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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
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Michael_Denneny
LOC: HQ76 D46
tags: book,biography,love,non-fiction,queer
title: Lovers
(DIR) book
(DIR) biography
(DIR) love
(DIR) non-fiction
(DIR) queer