Matthew Gallaway

Notes on Adjacent Societies

1. It was a quiet Thanksgiving, spent mostly with the leaves. Millions of people were cooking and traveling -- and writing about cooking and traveling -- which seemed like a lot of pressure. I was happy not to partake. Over the years, even the nondenominational holidays seem to have acquired a sheen of (inauthentic) reverence and tradition, maybe because -- whether we like it or not -- we all belong to the church of capitalism. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small-Business Saturday, Buy-Nothing Sunday: it all feels like work.  2. In an attempt to forget about any day related to shopping or not shopping, we went for a walk in Fort Tryon Park, which was perfect. Apparently, it's a micro-climate where "peak leaf season" is now, in case you missed it everywhere else.  3. I learned that, by angling the camera, I could hide the sun behind the tree, creating a dramatic silhouette.  4. Even when you could see it, the sun seemed very far away. 5. Seeing it so far away was a source of sadness and relief. (But mostly relief.) And a little hope, knowing that spring actually wasn't too far away. And a little dread when I considered how many miles I would need to run between now and then.  6. Sometimes I fantasize about moving somewhere not too hot or too cold, a place where I could run outside in shorts year round.   7. But what I really crave is to live in a society where time is marked not by artificial designations like holidays and even birthdays. And the obligation to buy and consume that come with these designations.   8. I understand that such a system would not lend itself to many aspects of modern society, where in order to buy and sell as much as possible we have to be precise in all things, but I like thinking about different options, even if they're hypothetical. You have to be able to tell a story before it becomes reality. 9. On the day after Thanksgiving, we walked on the new path through Highbridge Park, which is on the eastern side of Manhattan, facing the Bronx. As usual, it wasn't very crowded. People are still just discovering this new path and, sometimes, it feels a bit desolate and wild. I often get the sense that strange beings live in the wooded ravine, beings who wouldn't take kindly to any off-the-path exploration. I leaned over the rail and my heart skipped when I saw the silver reflections of eyes staring back at me. 10.  Still, it's nice to feel like you have access to a secret, magical landscape in the middle of the city, a landscape populated by ethereal creatures who pay no attention to our society. 11. It was sort how we felt on Thanksgiving, eating pizza and green beans. (And some pie and ice cream.) We had entered a world that was not exactly new, but new enough. 12. And relaxing with the cats, another kind of ethereal being. 13. It's one of the reasons I've always liked living in Washington Heights, which is in Manhattan but not really "of it." It's what I call an "adjacent society." 14. A place that seems less "American" than many -- at least in the superficial, jingoistic, and capitalistic ways that increasingly seem to define the term -- and, for that reason, more American in the substantive (but increasingly theoretical) ways that matter. 15. A place where you can live among thousands of others but, thankfully, find yourself all alone.  
  

Notes on Blogging

1. As winter approached, the temperatures dropped and the greens gave way to a kaleidoscopic wash of orange, yellows, purple, and brown. The beauty made the cold forgivable.   2. In the world beyond the park, everyone was seething.  3. I kept thinking about the internet from ten years ago, which in many ways was no less angry but -- at least in retrospect -- seemed to offer more nuance.  4. Corporations hadn't yet figured out how to corral us behind their walls. It was not only an age before FB and Twitter but also before 'Tiny Letters,' which I have come to think about as 'Tiny Conspiracies.' What happened to being transparent?  5. I don't want to overstate it. George W. Bush was still presiding over a bellicose, corporate feeding frenzy that was the necessary antecedent to the bellicose, corporate feeding frenzy of today.   6. But the blogosphere felt more 'democratic.' There may or may not be data to back up this assertion, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 (or that Trump was elected in 2016, following eight years of increasing constraints on the internet).  7. And when I say 'constraints' I don't just mean the legal kind. Obviously, there's no law against blogging (and, again, I lack the data to back any of this up), but my sense is that a lot of time and energy that used to be spent on blogging is now devoted to Twitter and Facebook and other 'social media venues.' Which I understand; it's easier to join a 'community' -- even a gated one  -- than to be a flickering light in an infinite universe. The validation we (sometimes) receive is easier and more rewarding (and more addictive), which is why we rush into these corporate fortresses. 8. But the validation, when it's not forthcoming, is also very sad.  9. When I post to Twitter or Facebook, I feel like a junkie in a crackhouse looking for a fix. 10.  If I get it, I feel the rush; if I don't, I wallow in self-loathing.    11. And then I think about the park, which offers a completely different kind of validation.  12. And contains the symbols of every change that's yet to come.  




 
 

Notes on Leaving the Deep Freeze

1. The park was enduring the first deep freeze of the winter. Very few people were outside; most were at home, wondering how the recent wave of sexual-abuse reports would change our society.  2. It was easy to be hopeful, or at least cautiously optimistic. If every woman (meaning all of them) and every gay man (ditto, almost) who have suffered, along with our various allies, decided to speak up and demand justice, then 'systemic change' would presumably be forthcoming.  3. But then I remembered our president and what he had said and done before getting elected, and I was less optimistic. It seemed that many of the perpetrators now being called out were relatively easy cases; powerful, famous men who, for years, if not decades, had inflicted themselves on women (and some younger men) without taking too much care to hide their actions. These men possessed a level of power that made them delusional. It felt good to see these men get called out, but were they merely a few heads of a massive hydra? 4. I thought about my own past and whether things I had experienced constituted abuse, and whether these things were -- or would be -- any less likely to occur in the wake of current events.  5. I remembered how, as soon as I became self-aware (around the age of three or four), I faced an ongoing interrogation -- from strangers and relatives -- about whether I 'liked' girls and whether girls 'liked' me, and how these questions were always a source of discomfort that, as I grew older, became a kind of terror, if terror is understood to be a systemic effort to eradicate fundamental qualities of another person's existence. This is not the kind of abuse that gets much coverage, and I'm not sure it qualifies. Most of the people from my past who were asking these questions did not harbor any malicious intent toward me; they certainly weren't seeking sexual gratification. They merely assumed I was like them, which I was not. I also knew that the specific way I was not like them was not something to be disclosed without serious consequences, which is why I learned to deflect these questions or to offer ambiguous, non-responsive answers. Some people these days no longer make these kinds of assumptions, but I also think that the number remains very small. I don't have children but I've been around enough of them to know that, more often than not, adults are pestering/terrorizing them with expectations that may or may not reflect how the kid thinks of him/herself.  6. I thought about how, when I was growing up, everyone I ever saw on television or in the movies was straight, except for maybe Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly. Again, this wasn't abuse per se, but it was also terrifying. I knew some gay men in real life, friends of my mother who were more on the Paul Lynde end of the gay spectrum. They were nice to me but I was afraid that if I spent too much time in their vicinity, they would know my secret. I disliked being around them.7. The state of television is marginally better than it used to be, but is still a nightmare in terms of depicting anything reflecting lives of gay people (or any other marginalized group) in the real world. Television likes to depict British royalty. I know this because I watch a lot of it. It entertains me, but also terrifies and disheartens me. 8. Growing up, I didn't know any gay kids my own age, much less any who played hockey. Which, when I think about it, probably isn't much different today when you consider that the number of gay professional athletes in the four major team sports (football, baseball, basketball, and hockey) is . . . zero. This is another kind of terror for kids who are good at sports and are gay. It's not so bad when you're young, but as you get older, it becomes pretty clear that these two elements of your life are not reconcilable. Or maybe they are now for some kids who are stronger than I was. I couldn't imagine it. 9. When I was fifteen, I happened to find myself propositioned for sex by a much older man (probably close to fifty?) and I said yes. At the time, I knew what he was asking for (and I was accepting) was wrong on some fundamental, age-inappropriate level, but I didn't care. Like every fifteen year old, I was keenly aware of things my body wanted to experience; unlike my non-gay peers, I had no idea how to make it happen. My mind was roiling with fantasies but devoid of practicalities. There were no dances (or at least none were you could ask someone you actually liked) or 'going out' with other kids and maybe kissing them or putting your hand down their pants or whatever else the straight kids were doing with and to each other beginning in fourth grade. So, I was desperate and inexperienced, which made me vulnerable to the advances of an older/married (closeted) creep. His age and experience gave him power over me, and he used it, which is a very traditional kind of abuse. On the other hand, he didn't exactly force me; I could have said 'no thanks,' but I didn't. I said, 'okay, whatever.' I wanted to know what it was like and he offered me the first opportunity, which I didn't hesitate to take. This dynamic informs many of the abuse allegations you see in the gay world; because these teen boys are (psychologically) desperate and insecure, they are vulnerable to older gay men/creeps who are happy to take whatever advantage they have, even if they are not technically in a position of power over the boy in question. My sense is that, despite the downfall of Kevin Spacey and 75 percent of the priests in the Catholic Church, such abuse will continue to plague our society more than anyone cares to admit, because we are addressing the symptom of the disease instead of the cause; the gay mainstream media/entertainment complex abets this situation, of course, by constantly reminding gay men that the most sexually desirable bodies are those belonging to thin, hairless teens. (I am thankful not to be attracted to this type of body, although I once possessed it.)  10. I have some regrets about this incident, but am not 'tormented' by it. I have no desire for 'revenge.' It would have been nice to have sex for the first time with someone I cared about, someone closer to my own age, someone who wasn't using me for my 'hot 15 yo bod.' But, for me, these are small regrets. If anything, I'm grateful because he planted a seed in my mind -- albeit one that would not germinate for many years -- that told me I didn't want to ever be like him. He became a measure of what I'm not. Which isn't to say there aren't a lot more men like him out there now, or that they shouldn't be stopped. They should be held accountable. The best way to stop them, though, will be to give gay teens the same opportunities as their straight peers to figure out who they are, both psychologically and sexually, so that they have the confidence to say 'get lost, you old creep.' 11. Worse than having sex with that older, married man, to be honest, was the time in college I woke up and found my dorm roommate having sex with a girl in the bunk under mine. And not quietly, either. He could have woken me up and said, 'go hang out in the lounge for a few minutes while I get busy' but he didn't. Part of me wants to say, 'big deal -- it was just college and two people were fucking, as college kids will do. Quit being a baby. It's not like you were raped.' But these experiences are subjective, and this one made me feel very small and worthless, and still makes me (a little) angry when I think about it. I felt powerless. It's another weapon people have to inflict themselves on those who are different. I've seen so much straight sex on television, it makes me want to die; not because I hate watching straight sex, but because it seems to always (98 percent of the time) happen at the exclusion of anything else. To see it in real life, at that age, was even worse.    12. I also thought about how men are not the only problem, at least when it comes to the kind of systemic homophobia (and concurrent abuse) that is my primary concern here. 13. I remembered the time a 'superstar' editor told me that I should rewrite The Metropolis Case without the gay characters. 'Just put the manuscript in a drawer and rewrite it from scratch without Martin. Keep Leo but make him straight.'  I laughed, but she was completely serious. Over time, I've learned that she represents the rule more than the exception, although most people are more sophisticated in terms of how they couch their objections. 14. For example, the publisher who explained that having so many gay characters in my new novel wasn't really catering to their 'core demographic.'  15. I won't pretend that such incidents cross the threshold of 'sexual abuse' but I think they belong in the same conversation, or at least a related one, about the way people in power -- despite belonging to a politically marginalized group -- denigrate others to enhance their own careers. Big Publishing and Big Media are afflicted with this problem.  16. I also thought about how the biggest-selling novels about gay men in the past decade were not written by gay men. Does this fact not speak for itself? 17.  I thought about a prominent literary critic (as in someone who actually gets paid to review books) I follow on Twitter who regularly tweets about how things he doesn't like 'suck ass.' If a NYC book critic can't understand why such language is needlessly offensive, then what hope do we have of raising the consciousness of the twenty-five percent of the world's population that still thinks gay people should be eradicated?   18. But I thought about how I support this conversation -- and am obviously throwing in my two cents -- even if it's imperfect and just beginning and may not lead to much in the way of tangible change, at least in the foreseeable future. Because it might, and something is better than nothing. 19. And, finally, I thought about the trees and the plants and gardens where I love to spend the bulk of my time, knowing that these are creatures of this beautiful earth who do not judge. 





 
 

Notes on the Garden of the Mind

1. Another week had passed, marked by almost nothing except the declining angle of the sun and the lengthening shadows. 2. And the yellow leaves on the red bricks.  3. Even the ferns were relatively calm.  4. The tranquility of the garden was an illusion, but a necessary one. 5. Beyond the walls of the garden, the rest of the world churned. The news about ___ was unbearable. 6. Thankfully, the garden walls were metaphorical. Even the metal gates of the shuttered stores could offer some tranquility if you weren't too fixated on the news about ______.   7. The ants and spiders and worms looked up and saw a powerful god. 8. While the cats looked up and saw the birds. Programming notes: Exciting news -- #gods is still on the bestseller lists for Small Press Distribution, so thanks to everyone who helped make that happen. If you don't have a copy, you can get one here. And please don't forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Happy November <3