Normalcy Revisited

My recent thoughts on normalcy, particularly this from last week, have evoked some responses. So I wanted to go back to that subject.

Yesterday, a young gay professional in Manhattan wrote to tell me that he lives a life very similar to the one I was envying. But:

My very environment I fear has slipped me into the perversely routine stride of the gay man who very rarely even has opportunity to enjoy the company of another gay man. Even as I make plans for yet another evening of dinner and drinks with three heterosexual couples who all “can’t believe that I haven’t been snatched up by a great guy” I perpetuate and fear that acute normalcy. I look at my life and I realize that it is exactly that satirically comfortable “normalcy” that is preventing my contentment…

Can you see why your entry made me smile an ironic smile? I suddenly realized that I in some superficial manner I possessed some of which you felt you were missing but at the same time I was reading envious at your exploits and companions in the electric gay world of New York that seems to me so far from possible reach. Envy is so clever in the way it produces absurd ironies, I could not help but grin at us both.

It made me think. I think most of my visions of “normalcy” are a fantasy; they come from TV, and from images of fresh young Gen-Xers living their fun, yuppie, straight lives. And when I really ponder it, what I want is not to be straight; what I want is to have more of a classic 20-something social life. I’m having the very ordinary syndrome of looking at other people’s lives and imagining that they’re having much more fun than me, that they’re all part of this big happy group of people, just like on “Friends.” Perhaps this kind of “grass is greener” feeling means that I’m actually an optimist; after all, I’m seeing that what I want to have is actually possible — only I’m seeing it in other people and not in myself.

And if I’m having this very ordinary syndrome, I guess that means I’m normal after all.

And more recently I’ve realized that my social life here is gradually developing. I grew up only half an hour from Manhattan, and my family and I would visit the city all the time — my parents’ lives have always been very Manhattan-centered — but I’ve never really lived as close to it as I do now. I spent three years of high school in Japan and then eight years living in Virginia. It’s only since I’ve moved to Jersey City that Manhattan has become the center of my social life. So, familiar as I used to think I was with the city — all the snobbery I used to feel when I’d tell people that I grew up in the New York City area — in a way it’s actually a new place to me. A couple of people have told me that when you move to a new city, it can take a good two years to develop a solid social life. But I’m developing one; it’s happening.

Lord, maybe I’m normal after all. Or nobody is. Or both.

* * * *

I realized that today is my 100th day of blogging, and that’s probably significant only to me, but that’s okay. It feels like it’s been a lot longer. This thing has taken over my life. I’ve created a monster, and it’s sprouted various tentacles. Remember that Japanese toy, the Tamagochi? That’s what it feels like. And like this. Feed me! Update me! Change my diaper! And I love it. It’s my virtual baby.