one life stand

A voice I knew too well,

A voice whose creases and crannies were well-trodden terrain,

Washed over me in rapture.

She said:

We all die alone,

Don’t be afraid of the darkness we create,

Only to make the light brighter.

God was searching for a fool when he built you.

And you have not disappointed.

I’m sure what Lena Durham meant to call her freshman HBO series Girls was ‘Every girl, from every culture, from every country in the world’ because that’s certainly what she’s been tasked with representing.

A recent article written by writer/actor/director/my personal hero James Franco via The Huffington Post was the latest in a long line of critiques for the polarizing show about four twenty something girls living in New York.

If the title didn’t suggest as much, that last sentence should have prepared astute viewers for a bombardment of comparisons to that other show about four females in New York – what was it called again? Yes, the Sex And The City shadow looms large over Dunham’s knowingly different series.

It’s a pop cultural expectation that TV ensembles of women will be subjected to silly archetypes, but in life surely no-one truly expects a woman to slot easily into only one of four stereotypes. It’s a point Dunham makes in the show’s pilot with humorous huberus care of an exchange between Shoshanna and Jessa.

‘Are you a Carrie or a Samantha?’ is now the kind of sociological CSI accepted (and perhaps more frighteningly, almost universally understood) at dinner parties and inner-city bars alike.

But the point of Girls is that it’s not Sex And The City. Not only are these characters not able of being reduced to the Manola-wearing, Manhattan-sipping clichés that made SATC an easily digestible, visually appealing, though ultimately benign cultural phenomenon, they likely won’t be for some time, if ever. Dunham’s series is not about four women who have decided who they are; it’s about four girls trying to figure just that out – more often than not, one horrifying mistake at a time. It’s a love letter to the folly of youth, a topic Franco should be well-versed following on from last year’s ‘Palo Alto’ - which I am unashamed to admit was easily one of the most intelligent and original books I read in 2011.

Perhaps this is why such criticism seems so harsh: these characters are being judged as women, despite a pretty clear title and far-too-many awkward sex scenes for any discernable viewer to think that this was a show about women who have their shit together.

One of the overarching criticisms from critics and viewers of Girls has been that people don’t recognize the characters. Commentators have struggled to find ‘an entry point’ with the often-prickly leads and the colorful array of supporting players, to which I would say – fantastic! Art is arguably the most accessible medium through which the divides that plague our world can be bridged.

Like the gap that’s being divided here, with little old me, a would-be-writer having a pseudo-conversation of sorts with James Franco, a man and artist for whom I have great respect and admiration. Will Mr. Franco ever read this? Chances are no, but the dialogue still exists. Thoughts have still been exchanged. And what is responsible for that? Art. Art and the intelligent, reasoned dissection of art that comes only from observed and eloquent analysis. By all means, let Girls be a flashpoint of discussion, the dialogue that has already been had since its arrival is encouraging to say the least. But let us not explore these characters as being emblematic of every girl or every creepy dad, let them just be themselves. The character flaws that have attracted such vitriolic reactions are just that: flaws of characters, fictional creations. They are not a social commentary on every white girl in New York. Or anyone in New York.

I am wary of speaking for Dunham, though I do feel as though it’s a safe assumption that in creating Girls, she was not seeking to tell a story that was symptomatic of every girl: rather girls she has known, or girls like her. Which leads to the single-most inane criticism of Girls and the one, which has proven to be the most unshakeable. Hannah is not Lena. Do I need to repeat that? Hannah is not Lena.

As a person, I find Hannah to be bordering on loathsome and like Franco, I too, think she should get a fucking job – any job. I want to be a writer too Hannah, so right now I get paid £6 to sell greeting cards to crack-addicted East Londoners. Hannah’s attitude – and yes, as Franco astutely observed, almost complete lack of actual writing – is infuriating. But I know where to channel my rage: Hannah. Anyone who says Girls is about poor rich white girls, just like Lena Dunham are missing the point completely. Hannah is not Lena. Lena is not Hannah. There are similarities and overlaps, of course. Dunham herself has been open about how her real-life experiences shaped Girls as a series, but that is where the crossover ends: or at least where it should end. Structuralists will likely disagree with me and insist that in order to judge a work, we must also consider the context in which it was created. But then context hasn’t really been too difficult to find, with the various bonuses released by HBO with each episode, most tellingly videos of Dunham offering viewers a ‘look inside the episode’ at its etymology and inspiration. Even without such insight, a consideration of context still doesn’t translate to Hannah and Lena being the same entity.

Franco took particular ire to the portrayal of men on Girls. And between emotionally-stunted, perennially shirtless Adam, uber-clingy Charlie and Jessa’s bordering on inappropriate employer, it’s easy to see thus far, the characters at the heart of Girls are swimming in the shallow end of the male gene pool. Therefore, Lena Dunham either hates men or just doesn’t understand them, right? Of course the creator of a show called Girls is a man-hating bitch. She’s probably a fascist lesbian too. Come on, people!

Maybe the dubious portrayal of men is designed to be a reflection on the girls themselves? Why do they surround themselves with such loathsome men? Why do they seem destined to repeat the same vicious cycle with their respective counterparts?

One thing I do agree with Franco on is his observation that internet chatter is all too often devoid of both intellect and relevance. What I can’t quite swallow though, is the notion that because Girls is on television, and say, not a quirky little novella or a web series, the stakes (read: responsibility) to be politically correct are higher.

Do we want creators writing about different cultures, different socio-economic classes merely to appease some lofty cultural ideal of accuracy? And to that point, an idea, that for most part anyway, seems to be championed by educated, white academics or critics far removed from such sectors of society? When did it become the task of every author to represent every other person?

This isn’t the modern bible, audiences are not called upon to worship at the altar of Hannah and her merry gang as if their every word was gospel.

Franco speaks of HBO’s obligation to represent its subject accurately, and yet it’s creator Lena Dunham who has copped the majority of the flack for the shows perceived cultural ignorance. These criticisms, to a point, are illuminating many of society’s preconceived notions about class and racial relationships.

If Hannah and her pals were rich, would the expectation of cultural diversity be lessened? Is the implication that because Hannah is poor, it is more likely that her world will dissect the world of black people than say an upper West sider? Has anyone ever asked where are all the black people on Gossip Girl? Oh wait, there’s a Polish maid and a gang of mute Asian followers who float ominously behind one of the white leads. And people were obviously too busy wading through Cosmo’s or bandying around character names for their frenemies to wonder why Carrie Bradshaw never had a black gal pal. So why punish Girls? Just because it portrays itself as existing in a realer version of New York than SATC? Here’s a truth about the real world: sometimes you see black people, sometimes you don’t – they are free to live their lives free of the white man’s schedule these days you know?

Maybe she just doesn’t have black friends. Living in London, I walk through the city some days and I don’t see any black people. Some nights on the last tube home, there are no Muslims. Does it mean they don’t exist? Is it a reflection of my own personal opinion of such cultures? Absolutely not, sometimes it’s just like that. More offensive, I would imagine, would be the tokenistic placement of a black character simply to appease the out-of-control social conscience. We are all so afraid of being racist or insensitive, and do not misunderstand me, that is an admirable level of awareness for a society to possess, but sometimes going too far in the opposite direction can also cause offence.

Franco, I’m sure is aware of this, and has certainly not done a disservice to Girls or intelligent discussion with his ‘Dude’s’ take on the show. Though, much like he asserts that Hannah can’t be a loser, because Lena is anything but, Franco can’t be the voice of ‘young New York’ that he posits HBO is trying to frame girls as representing. With his intellect matched only by his eloquence, millions of dollars and an Academy Award nomination, Franco seems even more removed from the seedy underside of New York everyone wants to represent, but no one seems capable of pinpointing, than Dunham. When he writes for The Huffington Post people, often millions of them, read it.  When I blog on tumblr I’m not even convinced my mum reads it. Still one has to blog don’t they? All adventurous writers do.

He was looking at me, right at me, into me almost. Then with a twitch of his left eye, he was no longer looking at me, but on me, like he was looking for something. I knew what he was looking for. I knew why he was looking for it.

In the sixth grade, a substitute teacher named Mrs. Hark said this to me when I was last out of the class for lunch one Friday: ‘There’s something undiscoverable about you Samuel Funk.’ The greying, over-the-hill woman removed her thin red reading specs and elaborated: ‘You give a lot away in your face, but not everything. We mustn’t give everything away, not in our faces. Maintaining some veil of mystery will be your greatest source of power and your greatest cause of misery.’

They were odd words to bestow on a sixth-grader, ones I later found out were likely the by-product of Mrs. Hark’s penchant for drinking whisky at breakfast. When she was fired some years later, I was endeared to her even more and I refused to let her crippling alcoholism dent the significance I had placed on her words. I carried them in my backpack all through high school, as both a warning and an encouragement. When I graduated from my teenage wasteland I carried them only in my head, though with rigour and complete trust. In a drunken stupor she probably can’t even remember, Mrs. Hark had inexplicably handed me a framework for dealing with people like the fish cunt. I neither pitied him, nor felt anger towards him, I just let his eyes fall upon me because I knew his quest was in vain. To amateur eyes, I was undiscoverable. My youth is a dirty t-shirt, one that even replete with coffee stains and the residue of yesterday, stills slips over my head with ease and hangs from my shoulders with both grace and complete familiarity. My undiscoverability though, it is far more essential: it is my most trusted pair of bed socks. Stretched and riddled with holes cut by overlong toe nails and rigorous bouts of coitus, they keep me warm, even when the heat of three sheets, a lover and a cotton duvet is splashing back and forth against my otherwise naked body. A man should never sleep without bed socks, for there is no greater surrender than chasing bare feet into the darkness of night. 

“It wasn’t foolishness or vodka that led us to ruin, it was faith. Blind fucking faith.”

“Is there a cure?”

“For faith?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess we could go to a One Direction concert?”

Jones contorted his face to look as if he knew not of who I was speaking. It was his eyes though, they betrayed his mystique of nonchalance. As they had been for years - when he stole money from his arthritis-ridden Grandmother, when he ran over that chihuahua and just kept driving - his eyes were his tell. I knew the bastard was lying and he knew I knew. But like all self-respecting vagabonds we simply raised our tequila chalices and drank away the last vestiges of reasonability. 

It ends when it ends and the start’s no more pure. Pick a cross and carry it. Choose a secret and bury it. This world was once said to be a stage, and the men and women on it players. Well, if theatre is to be the metaphor, hunger not for the cheap applause of contrived neophytes, but the quiet acclaim of the faceless and the revered. Feel the weight of the heavy velvet curtain as it swings together in front of you. Who is the greater fool; he who is someone else for a living or he who lives as someone else? All men have folly in their hearts and deceit in their eyes. 

There is a place.

Somewhere beyond the valleys of youthful lunacy and over the hill of hopelessness, farther than self-loathing can see and higher than the vitriol of detractors can reach, there is a place. It has neither a name nor a postcode. It knows nothing of government or tax and no man has ever been able to accurately translate its shifting geography onto a map. Houses have no business there, nor do roads. There, we walk and we walk freely. Birds circle and sing in a chorus of reciprocity. Give them your heart and they will give you their wings. You will fly, there. Up with the birds. 

There is a place.

I am going to that place. 

no one ever got found by not being lost.

Once,

I was desirous of much.

I dreamt like a young man,

Unburned by a treacherous world

And longed like an old man

Robbed of clarity in memory.

I had plans and schemes and goals,

Though I never knew they had me too.

I lived under laboured delusions

Of possibility

And self-importance.

I was in search

Of affection

And success

And sex

And respect.

I wished to be thinner

And taller

And happier

And better.

I wanted money to spend

And days to waste;

Secrets to harbour

And talent to spare.

I whispered into any open ears

I was simply seeking more.

As a description

It was as vague as it was misleading.

From the wreckage of my fading desires

And discarded dreams,

Festooned atop a clear blue ocean

Of nothing and everything,

There is but one.

This is what I desire now:

To look upon my life –

The disparate collections of Tuesdays and

Egg sandwiches and

Pre-dawn alarms

Smarter,

Better-paid people

Tell me constitutes an existence,

–  And hark without equivocation,

If this is it

Then it is

Enough.