The ritual of having children has never quite caught hold of me. I am, perhaps, what some might call a “serial monogamist.” Perhaps back in primitive days I’d have been some sort of absentee father, trudging across the African savannah in 50,000 BC, addicted to the scent and subsequently impregnating a farmers daughter here, fixated on the shimmery flesh of a hunter’s wife there, perhaps narrowly escaping a stoning, or perhaps nothing. Perhaps people didn’t even think in terms of daughters and wives, romance. Perhaps we simply gyrated against and within each other for a small duration, having no clue what we were doing, simply enjoying, and simply going about the rest of our day hunting, farming, which may have simply consisted of following a herd of cattle around, spearing one in the ribs when we were hungry.
Perhaps my life rituals live on from these humble roots in an era some might call the nanny-state, a state of multiple choices, where perhaps no true choice exists. Perhaps the only theory is the pheromone theory, and I am trotting round this fair planet with a emitting a pheromone signal that shouts “potential wives and mothers, be gone, this is not provider material, find a different man, perhaps in a suit, to provide you offspring and meat!”
Well, that might be part, but perhaps it’s more truthful that when I decided there was such a thing as artist, and that I should be one, there was a notion that the act of being an artist was akin to devoting one’s life to the priesthood. Early Somerset Maugham summarizes my philosophy. But is the role of an artist just an ego-driven folly? Is the act of procreation the same? In both one replicates ones self into future rituals. Is the entire course of human activity simply a series of human follies? How and why does one justify their “chosen” path?
I imagine humans have been lazily repeating social and sexual patterns since above mentioned cave man days, and in these modern times, I somehow have not been privy to the ritual of providing a nest for offspring, or consequentially pro-creating. Perhaps it is a choice, but it is a lazy, only semi-conscious choice resolved in part by looking at the paths available to me. The fact that I never had kids could be due to my family background, it could be due to perceived dangers in the world, it could be many things, which I will now contemplate.
Let us contemplate the soy burger — an excellent protein source. Perhaps in some parallel universe soy protein is a gourmet delicacy, but in our US of A it is most often forced to fit into the ritual of hamburger cooking and eating. In this ritual, it would only occur to one to eat soy rather than meat, if one is conscious that meat is a bad choice for feeding oneself. So the vegetarian proselytizes to the carnivore, attempting to trick his or her hard-wiring into substituting soy for meat, and to do so, soy must mimic the beef hamburger ritual. The soy must be hearty substance, able to withstand grilling, often over an open fire. The soy burger must fit within 2 pieces of bread, and should be good company for garnishings like tomatoes, pickles, lettuce, catchup, cheese, mustard, and occasionally mayonaise. It can then be readily passed around a group of friends or relatives and consumed on a sunny summer day, preferably in close proximity to a beach or perhaps just a beer. The fact that it is a SOY burger, lets one continue to a large extent with the ritual while clearly eating something that is a better choice within that ritual, a choice that is easier on the planet to create, easier on the body to digest, one that does not contain the fats that adversely affect the heart, one that is not cruel to sentient beings in its production. However, part of its virtue is also its shortcoming: Blood, being the most obvious, the savory liquid that is the proof of an animal sacrifice, one that assures the consumer he or she is atop the food chain, even the grease, the unhealthy film that is left on one’s fingers, lips and chin when grabbing a burger fresh off the grill, is a sensuous reminder of its authenticity, and lest we forget, the soy burger’s smell is not that of roasting flesh, but rather dons a slightly medicinal quality, like the lab-created replication that it is. Alas, the soy burger’s supreme creators managed only to make it mimic meat as far as it can mimic meat, and thereafter it is simply an inferior burger. Even if you corrected this nuance or that, it would never be as good as a straight-up beef hamburger.
In like spirit, today’s ritual of a red-blooded American family man consists of:
1. Owning a truck and/or a luxury car, proving one’s ability to provide an adequate nest.
2. One should enjoy sports, preferably having gone fairly far in one, perhaps have even gone pro had it not been that one was accepted into Business School. Preferring particularly violent sports like football or boxing shows a comfort level with violence, and thus, the more likely it is one will provide adequate protection for the nest.
3. One should support the actions of our military (3a) while at the same time proclaim one’s belief in Jesus Christ, (3b) while at the same time espouse a hearty lust for silicon-breasted women with spray-on tans.
In short, one must not think at all, should the inherent contradictions of the above philosophies become apparent. The ideal family man is a neanderthal with an MBA. This is the strain of gene that tends to dominate in our culture, although my evidence is entirely anecdotal.
Lo, I am but a soy burger of a man, barely able to make a living, a person who studied the history of art, alongside numerous gays and —god forbid — women. It is a smart social combination, given my lack of machismo. Women who chose me must choose to deny that ultimate turn-on of a high-income muscle-bound protector, the man comfortable with violence, the one who ultimately will go the distance, which is marriage and children. Pretty much, I’m a fag who happens to fuck women. I haven’t been in a fight since, say, 7th grade, and heck, I can barely even watch football!
But I’m comfortable as a soy-burger man, a role I have perhaps lazily slipped into. Before my effeminate discipline of study, I was previously labelled a soy-burger of a boy — or should I simply say a defective boy -- by people within our Seventh-Day Adventist community. My parents divorced, there were a couple domestic violence events, substance abuse, my mother’s chronic depression, constant moving from town to town, in general, we were a mess. One look at our fractured family, and we were a social project for do-gooders to prop up their own role. A stigma followed me. Dating as a teenager, there were parents who felt I had no role models, and would not mature to become one, though I’m certain they piously hoped for the best. Even as an adult, in more than one relationship, discussions return to my upbringing, which according to some partners, has taught me little in the ways of family loyalty. Certainly, I will die with the “not family material” label upon me, and it will have been true, and perhaps even a bigger contributor to my soy ritual than some primordial urge. I don’t argue against that, but I will argue the validity of my choices, which due to my background, I’ve had the freedom to choose.
From the non-Seventh-Day Adventist culture at large, we did more often eat Soy Burger than beef, as the religion espouses good health, the body being the temple of God, or what have you. We were also conscientious objectors, i.e. — it is sinful to bear arms. Man has no moral authority to kill another man, as it is written right there, in the most obvious commandments from God, written in friggin’ stone, given to Moses, who shared with God’s chosen: “Thou shalt not kill.” To reinforce that, the Son of God taught us to “turn the other cheek.” I’ve chosen to retain this in my personal moral code, even though I’m either agnostic or atheist, depending upon which mood you catch me.
Although I don’t feel compelled to mimic any particular role model, I do espouse, from high atop this soap-box, the general philosophy of Christ (whether he existed or not) that no one is perfect, we are all works in progress, and to forgive imperfections. I believe in a broader morality than personal gain, or even tribal gain, or that my family is better than yours — which also stems from my Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing. All god’s children are equal, therefore, we never had intramural sports, nor even grades in one school.
To some people, this is abhorrent mediocracy. They might project the “work in progress” philosophy to parenting, but set bars that are concrete. They guide their children through discipline, religion and politics. Being somewhat of a self-parented child, I have at points applied all the bull-shit to myself, and mostly, have realized I should be free. Whether I achieved this point of view from liberal teen and early adult psychotropic drug use, I cannot be sure, but given the hostile nature of the environment in which I was born, feel I should not adhere to the model of a family, nor larger lessons our culture teaches us, which is largely a study on the value of war, nor place a virgin soul into this mess. I discourage most friends to pro-create, but if they do, I discourage living up to the conflicting standards of that family man, lest they wind up, in the words of Henry Rollins, “a twice-divorced alcoholic like me.” No, the innumerable conflicting standards read like a match against flint to my sensibilities, and I see flints ignite from Oklahoma City to Iraq.
Nor I do have that desire to attack life as if an invading marine, grabbing that career, that wife, creating my tribe. I’m much happier dabbling in my paints, or music, or writing new characters or what have you. My so-called artistic achievements will be my legacy (even if I have no agent or publicist). I can attack the color orange within that art, be as violent as I want to that hateful color, without hurting anyone. Or I can write a murder ballad, again without hurting anyone. Since a small child, I have always locked myself in my room, drawing my secret drawings, building imaginary cities, my fantastical life of no consequence while the misery of my parents’ doing continued outside. If it may seem like escapism, it is actually much more than that. Let’s call it a philosophical “sketch-pad” which enables an artist to act without consequences, revealing human nature with fictitious scenarios, empathize within imaginary scenarios and characters, allows one to freely explore themselves and others, and eventually hone one’s “real life” activities into actions that reflect a kinder personal ethic.
In reality as opposed to art, all events have direct and immediate consequences that manifest themselves physically and block or open future paths in real time in real lives. They can maim or kill, or at the least, hurt feelings, or just hurt. Sometimes they even leave offspring. Jack Kerouac proposed the first thought is the best thought, but in my experience, a thought that has undergone contemplation is much better. That said, I cannot escape the conclusion that life is a series of joys and pains, no matter what you choose to do, no matter how many souls are swirling about in similar patterns.
Sure, it is obvious that bringing a soul into this world, especially one’s own child is a joy that outweighs pain. But let’s dwell on the pain: When my sister had a baby, I could not help but think of it as the most barbaric act left in western culture. She did it naturally, a very long labor, which pushed her to her limits of pain and exhaustion, afterwards using a doughnut shaped pillow to sit on wherever she went to alleviate the pressure while healing from her horrible birth wounds. Why more feminists do not protest against this barbaric victimization of women is beyond me. Simply put, birth should be illegal!
Likewise, I find the casual regard about bringing a new soul into this existence stunning. People even ASSUME that they will have children. As if they have no say in the matter! As if there is no other way to contribute to society, or to not have children is not fully contributing. These days, to opt out of procreation is almost as freakish as being gay was before Stonewall. Now, even gays are rushing to procreate! Where is the contemplation? Don’t they realize that contemplation is the luxury of the first-world homosapien? Frontal cortex, people, frontal cortext!
The generation in which I was born has passed its youth and created the next generation. I am stuck with THEIR children. In a way, I can’t help but think the lessons of the sexual revolution, the lessons of self-realization, the lessons of pure and simple ecology were at least partially lost. Intellectually, I know this may be incorrect, but looking around me, emotionally I feel the wrong people had children. The new hipsters that surround me here in good ole Brooklyn have gone back to pro-creating in their 20s. Many mothers are content to shun careers, though to be fair, there is the bourgeoning class of stay-at-home dads. Even if they shop at Whole Foods, their personal rituals seem Monsanto grown…OK… I’m ready to reduce this to what I really feel: PEOPLE ARE BEING REPLACED WITH HYPER-CONSUMING, BABY POOPING CORPORATE COGS BEARING STUPID TATOOS, TALIBAN BEARDS, AND BABY STROLLERS!
Ahem… Sorry. It’s not the heat, it’s the humanity…
Here in once dilapidated Brooklyn, the once sparsely populated G-train is now cheek-to-backpack in humanity, as their brand-named bags are apparently too precious to put on the floor. I’m forced increasingly to deal with their snarky “Daddy-issue” manners, with which I have no clue how to handle, as I’m no “Daddy”! It just exacerbates my anxiety about how capable they are to handle the future. Each time a brownstone is torn down, I dread the Ikea-manufactured 7-story baby-pod that will replace it, spewing these dewey youths that recklessly destroy any authenticity in their wake. “Oh, look, they’ve opened new bank.” Even if a small boutique business opens, as opposed to a faceless chain, it is so precious, you can’t help but think the proprietor got a blue ribbon every 1/2 hour of their lives from their first poop to losing their virginity. It will soon pass that our brief generation of punk-rock offspring-denyers never existed, and will be forgotten like a discarded appendix, a vague memory of a bad taste left in one’s mouth by a soy-burger. Only the empty slogans of punk rock, piercings, tattoos will live on. The content is, as someone from a previous generation pointed out, just the dull stuff between commercials. One soy-burger consumes the other.
In the olden days, before Brooklyn was gentrified to provide a “Truman Show” set to anyone who has the cash to participate, there was what one once was called “struggle.” There have been books written about it by Howard Zinn and so forth, and I believe MTV or TLC network might have a reality show that approximates this historic phenomenon.
A quick aside: In 1967, when the monkeys went to heaven, before my parents went crazy, when I was in kindergarten, our neighbors had about 8 or 9 kids — I don’t remember the exact count, and probably neither did the parents. I asked my mother why there were so many kids in their family. My mother said it was because they were Catholic.
My Sicilian-Catholic great-grandma was a mere 14 when she was sent off from Palermo, Sicily to her aunt in Chicago circa what, 1910 or 20? Well, it wasn’t technically Chicago. Back then Italians were shunned from Chicago proper, and “Italian-towns” cropped up just outside the city limits. They were nick-named “Ciceros.” One still exists as a bonafide suburb. Anyway, while she was in line to be processed on Ellis Island, a couple n’er-do-wells abducted her, put her in a fishing crate and transported her up the Hudson River to Albany where they intended to sell her into the “white slave” market. While at this hoodlum’s house, they found that her aunt that she had been planning to live with in Chicago, was a childhood friend of their mob-boss in Albany. In their Sicilian-neanderthal world, when a woman stayed under another man’s roof, it was the same as losing her virginity, which she had just done. Therefore, she was no longer suitable wife material, therefore, she probably could only make a living as a prostitute. The family of that virgin replication of Mary, mother of God, would sensibly retaliate by killing whoever it was who took that un-wed virginity. They quickly realized that their boss would whack them… unless… wait… unless they found someone to quickly marry her! So they wed her to a 35 year old man, my great grandfather, and together they had 12 children. What a joyous, romantic story, eh? Put that in your sock-hop.
On my Southern Baptist side, I have a retarded cousin, Niki. I’m sorry: learning impaired. He’s nearly 70 now, and has lived a relatively happy, fulfilling life. He is, however in another way, a “soy-burger man.” He was oxygen deprived during birth. When my aunt Lavinia was in labor, her doctor was out of town. It was a small god-fearing town in west Tennessee along the Mississippi River, mostly poor dirt farmers or other just-under-subsistence wage dwellers. There were 3 doctors, the other two refused to cover for my aunt’s doctor who was out of town when she went into labor, thus sending the under-trained nurses into panic mode. The nurses bound my aunt’s legs together until her doctor returned the next day. Yes, brain damage.
Nevertheless, once past the threshold of life, Nicky has lived a happy fairly happy one. A devoted Roy Rogers fan, his biggest life event happened in his 40s when he and a dozen or so people of his ilk visited Roy and Dale at their ranch in California (btw, Roy and Dale apparently parented 30 or so adopted children). Now that his mother has died, he lives in a group home with other dependent types out there in the town he grew up in, Dyresburg, TN, and I hear works in some sort of a wood workshop that employs people with his level of competency. The point is, his IQ is perhaps very low, yet most of his life has been happy, and even productive with peaks and troughs like any other life.
A couple decades ago, my then devout feminist girlfriend and I sat and watched Pat Robertson with Niki’s mother Lavinia the morning before a family reunion in in Dyresburg. We had been talking for a while, and were quite comfortable in each other’s company when Lavinia confided that had she known how Niki’s life would be she would have opted for an abortion. After all, she wasn’t even convinced she was in love with my uncle Quentin. He was just some sexy guy that raced motorcycles who managed to get into her nickers. Lavinia’s choice to procreate was the most profound choice she made in her life. So much so, that she still contemplated whether she made the RIGHT choice some 60 years later, despite the fact that she was a Southern Baptist, who despite the philosophical box in which she was born, still vocalized that thought even while watching Pat Robertson.
My mother, herself, though happy with me at the time of my birth endured an unhappy marriage, domestic violence, and barbiturate addiction. She never said she regretted having me, but I did overhear one phone conversation that she had with her sister after a poignant argument with me. She was telling my aunt that just looking at me reminded her of Jerry (my dad, her ex-husband), and she hated me for that. I’m not saying this for sympathy, I simply think it’s an interesting dilemma. Like Lavinia, she wanted to go back in time and abort me, though there I was, a full-fledged teenager resembling her life nemisis. Consequentially, asserting her authority, she refused to let me live with my father, ie - let him or his psychic offspring, win, which I pleaded for numerous times. Instead, she first sent me to live with my music teacher. WTF? The following semester to a Seventh-Day Adventist boarding school in northern Michigan. Finally, I was liberated from her latent indecision regarding the merits of my existence, and allowed to live with my dad mid-way through my junior year of high school. In short, she was a woman who desperately wanted to backtrack and make better decisions.
My sister’s best friend, Linda Yalem, was jogging in a park adjacent to her college in Buffalo, NY. She was abducted by a sex maniac who strangled her to death with a wire while fucking her. This was his fifth sexual attack on young women within a short period of time, at the same small section of the running path. Why hadn’t the school warned the students? Simple: the administration did not want to tarnish their reputation by making the previous rapes public, and consequently Linda became his first murder victim. This was a common practice by Universities in the 80s for which I can supply other examples.
If warning students of danger is bad marketing, and this is how we treat our “gifted” children, how is the underclass treated? Ask Michael Brown. Ask the boat people constantly sinking in the Mediterranean, the Mexicans routinely suffocating in the back of box trucks that smuggle them into the US.
In an early Marina Abromovic performance, she stood in a gallery for 6 hours with items of pleasure or detriment such as feathers, roses, whips, and a gun on a table in the gallery. Anyone could interact with her. At first, she describes the attendees as playful, but soon the performance became carte blanche for abuse. Her clothes were torn off, the long-stemmed roses were stuck into her flesh, one person placed the gun in Abromovic’s hand and began forcing her fingers to pull the trigger, another grabbed the gun saving her. Shia LeBeouf did a similar performance in which he wound up being raped by a young woman — in front of her boyfriend! (So it isn’t solely testosterone as villain).
At any time I can see Linda Yalem’s murderer staring back at me from my computer screen. He has his own Wikipedia page. They tally up 20-some rapes to this guy, and the lives of 5 women. His story is that he hated women from an early age because he claims his mother used to humiliate him. He was a model father — a classic family man. He coached his two boys’ little league teams. He went to church on Sunday… and occasionally raped and strangled women. He was eventually caught after dinner with his family at a restaurant. A rape victim who survived had since been working with the police and identified him while he was eating. They took his fork (I would venture to guess he wasn’t eating a soy-burger), and were able to get a DNA sample to match that which was found on this woman’s body. I don’t know what the notion of family, nesting, nurturing meant to him, or how he arrived at his rituals. Some have suggested he’s like an animal, without thought, and should be put down like a dog with rabies.
I remember growing up hearing the argument, “the wrong people are having kids.” If that is the case, one of “us” is OBLIGATED to have kids, it is our duty, for the sake of the planet. How could you possibly argue against it? It’s so flattering that to argue against it would imply self-hatred. Or, if you could be possibly more arrogant, you could adopt, i.e. save those “other children” from poverty and ignorance. Most well-informed liberals will not adopt puppies from a puppy farm, yet Asian BABY FARMING is a full blown industry complete with brokers, and of course, and I’m not even touching the whole domestic serogate mother issue.
My partner Laura and I have discussed adopting, but I fear cats are the closest we will come. Laura’s suggested adopting a war orphan, or a kid that come from drug-addled families (like mine?). I respect the notion of mentoring someone already in dire circumstances more than the more traditional, narcissistic model of parenting. Mentoring, to me, is what parenting is about. Which is also what you can do by simply living your life and contributing to our culture in a way that makes this life a more interesting, more rewarding place. But perhaps that’s just my soy-burger narcissism kicking in.
If the world were not overpopulated, if civilized society was not in a free-fall, if there was a welcome net for that off-spring to land, or even a wilderness, I may commit to the act. But even if I were a caveman, without a notion of overpopulation or the end of time, I may still be more interested in my most recent cave painting, or perhaps how to smelt bronze. Seriously, does the world need yet another over-consuming westerner to drive a farting car, eat the meat of farting hormone-fed cattle, to fart themselves? My abstaining from procreating is my fart-free duty fullfilled.
This entire pro-creating world of insipid violence wears the face of a family man, a so-called “religious” man, to boot. The notion of loyalty, devotion, it is a two-edge sword. I don’t even agree with the ideological frameworks that encourage procreation, family, nationalism, so why on earth would I want to bring a new souls into this environment? To make a young man or woman in my image to endure the cultural entropy which will be yet a further generation along? To send them to war, to clobber Mexicans escaping local thugs only to be greeted by new thugs? Am I going to raise the next Messiah? Have you read the story of Jesus? That’s not what I want happening to my theoretical kid.
