in the hall of mirrors

A night on the town

Saturday of a three-day weekend.

A benefit for the gay rugby team... they're sweet guys, I know I'll go to this thing...

but last night (i.e. Friday of the three-day weekend) I did a presentation for the new student Youth Stop AIDS group (yes, I was clear that I wasn't the 'youth' part) and we went to that good-but-rather-spicy restaurant that serves Stormy Weathers, with serious rum, and which also does a two-drinks-for-one deal, so that's always kind of....

Well anyway. I assume the students recovered more quickly than I did.

Aaaand the last two or three days have been strange anyway: rapid political change, a disturbing sense that British politics is abruptly shifting into a lower, more primitive register – stupid people, stupid decisions, and no safety nets.

Sort of like Trumpland, except this government has no checks and balances, so crazed ideologues do just what they want. And the English merely look... perturbed.

But I don't know what to do with that fear and anger, so... might as well go to a party.

•••

So it's Saturday and it's 11 pm, and I call an Über, but 11 pm on a Saturday in a British city is not an intelligent time to expect any form of service. There are no cars, then there are again no cars, then... no vans, then... okay, well, 'Exec Über' (what the hell is that, a limo?) is available. For a small fee.

No problem, it's not as though my money is going anywhere important these days....

•••

The rugby player benefit is cheerful, with a very casual/local feeling. Several lovely guys I know, more that I don't (one tall guy with a sharply defined face is wearing sunglasses – because they have a Hawaiian theme, did I mention that, so there are a lot of Hawaiian shirts and a few grass skirts – and with those sunglasses, indoors, he looks exactly like a coke addict. Or possibly a contract killer, who can tell at that point).

Fun, nice kids, that sense of the sweetness of everyday guys....

•••

But I've literally arrived in the last twenty minutes of this benefit, which is about to leave the old pub and move to the gay bars. So then a semi-long walk, I get detached from the others, which is okay... I'm actually feeling detached, watching. The kind of evening where I walk through life, among it, not in it.

•••

The bars are fairly, not intensely, busy. Bouncing from one to the other, I settle in the Eagle –

and end up talking to Marco and his partner, which is lovely. Marco knows me from all those public presentations – I've met him but don't remember (which is normal for me of course). But we talk about everything on earth for perhaps two hours, and from now on I know that I will remember.

The relationship of the two of them... again, something with a real sweetness, a trust, a sense of guys whose relationships and emotions matter. The calm solidity of the bears, the best of that class of gay men.

•••

The Bank is noisier and more chaotic, but also bear-oriented tonight (or perhaps I just know a lot of them these days).... and then Switch, which is usually mostly young people. Marco and his boyfriend have led the way, I meet their friends – mostly younger, postgrad students at the uni.

One startles me by saying, of course I know who you are, you're... and he knows my full name.

... When I think I'm invisible or forgotten, do I actually have a public persona that functions in the world?... that is news to me.

Young people, some with birthdays, someone's sister....

•••

In the Bank I'd already seen two guys, handsome – one very handsome; but relaxed. Not like guys who preen: just regular-looking men with weekend beards, who happen to be calmly, quietly beautiful, in an everyday way.

They follow us into Switch, the dance music is going... they buy drinks and talk, seem alert in a relaxed way, looking around – a sense that perhaps they don't come out much, or live a bit far from the city.

And, as it does, that song by Journey comes on – the one that gets played incalculably often, but which always retains its eerily transcendent rising, circular hope, that sense of time stretched and also lost, and extraordinary desire:

    just a city boy / born and raised in south Detroit

    he took the midnight train / goin' anywhere

... one of the guys is galvanized by this, and who can blame him. They go onto the dance floor, and dance with increasing energy – both of them dancing, like dads, one enthusiastic and slightly awkward, the other more casual; but as he is a handsome man you know that, if he were the person you were living with, you would see this with such a daze of love: his humanity, his easiness, he is happy and dancing, and you'd think: I live with this man, I can see him every day, and there is nothing better to look at in the entire world....

•••

Somewhere in this I think: so, life, meaning, judgment: what if my life right now, just as it is, is... perfect? What if all of this is as wonderful, as extraordinarily beautiful, as it seems during the time of this song?....

    it goes on and on and on and on

The song is ending, and I think: no, I should go home after that. I turn to Marco, then his partner, quickly: 'yes, I'm going home, text me', hugs, and also the young hunk who told me it's his birthday, and....

walk out into the night.

Anniversary

Well... not quite the anniversary.

It was thirteen years since this blog was begun... as of yesterday.

A day late, that's appropriate for a thirteenth anniversary, yes?

•••

No posts since the new year; which doesn't mean I'm giving up on this. I do like the blog, I like writing it....

I want to transfer it to a better website, get somebody to help redesign, something that looks better and is more flexible. A multi-page website – psychoanalyst, academic, blog. Do I make all those pages visible to each other? I'm not quite sure.

•••

Since January I have finished the thesis for the Jung-Institut, which is an accomplishment somewhere between 'amazing' and 'finally,' and which is also a torso of what it should be. An attempt to draw up all the heaviest, most unbearable aspects of thirty-five years of HIV/AIDS: infection, fear, anger, the rotting body... death of course.

A draft of about 160 pages was taken down to 80 at the orders of my supervisor – they're going through a period of wanting to simplify the academic side of the training....

I'm never terribly impressed with such policies – my own university sets a maximum number of pages, which I think is merely tacky, but even an expansive Wagnerian PhD student had to comply. It's okay, he's kept all that he wrote and will continue to publish, I hope.

And, of course, compare the situation of my dear John, who basically wrote about four theses... at least he got not one but two degrees for that.

As for my own thesis, it currently feels a bit like I've ticked a box: as I get into the idea, as I look at the draft and see what needs to be rewritten and what is missing, I know that this will be a book....

which is good, because (pay attention, children, I need to boast while pretending to be humble) I have been commissioned for one, and very probably will manage to get a second through the same channel. With a reeeeally goooood publisher. And, because circumstances are different, because much is written, and most of all because I am now very different, this time I think these books will happen – one this year, the other within a year or two.

Given the neurotic exasperation of arguing with my supervisor, and my rather sad anxiety that I was once again proving my inability to finish large things, it was a great emotional rescue to get the book commission in the midst of that conflict.

I'd already written a note to myself, on the new whiteboard by my desk:

"write past the thesis – aim for the book(s)"....

•••

It has been a cold spring, with continued miserable politics.

But I have been flying along my own path – relatively calm since getting over the thesis, and even that was a fairly attenuated anxiety.... bored and annoyed by the world, and by the irritability and anxiety of so many in it, I've been floating in a world of word, psyche, screen....

At some levels I am calmer, at others more irritated by others, especially when they are themselves fractured, unhappy, anxious.

(But I don't mean my own analysands – I am patient with them, I think. It is actually a great existential relief to firmly know that place in myself where I can step back from my own feelings, and ask instead: what is this? There is a calmness there which is of course professional in nature, but which has its own quality, like a still pool in a Zen story. Even amidst my irritation with so many others, a couple of days ago, while dressing, I suddenly paused and asked: what is that irritation? Why does everyone seem so anxious, so self-lacerating – of course there are the cultural level, and the political level – but what in this anger is being created by me?....)

•••

The past couple of days have been beautifully warm. It won't continue of course, but this has been the kind of weather I love – why is it not like this for, say, four months a year? Then happiness would reign.

•••

The last couple of weeks of writing the thesis, I was eating more, and not caring – there was too much to focus on. And so I am now heavier, and irritated, even publicly embarrassed, about that, though of course no one else notices. More importantly, I do not feel well – the heaviness, poor digestion and aching, and the weakness – I haven't been going for walks; and I do, too frequently, start to shake, start to become really weak, usually for several hours.

I still assume this is my doing – an extreme lack of exercise; though this is happening too often. It could actually be something external – though really this is probably just an exceptionally ridiculous version of the ways people let themselves fall apart as they get older, which is of course a good way of dying before time.

I'll get out more, I promise – I promise myself.

As so often: there are really no excuses.

But then, of course, in my life, there have been so many points where there were really no excuses.

•••

Thirteen years.

A box of books in the mail.

Sunshine, warmth, birds.

Writing in a café; the charmingly handsome man behind the counter.

And spring: a real spring....