I Was A Teenage Existentialist #2

Driving Off The Road to Nihilism

This driving off the road event was an accident, but it was no accident. That is, it was not an isolated incident. It almost seemed inevitable. I remember Ray Manzarek of The Doors talking about how they did not understand that Jim Morrison of the Doors was an alcoholic, because “alcoholics were old guys on skid row- Jim just had a drinking problem.” But that is what we grew up with, that drinking was cool, and we were ignorant. Prohibition made drinking subversive, and drunks were brave, daring and cool. That’s What Men Did. My namesake Dean Martin was tipsy-drunk on every show for 9 years on NBC(or he pretended), and he got $75 million in RCA stock for it back when you could buy a steak for five bucks. The former Dino Crocetti never rehearsed, didn’t care if he screwed something up, he had that magic touch of Getting Away With It. Sinatra said “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink.” The Thin Man having cocktails with Nora, W.C. Fields tippling, Red Skelton with steam coming out his ears and going cross-eyed after a belt of gin, Jackie Gleason saying “Wow!” in Miami Beach, Paul Newman hung over in The Sting, even Laurel and Hardy, we were taught that drinking is funny, hangovers are funny and masculine, it is suave and sophisticated to be having a little drinky-dink, it is Manly to get Hammered. Girls liked Bad Boys, said Joan Didion. It was rock-and-roll to be getting a little bit Juiced to the Max. Men used booze to show how tough they were, how much punishment they could take. The Irish don’t talk about how much they drank at a wedding, they talk about how long they drank at a wedding. It’s how they got braggin’ rights. It’s also the back-asswards way we had of dealing with emotions- something girls had, but men weren’t supposed to. We were supposed to be tough, cold, ready for The Army. Because The Army was Inevitable. We thought at 18, we’d be drafted and shipped to Viet Nam and killed in a couple weeks, like my neighbor Tom. So what the hell?

Getting blotto also fit in really well with my own nihilistic view of America. Who wanted to face reality at a time like this? We were the Bad Guys, not in a good way, and we were growing up being very unhappy about joining in. America is Warlike, violent, sexist, racist, patriarchal, it all sucked. When everything seems fake, getting hammered is real. It’s like cutting. Getting high was a way of signaling to each other and ourselves, that we were Not Part of the System, I wasn’t Working for The Man. I was a co-conspirator, and even though it was more like being a petty criminal, I felt like I was in The Resistance.

Plus, Boys were supposed to be tough, we had to be able to Take It. Girls were supposed to take care of themselves, they had to protect their bodies, they were delicate. They paid attention to their well-being; how they looked, how they felt, where they were in their cycle, what they ate, what they wore, how much they drank. Women were playing Defense, men were playing Offense. Men paid no attention to their bodies, unless they were gay (I didn’t know what gay meant at all, all I only knew was that there were some guys who acted a little like girls, like my mom’s hair dresser- she said “they were ‘that way’”). In those days, you were gay if you were clean, dressed well and smelled good.

My faith tradition (Lutherans) preached Against the Body, we were supposed to be above that sort of thing. The spirit and the mind, pure in thought, word, and deed. Being physically fit was a form of Vanity, so was looking in the mirror or having nice clothes. We wore clothes to protect ourselves from weather, or maybe look nice for church (“for the glory of God!”), not to aggrandize ourselves, or, heaven forfend, to Become More Attractive. Lust was not on the table.

My wife was shocked and dismayed in a conversation we had, when I was in my 50s, where I described how I never learned to relate to my physicality. She was a dancer, a disciplined athlete. She knew her body from head to toe, I knew mine from head to neck. My mom said, “If you’re sweating, you’re doing something wrong.” I’m with her. Exercise was something the athletes did, athletes were jocks, and jocks were into having school spirit, rah rah rah, Pledge of Allegiance, and they were Patriots, and therefore pro-war, pro-Vietnam War in 1969. We were theater geeks, foyer freaks, peaceniks, cig smokers, art students, music fans, pot-heads, we did not try to get strong enough to beat someone else up, we sat around and listened to records and drank coffee and smoked. She said “So how do you think of your body?” And I said “It’s the thing that carries my head around.”

When we learned much later that this alcoholic thing was a disease that runs in families, specifically ours, it started to make more sense, because both my parents had alcoholic brothers. It was not discussed, it was shameful, a weakness of character, a sin, and personal matters were not shared unless it was under duress, in hushed tones at funerals or gravesites or in hospital corridors. Norwegians don’t talk about scandal. They pretend it didn’t happen.

Getting buzzed was the obvious part, making a spectacle of yourself with public drug and alcohol abuse was an overt act of self-destruction that said We Are Not Straight (meaning Not Sober). Cutting ourselves out of the herd mentality. We were non-conformists. You could get beat up for having long hair, so we had long hair. I wore a short-hair wig at my job as a stock boy at a grocery store.

Smoking pot is another story.

#30#