Have all the essential moments in my life come and gone or am I being too dogmatic? Is the best yet to come? By most standards I am still very young, but I am already afraid of boring people, myself most of all. If the most glorious experience took place this instant would it inscribe itself on my unconscious/subconscious the way those early, intense moments inscribed themselves on the psyche of an innocent and fearful child? Was Umberto Eco right? Or, do all the good things happen before the age of 21 and everything else is just commentary? Maybe I've been depressed because I am desperately groping for an Act III without fully having had an Act I - and Act I is still all I have, though there is absolutely no reason to cling to Act I. I am just terribly afraid that I am too old and tired to make Act III as meaningful as Act I. I don't even think it's possible. Now - at my age - having and raising children is supposed to be the course pregnant with meaning (no pun intended) and I have no desire to have children. I don't think I'm jaded as much as much as I have just developed a skill at distinguishing the venal (and the new) from the limited associations attached to my own powerful, personal archetypes. Everything beyond that is just too much. Junk food for gluttons and nothing else. I am no longer pretending to be a romantic - it has now truly gotten to the point where only a woman can save me. The right woman may still contain as much as the first woman. Boston is a very charming city, but it's not the L.A. I dreamed about when I was 12 and desperate to get away from Wall Township. At that age I also thought I would be a Rock Star by 21 and dead by 27. Now I'm 28 and well into Act III. At least I have my friends - and they are as personally archetypal to me as can be. They quite literally assure me that my life has meaning. Then I meet new people who inscribe themselves on my life, but my two best friends are my eternal insurance against the "wound of non-meaning."
Eric Hartz is one of my personal archetypes. After all, he taught me the "F" word. I just scolded him for pestering me as I was blogging. He does not understand that an artist needs to concentrate.
Since High School Eric and I have talked to each other as flaming, campy homosexuals.
"Hi sweetie!"
"Hi darling!"
"Ciao!"
"Tata!"
Eric and I are not homosexuals or homophobes, but we find it amusing to act like the former.
Lately it has gotten out of control. Our "gay voices" have now become a crutch in our friendship. It's a wall between the true intimacy of a friendship.
Today, when we arrived in Boston we made a pact to not use "gay voices" for the rest of the day. The first to break the pact would owe the other $5. Eric lost. He whined: "Oh, my darling! Give me my jacket!" in the gayest, gayest, gayest voice ever.
"Ha! You lost!"
"Oh, dammit! I lost!"
The first day of the rest of our lives began at a Panera in downtown Boston. Boston will never be New York, an imagined L.A., or even the "family house" (the house where the Johnson's came from) in Neptune, N.J., but it is a fun, cozy city and it is the place where I felt I found my friend again. Eric and I were hiding behind those gay voices. And now we are not hiding anymore.
We've come out of the closet about our heterosexuality and our friendship.
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