When I Grow Up

As a young boy, I grew up in the small town of Mosby, Missouri. There is not much more to that town now than there was then, possibly even less. I remember it as a town of about 300 people, with little or no economic basis. The only businesses in town were a farm implement repair shop that always seemed to be full of the same equipment waiting to be worked on, and Bill Dew’s bait and tackle shop and grocery store, which he ran out of his garage not far from the banks of the Fishing River. Bill’s shop was the most popular place, since it was the one and only source of candy in the entire town.

Life in Mosby was pretty simple, as were most of the people. The two social hubs, around which everything in town seemed to center, were the church and the school. Attendance at one seemed as required as attendance at the other; anything less either deprived you of half the active life in the town, or subjected you to the potential scorn of wagging tongues. Neither was desirable, in a town where everyone knows everyone and everything, and any escape or transportation away from it limited by your access or actual ownership of a car, or even gainful employment.

We did not have much, in our lives there, but we seemed satisfied with that. When I was that age, I don’t remember being pummeled with television advertising that awakened any desires for things I did not have, and so I never knew any different. We ran loose in the town creating our own fun in all the ways that young boys did, either at the school yard, in the woods, or on and even in the muddy river—whatever could keep our energies and active imaginations occupied.

But it would be safe to say that our economic situation was—like that of pretty much everyone in town—not the best. The house was small and rented, and our landlord not fabulous. My mother, who had never worked a day in her life before the divorce, only held one job that I ever remember, as the part-time clerk for the city. Just the same, we managed somehow, and my memories of my time there are filled more with what I had than they are of what we did not have.

During those years, there was one person who came around once in a while and brought a little magic to my days: my Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Jimmy (somehow, I can still only call him that even now), was someone who had and shared things I never would have known existed had it not been for him. He was a seemingly successful car salesman (if that is possible) in Liberty, which to me seemed a thriving metropolis a world away from Mosby, and he always came to visit in the coolest of cars. To this day I can still picture the green Mustang Mach One—my personal favorite—that he drove for quite a while.

It was Uncle Jimmy who loaned or gave (I can’t remember which) my brothers and me a reel-to-reel tape player, which was considered the highest end of HiFi at the time, and reel after reel of music to listen to on it. At a very young age I got exposed to the likes of the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Uncle Jimmy would often pop into town and load up my mother, brothers, and me, and carry us out of Mosby to see movies at the drive in theater in town, or help us get some grocery shopping done, or sometimes just out to get fast food in Liberty or Excelsior Springs. Looking back, I have to believe now that it was Uncle Jimmy who probably helped mom enhance our Christmases a little, given some of the gifts I remember and mom’s and dad’s incomes.

Life was not bad then, but Uncle Jimmy made it better in ways that he could, and I always looked up to him as kind of a magical figure in my life. But when mom moved out of Mosby and in to the city, I stayed behind to finish out grade school, living first with another family for a while, and then with my grandparents for a couple of years. During that time, I did not see Uncle Jimmy much; I think the only time I saw him was when he was at my mother’s apartment in town when I came to visit.

The summer I turned twelve I moved to Parkville with my dad, because the family thought it best—and I agreed--that I went to school in the Park Hill district rather than the Kansas City District (I would have been enrolled in Paseo). It was a confusing time for me, adjusting to a step family in the totally new environment of the suburbs, but dad and Margaret and my sisters did everything they could to help me get acclimated.

One night that summer, after dad got home from work, he asked if he and Margaret and I could talk privately after dinner, and so we went off to their bedroom, the designated private conversation spot in the house. It was then that dad asked me about what I might know about Uncle Jimmy, and if I had an understanding of Uncle Jimmy being gay. In the small-town life of Mosby in the 60’s and early 70’s, I had never even heard the term, let alone have any understanding of it. Dad explained things, as gingerly as he could, his own definition of men and his challenges in communicating on that level making it very difficult and uncomfortable for him.

The conversation was a huge emotional moment for me. I remember coming out of it in tears, feeling confused at having learned about something so foreign to me in such an abrupt manner and having someone I looked up to torn down and made into—what I felt like—a monster. It was never dad’s intent to paint Uncle Jimmy that way; he was trying his best to be as sensitive as he could, knowing what Uncle Jimmy had meant to me and my brothers during those years in Mosby. But the edict from both my dad and my mother, where I was never allowed to see Uncle Jimmy or have contact with him again, left me with the indelible impression that he was a deviant to be avoided, and I needed protection from him.

It was years before I ever saw Uncle Jimmy again, well into my twenties, but for reasons besides his sexuality or those years of banishment, we were never close again. Seeing him then brought up the unpleasant memories of that night and that discussion with dad, and also reminded me of how far I thought I had come as a person since then. I had a little more life experience behind me, had shed many of the superficial notions of my youth, and had learned to appreciate diversity more and judge less. Or so I thought.

A few months ago I shared a link on my Facebook page that supported same-sex marriage, and it touched off a heated statement or two from friends that I didn’t necessarily agree with, but respected as their opinions driven by their own personal background and experience. I was discussing the comments with a friend a few days later when she shared with me that she had someone ask her about my sexuality. I was on my way to work at the time, and I remember that news angered me, that someone would think that about me and be discussing it. It was on my mind a great deal of the night while I worked, wondering what it possibly could have been that would ever give anyone that idea of me. I thought it was a huge leap from my sharing a link on Facebook to wondering about my sexuality, so I kept asking myself what else it could be that I had done or said that would support such a question. By the end of the night, I had worked myself into a fair amount of frustration and anger, and I was determined to make a public response in order to set the record straight.

Fortunately, I came to my senses first, and I didn’t. At first it was because I thought it best I just let something like that die, not poke sticks at the animals and be the bigger person. But then I began to wonder about why it was I felt so compelled to respond in the first place, and that was when I discovered something about myself I did not necessarily appreciate.

When I took the time to ask myself why I felt the need to define myself, I realized that declaring myself heterosexual was, in fact, inferring my heterosexuality was better, or the best, or the only acceptable norm, and it was at the very least me marginalizing any friends or anyone I’ve ever known whose sexual preferences were different than mine. Declaring my preference one way was tantamount to saying that my friends who were different were lesser persons. I was a little ashamed to see that I could possibly do that, and it became a learning moment for me.

Some things die, or are killed off, with great difficulty, and sometimes only accomplished with diligence and reflection. Sometimes the remnants—even the smallest bits—of what I learned as a child, as a teen, even as a younger adult, can linger in the deep recesses of my conscience until something creates the opportunity to fully examine them, understand them, and work a little more on expunging or modifying them. But hopefully, that is a process that never stops, no matter my age. Otherwise, it would be a pretty boring life going forward from here, if I’ve already managed to learn all there was to learn. Even about myself.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Between the Two

Recently, I wrote an essay that I never published, because it was a little on the dark side. It explored something I had on my mind at the time and couldn't shake, one of those questions you keep circulating in your stream of consciousness unresolved. Writing about those types of questions helps me sort them out a little, if sometimes only enough to put the question out there for others to discuss.

I had a number of reasons for not publishing it at the time, and still hesitate to do so now if it were not for the fact that several aspects of it’s core questions still plague me. But then I got to thinking recently—again—that I am not unique, never have been, and that someone out there is pondering the same basic question or questions.

The essay dealt with my lingering doubts about faith, belief, thought, and emotion. My position on these very basic aspects of our everyday life is something I have never been able to completely resolve, and the fact that I cannot resolve them is, in itself, an answer I suppose. Then again, I can’t imagine why I would be any better at resolving an argument for myself that philosophers have been unable to answer for the masses over the run of a few milennia.

At the heart of my argument with myself is the split in what most people see as modern philosophy. In layman’s terms—and please don’t mistake me for being far more educated or philosophically capable than I am—the two sides of modern philosophy are Dualism and Materialism.

Dualism is the idea that there are two realms, the physical and the metaphysical. Think of it this way: to subscribe to Dualism means that you believe that you have mind and body, and that thought is generated by the mind. You can also think of it in terms of the tangible and intangible. Dualism makes possible the idea that our thoughts and emotions are intangible things, just kind of out there, impossible to touch physically but no less real to us than the keyboard across which my fingers now dance. At some point in the history of man we tried to make these things more tangible by assigning places where they reside, such as the heart and mind, but we’ve come to understand that we are stretching what we know from modern science to do so.

Materialism is the opposite, far beyond that attempt to make thought and emotion reside somewhere within us. Materialism (not to be confused with the accumulation of wealth or things) is the belief that everything in the universe, ourselves and all of our thought, emotion, and belief, is the product of a physical process that takes place as far down as the atomic level. Someone in the Materialism camp would say that when I am happy or sad it is the result of a biochemical reaction taking place in my brain, which in turn triggers a number of other chemical and physiological reactions in the rest of my body and produces the feeling of euphoria or angst physically.

What is the importance of where I stand with or between these two positions (and why would anyone else care)? I’m sorry. I can’t answer that for you just yet. Despite the openness I feel I can express when I write, and in particular write to the audience I feel I am speaking to when I write, the significance of my is question delves deeper than I can comfortably express to anyone, even though it may be simple. And I think that what I was thinking at the time, and the question that I was unable to answer, is what is more important to examine.

Put simply, I was writing an argument against, yes, very much against, the concept of love. My position at the time was squarely rooted in Materialism, and it stated as much: that love was merely a product of the biochemical cocktail sloshing around in our brains, resulting in what we mistake for an emotion that we make far too important. I went on to argue that what we see as romantic love changes over time and becomes a functional and convenient compatibility. I further argued that when even that breaks down, the end result is a complete emotional and then physical separation of two people supposedly in love, and that current and longstanding divorce rates were great proof of that argument.

But I didn’t stop with love. I went on to attack faith and emotion as well, and eventually came smack up against God. And then, that is where the essay and my thoughts paused.

You are probably thinking right about now, “Geez Cody, you were feeling a little pessimistic at the time, now weren’t you?” And you would be correct. I was. And I recognize that now. Which is why that moment, that essay, and those thoughts all came back around, why I thought of them again. Sometimes I like to explore why I think or feel something at a particular moment and think or feel something else completely different at another time, even if it may not interest another soul on the planet. My recent feelings have been a stark contrast to those at that time.

The pause I mentioned, the moment where I could not progress my argument any further, was the point at which my argument turned on itself. Despite my logic and pessimism, I could not give myself over completely to a complete lack of faith or complete hopelessness in love. I just couldn’t, no matter how much it infuriated me that I could not be black or white on either subject. So I was no further along in my development than I had been at any other point in my life and had no better answers for myself.

I even tried an end run around all that and attempted to rationalize that I was falling prey to archetypes, or that I was just having trouble shedding years and years of fundamentalist upbringing. That didn’t work. I tried arguing with myself that I was subscribing to deeply rooted cultural influences that have surrounded me all of my life, as they did my parents and siblings and generations before me. That didn’t work either. I just couldn’t get there.

I could not give myself entirely to Materialism. And the longer my pause in between the two, the more I began to come back toward the opposite. Gradually, things like hope and love crept in.

I couldn’t hit the Post button. I couldn’t abbreviate the essay stating one position over the other. Evidence of impossibility—make that possibility, actually—quickly mounted. At first it was fear of perception (“What will people think?”). Then I began to think about how it would impact others who read it, and how it might hurt.

I know a number of married couples. How could I, as a loving friend, try to reduce what I see reflected between the two of them to an argument that it doesn’t exist? Who am I to say or think as much? I suddenly felt like I had let myself slip off into a crass and nasty space for a while, and I felt a little selfish. What I saw as very real between them was bigger than me. My perspective, and my perception of myself in comparison to those very powerful things shifted, even humbled me a little.

Even bigger: I began to think about the very real and very powerful love between Megan and Kylee and me. I felt real shame when I began to think that I had tried to make that into something only physical and base.

Sometimes, I think timing is everything, even critically so. At the very moment that I was perplexed and frustrated with myself over the whole contemplation and trying to write about it, Kylee walked out of the bedroom upset from a nightmare. She needed me, and her need for me, need for the comfort she could feel from me, was based on our love, which could overcome the biggest and worst of her imaginary monsters. Mine too.

Thanks, Kylee, for saving me.

Originally published 12/7/09.

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.