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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
This difference is key for Watters, who nods his head vigorously. Ethan Watters is a nice guy, and nice people don't do cliques; they are not snobs. "People can come participate [in tribes], and no one will look askance at you when you show up." This seems true -- at least as far as Watters' San Francisco tribe is concerned. Throughout the '90s, fresh out of school and sure I was bound for nowhere but a park bench, I attended several parties that I now know were thrown by Watters and company. While I do remember feeling intimidated by their important-sounding jobs (Editors! Freelancers!), I don't remember ever having been snubbed or made to feel like an outsider. Of course, had I moved in and tried to reap the full-fledged benefits of tribal membership -- in the book Watters details favors ranging from providing shelter to distilling home brew to driving friends to therapy -- surely I would have had to jump through some hoops before indoctrination, right?
With my friends, it would take a lot more than hoops. In fact, none of them -- disloyal, unsupportive and emotionally stunted slackers all -- would do this kind of stuff for me, and they'd never chauffeur me to softball games on the other side of town. By now, my take on the tribe is not "Fuck you, I'm not in one," but "Damn, I need to find me one!"
We head out to Noah's car, and on the drive over to the Marina, I take the back seat and listen to them grumble like two old ladies about another tribal member who just won't grow up. "I'm worried about him," Ethan says. "I mean it's one thing to want to go off and have your own TV show when you're 25, but when you're 35?" Watters had mentioned earlier that in tribes, people like to gossip, but since he and Noah are both journalists, I can't help wondering if the conversation is for my benefit, especially since Ethan assures me that he's not using the ne'er-do-well's real name.
By the time we've found parking, the team is out on the field warming up. "The Elucidators" are mostly journalists, mostly in their 30s, and many of them turn out to be friends of friends of mine (or if you want to be fancy, people with whom I have "weak ties," a term Watters borrows from sociologist Mark Granovetter). I meet Brad, a journalist, and his wife, Jennifer, a lawyer; there's Christine, a consultant; Adam, also an editor; and finally a novelist named Alex and his gorgeous new wife, whose name I don't catch. There are several others there, and they all greet me with genuine warmth and friendliness. It's freezing and several people offer me sweatshirts. "Inclusionary" might not be a word, but is certainly a lovely idea. I take my position in the bleachers to watch the game, light a cigarette and start a heated conversation with yet another editor, Adam, about Spider-Man comics.
I meet with awkward silences, however, when I ask each person, in turn, "Are you a member of the tribe?"
"Uh, I just moved here," says Adam.
"I married this guy over here just to get in!" jokes the gorgeous newlywed, pointing to her husband.
Sometime during the fourth inning, Watters joins me on the bleachers and offers a discreet behavioral corrective -- it's the first time I've heard any edge to his voice all evening. It turns out, not everyone on the team is necessarily a part of his tribe, some of them are just "on the team," and it was a faux pas of the new social order for me to have made that point so clear.
"That question," he says, "is antithetical to what this book is about, antithetical to what I'm trying to say. I found those questions unnerving. No one would ever, ever ask that." I apologize, profusely, although for what, I'm not quite sure. Tribes aren't cliques, right? They are organic, and naturally inclusive, no? But lines do have to be drawn, people get left out. The concept of a "group" of friends, no matter how loose, must leave some people out -- even if that uncomfortable fact is anathema to Watters and the rosy picture he wants to paint of open and borderless single communities.
Watters heads back to home plate -- and scores a double, but too late to save his losing team.
After the game, and some good-natured browbeating from Brad, Jennifer and Christine over my gauche queries, and on the verge of vertigo from all the slippery definitions and vagaries of the evening, I ask the women whether they feel that a "tribe" ever kept them single.
"Oh yeah," says Christine, one of Ethan's friends from the softball team -- I know enough now not to pose indiscreet questions about her tribal status. "I have my friends so I don't get lonely. And if a guy can't get along with my friends, then there's something wrong with him. My friends are smart and cool -- if he can't deal, he's out."
But what about marriage? Settling down? Growing up?
"I think it takes more maturity and courage to define your own priorities, and wait for the right person," Christine continues. "You don't need to be defined by whether or not you're married anymore."
Jennifer, the lawyer, drives the point home: "How do you define maturity anyway?" she asks. "By how you live? By how you treat people? By your values, what?"
The tribe to the rescue, again. Jennifer has inadvertently saved Watters' memoir-pitching, generalizing, bet-hedging ass by touching on what makes the book worth reading. Part -- not all -- of our generation is redefining something, but that something is not "friendship, family, and commitment.' Instead it is single life itself, which Watters doesn't treat as a pathology, a neurosis or a condition from which America must heal, lest we all become bitter, Botox-addled old maids or freaky Chuck Palahniuk protigis. And for this he should be applauded.
Watters himself finally makes that point clear at the book's end, when he throws down the gauntlet: "I have spent exactly 20 years -- almost to an hour -- living outside a family unit. It is impossible to see such a large chunk of time as a transitional phase between youth and adulthood. Twenty years is an era -- a goddamned epoch in one's existence."
Whether one agrees with him or not, Watters has said something original, and to this 33-year-old single adult, it is a long-overdue addition to the national conversation about what being a "grown-up" really means: The old definitions don't apply, the new ones haven't been invented, and 20 years suddenly seems like a reasonable amount of time to take to figure them out. If it requires some sociology-lite and a catchy phrase to make this point about the new adulthood, then so be it.
I am pondering all of this when Watters interrupts my thoughts. "I'd love to keep talking about all this some more," he says wryly. "But I've got to go home to my pregnant wife."
