Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

My friend JoAnne is doing a big magazine piece for Harper's on the scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, and she's setting it here in Boston, where the "epi-center," as the press calls it, of the quake is. Over lunch one day, JoAnne and I were discussing earlier hysterias and I did a riff on the day-care scandals of the 80s-- all of which were cooked-up conspiracies by scared parents, demonizing DAs, and crooked therapists. I mentioned to JoAnne that in the accounts of these "scandals," the stories by the kids were all the same, including secret tunnels, dark basements, and small animals stuffed in their underpants or bodily organs, etc.

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JoAnne knew all about it. She told me that one of her interviewees-- I think with reference to "recovered" memory-- was a professor and psychiatrist who had made a specialty of interviewing those who claimed alien abductions. He had learned: all the stories of the alleged abductees were exactly the same, down to the smallest detail-- the levitation to the spacecraft, the splaying on the table, the restraints, the medical and sexual interventions, and then the return home.

I was saddened to hear this news. There are two ways to analyze the reports of these "alien abductees." It might be the occasion that each and every one of them went through the exact same procedure with the aliens on the UFOs. Or they each have the exact same story somehow programmed into their brains. Or maybe they got a group discount and went to see the same movie.

Any way you cut it, it's sad. The kids have the same stories about their "abuse." The UFO people have the same story, down to each detail, of their strange encounters with the aliens. I'm a storyteller; I like storytelling. But if these two focus groups are any indication, the storytelling base is pretty narrow, with the same-old, same-old being the fount. Perhaps folks are most comfortable with the familiar.

Certainly this accounts for the appeal of the stories of E.A. Poe-- the familiar elements as well as the overt demonstration of his cerebration, the part I like. Poe's great themes are entombment (a.k.a "helplessness") and abandonment-- central features, as well, in the day-care fantasies and the UFO accounts.

As I get older, I have definitely decided that the most disagreeable thing is the human voice-- well, most human voices. All that braying! Don't folks tire of talking? Of saying nothing over and over again? I think of all the stories I have heard from gay men (mostly) over the decades and I'm disappointed to report that-- much in the manner of the tots and the UFOers-- the story elements, few that they are, cluster around the same scanty themes. For some reason I'd expected amplitude.

Is my cohort unrepresentative? Is the world beyond chock full of better fabulists? People with more interesting lives? Like the narrator in Poe's "Descent Into The Maelstrom," am I, in fact, in the hub of a most unusual eddy and by going with the flow am unaware of its uniqueness? I've known some very grand liars over the years, and there's nothing more tired or transparent. As Boyd McDonald reminded us through his life and work, the truth is always the most shocking thing. And yet, the very foundations of this so-called civilization-- religions, advertising, politics, etc.-- are based on the masking, nay, distorting, of the truth. Lying seems to be on the up these days.

I had thought the gay men-- always semi-outsiders no matter their economic or class status-- would have a leg up on the things you'd expect: hard-hitting social analysis, biting wit, artistic creation, the usual menu. But I also thought the conversation would be better. With very few exceptions, it hasn't been.

You see, that's the only time I really enjoy the human voice-- in really good conversation about, what else, The Truth! What about the activity? What's the report on that? Has my cohort been a disappointment?

A friend, who is maybe 13 years older than me, and I were discussing generational changes. He spoke of growing up in the 30s and 40s. "And then your generation came along," [i.e., the baby-boomers] "and you got it all." That's been the rap on my cohort.

Obviously, we didn't get it all-- I wouldn't be complaining as I am if we had! My cohort consists of people who came of age from the mid-50s to the late-60s. And the bad news is too many of us died young. Although I must confess, I've reached a point where I'm not certain if I can recall who is definitely dead and who might still be alive-- specifically, the other day, I was thinking of Konstantin Berlandt, the colorful San Francisco activist and writer. Some whom I considered among the finest in the cohort went early. You'd think we'd be paralyzed with grief. Actually, that's sort of the theme of Douglas Crimp's new book, Melancholia and Moralism: that the gay activists, because of all the deaths, have fallen into a melancholic state, opening the door for the right-wing "Attack Queers" (Richard Goldstein's phrase) to start their screeching in the media.

Oh well. Every cohort is to some degree self-regarding, and mine is no different. But our story is not yet over; there could be surprises in the next 20 or 30 years, but I suspect it will be a lot of the same old plot points-- more entombment and abandonment-- and since you only get this one cohort, how can a person ever know if it would have better with another?

Except by imagining!

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com