In the beginning...
How I came to write about our "Life at the Margins."
“Gay men and their mothers; gay men and their bodies; gay men and their houses: if you have grown up knowing that you will always be at the margins despite all appearances to the contrary, you learn to cling to appearances” Andrew Solomon, World of Interiors March 2024.
This quote resonated with me—powerfully—so powerfully that I looked up the meaning of the word “margin” and pulled out the following from the Merriam-Webster website.
the part of a page or sheet outside the main body of printed or written matter
the outside limit and adjoining surface of something: EDGE
an area, state, or condition excluded from or existing outside the mainstream.
It explains much of what I have been trying to articulate in my writing. What I feel is not so unique to me and my husband. Despite our advanced education, our wealth, our stability, our amazing children, our big house in the suburbs, church attendance, monogamous relationship, all the things that represent who we are and the life we love living, despite all of it, we remain at the margins of our communities because we are, two men in love who have built a life together, and have made our own choices on how we live that life. Choices that often upset every community that may claim us or vice versa. Our decisions on how and where to live, love each other, and raise our children directly reflect our suburban upbringing with our parents.
Boo-hoo, right? I know I get it. Sometimes, I feel as though I have no right to complain. I have happiness and privilege beyond my wildest dreams; my life is a blessing. Do I have a right to complain? Is it complaining to recognize and acknowledge that despite everything, our existence lives outside the mainstream of the galaxies we inhabit? We live on the event horizon. A forever liminal space where we belong, comfortably, uncomfortable. Never quite becoming a part of anything but rather a mildly tolerated peripheral witness to the lives of those who do belong.
People agree that we are all just trying to find our way. Some of us are aware of it, while some are not. You have hyper-confident people who everybody wants to be around, and some want to fuck. Then you have the wall flowers who say little but take in everything. And all kinds of people in between. No matter where you fit into humanity, we are all trying to figure it out. And by “it” I mean life. What is it all about? What is the purpose, who am I, and how do I fit into this world? Just because some people seem like they have everything figured out does not mean they do; it does not mean they are not agonizing or balancing on some edge they perceive that may or may not be there.
We may have left our church last year, but we are still people of faith. We pray every night with our children when we put them to bed. We share our gratitude and what we need help with and pray for our family, community, country, and the world. Recently, we started adding a prayer for “unity” for all humankind. Unity is a powerful word in a world that is anything but united. We have tribes, within tribes, within tribes, and this separateness, these divisions are among the most inhuman of anything that has happened throughout history. It is a different kind of killing, with the victims subject to stark loneliness, debilitating anxiety, and crushing depression. We pray for unity because humanity is subject to an unprecedented assault each moment of every day, the assault on unity among people. This must end. It takes a ton of faith to feel isolated and still seek connection.
I have spent my life on the margins – never entirely fitting into any group; I am comfortable in this space. Despite that comfort, I sometimes slip into the “see, we are just like everyone else” mode – it is only natural. In our first few years in Greenwich, Connecticut, I focused heavily on opening our home to our children’s friends and their families, hosting family pizza nights with other parents and neighbors, having parties, engaging in local charity work that I believe in and inviting people of all kinds to our home for parties and events. We enrolled our children in elite private schools, I reasoned, that we would be accepted, and our children would be welcomed because we were paying full freight. I was wrong. Despite five years of efforts, with some exceptions, we found ourselves and our children ignored, unwelcomed, and our welcoming transparency unreciprocated; we pulled back dramatically. The private school experience was an expensive mistake rife with institutional racism and bigotry in one case and a decidedly anti-female pedagogy in another. I withdrew our children from their elite private schools. I pulled away from my community engagement and hunkered down. Feeling depressed, disconnected, and unsatisfied, we recalibrated, and we thought about who we were, what we wanted, and how we lived. How did we get so caught up in winning broad approval and acceptance? It was easy to pivot once we diagnosed where we had gone wrong. Some lessons:
On the margins by living well and not needing to be welcomed or accepted by anyone.
Be resilient. Live a welcoming life, but do not take a lack of welcoming personally; move on.
Be careful – your children are watching and listening -
Few people choose to live on the margins. But as I grow older and have a more profound understanding of my place in the world, I realize I and we may have something to offer others who find themselves living life at the margins. Because the truth is, we are happy. It takes a hell of a lot of resilience and daily work, but we are so glad and grateful. As the ancients said, happiness takes work, so get busy.
I began writing this blog as a thought experiment in November 2023. It became cathartic to block out time each day where I sit and pour out whatever I am thinking about my life and what is presently taking up room in my mind. As the days, weeks, and months passed, I began to zero in on different themes I have tried to articulate in the messages featured in this Substack. You can look for posts about twice a week. Most of these posts will expand on today’s ideas and thoughts.
I am not sure who, if anyone, can receive help from reading “Life at the Margins,” but so long as I feel a benefit in writing it, I will continue. I hope that someday, it will give my children, Leo and Alice, some perspective on how their perfectly imperfect dad lived and viewed life. I write this for them.
Let us begin…