directorcommentary | jasonbentley.org

The past month has been beyond busy and bizarre, and it's seemed like one of the few times where I've been more about living it than wryly observing it. But I've realized in the end that's just what I've been doing all along, observing - it's just that the programming has been considerably more interesting than it has been for a while.

I've managed to become acquainted with some local young people, mostly around the tipping point of 20, and more than ever I'm aware of generational character. Say what you will about blanket generalizations, these kids (and for the overly sensitive, I'm not using that term in a condescending way) are far more cogent and with it than the generation that came after mine. And they deal with more problems and drama than I ever remember dealing with, and I dealt with some serious drama.

Even more interesting, is that, with few exceptions, most of the new acquaintances are, well, girls. Females are not plentiful in my life, being gay and working in the tech industry, and suddenly my worldview is full of this vibrantly young and female energy, which is both delightful and mystifying and scary at times. And the more I enjoy their company, the more I feel like I don't really get girls. Nor do I think I'm supposed to. I've observed straight guys for years, and their frustration at that mystery, so I'm at least prepared.

All of them - well, most of them- have big, good hearts, but from over here I'm very aware of the dark undercurrents running through them. Maybe it's the generational distance, but for all the unique perspective and colorful language they bring about ("he crib's tight but he clucks hella"), these kids are more vicious, duplicitious, and cruel to each other than any I've ever encountered. I remember the ferocity of high school and afterward, where self-hate and confusion internalizes and bubbles up like lava, but this...is something else.

The evil's never been directed toward me, but I've seen it pointed at each other with such shocking, emotional violence that it leaves me with the feeling of watching an animal beaten and skinned. I offer my observations when asked, but I'm very economical with advice: the platitudes of adulthood don't map to their experience, and I, of all people, find myself struggling against the clichés and pithy maxims that I remember rejecting.

That said, I'm retiring the phrase "youth is wasted on the young," because I now understand what bullshit that is. For if these kids really, genuinely realized how young, beautiful, fragile, vicious, and sexy they really are, it would be an unqualified disaster of rampant misery for everybody. Maybe it's all the estrogen in the air, but I, more firmly than ever, now reject the rampant gay notion that adulthood and maturity are an inevitable fall from grace against which all should struggle. Youth is what it is, but never again will I mistake it for a goal.

I've met maybe twenty new people this past month. Some are social flotsam with lives written on the wall in bright neon letters. But some are truly special. One already feels like my kid sister. One is brilliantly talented. One is scarily insane. One seemes hopelessly broken, like a walking Lou Reed song. All of them are stuggling to find a voice, but are full of ideas and notions that I wouldn't have even considered. Most haven't known innocence for years, and yet even the most battered of these kids retains an idealism I'd left for dead long ago. Despite the relentless WB-network sturm und drang, their paradoxical mix of idealism and worldliness and smart naivité, gives me lots and lots of hope along with a healthy dose of amazement that I've made it this far.

This entry was posted by jb, on July 15, 2005. You can leave your response.