Nate Knows Nada

Well, classes are about to start up here at Harvard, and everyone is back, filling the Square. Ran into my friend Luis a few minutes ago and hung out quite agreeably. Have an interview to be a Non-Resident Tutor in Mather House in about an hour and a half. Plenty of meetings tomorrow, and two drinks to get together for tonight.

But what’s most on my mind of late has been the visit of my younger brother to the area over the last couple of days. As regular readers will have picked up between the lines, my mom and dad have a lot of difficulties with my homosexuality, based primarily upon their beliefs as conservative to moderate evangelical Christians. (NOTE: Evangelicals and fundamentalists are NOT the same thing. My parents are not fundamentalists by any means. Please don’t confuse them….) In their view, my being gay is problematic but only insofar as I “act on it.” They know that there’s nothing I can do about the fundamental state, but they would prefer that I remain out of any sort of relationship, because they think that’s wrong. They won’t meet BF at their house; I can come to their house, but he cannot come with me. I’ve let them know that I’m sorry they feel this way, but I have to make my own moral choices and do what I think is right. As a result, I do not wish to visit their house, and we do most of our communication via e-mail.

My brother is also something of an evangelical, but he’s also a center-left political person. He hates the Bush admin, doesn’t vote for Republicans, has a generally positive view of some wealth redistribution, and so forth. But his religious legalism comes into play in a couple of ways, and these are bothersome to me, and they have been especially evident over the last few days that he has been here.

I guess I should explain that my brother is fairly introverted and also a writer, so most of his human interaction comes via words, it seems to me. Also, we don’t have a particularly close relationship: it’s not that we dislike one another, as far as I can tell, but we don’t talk to one another very much. And I don’t think that we have much in common, either. I have this feeling that my brother and I would not be friends or spend time together if we were not related. My brother is also a curmudgeonly and somewhat misanthropic sort of guy. So he’s not big on people in general. And finally, as regards me, he doesn’t really want to talk about my gayness, but he’ll deal with it. Regardless, I have no real idea what he thinks, but I often feel like he disapproves of who I am and is even disgusted by it. (The latter part I may be projecting, and since he HAS been willing to meet BF and hang out with him, I may be thinking worse than might actually be the case.) Mostly, I can’t tell which combination of these reason explains why I feel like he doesn’t like me.

But I don’t particularly enjoy hanging out with him, I find. He doesn’t talk much, and I find him often condescending, especially about interests we potentially share, like music, cycling, or such. I get really angry when he orders me around, such as when I say “Jesus!” as an expression of exclamation. His response is “Different word!” (And mine now will be, “It’s not your place to order me around. If you have a problem with something I say or do, you need to discuss it, not stomp on it. And you also need to be aware that there are things that you do that offend me.”)

But I feel somewhat regretful that we don’t have a closer relationship. He’s not a significant person in my life. And I feel like I often enough try to reach out and have a relationship with him, by calling occasionally and trying to see him when I’m in California, but I’m not sure there’s any reciprocity there. I feel like I’m trying, but I’m not getting anything back. And there’s a big part of me that wants to just cut my losses in the end. If he wants a relationship, that’s fine, but I’m rather tired of putting effort into something that feel so one-sided. I don’t enjoy spending time with him, and I don’t feel like I’m getting anything out of the relationship, and I don’t have any indication that I’m doing anything that he’s deriving any benefit from either.

Part of this could also be a projection from the situation with my mom and dad, I acknowledge.

It’s not that I don’t want a relationship with my brother. But I feel as if I am the person making all the effort at the matter, and it takes two people to do this. I can’t make him like me or really want to spend time with me, and I feel like giving up.

I have a whole file (33 pages in 10 point, single spacing) of quotes that I have found interesting. I thought I’d include a few this morning, since all my thoughts went out this week in my paper on The West Wing (which you can find here).

“It is an awkward truth that social life is the antidote to scholarly paranoia; it drains intellectual differences of their drama. The cure for the acrimony of intellectuals is dinner. Had Jesus invited a few Pharisees over for the Supper – and the Pharisees, let us remember, had been revolutionaries only a little while before – it might not have been his last. Dining with disciples is a perilous business.”
– Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker, 1 April 2002

“Morality can only be relative, not universal. Ethics must be interpreted in terms of politics; and the search for an ethical norm outside politics is doomed to frustration.”
-E.H. Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, 21

“Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.”
– Don DeLillo, Underworld (237)

“Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral. Yet, paradoxically, only Americans — a few, that is — ever try to be moral in politics.”
– Gore Vidal (Burr, 520)

“If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.”
– Martin Luther

It’s been way too long since I have written a serious academic paper on my own, and one of the things I have always prided myself upon in my work is that I’m a fairly good writer. But when you haven’t done any serious writing in a year or two, it’s hard to know if you’re doing well. Is the point getting across? Is the style clear and pleasant to read? Is it reflective of how and what I think?

Writing is really hard, as I had forgotten. But the difficulty is enjoyable, as it’s something I can do in a way that no one else can.

This is the reason I have been hesitant about keeping a blog.  Not only is it the offense factor, but it’s also a hesitancy on my part to reveal too much of myself to whomever might be out there.  Do you need to know about  my d———?  Or about my r————?  And how much of my interior monologue should be public?  Not that a ton of people are reading this, as the stats seem to indicate.  But what’s my line, the step over which I will not go?  Dean and Shel (whom I link to at right) let it all hang out — but I don’t know that that’s for me.

My approach to life is to remain sort of aloof.  Whereas BF needs to be closer to people when he’s insecure, I need to pull away and have more space to myself, and it’s very hard for me to let anyone in.  I’ll let Matt in, and Keith, and maybe another, but distance is my means.  Which isn’t a surprise, consideing that my personality tests indicate I’m an “introvert.”

What do other people think?  What’s your line?

It came to me earlier today as I walked down the street toward campus — the unifier I have been looking for is a discussion of the role of “Duty” in TWW. I think I can write the paper now. And all it took was watching the show last night for this to come.

Make no sense? Doesn’t need to for now. As long as it does to me.