Another Visit to Melancholy City

There wasn’t a tilt. But there was a shift. A mood change. The sidewalks seem the same. The sun is still shining. But the light is different. And the Air. The air is heavy. Heavier than when he’s in Anytown. Here the air insulates him with his thoughts. 

(sigh)

 

Melancholy City. He’s back for another visit.

 

When he’s in a period of deep melancholy, a period in which he currently finds himself, another wander through the streets of Melancholy City is inevitable. And when he’s there he longs for it all to be over.

He wishes there were no more days. That his fading from people’s memories would begin. That he no longer existed

 

Have you ever wished it were over? That you were done.

 

Before you even ask the question, yes, he knows what he’s saying. He knows the above scenario would mean that he was dead. And surprise, there are days he wishes he were.

 

He longs to stop trying. 

 

He longs for sleep.

When he’s visiting Melancholy City, sleep is a drug. It takes him to Dreamland. And when he’s in Dreamland he doesn’t have to think. Thinking

(overthinking)

is a must in Melancholy City. But while slumbering in the lighter breezes of the pastel void of Dreamland, he is free. Yes, he knows that Dreamland can be vivid with color. He also knows that sometimes it can be alive with technicolor nightmares. But he so often lives in a fantasy world—even in Anytown—that Dreamland is the better respite from his thoughts.

 

(mostly)

When he’s in a period of deep melancholy, he wallows in self-pity. There’s a lot he doesn’t like about himself, which he can keep at bay most of the time in Anytown. He ignores his feelings, pretends they don’t exist, pushes them so far into the dark corners of his mind that he believes he’s happy.

But when he visits Melancholy City, he can’t keep the negativity in the darkness.

He sees himself as old and ugly, worthless with shallow tendencies that announce themselves like a scent that enters the room before he does. He wears his anger like a pair of shoes and clomps around hoping to frighten people away otherwise he will condescend and judge until they run. His fear has kept him afraid and alone and lonely. 

(and insecure)

When he’s visiting Melancholy City his wounds ache, they bleed. While there he longs to be invisible. He wants to go unnoticed. He stays silent. He tries to give no one anything to talk about, no reason to stare. But inevitably, every laugh he hears piercing the thick air as he passes through stabs him with mockery for something, anything, nothing he’s doing.

 

As he wanders those desolate streets of MC alone, he thinks about his age and his life and sometimes he wishes his retirement were closer.

(another ending)

Before him there are fewer years left to work than the years of working already behind him.

But then he thinks about retiring from life and wonders how much of a relief that would be. 

 

He knows there’s beauty in the world. He sees it most days. There are colors he wants to surround himself with because they breathe life into his day. He knows the sky, when its blue stretches uncluttered for miles, is a miracle. He loves the green shade of baby leaves that trees produce as they burst back to life in spring after a cold dormant winter. He knows the cooing of a dove is somehow calming.

He’s seen the majesty of a sunrise, the glory of a sunset. He’s smelled the sweet floral fragrance of a pink peony, inhaled the creamy scent of sandalwood drifting off his skin. He’s tasted the bitter sweetness of cinnamon in his coffee, the explosion of flavor from a greasy skillet-fried cheeseburger 

He’s felt the rough brush of stubble on his face from a man’s chin during a passionate kiss.

 

This is life.

But when he’s visiting Melancholy City, he mostly feels like he’s just surviving instead of really living.

(a side effect felt in Anytown)

He’s alive but perfunctorily going through the motions; no thought to carry him through a day. 

Or, for that matter, through a life.

 

The idea of dying

(literally being dead)

freaks him out. But when he’s in one of his periods of deep melancholy, the idea of not being feels like relief.

There are too many days he wishes for what he can only assume is its “sweet release.”

But maybe death is merely a metaphor for ending this way in which he sees himself.

Convinced

When one has convinced himself that no one truly cares about the things he cares about — merely indulging him as he romanticizes about the scent of a new perfume, humoring him as he reenacts a moment from his favorite soap opera, tolerating his frustration with the lack of consequences for rule breakers — it is incredibly difficult to convince oneself otherwise.

When one has convinced himself he is his family’s shame and disappointment — welcoming him into their home, yes, but avoiding conversations about his life as a gay man, flippantly replying when faced with gay topics, silently reacting to his emotional outbursts on phobic occurrences, ultimately tempering his own shame — it is incredibly difficult to convince oneself otherwise.

When one has convinced himself that he is a unicorn peacocking among the regular horses — chin up, aloof, lips glossed with color, lashes mascara’d, perfectly armored (um, adorned), an inkling of knowledge that makes him seem well versed, a pretender even after he is safely hidden away and has removed the horn he foolishly believes makes him special — it is incredibly difficult to convince oneself otherwise.

©️MichaelRohrer

Subway Stories: An Observation Toward Forest Hills

He sat next to her on the hard, orange-colored seat in a Queens’s bound subway car, fanning her with a bright pink fan covered in white leaves. He was 65 if a day. The light glinted off his 80s style herringbone necklace. His beard and mustache were close-cropped, well taken care of. His backwards facing cap said Nike.

Her age was indeterminate. She might have been younger than he but from the looks of her, cigarettes and, I don't know, drugs maybe, had taken their toll. She was still attractive in a worn kind of way, but she seemed worn down, tired, but more than tired. She seemed spacey. She grabbed a scarf from her backpack and dabbed it across her face. I couldn't see the wetness she must have felt.

Her bleach blonde hair was brushed straight back from her face and gathered into a short ponytail. She was wearing all white. She looked fragile and vicious all at once.

The sores on her leg could have been from over-scratched insect bites. Or cigarette burns. Or they could have been the broken skin of a shin bashed too hard against a coffee table. But to me those glaring sores looked like puss-filled ulcerations the can result in over-active drug use.

Her face was made up. She seemed the type to never leave home without it. But it wasn't garish. Just enough. She knew what she was doing. Her eye lids were lined with long fake lashes that didn’t quite fill the expanse of the full lid. They were generously covered in black mascara, which accentuated the empty spaces on either side.

She leaned over to him and kissed him gently in the cheek. He turned his face so that his lips met hers. Another kiss. He loved her. I could tell. And she loved him. He continued to fan her, loose wisps of her bottle blonde hair blowing back and forth in his created breeze. 

I had heard her mention Forest Hills in her cigarette-choked voice when they first sat down on the train. But Forest Hills didn’t seem like their final destination. 

I never heard his voice, but watched him listen intently to every world she said, fanning, fanning. She closed her eyes and lay her head on his shoulder. I watched as he pulled the bottom of her shirt dress down over a thigh he must have felt was too exposed. He would protect her until he died. I knew it. I bet she knew it too, even if she did seem slightly languid at the time.

I wonder where they were going with their five bags of stuff? I wonder who they were? I’ll never know. 

Exit

I Woke Before The Flood Could Take Me

photo from the film The Day After Tomorrow

I could see a crowd of people running in the distance. I was about half a block away from the bustle. I had an odd sense of déjà vu. I had seen this crowd, and their running, before. Yet I did not run...toward them, from them, or with them. I continued to walk as I always did until I reached the street corner. The crowd was running past me to my right. 

Where was I? Was this New York City? If so, these strangers, who seemed familiar yet not, were heading south. The familiarity with the scene gave me pause at the corner of Whatever Street and Something Avenue. Where was I going? What were the people running from?

I finally turned to see what the people were running from. I saw it. A wall of water cresting over the avenue’s hilltop maybe three blocks away. I stared in shocked fascination then turned to join the crowd moving away.

This was happening. My sense of déjà vu spiked even higher. 

This had happened before. I remembered it. I had survived it. I had lived through this destructively rushing liquid wall's twin in my very recent past. I had run with all the others who were trying to stave off mother nature’s attempted murder. I had run down the hill (down the hill? Was this San Francisco?) toward a building that housed a department store. It rose maybe four stories. It had been tall enough. I had managed to get inside and climb up, up, and away from the wall of death that threatened to wash me away without a trace.

This time, however, I could see a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk in front of that same department store. They were pushing, shoving, shouting, screaming, beating on the glass. From what I could see, no one was getting inside. The revolving door was not moving. 

We had all been here before, but this time it was different. We were either late or the water was early. 

Somehow, even at the distance from which I stood, I could see that the ground level of the department store was filled with people. Movement had ground to a halt. Others were trapped inside the triangular pockets of the revolving door, briefly surviving to ultimately die. I could not imagine their fear even as I felt the hand of dread clench my heart. I could hear the roaring surge of the water approaching. I recognized this water. I knew it was taking with it everything in its path even though I refused to turn and look my approaching killer in the eye.

There was no building high enough for me to save myself. I had been here before but not like this: outside, completely unprotected. The hand of dread did not release its grip on my heart nor did it tighten any further. My terror was calm as I tried to accept my impending doom.

I heard myself say aloud,  “I guess I’m going to die today. I love you, momma.”

Then I woke

Can I Call Myself A Writer?

I have begun to call myself a writer. It still feels weird. But it has gotten easier than it was nearly 10 years ago when I started blogging about my life experiences. It is true that writing is like exercising a muscle: the more you do it the better you become at it. 

My writing has changed a lot since 2009. There's more raw honesty, more depth in the storytelling. I have even faced the daunting task of staring at the blank screen and creating fiction, which is completely different than recounting how certain situation or experience affected me. Fiction is creating something from nothing. Intimidating. I have then let other people read said fiction. As a creative person with a fear of failure, putting my thoughts, ideas, and stories in front of other people's eyes is truly a feat of courage. 

However, I recently watched the film The Wife in which Glenn Close gives her Oscar nominated (and hopefully, finally, winning) performance as Joan Castleman, the title character. She is the wife of a writer. She is a writer herself. 

There is a scene in which her husband says, “a writer must write as he must breathe.” As soon as he said it, it gave me pause. Was Joan breathing? Am I? Of course I am. I breathe to live. Yet, I’m calling myself a writer, yet I don’t write every day. Sure, I try to be clever or intuitive or thought provoking in a Tweet or Instagram post. I try to use my words to greatest effect. But I don’t write every day. 

I don’t live and breathe a story for eight hours a day. Not even ten minutes a day on most days. But I love words. I love stringing them together to create a feeling, an emotion; to evoke a laugh, a tear, an understanding of a situation; to take the reader on a journey. 

Can I call myself a writer?

I recently finished watching the series You on Netflix. The main female character is a writer. She didn't write every day though. She would often say she was stuck. Social media, and life in general, were often distractions. (I know these distractions. Throw in television and porn and I'm fully distracted.) She admitted, if she was being honest, that she was just putting it off. (Guilty!) She once tried to justify her procrastination saying that thinking about what she wanted to write was just as much a part of the process. In her next breath though she acknowledged she was actually procrastinating. I believe a lot of her, and my, procrastination is fear of failure. Maybe even fear of success.

I often think about the stories and characters that are brewing in my head. I would go as far as to say that I think about many of them daily. But I don’t sit down and write about them. I often mull over my own life experiences and think about what I have to say in connection with something that inspires or angers me in the present. But I don’t write about it immediately. 

Can I call myself a writer?

There are times when words pour out of me like water; when essays practically write themselves; when I can’t type fast enough for the sentences forming in my brain. But it doesn’t happen every day. 

I don’t commit time daily to the computer screen. That long gestating party that I’ve been thinking about since 1990 is still waiting to be written. The piece on the importance of pink in my life is still waiting to be fully explored. The story of the half sisters who hate each other yet continue to work together is waiting for its next soap operatic confrontation. The fiction and the non, it sits there. But hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about that party and who is in attendance and what they are doing or saying. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about what pink means to me. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t wonder what is going on with those two women.

Can I call myself a writer? 

There are days when I can do nothing but write the words that are clawing their way out of my thoughts; when writing is the only form of expression that allows me to get the drama, the anger, the comedy, the provocation out of me. 

There are other days when I can't seem to find the words to say anything at all. 

The written word is probably the most authentic way in which I express myself. I am definitely a storyteller. And even though I have a body of work to my credit, calling myself a writer remains an uncomfortable label. My confidence ebbs and flows.

I may not write every day. I may be lazy and procrastinate. I may be afraid of the exploration of my thoughts, my opinions, my ideas, my past. I may be completely intimidated by the party scene that I won’t write. But I do know that without the ability to express myself in words, whenever I have something, anything, to say, I would be breathless. 

Four Hours on a Train: A Tweet Opera

NYC, July 24, 2017, 8:30 am Departure.

9:02 am: The City lies under a blanket of fog. The world turns. The train moves forward. I am stuck. Moving yet not.

9:18 am: I am neither mover nor shaker. I move in no circles. Excepting for the one encompassed by my rut. Stuck.

9:54 am: Gray skies. Raindrops streak the train window. Towns pass in a blur. Steeples. Flags. Lakes. Gloomy all.

10:53 am: The train stops unexpectedly. A breeze sways the leafy branches. There's a chill. I await the arrival of Dementors. Trepidation.

11:09 am: The train sits powerless, silent but for the sound of breathing. The air is still. Waves ripple beyond the glass. Waiting.

11:49 am: The boats bob up and down on the turbulent sea. Anchored in place. Sails folded. Rainy days in seaside towns. Sad.

12:05 pm: The broken ruin of what used to be still stands proudly on the hill. Oh, to stand that proudly, even now, as broken is how I feel.

12:32 pm: "Maybe u can't connect because u're not as funny, stylish, or clever as u think u are," he said to himself. "And u're kinda cold.”

12:59 pm: As the condensation continued to fog the windows I began to wonder, "Is this a reflection of my mind?"

Boston, July 24, 2017, 1:07 pm Arrival

I Am a User of Words, A Teller of Stories; A Writer

Those closest to me know that I find it difficult to call myself a writer. It feels false, fake...sacrilegious toward those who actually make their living as writers. There is evidence to the contrary however. On my own blog (you know of it if you're reading this) I write about my life--the exciting, the boring, the funny, the past, the present, the NSFW. On this same blog I've even published fiction. Some of it (both fiction and the non) goes over with a bang. Some of it fizzles. I keep writing. I have something to say. I am a user of words, a teller of stories.

There there's the more than two years worth of blog entries on my Huffington Post author page. That sounds weird to say out loud and looks even weirder in print--'my Huffington Post author page.' The truth is, it exists. Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rohrer/. Check it out if you haven't already. I've been published on HuffPost over 30 times. There's no pay from contributing to the blog on HuffPost, but it's a chance to get my opinion, my take on a subject, my life experience (good or bad, funny or sad) out there for others to read. And you know what, people actually connect. People can identify with me. People reach out to me either through the comments section or through Twitter. I am never more moved than when someone says to me that they feel exactly the same way and they're so glad someone put it into words.

There is strength in knowing that someone out there is feeling same way you do; is experiencing the same challenges in life. I've never pretended to myself or others that what I'm experiencing is unique to me, but there's such a sense of community when you find other people who've been there done that or are still there doing that.

Religion throws the most fuel on the fire when I write. I'm homosexual and have very strong feelings about my religious upbringing. In the two years that I've been submitting my story to HuffPost I've grown stronger as a person. I've found more courage to speak openly and unfiltered about my feelings regarding my religious past. Writing has provided me a way to work through some of my issues--confront them head on--that even talking to my therapist couldn't accomplish.

Yesterday I published a piece titled I Will Never Repent for Being Homosexual on Huffington Post. I struggled with the title of this piece. Much like I struggled with writing it. During the process of putting my thoughts and feelings into words I found myself unable to sleep twice. My thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences continued to swirl through my brain. Even with the help of a sleeping pill I couldn't resist the pull of this piece. At 3am one morning I was awake thinking about my life and the piece. Thanks to the help of a few people who read the initial drafts I managed to craft a strong, passionate piece about being raised in a world where just being born homosexual was considered a sin. Thanks to the collaborative help of an editor at HuffPost I was able to give the piece a strong title.

The piece was published on the front page of Huffington Post. That's never happened to me before. Those are my words. That's my story. That's my opinion. I wrote that. It came from my childhood fear and my adult frustration.

This morning I took a moment to engage with those who had taken the time to comment on the piece.  I expected that the conservative religious right readers would be the ones commenting and condemning me, but what I found was people thanking me for putting there story into words, people supporting me, people telling me to be happy, love my neighbor and I'll be fine. For the first time in many posts, I engaged with my readers. I took the time to thank them, to write back to them, to show them my appreciation for supporting me. I even took the time to write back to those who, through carefully chosen words, suggested I continue to live in fear.

I'm still finding courage every day to live my life; to create the life that I want to live. But I'm tired of being afraid of other people's opinions and I'm tired of being afraid to give mine. As a writer I've been able to express myself more freely than I ever imagined. My gift is my ability to tell my story.

I am a writer.