bjornlarssen

Confession: I am not enjoying the world in 2018.

Obviously, I don’t mean to say that the entire planet has nothing to offer me. I’m not enjoying the news, the outrage, the furious exchanges on social media. I block certain words, phrases, unfollow people who seem perfectly nice and reasonable…until someone says that one phrase or criticises that one idea or…etc. As a chronically ill person I have a limited amount of spoons, and I have to decide how to distribute them. Realising how much energy reading those tirades cost me and how little I actually learned from them made me disengage. There are times when I will see X commenting on a post by Y in a way that makes me absolutely seethe with rage. I deal with this by blocking X, then hiding the post.

Unfortunately, it appears I can’t completely block worldwide politics, climate change, or countless acts of violence that media love reporting on. A brief look at the front page of HuffPo makes me gasp. A remark from a family member makes me want to cry in powerlessness. Twitter keeps me informed whether I want to be or not. I’m not going to give examples, because why would I? Look at the news yourself.

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Fear of not missing outRead More »

In my second work-in-progress novel (WIP2) the main protagonist utters the following phrase: “A responsible adult should be taking care of this, not me!” It’s not a good thing when a fictional character speaks with the writer’s voice, but Gareth and me are in 100% agreement over this. Gareth, by the way, is 32. I am 40.

When I was 10 years old, I couldn’t wait to be a Grown Up Man. My mom would buy the most delicious sweets – chocolate-covered marshmallows – and give me one a day. Perhaps two if it was a holiday. (For sake of transparency, that was Communist Poland and getting more sweets wasn’t as simple as popping out to the corner store, but try and explain this to a 10-year-old.) I promised myself that one day when I’d become An Adult I was going to buy myself those marshmallows and eat the whole box in one go. Twenty-five years later, after an exceptionally heavy shift at the forge I opened a brand new box of exactly the same marshmallows, and started eating them mindlessly. I made it through half a box until I began to feel sick. Clear proof that adulthood sucks – as a child I would also have gotten sick, but I would have enjoyed it.

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Looking for a responsible adult!Read More »

Picture above: 2004

I am a proud owner of not one, but TWO mirrors.

When I look in the first, I generally think, “daaaamn bae, not bad at all”. Sometimes I think “daaamn bae, you’re greying” or “daaamn bae that is a VERY impressive zit”. But that mirror tends to bump my self-esteem even if it’s because the zit is truly of galactic proportions. The second mirror, on the other hand, always makes me look grey-skinned and tired. It underlines all the wrinkles, makes my black beard look like it’s greying even in spots where it isn’t actually doing it.

The interesting thing is that two mirrors both hang in the bathroom, approximately three meters apart. The only difference is that the lamp hangs closer to the first one.

As shallow as this sounds, the “choice” of first mirror I will look at on the day can affect my self-esteem for the entire day. The “worse” one, unfortunately, hangs over the sink where I brush my teeth and put on my lenses. The “better” one is the medicine cabinet. I do not organise my day about looking in mirrors in correct order, but perhaps I should.

(also 2004)

I hope you are not surprised to hear that those mirrors are actually a metaphor. Because what I actually want to talk about is how we see our mirror images in others’ eyes. There are people whose gaze is going to make me feel better and happier. There are people who just need to look at me once for a second to make me feel like I am Quasimodo with the most impressive zits ever. If those people are strangers, I generally don’t notice their existence, since I am the type of person who gets so lost in the music in my headphones that I miss the fact I’m standing next to a dear friend who’s trying to attract my attention by performing an interpretative dance in the nude. But sometimes the mirror people feel the need to tap me on the shoulder and ensure I know their negative opinion about them. A bit like Rebecca here (read the thread):

*

A good friend of mine wrote:

Only recently I realised that if I decided to talk about [thing], a lot of people would decide I am simply trying to flaunt how disgusting I am and that I should keep my thoughts to myself.

This is the kind of mirror I don’t want in my house. Or life. The mirror that not only gives you a better view of your zit and wrinkles, it actually huffs “if you could PLEASE not reflect in me, because it makes me sick, people with faces like yours belong in dark spaces with paper bags on their heads”. And then you turn around and the mirror is like “I STILL SEE YOU”, and you’re like, well fuck you mirror, and the mirror says “You are SO rude and impolite, I am just being nice and helpful, not only are you ugly but also rude AND a snowflake!”.

(I believe it was John Cleese who correctly pointed out people who call me a “snowflake” are actually saying “you’re not a sociopath, you have those ew, ew, feelings, and that is a bad thing”.)

(2010)

There is no objective way to tell whether I am a good-looking, funny, smart, well informed, interesting person, or perhaps disgusting, evil, gross. There are no objective rules for that. There actually are people who still insist Hitler was a very nice person and a misunderstood artist. (Those same people often insist Holocaust was faked, then move on to saying “but we should stage another one for everyone who isn’t like us”.) Those people are unlikely to become my BFFs. Some things can be perfectly fine inside a church, but NOT at my house – and, of course, vice versa. Even various sub-religions of Christianity can disagree on what is wrong or right. Hell, a friend of mine goes to a church where the vicar finds her perfectly…suitable, but SOME other churchgoers demand her to leave and never return. My friend, you see, is a lady of faith, she takes part in a lot of church activities, but she is also a lesbian. Another one went to her priest and asked if he found contraception to be a horrible sin. The priest was like “of course not, duh”. She mentioned this to a friend, who huffed saying “it’s the WORST of sins”. When she mentioned the priest’s opinion, the “friend” answered “well, then he is wrong”.

I don’t have friends like this. Not anymore.

There is a book called “Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fine”. The book has been covered in such thick layer of awards that it’s hard to see the cover anymore. Tons of people told me I will love it. I suffered through first 1/3, cringing internally, feeling that it’s a particularly cruel portrait of a person with mental illness. I tried and tried. People told me it gets better later. I didn’t manage to last that long. I also hear that if I force myself long enough I will start liking goat cheese. I respect this WRONG view, then order pizza with pineapple and people block me on social media.

This has no relation to whether the book is good or not. It means that when I am the mirror, this book has a lot of zits and wrinkles. It’s a matter of taste, world view, possibly even mood I am in. No book is ever going to be good enough to warrant perfect 5.0 average on Goodreads from every single reader. Not even mine. (SHOCK!) This blog is going to piss people off. Every blog is going to do it. People complain about too many kittens on the Internet, as if something like that could even be a thing. I used to write a very popular blog back in Poland. It was called “Scenes From the Life of Heterosexuals”. It was a humour blog, and quite often got linked on the front page of the most popular news portal in Poland. Every time I got that link my visits spiked, and so did the amount of nasty comments. This was the day I realised I can’t possibly satisfy anybody. On one of my previous blogs, where I wrote very openly about my life, I sometimes got one negative comment per 99 positive ones, and I suffered through sleepless nights wondering what I’ve done wrong, and why doesn’t this one person love me. Receiving comments that consisted only of expletives cured me from this. So did reminding myself that 13-year-olds can now post comments on blog posts.

This happened in 3D life as well, of course. Person one would look at me as if I was the eighth wonder of the world. Person two, thirty seconds later, would spit at my shoes. Obviously I would focus on wondering why person two doesn’t love me, and try to change myself, only to find that person two continued to hate me, and person one quickly withdrew from that stranger I suddenly became.

(2011)

The worst mirror is the one inside of me. When depressions strike, in particular, I have a tape in my head telling me over and over and over how useless I am. Attention seeker (this is especially weird when I am alone and nobody can see me “seeking attention” by staying in bed for hours). Lazy. Gross. Awful. Worthless. This is a mirror that hurts, and I can’t even break it or turn away from it. This is when I need other people to remind me those things are not true, and this is why I had to let go of people who reinforced those beliefs. Often as I am writing the editor I work with is the mirror that helps me remember what I am doing has value. I would have probably left the book alone at some point, but the editor put so much work into my book that the mirror she is motivates me every single time she sends me an email. This is how I survived writing the book for nine months, thinking it was ready, then – so far – revising and editing for 9.5 months. There is end in sight. But if it were just me, it would most probably have ended by now. Because when your mirror is your low self-esteem and impostor syndrome, it’s not going to help.

It’s okay to look in the mirror that makes me look better. It’s okay not to put myself down in disguise of being modest and well-behaved. It’s okay not to listen to stupidest advice ever – “if I can do it, so can you”. I know a person with anxiety who “got over it” and told me repeatedly “if I can do it, so can you”. He is very well-meaning and sweet, but he’s also wrong. A person without legs can’t run a marathon despite the fact you can. A person with cancer can’t stop having cancer because you don’t have it. A person with anxiety disorder can’t just decide to stop having it, even though it can be semi-controlled with medication and therapy. An introvert can’t suddenly start organising huge parties and enjoy them. (I’ve read a comment once that the person – I wish I could remember her name! – hated books that began with a person being a hermit introvert, then at the end of the book being soul of every party they went to. This comment shaped a lot of my novel-in-progress.)

(2012)

I may look better in one of my bathroom mirrors, but I still don’t look like Travis Fimmel. This, however, makes me wonder what Travis would think about his reflection in my evil mirror. Perhaps he’d quite Cindy Crawford – “even I, when I get up in the morning, don’t look like Cindy Crawford”. Perhaps he doesn’t need a mirror to confirm his exquisiteness. Perhaps he’d sigh “why can’t I look like Idris Elba”. Even mirrors change depending on who’s looking in them.

I used to Photoshop my pictures to hell and back. I stopped. I am who I am. Sometimes I am a person that looks like a go away, and then on the next picture five seconds later I’m delicious. Even if the same person took the photo. Because that’s how life rolls, baby.

PS. I also don’t look like Idris Elba.

(2013)

Natalia Sylvester published a fantastic essay on Writer Unboxed:

As an immigrant and a Latina whose recent novel deals with family sacrifice, love, generational trauma, secrets, marriage, adolescence, borders, and immigration, I’m often told things like my novel is very timely, or that the topic of immigration is very relevant right now. I’ve lived my whole life as an immigrant; to me and millions like me, immigration is not a “topic” but a lived experience. We cannot separate politics from our lives because our whole lives there have been policies in place that affect us. […]

In stories like mine, in a time and setting where the current (and historical) politics obstruct and oppress the lives of the Latinx immigrant communities I’m writing about, the political becomes more visible. It is a force that we do not have the privilege, as much as we’d want to, of ignoring. Even if I were to write a fun, “non-political” story that makes for an escapist read, it’d be difficult to do so authentically because my existence as a woman of color and immigrant is politicized in the world we live in.

I am a white cis man. So far, so good. But I am also an atheist gay man raised in a very strict Catholic country where being different is very rarely an advantage. I refused to remain in the closet, didn’t attend mass or religion classes at school. It was enough to become a polarising figure, accused of pushing an extreme agenda. The price I paid for being openly gay (as opposed, I suppose, to people who are openly straight) was high – I lost contact with a large part of my family. The reason? Wanting to bring my boyfriend to a family celebration. When my cousins brought their girlfriends, that was normal. When I wanted to bring my significant other, it was made very clear to me that it was okay for me to be gay – but only where nobody could see me.

A few years ago I happened to be in Poland in time for a rally demanding legalisation of registered partnerships – not even the most extreme of activists dared to demand same-sex marriage at that time. Since I was very open about my sexuality on my Polish blog, I was called onstage without any prior warning. I gave a short impromptu speech, in which I said that in Poland I was “a gay man”, while in the Netherlands I was a person. This was shocking enough to put me in a newspaper. But even though here in Amsterdam I am a person, I still check who is around before I hold my husband’s hand. Because even here, even in 2018 this puts both of us at danger. We’re flaunting, pushing our sexuality down people’s throats, think of the children. We’re holding hands.

Committing a political act either before or after I was called onstage

The default people

A default person is a white cis straight man following the mainstream religion of the country he lives in. He was born in that country, and sees himself as a patriot. Being the default brings along a lot of what is essentially political privilege. And the default people don’t want to lose it. Women are great to play girlfriends, wives, daughters, secretaries. They get spoken parts, in which they talk about men. In the first “Thor” movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh, Natalie Portman plays a badass scientist. In the second, she mostly shrieks and faints. I didn’t watch the third one, so can’t comment on that.

Look at the reaction to the all-female “Ghostbusters”, “Wonder Woman”, “Ocean’s 8”, “Black Panther”. Despite the fact that default people are represented everywhere all the time – pop music, movies, TV, billboards, adverts, books, you name it – they feel threatened by anything that doesn’t confirm their view of the world. An Asian actress is shunned, because “Asians are not expressive enough”, therefore she can’t play an Asian woman (!?!?!?!?) and a white woman must step in. Margaret Cho was told she was too fat to play herself. It all boils down to the idea that default people should have a monopoly on being represented. Blockbuster movies featuring gay men (“Brokeback Mountain”), people of colour, women in all leading roles are all considered shocking, ground-breaking, and political. If I have one thing to say about “Brokeback Mountain”, it’s that once you stop thinking of gay cowboys as scandalous taboo topic it’s a rather boring movie. The director managed to make it just scandalous enough for people to watch it. Casting two very popular white cis straight male actors helped, I suppose. It also got them lauded for their courage.

Back in Poland I was regularly told to “go to Holland where perverts like you belong”. I emigrated, and never looked back. I was accepted without any problems, assigned a knowledge migrant visa, later applied for citizenship and received it. This didn’t make me a Dutch person. It made me an immigrant from Poland with Dutch citizenship. I feel very lucky, grateful, but also still resentful towards a country where it is completely acceptable to tell me straight to my face that I am unwanted. I’ve experienced violence – verbal, emotional, physical – because of the political fact of holding my boyfriend’s hand in public. Even during that rally in Poland we, the Dutchies, seemed to be the only couple holding hands. I originally wrote that my life was never in danger, but then I remembered the death threat I received because of what I write on my Polish blog. Specifically, because I don’t hide the fact I am gay.

Just married (photo: Gerardo Viviers)

“What will children think when they see two men kissing?” is just one way of saying “you’re not really human”. Back in Poland a prominent politician said once that there is no discrimination against queer people, because any gay man can marry a woman whenever he likes. Another pointed out that she never noticed any discrimination against gay and lesbian people. (She is straight.) I was accused of “flaunting my sexuality” and “pushing it down our children’s throats”, as if all children were straight. As if we, as children, were not constantly having heterosexuality pushed down our throats. Why is it so easy to forget heterosexuality is also a sexual orientation? That white is also a colour? (I have a grudge against the phrase “people of colour” for this reason, while reluctantly accepting there’s no better expression to use at this time.)

“Diversity” is a buzz word in 2018. “Representation”, “own voices”, you name it. This doesn’t change the fact that a woman of colour is being told by her white editor that she (the author) doesn’t know how to write a character of colour correctly. (My apologies for not being able to provide a source – perhaps tellingly my attempts to locate the original article led me to…4chān.) That Natalia Sylvester is accused of pushing a political agenda – and, at the same time, asked why her novels are not more political. That when I said on that stage that I wanted to be treated like a person without putting me in a rainbow-coloured box and shutting the lid it proved to be controversial enough to warrant an article in the biggest newspaper in Poland. I take issue with the word “diversity” as well, because it creates another divide: default people versus diverse people. As if non-whites, non-straights, non-*insert dominant religion in your country* were some sort of “diversity tokens”, political simply because they – we – exist in public.

A while ago I noticed that I stopped reading novels written by default people for default people. It wasn’t a political act either. It was seemingly a coincidence that continued until I realised my top five novels of 2017 were all written by women, not all of them white or straight either. I never picked a book thinking “this will be good, because a woman/PoC/gay man wrote it”. I believe I just got tired of the default viewpoint. It truly has been pushed down my throat for decades, together with explanation that it’s good for me, and attempts to convince me there was no other perspective.

I am both exhilarated and upset by the fact “Black Panther” was such an enormous hit and generated so many headlines. “Black Panther” finally gave on-screen representation to people of colour, for once not cast just as “token blacks” to show “our commitment to diversity”. When the makers of “Doctor Strange” were accused of whitewashing due to the fact Tilda Swinton was cast in a role written for an Asian man, they responded:

Both director Scott Derrickson and writer Jon Spaihts have defended Swinton, rationalizing that casting a woman in the role of a man was already a diversity choice.

Very recently casting of Scarlett Johansson as a trans man sparked controversy. Johansson herself fails to understand the problem. This was her statement:

Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.

She feels personally attacked and singled out. It doesn’t look like Scarlett Johansson realises what the problem even is. She is a white, straight, cis woman, who already played a Japanese character, because – I suppose – there just aren’t any Japanese actors? (The movie, “Ghost in the Shell”, bombed at the box office.) The very idea that perhaps the role of a trans man could be given to a trans man is a shocking political statement. As if the filmmakers were not already being so brave and supportive by even making a movie about a trans man at all! Below a photograph of the man Johansson will be playing:

Nobody is saying Scarlett Johansson shouldn’t ever play any leading role again. Nobody is saying she is not talented. The movie industry didn’t suddenly stop offering acting opportunities to white actors. Despite the success of “Black Panther” I don’t expect that five years from now all superheroes will be disabled black lesbians (as was sarcastically suggested when the idea of Idris Elba playing James Bond started floating around). But disabled black lesbians exist. So do gay atheists born in Poland. Trans male actors. Immigrants. Gay Muslims. You wouldn’t know that from popular culture. But yes, we do exist, and we don’t think about ourselves as “diversity representatives”. We think about ourselves as people. I hope to see the day when that doesn’t seem shocking.

Just married (photo: Dorota Kozerska)