Self-Helpless: A Misfit's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

By T.J. Beitelman

Thirteen thumbnail sketches in a semi-casually related sequence that more or less maps out the author's life from, say, 1996 to 2011. With a judicious feint or two toward the back story where appropriate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outpost19
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781937402471

Book preview

Letterman

INTRODUCTION

I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way….But, forget as we will, something soon comes to stand in their place. Not the truth, perhaps, but—yourself. —John Ashbery, from The New Spirit

I’ll try to make this as quick and painless as possible: 

A while back, I decided I’d write a memoir/manifesto-type-thing. 

(I thought that if I could put it all down….) 

I mean… 

Seemed like everybody was writing memoir/manifesto-type-things and I guess I’m kind of an egomaniac, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to add my life story and/or unsolicited exhortations to the mix. 

Because I’m like a genius or something. And I have Things to Say, or so I’d like (you) to believe.

Only thing was: turns out my life story is boring as hell. 

Or I don’t know if it’s boring exactly. Stuff has happened. Sad stuff, happy stuff, crazy-insane stuff. But it doesn’t seem to cohere. Or something. I don’t know. 

Anyway, I wrote the whole thing out and read it and was like, Hmm. I’m sort of clever, I guess. But is that it? Where are we going with this thing? 

That’s when you hand it off to friends to see what they think. 

And everybody I showed it to was like, Hmm. You’re sort of clever, I guess. But is that it? I mean, I hate to hurt your feelings or whatever, but. Uh. Where are we going with this thing?

So yeah: it got tabled. It’s for the best. 

I don’t like people knowing about my life anyway. 

Yes. I do have an eponymous website/blog. [Visit www.tjbman.com today!] 

Yes. Inconsistency and paradox are the two truest facts of the world.

At least they are the two truest facts of my world. 

At any rate, my so-called web presence factors in here in a practical way too because pretty much all anybody needs to know about me can be found there. (There.)

Hence: another reason I don’t need to write a memoir. 

And yet the solipsistic impulse persists. Stubbornly. Hmm.

Which is to say, maybe you don’t have the internet (highly unlikely given the digital form of this so-called book you’re holding) or you just can’t be bothered to zoom over to my virtual world (far more likely and even understandable if also regrettable for all parties concerned).

So. In either case, here is…

Pretty Much All Anybody Needs to Know About Me 

I am a child of the Nineteen-Seventies, the Aquarian Age. I spent my unassuming formative years on the outskirts of the self-proclaimed Most Important City in the World, Washington, DC. 

Mine was the American boyhood: the endless pursuit of sporting contests, real or imagined. I was small but fast, and I could throw a football in a tight spiral. I disliked school. Etc.

My father was an old man, a government lawyer and veteran of a foreign war. The foreign war. A member of the Greatest Generation (so-called) and a beneficiary of the GI Bill. Etc. But really he was a frustrated visual artist with a weak heart and abiding passions: the endless pursuit of sporting contests, real or imagined; Sunday morning political talk shows; atheism; a venomous hatred of Ronald Reagan and the so-called supply-side economics. Etc. 

These he passed on to me—or tried to. Some took root better than others. Even the ones that took have changed over time.

My mother was different. She took risks. She loved and lost. Crashed Harleys. Examined the wreckage through the bifocal lenses of the New Age and Pop Psychology. Etc.

Mash all that together—Art; God; America; Love; the accompany-ing wreckage, frustration, dreams, and visions associated therewith—and transplant it in the fertile cultural soil of the American South at the dawn of the 21st Century. Add water, sunlight. Etc. 

Eventually something like me (and my eponymous website, etc.) sprouts up.

And they all lived happily-ever-after-ish. The end.* 

Hence (and again): no memoir necessary. 

---

*See, now. Already I’ve mislead you. Both of my parents are dead and have been for kind of a long time now. (Please see: p. 2—"Stuff has happened.") Which is something I’ve mostly got a stiff upper lip about but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t matter (it does), or that it hasn’t contributed to what can only be described as my deep-seated intimacy issues (it has). But. That’s not something I talk about a whole lot or really even understand very well. So let’s just move on. Thanks. Amen.  

---

Hmm. Times two. 

One thing I did notice, though, is that I kind of liked the Table of Contents to the unnecessary memoir I wrote. 

And also (ahem) the footnotes. (Actually they were end notes but footnotes sounds better. Less, I don’t know, fatalistic.) 

Oh: also I liked the title. 

Everybody liked the title. 

That’s because it’s an awesome and clever title: 

A Misfit’s Guide to Life, Liberty, 

and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Like it’s a bona fide manual—but not. (Irony! Self-deprecatory solipsism! Meta-! Also wordplay!) 

So yes: good title, good TOC, good footnotes. Check and check and check. 

Just everything else (which is to say: you know, only the important part) was mostly shitty and superfluous. 

Hmm. Also: ugh.

Okay, so here’s what I’ve gone and done. To sort of split the difference. As it were. 

But first: another quote (!) because I like quotes and I especially like this one:

‘Everything is biographical,’ Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.—Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero.

Which is to say: like all of us, I am but one small voice in the wilderness. 

And really, I can’t speak for you, but I’ve come to understand that I’m not even a single autonomous voice. I’m a voice that’s filtered through an odd ventriloquist’s mix of sundry other voices. Real or imagined.  

The real-life wilderness I inhabit is the aforementioned deep, green thicket of the American South, circa the 21st Century. I traipse in less tangible woods too: the high-concepts of God, Love, Art, America. 

So this—biography? collage? ill-advised dog-and-pony show?—thing you’re staring at now is the patchwork of a life spent in pursuit of a series of these (to me) elusive Higher Callings. Truth. Beauty. The American Way. 

Or something.

Mostly it’s in my own words but when other people said it better, I yield the floor.

It is perhaps best seen as an earnest but, yes, also relentlessly flawed How-to Guide and So-called Wisdom Book. An avowed misfit’s guide to how to be alive and awake and American. If also kicking and screaming. In one long string of stops, starts, hems, haws, erasures, and dubiously assorted notes-to-self. 

That is: it’s a bit of a mess.

But that’s sort of the point, right? 

Again: I can’t speak for you, but any honest, accurate record of my life pretty much has to be an unmitigated mess. By definition. 

Therefore: advice and insights are, of course, intended for entertainment purposes only. 

Please, no wagering.

Which leads us to:

Some Very Important Disclaimers & Disclosures

As may well be blatantly obvious at this point, I don’t consider myself to be a particularly well-adjusted person. 

Neither should you consider me to be a particularly well-adjusted person. (Ditto about the blatantly obvious part. I mean, hell: I call myself a Misfit right there in the fucking title. Buyer beware.) 

But that doesn’t mean I’m bad or crazy or a danger to myself and/or others. 

It doesn’t even mean I’m all that different from most people (though more often than not I like to think I’m very different from most people [which, of course, is a trait I have in common with a great many people]). 

Nor does any of that mean I don’t have Things to Say that are worth saying. Honestly, I think it means the opposite. But I’m predisposed to think that. As may also be blatantly obvious at this point. 

Mostly it just means that:

(A) I do know (and love) some well-adjusted people and…

(B) I’m pretty much not like them at all.  

The well-adjusted people I know are comfortable in their own skin. They more-or-less know