Book Club Log #12
This month's book was Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin. I arrived about 5 mins early as usual and then didn't know where to sit. My instinct was to sit next to Bookstore Employee, but it looked uneven with the way Old Guy and Teacher Guy had spread themselves out, so I ended up just sitting on the other side of the circle to even things out more.
There wasn't much small talk I had to do since the two men were just talking about what they had read recently. At some point, Multiple Names Guy actually arrived early for once, which surprised me. It looked like I was sitting near where he would normally sit, and he seemed to seriously be waffling about sitting next to me or Old Guy. Guess neither was a winner in his brain because, when Old Guy suggested it, he went over to sit next to Teacher Guy. While this was happening, I wasn't really making eye contact or anything like that, but it occurred to me that I've never been in a pair share with Multiple Names Guy alone because he usually comes late. Guess it wasn't gonna happen today either. Can't say that I particularly am interested to talk to him one-on-one given how awkward we both are, but it keeps feeling like something between me and him is unresolved, and it's kind of annoying. I think it's because I can't figure out what we could possibly talk about but he keeps coming up to me at the end of book club. Very entirely possible that it's just because both of us are standing awkwardly and he figures it's easier to stand awkwardly next to someone who might talk to him, but being a bad conversationist, I can't decide whether I'm grateful or not about this. Like, yeah, I guess if I'm standing here (for my exposure therapy attempts) I better talk to someone. And I don't dislike him, but I also don't feel as comfortable as I do talking to Bookstore Employee, Teacher Lady, Chill Lady, or even Purple Corn or Old Guy. So there's always this ?? feeling about Multiple Names Guy, like what do I even do with him? Does he still want to be friends, and if so, what for? I don't know and probably will never know, and we'll keep standing around awkwardly for years to come. Practice in surviving looking like a dumbass: Me every day I'm actually in public. I think I'm doomed to be overly conscious of him until the random day that we actually find a common topic. Actually, I should ask him about how his comic idea is coming along. Keep forgetting. I just am like convinced that our interests are only like 5% aligned so it's a vast territory of ??? between us because neither of us is a talker (me probably more at fault than him).
Bookstore Employee ran out of steam in making the questions this month so they were pretty basic, but in the end we only got to 2 anyway (typical). One of those questions was the one I contributed:
Something that James Baldwin claims is that people lose some part of themselves when they oppress others. "Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man and this was an immutable law." Do you agree with this statement, or do you see it as a mere fantasy of the oppressed?
For some reason, I was seriously going through it today anxiety wise. Something about me just felt physically off and my heart was doing flips, which was really distracting. You would think that I would be all cool about coming to a book club I've been at for over a year, but no. I did take my daily propranolol but I started wondering if I should've taken an extra dose or something. Was this just because Chill Lady wasn't there? I can't seriously be this dependent on the one other person who talked about Animal Crossing with me, or else we have serious problems given that she and I aren't really Friends and she's apparently been going through a hard time emotionally lately and thus should be expected to show up even less.
Anyway, Multiple Names Guy did not sit next to me but his friend did, who I will finally deign to give one of my terrible pseudonyms; he shall henceforth be called Keeps-Inviting-People-to-Book-Club Guy because he invited yet another person who showed up this time (and has done so at least 2 other times before). In the pair share, I did ask him about my contributed question, and he did say that he thought it was a fantasy of the oppressed. So that was interesting. I was kind of expecting him to go off topic since that was the impression I had of him before, but it seemed fine.
We had like 3 new people at book club, all women. But some of the usual crew didn't appear. Discussion was dominated by the men (minus Multiple Names Guy) for like the first half, I feel. But most of that is always the fault of Old Guy, who definitely does get off topic.
The first question was more of the, "How do we actually make our political system responsive to minorities," and there was a lot of "idk" basically. I thought about speaking about Swing Left's Ground Truth program but didn't want to sound like I was shilling for an organization I'm not actually involved in and thus have no clue about the efficacy of. I feel like the answer comes down to just organizing locally until greater coalitions are made, but again I didn't really feel like saying this if I wasn't living the talk myself. "Hi, maybe we should get out there and talk to literally everyone!" "Have you been doing that?" "Absolutely not, for I am a hypocrite with mental problems!"
I did steer the conversation towards my question, but I don't think anyone but Teacher Guy understood what I was asking. When people just started talking about whose job it should be to pull bigoted white people out of their hatred (not people of color), I became aware that I really should have given a much longer intro to what I had gleaned about James Baldwin's philosophy/spirituality to contextualize my question better. It seemed that other people didn't understand why I would be asking the question of "But do white people actually lose anything if they fully believe that they're doing the right thing, even when they are directly participating in the death and disenfranchisement of others?" The "why I'm asking" actually seems like too much to even explain concisely, but it's because I'm curious about the rationalizations people give themselves to live in a hate-filled world. I largely suspect at this point that Baldwin developed this philosophy specifically because living the other way — to believe that bigots don't lose more than anyone else necessarily and actually have a lot to gain from their hate when they win materially — would be both to go against his spiritual background as a Black Christian (whether or not he decided to believe in God at the end) and be a death sentence for him because he would not know how else to otherwise quell his own hate enough to keep it from destroying his life. (Keeps-Inviting-People Guy did bring up that he thinks it has to do with wanting to believe that you have some control over a situation.)
Anywho. After book club I sort of exchanged a few lines with Multiple Names Guy and then just bought next month's book, and then I felt too awkward walking back to stand around more, so I just left. Oops! Better luck next time. Or the next. I keep wondering if I'm becoming complacent and not pushing myself hard enough in this social stuff, but I also don't want to try any harder... The continual conundrum.