mj@zeus.UUCP (mj) (07/17/84)
Caring, Sharing, Relating, The man/woman trend of today
[Copied without permission from Mother Jones]
by Charlie Haas
Jill (not her real name, which is Alison) is 33. With her high cheekbones,
friendly smile and good posture, she could easily be taken for a
new-products-marketing group head, or perhaps a planning-and-development
research coordinator. Surprisingly, though, she is an administrative policy
liason, working at a large Chicago corporation.
A few weeks ago, Jill met Kevin (Michael, actually), 41. People who meet
Kevin feel instantly drawn toward him, and Jill was no exception. With his
lean, spare body and easygoing manner, Kevin has the look of a telephone
lineman who fools you by not looking anything like a telephone lineman and
instead resembling a shale derivatives consultant. He is a bassoonist.
The two met at the Jade Palate, a fashionable Chinese restaurant on the
North Side. "He overheard me ordering the Five Happiness Special Sea
Biscuits," Jill remembers. "and he leaned over and said, 'Not without a
side of gamma globulin, you don't.' Well, I'm not normally that impulsive
about things, but I switched to the Chicken With Flavor Taste right away. A
week later, we were living together."
"At first, it was incredibly intense," she continues. "We had both 'been
with' people before--Kevin had been married, in fact--but neither of us had
felt so close to anybody. Other men would listen to my life story, but
Kevin actually optioned it. I had sometimes had a hard time in
relationships before, and at first I had a lot of trouble letting myself be
comfortable with being vulnerable--vulnerable to what, I'm not sure, maybe
just to being comfortable. And I wondered if being open to being vulnerable
to being trusted to be comforable being honest still lets you be free, or if
you have to close off some of the closeness in order to have the selfness as
well as the otherness. I felt that we were moving out of a place that was
'we' into a place that was 'us'; from 'each other' into 'one another.' And
I guess I didn't know if I was ready for that.
Kevin, too, remembers the early days of the relationship as exhilarating and
special. "With Jill," he says, "I felt that I was discovering all kinds of
intimate places inside myself. My pancreas, for example, is shaped like a
little booth at a cocktail lounge, and of course it's pretty dark in there."
Soon, though, Jill began to feel that "something was missing. I was
discovering that I wanted a deeper kind of commitment," she says. "More
than that, I found myself wanting all kinds of things that my parents had
wanted, things I thought I would never want. Wrought iron, particularly."
"We both felt that the relationship wasn't going anywhere. Finally, a few
weeks ago, we were shopping together for tile grout at Handier Than Thou,
and just as we were deciding to spend a few pennies more for the added
convenience of a premixed product, I suddenly had this, like, breakthrough,
where I said, 'Wow, O.K., I know exactly what I want from this relationship.'
"What I wanted, it turned out, was to have our relationship written about in
a magazine article on contemporary relationships. I wanted to explore; I
wanted to test myself as an interview subject; I wanted to see what my
not-real name would be. I wanted to be quoted saying things like, 'At
first, it was incredibly intense' and 'I wanted a deeper kind of
commitment.' And, of course, I wanted to see how many of my friends would
figure out it was me. Because that's what I think is happening with men and
women now: they're either writing articles about their relationshsips or
being interviewed about them. People are carrying on about themselves in
print in a way that, even a few years ago, would have seemed impossibly
dreary. And I think that's a positive, positive thing."
Jill and Kevin's story is real, although the two of them are phonys. And
their story is important, because it is not only their story but the story
of countless other couples on the change-torn, contradiction-littered
battleground of contemporary relationships. All of a sudden and all over
the place, it seems, men and women are warning each other off questionable
seafood dishes, experiencing insights while purchasing tile-related
products, and using up magazine space that would otherwise have gone to
stories about people who were clinically dead and "saw a warm, pulsating
light" or to profiles of Debra Winger. And it is crucially important that
we understand the reason for this, as we enter the early mid-1980's if we
are to succeed in our struggle to build a more decent, caring, humane,
sharing, honest, open, loyal, thrifty, clean and cheerful society.
Dr. Richard Brain is a professor of Sheetrock Psychology at Johns-Manville-
Hopkins University in Teaberry Shuffle, New Jersey, and the author of Up the
Self With Gun and Chimera (Macmillan & Wife, 1982). "Relationships," he
posits, "are the human potential workshops of the '80s--in the same sense
that human potential workshops were the peace marches of the '70s, and that
peace marches were the Johnny-Mathis-records-and-little-hot-dog-and-biscuit-
dough-hors-d'oeuvre parties of the '60s, and so on back down the line."
If what Brain says is true, then he is right. Some background may be
helpful. During the long sleep of the Eisenhower years, sex was something
"dirty," unnatural and very much restricted. In many states, laws placed
stringent limits on breast size and penis length--freedoms that, today, we
take almost for granted. But then came the '60s--a turbulent decade of
turmoil, or ferment, or fomented torment. For many, the lyrics of
rock-prophet Bob Dylan seemed to sum it all up: "Now your dancing child with
his Chinese suit, / He spoke to me, I took his flute, / No, I wasn't very
cute to him, ' Was I?" The very foundations of society seemed to be
shaking, as long-held assumptions were questioned. Who were we? Why were
we here? Where were we going? Were we there yet? When were we going to be
there? NOW were we there yet?
But the '70s held few answers. We seemed to be hurtling into a new,
terrifyingly uncertain time, as sex roles, standards of conduct, even car
shapes, underwent rapid alterations. The Muppets rushed into the vacuum the
Beatles had left; John Heard was the new screen idol for all who could
remember which one he was. The Pill had revolutionized sexuality. I think
I meant William Hurt back there. Reeling from assassinations, from Vietnam,
from Watergate, we hungered for a portentous, yackety style of journalizm
that could put all the pieces together. But chilling new deterrents to sex
were on the horizon: herpes, AIDS, the Grace Jones look. This whole analysis
is valid because I say so, and Jill (not her real name) is glad I do. "I'd
hate to be in an article like this," she say, "and then have them leave out
the phrase 'the long sleep of the Eisenhower years.'"
Nowhere was the new freedom felt more keenly than among magazine writers,
who turned their attention to the precise documenting of trends in "personal
growth" and in male-female relationships--a doubly difficult task since,
before being documented, the trends had to be fabricated, often on the basis
of a single incident in the life of a writer or a friend. The birth of the
subgenre of "confessional journalism" was "an enormously fortunate thing for
writers," says book critic Bigby Deal, whose "How My Catharsis Made Me an
Even Greater and Famouser Sort of Person" appeared recently in Exchoir ("The
Magazine for Men Whose Voices Changed Some Time Ago"). "We discovered,"
says Deal, "that we were free to carry on about our marriages, our divorces,
our affairs, as if people waiting to have porcelain jackets put on their
back molars were genuinely, passionately, urgently interested."
One of the most prolific masters of the new forms is New York journalist
Barbara Gristedes Harrasing, who has contributed countless pieces to Scurvy
("The Magazine for the Executive Woman Who Doesn't Have Time to Eat Her
Vegetables"), including the wrenching "My Briefcase, My Self"; to the trendy,
sexually emancipated women's journal Madame's Wazoo (her "When He Calls Your
Friends a Pack of Shrill Freaks With No Discernible Values" appeared in
February); and in Ws, ("The Magazine for Women Who Are Pretty Pissed Off By
This Point"), where her "Cliff-Hanger Movie Serials: The Roots of Premature
Ejaculation" was considered a seminal piece.
Harrassing rejects the suggestion that her brand of journalism trades
heavily in cliches. "Cliches just don't play an important role," she says.
"You see, I think we're really only beginning to understand some of the
things that have happened. In the '70s, after the peace movement and so on,
there was a kind of branching out, a seizing of possibilities. An
opportunity to go in some new directions. A freeing up, if you will. It
was an exciting period, because a lot of the old formulas simply didn't
apply anymore, and people almost needed to invent a new language in order to
address what was happening. I think it affected the way we all saw
ourselves. Women, in particular, began to understand their power
differently and to draw strength from each other. There was a great desire
to create alternative structures. Now, of course, I think you see a lot of
people turning inward. A kind of retrenching is taking place, especially at
the community level. But, no, I don't think cliches have very much to do
with it."
Annette (not her real teeth) is 13, but she has been searching for the
"right" relationship for as long as many older women. "Cubby and I were
together for a long time, and it was painful for us to break up," she says.
"But he was so much younger, and while I enjoyed the vitality, the
immaturity became too much for me." (See "This Month's Article About Older
Women and Younger Men" in Cosmopolymer, "The Magazine for the Completely
Artificial Woman," March 1983.) "Then, with Spin, it was great, except that
his whole male-bonding thing with Marty took up so much of his energy--you
know, 'Come on, man, let's go ride these horses; let's go find this calf
that's missing. Let's, let's, let's.' So, finally, that came to an end,
too--it was on Talent Roundup Day, it's funny how you remember these things.
But now I'm with Donald and I feel very good about that--his sense of play,
the way he lets his anger out, and of course he's so much more animated
than--oh, but I see the clock on the clubhouse wall says it's time to go.
See you real soon!" Why? Because she likes us.
George Leonard (not his real name) has spent his past few years on the
"cutting edge" of the human potential movement. After a long career at the
popular picture magazine Look (he was, at various times, the magazine's
Ghetto Kids Cavorting in the Spray from a Fire Hydrant Editor, the Wizened
Crackers Sitting on General Store Vernadas Editor and a consultant to the
Cat in a Baby Carriage department), Leonard became a fixture at personal-
growth beachheads such as the Esalen Institute and in the pages of Exchoir,
where his "Sorry, That's It For Sex" appeared last winter. "Make no
mistake: I was on the front lines of the Sexual Revolution," he wrote, "and
I derived my share of personal benefits, if you know what I mean. More than
my share, actually, and a lot more than most of the 'upscale' subscribers to
this rag, I'll tell you that, pal. You were out getting your MBA while your
faithful correspondent here was getting his end wet, and now you think
you're going to catch up. Well, forget it, because it's over. That's
right. Those of us who are in charge of these things have had it with the
Sexual Revolution, so you missed it. Maybe next time, if there is a next
time, you won't be sitting with your head stuck in a magazine about how to
wear the classic porkpie hat and mix the classic Sidecar and all this shit.
But I doubt it."
"George is an incredibly charismatic and magnetic social philosopher," I had
been told. "He doesn't shake your hand, he Rolfs it." I was not
disappointed. With his piercing, curious eyes, easy laugh and warm, open
toaster-oven, Leonard commands the listener's immediate trust. "There are
so many questions we have to look at, but I think that's what's exciting,"
he says, with infectious enthusiasm. "For example, the 'end of sex'--what
does that mean? Well, for a lot of people, the end of sex means the
beginning of a cigarette. And that's fine, except there are a lot of people
who don't smoke, and I think we incredibly charismatic and magnetic social
philosophers have to be willing to look at that.
"I do think it's true that we've pretty well come out of the 'Me Decade,'
and it's good to keep in mind what Tom Wolfe said: that after the Me Decade
you can't go home again. I really think that's true. Already we've moved
into the 'US Festival Weekend,' though, of course, that's a good deal
shorter. But there's a lot of variety ahead, a lot of options. Eventually,
I think we'll see the 'Your Mother Fortnight'--in fact, I understand that's
already happening in certain neighborhoods--and even the 'Her Cousin That We
Met Over a Lonnie's House Mid-Afternoon.' The one thing you can say with
any certainty is that whatever trend does happen, it will start in this kind
of article. In fact, it will end in this kind of article, too. In fact..."
But his voice trails off, his mind already tracking a new insight.
Nick (not his real nickname) is 34. Rangy, softspoken and dumb as a post,
he feels that he has "moved past relationships as a model for interacting
with people. I think we have to find some new models.
"In college, at Berkeley, I was always very active in politics--you know,
writing trade agreements, forming collusive suballiances within SEATO, that
kind of thing," he continues. "And I still think of myself as very much a
'movement person.' But eventually I burned out on that kind of activity and
I began to feel that change had to start with the individual.
"For the past few years, I've mostly been involved in taking, and then
leading, various kinds of workshops. Workshops in a sense are more viable
than one-on-one relationships, because you can really rotate who brings the
salad. I've been through workshops on birthing, rebirthing, parenting,
networking, bonding, actualizing, life-transitioning, even on composting.
Finally, I took a look at what I was doing and where it was taking me, and I
decided to lead a workshop on gerunding. A surprising number of people
turned out for it. We want to look at our gerunding behavior and try to
understand where it comes from. For a lot of us, it's been a chance to get
back in touch with our root words. I made a breakthrough a couple of weeks
ago, for instance, when I realized what an impact it had on me, as a kid, to
hear Nancy Sinatra sing, 'You keep lyin' when you oughta be truthin' '--you
know, in 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. If fact, that may have been the
basis of a lot of the human potential movement, right there.
"So, without question, you know, I'm still searching. Maybe I'll always be
searching. But for me, the '60s are definitely over. I guess that means
I'll first hear of the Talking Heads in about 1995."
Judy C. is a dour (not her real demeanor) editor at Mother's Loans ("The
Magazine of Trust-Fund Radicalism") in San Francisco. "In a way," she says,
"I think I've stopped looking for the 'perfect' relationship article. It
took us a while to get into this kind of journalism, because we brought a
lot of our old habits to it. First, we assigned an investigative story
on 'Boyfriends That Burst Into Flames When You Hit Them From Behind,' but it
was hard to pin down the sources on that one. We also sent a reporter to
check out the singles scene in Nicaragua, but he was captured and held in a
piano bar in Managua for, oh, six or seven weeks, and all he came back with
that was really substantive was the Spanish lyrics for 'Raindrops Keep
Falling on My Head,' 'Georgy Girl' and a lot of Billy Joel things, and we
feel our readers are more into, you know, Joan Armatrading and so forth.
"But now I think we're getting the hang of it with this new series. The
thing to remember is that this kind of journalism isn't really all that
different from any other kind. The same standards of quality certainly
apply. For example, if a piece is truly excellent, there will always be a
quote at the end that sort of sums it all up, and just before the very last
part of the quote, the writer will always have the person who's being quoted
smile or brush some hair out of their face or something." She smiles,
brushing some hair out of her face. "If you have that, you know you've done
your job."