Bad Dreams
The mind is a really funny thing. When you are asleep, it seems to go off and do it’s thing, which at times can border on the insane. I’ve read that is how the mind maintains it’s sanity. I don’t know if I buy that, but it is strange how one’s mind can take some experience that you’ve had in life, and twist it into something that you would never ever have thought of on your own, without the help of dreams.
I had a bad dream last night. It woke me up and I was anxious and panicked. Something was coming at me and making a noise that sounded like a big truck engine. I wake up in a panic, and after I controlled my breathing, I heard a snow plow going by outside, to remove the remains of the winter storm we had last night. Could that have been the truck coming towards me in my dream?
At the time, I said, I have to write about my dream. I get up, put on some clothes, and go downstairs to make myself some coffee. I come back upstairs, sit down to write, and in the time it took me to get up, make that coffee, and sit down to write, the contents of my dream are gone from my memory. Forgotten. How could it be gone from my mind after it woke me up?
This is actually a normal phenomenon and happens with many dreams. It’s as if the mind has it’s own area that it’s free to explore with abandonment. But when you cross that line of the awareness of being awake, those thoughts that you had in your dream state vaporize into nothing.
I have no idea if the thoughts I have now have anything to do with my dream. But, at the instance I woke up, the thought on my mind was, “I’ve brought an end to the gene pool on my segment of the family tree because I didn’t have children.” Why that thought resulted from my dream, I have no idea. What I am, genetically speaking, will die with me. Not that I have Olympic genes or anything like that. But there is something deep down in every male that desires to carry on the line, or so I’ve been told. It’s deep and very carnal, but in a weird way, it’s left me with a feeling of regret, this morning, at least.
Is this why there are gay people around? Is it to curb population? I personally don’t believe that’s correct. We have in the past married to cover up our homosexuality (the deep closet). In the 40’s and 50’s, if you were in your thirties and not married, there was “something wrong with you” and people would talk. People even talked about me in high school when I hadn’t dated a girl even once by the time I was a Junior. So, many would get married and have children to prove they were normal. Some tolerated it and while both the spouses realized the truth, it was probably never talked about. If you want to get a flavor of what it was like, watch the movie Far From Heaven. It’s pretty accurate. They should have named the movie Living Hell, in my opinion. This is an excerpt from one viewers opinion of the movie:
Hartford, Connecticut - who in the world would imagine this little picturesque and neat suburbia would be displayed as having a population of narrow-minded folks? With today’s threat of terrorist attacks menacing our well being, and our government’s newfound heavy-handedness, and non-whites regarded as sketchy, are we at all surprised to see this movie harking back 50 years to start a new hold on the American imagination? Of course not! And this movie does bark at the cultural trends of the ’50s when blacklisting is vogue! It’s an era of psychological human conflicts that have no room outside the closets.
This movie’s wholesome family is fantasized as living in a perfect shelter where all the domestic problems are supposed to be handled by women. The upper class has neat homes and lovely gardens, tended by some black maids or black gardeners. The wealth of the men - seen with their well-pressed, gray flannel suits - is measured by their success in paddling their wares, and the women, primed up like Barbie dolls in their full bell-shaped, gathered-at the waist skirts or Pettipont Sunday best spend hours in gossip. Yep, seemingly perfect families, with all the enviable comforts of life! And equality among the genders is foreign; non-whites are deemed as animals; and homosexuality is an illness to be treated by psychiatrists. Yep, any little scandal serves as good humor, and provides cause for the most gentile, prim and proper society of Hartford to blush and sneer. Todd Haynes has revived a ’50s-era muzzle where the normal is no longer normal, and each innocent act has the potential of stirring up an acute, dramatic irony.
That was then, and had I been a teenager then, I don’t know how worthwhile life would have been for me. But today, there are many gay couples adopting. There are those who feel that the gay trait is carried on from parent to children, but if that is true, gay people would eventually leave the gene pool because many didn’t reproduce. Of course many of us are opting to have children with a surrogate. I have had some offers from single women who wanted a child to be the sperm donor. The only thing is, after the birth of the child, they didn’t want me to have any connection to the child. That was unacceptable to me. If I’m going to have a child, I would want to raise that child and be very involved in their life. I would never be able to donate sperm knowing that I would have kids out there without ever knowing them. It’s not logical that I would feel this way, I suppose, if you think about it. I suppose it’s parental instinct.
Kent is up and it’s time to start blowing snow off the driveway.
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Daniel,
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the point your made, for many years. I am a concert violinist. I haven't performed in a long time. But, in my day, I studied with the greats and I had my time on stage. There were times when I didn't know where my physical body was during performances. I would start my performance (usually solo performances) being self aware, but if everything was good (feeling well, mind in the right place, etc.), I would become one with the music. I would actually lose all awareness of my surroundings, my body, people listening to me, everything. I would hear the music, but I was the music. Or, was there the music and I was part of it? We were together, as one.
And at the time that you are there in that space, you know that it is art, that it exists only in that moment, and that the best that can be hoped for afterwards, is that people can take it home with them in an abstract way, and say, "That was quite a performance", and hopefully, remember the beauty of it for while - or years.
For me, the artist, it is gone. I comes, it blooms as a rose does. It is sweet, it is magnificent, but then it fades and dies. It was never meant to last because it cannot self sustain itself in this world.
The very haunting thing of this is that many gay people have these gifts. And those gifts die with so many of us because the gifts are not passed on. They can try to be taught, but you can't teach someone how to be one single entity with a composition. The best you can do is to teach them to achieve technical mastery, be prepared like nothing else, and do the best they can. Most never achieve total oneness with their art. It is always something separate, and I can always tell that it is separate. And guess what? When I do find an artist who is remarkable and who was one with the composition, after reading up on him/her, nine times out of ten, I will learn that they are homosexual. What does that tell you?
Gay people are extremely creative in so many fields. The thing that most disturbs me about civilization today is that, while civilization is very willing to accept and appreciate (exploit) these gifts, civilization is not willing to treat something very dear and necessary for our existence with respect, dignity, and equality; our relationships and our need for happiness and a full life. The way some of us have been treated in the past is unforgivable (Tchaikovsky, for example).
And, I think the notion that we can still be discriminated against and legally fired in 36 states in this country is a black mark against this country.
Still, there is something that is unsettling in all of this adversity. Does art require adversity for it's existence? If Tchaikovsky's life had been one of acceptance and happiness, would his achingly sad and disparate Fourth Symphony ever exist? The same can be said of writers, performers, and in our own way, all of us who go through this every day.
Sometimes I think gay people are stronger than the rest of the population. Most of us go through adversity of one kind or another every single day. I know bad things happen to straight people as well, but after it happens, they usually have support from their families and society. After it's over, it's over, and they can go back to living their lives with full acceptance of society.
For gay people in the United States in 2005, it goes on day after day. But perhaps I've evolved to be stronger because of it. I was called "faggot" this last week as I was leaving a supermarket. Without thinking, my brain processed it with the same weight as someone saying "hello", or some other benign word. I've finally reached a time in my life where it doesn't matter anymore what people think of me. At least, I hope that's true. Your mind can tell you one thing, but what does rejection and harassment do to the body and the subconscious?
Maybe that is what me dreams are trying to process. I had the bad dream after that incident.
Bill,
I try to make the most of my dreams, that is, when I remember them. And like you, when I get to too physically active, turn lights on etc, the whole thing can disappear into thin air. My solution is to keep a pad by the bed and write in a one word shorthand in the following manner:
1. how I felt before, during and after the dream.
2. the 'stuff' in the dream i.e. objects, events, colors etc.
3. free associate between 1 and 2.
As the Zen people say regarding #3: "First impressions are always correct."
Your thoughts on not having children strike a chord with me. My husband and I have'n't seriously thought about it much, though now that I am 46, he 51, it has entered our discussions of late. I solace myself with the thought that being in the arts (I a singer, he an organist) is some sort of creative compensation. But I don't see that as a sustainable way to think about this long-term, it is, perhaps, a nice rationalization.
What disturbs me about the whole family/fathering/having children thing is the factg that, as gay people, we can develop extraordinary awareness and sensitivity about ourselves and others (that outsiderness quotient) that can seem wasted if not passed on in some physical way. I certainly have been there. All the more reason, as I see it, to keep fighting like mad for the recognition of our love. Having 'meaning' in a larger context would change things certainly, if not for ourselves, but for others as well. What is more radical than love anyway? No there's something to dream about.
Daniel
By the way, Bill, get on over to Athenamama and look at the most recent pictures of my "kids", Angel and Jacqueline. Look for a link to a short movie of Jacqueline eating some small flowers. I think you will enjoy it.
Jacqueline loves to eat flowers for some reason. She really likes to eat dandelions that have gone to seed. It's the funniest thing to watch. She runs up to them and chomps the dandelion, and then she has a mouth full of white fluff before she finishes it off.
I agree Jeff, it's important to be in the right place to have kids because they are a huge commitment in time, money, and love. It's not for everyone.
We have some good friends that we saw a lot of before they had a child. I love there son dearly, and I am called "Uncle Bill". But, it has consumed their time - all in a good way I think, but it has also limited how much we get to see them. I never really realized just how much having a kid can turn your whole life up side down. Now, I do.
I think I would make an outstanding father. But it's really too late for me to do that. At this point in my life, I enjoy being able to take off when I want too without worrying about school schedules, day care, etc. It's all I can do to make sure the pet sitter is all set before we go on vacation. :-)
You know, I didn’t date much in high school, and I didn’t get married until I was in my late thirties, and I am sure some people wondered if I was gay, but I never really gave it much thought. But I was a weird kid. Things such as people hypothesizing about my sexuality didn’t bother me. Zits on my face did.
Go figure.
Still, because I did marry late in life, and because my wife came with three kids of her own, and because I never really wanted children anyway, I am childless as well. I have given some thought to the fact that there will be no little Jeffs after I go. I have also considered that along with there being no little Jeffs, there will be no little boys period because my brother, who is older than me, has two girls already, and I doubt that he will be having any more children at all.
My parents did ask me when I got married if Angie and I would be having any children, and I told them it was very unlikely. I was 38 at the time, and as it stood with her kids I was looking at being 48 before I could even think of living in a house with no kids. If I were to start a family now, I would be 62 before I could start kicking people out!
Perhaps that is why I love my pets so much, because I never had children. In any event, I do not regret the fact that I never did have kids. I was never in a good enough place to raise them properly, and I never felt so selfish as to have them just to “further the genetic lineage.” In the big scheme of things it really doesn’t matter anyway. I feel so close to my wife, my parents, my siblings, and my pets that I consider them all spiritually bonded with me forever anyway. I feel that life on earth is just one, very small aspect of our existence, and that we are bound with other souls for all eternity. As such, living for a few decades and then having children to carry on the family name for a few decades more just seems a little trivial to me.
Of course, I could be wrong.
You would have survived Jeff, but it would probably have meant leaving your family behind and moving some where else to start a new family. That's what Kent and I did. We got together in college and realized that we could no long stay in Idaho. After graduation, we moved to San Francisco so we could "live" and start a new family with people who would truly understand us. I've never regretted leaving Idaho and my family behind because I knew the only thing it had to offer me was death or sadness. Life is too short for that.
I'm very pleased that you are on solid ground now and have found your partner to share your life with. It makes everything so much better. :-)
Bill,
Even in the 70's and 80's we got married to cover up our homosexuality or in my case because being gay was a sin and wrong. And having grown up on a farm in a small community I never saw myself as being able to escape that.
I never dated until I was 24. Everyone wanted to know what was wrong with me. As my Father said, "no one will come knocking at your door, you need to get out there and find someone".
All my siblings were getting married. At 24 I got married and tried hard for 10 years. I do have 2 wonderful children from that union, so all was not horrible.
I have been divorced and remarried for 10 years now to wonderful man who can truely understand me. I live with the regret of not being able to come to terms with my homosexuality sooner. But given my circumstances I did what was necessary to survive during that time. I am not sure I would be here today if I had come out in 1984 before I was married.