One of my favorite movie quips can be heard at the end of the film ‘Some Like It Hot’ by Billy Wilder just before it fades into black. The scene shows the cross-dressing Jack Lemon, who in his exasperation to get rid of his love-struck stalker, finally blurts out that he is actually a man, not a woman. Without missing a beat, the stalker snaps back: ‘Well, nobody is perfect!’
Every one of us has his own quirks, eccentricities, idiosyncrasies, oddities, kinks, foibles, peculiarities, mannerisms, anomalies, deviations, aberrations or whatever you may want to call it.
But unlike the black mole under one’s nostril or the reddish birthmark on the face, an aberration or behavioral flaw is usually hidden from public view. Yet it is this concealed aspect that often serves as the key to understanding the real person.
Remember the saying ‘No man is a hero to his butler’? No man or woman is flawless to a manservant. If you want to know the real man or woman behind your celebrity idol, talk to his/her personal assistant, secretary, make-up artist, driver, or the family d.h. They know every ugly wart, frailty and weakness of the person they serve.
The saying can also apply to one’s spiritual advisor or personal physician or biographer. One consoling comfort I get from reading biographies (I have a predilection for this genre) is that great men and women have their eccentric side, which makes them ordinarily human, as much as you and me.
If you’re observant, notice how novelists or film directors often give their characters a distinctive oddity or quirk to make them more singular and absorbing, compelling and intriguing?
One example is the calm but methodical protagonist in the ‘Equalizer’ series played by Denzel Washington. Named Robert McCall, he tends to do things the same way every day at the exact time. He likes objects to be placed in an orderly fashion. Those are signs of someone who has an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I later learned that Denzel Washington contributed much to the character’s background and back story, including the odd pattern of his behavior.
For most people, Abraham Lincoln’s character seems so perfect that when I read something about his dark side, I was relieved that he was only human after all. According to experts, Lincoln had a ‘schizoid manic personality,’ suffering from what we would today call bipolar disorder. Those who knew him reported that he suffered from major depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
Even saints have their quirks. St. Therese of Lisieux had a fear of strangers and did not make friends easily at school (she was bullied). For a period of her youth, she suffered from scrupulosity, a pathological preoccupation with sin in her daily behavior. She spent 10 years trying to overcome her deep-seated weaknesses-her sensitivity and inability to control her emotions.
Sometimes, the quirkiness of great individuals can be amusing if not creepy or cringey.
One notable example is Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist, who lived in the 1800s and is now considered to be the father of taxonomy, the science of classifying plants and animals. It turns out he had a preoccupation with sex. To be more specific he was obsessed with the female genitalia. For instance, he was particularly struck by the visual similarity between bivalves and the female organ. This is why he named several species of clams Vulva, Labia, Anus, Hymen, Pubes, Mons Veneris. He named one genus of plants ‘Clitoria’. Did Carl Linnaeus have a perverse sense of humor? Or was he simply a secret sex maniac?
Creative people have differing quirks to get the juices going.
Ernest Hemingway, the novelist, wrote standing up, facing a chest high bookshelf with a typewriter on top and on top of that a wooden reading board on which he composed first drafts in pencil on onionskin typewriter paper laid slantwise across the board.
Ludwig Van Beethoven, the acclaimed classical music composer, rose at dawn and wasted little time getting down to work. His breakfast was coffee, which he prepared himself with great care-60 beans per cup, which he counted one by one for a precise dose. Then he would sit at his desk and worked until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
Thomas Wolfe, the American author of ‘Look Homeward Angel’ and ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ had a peculiar way to get his creative juices flowing, so to speak. He would undress himself and then as he wrote, he would fondle his genitals, a habit from childhood, which he claimed was not exactly sexual because ‘his penis remained limp and unaroused’ (revealed to his editor). But this act evoked ‘a good male feeling’ out of him and stimulated his creative energies.
Jean Paul Sartre, the French philosopher and founder of Existentialism had a singular relationship with Simone Beauvoir, writer, social theorist and feminist activist. Theirs was an intellectual partnership with a somewhat creepy sexual component; according to a mutually agreed pact both partners could take other lovers but they were required to tell each other everything.
Their writing schedule revolved around this head-scratching unusual relationship. In the morning, they worked in separate apartments and then would have lunch together in Sartre’s apartment, then they would go again to work separately. At night, they would go to a social event or watch movies together and then have a night cap, drinking scotch, at Beauvoir’s apartment. Odd couple? Different strokes for different folks, indeed.
As someone puts it: ‘Sooner or later the great men turn out to be all alike, so like us.’ Quirky, strange, odd, flawed. Yet by knowing their imperfections, we are able to appreciate their individuality and understand that greatness can coexist with eccentricity. Lois McMaster Bujold, speculative fiction writer says: ‘Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.’
I get irritated when my wife would suddenly ask me: ‘What is it that you don’t like about me?’ How can I tell her that falling for someone’s flaws is just as necessary as falling for their strengths? I remember a line from a Jodi Picoult novel: ‘You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.’
In our 50 years as a married couple, my wife and I have taken to heart our respective flaws, quirks and oddities. But my personal quirks that used to irritate her are exactly what endear me to her today. In fact, our respective eccentric ways are now a running banter between us.
Rather than seek what is perfect or flawless, embrace the imperfect and devote yourself with finding what is good with the imperfect.
Nick Tayag, now in his mid 70s, is a long-retired advertising creative director. His column is his platform for sharing the little distilled wisdom he’s accumulated through the years. He hopes to inspire his fellow seniors to lead a more lively, productive, reflective and meaningful life in the last chapter of their individual life stories.