age

Next week I turn 52, and although growing older is no picnic, there are some silver linings. It’s easier for me to be an older male than it was for me to be a young one.

 

No one expects me to go to war. I came of age in the mid-1980s, and the memory of the draft and Vietnam lingered. Boys were expected to register, and those who didn’t were ineligible for college financial aid. It was also against the law not to register. Not only did the thought of being in a war frighten me, but I wasn’t like other boys, so the idea of living in a hyper-masculine environment was enough to cause me to experience panic attacks. I’m not exaggerating. I lost sleep thinking about being in the Army.

 

No one expects me to engage in fist fighting even if I were to be physically threatened. If someone were to punch me in the face the next time I go into a bar, no one would expect me to reciprocate. No one would ask me, “Why did you *let* him do that to you?” And I was most certainly expected to be prepared to violently defend myself at the drop of a hat when I was young in West Virginia. Boys were expected to protect themselves, and if you needed or asked for help, you were deemed unworthy.

 

No one expects me to play rough sports anymore. When I was growing up, I was regularly asked when I was going out for football. My father played, so many expected me to follow in his footsteps. I had no interest. I didn’t relate to the urge to run at other boys and slam into them at full speed.

 

It all left me feeling uncertain. I wasn’t a girl, but I couldn’t live up to the expectations placed on me as a boy either. It made me question my identity and my worth, and it put me in danger.

 

I grew up in fear. I feared rejection, and I feared physical assault. I’m glad the threat of those things are no longer as immediate. But I don’t want to forget. Living in fear for so long has taken its toll. And I don’t want to give even the slightest impression that I think what was done to me and other boys is necessary, acceptable or excusable.

Who Is Michael?

I Am Michael is now streaming on Netflix, and I watched it last night. Like many, I found the film perplexing and frustrating. There wasn’t much insight provided as to why Michael Glatze would be drawn into Religious Right anti-LGBT beliefs. To me, Michael came off as disturbing and unhinged.

We learn that Michael’s father died suddenly of a heart condition when Michael was 13, and then his mother died a few years later when Michael was in college. Just before he abandons his friends and boyfriend and denounces LGBT recognition, identity and rights, he has a string of panic attacks, which he fears are symptoms of the same heart condition that killed his father. When he’s given a clean bill of health, he takes it as a sign.

So he had an existential crisis? That isn’t rare. Many have trouble facing their own mortality. Many wonder about meaning and purpose. Many find comfort in religion and spirituality. But why would Michael choose Christian fundamentalism? It doesn’t make much sense. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of other points of view. And his parents didn’t foist fundamentalist beliefs on him. His father was an agnostic, and although his mother identified as Christian, she wasn’t Religious Right Christian, and she hardly ever talked about her beliefs. She didn’t take Michael to church.

One thing I noticed was how Michael always wanted to be out front. He wanted to lead. He wanted followers. He wanted to be the preacher. He was always going to the extreme. When he went to San Francisco with his boyfriend, he immersed himself in fast lane urban LGBT life. He joined a magazine and became an activist. Then he wrote a guide for LGBT youth. Then he started his own LGBT magazine. After becoming a fundamentalist, he started writing inflammatory blog posts that drew a lot of media attention. When he went to Bible school, he started telling his fellow students they needed to listen to God and not the instructors. Many seemed to be listening to Michael. Finally, he became the pastor of his own church. I got the impression he was an attention whore who was basically empty inside. He was absorbed by a particular subculture. He studied it. He learned to mimic. Then he wanted to take over. I suspect he has some kind of personality disorder, maybe borderline. There doesn’t seem to be a center. No one is really home. And the attention seeking and the adopted zealotry might be his way of compensating.