(cont.) "It never occurred to me that I was 'different' in any way until I was maybe four years old and I went to nursery school."
"One day we went on a field trip to an apple orchard. At that point I didn't know exactly how I was different, but it was more like a suspicion or skepticism I felt toward the other kids."
"It was something I knew even before I started. What's funny -- though not in a laugh-about-it sense -- is that I think my mother was a lot like me, except she had long ago made the decision to overcompensate, to basically suppress her difference to the extent she could, because she couldn't bear the idea of standing out or being isolated."
"I'm not blaming her or anything; I don't have kids, but I think it's pretty common for parents to instill traits in their children that are consciously the opposite of what they claim to want, but are unconsciously exactly what they do want. I'm not a psychologist, either, but maybe you get what I'm talking about."
"My point is that my mother didn't like going to school, either, but that she tried to make me excited about it, which backfired because like many kids my age, I could immediately tell when my mother wasn't being honest with me, and even though she denied it, I knew. Maybe not to explain it, but it was there."
"So I felt very conflicted about nursery school. I realize that's an 'adult' word -- conflicted -- but that's what it was. Like I wasn't immune to my mother's more conscious desire for me to 'fit in,' but I was also unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps."
"There was a word for kids like me, which was 'shy.' Is that still a thing? I wouldn't know, but that's what my teacher told my mother. 'Your daughter is so shy'."
"Which they couldn't understand, because I wasn't -- you know -- 'ugly' or 'crippled' or 'deaf' or whatever else made kids targets for scrutiny and in some cases real abuse. I wasn't teased or singled out. I just kind of existed at the margins of nursery school society, just like I do now, I guess, except now I'm more aware of why I act the way I do."
"My heart breaks when I think about the way certain kids were really tortured. Like the deaf kids who couldn't talk like everyone else, and how they were teased constantly. I remember this one girl 'Laura' who was deaf and she wore a hearing aid, which back then were pretty ungainly, and she also had this lump on the side of her nose -- I don't know why exactly -- and kids treated her like she was an animal. And she would break down and sob, and it was horrible to watch, because you could see how much pain she was in. Not that I ever helped. I just tried to pretend it wasn't happening. It's not like I was a saint or anything."
"Are kids still like that? My guess is they probably are, given that adults aren't much better. I mean, look at what's happening in our country and around the world."
"You know what's really awful, though? Sometimes I was a little jealous of the pariahs and the outcasts, because I knew that I was different, too, but that I couldn't really explain how or why, and you couldn't tell by looking at me, either. I was a 'normal' or 'typical' kid on the outside, but on the inside I sometimes thought that my difference made me monstrous, which is a bit more subtle, right? Like sometimes you want to look the way you feel."
"I'm not saying it's rational or 'healthy' or even a constant desire, but sometimes it was there."
"That's what society does to people who don't or can't conform. It turns us into monsters, at least until we learn that, well, maybe society is wrong."
"And that's not something that ever goes away, either, or at least not completely. I'm much better than I used to be -- like I wouldn't trade my life for anything and 98 percent of the time I'm grateful for being like this -- but there are still those moments of reversion, those flashes of hatred I'll feel for myself and that utter, implacable longing to be 'accepted' by people for whom my primary feeling, my 98 percent of the time feeling, is honestly ambivalence."
"So anyway, I was telling you about that field trip to the apple orchard. There was the teacher and someone from the orchard leading us around in a little group. It was exactly what you would expect."
"They were explaining how the trees were grafted to grow different types of apples, and how they were planted in a straight line, and how the flowers turned into fruit and everything else that's pretty miraculous but in some ways comprehensible. And I listened just like everyone else until I noticed something about ten or fifteen yards away, where there was a patch of woods that I think led into a forest. And I saw someone standing there -- a woman with long hair and a very simple dress that reflected the light, even in the shadows -- and I caught her eye and knew that she could see me watching her. And so when she waved, I waved back, at which point my teacher -- who wasn't used to me causing any kind of disturbance -- looked around and asked me what I was waving at, because she -- meaning my teacher -- couldn't see anything but the trees."
"And when I told them, they all thought I was crazy. Which I immediately understood, and so I pretended to be sick. It was probably the most 'dramatic' thing I ever did, like I collapsed on the ground and acted like I was having a seizure, which -- get this -- they attributed to 'heat stroke' even though it wasn't even that hot out. Whatever. After that I learned not to tell anyone about what I could see, because, really, what's the point in describing something you know nobody's going to believe?"
Pictures from Fort Tryon Park taken April 23, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project (Section 2: Interviews with the Institutionalized).
« We Already Live in an Underwater World | Main | Dianthus Are Also Flowers of the Gods »
04/28/2016
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.