Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, wrote Dickens, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. “I was better after I had cried, than before,” he wrote, “more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
Me, too. We find love and wisdom when we allow our most vulnerable and troubled selves to be seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual reward that comes from seeking trust, kindness and compassion. I have felt shame all of my life, it is the major symptom, I have been told, of the abused person.
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I started watching some of Louie C.K.’s comedy skits a couple of years ago, he seemed to occupy a special space in comedy, especially male comedy. As I saw him, he was authentic, vulnerable, tortured, and sometimes, achingly funny. He was very different from most other comedians, and i especially loved his riffs on arrogant and insensitive men. He had a particular genius, like all the great comedians have, of making one feel uncomfortable and also laughing, one right next to the other.
Unlike much of the entertainment industry (there are downsides or perhaps blessings to living on a farm), I had never heard a single rumor or read any of those gossipy bites about Louie and his penchant for masturbating in front of vulnerable women over whom he had some power.
The first word I heard about it was yesterday driving back from a visit to the Albany refugees Thursday afternoon, pleased with myself over all my plans to do good. Another man I admired going down in flames.
I was shocked yet again, and also shaken. Perhaps I am getting too old to understand my world, perhaps I have been on a farm with animals for too long. Why am I so shocked all of the time these days? It is because I am ignorant and oblivious and self-absorbed, just another narcissist telling his story to a distracted world?
Right after the story about Louie C.K., I heard about the Alabama judge showing his white underwear to a 14 year-old girl. and asking her if she would touch him. Louie had no comment, the radio said, and the Alabama judge, the scumbag of the hour, right after Louie (they are stacked up like airplanes at O’Hare airport) denied it and claimed it was a liberal media plot to undermine Christianity.
I pulled over at a Dunkin Donuts on Route 7 in Troy, N.Y. Maria was at her belly dancing class, I couldn’t call her, I had no one to talk to and I needed to talk.
I pulled over into a Dunkin’ Donuts to order a decaf coffee and half of a multi-grain bagel with light cream cheese (I get the whole bagel, but only eat half, it is too big for me).
I paid at the window and then drove off. I heard a shout behind me saying “hey you forgot your coffee!”, a young man was leaning out of the window. I backed the car up collected the coffee, left him another dollar and then drove off.
As I got to the road to turn towards home, I heard another voice shouting at me, “hey, Mister, you forgot your bagel!” I was impressed, the girl chasing after me had run a good ways to catch up with me, shouting all the way. She was panting, I was embarrassed. I gave her two dollars, she told me it wasn’t necessary.
She seemed so nice and conscientious, and attractive, to me, even as I wondered if I should be driving home alone.
“You just took off,” she said, concerned, catching her. “You left your bagel behind.”
“Thank you,” I said, “you ran a long way.” I’ve been to a lot of Dunkin’ Donuts and left a lot of muffins and bagels behind. No one ever ran after me. Why, I wondered, did I need to mention that she was attractive? Is there some worm crawling around in my own DNA? At least it struck me as strange.
I was grateful to her, she was out of breath, I wanted to call Dunkin’ Donuts and tell them what a good worker she was, how much she cared. I didn’t, I drove off. She must have thought I was bonkers.
I sipped my fake coffee and headed down the highway, soon I moved from the city and the suburbs and into the country. When, I wondered, did men lose their shame? Was it from the beginning of recorded time, or was it new? Did it have to do with the ravages of power, was it true that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? I’m not shocked, yet I am shocked. There is an awful disease going around.
It kills shame.
This has nothing to do with sex, I thought. I love to have sex, but there is nothing sexual to me about masturbating in front of any woman, young or old, attractive or not. That has nothing to do with sexuality or with love. I couldn’t even get aroused by that, I couldn’t even masturbate in that way, it would make me sick to do that.
So when Maria came home, she had already heard about Louie, she had watched some of his comedy with me, we both thought he was smart and funny and authentic. He, too, has lost his shame, just like the Alabama Judge, they seem to grasp that there is no shame any longer. The left did it, the right did it, the media did it. No apology seems authentic, but then again, what could they possibly say?
It seems clear that none of these men, not even the ostensibly good and gifted ones that I knew and worked with, have any genuine sense of shame. The excuses are like a stream of shamelessness and denial. They were young, they were gay, they were drunk, times were different, they were sick, they are seeking treatment. They all seem so hollow.
The women are dishonest, ambitious, unreliable, opportunistic.
I’ve learned one thing in the past few weeks, you can’t fake shame. If you feel it, it shows.
I have so much more shame for the messes I have made in my life, and the things I have done to hurt people, than any of these rich and powerful men have about the ways in which they damaged, degraded, dominated and abused powerless young people trying to make their way in the world.
What happened to shame and where did it go? The Alabama Judge understands the new non-denial, denial. The judge talks a lot about being a Christian and about how sinful other people are – they all do, it seems – but he better hope there is not a true Christian God, because if so, he will one day face the ultimate judgment for his shamelessness and lies and abuse.
I felt some despair, but I then thought that things are different now, women are rising up all over the place, finding one another, saying no more, enough is enough. I believe that moral outrage is more powerful than shamelessness in the long haul. Women are on the move, on the march.
The women exposing these men are warriors, they are not ashamed, they are shedding their shame, and this time, they are not going away or hiding. There is a new script.
They are coming out for each other, standing up for one another. It feels different to me somehow, there is a powerful wave of outrage behind it, the powerful men are peeing into their boots and running for cover. Me.too is coming for them. If they have no shame, they surely have fear, and they know who they are, and they know who is coming for them: a great big wave.
I took a long route back home, I sipped my coffee and ate my multi-grain bagel and I thought about shame, and I remember what Jung said about it. He said shame is a soul eating emotion.
Perhaps these people’s souls are already dead.
