Vanhattan

Every Tuesday afternoon available to me, I spend a couple hours at the Brooklyn Public Library sat around a giant conference table, reading select plays with a mishmash collection of the city’s finest Average Citizens, those of us with a few extra hours on hand and at very least a fleeting interest in dramaturgy. Since my first attendance last September, we’ve gone through an equally mishmash collection of works including: The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman; Trifles, by Susan Glaspell; Fences, by August Wilson; The Visit, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt; They Knew What They Wanted, by Sidney Howard; and we’ve just about finished Take Me Out, by Richard Greenberg.

The Director of the group, a previous drama professor of mine and a fascinatingly intelligent, charismatic, crass, caring man, conducts sessions in as objectively unbiased a manner as possible, meaning that we all read at least a few lines every session, without regard for gender, sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, political spectrum, hair color, eye color, height or weight, or whether or not you have a stutter, which many do, or even like public speaking, which I feel many don’t (although with practice, everyone seems to grow fonder and fonder of the attention). We’ll read aloud for a solid block of time, I’d wager about half an hour, and then take another half hour to discuss what we’ve read thus far (IF we get to the reading; this past Tuesday the discussion started before we even turned to the page we’d left off on).

I like these Tuesdays, I like the swelling group the Director and his librarian cohorts have amassed. It’s a decent sampling of the cultures all clumped together in this at times godforsaken, overcrowded group of islands standing stalwart and proud on the edge of the continent. I’m unusually and distantly fond of each of the attendees, I like watching them develop their confidence — or, conversely, learning to tame it. I like learning from them. Everyone has something to say, and more often than not, what they have to say is intelligent, informed, well-thought-out, and none too personal or self-therapeutic, the way us closeted actors, artists, playwrights often seem to be. I try not to speak too much, because I do more than my fair share out in the wild, and sometimes it’s good to sit down, shut up, and listen. I’m constantly and pointlessly surprised that when I zip my own trap, I find myself considering other proposed perceptions, something I like to think I’m pretty good at to begin with (it’s my anxiety, I need to know everything and think of everyone and be good at everything so everyone on the planet likes me, really likes me, I NEED YOU TO — I NEED YOU TO LIKE ME — ).

I like that I’m proven wrong every session. It makes the rusty gears start cranking. I like how in-depth the others can get, and I like when it gets so politely rowdy (we’re not allowed to attack, belittle, ridicule, or judge — at least out loud) that the Director has to corral everyone with a firm, playful bark. I like that there is a group of people from all different corners that can discuss difficult concepts — the rights of and sympathy for pedophiles, where and how far hate legislation can go and the responsibility of individuals to protect themselves versus the responsibility of society to protect marginalized groups, whether or not intolerance exists if it goes unexpressed but lives on inwardly (if a tree falls yaddah yaddah — yes, you guys, it makes a noise) — I like that the discussions get this deep every single meeting.

Another reason I keep my mouth shut, is because every single meeting, instead of focusing on the conversation at hand, I’m brought back into the same overarching argument with myself.

We spend hours trying to suss out the answers to deep, meaningful questions, we debate motive and what the playwright intended or didn’t intend, why a character would act a certain way and why they should or shouldn’t, what the context is, what time, what day, what decade. That’s the point. That is the literal purpose of our meetings.

And I keep thinking something along the lines of, but not quite crossing, why bother? Hours of trying to fit people, fictional people, at times very real people, into neat boxes and categories that explain away some of the most beautiful and horrific moments of human nature. We’re very adamant about it. We insist upon it, being able to reduce the actions of a largely illogical, emotional creature down to certain circumstances, we want to say, “This is how they should behave, and this is why. Because they fit in this box, and people in this box are relegated to this list of characteristics and corresponding actions.”

Darren Lemming is gay, the other men on his baseball team are not (or at least aren’t so vocal about it). Why are his teammates so angry about it? Because he’s a baseball player, first. Baseball players — athletes — are America’s sweethearts, they’re straight, strong, manly men, probably Christian but not too Christian because they’ve gotta joke around with the boys and get a little rough ‘n’ tumble to show that they’re men.

But then he’s gay. And that doesn’t fit in the baseball box. Baseball doesn’t fit in the gay box. No box. Hell didn’t break loose, Lemming untied its chain and it took off after the postman. (We won’t talk about the glaring, gaudy, glitzy pink elephant in the room — straight men uncomfortable with sexual attention, feeling unsafe under the potentially predatory gaze of a peer — it’s too easy, low-hanging fruit.)

And then we, as a group, set about trying to figure out why. Why Lemming told them, why Shane Mungitt blurted out “faggot” on live TV, why he blasted Davey Battle with a pitch that killed the guy at home plate and if he meant to, why the boys beat Matthew Shepherd, tied him up and left him for dead, why people were so surprised, why Troy cheats on Rose and if she deserved to cheat too, why he off and, behind his back, told Cory’s coach that he wouldn’t be playing football anymore.

We try to simplify things for ourselves. Make complicated matters, lovely moments, inhuman actions, make sense. Make it make sense. Make it into something we can grasp, firmly, no slipping, no wriggling. Hold it in our tiny palms and lift it up to our noses and say, “I know what this is. And I know how to dispose of it.”

I keep thinking to myself, secretly, because I have this niggling notion that I’m entirely full of shit, but I keep thinking that if we stopped trying to make sense of things, and just accepted them as they are, we might be a bit happier. A bit more welcoming, a bit more capable of handling someone Different, something Other. A bit less scared.

Kylie (my roommate) says that it’s possible we have to break things down to their smallest parts, get familiar with them in order to reduce that fear, so that in the future, whether or not Darren Lemming is gay and an athlete isn’t so earth-shattering, because we understand it.

I want to know why we have to understand something to not fear it. I suppose it boils down to biology and survival instincts, but we’re supposed to be beyond our most base selves, our primal urges should be acknowledged and told that there is no lion in the dark, it’s just a dude in drag. To me, the need to understand and solve implies that there is a problem to understand and solve. And the drive to do this with everything, not just things we have deemed as a society to be wrong (murder, torture, cheating, pedophilia, stealing, the list detailing genuine mental and physical harm to others goes on….) suggests to me that, I dunno, maybe we treat our humanity and its individuality as a problem to be solved.

You are not like me, so you frighten me. It’s wrong. You’re wrong. I can solve that for you.

I do it all the time. I’m a bartender in Brooklyn. I am constantly trying to rectify people’s manners. I delight in kicking them out, in putting them down, for a spectrum of actions spanning “What, no ‘hello’?” to “You are not allowed to talk to people you do not know about your cumrag when they do not want you to, please leave” to “Call the police, someone has a knife.”

I despise religion, and I look down on those who practice it. It’s stupid. When you die, you die, cope with that fear, and stop forcing other people to do like you under the guise of saving their souls. (But I believe in Santa Claus and will die on that hill.)

You are not like me.

I want to know why we need to know why. I kind of feel like it’s taking the fun out of being different. Being surprised. Learning something new. Someone new. That’s the exciting part of life, isn’t it? How much there is to pack into the limited years we get? There are so many reasons for why we do what we do, how can we whittle it down into these tiny, neat little boxes?

There are reasons for what we do, of course there are, they are many and varied, biological, chemical, contextual, natural, nurtured. But isn’t the best thing, the most human thing, what they are as a whole? We are more than the sum of our parts.

…But then there’s psychology and therapy and people who do bad things and how do we help them and others around them without understanding why it is they do and feel what they do and feel, how do we legislate to make society safe for everyone, and do we do any of those things, or should we just let everyone run rampant, what right do we have to tell anyone to do or not do anything, I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want anyone to hurt. I just want to have a good time.

I have no answers. I have bad questions, and I ramble about things that get stuck flitting around my head, so as to give them a window through which to exit.

In the meantime, I go to the group. I read the plays, and listen to people talk. I like the experience.