hours to gain,

hours to gain.

time is always my focus

a focal point of my thoughts

and when it slips by me

i'll only have more time

to contemplate

my time lost.

Personality Extremities and the Middle Ground

I tend not to think of myself as a deeply serious man. Serious enough, maybe serious like a serious hangover but not serious like nuclear talks with Iran serious. So that’s that. But most people see me as serious, introverted, closed off. Of course, I question why; in my head and in turn play off these misconstrued typecasting. If I had to pinpoint myself into a set personality type I would go with dramatic; dramatic in all sense of the world, theatrical even. As an adult I always want to make common circumstances a serious matter, but I know doing this will only make it dramatic. I always have an existential dilemma toeing that line.

My flair for drama stems from a childhood of disconnect and a supple extent of alone time to cultivate my imagination. Drama is a way to get attention, and like all things that are beyond social norms, it catches attention.

A car crash, yes, I would stare until my eyes hurt then I would keep staring. A man wearing a dress, yet I would stare. Then I would judge the fit of the dress and the style. A child raging about cancer like his admittance into Jerry’s Kids was in the mail, yes, I would stare. That would be staring into a mirror, staring into the past. I would be staring a spectacle of poor timing, bad decisions and affected performances that would probably bring a tear to my eye. Good tear; let’s not take this the wrong way, I would cry from laughing.

Staring into that mirror would be comedic in one of those “bitter-sweet” ways. Because I have to look at my outlandish nature with humor or I might fall into a somber state.

As a child I was a hypochondriac, I still am to some extent. Not nearly as bad as the seven year old version of myself, peering through a compendium of human diseases and internal disorders. Children should not experience this level of neurosis at the age of seven. Maybe ten or eleven, when the weight of the looming beast that is middle school starts to rear its head. But neurosis at seven is absurd. Perhaps that is just my own social perception on the matter.

Now for the vast majority of my life I have had this inclination for the grandest and at times most obscene way to deals with situations. I would take those arguments with my first girlfriend to levels of neat Shakespearean drama. These petty arguments would spill across phone calls, hand written notes and the ever present AIM. I told her she was evil, more than once. In reality she wasn’t and I thought I was being serious. I wasn’t. The fallout from a fistfight would lead one to believe I just cold clocked a heavy weight contender and downed them. Post fight me would be elevated to Olympia Heights; although this was mostly in my head.

In my teenage years I had an inclination toward recreational drug use. So of course me stoned would be a parade of underwhelmed emotions brimming to the surface. “I’m so fucking high,” I would say. “I can see everything. The molecules, my heart beat, my breathing. I’m having a fucking heart attack. (Author’s note: while I’m fictionalizing that dialogue blurb, yes, that happened more than once.) However, the beauty of that type of a downer meant whatever dramatic inclination I might be leaning to would be quelled with more dope or more pills or more, well, downers.

Teenagers are socially aware of how they might be perceived in situations. It was around my mid teenage years when I became aware of what “cool” might be interpreted as. This is where my level of seriousness came from. If I were stone faced, snide, coy and calm I would be classified as “cool”. I would save my dramatic panache for closed doors where only immediate family and whatever girlfriend would be treated to a private show of tantrums and vaudeville.

Common knowledge of the self-aware teenage male means they cannot be seen as a sissy in the confines of public space. Hence, serious Michael Tesauro. If the tragic performances that I would give in my private life reached the rest of my freshman to senior classmates, I would be stereotyped as a “wuss”. We all know that’s no way to go through high school, I know because I tormented those kids.

Putting up a front is a logical way to deal with insecurities and absurd levels of neurosis for a teenager. It’s logical because all teenagers do it. The true test of character lies in the transition into adulthood. Does the dramatic/serious Michael Tesauro enter his adult life as such. Yes and no. I suppose that being scared of one typecast would drive someone to another I wanted to be noticed in public so I acted a certain way. Absurdly austere and foggy eyed a solid chunk of my adolescence on one stage while red faced and driven by catastrophic monologues behind that velvet curtain. My image as serious amongst my peers was drastic and contrasting to what I thought was serious in my personal life.

While years of frowning and stern looks have cast me as a serious person, I still give a good show. For most serious people, authentic seriousness, my style of dealing with less than fortunate situations is absurd. Now as an adult I am faced with serious situations as I drive toward a college degree and starting a family. My serious demeanor has traded in for composed and articulate. My at home Grecian tragedies have been traded in for soap opera level drama. Easily quelled with a word from loved ones. But when situations are serious, bona fide serious, I never really know how to react to the situation.

A few weeks back, I had to deal with a state of affairs that was serious in the most authentic of ways. It involved my partners father and myself. I had to ask that serious question and me being me, I framed the inquisition in that exact manner. “Let me ask you a serious question…” and so on. Yet, I wondered I didn’t want to look stern or ridiculous in the process so I strived for a rational medium, articulation and a smile.

When a young man has to ask that serous question, the “can-I-have-your-daughters-hand” question, they are faced with the crisis of execution. They must figure out what route they have to go down. Now, as I understand, most young men try to seem serious, reliable and well mannered when diving into such levels of importance. Me, on the other hand have a history of the two extremes in electrified situations like this. Serious/dramatic.

Neither of which would help my case asking that question.

I wondered if I would have to pull her father aside and ask him with a stern jaw line and firm handshake. Maybe nod my head and present a rigid case to do so. But I would probably come across as humorless asshole. Now as I learned in high school the way you present yourself speaks to your peers and your elders. Of course I wouldn’t want to look like that. And then there’s option B kept in my back pocket.

The drama.

But in reality I would want to break into a flailing monologue to him about love and poetics and how she is my other half, so on and so forth with raining flower petals. That would make me look like a sopping and outrageous human being that is fit for a stage, possibly straightjacket. Finding a middle ground is a challenge.

I’ve learned that I can pair my theatrical leanings and my serious persona into rare instances of a lovely thing called boldness. I have always been known to be a bold, brash and otherwise forthright man. My thespian nature and my introversion meet in a lightning spark of boldness that couples the two and leads me to wonderful instance of adult life.

Bold is my middle ground.

So I approached this issue of a serious and life-changing question as bold. I asked him at the dinner, at the table in front of everyone. However, with bold comes calms for me, with calm comes lucidity. So I assumed his response would have been naturally a yes and in turn it was a yes. But I wonder what would have happened if it was a “no”, an concrete and serious “no”.

Would I have stood on the table, feet in the salsa bowls and torn my shirt? Maybe breaking into a monologue about despair and loneliness, then collapsing in a white-hot panic. Or sat calmly with a frown with grit teeth and a pulsing forehead vein. I can only hope I would counter bold with bolder. For me bold is level headed and that is a great way to go through life.

But if I did jump head first into the drama I would hope there would a tablecloth that I could use as a cape for my performance, adding that Michael, age 7 theatrical flair to my monologue.