Growing up under the cathode rays, I fell prey to the modern- day alchemist's pitch for immortality. The media, following Plato's lead, had introduced a new gold race of beings. With naive and unassuming eyes, I watched men and women turn into gods on my TV screen. Their appeal radiated through the channels of time and space, like the force of attraction between infinitely charged particles. The net effect was as universal as it was beyond the scope of my understanding. I could not explain the reaction I and countless others had to Kennedy, Marilyn, James Dean, Elvis, Tom Cruise, and Mel Gibson. Each star had “Chemistry”, to be sure, but what exactly did that mean? Whatever it was, I knew I sure as heck didn't have it.
Over time, I learned that Chemistry, in the popular sense, encompassed all the factors necessary to spark a reaction, i.e. to attract or repulse. I came to recognize that there were those, like Kennedy, whose chemistry made them attractive to practically everyone. Conversely, there were those, like Nixon, who seemed chemically predisposed to loathsomeness.
My own place in the chemical spectrum was somewhat harder to determine. Feeling alienated from all that was attractive, I came to believe that I exuded a relatively neutral charge. Nothing I said or did sparked much of a reaction in those around me. In general, I refrained from arguments and other situations which would have required me to choose sides.
“What made me this way?” was the question I proceeded to ask myself. I might just as well have asked Nixon or Kennedy. The reactions which take place between human beings are as complex as those occurring on the molecular level. I hold both, moreover, to be equally inexplicable.
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