Judgement

Encouragement that I can get work done. Discouragement that I can't get work done.

Discouraged that the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council, the rather incompetently run bottleneck that the British government employs to give lecturers and students funding, or actually mostly not to give it to them) did not give me additional research leave, which means I'll be back to teaching in September. Encouraged, a bit, that I'm promised a light fall semester – so possibly, if I can get work done (see above), I might get the book written.

Encouraged that Melinda, in a wonderful meeting with me last week, was so supportive. Discouraged that the day after that meeting I was worth nothing at all, depressed by gray weather, never got out of my robe all day. Encouraged that Patrick interviewed for a really wonderful job, discouraged that he might get it and leave. Encouraged that I might still get the promotion, discouraged that I probably won't get the New York interview.

And this week, my dear Janet, a lovely and amusing friend, is staying with me to work on the Buffy book. Janet is not only amusing, but also quite sharp, organized, take-charge – which is making me feel both relieved that everything will be all right, and at the same time even more helpless, more inept, that I'm not like her; though I'll try to keep up. A bit discouraging. Or encouraging. Depending on the time of day – moments when one of the book chapters seems as though it can be edited, fixed, improved, made successful; others where the confused mess of papers left by Vanessa's death leads us down unexpected dead ends, makes me panic about the amount of work left to do, the hopelessness of the whole venture.

And then I have to do all this kind of thing again, in April, with Joyce, working on the Stäbler book – which emphasizes my own ineptitude, my own inability to simply finish these damned projects, let alone to write the monograph that these projects are distracting me from. Leaning on Janet, on Joyce, as I leaned on Vanessa – I shouldn't need to lean; but I do. And, of course, as always, on women: I'm such a younger brother, always – I'm lucky they don't just throw up their hands in frustration.

Or, contrarily, those moments that remind me that these projects aren't that hard, and are well within my abilities....

•••

Tonight, when Janet was tired from editing all day (she was probably focused for as much as, say, seven hours, maybe a bit less; I, on the other hand, was only clearly focused for perhaps two or three? – sigh) she said, let's watch a movie. Her first suggestion, Brokeback Mountain, was vetoed by me – far too sad for me at the moment; her second, The History Boys, rather tentatively accepted.

Yes, well played, yes, an interesting film; but one that left me a bit bemused and distracted – I still find the peculiar British attitude towards sex between men so confusing, and (therefore) I can't understand why all the major British critics identified with this movie so much. (I'm equally confused by the obviously hugely significant gay element in the cult film Withnail and I, which is also, to an American, fascinating and disturbing.) Should I be encouraged, pleased, that they are so unclear about boundaries, identities, actions? But I never am – somehow it's even more confusing, discouraging, dismaying that all the straight men have looser boundaries here than at home. It seems to make anyone who is "really" gay particularly pathetic – or does it? – in any case, being viciously teased by young straight men seems like the nastiest possible hell for a gay teacher, and in Britain it also seems like the norm for them.

(I'm very glad, in my case, that I teach at university rather than in a school – we don't spend as much time with them, we don't get as close to them – and university students aren't as nasty, of course. Not to mention my relief, which I have felt strongly for years, that I'm seldom attracted to them at this age anyway – I think teachers and lecturers who fall in love with their students are just asking for trouble; thank God I only get really interested when they pass about the age of thirty.)

Of course, this is also one of those damned movies that Vito Russo so hated, where the Gay Character Must Die. Especially the older one, especially the more ridiculous one, and of course especially the one who Touched A Boy. What an utter, and pernicious, cliché.

Contrasting to that is the one Woman's Moment – when the older woman history teacher gives her remarkable tour de force on men and history, a real coup de thêatre; but it does feel a bit pasted in, as a sop to women in a man's play. But the actress certainly takes it even further than one would have thought possible – her angry eyes, her cigarette, as powerful as any prison warden or tough cop; but completely believable. Oh, and the handsomest of the guys: the red-headed piano player – no doubt about that one.

But I suppose this film is really (really) about judgement, about school boys getting into Oxbridge, or not getting in (and does anyone really believe that they all make it in the end? – impossible, just impossible). So it's about competition, or about the chaos of getting judged in a system that's ultimately cruelly arbitrary – or about losing all chances when you're young. (For me, not getting into Princeton, which, ridiculous as it may seem from this distance, utterly broke my heart, and my spirit – and at an age when I wasn't wise enough to realize that it might not be important, at all; and as for my colleague blahfeme, not getting into Cambridge, which was clearly as shattering for him: don't they realize how terrible these decisions are, for some of us?)

Encouragement. Discouragement. Judgement. Lonely, gay, straight, sexual, asexual, isolated, social. Good enough, not good enough.

Given all this – frankly – how could anyone possibly not be emotionally exhausted, hopeless – even suicidal?...

Perhaps Brokeback Mountain would have been a better choice.

Comments

[blahfeme]

this is lovely, just lovely and very smart. And SO right! You have identified absolutely what is so pernicious in the English public liberal discourse about male homosexuality: that older men that dare to imagine the touch of the younger man are, at best, sad and deluded lonely freaks, doomed to play out their lives as clowns, side shows or, at worst, as jokes. I hate that film.

The selectivity issue and that awfulness that comes of not really knowing that a certain kind of failure is not really that at all, but an opportunity, a blessed relief from the mediocrity that is bred by the brain factories... that is dealt with very badly in his pernicious little film also.

very moving post.