Fifty
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

FIFTY. I stretch all I’ve got around it, but barely grasp its half. I thought that cresting at the half-century mark might spark a wrenching essay or clever poem but, so far, the whole thing leaves me flat. Another Monday. Another Monday at the office. Another paycheck on Wednesday I’ll spend on … let’s see … pen refills, shaving cream, jam, and another dozen legal pads that somehow seem to be disappearing with alarming regularity. My pharmaceuticals are due for a refill too, and are pricey, but I can’t have my blood pressure spiking or my gastrics acting up. Certainly not on my birthday.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was forty before I was dumbfounded by the realization that I’d never seen my own ass. Only glancing glimpses of its right and left, but the rest of it, barely viewed in second-hand reflection. Amazed by the oversight, a mini-epiphany began to manifest itself, and when I next realized I’d never really seen my own face, I had to go sit down, on an ass as alien to me as yours.

No one but us, I further pronounced, ever gets to see the we that we artfully pose in front of the mirror, fresh-shaved, scrubbed, shirt tucked in, chest out, scraped-off and shiny. But we may as well leave the image we have of ourselves stuck to the mirror for all the good it does us when we step out the front door, with a missed belt-loop in our jeans and the tag sticking up from our shirt collar. The goober glued to the cavalier.

I’ve read that we look larger in photographs because they flatten us out, edge our curves, make us “look ten pounds heavier.” They say we look odd to ourselves in pictures because they show us as others see us, and not as we’re used to seeing ourselves, in reverse. Stranger still are those bizarre photocomposites that splice two right or left halves of our faces together, proving that each half wouldn’t recognize the other if they met at an Appalachian mixer.

Although I doubt that I would have made a study of it in any event, the realization, at forty, that I’d only had a passing acquaintance with my own butt translated into a rather detached regard for my physical persona. If I didn’t have the remotest notion what I looked like to anyone else, I concluded, then any steps I took toward making that self presentable to others were not only ludicrous but ran the risk of making me look ridiculous. And I had noticed over the years that, whenever I overly attended to my physical appearance, people stared at me. A more confident man might have interpreted the phenomenon otherwise: “Hey, I must look hot!” But I’ve always had a real horror of thinking-one-way-and-looking-another.

Consequently, what attention I now pay to how I look is devoted to downplaying instead of detailing, and discouraging rather than attracting, attention. Which, I guess, is a kind of backward-vanity in itself. If one didn’t think one was pretty hot for starters, why would one go to such lengths to underplay one’s potentially provocative attributes? Or is it just easier to be dumb and ugly? Is there too much responsibility attached to smart and handsome? Maybe so.

Last December an old friend asked in a Christmas card if I were “just getting more gorgeous?” What the hell did she mean by that? Dashing for the looking glass, I appraised the backwards me I’d never really seen with a knit-browed glower. My hair—that is, the willful fur with which I’ve been cursed for some unforgivable karmic atrocity—did appear to be getting thicker the older I got. And, if my hairline had budged a millimeter in twenty years, it had encroached on my forehead instead of forsaking it. My father’s hair was Einstein-white at forty but, having begged God for the same stuff myself, so far, the answer to my prayers had only produced unnoticeable one-in-a-hundred silvery outcroppings. I cursed my mother’s dominant scalp.

My eyes looked bluer too, faded. And although the wrinkles around them shouted my age, even they were advancing in a way that looked more wise than worn-out. Also, for years my thinness had made me a target of ridicule, with all of my bitchy fat friends complaining that I had “the metabolism of a hummingbird.” And I must say, I match them bite for bite, eat my dessert and theirs, and think, “Tough luck, lard-ass,” as I gulp it down. But gorgeous? I hardly think so.

I’ve also read that, to our tits’ and dicks’ chagrin, the only human anatomical accoutrements that never stop growing are our ears and noses. The faraway titter we hear with our big ears on clear nights is God’s snickering at our huge noses.

“All the better to sniff you out one day,” we curse, rubbing rigid our little nipples and pricks to spite Him, but His nasty snicker persists.

I’m sure our brains get bigger too. Our heads stay the same size, though, which is why life gets to be such a headache the older we get. I used to think that the real advantage of advanced age was that the cultural pressure to perform would wane. Of course, culture didn’t really give a shit one way or the other. But our longing to be a part of it impelled us to continuously improve ourselves, to contribute, to think up something meaningful and make our mark on the world. The “what for?” is more of a mystery to me now than it’s ever been.

FIFTY. Apart from the accursed fur that sprouts from my head, the bane that I feel I bear more than any other is awareness. And not of any erudite variety, but instead an intense, magnified, obtuse acuity, so overwhelmed by the particular that the general often escapes me. Further complicated by a hard-drive that erases nothing no matter how crowded it gets, the result is a concentrated attention to detail at the expense of the larger reality.

The same attention, focused, however, is not without its perks, and I awe myself and others with my unerring grasp of useless minutiæ. Which can be immensely beneficial when immersed in more subtle pursuits but, when applied elsewhere, the same faculty focuses so fiercely on the personal that no pore, gas bubble, or fleeting sensation goes unnoticed. A degree of self-consciousness so consuming, even the most ostensibly spontaneous act is analyzed during every fraction of its unfolding.

I relate this because of a curious thing that’s been happening for the past few months. Since I can’t remember a time in my life when remorseless self-consciousness hasn’t been both first- and second-nature to me, I’m so accustomed to it, it’s only noticeable when it freeze-frames me now and then in an instant of unexpected paralysis, when I’m like Bambi caught in the headlights of a hunter’s pickup truck.

But lately, say, while standing in line at the grocery store, I’ve been finding myself engrossed in a phase-shift of other-consciousness, abstractly riveted to the person in front of me. Unaware myself of my own uninvited scrutiny, it’s only when I catch myself and snap out of it that I recall that it was the tag up in the back of his collar, or that missed belt-loop, that first got my attention and, from then on, I was fixated on the shirt itself, the shoes, the socks, the haircut. Each of which in turn had acted as a galvanizing agent for an array of senses and emotions that would have brought me to tears if my ego hadn’t stepped in and reminded me where I was.

Tears? I don’t get it either. It’s some kind of human thing. It first starts with “seeing” him picking through a pile of sale shirts somewhere, deciding he might look pretty good in that one. He buys it, without trying it on. It didn’t occur to him that those pants might shrink that much, but they’re “okay for around the house.” Does he tip his barber extra, to scrape his neck that red? Is that big silver “DALE” on the back of his hand-tooled belt for my benefit, or his own, in case he has two too many and forgets who he is? Does he love his mother? What did he dream about last night? Did he make his bed? What did he have for breakfast? Did he give any thought at all to what he was going to wear today? I “see” him choose his socks, tie, shoes, hunt for his keys. Is he happy? Fulfilled? What doess he think about? Suddenly I’m filled with sadness, deep, human, man-sized sadness. I grieve for us all; the whole, shitty, impossible mess. I love him, hate the world. Love the world, hate myself. Love me, hate my shirt, my shoes, my socks and, most of all, my thoughts…

“Paper or plastic?”
“Oh… uh… plastic, I guess. Would you double-bag those Eskimo Pies, please?”

FIFTY. Somewhere the famed Freudian analyst Dr. Karen Horney says it’s almost a given that patients will take weeks or months or years doing their damnedest to impress their analyst with stories of unrequited love, philosophical theorizing, intellectual showmanship, dragging in reams of dreams every week in an effort to win approval, acceptance, affection. Sound familiar? And although it’s too late to turn back now, it was never my intention for “Edgework,” my tortured memoir, to become The Neurotic Manifesto it already is. All edge, that is, and no work.

I should be ashamed of myself. And I would be more than I am if I hadn’t already admitted more than once to being a word whore par excellence. But, if I don’t stop now, I’m going to spend another 400 pages trying to harpoon a Great White meaning that may only exist in my imagination. And I can hear my obsessed ego’s peg-leg thumping on the deck of my brain pan, even now.

Daily I’m becoming more convinced that realization and acceptance are more fundamentally advantageous than revelation and reconciliation. If my neuroses have become the flagship of my personality, so be it. I’m certainly not the first, and I keep stumbling across the testimony of people a lot smarter than I who regard their mental maladies as a kind of limping genius, the tougher stuff from which epic poems and pietas are made: “Put your finger on the problem, tap the phobia; feel the malaise; work the twisted, sordid junk—the oppression, the pain—that we all carry around with us. Feed off of it. Fetishize it. Flaunt it. Make no apologies for your difference, but don’t claim privilege for it either. Make it into art.” (Jan Avgikos, Art Forum.)

In my own defense, I do take some pride in my willingness to be wrong. I’d rather learn from a wrong than be told what’s right. Never entirely right, of course, the most I can hope for is to be less wrong, and the goal is never more than an open-ended “mostly right,” with plenty of room for improvement. I remember reading someplace that Thomas Edison, after something like 1,251 attempts to invent a long-burning light bulb, was asked by a reporter if he wasn’t discouraged by so many failures. Tom’s response went something like—and I paraphrase here—“Failures? Hey, asshole, I now know 1,251 ways not to do it, don’t I?”

Word by word, I realize more and more that equal parts of me are in a deadlock. One part, working the graveyard shift, is defined by its arts and crafts, with produce aplenty to show for its industry. And the other part, up at dawn, scraped and sprayed, appearing normal, produces nothing but an 8-to-5 that buys the gadgets that symbolize and justify one’s labors. Meaning nothing, really, in the end. But, happy? I couldn’t say. All those people at the Super Bowl look happy as hell, but they’re all going to be dead in a hundred years. Then what? Dust—even Joe Montana.

So, what is the problem? Until I’m shown, or can even imagine, a more positive example, the most I can do is make the best of what I’ve got. And I do think I’m breaking new ground. A year ago I couldn’t call myself a writer without gagging a little on the word. But now, although I question its contribution, I like what I see, appreciate my mind, the skill to express what’s on it, and the balls to say what I think. A year ago I couldn’t call myself an artist without gagging a little on the word. But now, although I know I’m no Caravaggio, my artworks, I confess, are pretty good, move people, force me to do more, get better, stay tuned to the second-dimension. A year ago I couldn’t call myself a poet without having to suppress a resolute upchuck. But now, although I know I’m no Walt Whitman, I like the tone of my verse, the mood that overcomes me, and the ability to condense and slam-dunk those feelings onto an empty page.

A year ago I couldn’t call myself a man without my dick twitching a little. But now I call myself a man, and my dick twitches a lot, points, as surely as this pencil, to the mystery I’ve yet to solve. A year ago, it had never once entered my mind that I might have slipped back into the closet. Like virginity, once the seal was broken, I thought you somehow wore your perversion like a badge, an armband, a scarlet letter, a lipstick 69 indelibly plastered across your faggy forehead. Maybe I take as many pains to hide it on the outside as I do on the inside; to pass, perhaps too effectively, as average.

I admit, a little grudgingly, that the façade is as studied as everything else. Attractive enough to solicit the attention of women, but not so much to warrant a wet pass. Attractive enough to be a contender among men, but not so much as to be considered a threat. The attendant attitude, aloof and preoccupied, quietly strides above the common run—good natured, charming, forthcoming, outgoing—a catch, curiously uncaught. The inside, however, intimately aware of its flimsy camouflage, busies itself at a complicated panel of dials, gauges, seismographs, Geiger-counters, lie-detectors, oil cans, valves, bells, and whistles. Pay no attention to that man behind the illusion! And, as long as the whole operation keeps moving at a pace commensurate with the human race, all’s in apparent accord.

Home alone, I still look for answers. The Encyclopedia Britannica, my oldest and dearest friend, tells me that “facultative homosexuality” is the term used to describe the apparent ease with which men turn queer in wartime, during imprisonment, or in other circumstances when they’re isolated from women.

Having been held captive for my first two decades by a fascist regime, tortured, brain-washed, and only released through some tacit cultural amnesty, I wonder if some of us POWs ever really recover from the damage done at the hands of our ruthless jailers? Britannica also tells me that another type of homosexual, to compensate for the strength and masculinity they feel they lack, revert to a primal mentality approximating that of cannibals who eat others in an effort to incorporate their prized qualities.

Britannica also reports that homosexuality is no longer considered a variant on normality but instead is attributed to severe anxiety in childhood. The more I read, the more the compulsion to bond with one’s own gender sounds phenomenological rather than sexual. And dysfunctional, only insofar as it conflicts with a sociological ideal. Which is an ideological artifact, in itself, worthy of closer study.

If apparent success in doing productive work, or in establishing a good human relationship, or a success that we desperately wanted leaves us only empty and disgruntled … we feel dimly that we cannot put the failures altogether on external circumstances. In short, we need to examine our unconscious motivations if it appears that something from within us is hampering our pursuits.
— Dr. Karen Horney, Self Analysis

I hate her. Just when I get past a bad patch and catch a glimpse of open road, there’s old lady Horney on the track waving another red flag. I could, of course … and there are times when I’d like nothing more than to see her splattered across my windshield … but she always seems to know something I don’t. That flapping back tire, the melted muffler, those ominous puffs of black smoke. And it’s getting harder to ignore the irony in this endeavor.

But, page after page, the same dichotomies continue to emerge —meaning/happiness, art/angst, potential/accomplishment, et al.—all of which are further reduced to an unpleasant common denominator that I’m loath to admit. But a part of me clings hammer-and-tongs to the notion that whatever you are, sexually, isn’t anybody’s business but your own. And the same part also believes that if an individual, say, myself, hadn’t had sex with anybody for fifteen years, my orientation would only become relevant to the present if it somehow complicated a current relationship.

For instance, it may seem strange that in all the hours that my good friend Dr. Beavis and I have spent together, deeply engrossed in our complex psychologies, it has never once occurred to me that my sex preference was in any way germane. And our relationship, in itself, is such that it hasn’t required any overt or covert forms of subterfuge to conceal it. In fact, I can’t think of a single instance when hunks or babes have interfered with our conversational priorities. We’re much too self-centered for that, and our brand of bonding’s first question is always who’s going to get into whose bubble, or if we’re going to interface the two.

More generally, it may also seem strange that in fifty years only a dozen or so people I’ve known for most of those years know about the other me. And we’ve rarely had reason or occasion to talk about it either. A peculiar situation, perhaps, but it’s one that cannot help but develop when one is sexually inactive. And only peculiar, I assume, because sex talk is customarily such a hot topic among other people.

Another part of me, though, is growing more convinced that everything that manifests, psychologically and physically, is a direct consequence of our various repressions. And to address them symptomatically, in the linear, is like following a leper around with a box of band-aids; pain-chasing, with a cookbook of mitigating remedies that only mask the symptoms and do nothing to isolate the cause. But this other part of me also cocks its head when it hears things like, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” Presumably, this refers to both psychological and physical ailments, which could lead one to speculate that the embittered gnarl of old age might precisely reflect our internal tangle.

But, to elaborate on the alternative, let’s say that, by some sudden flex of healthy initiative, I pardoned every biological and psychological contributor to the condition I’m in and, from now on, started outing myself at every handshake. “Hi, my name’s Tom, and I’m a big queer. What’s your sign … ?” Is such a blatant disclosure actually supposed to improve your relationship with others? And yourself? I’ve never felt like I was the problem in the first place. It’s the other guy I’m worried about. And, if I happen to like him or her as a human being, period, then the last thing I want to do is introduce an extraneous and irrelevant complication. My former good-buddy Robert is a text book example of how subtly, and then seriously, an otherwise strong relationship can be categorically undermined by the other guy’s problem with your problem. Which, yes, is really his problem. But don’t try to tell him that.

FIFTY. I haven’t gotten very far. My grammar school is six blocks from here. The incinerator, cafeteria, and The Special Training class are gone. So, too, the evil Mrs. Cruz. But “the big building” is still there, and the same drinking fountains and tetherball poles. And so are the same kids, waiting for that last bell to ring so they can hurry home to their happy families.

Two blocks from there, the same tree, not an inch taller than it was 45-years ago, stands in the front of the same house. The house is run down, occupied by another young family that looks much like my own. I ride by on my bike once in a while, see them mow the same lawn, sweep the same sidewalk, and I wonder if they have any idea … but how could they?

It’s hard, impossible really, to imagine my mom and dad at twenty-something. What were they thinking? What did they dream? They must have loved each other … once.

Did you ever wonder why elephants, chained to a stake with a ring around their ankle, just don’t pull the stake up and run away? It’s because they weren’t always the size they are now, and when they were little, the stake was more than enough to hold them. Trouble is, when they did get big enough to pull the stake out and run off, they were too firmly staked to a belief, so old and deep, that it alone was enough to restrain them—forever.

Fifty, and still no wrenching essay or clever poem. Still no great love beside me, no book on a library shelf, no song on the charts, no gallery show, no trenchant annunciation from the Almighty. Only words, words, and more words, falling dry, occasionally colorful, piling up in an empty heart.

Sometimes I marvel when I cut myself, or catch a cold; the dribble of blood or drizzle of mucus reminds me I’m still alive. And, in the same way—trickling, gushing, plugged-up, or runny—this ebb-and-flow of words also validates me somehow. Like those darned Hardy Boys, I too must exist, the proof of it is right here in front of me. I write, therefore I am.

Tom Pickurel is currently barricaded in a closet in an inhospitable redneck region of an otherwise liberal western state. For the most part uneducated, he nevertheless waxes lengthy on a number of dicey topics upon which he is eminently unqualified to expound.