Thought That Came Unbidden

It’s easy to never make a mistake if you never take a chance.

More on this as soon as I get my DSL fixed.

Albert Einstein has been quoted as stating that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest, that accretion of small bits of money over time adding up to a much larger sum than the average mind can grasp. It has also been said that water weareth away stone and that over time a little stream created the Grand Canyon. Granted, “over time” was probably a billion or so years, but time and constant influence, nonetheless, changed the landscape in the American southwest, well, for my personal forever at any rate. These two aphorisms and a strategic question from a friend got me to thinking about the people in our lives that influence us which led me to a much larger, much more relevant question.

Life is a series of interactions, both intentional and casual, that range in intensity and influence. Like a pinball we go through life bumping against other people learning lessons consciously or unconsciously from every single person we encounter. Your interactions with the other people on the subway, in the grocery store, or at the news stand generally fall at the low end of the influence scale. Your interactions with your parents, teachers, or your lovers generally fall at the higher end of the influence scale.

So when do we stop being directly influenced by the people who have rubbed against us, literally or figuratively, in our lives? When do these people cease to be relevant?

When does an ex stop being an ex? When you stop thinking of her? When you stop worrying that you’re going to run into her in places you both used to frequent? When one of you moves away?

When does it cease to matter that your father was an alcoholic bastard who chose to walk away or your mother was a total bitch who took her frustrations with her life out on her kid with her fists?

In short, when do you start being responsible for who you are instead of being a collection of influences and lessons aggregated over time?

American culture is riddled with “woe is me” hand to the back of the forehead victim posturing. I used to think that it started in 1979 with Dan White claiming diminished capacity in the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Having considered it further I think that was just the tipping point into the larger stream of consciousness of an idea that already existed. Stephen Sondheim gave us the perfect litany of “I’m not responsible and here’s why” lyrics in the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story. It debuted on September 26, 1957.

Perhaps it’s personal responsibility that is the myth. Maybe Americans have always been willing to blame, to point to some past influence and say “How can I be expected to overcome that?” But in order to do that finger pointing don’t we first have to have the self-awareness to look back at our relationships and figure out how we’ve behaved in them and what lessons we took away from them? And don’t we at some point, in order to be complete human beings, have to take that extra step and say “I acted that way because I chose to act that way and for no other reason” ?

Identity is a slippery thing. In a globalizing world it’s not really possible to base the totality of your identity on your native culture (more thoughts on this here) and sex and gender become increasingly complicated in a world where someone born female who still possesses female sexual biology can reasonably and acceptably label himself a gay man.

So what is it that makes us who we are? I don’t think it’s a single origin answer but I do know I’ll be thinking about it more and I know there will be a lot more from the Department.

So Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks homosexuality is immoral. To quote Mr. Arlo Guthrie:

I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” He looked at me and said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.”

– Alice’s Restaurant, written and recorded by Arlo Guthrie

I think Tom Toles said it more eloquently with his cartoon today.

Urban driving carries with it particular annoyances. Add a lot of tourists who have no idea where they are going, and cab drivers more interested in making a buck than in being good “road citizens” or obeying traffic laws and you have a driving environment that is enough to make the Buddha homicidal (OK, maybe not the Buddha but certainly any Catholic saint). My two pet peeves are people who can’t follow in traffic (you know them…the ones who leave enough room for a school bus between their car and the car in front of them thereby insuring that everyone in traffic behind them has to wait an additional light cycle to proceed) and the idiot who decides it’s OK to pass on the right.

My regular commute takes me down Connecticut Avenue, one of DC’s main arteries and the only one, I believe, to employ the daily use of contraflow traffic lanes. It’s a little scary to realize that yes the car coming toward you should be on that side of the double yellow line. Like most things in this city, these traffic lanes aren’t very well managed. They don’t go the entire length of the road so when and where they switch is a matter of custom rather than explicit instruction. I can feel myself breathing a sigh of relief every day after I get past a certain intersection and I know that yes, my lane is my own. After that, it’s just the regular annoyances and one of those involves an unmarked right turn only lane.

At this particular intersection there are three lanes southbound. The left-most is left turn  or straight (mostly left turn). The middle is forward only with lanes continuing on the other side and across the Taft Bridge over Rock Creek Park. The right-most lane is right turn only onto Calvert Street except that when the DPW resurfaced Connecticut Avenue they didn’t bother to repaint the arrow. Instead they rely on a sign lost on the sidewalk in a forest no parking/standing bus zone trees.

What makes this particularly problematic is the truncated pull off lane across the intersection. Every asshat who thinks he’s got a bit of horsepower under the hood blows up his sense of entitlement and pulls into that right lane to beat the traffic that should legitimately be crossing the intersection which is exactly what happened to me early last week.

I’m sitting there behind a taxi, not pulled up to the stopline I might add, made out of a early-1990s Ford POS when two cars pull up in the right hand lane. Next to me is possibly the epitome of ridiculous vehicles: a white Lincoln Navigator with gold body trim. In front of him a bright orange Lotus with a Florida plate.

Now, I knew I could beat out the Navigator with ease: the pick-up on them is for shit and I drive a little sports car. I have to give the cabbie this; at least he tried. Even with him inching slowly toward the stopline while the light was still red the Lotus was across the intersection in nothing flat and across the bridge in not much more than that.

Flash forward a week and a half later. I’m meeting TGF for a walk since today is absolutely beautiful. When I get upstairs to street level there parked at the curb in front of my office building is an orange Lotus with a Florida plate. Being who we are we gape and peer and take a look inside.

Lovely car, small, and your ass is probably about 6 inches off the ground. TGF is way too leggy to ever be able to drive one. And then we see it. In the passenger seat is a baby’s car seat.

Now, I’m all for people living how they want, not being constricted by pointless societal convention, but a car seat in an automobile with a top speed of 147 mph and a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds? To me that’s taking self-delusion just a little too far.

I went to a shopping mall in suburban Virginia yesterday. I return largely unscathed and with both good and bad news: we are, sartorially speaking, about 15 minutes away from the Members Only jacket being back in style.

How can this possibly qualify as good news, you ask?

Quite simply, despite the nonsense that is most of the haute couture or even the ready-to-wear designer shows, fashion for the average Target-shopping mall-going American has spent the past three years in a time warp between 1975 and 1982. Coexisting in the same fashion universe are the peasant blouse complete with billowy sleeves and delicate lace details around the neck (circa 1976), hip-hugger bell bottoms (also circa 1976), skinny jeans and polo shirts with the collars turned up (god save me from 1983) for guys.

Walk into any store (Gap, Target, Old Navy, Macys, etc) where an “average” person might shop and what you’ll find is a mashup of the worst of fashion from the past 25 years. Colors that used to appear on appliances (think harvest gold and that sort of pukey avocado green that your aunt Edna thought was such a hip color for her new dishwasher in 1978) now saturate the clothing market. And just who the hell thought it was a good idea to bring back horizontal stripes? They still make all except the skinny of us look fatter than we really are and a population coping with both a sixth sense problem and an obesity “epidemic” does not need one more thing to drag into the arena of self-esteem building.

I also noticed another disturbing trend while I was looking at clothes yesterday: we seem to have taken disposability to a new, more ridiculous level. I lost lot of weight last year and as a result none of my pants really fit any more. I’m not quite wearing them prison style just yet but I have run out of holes on a couple of belts. Thus began the great search for new jeans.

Now, I understand that Gap is having some financial problems and that their CEO was recently booted from his post on the basis of weak overall sales at company’s many brand outlets but they’ve always been a reliable source for competitively priced casual clothes. That is until they decided they were going to try to compete with Abercrombie & Fitch (you know them; the company with the hopelessly gay and racist advertisements, the ones that make fundamentalists pant and scream boycott, comedians giggle at the easy target, and give gay boys yet one more soft core porn outlet and more proof that gay male sensibilities have overrun advertising in America).

So why can’t Gap compete? Because no one who actually has to work to earn their money (read: anyone over 24) wants to pay $45 for a pair of pants that are frayed around the cuffs, look like they’re in need of a good wash, and have a hole in the thigh just like the 10 year old pair they just tossed in the trash and are looking to replace.

If we are, as I suspect, sartorially about 15 minutes away from 1985 that means that maybe, just maybe there might soon be clothes on the market that normal people can wear. You know, clothes that don’t come pre-ripped, don’t wear out in a season, and don’t make you look like you raided your teenager’s closet in a vain attempt to recapture your youth.

Of course, I did in my shopping expedition trigger the second sign of the coming apocalypse (the first sign being my friend Charlotte appearing in public in a skirt): my ass is now small enough to get into a pair of Levi’s 501s. Button fly here I come.