The lost decade

[randy_byers]

Well, I really should be cleaning the house for Vanguard, but instead I'll use the looming chore as motivation to write.

So I got together with Hazel at the Big Time last night for the Alumni Employees and Customers Night of the 20th anniversary celebration. Most of my questions going in were asked and answered, I think, but that's neither here nor there. One of the challenges for me in Hazel's renewal of our friendship is that it makes me think about how dysfunctional I was in many ways during the '90s. As I've mentioned at least in passing here, I spent the decade pining after Hazel from various distances, occasionally encouraged by dates when she was between boyfriends. The early parts of this pining were pretty pathetic and mostly confined to my journal. Eventually I outted myself to her, and it was better after that, even if still pathetic. At least we had become friends by that point and I got some affection from her that way.

Why did I remain fixated on her for so long when she was so obviously not interested in anything other than friendship? That's the question that always comes up when I see her now. The best theory I've come up with is that following a series of heartbreaks with Sharee, Robyn, and Nahid, I preferred an unrequited longing to a painful rejection or break up. Still, why not just give up on romance and relationships entirely? That's more or less what I did when I finally decided to stop pining after Hazel after a couple of disastrous date-like interactions in 2001. (Thus Sharee was forced to hit me with a clue-by-four in 2003 when we got together. Good thing she chose to be persistent! Not that I wasn't encouraging her "subconsciously". Ah, what a tangled web we etc.)

Anyway, there are other aspects of my life in the '90s that in retrospect look like stasis, particularly in terms of my writing. When I started writing for Apparatchik in 1996, I finally started edging my way into a niche where I could be productive creatively, although it took another four years or so for the real explosion to happen, sparked by the Seattle Corflu in 2000. That's also the year I turned 40, and I've often said that my 40s have been my best years. Perhaps that's when I finally shed the expectation that I was some kind of genius and could accept and engage with my limitations. Including my romantic limitations, for sure. I accepted that I was going to be single, and that it was okay. Well, it seemed like a good theory at the time.

I'm just rambling, really. Procrastinating from housework. Last night, standing with Hazel in the Big Time, where I first met her in 1991 -- getting on toward twenty years ago! -- and watching other former bartenders cluster or stand alone looking vaguely forlorn, I felt a little removed from it all myself. This was not my family, not my community. My community is coming to a party at my house tonight. Integrating myself into that community is what I did during the '80s. It has borne creative fruit in the '00s. What did I get from the '90s? Maybe I just got lost for a while.

"It's like we were all living in our own little bubbles," Hazel said.

Comments

[missfairchild.livejournal.com]

I think that Hazel missed out, big time. But I've been Hazel, to other people, and I won't judge her.

It's good that you're friends again. When I met her, she struck me as a singularly lovely woman.

At some point I will write my own thoughts on stasis. But not today ;o)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Argh, I'm reminded that I forgot to integrate the bit about how at the very moment when I was pursuing Hazel most ardently (feeling I was finally getting close to the prize), I found out that everybody at the Big Time and the Elysian thought AP and I were lovers. That was such an incredible shock to my system. Perhaps the very thing that pricked the bubble. It's also when I coined the term "closet heterosexual," which you may remember I was still using when you pricked my bubble at the 2000 Corflu.

[missfairchild.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd completely forgotten about the AP rumours! Priceless...

I think that we did each other a lot of good back then, even if it wasn't obvious at the time. And I think we're still very good for each other.

*raises a glass to a distant, but much-loved, friend*

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Cheers, mate. I couldn't agree more.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

This is very moving. Thank you.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, it's moving now, but it was static then!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

You have considerably more insight on this subject than I've managed so far in terms of the mirror of my own life. Thank you for writing about it.

I've now been divorced for three times longer than I was married. One would think I'd look at the evidence and accept that, while it's not impossible, spending the remaining years of my life happily married is not the way to bet, or even something that's reasonable to hope for, look for, expect, or work toward.

One would think.

I am happy for my friends who have won similar fantasy sweepstakes in their lives. My own history has shown that I do pretty darned well on the friendship front. Amazingly, even, especially when I look back to my pre- and proto-fannish days in the first few years of the '80s, when my support system for daily life consisted of three people -- my husband, my sister-in-law, and one additional friend. All of them were gone from my life within a 2-year period. Different reasons -- death, divorce, the additional friend entering a marriage that left no room for our friendship -- same result.

The work I put into building a much broader, stronger support system was no doubt affected by that experience. I've never thought about it before now, but it seems rather likely that the experience also handicapped my romantic relationship skills and sensibilities.

"Closet heterosexual," yeah, I remember that. As people, we like to figure things out about each other, and in the absence of information, we make it up. I once held a similar view about two women. They were obviously close friends. They never seemed to date or seem all that interested in men, but they'd get dolled up and dance together when out to see fannish bands playing in bars. They were both utterly hetero, and are both married to men now. They were trying to attract men with their finery and dance floor flash, but the trick wasn't working. In that time, in that place. Things eventually went the way they hoped, it just took a long time.

And so life goes. For us, for others. At least it's interesting, with a fair bit of fun along the way.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It makes sense to me when people assume that Denys and I are a couple, because he's out and we live together. It completely blindsided me with AP, both because neither of us is gay and because in the social context of those two bars I thought everybody knew of my interest in Hazel. It made me realize what a cipher I was to most of those people.

As for hoping for a relationship or not, I think the reason I settled on not was because I could never figure out a way to keep hoping without signaling desperation. Also my experience with Sharee tells me that it's still possible to find a relationship even when you're not looking. However, one of the things I've learned about myself over the years is that I'm a very passive person, so I know my approach isn't for everyone.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, finding that place that reflects openness to interest and possibilities without conveying that off-putting desperation vibe can be a challenge. Overall, not looking is one of the proven strategies for finding some things, including love and job opportunities.

If I'd been among the observers at the Big Time and the Elysian, without knowing anything more, I probably would have thought you were bisexual.

I do believe you're hard-wired monogamous, though, and that wouldn't have fit any of the scenarios the folks watching you were coming up with.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

These are deep waters, mate. I look back at my 20s and wonder if my experience could possibly be informative to anyone, or if it was just sui generis. Probably the latter.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Even sui generis experiences can be informative. The sheer variety of human experience is a wonder in itself.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What I mean is, here's a guy who has never had a girlfriend and and is sure he never will. (Careful on the link: he grouses about this at great length. Strangely, he's usually a good writer.)

Not having started out well, I can actually kind of sympathize. So how did I avoid his fate? What's my secret? Damn if I know.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Well, I don't think my experiences tell me much about my future either. See my comment to farmgirl1146 below.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

I think that we walk two roads simultaneously: one lost and one deliberate. Sadly, we never know which was the road (if there was one) that we should have been on.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought, and a very resonant one for me. Even when we know what we're doing, we're never completely in control. There are always larger forces at work, indifferent to our purpose.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Even when we know what we're doing, we're never completely in control. There are always larger forces at work, indifferent to our purpose.

Well put, and rather frightening with that deep ring of truth.