Patrick Jay Sullivan's Blog

I am not sure why I constantly look back in life at the really good times. Lord knows while I was living them I really didn't know they would be the good old days. I suppose part of it is getting older and having less control over what life hands you in the work place. It seems also that as you get older and become perceived of as being a dinosaur, a relic of an era gone by, you lose a lot of influence over life events in your personal life as well. When I look back over my life I remember the exact day when I realized that there are A list people and B list people in this world. It was a sunny autumn Monday and I was teaching a ninth grade English class. It was from an anthology text that was popular in the 70's and 80's. We were beginning a short story called "The Endless Streetcar Ride Into the Night." In the story, a guy is going on a blind date and thinks he is doing a favor for the girl. As he makes one blunder after the other during the evening, he comes to the realization starting back on the cable car ride with his date, that he is the blind date. The girl is doing him a favor. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that I often am oblivious to this situation in my own life. Who really knows why people like to spend time with you and why some don't. It is especially true in gay society. You are either an A lister or a B lister and I am definitely a B lister or maybe even C list if there is a third category. Gay men are very vain and they judge people on many levels. First of all is physical appearance. You have to be a certain body type, handsome, with really beautiful teeth and hair. Youth is prized but looking young can diminish advancing years. A bid dick is a definite override for some smaller faults. You must have the ability to engage in what Armestad Maupan's character, Michael Tolliver, refers to as "sparkling repartee/" You have to have good taste and dress in a certain way. The list goes on and on. I grew up in a family of 13 and the straight override was big. I missed out on a lot of the things a young fag is supposed to learn. In my family, career was and is king. I chose education and with the aid of my parents I treated my personal career like a grapevine that would, in time, yield a very rare and beautiful wine. Every ounce of energy went into that career and keeping up with family things. Now at 57 my folks have passed on and even one of my older sisters has passed away. My other siblings are out living their own lives and we don't ever get together except once in a while smaller groups. But I still carry them in my heart and they are still number one in my life. I feel deeply in love with one man and it did not work out. It ended in a long distance relationship and neither one of us was willing to give up our individual situation and move in with the other. But I think more than anything else, as a young gay boy in elementary school and later in high school, I got the message of how inappropriate it was and how hated we were and are. I tried desperately to cling to religion and find a way that this problem could be taken from my life. That was what they told you back then, being gay is a test from God and if have faith, you pass and it is taken from you and you are restored. It's all bullshit, but when you are a kid, you don't want to be different from everyone else and being gay is a different that no one would chose under any circumstances. So I spent my early life and even my twenties and thirties on the outside looking in trying to figure out what normal was and is. I never knew. I was an imposter. This set me apart from gay men who ended up saying "Fuck it" and embracing it full on. I never did that until I hit my thirties and if I am honest, not until I was in my forties. Or maybe I have yet to do that. I don't know. I'm still on the outside looking in but I have a much clearer idea of the inside now that I have passed fifty seven years on the planet. I am a survivor. There doesn't seem to be any prospect of sharing my life with another, no deep abiding love in the crystal ball. It's not a bad thing. There have to be a few dolts out there so the Ken and Larry's and the Matt and Danny's and the Peters and Seans and Brians of this world can feel the true happiness of having that ideal. I have had the good fortune to face up to a lot of things in the past couple of years and I know I have passed the crest and am heading down the back side of life towards the finish line. It is time to throw out the junk in the closets and basements. It is time to simplify and begin living a more humble and quiet life. It is time to forget the dreams and make some new one. Time to embrace the next generation of family and see if I can be the interesting gay uncle and maybe have an influence in their lives. I have been deeply in love with two men in my life and perhaps that is all I get. If it is, wouldn't it be nice to know that and to accept it and to treasure those few years of deep happiness? Much better in my opinion than running around looking for something that is not there. Time to clean house and get rid of superfluous material possessions and junk. Time to simplify my life and enjoy the day to day. I became my own best friend a long time ago. I am a good friend, a real prize as a good close friend. Maybe that is all any of us can expect out of life. Maybe I am the guy in that story from 1981 and I am toward the end of my endless street car ride into the night.

There is a moment of time when almost every human being has to face an experience, involving another person, where he or she is forced to realize that there are people in this world so cruel that they can ruin another person's happiness. It could be an official who tortures a political prisoner or simply a person where you work who treats you as though you don't even exist. Someone who deliberately invalidates you and what you do. I don't know why people are like that, but some folks are just mean people. Mean people suck as the bumper sticker says. It doesn't help. But you do learn something. You learn that you don't have to be happy in life. You can live a good life and accomplish things and never be a happy person. I just hope that it gives the mean person some kind of satisfaction. Because if it didn't - I would feel like it is such a waste of life. I wish I could stop the hands of time somedays, just stop for a moment the tic tic ticing away of our lives and just really connect with a moment and learn why it didn't go so well. But I can't. No one can manipulate time except Salvidor Dali. So the best we can do is get up each morning and try to do the right thing. Trying to keep on going is the best thing. Because it is even more cruel, to waste your life, not living at all - or event o commit suicide. That is a cruel waste of time and human resources. Don't ever give in to hopelessness. Just let it be your brother.

Almost everyone has moments of sadness in their life. Some people are susceptible to the diminishing light each autumn and succumb to sadness. Some individuals lose a friend or a parent to death and the loss launches them into a period of loss and separation. At times, the loss of a parent is so devastating that the pain is almost visceral and this stays with us a long time. But inevitably we recognize that the mother or father we love so much would never want to see us in pain like that and would want us to pick up the pieces and go on. All of these are reasons for sadness in life and this is a normal part of life. But what happens when a person wakes up one day and they are suddenly in such a deep state of sadness that all their energy must go to just getting through the day? What I am talking about is depression. I think that sometimes, in middle age, a person can wake up and realize that life is slipping by and he or she has made mistakes, lost good people or jobs or both along the way and it can seem like nothing will ever be the same. In my case there were so many factors that it became impossible to figure out what was wrong. The economy had tanked and I was watching the country going into a nose dive. The state I live in lost over 60,000 jobs and all of the tax revenue and the loss of hundreds of corporations have altered the course of the future for the state and for all of us who live here for the rest of our lifetimes. At the same time, the prolonged absence of my beloved father in my life seemed to hammer me and the loss became so great I couldn’t bear it. I lost the wonderful cat, Sarge, that I had as a companion for 16 years or so and he had been my best friend. I realized that I was overweight and a nobody. I had at least looked good in my younger years and was well liked amongst my circle of friends. And there were many other things that seemed to converge on me at the same time. A fairly serious and private event launched me into a severe depression in early May of that year, last year. I would come home and cry and listen to a sad song over and over for hours. I would go walking and just exist in a state of perpetual sadness. I felt unloved and unlovable. All I am sure of is that it has subsided right now and that several friends and family members helped me through this. But the one thing that helped more than ever was my friend, Andrea, who seemed to recognize that something was wrong and got me to talk about it. Coming out to her helped me to be able to discuss everything in my life and made me realize that a big part of this is the shame over being gay. I went to see a psychologist named Irwin and he helped a lot. He really helped me to see that there were multiple things going on and that I had to deal with the shame issue first and accept myself and love myself for who I really am and not who I would rather be. Until that happened, I couldn’t really deal with the rest of what was wrong. It would be like putting a band aid on a blister when the real problem was a raging fever. So one by one we worked on the issues. I was disappointed that we did not really get into the grief issues, but I recognized that by that time, I was going to be OK and I was no longer contemplating suicide. I knew that I could handle those issues and my work was cut out for me. I am lucky that I had Andrea, my good neighbors, my sister Mary and her husband, my brother Steve and his wife, Bernadette. All of these people helped me to get through a really rough time in my life and I am a better person for it right now. But from here on in, when I hear of someone suffering from depression, I have a keen sense of what is going on and there is a little uneasiness. In the back of my mind a little voice reminds me that no one knows when the cloud will descend. It is not a fault. It doesn’t mean an individual is weak or less than. I want to believe that this will never happen to me again but I have to take things one day at a time and work on making myself the best person that I can be. I don’t want to be an old man in a rest home. Like all people in middle age, I face the fact that I do not want to grow old. I love life so much. So in the end, I have to just live and enjoy the day to day moments. That is better than worrying and focusing on the dark side of life. Diet and exercise are a big part of being healthy in body and mind. They are essentials says my psychologist. It turns out that keeping the weight off is a part of my therapy. And Mom and Dad, I hope that wherever you are right now, that it is heaven and that your souls are there enjoying eternity waiting for the rest of your children to join you. I hope you can see this new one, Madison. She is a beautiful baby and brings a lot of happiness into our lives. In the end, it is all a circle and one day I will be gone from this world. I hope I shall have made a good mark on it and that my screw ups were not so bad that they diminished my life. It’s that simple in the end.

Well, it's here again. Valentine's season will fast be upon us and with it comes a variety of surprises. For some people, it is a romantic holiday in which two lovers give each other gifts, spend a romantic evening with each other and culminate in making love. For others, it is a time when you give a card or chocolate to a friend and show them how much you appreciate their friendship. It can also be a time when parents and children tell each other how much they love each other with a card or a phone call. The thing is, Valentine's Day is about love and it really doesn't matter if it is hot raunchy sex or pure filial love between siblings. You can go to both ends of the spectrum and it's not a big deal. What other holiday do you know that is so flexible? I think that all holidays should have that spectrum of celebration. It is the one holiday we get to personalize and we can celebrate it in different ways with different people we know. Variety is the spice of life. Now if we can just get everybody on board with birthday sex we will move another celebration onto two levels at the same time.

If you stop and think about it, life is a series of days strung together and time is an artificial concept to explain a reality. Dali painted Persistance of Memory with the drooping watches set in an imense space. The whole idea that the artists can control a concept and bend it to his or her will was novel at the time. Now we exist in a world of avatars and the younger generation is a collection of images that they present to different people at different times for different purposes. There is no object permanence in one sense. It gives rise to a odd way of looking at spiritual and moral action. I am not so sure that some of these people even have value systems. But yes, there are good people out there. In the end we will still go through the days and come to the end. In the end it will be ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the end, God will exist and we who doubt will be gone from this world. I like that.

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I don’t know when it happened but one day I was looking in the mirror and was stunned to see gray hair and wrinkles looking back. The fact is, at that moment, I saw a middle age man looking back at me. When I was in my 30’s I had a renaissance. I moved to Minneapolis after getting a good job there and I started to really live life. I didn’t have much money but I really worked at having fun and making good friends and doing a great job on my career. In other words, I made the most out of what I had and I was happy. It was awesome. I was still young and good looking and I knew it. Somehow looking in the mirror many years later on that day of epiphany, I knew it was gone. I had hit middle age. It took several years to come to grips with it. I no longer had the same relationships at work that I had before. I was “old” and “out of it.” I also realized that supervisors were starting to see me as an older employee. Not all of that is positive either. But the thing that slowly came to the surface is that as I age I am expected to fit into a certain mold. Part of that mold is that I am no longer considered sexy nor am I considered to be up to date as far as my thinking goes. I am supposed to go into a more conservative and asexual state and eventually be a geezer with the plaid pants half way to my pits. No thank you. One thing that watching the Golden Girls taught me is that when a person gets to middle age and beyond, it is up to him or her to decide what life will be like. True, I cannot change other people’s perceptions but I can refuse to accept what society or others expect me to be or to do.
I think that people who are middle age are still vital and intelligent. I think they have a lot to offer on both personal and professional levels. I don’t know yet if there are other areas where this transition comes up problematic, but I know that it does on those two levels. I hope that the best of life is yet to come. I hope that I can make the most of what I have now and be happy on purpose.

School may be out in Lake Wobegon but here on the east coast it is still on for another week. I think that it is good for students to have summer vacation. There are many people who would like to see school go year round and students have small vacations. I think that it isn't the same as the block of freedom they enjoy now. There is something good about kids being able to get away from their studies and run and swim and hang out with their friends and just be kids. We may not be able to see the benefit but I believe it is more than just relaxation. I think it has a healthy impact on the development of the brain, thought processes and a person's character.

I think that summer is the best time of the year. The world returns to life after the dead and cold of winter. Somehow there is a transition and people relax more. Fuel bills go down and there is a little breathing room. The birds are singing and raising their young and kids are out playing. There is nothing like the sound of kids our playing as sort of a background noise. In the winter there is silence. And don't get me wrong, a little of that is good when its time is here. But in the summer, I am sick of winter and I just want that burst of life back. Life just seems more complete. I can go out walking in short sleeves and shorts and just meander. There is no hurry. My thoughts to wander where they may as I walk along.

I was just listening to Me and Mrs. Jones. There's an old song. I remember it because I was young and becoming aware of my sexual side. There was some movie about a woman having an affair with a young man and the theme song was "The Summer Wind" and I believe Frank Sinatra sang it. Of course, in the sixties, the whole sexual revolution was just starting up. Believe me when I say we missed out on that in the Dakotas. I went to a big high school and most of us graduated as virgins. I do remember being a bit ashamed of that but it wasn't like I knew how to just go out and get that one taken care of or anything. I laugh thinking back on it now. High school is a tough time for kids. Still, I am glad I grew up when I did. I think these kids now days have a lot more pressures and are sexually active very young. This brings with it the risk of many STD's and a lot of other problems. I guess my being so innocent was not such a terrible thing after all. But kids today don't just have it tough for those reasons. They have inheirited a mess as far as the world and the planet go. How would you like to be starting college in this economy? What about those graduating? When I finished up jobs were so tough to get. I had to work as a custodian for a year or so and moonlight as a waiter at night. It was hard. Now, I don't know what kind of jobs are out there. I couldn't even get a summer job at WalMart this summer. That is a scary thing. But I suppose that youthful optimism and the work ethic they have will help to get them through. I am hoping and praying that they will have a simliar experience to what my generation had. I am hoping that things bounce back and that life will be good for all of us again. I don't pretend to know a lot about the generation in high school now or the ones coming up. I spend most of my time just trying to live my life and do what I need to do. I enjoy the day to day stuff. I enjoy the summer off and time to just be me. I hate being on a tight budget but it must be so if I am to survive. In the end, that is what it is all about. We must survive and do well. We must build our own happiness. I don't know why I am thinking about the past this Memorial Day weekend, but I am. I am thinking about parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles even a sister who went before me. I am remembering them all.