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# 2023-12-25 - Lovers, The Story of Two Men by Michael Denneny | |
A friend picked this book out for me at a yard sale. It is a book | |
published in 1979 about a romantic relationship between two men in | |
in a time and place when that was much less socially acceptable. | |
The format of the book is a series of personal photographs and edited | |
questions and answers from interviews with both of the persons. | |
I enjoyed this book for its candid and intimate style, its | |
introspective depth, and because i appreciate the "genres" of | |
awakenings and new beginnings. I found it easy to relate to the | |
stories told in the interviews because i recognize many of the | |
relationship dynamics from my own experiences, recklessly jumping | |
into capital R relationships, and starting from a very young level of | |
emotional maturity. | |
I have not quoted any of the interviews in my notes. Below are | |
quotes from the postscripts. I found them interesting because of the | |
insightful self-analysis. | |
# Postscript / Philip Gefter | |
In retrospect, I begin to understand that the conflux of emotions | |
summoned by any romantic involvement draws from that emotional | |
network constructed in our initial, early-childhood attachments to | |
our parents. The texture of my feelings for Neil was similar to the | |
most primary attachment feelings I am aware of. It's no accident | |
that only Neil and my mother are capable of arousing primal rage in | |
me, just as only they are capable of evoking in me those feelings of | |
familiarity and warmth that I feel for no one else. It is at that | |
level of emotion, established long before any of us are conscious of | |
words to express it, where prototypal feelings and their construction | |
exist; it is that same prototypal network which is reconstructed by | |
romantic feelings. | |
However, in the process of connecting with Neil on that most | |
fundamental level, I lost my autonomy. Rather than growing mutually | |
close and independently richer throughout our relationship, I only | |
grew more dependent. | |
Our relationship might have prevailed were the timing different. I | |
met Neil when I was twenty-one, just out of college and in the world | |
on my first real flight from the economic nest of my family. My | |
sense of myself and my ability to survive on my own seemed awfully | |
tenuous. It is no wonder to me now that I met Neil and fell in love | |
after a month and a half of assessing and approving one by one his | |
credentials against my own internal checklist of ethics, background, | |
intelligence, and interests. It is no wonder that I became totally | |
dependent on him. ... This is not to say that I wouldn't have fallen | |
in love with Neil had I been older when I met him, but I would have | |
approached the relationship from a healthier set of needs. | |
# Postscript / Neil Alan Marks | |
I think if homosexuals want something to work, they have to work | |
doubly hard. [Because of the lack of support in society.] If they | |
are living in large metropolises, they must come to terms with the | |
erotic lures which are not only free, but which know neither guilt | |
nor respect for marital bonds. | |
... from earliest consciousness, we are forced to be two-faced: | |
certainly in the non-gay world of family and business and most | |
definitely in the social gay world of posing and posturing. I think | |
that surviving the gay social experience with a holistic sense about | |
oneself gives one a survivor's sense of nobility. For whether it's | |
the still strongly homophobic straight world or the strongly | |
self-doubting gay world, there is a constant sense of struggle with | |
visible and invisible demons for anyone who keeps his head above | |
water. | |
He talks of my various "poses" as if they were distinct from some | |
"real" me. I'm afraid that doesn't quite wash with me. ... I think | |
what Philip is really saying is that he liked certain aspects of me | |
and didn't like others. Period. | |
[Hear hear! I feel that way when people tell OTHERS that they are | |
being inauthentic. To your own self be true.] | |
# Interviewing Lovers | |
Love--romantic love or passion--seems to consist of nothing but | |
perspective (the two-interpretations-and-no-text phenomenon). Love | |
equals recognition. The lover is the only one who recognizes his | |
beloved--which is why friends can never see what he sees in him. ... | |
Recognition and awakening, the lover and the beloved. ... Love as | |
passion, the mutual awakening and recognition of two lovers, is | |
perhaps the greatest confirmation of our being we can experience. "I | |
want you to be here. I want you to be you. You belong here, with | |
me." In our increasingly anonymous mass society it's no wonder that | |
love overshadows all other themes of popular culture. | |
But love is a matter of feelings and a feeling is not a fact. A fact | |
sits there, it stays the same. Feelings not only change, they seem | |
to exist in a state of flow. | |
Gays, because of their peculiar social situation, tend to try to | |
build interpersonal relationships--love affairs--on their feelings | |
alone. Without the subtle, numerous sanctions that usually support | |
straight relationships, gay relationships tend to be grounded only on | |
affectional preference, which is no ground at all but a vasty deep | |
whose tides and currents are way beyond our ken, much less our | |
control. Who understands why they love anyone? If love is beyond | |
comprehension, it is even more beyond our control. I can promise to | |
do something, but not to feel something. | |
author: Denneny, Michael | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Michael_Denneny | |
LOC: HQ76 D46 | |
tags: book,biography,love,non-fiction,queer | |
title: Lovers | |
book | |
biography | |
love | |
non-fiction | |
queer |