Month: January 2012

January 25, 2012

A “West Side Story” Story (A.K.A. “The Angry Lady Incident”)

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Being the parent of talented children is a tough job.

Especially when they are performing on stage or on the field of play.

You want them to succeed, you hold your breath as they do their stuff, and are delighted and relieved when the show (or the game) is over. You want to find a balance between identifying completely with their performance and being totally indifferent.

You don’t want to pressure them too much or feel like the fate of the free world hangs in the balance, entirely dependent on a flawless effort.

And you try to remember (and remind them to remember) the quotation of a Hall of Fame basketball coach who said, “If every game is a matter of life and death, you’re going to have a problem: you’re going to die a lot.”

Then there is the question of how much encouragement or discouragement you visit upon your child if he actually wants to make a career in the arts or sports given the long odds of actually being able to make a living.

Two stories about that, the first a joke:

Question: What is the difference between a musician and a Domino’s pizza?

Answer: A Domino’s pizza can feed a family of four!

The other story has to do with Leonard Bernstein, who was the composer of West Side Story, not to mention a famous symphony conductor, pianist, and educator.

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Sam Bernstein, Lenny’s father, came to the USA from Russia, where musicians were held in low esteem. The musicians Bernstein’s father had encountered in his old country were mostly “klezmers,” itinerant Jews who played at weddings and other celebratory occasions, but had a hard time gaining respect and keeping bread on the table. Thus, when Sam’s oldest son displayed an interest in this “profession,” the elder Bernstein did his best to discourage the young man’s pursuit.

Eventually, his son Leonard became world-famous. And, the story is told that a newspaper reporter asked Sam why it was that he hadn’t encouraged his son in the field of music.

The senior Bernstein answered, “How was I supposed to know he would become Leonard Bernstein!”

Then there is the problem of the audience, of which you are a part; and what people say and do while your child is doing his stuff. We all have heard or witnessed parents and fans who go a bit crazy in opposition to each other over the performance of their eight-year-olds. It is worth remembering what happened on occasion when Jackie Robinson became the first black man in the 20th century to integrate organized baseball.

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Before his 1947 debut in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson played one season for the Montreal Royals of the International League. The rudeness and racism recalled by his wife Rachel at the time of the team’s April, 1946 appearance in Baltimore is recounted by Jules Tygiel in Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy:

When Jackie appeared on the field, the man sitting behind her shouted, “Here comes that nigger son of a bitch. Let’s give it to him now.” The Baltimore fans unleashed an unending torrent of abuse. All around her people engaged “in the worst kind of name-calling and attacks on Jackie that I had to sit through.” For one of the few times Rachel feared for Jackie’s physical safety. That night as she cried in her hotel room, Rachel thought that perhaps Jackie should withdraw from the integration venture.

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Fortunately, as the proud parent of daughters who have performed, I never had to deal with anything like that. Just the usual twittering, texting, whispering, program rustling, and bracelet jangling, that is the commonly experienced thoughtlessness in auditoriums world-wide.

But on one noteworthy occasion attended by me with my wife, I went beyond an occasional stern look to take on a woman who should have known better than to converse with her neighbor when my youngest child was in a high school production of West Side Story.

The lady was a senior citizen two seats to my right, nicely dressed, who was talking pretty loudly to a friend seated to her right. Because she was turned in her neighbor’s direction most of the time, it was difficult to catch her eye in the hope that “a look” might communicate my wish for her to quiet down. About 20 minutes in to the performance I’d had about enough.

I leaned as far to my right as I could (across the body of my friend Rich who was our guest) and, in one of the few moments when she was looking forward, she noticed me as I said, “Please be quiet!”

It was not said with ferocity, but I’m sure she knew I meant business. And, indeed, she was quieter for the rest of the first half of the performance.

Rich and I had to walk past this woman in the aisle as we began to make our way to the lobby at intermission. To my considerable surprise, as I passed this lady, she actually pushed me into the railing barrier to my left. I turned right to face her.

“Why were you so angry?” she said.

“I wanted to listen to the performance.”

“But I was only talking during the orchestra part, not the singing!” she indignantly continued.

“But I wanted to hear the orchestra. You know, you are not in your living room and this is not TV!”

With that, the encounter ended.

No guns were drawn, no knives displayed, no one put on brass knuckles, and no chains or tire irons were brandished — there was no “rumble” — no example of life imitating art, as in the gang fight that is a central part of the musical we were watching.

And my antagonist and her companion did not return after intermission.

Given that more and more states permit concealed weapons, I suppose I was taking a risk. I can’t recommend that you take on rude audience members, who might retaliate even more forcefully than did the lady in question.

But, it is hard to “tune out” people who create a volume of sound sufficient to compete with the main attraction.

It was another one of those situations in which different people react differently, sometimes dependent on mood, the capacity to tolerate frustration, an evaluation of the importance of the matter, and one’s ability to be assertive or foolhardy — however you happen to label such action.

In the end, I guess I should simply be glad that it wasn’t Baltimore in the 1940s and my adversary didn’t have her own set of family members handy, and a length of rope to hang from the nearest tree.

Rachel Robinson would understand.

—

The top image is from a 2003 performance of West Side Story given in Brno, Czech Republic by Městské divadlo. It is the work of Jef Kratochvil. The second photo is of Leonard Bernstein in 1945, taken by Fred Palumbo, then a photographer for the World Telegram. The third picture is a 1950 lobby card for The Jackie Robinson Story. The final image is of Rachel Robinson Accepting the Congressional Gold Medal for her husband, deceased baseball star Jackie Robinson on March 2, 2005. From left to right: Nancy Pelosi, President George W. Bush, Mrs. Robinson, and Dennis Hastert. The picture was taken by White House photographer Eric Draper. All photos are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 20, 2012

The Pain of Counseling: When Therapy Turns South

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Turning points in therapy and in life are usually seen only in retrospect.

Sometimes — many times — therapy leads to a better life. But sometimes therapy creates pain in the process of trying to do its work. The patient can experience it as a necessary part of the process; or, as one more disappointment, frustration, failure, or betrayal in a life already filled with them.

It often depends on the type of discomfort that therapy is causing.

I’d like to describe four different categories of such therapeutic problems. Three of these involve failures of the therapist. But one (Item #3) is a frequent development in therapy that has to do with the nature of treatment and how people deal with emotional pain, rather than some shortcoming of the counselor.

1. Countertransference

Therapists can get frustrated or angry with patients, attracted to them or repelled by them, bored by them or fascinated by them. Therapists are human, so they are subject to all the same relationship issues as everyone else.

Of course, we are trained to keep a therapeutic distance and to know ourselves well enough to minimize all of the above. Unfortunately, self-knowledge is always less than complete and training can be an imperfect aid when faced with challenging relationships.

The psychoanalytic concept of countertransference was an early contribution to understanding these sorts of dilemmas within the doctor and patient dyad. It refers to the therapist’s feelings toward the patient, particularly those that may be unconscious and stem from unresolved relationship issues in his own childhood.

For example, does the patient somehow remind him of a mother who was insufficiently loving or too critical? Those are the sorts of feelings that can sneak up on the counselor without him fully realizing what is happening and why.

Therapists who are not aware of the shadow of their own past can be destructive toward the very people they are supposed to help. Similarly, healers who are themselves too needy or too stressed will not be at their best when someone else requires their undivided attention. Simply put, the therapist should be safe and stable — on land if the patient is at sea, so that he will not be sucked into a whirlpool of suffering and make things worse.

In other words, the therapist must be professional. And, if he finds that he is pulling too hard or being too critical, then damage to that person is likely.

How will the counselor react if he discovers that he doesn’t enjoy the patient’s company or thinks that the patient is too demanding or too dependent — too critical or cancels appointments too often — not improving fast enough? Will the therapist lash back, feel hurt, try too hard to win the patient’s approval? Under such circumstances, the patient can be harmed, even if he provoked the relationship complication himself.

Therapists are well-advised to reflect on their own feelings, work on their own unresolved issues, obtain advice or supervision about challenging therapeutic encounters, and sometimes refer the patient elsewhere; not to mention, get their own treatment if their issues are compromising professional responsibilities.

2. Therapists Who Cross Boundaries

There are two categories here. First, those therapists who mean well, but are not aware of their personal vulnerabilities and the necessity of inviolable boundaries between themselves and those they serve. These practitioners therefore fail to set firm limits on responding to the neediness (or attractiveness) of their patients. Second, there are those self-described “healers” who are frankly corrupt.

  • Let us begin with the first of these two categories. In an effort to help, some therapists simply do too much for the patient. A few examples:
  1. Discounting (or deferring) fees to the extent of feeling resentment.
  2. Agreeing to schedule appointments so early or late (or on weekends or holidays) to the point of wanting to help the patient more than the patient wants to help himself.
  3. Seeing patients outside of therapy in some sort of quasi-friendship.
  4. Giving patients a physical contact that they crave which leads to sexual contact.

I’ve known therapists who took too many calls in the middle of the night for their own good or that of their family, counselors who brought patients who were down-on-their-luck into their own homes, and those who did not (I don’t think) intend for a comforting hug to become sexual, but who found that it did.

  • In the second category, some counselors — thankfully not a great number (although one would be too many) — take advantage of the power relationship in treatment. An attractive patient can be used for sexual purposes, or for the ego-boost that such encounters can provide, without conscience; or with some sort of rationalization that it is actually therapeutic. It isn’t, no matter how much the patient provokes it, desires it, or the counselor rationalizes it. More on the problem of “dual roles” and boundary violations can be found on a previous blog post about damaged therapists: When Helping Hurts.

3. When the Patient Has Improved Somewhat and Now Has Less Motivation to Continue the Hard Work of Treatment

Naturally, when therapy is working the person who came to treatment starts to feel better. Sometimes, in fact, he feels better even when therapy isn’t doing very much. Many if not most individuals come to therapy in a crisis. Eventually such a crisis will pass or at least begin to be more tolerable, even if the treatment isn’t the reason.

Once the patient is experiencing less pain, he now has less reason to stay in therapy. The pain is what brought him in and the desire to reduce pain was the motivation to do the hard work involved in treatment. Now that there is less motivation, there just might be less cause to suffer the unsettling thoughts and feelings that therapy stirs up, not to mention its financial cost and the amount of time that it takes.

Take a look at the graph below. The red line (AB) is the pain of “life,” the distress that the patient finds outside of the doctor’s office — the upset, unhappiness, and disappointment that brought him to consult the psychologist in the first place.

The blue line (PQ) in the graph is the pain or effort required by the therapy process itself. Therapy is hard work. It is often also intense and wrenching, since it asks people to change, stop avoiding frightening situations, and face the demons that might have been covered over until the therapist worked to address them: those incompletely healed psychic wounds that are still excruciating to touch.

intersecting lines

On the left side of the graph you will note that the red line (AB) is above the blue line (PQ). That is, when the person enters treatment, the pain of the person’s life is greater than the pain caused by therapy’s effort to make life better. But, as I indicated, at some point it is likely that the pain of life is reduced, while the discomfort (effort or difficulty) of therapy remains constant or might even increase. Why increase? Usually because the most tenacious problems are the hardest for the therapist to successfully address and might include taking the patient deeper into traumatic memories that he has tried to look past.

Once the patient has improved sufficiently (where the two lines intersect at point C), he now begins to find that staying in therapy causes more discomfort than getting out of it, as indicated on the graph by the fact that the blue line is higher than the red line (on the right side of the image). When the point of intersection of these lines is passed, the patient often wants to terminate treatment. Only those with sufficient “therapeutic integrity” or courage will stay long enough to resolve the most intractable of the issues that brought them to the doctor’s office in the first place. Or, they will wait until another life crisis brings them back to finish the job.

4. Therapists Who Haven’t Done Their Homework

It has only been in the last couple of decades that research has begun to point clearly to those treatments that are most helpful for some of the conditions therapists treat. Broadly defined, for example, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be the “treatment of choice” for most people who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Despite this, many therapists who claim to treat such conditions do not avail themselves of these treatment approaches or don’t familiarize themselves with the research upon which they are based.

Why?

Some weren’t trained in how to evaluate research or in how to engage in this form of therapy. Some stopped reading about progress in working with these conditions or “don’t believe” in the conceptual grounding of CBT. Some are too busy (or think they are too busy) making a living to afford the time and effort required to be up to date. Some trust their intuition to the point of rejecting anything that doesn’t match what they have come to believe is most important about how to deliver service to the people who seek them out.

The difficulty here is that therapeutic models should not be like religious beliefs, based on faith rather than evidence.

While a failure to follow “best practices” for which there is empirical evidence is not as egregious a violation of trust as sexual contact with a patient, counselors must keep learning and growing in their field of alleged expertise, just as much as they encourage their patients to grow personally.

In summary, therapists are not unique in having the capacity to do injury, but their position of authority gives them a vantage point somewhat like that which parents have with their children, making it easier to accomplish quite inadvertently.

The remedy? Obtain recommendations about counselors from those you trust. Read up on the treatment of your condition. Collaborate in your treatment, don’t just count on the therapist to do exactly what you need at every moment. Let him know about any concerns that arise. If necessary, get a second opinion. And keep your eyes open for the things I’ve described.

Not least, have the courage to stay in therapy even when the process touches on important issues that are sensitive.

As the old saying tells us, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

And, no, I don’t mean “…going out the door.”

—

The above photo is called U-Turn by Zipley is sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Intersecting Lines is sourced from onlinemathlearning.com

January 14, 2012

Beware of Therapy Past Mid-life: Reflections on Reading “The Sense of an Ending”

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“Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” Satchel Paige’s words suggest that life should be lived “full steam ahead,” not weighed down by regular retrospection. Most people take the advice to heart, at least to some extent, even if having never read it or heard it.

And, past age 60, my experience as a therapist suggests that such reconsideration of one’s own history becomes less and less likely. Unless tragedy strikes, a senior citizen who is a therapy virgin is not likely to seek the counselor’s services. No, the story that we tell ourselves about our life usually becomes fixed and — one must say it — self-serving, so that one does not become overwhelmed by remorse and the things that “should have” (or should not have) been done: the failed persistence, poor choices, and chances not taken; the damage done to others, including our children, our lovers, and our friends.

It is as if our old brain knows what our young brain couldn’t imagine: that there will come a time when there is not enough of a future to redeem the past.

We are, most of us, pretty well rationalized.

Yet this is what Julian Barnes’s prize-winning book The Sense of an Ending is about: the reflection upon and reevaluation of a life of 60-some years, by the author of that life, Barnes’s fictional narrator Tony Webster. And, if you are inclined to such self-analysis or even the common speculation about why people in your life do what they do, you might just find it the best work of fiction that you’ve read in a long time.

On the face of it, the story appears to be a simple one: a tale about pre-college friends including Tony, and his relationship with his first serious girlfriend; then losing touch with all those people, one of whom suffers tragedy. Finally, a jump of 40 years and the reinterpretation of that tragedy and those relationships, as well as his second-thoughts about himself. All of this occurs because of an apparently inexplicable event that disrupts Webster’s “peaceable” way of being.

Until that new monkey-wrench is thrown into the works, Tony thought he’d “wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded.” Somehow he’d trod a course that set aside youthful ambitions and hope for excitement, settling for things (and women) that were predictable and straight-lined. Eventually, he will realize that “We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.”

What he must now face — the way in which long-ago actions have continued to have consequences — is the mystery that Tony (and the reader along with him) will soon come to know.

The book raises a number of issues:

  • How much can you trust your own memory?
  • How much of your memory is selective and comforting?
  • How much are you responsible for what happens to you in your life?
  • How much are your actions responsible for what happens to others?
  • Past what point is self-reflection destructive or, to paraphrase a Jack Nicholson character, “Can you handle the truth?” assuming that it is knowable?
  • How much damage to others do even the most careful of us cause?
  • Is it possible to be completely honest with oneself?

Most of the time one does want to — need to — think that “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” The world would be too scary otherwise.

A simple example illustrates the complexity here:

In graduate school a friend requested me to help his girlfriend move some things from one apartment to another. Although I owned a car, I took the rapid transit and got off at the wrong subway stop, one station away from where I should have been. I didn’t realize until I walked a bit that it was in a terrible neighborhood. In the event, I arrived at my destination safely on foot.

But instead, you could have read this story on the next day’s front page:

Northwestern Graduate Student Murdered Near Cabrini-Green Housing Project

That no one did has always seemed to me a matter of pure luck.

What if I hadn’t been so lucky? Others would ask themselves, how did this happen? Doubtless, my friend would have found out; his girlfriend, too. Would they have felt guilty? Neither intended to set the chain of events in motion, yet both were a part of that chain.

As Tony Webster would say, “There is accumulation.” One thing leads to another.

Why didn’t I drive? Even I can no longer answer this question; I simply have no recollection of how I came to the decision to take the subway. Was it to save money? Was it because I thought it would be difficult to find parking? Was my car in the repair shop?

And why didn’t I walk back to the subway stop soon after I got off the train, the better to go to the next station? Shouldn’t I have been more aware of my surroundings and a little more terrified? Was I too cheap to pay another fare? And if I was, to what extent was that based on how I’d been raised, lessons learned at home about the dearness of the dollar? And if that is so, do my parents have some responsibility in the chain of events?

The example I’ve just given you might seem a bit silly, but I assure you that Barnes’s protagonist confronts a set of events that are much more compelling, involving real events and relationship complications, not things that didn’t happen, as in my illustration. But in both instances, one can ask oneself many questions: Why did I do that? What if I’d not done that? What if I’d done something different?

On the answers to these questions — really, on the actions themselves — lives can depend; at least the quality of a life.

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The Sense of an Ending reminded me a bit of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. In each novel the author gives you enough information to put you in the position of an important character in the book, forcing you to live with the same incomplete knowledge that the character has of how things will end up. In Barnes’s work, this will likely cause you to want to reread the book, just as Tony Webster attempts to reread his life through letters and photos, the incomplete testimony of others, and his own imperfect and self-justifying memory. But at 163 pages, the rereading is just as engrossing as the first read-through (for me, just one day earlier).

If you believe that, in Kafka’s words, “a book should be an ax to break the frozen sea within us,” then know that this is such a book.

All of us are, or could be, like Tony or Lot’s wife, from the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot is the nephew of Abraham in the biblical Book of Genesis. Lot and his wife are permitted to leave before God’s destruction of the two famously iniquitous cities, but there is a catch. They are instructed by angels not to look back. When Lot’s wife does, she is turned into a pillar of salt.

Yet we must look back, mustn’t we? At least some of the time? Isn’t that how we learn? As a therapist, I would certainly say so.

But the biblical rejoinder comes to mind from Ecclesiastes 1:18:

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Or in the words of Tony at the book’s end:

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The positive aspect of looking back can be found here: The Handwriting on the Wall.

The two images are photos of Hamo Thornycroft’s sculpture Lot’s Wife. The first is the work of Yair Haklai. The second is the uploaded photo of Donald Macauley by Amada 44. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 8, 2012

In the Days Before Girlfriends

Life is full of the before and after of things: before and after you could walk, before and after you began school, and before and after you started to mingle with the opposite sex.

It is hard to remember what life was like before. How was it before you had children, for example? Most parents can describe it, but kiddies alter life so that such a before feels distant — as if it happened to someone else.

This brings me to those days before I or my friends made actual, palpable physical contact with young women, other than, perhaps, walking into them by accident.

Life was simpler without thinking about girls.

It didn’t make a difference how you looked or who looked at you. One grudgingly talked to girls but didn’t enjoy it, as you did when conversing about baseball with Ron, Steve, or Uncle Sam.

You didn’t play ball with young ladies and got the creeps when they were fond of you—something in their saucer-eyed, admiring gaze.

Yes, some fellows teased girls, perhaps to show interest. Some were testing what they could get away with, trying to see where their boundaries were and what mischief was possible. Hardly a reckoning with romance or a lesson in lust.

Anatomical curiosity was present but didn’t require attention to body parts beneath undergarments. Or maybe it did, as in, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

The kid who got the most playground notice from the Jamieson School first-graders enjoyed flipping back one of his upper eyelids (turning it inside out). At the same time, he crossed his eyes, thus provoking an occasional howl from a squeamish classmate.

He would put on the show for free if you were his friend and flip the second eyelid, too. Others were charged a nickel.

Today, he’d be running for President.

At home, there were only occasional allusions made to throbbing physical attraction. My recall of this, because it happened every year, was viewing the Miss America Pagent on TV, an event not to be missed by my father or Uncle Manny.

When a curvy contestant sashayed across the stage in her bathing suit, my dad would yell out, “Holy Criminy, hung to the gills!” in a half-humorous hoot never uttered at any other time.

The old man wasn’t talking about fishing.

Few use the same reference to a woman’s bosom these days. Dad might have invented the phrase since he was an avid fisherman.

In fifth grade, my eyes were drawn to a girl’s legs. One girl in particular. What was this about? I asked myself. My little mind found it illogical.

Those female underpinnings no longer appeared as a simple necessity designed to keep the girls moving forward and avoid a significant reduction in height.

This new attention to a distaff body part was involuntary, not to say alarming. This was the first sign my body was taking possession of my brain. Adult women know about this masculine flaw, but as a kid, I had no idea.

At about the same time, some females invited my classmates and me to boy-girl parties. Spin-the-bottle was a highlight, although the darkened room the chosen couple entered — the one who had done the spinning and the opposite-sexed person at whom the bottle pointed — was an innocent place.

The girl with the beautiful legs, who would soon be my girlfriend, asked me a question in the dimly lit cell we inhabited for a few minutes:

“Gerry, did you know the most beautiful girl in the world is deaf?”

Ever the straight man, I could only answer “No.”

“What did you say?”

In other words, attractive legs and witty.

I never heard my folks talk about sex, but on occasion, a question would be answered in a way that was nonetheless informative. Watching The Untouchables TV series with my father, I heard the word prostitution about one of the illegal activities the Capone gangsters operated in Chicago.

When I asked Dad what the word meant, he said, “It’s when a woman sells her body.”

My head buzzed.

For what?

To whom?

At the grocery?

What aisle is that?

I knew he would say no more, so I refrained from asking.

By the end of sixth grade, I was hip-deep in the latency period. Freud labeled this as the time before puberty when your sexual preoccupations go to sleep.

Although Sigmund’s thoughts on the subject are not current gospel, I recall losing interest for a while. I submit as evidence a party to which I was supposed to accompany a charming lass named Heidi, about whom I forgot while riding bikes with my friend Jerry.

An hour after the get-together was to have started, I awakened to my faux pas.

I apologized to the poor girl, realizing it would be best not to tell her what caused me to lose track of time, my desire to be with her, and my obligation.

Whatever earthly urge bubbled down below was sublimated into alternative activities and interests. Perhaps they fueled our school work or athletic endeavors.

One of my friends displayed more interest in lunch than ladies. Neil pasted a magazine picture of a hamburger, fries, and a coke on his bedroom ceiling, so it was the first thing he saw every morning. A few years later, Marilyn Monroe took its place, I imagine.

By age 16, I was slightly jealous of the two guys I knew well who had started going out with girls. These friends had no obvious appeal, setting them apart from the rest of us, which puzzled me.

Their relative success, however, did reinforce my esteem for the illustrious Sigmund Freud,  who must have been as stunned as I was when he asked, “What do women want?”

Not these guys, I thought. Yet the facts suggested otherwise.

To their credit, those pioneers on the route to consequential sexual contact introduced me to the fact that success is often a matter of showing up and saying something. They’d asked some girls on dates, and sometimes, the female targets of these requests said yes.

The idea was simple. You sometimes get to first base if you swing at a baseball with your eyes closed.

Taking the initiative was all you needed if you were male, and most other Y-chromosome types were holding back. Much later, I realized most of the girls were waiting by the phone, as desperate for a date as we were terrified of calling.

Of course, the alternatives for the most insecure males were begging and pleading, but they still required enough courage to get within whimpering distance of the selected damsel.

But where could you be with a girl in private? Not at home, where curious parents and evil siblings might spy on you. My friend Alan didn’t want anybody to see the three-ring circus he lived in, at least not someone he hoped to impress.

Even so, he arranged for his date to be dropped off at his house one Saturday. As they prepared to leave for a movie, Alan’s father asked, “Where are you two going?”

“We’re going to a show.”

“Why are you going to a show? You’ve got a show right here!”

One of my regular compatriots at the Mather High School cafeteria would bring the daily Chicago Sun-Times to the lunch table. Soon enough, we were all drawn to the part of the paper advertising movies, theater, and especially the burlesque shows of South State Street.

The Rialto Theater’s ad acted like a magnet because it reported there would be:

MIDNIGHT SHAMBLES EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT. BRING THE LADIES!

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Substituting for the possibility of fondling an agreeable female, we spent many lunches pondering what midnight shambles would involve. The group discussed it so often that, for convenience, we made it into the acronym MSBTL.

Since none of us were old enough to attend, my buddies had no alternative but to think about it and talk about it.

Suffice it to say, had the Rialto Theater somehow charged our group for the time we spent fantasizing about naked, shambling women, it would have generated more money than it derived from box office receipts.

The premarital sex thing remained mysterious to most of us, impenetrable in every sense, and immoral since it was the early ’60s, which remained in thrall to the culture of the ’50s. The sexual revolution hadn’t quite begun.

At the same time, the topic was mystical and quasi-religious, the kind of subject spoken of by hooded shamans in hushed voices while incense burned. Quite different than today, in other words.

The actual idea of intercourse suggested lots of moving parts you didn’t yet know how to move or where to move them, like the tabs and slots I wasn’t adept at working with when I tried to follow the directions for assembling model airplanes:

Insert tab A into Slot B.

What?

Carnal knowledge also demanded technical skill in dark places without the miner’s helmet I was inclined to wear to improve my chances. Notes and diagrams might have been helpful, but without the light, well…

Why didn’t a girl’s body come with instructions written on the package, like a box of aspirin? Luminous lettering and diagrams would have been a welcome addition, as well.

Many of us were in the dark, literally and figuratively, lacking the required touch — deft and sure — that was far more challenging to acquire than the ability to hit a line drive to right field or throw a curve ball. Nor was sexual mastery a talent you could perfect on a public baseball diamond.

All the while, a ten-foot-tall sasquatch-like entity named “Insecurity,” who had his chair at our regular Mather High School lunch table, instilled whispered self-doubts in whoever sat beside him:

Aw, jeez, why did you say that?

Does your hair look OK?

Are you sure your fly is zipped?

How did we survive all this? The way most other very young men do. The procreative urge and a little courage find a way to carry the day.

We are all the descendants of people who had sex.

I have told you, friend, the last bit of information in confidence: the bit about actually “doing it.”

Your forbearance would be most appreciated because, whatever you might think to say, I’m sure my adult daughters still don’t want to know at least about their parents.

==========

The top image is Hawaiian Boy and Girl, a 1928 mural by Arman Manookian. Next comes a photo of The Untouchables Cast, 1960. From left: Nicholas Georgiade, Paul Picerni, Robert Stack, and Abel Fernandez. Finally, the author of the bottom poster of the Follies Bergere is “Pal.” All the images come from Wikipedia Commons.

January 4, 2012

How Not to Choose a Mate: Reflections on “The Bachelor”

File:The moment of happiness.jpg

I don’t watch much TV and certainly not much reality TV. But still, I find The Bachelor and The Bachelorette on ABC have their fascination.

You probably know the drill: twenty-five competitors for the affection of a single member of the opposite sex. The “star” gradually winnows the field over the course of the series, until only two remain for some sort of romantic, cliff-hanging showdown. All this is orchestrated around activities that have a Fantasy-Land, once-in-a-lifetime quality; and done in places of exotic beauty that would make virtually any honeymoon seem shabby by comparison.

Yet, cast out of paradise, the couples rarely if ever last. The undying love dies. The bloom comes off the rose.

Why?

Here are some reasons:

1. Who are these people?

We are offered competitors who are uniformly very attractive, some sensationally so. Why are they single?

As they are generally in their 20s or early 30s, is it really possible that they have exhausted the more conventional ways of finding love? Many complain of previous romantic disappointments. Do they believe that their chances will be better with 24 rivals than they were in their past history of dating? Isn’t their judgment here a little suspect? A move to Antarctica might actually improve their chances; at least if 24 other beautiful people didn’t make the same trip.

Some have resigned from jobs or left small children behind to take a flyer on a stranger who might have only been seen by them on the past season’s edition of the Bachelor/Bachelorette enterprise, where he lost the race they now hope to enter themselves. Again, what part of the decision to come on the show should make us think that this will end well?

2. Alcohol

Wine appears to be the omnipresent social lubricant during the filming. It is well-known to disinhibit people, making for more drama. But it tends to add to whatever relationship problems might exist, if not create them. Nor will romance conducted while buzzed necessarily predict a successful daily life while sober. Solid relationships tend to begin with poetry, but must survive in prose. Just so, they can start with a toast, but are sustained in moderation lest they become toast.

3. Mistaking Intensity For Love

Since the contestants are not movie stars, the idea of being a TV celebrity must be a pretty heady experience. Indeed, there is no shortage of cinematic emotion on these shows, partly because of the enchanting surroundings and dazzling events. Everyone appears stressed by the competition, sometimes by a lack of sleep, the nearly total absence of privacy; and the guillotine-like quality of each “rose ceremony,” which some of the contestants approach as they would if a real headsman were about to execute them and not simply let them go. All the internal stirring that comes from these circumstances can mistakenly get attached to the single object of everyone’s affection. Will “Mr. Wonderful” be nearly so exciting when he comes home to share a TV dinner instead of a dinner on TV?

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4. Casting

Is there any bona fide attempt to choose 25 contestants who might actually be compatible with the bachelor or bachelorette; that is, beyond obvious physical attraction? My guess is that the producers are looking for people who are outgoing, quirky, and sometimes perhaps even brash or off-balance, all the more to make for watchable relationship dynamics. Not much room for the sedate or the shy. This is, after all, a real-life soap opera.

But, if compatibility were crucial, wouldn’t you want to choose people based on similar interests, well-matched personalities, geographical comfort zones, and the like? Once the final couple leaves the Disney-like surroundings, what are they going to talk about, where will they live, what will be the emotional and financial or career costs of relocation, and what kinds of activities will they share?

5. Motivation

Are all 26 people, including the star, there for what are called “the right reasons?” Surely, some come for the bells and whistles, the self-display, the adventure, or the idea of having their 15 minutes of fame. Others may see it as a means of self-promotion, increasing their chances for personal career success or for the advancement of their business.

6. Time

One repeatedly hears the suitors moaning about not having enough time with their romantic target. And, of course, the time they do get is being video recorded, creating a distinctly artificial analogue to the way the participants would be in “real-time” and real life. Even beyond that, the show is apparently filmed, start to finish, in about six weeks. While I’ve known brief courtships to lead to long-term romance, they are usually time-intensive and exclusive, cramming a lot of experience into the space of a few months. Does serial dating of multiple partners for a very few weeks favor long-term survival of the match between any two (still) strangers?

7. Supply and Demand

Consider the set up:

  • Everyone around you thinks the star is terrific.
  • You have nothing else to do other than talk with your dorm-mates and drink.
  • There is only one available member of the opposite sex.

The scarcity of options alone suggests that his value is likely to go up, at least while those conditions prevail. Put more crudely, if you know there is going to be a food shortage, lots of people are going to knock themselves out to get to the meat counter first and stock-up; even vegetarians. But would you really care about that particular grocery item nearly as much, if the stores shelves and freezers were full of other possibilities and no scarcities were anticipated?

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From what I’ve seen of these shows, there is much sadness and heartbreak on all sides. Yet the new contestants come “looking for love” with Pollyanna-like optimism, somehow thinking that their experience will be different. A few, from what they say, may already be smitten with the star, who they’ve seen get hurt in a previous edition of the show.

All are smart enough to know that even if they “win” the romantic prize, their relationship is almost certain to break down once midnight strikes and the carriage turns back into a pumpkin; where real life intrudes on dreams and a pie in the sky crashes to earth, leaving an inedible mess.

Yet they do still come.

In the course of the show, and in reflecting on it later, many appear to learn something about being open to experience, not closed off to what life may yet offer. Surely some grow, profiting from the pain and disappointment, not to mention the chance to see how they behaved when the program finally airs. In this way, each contestant is offered the rare opportunity to view himself or herself not in the mirror, but in the actual lived experience that the camera records.

I expect running the show’s gauntlet itself has the value of adding to each person’s life story — the story that they tell themselves about their lives. To have tried some things, even if you fail, is better than to be a back-bencher, rarely getting into the game. As war veterans say, nothing in their life after war compares to the intensity of the time in battle, even though that time was frequently awful; indeed, because of the nature of the awfulness.

I don’t wish to be too cynical here. I am convinced that many of the potential lovers come for exactly what they say they want, that “Thing Called Love.”

In spite of everything. In spite of the terrible odds. In spite of the likely humiliation and defeat.

In spite of the heartache.

Why?

We do so want to be loved, don’t we.

As the old song goes, “I’d Do Anything For Love.”

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The Moment of Happiness at the top is the work of Claire mono from Taiwan. The photo that follows is called The Kiss by Bleiglass. Finally,  The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.