A Quick Questionnaire

I haven't done one of these in a few years. It seems like a good time to see what answers I would give now.


When and where were you born?


I was born in 1970 in Abington, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia
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Where did you grow up?


I grew up primarily in Manassas, Virginia, where we moved when I was around 8 months old for my father's work and stayed until I was sixteen when my parents divorced, at which time we finally got out of there and I moved to Maine for my last two years of high school. Apart from maybe my father, I don't think anyone else was ever very happy in Virginia. We went back to Pennsylvania frequently, almost every weekend when I was very little, every holiday, and for weeks at a time during the summer. I thus identified with Philadelphia, the longed-for home, as my real home. Everything always seemed both more fun and normal there, people were more rooted, they had a wider variety of regular jobs, they did the kinds of social things like going to happy hour and bowling that characters in old books and movies did. My parents still went to and even had me go to their old eye doctor and dentist in Pennsylvania for a long time, until I was around ten. For most of my life since I have never told anyone I ever lived in Virginia, not even my wife, until someone in my family had to let it slip in front of her and ruin my carefully cultivated image of my childhood.


What is your earliest memory?


 I have always considered my earliest memory to have been some kind of party with cake in the apartment in Virginia where we lived at the time when I was three, but this is just an image, a momentary snapshot of memory. The earliest memory of an event is a time that we went on a long ride to visit some fancy gardens somewhere and had to leave because my mother had a migraine, with my father being very angry all the way home. He always had little tolerance for sick people, so it is ironic that the woman he married turned out to be an extreme hypochondriac. My parents would only have been around 26 and 24 years old at that time.


What was your upbringing like?


There wasn't a lot of joy in the home. My parents were, as noted above, quite young and not well-suited to each other. My mother suffered from depression and a myriad of health woes from as far back as I can remember, while my father was a good-looking, vigorous young high school teacher in the 1970s with the full 1970s licentious mindset, which was not conducive to a harmonious and calm home life. I will say, at that time my father never drank, at home at least, because his own father had been a terrible alcoholic, though much later, after I was grown up, he became, or fancied himself to have become anyway, something of a wine connoisseur. My father was quite bored by family life I think and he was out a lot, while we were left with my mother who spent a lot of time lying around crying. I was always taken to the library and when I was very young, before my father started to basically go away every weekend, we went to a lot of historic sights. My father thought I was very bright because I was an early reader and displayed a rapid understanding of math and the ability to memorize facts--being a young public school teacher he was accustomed I suppose to dealing with complete morons--but I don't think he knew what else to do about it.


Do you have happy memories of that time?


No, not of family life. I have some happy memories of being in Pennsylvania.


Did you ever have nightmares?


Not as a child. As an adult I have gone through periods where I have had dreams of being in my parents' power again at which I thrash around and react violently.


Do you have any brothers or sisters?


I have 2 younger sisters.


How would you describe your relationship with them?


I don't really have one. It's my fault, they have tried to be friendly and to reach out to me, but I don't relate to them very much. I don't really relate to anybody very much at this point.


What did your parents do?


My father was a history teacher until I was 25 or so, and he was 47, when he left that profession and did a number of other things to get him to the present, when I think he is more or less retired (I last saw him 6 or 7 years ago; I piece my sense of what he is doing through 3rd party sources). My mother did not work when I was a child. Much like me, she was mentally prepared to lead the life of the previous generation, and that life only. and did not adapt strongly to feminism and the divorce wave and the burgeoning new economy of the 1970s and early 80s. Eventually she held a series of jobs in florist's shops and drug stores after she was 40 and there wasn't really any alternative to not working.


Your family: are you close to them now?


No, not at all.


What sort of values did they instill in you?


I don't know. I'm kind of a valueless person. Part of the problem is that my parents were so much in conflict with each other, that the qualities they most held dear were what they considered to be the character flaws in the other. There was no united front in anything. My father thought my mother was lazy and weak, so he promoted the idea that we all had to fight the urge to be lazy and weak, especially me, as I was inclined to be those things. However I still have no idea how to overcome those flaws and banish them entirely from my character, though I am ashamed of them. My mother on the other hand resented that my father was a jerk and was mean to her, so of course in the cliché scenario she thought the most important thing was that I be a "good"--meaning essentially a nice--person regardless of whether I developed any more useful or interesting qualities or not.


Who was your role model when you were growing up?


My father, I'm sure. I didn't know anybody else.


Did you go to church when you were younger?


No, never.


What was your school life like?


It was all right. When I was in elementary school we lived in a fairly low-income neighborhood so I was a much more able student than almost everyone else in the school, which was not great for me, as it gave me an exaggerated sense of my actual comparative cognitive ability. I don't have a lot of great memories of school, until I lived in Maine, where I really did love the school.


Did you like school?


I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I liked the early grades. From 3rd through 7th I would be sad on Sunday evenings at the prospect of the weekend being over, but nothing worse than that. In 8th grade I actually began to like going to school again, getting to see the girls and all of that. Though I did not make the connection at the time, I did go from being around 5'6" in 7th grade to 6'2", and from then on I was always one of the bigger kids wherever I was, which has been a bigger help to me in my life than I am wont to acknowledge. The girls did not exactly begin to love me at that point, but they at least stopped laughing at me to my face as they had done in 7th grade, which was decidedly an improvement, though whether this was because I was taller or because they were more mature, I don't know. 10th grade was kind of a lost year as I went to 3 different schools as a result of my parents' difficulties, but then as noted above I loved my school where I went for 11th and 12th grade very much.


Did academia come easy to you?


To a point, after which I should have tried a lot harder. Needless to say I don't feel like I advanced to my maximum potential. But who cares? I don't wonder whether anybody else achieved their potential, unless they strike me as being really uniquely and interestingly intelligent, which is rare.


What were you like as a teenager?


I was probably even more openly desperate to be loved and for something exciting to happen in life than most people. I walked all over creation as if it were a kind of penance for whatever I had done to offend the gods that I did not have the talent, personality, sexiness, etc, that I craved, that I would in this way purge the evil spirits that were causing me to be deprived of these things. Otherwise I pretty much liked the same things I like now. I haven't developed very much, though if I had not had so many children I probably would have found some different and more adult hobbies and interests.


Did you have any school nicknames?


None worth remembering.


Were you a popular kid?


No. I was never really popular. I had some friends, but even within the larger group there were always some members who did not care much for me.


What did you do after school?


From 2nd to 5th grade I played football a lot, almost every day during the season. In the winter I don't remember what I did. Later on I walked around a lot, went to the library, cheap restaurants and diners in high school when I began to have some money. In high school I would hang around for some time after the regular day was over, often for practices, but even when I didn't have practices I would walk around the hallways and look out the windows and linger near areas where activities were going on because I liked it there so much and I did not want to go home.


Did religion have much impact on your life?


It must have had some impact. Not that I am especially religious, though I read a fair amount of Christian literature and I have attended church pretty regularly, albeit in a going through the motions kind of way, for the last ten years or so. I don't participate in any of the activities the church sponsors to help poor people or refugees, I don't regard the priests as my spiritual leaders or superiors in wisdom, and I politely resists all exhortations from the church authorities to step so much as a millimeter out of my comfort zone. And then of course to appease my wife, who feels strongly about these matters, I go to a Protestant church even though I consider myself to be a Roman Catholic, and consider the theology of that church to make somewhat more sense if one is really going to take the religious view. I like hearing the Bible readings, I like the music, I like getting an hour alone in a nice room without my children, I like communion, I like the donut table after the service. I like hanging around the parish hall, though I liked it better when the church library was in this room before the books were removed to some locked office. This is all very shallow, obviously, but at some point as with reading the number of sheer hours you have committed to it must have some effect. Most people are persuaded that if you spend enough time doing bad things like watching television or eating at McDonalds that you cannot avoid being damaged by it, yet it is easily believed that one can engage frequently in supposedly positive activities and get nothing out of them at all.


Did you ever get into trouble with the law?


No.


Have you had experiences of racism?


Probably, but nothing that was traumatic or especially bothered me. I have to confess, as long as there aren't any pretty white girls joining in on the side ridiculing me or ripping me apart on account of my racial characteristics--which has never actually happened, though I often imagined it happening--my sense of self is pretty strong.


Have you ever had a drugs phase?


No, though I would have if I had gotten in with people who encouraged me in that sort of thing.


Are you a political person?


Not like everyone else. I did not as a young person expect faction to be as much of a determining factor in how people regarded you as it has become. The last candidate I remember running who I felt any kind of trust or kinship with in my idea of what the country is was Bill Bradley, and that's going on 20 years ago.


Are you violent by nature?


No. Really, to the point that being more naturally violent might have been an asset to me, at least as a youth.


What makes you happy?


I like being out in cities and lively towns, bars and restaurants and train stations, public gathering places of a slightly highbrow nature. Some of the happiest days of my life were when I was able to be in crowds or in lovely places in Europe or the better parts of America where I felt I was among people at least at my level of sensibility and perception, and I am always seeking to replicate these feelings in my planned outings and travels, though it has been years since I have really experienced the sensation. Of course anything I can experience in real life that approximates the life I am nostalgic for in old books and films and so on. I should say my family, and I do love them and they do make me happy in a "real life", where would I be without them kind of way, but most of the times when I say I felt happy I was alone and imagined myself to be occupying, or potentially occupying, a particularly desired persona and role that was not actually real, and whenever other people such as my family members are introduced into an experience too much of my actual self rather than my perceived ideal self must inevitably be revealed, which renders the experience imperfect, in my view, in almost every instance.


Is there any difference between the way you are and the way you are perceived?


I certainly wish it were so, and in fact some belief of this sort still underpins my entire social existence, but I suspect it really is not the case.


Did you always know what you wanted to be?


I still don't really know what I want to be, and I have even less of an idea how I might go about getting there. Besides that many of the things I thought I might want to be when I was younger don't really exist anymore, at least in the forms that made them attractive then.


Tell us about the worst time of your life?


My life hasn't actually been that bad. My parents' divorce I experienced at the time more as a social inconvenience and embarrassment because I kept having to move schools and my family was presenting as not having its shit together, so to speak, at all. I was quite badly depressed last winter when I had the kidney stone surgery and did not feel well for a couple of months, sleeping and crying a lot and being convinced that I was dying. I am doing a lot better this year and am not having any of these extreme emotions. Since I met my wife, who is an unusually good-looking, positive, problem-solving sort of person who wants to have lots of babies and to whom nothing bad, or too difficult for her to overcome, ever seems to happen, I have really had nothing that could be considered a serious problem to contend with.


What's one experience that has had a big impact on you?


Moving to Maine when I was 16 was very important for me. Even though none of my classmates at that school really remember me now, the atmosphere there and getting to live in a beautiful town for a couple of years among kids who were quite smart and well-read but without the arrogance and social Darwinism of a mid-Atlantic high school was something I desperately needed at the time and probably salvaged such spirit as I had. Then St John's had similar nurturing qualities, though the more hard-headed thinkers there probably would not want to hear that, and of course my time in Prague was very important too, there would be a big hole in my life if I had never been able to travel in Europe, or somewhere approximating it, a little.


Who has had the biggest influence on you?


Probably my father. A lot of that influence seems to have come in the form of being stifled by his domineering personality, and hopelessly trying to imitate his more prominent qualities, even if some of them were ridiculous. I have not had much in the way of close mentoring-type relationships with men, no professional career or serious sports involvement such as being on a college team or something where any live people are going to be able to influence me. I suppose in school the cooler and most desirable men I was acquainted or even friendly with would have had some influence but I don't feel that that has persisted to this point in my life.


What issues concern you?


I am concerned about wealth concentration and the general degradation of the population which seems to be going hand in hand with that. The decline of college, in particular liberal arts education, even from the modest stature it attained in this country in say the 1950s and early 1960s, is sad to me. The cultural decline of the western countries in general as their populations age and the number of younger people shrinks with every generation seems like it must be some kind of loss too but no one except very bad people and idiots seem to care very much about it so I guess I shouldn't either.


Would you consider yourself a sane person?


Yes, sadly, I haven't got an un-sane cell in my body. I seem to be hopelessly, incorrigibly normal.


Who are your best friends?


Other than my wife I don't really have any friends at this point. I had friends at school, but some of them have already died and others I have seen just a handle of times in the last twenty years.


What made you pick up your instrument?


This questionnaire was originally directed to a musician, apparently. I don't play anything of course. I did take violin in school for about five years so I can read sheet music to some extent, but I wasn't very good. Not the most soulful person, which seems to be important in being good at music.


What first got you into music?


Well, popular music was always ubiquitous, so much of it has turned out to be laden with associations and meaning. Last winter when I was depressed one of the things that would cheer me a little was going to a diner that played 50s and 60s rock records. I'm sure if I had gone to a place that played 40s music or Billie Holiday-type songs that would have worked too though I am not aware of any such place near me.


What was your first show like?


I was the MC but I think I came off a little stiff and overeager to be judged good.


What was your first shag like?


I'm not free-spirited enough to answer this in any event, but...yeah. I didn't have the kind of life-is-a-great-lark carefree sex life that allows for 'shagging' and other sorts of wildness.

Is it true you ask women to shave themselves before sex?


Whoa, that one came out of the blue. I assume the question is referring to pubic hair. My very short-lived, Ryan Leaf-like career as a man about town seems to have long pre-dated the trend of shaving (down there) which I don't really understand. I like the natural look. I would want to ask a woman who had too much facial hair to shave, but I probably wouldn't do it for fear of losing the chance. It goes to show you, these questions assuming some amount of sexual agency and power are totally foreign to my sensibility.


How important is sex to your being?


Sadly it has mostly been the sole determinant of my worth as a human being, and the final tally was pretty much in years ago. I continue to exist, I suppose, but without anything like the same degree of interest or motivation. Even the ability to meaningfully affect/direct my children's lives as far as willing them onto a higher plane of intelligence or experience or economic instrumentality is not something I have proven to be driven to do to any great extent.

If you could live your life over, what would you do differently?


I'd have to find some way to be more aggressive and relentless, and everything else--the ability to insouciantly approach more women, to grapple for money, to pursue opportunities, to contend successfully with other capable people--would follow from that. But I still don't know how I would do that.


What is your philosophy on life?


Mental receptivity and adroitness are underrated and misunderstood qualities. The interplay of well-developed human minds is the height of our experience. The interposition of the machine as a more advanced, or at least faster kind of mind able to master infinitely greater quantities of data, is overwhelming the interactions between human brains and human people and is not enjoyable to this point for most of them. Practice a general macro-morality while allowing, generously but not too generously, for exceptions, it is the only way I have found to maintain sanity and positions I can be comfortable with in the face of extremists. I'm sure there are more things, these are the main ones that occupy my mind at the moment.