Steven M. Finkelstein

This past week, I was indoctrinated into the cult of FaceBook. Friends of mine had been pressing me to put up a profile for a period of some months, and I finally got around to it. Little did I realize that MySpace was old and busted, and FaceBook was the new hotness (sorry for the Men in Black reference, I promise it will never happen again). Within a couple of days I had fifty-something friends, and what was surprising to me was that they’re all actual friends, that is to say, people who exist, in reality, and not organizations or celebrities I’ve never even met. I didn’t even think I knew fifty-something people. Some of them are old work acquaintances, some old college pals, some family. But what has been the most interesting to me are seeing my high school crew come out of the woodwork again, some of whom I haven’t spoken to, or in some cases, even thought about, in the past ten years.

I hated high school. I think that a lot of people feel that way at one time or another, but I felt it all the time, back then. There was plenty that I had to deal with, and I honestly don’t remember how well I was able to conceal how miserable I was. I thought I did a pretty good job. But all I could think about, at the time, was getting out. I didn’t have in my head anything approaching a concrete plan as to what I would do after graduation. It was like a point of pride for me that I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, and I remember how concerned my parents were. Their biggest goal was just to get me into college, some college, any college, with any major, and in that they were successful. What happened next was a wild saga that cost me a good many brain cells, spanned five years and two institutions of higher learning, and eventually led me to the treasured piece of paper…and perhaps, some measure of inner peace.

Fast forward another five years, and lo and behold, it’s been nearly a decade since high school. In the Year of Their Lord 2009, it will have been ten years since I said goodbye to Walnut Hills High School and Cincinnati, Ohio. To be fair, I’ve lived in Cinci off and on during the past decade, but when I was there, I looked at it as sort of a staging ground, a practice city until I could get out on the road again. And the last time I was there, I made a vow that it would be the last time. I will always carry a certain amount of sentimentality for the city where I grew up, but I can never live there again; it sucks the life out of me. But being on FaceBook, and seeing so many faces from the past, has brought back many of the thoughts and feelings that I had then…or perhaps only some echo of them. It has led me to think on what I have gone through in this past decade, how I have changed. My own evolution, that is, of course, ongoing. So many of the pictures of those that I see have other faces alongside them now, the faces of spouses, children. I wonder how many of them have fulfilled the goals they set for themselves, and how many more have bottomed out somewhere along the way. Some have mentioned the ten year reunion and asked whether I’ll be attending. I doubt that I will. Most of those I would have wanted to get back in touch with I already have, through FaceBook, and frankly, I doubt I’ll have the money to make a trip back to Cinci specifically for the reunion, me being impoverished as I am. I don’t know that I want to see everyone again. It’s a chapter of my life that I’m glad is closed; that feeling hasn’t changed in ten years. It is bittersweet to me to be reunited (online, anyway) with those that have resurfaced. It’s not that I don’t wish them well. It’s just that I thought that I had made a clean break from that time. It seems almost like a bad dream to me now, and seeing other participants of that dream up and walking around and procreating is perplexing to me. Call me self-centered, but I had halfway convinced myself that these people had been figments of my imagination. This proof to the contrary upsets me.

Maybe it is only this evidence of the passage of time that is causing me to feel this way. It is unfair of me to think so, I know, but I would have much rather that I had continued on with my life, grown older, and collected the knowledge that comes with experience, while everyone else had remained behind, not had their own lives, adventures, and families, but had remained pictures and signatures in my yearbook. But that is not the way of the world, and the reality is that while I have been blundering along on my own ten-year odyssey, everyone else has been taking part in theirs as well. FaceBook is the irrefutable evidence of that. I haven’t made a final decision on the reunion yet. But as I would rather banish the past to the occasional dreams in which I find myself back in high school, still searching the hallways for a sense of identity that is years away from me, I think I would be better served to satisfy my curiosity through the online community of whoever takes the time and the energy to look me up. The past is the past. I prefer to let it lie.

At this point in my life, most of my friends fit into my age demographic, that being mid-twenties to thirty or so. As such, there aren’t a whole lot of them who are still single. Most of them have gone through the process of “coupling.” Some of them have children; some of them have children and are married. But there are precious few who belong to the category that I do: in a committed, long term, monogamous relationship, but without plans of marriage in the future.

I have been outspoken, as I’ve gotten older, in my views against marriage. I have my reasons. One of them has to be lingering feelings of bitterness about my own parents divorcing fifteen years ago. For the most part, I’ve let those feelings go. After all, it was a decade and a half ago, and both of them are happily remarried. But in addition to that, there are certain things that I’ve often felt about marriage that lend themselves to my general contempt and dislike of the institution. I’ve always felt when two people are getting married, it’s less about them and more about everybody else. Marriage, as I understand it, is the public declaration that the person of your choosing is your one and only, forsaking all others, till death do you part, etc, etc, etc. Why can you not be in a completely committed relationship, forsaking all others, without needing to legitimize everything with a ceremony, a piece of paper, and in most cases, getting God and the church involved, not to mention all those friends and relatives that, let’s face it, you probably don’t like very much anyway? Even if it’s a nonsecular wedding, you’re not doing much better. Love is supposed to be something organic, that grows over time between you and your partner. It’s a passionate, personal, private thing…or at least it should be. I’m repulsed by overly elaborate public displays of affection. Marriage is the greatest of these.

The thing about marriage is that it’s another one of these activities that you’re expected to engage in just because there’s a long history of doing it. Conservatives harp on its being the cornerstone of this society (if it’s between a man and a woman; queers need not apply.) But what does that mean for a person like me, who views marriage as the packaging and attempted commercialization of my relationship, which I view to be just about the best thing in my life? Like I said, for this age group that I find myself in, if you’re single, okay, all well and good. It’s assumed that you’re probably still looking then. (Of course, there are those individuals that are happy by themselves, who don’t have the urge to “couple,” and society at large tends to look at them as freaks of an entirely different variety, but that’s another story.) There are those who are married, with or without children. And then there are those who are in stable, long term relationships, like me…but I’ll be damned if I can think of another couple besides the one of which I’m a part that doesn’t have some sort of eventual plan of getting married. That just isn’t supposed to happen. Society won’t allow it. The pressures put on women, especially, to tie the knot are sickening to me. Think of all these romantic comedies where the woman is approaching middle age and she’s losing her mind because she can’t find Mr. Right, and then she realizes that Mr. Right has been her childhood best friend all along…or the hundred and one other inane bullshit plot ideas for the movies that come out around Valentine’s Day that men get dragged to kicking and screaming. They’re supposed to be ”funny,” and they are, but not for the intended reasons. They’re funny because they expose society’s insistence on love and marriage being identical to one another, when they should be anything but.

My girlfriend has spoken to me about numerous occasions when she has met someone new, someone about our age, who has asked about her relationship status. When she replies that she is in a monogamous relationship and that we’re living together, the question of marriage inevitably follows. But she’s always met with the same reaction, she says, when she tells the person in question that we don’t have any plans for it. They either tell her that she’ll find the right person eventually, as if this relationship is somehow inferior or unworthy, since it won’t end by crossing the “final frontier” toward which all ”serious” relationships must eventually lead, or they view her as somehow being snobbish or looking down on them because they’re married or plan on being married some day. She then has to try and explain how she isn’t necessarily against marriage, and she doesn’t think any less of people who have decided they want it for themselves…but it’s too late. She’s already been marked as some sort of outcast or degenerate, because she’s defying convention. Society has people well trained. Love equals marriage. Period. Otherwise there’s something wrong with you.

I don’t feel the same pressure. I think that if all those movies I mentioned are any indication, then men aren’t supposed to feel that same sense of panic as they grow older but remain unmarried. If it happens to them, then they’re still bachelors. Big deal. But an older, unmarried woman is a spinster, someone to be either ridiculed or pitied. I guess I should feel happy that I got the long end of the stick, when it comes to that particular double standard. But the whole thing infuriates me so much that I don’t feel much sense of satisfaction from it. Do I feel better about my own relationship than couples who decided to get married because of outside pressure and because it was just one of those things you’re supposed to do? You’re goddamn right. I’m not saying that the entire institution of marriage is inherently evil. But if you do get married, and you choose to perpetuate this institution that has held such a stranglehold on our society for so long, at least do it for the right reasons. Do it as the declaration of your love for which it was originally intended…not for the lace-gown, butter cream frosting, open bar circle jerk it usually turns into.

Hello again, true believers. I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be having two stories featured in the literary mag Perceptions, which is produced by Portland’s Mount Hood Community College and is a magazine of the arts which had been in existence since 1969. It is published yearly and is scheduled to go to press at the end of May. The run of this particular magazine is small, only 250-300 issues, but if you live in the area I encourage you to seek out a copy. Otherwise, you can check out their website at www.perceptionsmagazine.net, or the Mount Hood website, www.mhcc.edu/pages/1516.asp, to find out about getting your hands on one. More soon.

As I posted back in my year in review for ‘08, my goal for ’09 is to actually be paid for a piece of writing. Despite having more published last year than ever before, I have nothing to show for it other than the publishing credits, and it’s funny, but I find that publishing credits don’t pay the bills. Very disillusioning. Yes, creative writing, as the name implies, serves as a creative outlet for me. But I’m also trying to support myself with it, and my inability to do so as of yet can be frustrating at times. Ultimately, I’m looking for a balance between my professional life and my creative life, thereby breaking the cycle of having to take menial jobs that I’m ridiculously overqualified for. There’s a problem, though. In the back of mind, I don’t think I’m good enough yet.

Let me explain that last statement. I know my writing has improved in the last ten years. That time has been spent in a constant refinement of my craft, that is, of course, ongoing. It continues, and will continue, for the rest of my life. As a writer, you don’t achieve some plateau from which you can ascend no higher, and at which point you are considered a master writer. That’s not how it works. Rather, you must try to continue becoming gradually, painstakingly better, and the process can be meticulous indeed. That’s why no one else but those destined to be writers are able to do it, not so much because they want to, but because they’re compelled to. For anyone else to do it is inconceivable, because it’s the least fun part of the process. It has to be done, though, because unless you were born with the innate ability to write brilliantly, you have to work at it, just like with any other skill.  

All of that is fine with me. I accept that it’s something that has to be done, and I do it gladly. It’s heartening for me, too, to see the improvement between my writing of ten years ago with my writing of five years ago, and my writing of five years ago with that of today. But even though the improvement is obvious to me, I’m still so far from my personal goals for my writing that it seems doubtful I’ll ever get there, not even if I live a hundred lifetimes. I look at my body of work, encompassing now two novels (both unpublished), a screenplay (unpurchased), a comic book series (unpurchased), and many short stories and other smaller pieces that I haven’t found a place for, and I understand why they haven’t been picked up by publishing houses, or major studios, or literary mags. I wouldn’t publish them. Some of them aren’t that bad. There are sections of the novels that I think are okay. But according to what I wanted these pieces to be, initially, the finished products don’t begin to measure up. Even if I’d been able to sell all of these pieces, I know I’d still feel that way.

Artists are always their own harshest critics, and I guess I’m no exception to that. When I have an idea for something, it’s perfect: it’s like an unspoiled block of marble before the sculptor begins to chip away at it to reveal the shape within. But it never stays that way. Between the idealized version of the piece in my head and the final product that it eventually becomes, there is the creative process, the bridge between the two. And somehow, every time along the way, it gets bungled up. I have only myself to blame, and my own inability to produce on paper what was conceived of in my head. It’s ironic, but it seems to me sometimes that the creative process is the greatest impediment to creation. It’s frustrating, equally as much as not being paid for my work, if not more so.

What, then, can be done about this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, except to just keep working at it. That’s really all there is to it. There is no miracle cure for this problem. I just have to keep getting better…and keep myself alive in the meantime so that I can. Maybe a part of the whole problem is that I’ll never live up to the expectations that I have for my writing. I can almost guarantee it, because what I want to be able to do with my writing I don’t think is within my power, no matter how good I get. I want to be able to write something so good that people who read it are stunned by it. I want their lives to be permanently changed by something I’ve written. I want them to be unable to believe the truth of what they’ve learned, but to be unable to unlearn it again. I’ve read pieces like that, so I know it’s possible. But until I’ve produced writing like that, I’ll chock up everything as a failure. Because I’ll tell you this much. What I’ve produced so far, my anthology, there are some amusing bits here and there. But there’s nothing that comes even close to a major truth of the kind that it is my goal to ultimately reveal.

I could say that if I was able to write in the way that I describe, then it wouldn’t matter to me if I was paid for it or not. But of course it would. I can’t continue producing if I’m not supporting myself through it. The two cannot be separate from each other. I tend to think they do, in fact, go together though. If my writing has reached a level that I describe, then publication and notoriety must follow. Believe me, my aspirations are so high as it relates to the quality I’m looking for, that no one who read the finished products, including lit agents, editors, movie producers, and anyone else who ultimately decides whether or not to green light whatever it is I’ve been working on, will be able to do any less than agree with me as to its merits. But I’m still so far from that in my mind. That’s why, when I’m turned down for the hundredth time by a lit mag, or a lit agency, or wherever else, I’m disappointed…but I’m not really surprised. Because even though I’m hoping to find placement for whatever is in question, I don’t really think it’s worthy. It doesn’t live up to my expectations. It’s not what I wanted it to be.

Hopefully, at some point, I’ll reconcile myself to never reaching the ideals for my writing to which I aspire. And hopefully, regardless of what my personal viewpoint of my work is, a time might come when the general public regards it as good enough to merit my being paid for it. For the sake of my own sanity, I hope that’s the case. There’s something that’s occurred to me, though, on a few occasions. Perhaps it is my own sanity that is itself the biggest impediment to my writing the way I want to write. Perhaps what constrains me is the inability to let go of the inhibitions that are in place to allow me to function successfully in the world. If the checks and balances are eliminated, then maybe my work will improve. I have no idea if that’s actually the case or not. But maybe, just maybe, at some point I will find out. Could it be this year, ‘09, in which my resolution to be paid for my work is not something that I have any direct control over? Perhaps. In the meantime, all I can do is continue trying to bridge the gap between my writing and what I want my writing to be.

I’m posting a link below; it’s to my friend Jesse Renfrew’s art and photography portfolio. Jesse is both a talented artist and shutterbug, and he’s got a good selection of his wares up. He’s also adding new pieces regularly. As I mentioned before, the two of us have been collaborating on a comic book that we recently submitted to Image for consideration. We haven’t heard from them yet, but when we do, I’ll definitely mention it here. The link to Jesse’s portfolio is www.ArtWanted.com/jrrenfrew. Enjoy.