I’d initially set out to write a response to Nina Power’s lament in Compact to Gen X with the kind of sobriety expected of someone in my position as some sort of “cultural critic.” Though it was to be a positive counter to Power’s assessment of Gen X’s “failures,” I wanted to do so having marshaled all the relevant facts of the case, which definitely exist if you know where to look, in an orderly and rigorous fashion, and with little in the way of humor or any other sort of inappropriate ribaldry. Because, like Judge Smails in Caddyshack, I didn’t want to do it, but I felt I owed it to them.
But then I failed in about the same fashion as Power claims Gen X failed.
What accounts for this lapse? Maybe most obvious is, of all things, a generational deficiency. Being a millennial means carrying a special hindrance wherein even the most objective task cannot be completed without consulting Lived Experience. And Lived Experience always prevails no matter what the facts tell you. Fair enough. When I am the protagonist of my so-called life, it’s not sense-making to give to Jared Leto (the facts) what rightfully belongs to Claire Danes (me). But there’s still another complicating layer.
In addition to being a millennial, I am also among the earliest. Meaning I am burdened with a cultural memory that reaches far back into the 1990s. I am conscious of most of the experiences of which Gen Xers are also conscious. I remember library card catalogues, monolithic metal filing cabinets, video stores, scheduled TV, and Zima. I remember middle school teachers talking ominously about Marilyn Manson and casually about Monica Lewinsky. I went to shows advertised through Xeroxed fliers. I waited a fucking lifetime (7-10 business days) for delivery orders. I remember hearing “Wonderwall” morning, noon, and night every day until well into high school. I remember a world now lost like some premodern civilization that sacrificed sickly newborns and invalid grandparents because the wind was mad at it.
I also sense the depth of that loss just as they do, even if the world that emerged in its place was better suited to me. If Gen X felt excluded from Myspace and later millennials felt obligated to be a part of it, I opted out without a second thought. And if they could balk at the moral unseemliness of Napster, I became a near-sociopathic downloader of pirated goods. But none of that should trivialize my sense-memory that still has so much Gen X overlap.
How am I expected to culturally criticize under such conditions? With this enflanneled albatross tied around me? And it’s not like simply lifting it off me does much of anything. Generation X is not only something I witnessed; they were people I knew and who played a significant role in my personal development.
When you are cursed with the misfortune of being a firstborn, as I was, your options for meaningful life guidance beyond adult authorities are pretty anemic. Your surroundings, like your existence, are determined by dumb chance, so you have to work with what you have. Some in my situation may well have found wisdom and self-esteem in one of those library story time ladies who by virtue of their apparent childlessness or long-emptied nest took a relaxed and liberal, but not excessively permissive, attitude toward strengthening your moral and cultural senses. If that was available to me, I was not accommodating. Perhaps that is why I spontaneously vomit at the even the mention of Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Where The Wild Things Are.
No; I preferred the counsel of a younger but still well advanced in years sort of cohort that, in concrete terms, were neighborhood kids but, from my stature, were like graceful giants or benevolent centaurs. In fact, I think it would be a nice idea if we referred to them as “centaurs” for the duration of this essay.
Centaurs were characterized by a rarified inner-dignity and an iron self-possession. They conducted themselves wherever I saw them with a regality likely rare past the age of feudalism. Certainly in my pre-adolescence I had a sense of being a kind of serf in relation to them, and that I had earned that position. The centaurs never sought me out for anything of much importance. And it is not at all clear if they wanted me to seek out them. But they made the time regardless. Even so, the centaurs were distinct from one another just as we lowlifes are, and you had to approach each differently to get the most out of their counsel.
One I saw often because he lived next door to me. Let’s call him “Kurt.” Kurt was maybe five or seven years ahead of me. He was in high school when I was in elementary school. I saw him most when he was out shooting hoops in his driveway, and he had the supreme generosity not to leave immediately when I came and sat along the line of stones where his property met mine. I don’t remember much of what I talked about with Kurt, in part because I was 10 or so and never had anything interesting to say, and in part because Kurt was rather taciturn in his speech. His voice was low and gravely; his periods were abrupt. Not ideal for conversation but very ideal for imparting swear words. He also gave me his old Atari system, but that was less important. Mostly because I think it was broken.
Another centaur I shall call “Miss Cleo.” Miss Cleo I only encountered once, while she was subbing for one of my teachers in third grade. I admit I was put off by her for a few reasons. First because her entire demeanor was one of mild disdain. She was clearly a college student or a recent graduate in need of quick cash and not particularly impassioned by the teaching vocation. And second because her pedagogical approach was entirely heterodox; at least insofar as there was no approach whatever. Rather than impart lessons, she rolled out the TV-on-the-stand and put on Labyrinth. I had never seen Labyrinth before and had barely any conception of the fantasy genre it was commenting upon. It was unclear to me if David Bowie’s character was good or evil or entirely ambiguous. My memory is fuzzy and I have not seen Labyrinth since then. All the while Miss Cleo stood against the teacher’s desk and made sardonic comments as if we could follow her humor. I sat tensed in my seat for the duration. This was a special ed class. She either wasn’t told about or totally disregarded the prohibition against addressing us with such an absence of condescension, as if we were perfectly mature, intelligent interlocutors like the normal kids. It was a nightmare.
A third centaur was another neighborhood kid whom I will call “Large Marge,” even though Large Marge was a male. I cannot remember his precise age, but I believe he was out of high school. Nor do I remember what he did. He lived with his parents in a house a few blocks away. His father was a gregarious German who loudly greeted anyone he saw while out walking his two pugs. Large Marge was large though. His Baron Harkonnen proportions made him seem indomitable, and he was worse influence than average. He was not so much menacing as he was unsettlingly and knowingly impish. He would show some kids the (probably fake) pistol and (definitely fake) police uniform he kept in his trunk. Other kids he would harass from his car. My mom called the actual cops on Large Marge at least twice. I was in high school the last time I saw him. It was during a snow day outside a convenience store where a friend and I spent very little time persuading him to buy porn mags for us. So, mea culpa on that last one, but still.
In recalling these three centaurs specifically, I omit many more. The babysitters, the older cousins, the lifeguards, and so on whose influence may have been more positive and innocent, relatively speaking. The ones who let me stay up past my bedtime and watch R-rated movies (my mom beat them to it). The ones who guided my early cultural tastes with “cool” music and “mature” literature (either none appeared or what they recommended was trash). But even if such people were present and live on pleasantly enough in my memory, they were not otherwise significant.
I do not believe that Gen X failed. But I do believe the most salient impressions they left on me were negative ones. “Kurt” taught me that language could be coarsened. “Miss Cleo” taught me, despite her best efforts not to teach me anything, that rules could be slighted. And “Large Marge” taught me that the world was wicked. What I was supposed to do with these lessons they, to their credit (or rather their total indifference), left entirely to my discretion. I can only say that I’m now an adult who is protective, perhaps even a bit jealous, of my language, who imposes only those rules that I’m certain are worth obeying, and who does not approach wickedness with the same enthusiasm as Gen Xers evidently had.
What remains, then, is can centaurhood passed on? Should it be? I, wary of being mentored on any official basis and nauseated at the prospect of mentoring others in equal measure, would rather not accept it.
The centaur mindset, aloof without being haughty, aristocratic without being imperious, improvisational without being slapdash, and tragic without being morose, has a certain charm about it. But that charm, like all charms, is deceptive. There may be more practice behind it than is apparent to the receiver. I have friends with a wider age gap from me than I had from my centaur babysitters. I don’t peddle (or would not like to be thought of as peddling) influence upon them and there is no evident desire for such peddling anyway. I may, haphazardly, offer a fine or at least ponderable example. I may offer absolutely nothing. I may be a cosmic joke made cruelly flesh. Whichever is funnier is what I prefer to go with when possible.
How do you guide someone without actually going out of your way to actually be helpful in any meaningful sense? Perhaps that is a question that only Gen X have best answered. Perhaps that is their legacy more than Power’s “Zen nihilism.” Perhaps the centaur mindset should be buried with them. If so, Gen X’s actual failing may have been in cheaping out on a casket ill-suited for horse legs.