By Sammy Ginsberg
Just finished reading Service by John Tottenham. Stumbled upon John’s launch party at 2220. The room was packed with big names in literature introducing the book – Colm Toibin and Rachel Kushner – and was published by Semiotexte, aka publisher of the artistic and academic elite in Los Angeles. Over a hundred people at the launch party. This guy seemed like a big fucking deal, and an embedded member in the literary community in LA. After reading the book, I am stunned by the contradiction between reality and fiction.
Spending hours before bed getting to know “Sean”, I felt so sad at the end of this book, a somber kind of sadness. I felt like, if this protagonist doesn’t have some sort of epiphany, he’s one life crisis from being unhoused. One of those grumpy old men who gets sick, goes to the hospital, piles up more debt, and then gets discharged. Loses his house, and still refuses to accept reality. Using all the same dysfunctional coping strategies to prevent the clear and direct feedback that what he is doing is not working, and that he is the problem- not society, not other people, not women, not the fact that he never wrote a novel, not the pills. He is the problem who denies reality by making everyone else feel like the problem.
This book gave me compassion for my obviously miserable administrators at my school who deny their misery and need for help by making me feel like I am the problem, suggesting anti-anxiety meds or simply that I’m not cut out to be a teacher when their behavior of trying to micro-manage me and tell me what to do doesn’t solve the problem.
Things can be managed. People must be led.
In these situations, I do not want to follow the leaders in my school. They are clearly miserable.
This man appears to be miserable, and obviously needs help, needs to go to therapy. In order to cope in a difficult childhood in the UK, he learned some skills that are obviously no longer working. They may have worked at first in LA, or when he was in his 20s or 30 (and continued to look in his 20s)- but there are things that are simply red flags when people can see you have had plenty of time to mature and become a fully developed adult, and you haven’t.
In a way, by the end the character Sean is on his way to being a fully developed adult. He wanted to write a book, and he after decades, finally took responsibility for that goal and did the work to make it happen.
In writing this book, he was forced to accept his reality, his perspective. Will he actually change? Will life force him to change? Or will he be one of the many man-children that the Los Angeles lifestyle permits to exist.
Those who can hide in music and art and books, in fictional fantasies, who can inflate their intellectual egos about their deep understanding of the human experience without having much practice using any of the skills required to actually be a fully developed human.
I am attracted to these sad men. I saw myself in Mona, the woman he invites over when he is at his loneliest and most desperate, seeking positive attention. Always trying to play therapy with them and heal them, to unearth the experience that stunted their growth and keeps them trapped in the lifestyle and mindset of a boy in their early 20s.
This early 20s with an avoidant attachment style who struggles to allow the people he has sex with to cuddle and sleep over after does not age well.
Brimming with untapped potential.
I have dated this man before. I may be dating him now. The self-help books and podcasts I engage with tell me to avoid him.
But I have so much compassion for him. I know if I had been a boy, I would have been a sad boy.
Just like I know that if I had been born 40 years earlier, I would have been a Karen.
This book is a warning. If you know any sad-boys who are refusing to go to therapy or do any work to improve their quality of life, give them this book to read.
Very well-written with a clear voice, a voice that needs to be heard, and needs to be loved, and who needs love, needs to learn how to love.
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