I die a little
It’s a sad ass state of world affairs when a chocolate mousse made with love and instruction from the divine being of Julia Child herself can’t fix my broken heart. After all, whipping up such an act of selfless, culinary love on Saturday for a room full of strangers should have made me high for several days. I mean, I don’t snort cocaine(anymore) so the power of a good homemade chocolate dessert should not be underestimated and under normal conditions would have done wonders. But this Saturday was not normal.
Listen, you are smart people with fancy phones that tell you immediately when the world has gone to hell. Bless these little devices right now as they seem to be working like children in factories during the Industrial Revolution. So you know to what I am referring. You know that for the next few days that when we talk about feeling like shit about the world we’re talking about Charlottesville. This nightmare, this hate crime, this racially motivated act of terror and as well as the stomach churning pageantry which proceeded it is already infamous. It’s already another sad, shitty sidebar of American history and what we end up doing with it is anyone’s guess. At the emotional intersection of Bitter Old Gay and Sober Sage, I’d venture to guess not a damn thing will change. This is an awfully negative response. But you know me. This bitch keeps it real. Anyway, this isn’t that piece. This also isn’t that essay about how to fix racism or the world or what people are doing or not doing. This post is about me.
It’s very typical of an alcoholic to turn a national disgrace and tragedy into all about himself. So consider me guilty as charged but in my defense this blog is entitled “the seanologues” so I sort of let you know that I was my favorite topic from the jump. Look, I don’t live in Charlottesville. I am not a person of color. I was not there Saturday. But what I do know is that the way I process this kind of news is different than it used to be. It seems to happen in stages. For example, when I heard about it, I was at my day job. I work at one of those places where foodies come and take cooking classes while drinking wine. I’m supposed to help the chef instructors but really I just snack, eavesdrop on hilarious Portland food snobs and occasionally get to cook too. Not a bad artist’s gig, as these things go. So when my social media blew up with news out of Virginia, my default is to snort, roll my eyes and shoot off a salty, “Well, of course this is happening” tweet. The more I read, the more annoyed I got. I had to put my phone down. After all, there was a chocolate mousse to be made, dammit.
As I plowed through Julia’s extensive and exhaustive directions, the mousse materialized. There’s something deeply satisfying about just following a recipe. Like I cannot control what hell on Earth is happening right now but i can be damned sure this mousse turns out flawlessly. And that it did. After working all day and obsessively checking my phone for the latest bad news, I was exhausted. I went home, flopped on the couch, nibbled a dinner that wasn’t as impressive as the mousse I made earlier and generally tried to let Saturday melt away. When I woke up on Sunday morning, it was still there. Not just the headlines and the trending topics from yesterday but that aching pit in my stomach.
Another work shift (this time pastas of the world!), another face plant on my bed at home where I took a nap. When I got up, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” by Cole Porter was stuck in my head. Well, still stuck in my head. I sang it softly to myself earlier in the day on my way to work. I’m lucky enough to live in a part of downtown Portland that a gay singing Cole Porter to himself happens to be pretty basic behavior. Porter’s lyrics are always a touchstone for me. When I need confirmation that beauty exists and that we are capable of truly lovely things, Cole Porter’s songs always provide. That song in particular personifies Porter’s masterful lyrics while revealing his tender heart. It’s a song of longing for a person whose absence is utterly heartbreaking. On a day like yesterday, however, it kind of felt like a goodbye to something else. Like every time I say goodbye to our humanity, our compassion and our love for one another, I die a little. I wonder why, a little. I thought about this as I sat on the end of my and then it happened. 24 hours later after a day of senseless and horrifying hate, I cried. And I cried a lot.
Me crying, as we’ve discussed here quite a bit, is not an abnormal thing. In fact, I consider it win every time I do because I lived two decades as an emotionless drunken robot. I once heard my friend Dennis with 25 years of sobriety say tears from sober people shouldn’t just be comforted but congratulated. And I wholeheartedly agree. When I respond with tears or compassion or humor, I’m working through it, instead of moving around it. In other words, don’t worry about me when I’m crying. Worry about me when I tell you I’m “just fine.” But in this case, I feel like having emotions might be particularly powerful.
Consider this: currently in this country, we are at the whim of blustery, unemotional, bigoted assholes. These stilted shitbag examples of white men would rather die than show real emotion or compassion for another human being. Thus crying or going to meetings or therapy or helping others are now rebellious acts. The more we express ourselves, the more we take care of ourselves and one another, the less power they have. The first version of “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” I listened to yesterday afternoon before the tears rolled uncontrollably down my face was by Ella Fitzgerald. In my sorrow, I had to smirk that the vocals of an angel like Fitzgerald (a black woman and civil rights activist), Cole Porter (a gay man) and Julia Child (a unapologetic liberal and harsh critic of McCarthyism) were the Americans I turned to this weekend for comfort. Even my artistic inspirations from beyond the grave were holding their middle fingers up while also holding my hand.
I guess the thing is this: sure, my emotions and reactions to world events are not the end all and be all. And thank god for that. But at least, I’m able to have them. So if you are upset too and have cried too, know that I get you and know that it’s okay. It feels normal. It feels appropriate. After all, imagine, if none of us felt anything after Charlottesville. We’d all die more than just a little.
We are in the era of the topless, body positive Instagram post. We are in the era of the multi-tweet thread chronicling everything from an individual’s heroic battle with a mental illness to a harrowing account of waiting in line at the airport. We are in the era of blogs like the one your reading now routinely using (or abusing) their pages to become a digital dumping ground for confessions, neuroses and run-of-the-mill epiphanies. As a big fan of all of these things, I will say respectively and from the most spiritual place possible, fuck this era. Fuck this false sense of heroism for simply being a human who handles their emotional shit. Fuck this bar for being so low that we now spring to our feet anytime someone is real about themselves. Because for people with mental illness, addiction and alcoholism this brand of self-truth telling isn’t some breakthrough handpicked specially for a Lenny Letter essay. It’s just how we stay alive.