The Men in My Life
"This book has been out since 1999 and I am ashamed to say it has taken me this long to finally purchase a copy of this book and read it. It is a great read. I am not saying that simply because Michael is a personal friend of mine and someone whom I went to the same private metaphysical school with, but because books mean so much to me and once I started reading it, no matter where I opened it up, it was excellent, funny and insightful.." ~ Derek Lamar, D.D., Ph.D.
Michael Zonta began his search as we all do by trying to figure out one's role with themselves, their parents, friends and strangers. In this hall of mirrors that we call life there are few who go the route necessary to discovery the answers which help liberate ourselves from the bondage we find ourselves in. We rarely discover it all in one lifetime but any effort we make unlocks doors not only for our own "self" but for others whom we encounter and also strangers we never meet. This is becaus in "true reality" we are all already connected. Every inner change we make within ourselves sets others free a little bit more. This is part of what the concept of "salvation" is all about. It isn't about religion but rather it is about knowing who we are and not denying that. What that takes is looking at ourselves in the dark moments as well as the bright shining liberating experiences which allow us to sail across the sky. Michael is also a Fourth Way Teacher. This means he is there to help others "wake up". He plays the role of one who taps you on the shoulder when you fall asleep. He is one who calls your name when you forget who you are. He is one who knows the pain of believing things which just aren't true. And in so doing, he leads the way for others as he continues his journey toward the destiny of self discovery. ~ D.L.
Liner notes: (to order this book from Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.)
(far right: Michael Zonta speaks with associates and friends.)
From the publisher Xlibris:In an entertaining yet thoroughly thoughtful way, this book seeks to trace the life history of one human being. Born in upper-middle class affluence, a shocking murder starts him down the road to a lifelong career of self-examination and self-observation. Along the way he meets up with a teacher and a school which turn out to be exactly what he was looking for even though he didn't know he was looking for anything. He has an unexpected divine intervention and nine months later his life goes into a deep tailspin. From the depths of homelessness, he begins his recovery and then starts a new life in San Francisco. He falls in and out of love with the city. Moves to New York a few times. Back to Los Angeles once. Then he meets John and another cycle in his life begins. In a dramatic encounter with John just before a metaphysical AIDS healing service, he is brought out of himself and experiences in a moment all of the joy and terror of union with another person. He spends the next 13 years trying to come to terms with this experience and with the person with whom he had the experience. Both seem elusive. Along the way he learns what it means to be a moral gay man.
The Men in My Life
My father, of course, is too busy working and making money to be of any help. Anyhow, he's kind of given up on life since my mother was killed so many years ago. So I guess I've kind of retreated from life, too, even though I'm only 13.
But I have dreams. I have dreams of being a famous person someday-like the President of the United States or something. Somebody that people will look up. I guess I think I should be a great leader or something. I also dream of being an actor, living in New York, being on Broadway and living in Greenwich Village. I went there once. In fact, I've tried to move there 3 or 4 times in my life. But it never worked out. Rent there is ridiculous. And the people aren't that nice either. I kept thinking I would run into intelligent, witty, exciting people. Instead I ran into people with Brooklyn accents and Brooklyn attitudes.
Another time I went to Washington, D.C., and Boston, MA, with my step-mother and two step-sisters. They all stuck together like glue, of course. I kind of meandered off by myself a lot. I remember one time I meandered off to the hotel swimming pool and saw this gorgeous guy swimming there. He was all blonde and beautiful and had on a royal blue Speedo swimsuit. I went back to my hotel room and felt just horrible. I knew I could never be President with all the wicked thoughts I was thinking about this guy. What kind of leader would I be?
I remember Oscar Wilde talked about having had an experience one day after he had been newly married to his wife Constance. This young man looked at him and kind of smirked and Oscar felt a cold shiver run through him, sensing that this lad and lads like him would be his ruination. That's kind of how I felt with the guy in the Speedo.
I've had so many experiences with guys in my life. Okay, I'm not really 13. I'm 53, but who's counting. And I'm not really a little girl. I mean, I am, but not so's you'd know it. If you were to look at me, you'd see a 53 year old man. But that's just the problem. I'm not a 53 year old man. In almost every sense. Yes, I was born 53 years ago, but only in a strictly legal sense. I mean, I have had so many births and realizations and self-discoveries since then that who's to say when "I" really began.
Oh, while I am confessing: I remember another Speedo incident. When I was living on Santa Monica beach as a younger man, two stunning lifeguards lived next to our apartment. Those were the commune days. I never spoke much to the lifeguards, but I remember passing one of them one day. He was returning to his apartment and he had on nothing but a Speedo and his sandals. His Speedo was even skimpier than the royal blue one and he had a body so beautiful and desirable that it shocked me a bit. After they moved out, I went into their apartment. They had fixed it up really nice with lots of bright and wild colors. One of them had left behind an old pair of Bermuda shorts. I took off my clothes and put on the Bermuda shorts and serviced myself in them. I felt terribly ashamed but I did keep those shorts for a very long time afterwards.
Of course, living on Santa Monica beach-actually near Muscle Beach-was part of my unconscious plan. I remember once being engulfed in a bevy of lifeguards taking some sort of training. All of them in wet dark blue Speedos.
Okay. That's the last time I mention Speedos.
I could talk about Mercedeses. When I was hitchhiking down to Los Angeles from Oregon in order to study acting and break into movies, this friendly, nice-looking blonde guy in a powered blue, convertible Mercedes picked me up. He offered me potato chips. A year or so later, when I had the opportunity to buy a car, I bought a Mercedes just like his. I wanted a powered blue convertible, but settled for a black sedan.
I loved my sedan, although the first night I bought it, I stopped at a grocery store in Hollywood and pulled out without looking and got sideswiped. Maybe it was an omen. Later I drove it down to Ensenada and let my very good-looking Mexican friend drive it. "Put on the brakes," I yelled. Maybe he didn't understand English very well, so he crashed into the '58 Pontiac crossing the intersection ahead of us. He offered to have his cousin fix it but I demurred. Later when I brought up the subject of sex, he offered to stick it up my butt, but I demurred.
I've done a lot of demurring in my life. And later I usually kick myself for it. Maybe it has something to do with that 13 year old girl who seems to take over in times of emergency. And sex is, after all, an emergency, wouldn't you agree? I mean, something emerges literally (for men) and spiritually, as well.
For me, sex has always been the most important emergency in my life. I remember when I was first becoming sexual. I went to one of my father's construction sites. He built swimming pools. I would pull down my pants and see how far I could pull them down without them completely falling off. This got me very excited. I think there may have been construction workers around at the time too. And somehow it was dark. Don't ask me what I was doing at a construction site in the dark pulling down my pants. Just getting off, I guess.
Another time I remember pulling down my pants in the Menlo College playing field, when hardly anyone was around, and pretending I couldn't get them back up. Very exciting at the time. This was shortly after high school, when what boys did to each other was to pull each other's pants down. Well, that actually started in elementary school. I remember my good friend Michael Huxtable telling me one day how a bunch of guys almost pulled down Thor Thompson's pants entirely. I was getting so excited. Michael just thought it was funny. I knew it was much more than that. (And Thor was a god. Years later I returned to Saratoga and accidentally ran into Thor. He smiled at me. I gave him the cold shoulder. I still resented him and his clique for treating me like an outcast. It was a stupid thing for me to do and I regret it because I like Thor even though he was an asshole to me most of time in high school.)
My father told me about sex one afternoon when I was in high school. I just know it was at my step-mother's insistence. He told me, "When a man loves a woman, he sticks his penis in her." Ah, you think? What the hell is he talking about? And why is he so uneasy? "Sure, Dad." And then there was my better looking, blonder, bigger brother Tom who posed for me unbidden one day in his swimsuit. He was an aggressive son of a bitch. But he was also the one who, when we were living in Menlo Park, dared to take me across the forbidden line of how far we were supposed to go to play. We had potato chips and Pepsis at a snack shop in the outer reaches of Menlo Park and never did potato chips or Pepsis taste so good. Tom later became a member of the L.A.P.D. for 14 years and a Hollywood stuntman who drove cars for the "Dukes of Hazard" TV show and also had bit parts in Arnold Schwartzenegger movies. He went into business for himself showing cars like the Batmobile, the "Knight Rider" car and so on and hasn't worked a 9-5 job ever and doesn't work at all now other than making a few phone calls from home and/or sending a few faxes. I'm not saying this out of envy, although I am envious. I am saying it out of admiration.
The first time I actually kissed a girl was in the summer after graduation from high school. It was 1964, after all, but even for that time I was a slow starter. Her name was Kathy Warfield and she and I were talking in a abandoned building site on the high school campus. She was crying and telling me that her mother was dying of cancer. I sympathized as well as I could. Then she kissed me. I kissed her back. "No, not like that," she said. "Open your mouth." I did and liked it very much, thank you. I remember farting on the way back as Kathy and I ran across the school lawn so I could get home before 9:00 p.m. when my step-mother returned home from her part-time job at the library. We were too late for that.
You would think my parents would be happy that I had finally kissed somebody. But my step-mother went into this act about how worried she was that I had fallen off the cliff in our backyard. I can just hear her calling over the edge of the cliff. "Michael! Michael!" [Pause.] "Oh, well, what's on TV, I wonder?" I'm probably not being entirely fair. Later my Dad hit me in the car on our way to work (I was working with him for the summer at his swimming pool supply store). He got really upset when Harriet got upset.
In about a year and a half of college and a year and a half in the Navy, no sex. Sorry. In college I was just so happy to get away from home that all I did was play-visit my dorm-mates, socialize, make up a dormitory newsletter. The newsletter was called The Weatherford Hall News Review Gazette. It was kind of a play on all the newspapers merging at the time. I did spend some time at the enclosed swimming pool watching my fellow Beavers in their orange and black, ah, swimsuits, and getting a hard-on. To this day, the smell of chlorine excites me.
I was still trying to let nature take its course and assuming that I would and should find some attractive girl and that one thing would lead to another. That wasn't happening. I did, however, let the Navy teach me how to drink. I was a quick learner. And our campus was the City of Olongopo on Subic Bay. What a hole in the rectum of the world. But I certainly loved it. We would go to strip joints and I would very appreciatively sit back and enjoy these naked girls almost like I was a patron of the arts. And of course, I did a lot of drinking. Once, I was charged with inciting a riot because I would not give a Filipina back the picture of herself she had given me, and I guess that started some sort of fight. Maybe she wanted her picture back because when she offered to have sex with me, I declined. I really didn't want to be naked with anyone at the time. I was quite ashamed of my body-not in the sense that the body is shameful, but that I thought my body was shameful.
There was this one time, I remember, that a fellow sailor and I went off to Grande Island together. That was an island in the middle of Subic Bay which was set up as a recreational area. We two went off together and stripped down to our underwear. He wanted me to go swimming with him but, again, I, well, didn't. But I do remember looking at him longingly as his white underpants got wet and stuck to his convex (or is in concave?) buttocks. He was also someone I liked very much. Very quiet. Very handsome. Very cute. And he wore glasses. I think Dorothy Parker was only half right. Guys with glasses get a lot of passes-at least from me. A few years ago when I started wearing my first pair of glasses, I thought, oh no, I'll be too good looking with these on. It turns out I wasn't, but I think glasses give a guy a sense of intelligence and authority that is very attractive. They are kind of like makeup in that they frame already beautiful eyes and say to the world, "Look at these souls."
I spent 10 months overseas on the U.S.S. Mount Baker, an ammunition ship. A summer earlier I had been on a Navy ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) cruise and the enlisted men on board would salute me! Now I was the lowest rank of enlisted man chipping paint off the deck and sleeping in cramped quarters below deck. There were undoubtedly some beautiful men aboard ship but I was too depressed and scared, I think, to take much notice.
Eventually I worked my way up to Petty Officer 3rd Class. I was working for both the Captain and the ship's Executive Officer, doing their paper work. Our Captain's name was Captain Wolfe. He was a leathery old man in the greatest tradition of the Navy. Tall, gaunt, almost like a blonde-haired Gary Cooper in his sense of taciturn authority. I loved and admired him.
Then there was the Executive Officer. I don't even remember his name. He was a lot like Humphrey Bogart in the movie The Caine Mutiny. He was always worried about somebody's strawberries. He was really a petty officer. I think even he knew how petty he was because sometimes when he would say something stupid, I could see him smiling self-consciously. Why he just didn't stop saying stupid things, I don't know.
One of the places we visited for R&R was Hong Kong. We spent two weeks there anchored in Hong Kong harbor. It was a beautiful place to visit but I don't remember having much fun there. We also visited Osaka, Japan, and all I did there was watch the movie Mary Poppins over and over again with English subtitles at the local Japanese theater. I was depressed. Maybe I was homesick. I had been a fan of Dick Van Dyke from the time that my uncle who was in show business got us tickets to see the taping of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 60's. It was the episode in which Rob and Laura have to get remarried because their first marriage wasn't technically legal. Dick Van Dyke, John Kennedy and Danny Kaye were all big heroes of mine at the time. I think I kept seeing Mary Poppins over and over again because Dick Van Dyke was one of the few "friends" I had at the time. And I hadn't really discovered sex yet like all the other sailors on board. At least not my kind of sex.
Another time we were given the opportunity to go to Manila, but I declined. I wasn't interested in buying cheap electronic equipment and suits or in sight-seeing as were many of my shipmates. I still feel that way about Europe and other countries. I have enough to do trying to get my life straightened out at home. Why do I need the diversion of going to some strange land? They say that travel broadens one, but I think it makes one forget one's life until one has to come home. When I went back to college a few years ago to finish my degree, everyone got very excited about the class going to Nepal. Well, for one thing, my B.A. degree was costing me $12,500.00 and I was not too enthusiastic about going a couple of thousand more in debt to see some foreign country. But for another thing, if I can't work out my life here, which I can't, why should I go abroad? Why sight-see abroad when I have important work to do here-work on myself and work for and with others? Travel, unless it is required for your livelihood or your spiritual path, is entirely a self-indulgent waste of time. Ask anybody.
Anyhow, while we were anchored in Hong Kong, I was quartermaster of the watch which meant that I had to take bearings every 15 minutes to make sure that we were not dragging anchor. Well, one night there was a terrible typhoon in Hong Kong Bay and I did as I was supposed to do-I took bearings every 15 minutes. But it was a pretty strong typhoon and between my bearings our ship started to drag anchor and crashed into a merchant ship anchored behind us. It was very exciting as I stepped back and watched the experts try to prevent a collision. If I knew then what I know now, I would have taken it as some kind of omen.
After being overseas for 10 months, we headed back to the States. It took us 33 days to get from Subic Bay to San Francisco Bay because one of our engines had broken down. And we hit a few typhoons on the way. I didn't realize that waves got so big out in the middle of the Pacific. I assumed that everything would be okay and that these ships were designed not to turn over. I kind of looked to the elders on board and since they didn't seem worried when we would list 45 degrees one way or the other, I didn't worry either. Besides drinking, the Navy taught me how to type, which has become my occupation ever since. It is strange working in the ship's office with typewriters whose carriages move by themselves because of the extreme movements of the ship.
When we got back to the mainland, it was Christmas time and I was looking forward to spending Christmas with my family such as it was, but when I got back, I found out that they (or at least my parents) had gone to Texas to spend it with Laurie, my younger step-sister who was volunteering for VISTA (the domestic Peace Corps) in a small town called Cotula, Texas. I decided at that point to go AWOL from the Navy and spend the rest of my life in Mexico. I had had enough of this family which didn't really seem to love me very much. I did spend one night in Juarez but then realized that my plan to live in Mexico was probably not a good one. I decided to turn myself in to the Navy but to spend a few days in southern California on my way back.
I rented a motel room in Santa Monica for a few days and used the assumed name George Frank. I wanted something simple in a name so that my life would be simple. I remember liking it so much when the motel manager in Santa Monica called me Mr. Frank. When I finally turned myself in to the Officer of the Day on board my ship, I thought maybe they would be relieved or upset to see me. I had to tell the guy that I had been AWOL for 13 days. He told me just to go below and hit the rack. Later I was given a Special Court Martial because Captain Wolfe wanted to make an example out of me, me being one of his own staff and all. I could understand his reasoning. I was given 45 days in the brig, a demotion from E-4 to E-2 and a couple of months' worth of pay cuts. It was ironic that I was usually the person to type those same legal forms which were now being used against me. Many years later I ran into Captain Wolfe on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and smiled at him. He looked much the same and I still admired him.
I spent 36 days in the brig at Treasure Island overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and getting up every morning at 5:00 and exercising. I looked great after my brief stay there. The brig was run by Marines. The only harassment I remember was when we first entered the brig. We had to say "Sir" and lot and answer some questions said in a manner to convince us that we were indeed in Hell. I shared a cell with one other person and a toilet. One young Marine who didn't quite have the hang yet of how to act like a Marine thought he sensed a trouble-maker in me. I kept trying to tell him (without speaking to him) that he had the wrong man. "I'm not a trouble maker. I just want to get along and get out," I told him with my urging eyes. But he insisted. So I became a trouble maker for the afternoon.
The only reason that I was in the Navy in the first place was because my father encouraged me to apply for the Navy ROTC program so I could become an officer. The Navy would pay your way through 4 years of college and then you had to serve 4 years as an officer. You also had to take a Naval Science course every quarter and serve on 6-week cruises in the summer. Just my luck, I was accepted. My Dad was thrilled. I was not. I would be 26(!) by the time I finished my obligation. I was anxious to get on with my life as opposed to spending 8 more years in confinement.
At the time if you quit the NROTC program during the first year, you got out without obligation. If you quit after the first year, you had to serve two years duty as an enlisted man in the Navy. Unfortunately, I lasted the first year. In the first quarter of my second year I just stopped going to classes, except for the school play I was in. I quit the program and was given a plane ticket to the Philippines. Now that I had gone AWOL and turned myself in and been court martialed, my father-Commander H.J. Oberhaus, U.S.N.R.-came on board ship to visit me. We had a heart to heart. He said, "You never did want me to get remarried, did you?" I denied it. Later, he would deny ever saying that to me. But I promised him that I would give the Navy one more try after serving my time on Treasure Island.
After my court martial (or maybe before-I don't remember) I was interviewed by a Navy psychiatrist. I told him that I was willing to do anything-including suicide-to get out of the Navy. He called me a schizoid personality and put a letter in my personnel file indicating that if I felt this overpowering need to get out again, that I was to be allowed to do so. A few months later, I felt the need. I had been reassigned to a Fleet Tug Boat out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I lasted a few months. I was working in the ship's office which had no portholes and I remember having to throw up because of the extreme movements of this little ship out on the big ocean. There was no place in which to throw up so I took out a manila envelope from the drawer and filed my regurgitation into it. That was kind of symbolic of my relationship with the Navy. I left shortly thereafter.
Chapter 18 - "Birth of the Soul"
"The soul... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country [Ireland] there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.
"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
Whereas Joyce spoke about overcoming the "nets" of his culture, many of us today are seeking to be reconnected to our cultures. But we must keep in mind that just because a culture is indigenous or out of the main stream does not necessarily mean that everything about that culture is therefore worth keeping. We need to be selective about how we enculturate ourselves.
And if, as most Americans feel, we feel we have no culture, then we also must be selective about how we enculturate ourselves. The American "melting pot" is not simmering the same way it did at the turn of the last century. There has been a dramatic shift. Instead of people adjusting their identities to fit into the common mold of being an American, people seem to be searching for connections with pre-American or neo-American identities. So Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali, Lew Alcindor becomes Kareem Abdul Jabar, and Arnold Schwartzenegger becomes, well, Arnold Schwartzenegger. Many married woman keep their "maiden" names or use hyphenated last names.
But the beginning of ethnic and feminist and gay pride in the late 60's did not end the American melting pot. It added spice to it. Now part of being an American is being proud of our differences. This makes America a much richer place.
And for those of us who wish to take full advantage of what it means to be an American, such as myself, we get the opportunity to make up our own culture. And I do.
I speak Black English from time to time just for the fun of it and like my African-American friend Calvin H. says, "I can get very black when I want to."
My last name is a Lakota Sioux word meaning "the trustworthy one."
I am part Jew. If you prick me, do I not bleed?
I am part woman-perhaps my best part.
I am certainly gay, but I'm not entirely unstraight either.
I am Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Iranian.
I am American, I am human. I am.
My heroes are Christ and Buddha and Socrates and Shakespeare and Joan of Arc.
I am an American. I make up my own culture.
Science speaks to us of the miraculous birth of the body, but it is art, literature and music that speak to us of the birth of the soul. In Stanley Kramer's and Arthur C. Clarke's movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the earth becomes a womb for humanity to give birth to its soul as it enters the Universe.
We live in an age of preparation and reparation.
Karma is working itself out all over the world.
A nation (America) that steals land from other nations must make restitution.
A people who have been kidnapped and enslaved will have their day.
A sex which has been repressed and suppressed will not be repressed and suppressed any more.
But these are not the last days.
They are the preparation days.
We could fail. We could get caught up in the reparations and lose sight of the preparations.
But I don't think we will.
We are preparing to give birth to the soul of humanity.
And we are using the earth as our womb.
And infinity is our new home.
Michael Zonta's life has been dedicated to the discovery of "Self" and in doing so he is compelled to reach out to others who are willing to listen to what he has learned and do what he can to spark their interest in that journey. His life as a "gay man" is only a "hat" which he feels free to use to reach people who often are ignored, still, due to the social stigmas that any "minority" experience on this planet. And in so doing he is able to convey to those who desire also to know his or her "Self" just what is the truth in back of "time, space and change". Often liberation comes simply by discovering you are not the only one who has asked the same questions, walked the same roads, and cried the same tears. ~ Dr. Derek Lamar (Q.M.I.)