Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

What are we to do with the past? When does the past even become the past? I remember the torment of one character in the 1968 Liz Taylor movie, Boom!, adapted from Tennessee Williams's play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore-- directed in a hope-against-hope way by Joseph Losey. The character-- was is Miss Taylor herself?-- notes that after she takes each step, the action recedes into the past. This is not a new nor particularly profound observation; it still is scary (as was Taylor's performance, if memory serves).

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But that's just it, the memory-- individual, collective, promotional, selective, recovered, made-up, and all the other types. I am fifty-five years old and look it. I have noticed in myself and in others near my age (and older, of course) the phenomenon of short-term memory loss. Did I leave my keys behind? Did I take the credit card after picking up the tab at the restaurant? Did I remember the name of my friend's new companion? Yes, yes, and no. After 50, remembering names became increasingly difficult. Not long ago, at a book event I was working, I was chatting with novelist Sarah Schulman and I asked: "Have I met you before?" Sarah gave me a certain look and assured me we had met on at least one occasion previously, if not more. I had no memory of it. Did I offend her by not remembering? I rarely intend to give offense-- of course, except when I want to, and then I make that quite clear.

I begin with a disadvantage. I really don't like other people that much. I used to pretend that I did but I don't anymore, and, of course, in youth, a person tends to be more enthusiastic about many things that fade as the years advance-- like Liz Taylor in her movie, step following step, each receding into the ages. It is thought by many that memories from younger years stay imprinted correctly-- thus those weird dreams wherein you can remember your high school locker combination but can't remember what you had for breakfast this very morning.

But is this true? Author Edmund White once told me that as he wrote his career-making novel, A Boy's Own Story, he tried to get all the points as real as he remembered from his youth, and he thought he got it as real as it was. He heard from his sister. She told him she liked the book but informed him he had got it all wrong!

Then we come to writing history. What's true? What texts can we trust? Within a few years after the Stonewall Riots, I was working with my town's Gay Pride Parade committee. The fellow who had put out the poster with the Parade route and list of events had got the year of Stonewall wrong. This was just a fact-checking matter, but I took it as an early clue to the new direction.

Not many years after that, I read an account of those nights in New York outside the Stonewall Inn. Embedded in the text was this sentence which is something I suspect I will always remember: "Many people died that night at Stonewall." What was indicated here was that among those participating in the three nights of rebellion were the "many" mowed down by the authorities. I had to wonder: where did this factoid come from? Did the writer simply assume that rioters in the 60s and 70s got gunned down, ą la Kent & Jackson States? Did it dress up the story to have some martyrs falling in blood-soaked Sheridan Square? Does a signal event lack "authenticity" unless the body count is suitably significant? Should history be written by drama queans? What if Truman Capote had turned out to be Shelby Foote? "Breakfast that morning at Ft. Sumter featured poached quail eggs, crispy Canadian bacon, and cornbread smothered with gravy (wouldn't a raspberry sorbet have been the perfect topper?)-- a no-no in today's health-oriented regimen but yummy dishes from yesterday's larder. Who knew a nasty war would bring down the curtain on this genteel way of life-- handsome young soldiers soon to meet their violent fate?"

There's a fellow from our community who gets published his, in my opinion, made-up interviews with deceased show business celebrities. I realize that in Show Biz-Land, truth and falsity are only useful and to be deployed to the extent they can advance one's career. It is a world I loathe and do my best to avoid, an increasingly challenging effort. Television was invented to make people stupid, in many cases, even more stupid, and it succeeds just fine-- I exclude David Susskind at his best and any special done by Stan Freberg, and a special I saw in the 70s which featured Cher, Bette Midler, Elton John, and Flip Wilson, a decade which actually managed to get on some gay-friendly-- flipped-out, really-- boob-toob jags (including Holly Woodland's "Best Line of The 70s" ("What difference does it possibly make as long as you look fabulous?") on some silly show about "sexuality" hosted by that automaton, Tom Snyder, who, if memory serves, still pops up on the screen. (The nice thing about short-term memory loss is not remembering such events! If only!)

And then we come to "recovered memory." As I am a person who has a history of writing fiction, I won't go there, not wanting to reveal any hard-learned secrets of the trade, but we should note that "recovered memory" has been a fabulous career up-draft for some therapist-types, some prosecutors, some folks busy suing for events they don't remember but have had "reconstructed"-- like nose, breast or butt surgery. Perhaps a step up from the spectral evidence standards used in some day-care trials. I came. I saw. I conquered. I forgot. And then I came again. Nice day's work.

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