Driving Away

So what goes into this blog? Basically what people can’t stand to hear from someone else. That stuff that once someone gets into talking about it, you want to change the subject or end the conversation. It’s the unpleasant shit that’s not cool to even bring up with good friends, but somehow maybe can only be discussed with them. One time my sister very straightforwardly asked me to just stop talking about some of the stuff I put on here because it overly agitated her insecurities. She was blunt. She didn’t try to make me feel responsible for her reaction. She just stated it and acknowledged that the reaction was hers.

With such an unpleasant topic for blogging, I cannot therefore realistically expect a large readership. I’ve thought about doing things to the blog to attract readers, but that would be contrary to its point—unsupportable / ugly / distasteful beauty.

I’ve thought about ending the blog and just attempting to talk to some of my good friends about this stuff and quickly heard “I actually gotta go now.”

I might be retarded in devoting so much thought to these issues—but oh well. They are a part of me.

Ironically, all of these issues became cogent over dinner last night. An old friend of mine came to graduate school at my university. We’re very similar in terms of our personalities. He came out a couple years ahead of me though. We share one very good friend who told me that he and she figured out quickly that I played on both teams. Ever since then, I was scared of talking to him. He’s always been friendly though and welcoming. Finally, I took up his offer, made the phone call, and scheduled dinner.

I came out to him. He was noticeably taken aback, but just continued with the conversation. We talked about our academic interests, possible future trajectories in academia and in the professional world, his past serious fiancé, and his current committed boyfriend. I just responded saying that I don’t think I’m very relational and doubt I’ll ever marry. He told me to be patient. I said that I realize that I just change and in my opinion grow so much every fucken six months that its impossible for me to even keep a cohesive net of friends. In fact, I told him that for this reason I most appreciated us having dinner. He’s known me for over six years. I told him that he’s one of the few people who has known me undergone so many rebirths of myself. Only people like him could know the parts of me that truly comprise me because they know the parts of me that survive different environmental expectations and pressures. He acknowledged that I had changed tremendously.

I was curious also to talk to him because he mentioned that he works closely with faculty with whom I’ve had conflicts in the past. Because these conflicts can possibly entail administrative or legal action, most students refuse to talk to me about it. I figured he’d be open—and he was.

After that however, we arrived at the most interesting topic I had not expected. He’s doing research this summer abroad. He’s studying plastic surgery in various countries. I was surprised—here is this hardcore historian tackling such an often demoted topic. The core of the research of course is vanity. What it means, why it takes certain forms, and how it plays itself out in diverse cultures. Apparently, some organizations out there must care about this issue because he got a serious amount of funding for it.

He was open about his insecurities and talked about them. It was refreshing. I gave him my philosophical thoughts on the matter and we exchanged reading lists. It’s crazy. I can’t believe someone is going to study this issue in a totally academic way.

I came away feeling less stupid about thinking about these issues. It makes some people go under the knife and others devout an enormous amount of thought and money in order to better understand it.