12.05.2004
atypical adulthood
i was reading at work today and i came across a brief description of a "singles bar." when i think of a singles bar, the first image that pops into my head is fred mac murray and shirley mac laine in that shady chinese restaurant from the apartment. what a singles bar might be in 2004 (as opposed to 1960) totally escapes me. but it's the sort of thing i feel a kind of distant expectation to know something about, as "an adult."
sometime last year, i started to notice that the world thought of me as an adult. 27. you're an adult. but, without older siblings or boho parents, i found no appropriate model of adulthood before me (no complaints there, by the way)... just a vague feeling that it was finally upon me, reinforced by slight differences in cultural expectation, and so on.
currently, i find myself in a kind of blank space regarding adulthood. on the one hand, i lack an interest in children, property or aggressive financial advancement. i won't be emulating ward cleaver or gordon gecko or bill gates anytime soon. on the other hand, i think i can safely say my interests/lifestyle doesn't lend itself to a state of suspended adolescence (livejournal excluded). i don't long to transform into frodo baggins or darby crash or charles bukowski. adulthood is an empty signifier most of the time, and that's fine.
but then i can't imagine a "singles bar," and i'm reminded of the particularity of my life's path. a "norm" emerges without anything to enforce it, or even promote it. and it always starts with signifiers like that-- singles bar: a place where singles go to be "single" (a prequel to marriage, divorce?), guest room: a vacancy in one's house where friends go to be "guests." these are the adult things i inevitably collide with. and there is no friction in the collision. i collide with indifference, but i collide nonetheless...
adulthood emerges for me as something with a content when i contemplate "the singles bar." i feel cut off, ideologically. a feeling of alienation, but free of melancholia or reactionary entitlement. emotionless alienation; feeling alienated from that which was always "alien" in the first place.
sometime last year, i started to notice that the world thought of me as an adult. 27. you're an adult. but, without older siblings or boho parents, i found no appropriate model of adulthood before me (no complaints there, by the way)... just a vague feeling that it was finally upon me, reinforced by slight differences in cultural expectation, and so on.
currently, i find myself in a kind of blank space regarding adulthood. on the one hand, i lack an interest in children, property or aggressive financial advancement. i won't be emulating ward cleaver or gordon gecko or bill gates anytime soon. on the other hand, i think i can safely say my interests/lifestyle doesn't lend itself to a state of suspended adolescence (livejournal excluded). i don't long to transform into frodo baggins or darby crash or charles bukowski. adulthood is an empty signifier most of the time, and that's fine.
but then i can't imagine a "singles bar," and i'm reminded of the particularity of my life's path. a "norm" emerges without anything to enforce it, or even promote it. and it always starts with signifiers like that-- singles bar: a place where singles go to be "single" (a prequel to marriage, divorce?), guest room: a vacancy in one's house where friends go to be "guests." these are the adult things i inevitably collide with. and there is no friction in the collision. i collide with indifference, but i collide nonetheless...
adulthood emerges for me as something with a content when i contemplate "the singles bar." i feel cut off, ideologically. a feeling of alienation, but free of melancholia or reactionary entitlement. emotionless alienation; feeling alienated from that which was always "alien" in the first place.
