Chapter 3

For the longest time, I thought it nearly impossible for me to get close to people. Though my childhood was, in my mind, as normal as they come, I often felt I had missed some crucial experiences that would make me fit in better, interact with others more comfortably. Whether it was true or not, I felt like an outsider within whatever social context I floated in. I wasn’t a hermit. I didn’t actively avoid being around others. It’s just that, from elementary school on, I always felt that the people I called “friends” would more accurately be described as “good acquaintances”. They were people to shoot the shit with, catch a movie and grab a bite to eat with – all the typical stuff of teenage life. They were not, however, the lifelong friendships I quietly yearned for. There was always a distance between me and other people. Even with my closest friends, I had a hard time sharing intimate thoughts or fears. It was a failing that prevented me from the comfortable intimacy I imagined my friends shared with each other.

My reserve, I found, had a more profound effect. Seen as serious, focused, and rather, well, bookish, I developed a reputation that was, unintentionally, intimidating. Consequently, I was never someone people thought to call unexpectedly or ask out spontaneously. Everyone assumed that I spent my free time consumed by homework or school activities or some philanthropic activity to fill out my resume. If I wanted to go out, it was up to me to plan it, make the calls, coordinate the schedules. It just seemed like too much work. Thus, social events for me occurred rather infrequently by my final year or so of high school.

Everyone I knew seemed to have that “best” friend, be it with romantic connotations or not. I knew what I was seeking in theory – after all, it was the same things that were being bombarded into my head in all the television I had seen, the magazines that were lying around my apartment, and seemingly, between all of the people around me. Apparently I was the only one clueless enough to be unable to find someone to develop such an intimate relationship - that go-to person to talk about things slightly deeper than the performance of the local sports team or the quality of the latest big budget nonsense that had come from Hollywood. I wanted someone to trust – a person I could talk to and share the crazy and surreal things going on in my head. I had dreams, fears, and desires all hidden away in a little journal instead.

My journal was a thin, nondescript black book. It’s only distinguishing feature was a small “d” inscribed roughly into its front cover. But that black book held within its covers everything I wanted to share out loud; trapped and hidden on its off-white pages was the real me, captured in words and letters of think black ink.

Yet, somehow, even my writing betrayed me; as I re-read old entries I noticed a tendency to avoided truly personal details, generalizing people, places and events in the fear that somehow, someday, someone would open it, read it, and figure me out.

That paradox seemed symbolic. On one hand I wanted to share myself with someone I trust. On the other hand, I found comfort in the protection my isolation provides. I guaranteed myself invulnerability at the expense of intimacy. I wanted two extremes and was clueless on how they might be reconciled.

Looking back, I can see that my childhood experiences didn’t help. I spent most of my elementary years hanging out with several girls from my neighborhood and never thought about it once. We weren’t playing dolls or anything like that. It just that, being very un-athletic, I was the last to participate in the sports other boys gravitated towards. Sure co-ed games happened, and on those occasions I participated. But overall, I knew, and seemingly everyone else knew, that when it came to picking a winning team, I wasn’t going to be on it.

Thus, as I grew up, I learned how to interact with girls much better than with boys. And while it didn’t matter so much as a young elementary student running around on the monkey bars, as I got older, I found myself straddling a fine line, naive to the budding consciousness of gender difference and sexual desire that goes along with maturity. I was hunting for the simplicity of a platonic relationship. Everyone around me was interested in getting laid.

By the end of high school, the only people I really hung out with were girls. I liked that girls talked about things – I found that I gravitated towards people who liked conversation, who said what they were thinking. As hypocritical as it was, I had a hard time believe the other guys in my high school could be interested in things beyond sports, cars and the latest gangster rap.

I only realized how different I was, my childhood was, when I arrived at college. Unlike my high school girl friends, most of the girls in college were reticent about being close friends with a guy. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Single young men and women, free from the constraints of their families, living independent lives without the responsibilities of real life – this meant that the first thing on the mind of anyone meeting someone of the opposite sex was whether or not they were a viable hook up. My platonic sensibilities were not really interesting to most girls. And my inexperience in the traditional rituals of male friendships made it hard for me to understand how I could become friends with other guys.

As much as I feared the social implications of going to college, I was confident about myself, my goals, what I wanted, when I left home. School was always a place of security – it was the single realm in which I clearly understood my abilities. It was a place to excel, to stand out, to define the ways in which I was more than just a nondescript nobody. In academics I found a place to develop a belief in myself. I might not be pretty, I might not be a star athlete, but in any classroom setting, I was someone to contend with.

I had always been drawn to English as a subject. It seemed like an obvious fit, considering the importance books had as companions throughout my childhood. They held imaginary worlds, entranced my mind with pictures of unique places and memorable people that I could feel somehow connected to. Reading allowed me access to the thoughts of others; though they were fictional, the best novels created characters that felt alive to me, characters so real that I would refer to them as friends. I knew these characters through and through, developing an intimacy with them that I desperately desired from a real person.

Beyond that, I saw in English the potential to express things I found so difficult to say out loud. For me, the power of words to shape opinion, thought, and emotion were undeniably attractive. If I could master language, I could then become, on paper, the charismatic and interesting individual I was not in person. On paper I could transform my identity, draw people into my world, or rather my perceptions of the world, and maybe, just maybe, make a connection with them.

It is idealistic, but think about those times when you have written a paper for class. Have you ever just known, while proof-reading, that you have written something persuasive, well argued, that would make someone ask themselves, “why didn’t I see that?” For me, that was the challenge – to have that moment when my ideas and opinions found the necessary support to come together in a tight and cohesive way. If I wrote something that met these goals, I felt a sense of, well, empowerment. It was a rare time when I felt completely in control. I chose the words, I arranged the pieces, I weaved the paper into its final form. If it succeeded or failed, it was because of me, not some outside influence.

By the time of my senior year in college, I was finding myself focused on the Cultural studies coursework of our English department. I loved Literary and Cultural Studies. I mean, where else could the study of TV be considered a plausible academic pursuit? I had found a niche at school, and in the broad expanse of subjects under the title of Literary studies, I had found an area of study I felt truly interested in.

I had taken several courses in the study of television and film, building a course load that could define a distinct concentration. For me, seeing television in the title of any class ensured that I would be attending. Television had become a trusted companion as I had navigated life after my father’s death. Television was so…safe. Conflicts in television were contained; usually resolved within a quick half an hour to an hour, they generally didn’t alter the world of the character in a dramatic, and more importantly, traumatic way. The main characters of sitcoms or series were guaranteed to be there – to return in the next episode, the next week, the next month, the next season. In television, the people you came to cared about would not disappear on you, leaving your life at a point when they had become really important.

So, though I didn’t openly admit it, by the final year of college, before my father’s death, I had exchanged time with people for time with my TV. It even, occasionally, encouraged me to interact socially, like on Thursday nights when my apartment became the central location for viewing Must See TV on NBC. But, for the most part, my TV and I had an exclusive relationship which was wonderfully one-directional. It entertained me, kept me company, connected me to the world, and if it bothered me or annoyed me, I could turn it off and move to my books. And, if for some reason I wished to get out of going somewhere, I had an excuse; I just told people I had a standing date with my best friend.