The La La La Factor
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
I heard a while ago about a method of taking one’s mind off the ickiness of what one is having to witness or having to do. Whether it is dealing with excrement, or other gunk in unwanted places, or trying to mask the sound or the smell or the sight of something unpleasant, all you have to do is loudly say “La La La La La” repeatedly until the distressing phenomenon has disappeared or finished.
This is what I wanted to do a week ago when confronted with blatant rampant heterosexuality being flaunted in my face. I was in somebody else’s house and there was nowhere I could go really, to escape it. I tried to be polite and simply turn my attention and my gaze elsewhere – certainly there were more than three people in the room. The man seemed to take possessive and powerful pride in his chosen mate and she was all wrapped up in adoration of his person. Really it’s quite boring put into words, but all I could think was La La La La La let this stop and let them go be private someplace where I don’t have to see.
It’s not so much the sour grapes factor. I didn’t wish to conduct myself in a similarly amorous manner with my chosen mate. Conscious that we were already on enemy territory, taken in as a matter of duty more than because our hosts wanted us to be there, we were very careful not to draw too much attention to our deviant state of homosexuality. I did start to wonder why I was being treated to this lavish display. I suspect part of their enjoyment was in making me feel uncomfortable.
La La La La can you imagine what would have happened had I reached out and taken up her hand in mine for simple comfort? If she’d gathered me up into her arm or kissed me for heaven’s sake, on the cheek if not the lips? We’d have been accused of flaunting our degenerate state and we’d have been asking for trouble.
Of course I didn’t say anything audibly. I just kept thinking La La La this is so gross La La La take me away please La La La why are they so unspeakably selfish and so unspeakably rude and La La La what am I doing in this place? I don’t belong here.
I began to analyse their (hetero)sexual behaviour in the context that these two young people are not married and perhaps were putting on this elaborate and La La La La disgusting display in public because of their cultural context. Perhaps they were carefully going just as far as they could go in front of us to prove that they weren’t breaking the covenant or breaking the unspoken expectation that premarital sex is a no-no? Perhaps this was all they could do for want of privacy to enjoy themselves and their unmarried state?
I may have it all completely wrong. To some extent it also felt like everyone there was in La La Land. No one was real. No one was engaging with another person on a deep and thoughtful level – we were all skating along the surface like small water bugs who fear getting sucked under and losing our ability to escape into the blandness of two-dimensions.
Anyway it’s all beside the point really. Maybe everyone there around the dinner table was going La La La La La about the fact that I was sitting there with the woman I married in their presence several months ago? We were of course there because we’d invited ourselves over to try to break through the rejection and the silence enforced by an older generation unwilling to even grudge us room to breathe, space to exist, a chance to prove ourselves…
I tried to raise this over dinner – tried to turn the conversation to a topic that I thought was relevant to everyone present. At that point every person at the table except my Beloved turned to the person next to them and went loudly La La La La – or at least that’s what it sounded like to me. No one acknowledged what I had said, let alone engaged with it. I had broken a rule without even thinking. What was that rule?
You shall not challenge the older generation for fear that they will be driven out of their comfort zone. We must at all costs preserve their comfort for fear that otherwise they shall make things very uncomfortable for us.
You shall keep yourself small and meek because you are not deserving of attention or care or kindness.
You shall not speak of matters that concern you because if you do speak of these matters others will be forced to either take positions against you or to be complicit and culpable in your wrongdoing.
You shall above all be nice.
La La La La
