I have always preferred the bittersweet in art. Elegies, requiems, the pain of unrequited love. Melancholy melodies. A happy ending brings an immediate warmth, but it pales in comparison to the bittersweet, those that linger and still bring me a sort of joy. Above all I romanticize longing. It seems that I have always been this way, and there may be endless explanations for this predisposition: adolescent depression, homosexuality, familial pain. Perhaps even more influential were my first experiences of love.
We were an odd pair, but then I have always loved being one of an odd pair. Anthony might not have felt the same way, but it’s too late to ask now. My intentions were less than honorable, but I was very young then. I don’t think I caused him any harm.
I met him during my senior year of high school, through Rebecca, who sat next to me in Spanish class. Rebecca was the type of girl who wasn’t popular in high school but who would grow into a stunning woman. She wore glasses over her beautiful blue eyes and who would match slinky black leggings with a surprisingly maternal blouse. She had a low, husky voice, and Brooke Shields eyebrows, back when Brooke Shields was young. Rebecca and I became friends by writing on each other’s notebooks as we sat side by side in class. Notes regarding the peculiar teaching style of Senor Delgado, who would suddenly interrupt a vocabulary lesson to warn us of the dangers in eating canned food. “Little shavings of metal, they get in the food when you open the can.” Everyone would glance around at each other and he’d say, “It’s true!”
Rebecca drove a beat-up silver Cabriolet, which was more than I had. She’d give me rides home and I suppose I knew that she had a crush on me, but I hadn’t gotten to the point where I could tell girls that I preferred boys, so instead I’d say nothing and hope they wouldn’t try to kiss me. If the pressure of their unspoken expectations increased to uncomfortable levels, I’d simply slip away, leaving the friendship without ever really saying good-bye.
But Rebecca was full of surprises, and that’s why I stuck around. She lived in the Whittier neighborhood, in a large dilapidated house just off of Lyndale Avenue. It was two stories high and each side was painted a different shade of pastel: lime and lemon and pink and sky blue. Looking at it reminded me of Neopolitan ice cream. Or sherbert. We’d climb an exterior staircase to the second level and enter through the back. And then you’d see the piles: all the newspapers stacked chest-high, boxes of junk, old appliances, bags and bags of bulk dry goods, small hills of clothing. A narrow trail ran through the house. I spent many hours in that house, but I never even saw the first floor. I assumed it was just more of the same, probably even worse since nobody went down there. It wasn’t filthy, just unbelievably crowded. The effect was overwhelming; it would have taken a year’s worth of weekend garage sales to make a dent in the mess. Perhaps the idea of even starting proved too dauntless a task. The piles just encouraged more piles: an accumulation along the path of least resistance.
On my first visit, Rebecca’s mother was sitting in the front room watching television. She lay back in a vinyl armchair that was covered with a threadbare, floral-patterned blanket. She was obese; nearly 350 pound if I had to guess. She wore a shapeless housedress and blue slippers that hung from her toes. She had stringy brown hair and glasses and shiny skin over her nose and forehead. And a big, easy smile. Her husband had left many years ago. She welcomed me in and from that day forward talked to me as though I had been hanging around the house forever.
I peered across the dim room towards the television. Shafts of daylight pushed through the cracked blinds. Rebecca’s brother, Jason, was sitting on the couch playing Frogger. He was a big guy, mid twenties, wearing a tracksuit and a baseball cap. Rebecca had told me that Jason was the only white member of the Disciples, a notorious street gang that had emigrated north from Chicago. He preferred to be called J-Z. “Wassup,” he said when Rebecca introduced us. He didn’t look up from his video game, and it was the only time that J-Z ever spoke to me. A Newport smoldered in the choked ashtray beside him on the couch. His greasy hair fell in ringlets down the back of his neck. Later, when I used their bathroom (another stockpile of bottles and boxes) I peeked inside their medicine cabinet and realized that J-Z was using Jerri Curl.
I squeezed past the boxes in the hallway, and made my way back to the living room. I passed the bedroom that Rebecca had gestured towards as hers, and saw the mattress on the floor; a tornado path of clothes scattered about. By this point I was both intrigued and repulsed by Rebecca and her multi-colored house. It was a far cry from my orderly, middle-class life. Sure, I had two gay parents, but this family was something else. I felt like an anthropologist discovering a new tribe. I also felt like I didn’t want to sit down or touch anything. I was rapidly reaching my saturation point, and was about to tell Rebecca that I had to go home, when Anthony walked in.
Anthony was an inch shorter and two years older than me. Skin the shade the café con leche, with pale green eyes. He had a dusting of hair on his upper lip, and a white V-necked t-shirt pulled down over his compact torso. He wore an old pair of pale blue boxer shorts, and his thick brown hair was ruffled and sticking up a little from the top of his head. He had just woken up from a nap, and came in yawning and scratching his stomach. Rebecca introduced us. “Hi, Mike!” he said. He had a gap-toothed smile.
Rebecca later told me that Anthony was half Italian and half Native American, that he was a high-school drop-out and a friend of her brother’s. Anthony had been kicked out of his house last year and had been living with Rebecca’s family ever since. As I watched surreptitiously, Anthony sat on the couch next to J-Z and picked up the other joystick. I decided to stay.
///
I’ve always wondered how sexual attraction develops, how our preferences for certain characteristics or body types grow or fade over the years. For me, there’s always been the element of “opposites attract”. I was scrawny growing up, and always preferred guys who were bigger than me. I liked guys who were a little rough around the edges, more outgoing, less introverted. Is it elitist of me to admit a taste for working-class men? Back then I associated a raw sexual energy with men who knew how to work with their hands. An ideal husband would be creative and literate, but when it came to animal attraction these qualities mattered little. As a matter of fact, they still don’t.
It seems that some of my sexual tastes were cemented early on, and have changed little over the years. As a sophomore in high school I participated in a cultural exchange program and traveled to Léon, Nicaragua with twelve other American teenagers. The project organizers had set us up with families in a small villa outside of downtown; a neighborhood that was benefiting from the project's donations of supplies and labor. Dirt floors, occasional electricity, cold water, chickens in the courtyard. Toilet paper was a luxury and as such, we brought our own, along with t-shirts and other gifts. The family I stayed with gave me the largest room with the softest bed. They fed me, played me music, and answered all of my near-illegible questions with good humor and kindness. The barrio was a tight-knit community, and every evening people would gather around their front steps, to talk and to listen to the one radio that the “rich” neighbor across the way owned. We Americans were minor celebrities, and everyone wanted to meet us. They hated our government for funding the Contras, those false revolutionaries, but every American they had met were liberal, peace-lovers such as ourselves, and they treated us well. Léon was outside of the war zone, so we were protected from that danger, but everyone we met had lost sons and husbands and friends to the war.
I would sit out at night in front of the house and the neighborhood boys would come by to ask questions, sing along to the songs on the radio, and impress me with karate kicks to each other's heads. Late one night a boy named Alfredo, a couple of years older than me, seemed to take a shine to me. He lived four or five houses away, and would come up each night to the steps outside our house. Somehow we became friends, in spite of the language barrier. My Spanish was meager and his English nonexistent. But he was charismatic and funny, and to my fifteen-year old heart, very, very sexy. Dark skinned, with a light dusting of hairs on his upper lip, and cheap polyester clothes pulled over his compact frame. He told stories of machismo, of encounters with wild bulls and beautiful girls. He would act out various scenarios so that I could follow his stories. He’d slow and repeat a word with precise annunciation until I understood or until I paged through my Spanish-English dictionary for the translation.
I still remember the exact moment my attraction turned to full-blown adolescent love. I was sitting on the steps and he was standing in front of me when suddenly he placed both hands on my knees and rested his weight there, and told me another story. I can’t for the life of me remember what he said. I was so undone by the physical gesture that I could only sit there and look up into his face, his bright white teeth flashing around his words. It was the first physical contact I had with a boy whom I found attractive. There was a greater ease in physical affection between men in Nicaragua, as in many other countries. No other boy had ever touched me in that way, and though I knew Alfredo was straight, I fell in love with him.
We spent several more nights hanging out like that on the steps; the warm dark air, palm trees rustling above, the radio music drifting from down the block. Nothing more. No sex, no kissing, just friendly affection between two boys, affection that meant different things to each of us.
I have a picture of the two of us that was taken the day I left for home. He has his arm around me and is smiling. I’m looking a little shell-shocked. That morning, as our bus pulled away, I looked out the window and saw him, waving energetically and jumping up and down. As we rounded the corner, I lasted about five seconds then burst into tears.
As friends will attest, I was not the same when I came back. The shock of re-entering a world filled with everything, combined with the distance from my first infatuation, left me sad and wistful. In some ways I had felt more welcomed, more treasured, than I did in my own family. I talked constantly about going back, and I began to save my money. I wrote a whole notebook full of poetry about Nicaragua. I was arrested for the first and only time at a demonstration in downtown Minneapolis against the U.S Intervention in Central America. I wrote letters to my exchange family and to Alfredo, and they wrote back. I think my friends had a hard time understanding the intensity of my feelings for Nicaragua, probably because I could not yet articulate the passion I felt; the passion for another boy.
A year passed, I had some money saved and was negotiating with the project organizers for a solo return trip. One day a letter arrived for me, the airmail envelope a small kick in my heart, my name drawn in cursive on the front. It was from my exchange family. My Spanish had improved over the year, and I began to decipher the formal greetings and news within. Which is to say that it took me a few moments and several re-readings, to understand that Alfredo had been drafted. One day, riding in a truck headed for the war zone, he was ambushed by the Contras and killed.
///
In retrospect I can see that there was something about my inexpressible sexuality and the warm, immediate intimacy I had felt in Nicaragua that combined and intensified every moment of those twelve days I spent in Léon. Which is ironic, given that homosexuality is not particularly accepted there. Alfredo most certainly would not have welcomed the true extent of my feelings for him. At the time, however, I would not have been able to articulate such feelings. He was simply my first crush. When I returned home, I found myself staring at Latino boys. There weren’t that many to choose from in Minnesota.
It was a year later when Anthony walked through that door in his boxer shorts. He had an unselfconsciousness common among straight boys; an ease inside his own skin. I was nothing but self-conscious, and coming to an age where I wanted to distance myself from my family and my upbringing, from the safety and privilege awaiting me in a future of education. In Rebecca and her extended family, I found a little mystery and danger.
I’m not proud to admit that I used Rebecca in order to spend time with Anthony. Eventually he and I formed our own friendship, one that didn’t require an intermediary, and although the three of us spent many days together over the next few months, Anthony and I often made separate plans. For some reason he enjoyed my company. I had my secret, ulterior motives, but I was so afraid of discovery that these motives never came to light. Most likely they only registered to Anthony as friendly attention. We had almost nothing in common, and I suppose our differences made the attraction that much stronger. He was extroverted and immediate, he lived fully in each minute, and he laughed all the time, with a goofiness that I found sexy.
I also craved that little bit of danger, shreds of which I found on the edges of the Disciples. They had a central house off of East Lake Street, behind the McDonald’s, and Anthony took me there a few times. He wasn’t an initiated member (part of the initiation required the member to be beaten severely by the entire gang), but his friendship with J-Z gave him certain privileges, and thus by extension I could hang out at that house, though no one there seemed to pay me much attention. My white-boy adrenaline would kick every time I stepped into the house, but I loved it. I bought my first rap albums that year: NWA and Public Enemy and Ice-T. One night a man ran into the house, out of breath, a pistol in his hand. “Cops are after me,” he said, and he was ushered into the back bedroom, where they held their members-only meetings. Later someone told him he’d have to get rid of his bright white tracksuit. “Shit, man, I just bought it,” he said. That was about as dangerous as it ever got for me. Not long after, the cops raided the house while Anthony was there, and they had everyone lay down on the ground for a good hour while they searched the house. Later that week I was walking downtown with Anthony went he spotted a cop on the corner and went right up to him. “Hey, remember me?”
The cop looked at him a little suspiciously.
“You raided our house last week. I was on the ground the whole time. I recognized your shoes.”
The cop had to laugh. “Staying out of trouble?”
“Yes, sir.”
I felt that my proximity to this danger somehow lent me street cred; it urbanized me, gave me a sophistication that my classmates would envy, should they ever learn of my involvement with a street gang. But I could never shake the reality of my difference from Anthony and the others. I was going to college in the fall. I was dipping my toe in the waters of danger, knowing I’d never fall in. I was, for lack of a better word, slumming.
Naturally, Anthony was completely straight. He even had a girlfriend, though in all the time we spent together, I never met her. I still remember when Rebecca told me that Anthony was a screamer when he had sex. That fueled my fantasies for several weeks.
One weekend when my father and his partner went out of town, I asked Anthony if he’d like to stay over. That night we drove around the city in my father’s Jetta, and ended up crossing the Mississippi River to the Saint Paul side, where we parked along a quiet street. Anthony had brought some bottle rockets, and we walked down to the shore and lit their fuses, holding the Coke bottle so that they launched over the water. I watched the sparkling arc of their trails until they fizzled or burst. One plunged beneath the surface of the river and detonated there, a bright flash of light under the dark water. We didn’t stay long, afraid the people who lived in the mansions along the river would call the police. In the car we split a Newport, Anthony’s brand, blowing the smoke out the windows.
We ended up back at my father’s house where I concocted a ridiculous story about how all the sheets from my bed and my brother’s bed were in the wash, so we’d have to sleep in my father’s bed. Anthony didn’t seem suspicious; he went along with it good naturedly, as he did most things. But he never put the moves on me, and I was far too scared to initiate anything, and while he snored beside me I lay wide awake all night, heart thumping, till finally I passed out from exhaustion.
That was the summer after graduation. In the fall I was leaving for college in Florida, and my imminent departure lent the summer a romantic shade, of things coming to a close. He told me, in a rare moment of disclosure, that I had inspired him to go back and finish high school.
It was my final week in Minneapolis. Anthony and Rebecca took me out for a final night of driving and laughing. He bought a bottle of tequila and the two of us proceeded to get plastered. Rebecca, who was driving, took a couple of sips. We ended up at the Rose Gardens, along Lake Harriet. It was my favorite place to go when I’d sneak out at night with my headphones. I would lie on my back on the grassy hill and look up at the jumble of constellations. I suppose in my drunken state I wanted to share it with them.
The tequila loosened me up, and I was singing a song, something by the Fine Young Cannibals. It was a sad song, naturally. Even at eighteen I was a melancholy boy.
Somehow Rebecca and I ended up slow dancing, there in the dark garden, while I sang.
When at first you left
I thought I’d surely die
I couldn’t see the future
without you by my side
I didn’t have the best signing voice, but nobody stopped me. Rebeccad held tight to me, I could feel her pulling closer, her warm breath against my neck. But I kept my head turned away from hers, looking over her shoulder. Anthony lay on the grass a few feet away, watching us dance. I could see his smile, even in the dark.
Later that night I passed out. They drove me home, to my father’s house, and Anthony literally carried me inside and stayed until I was able to make it to my bedroom. A few minutes later, as I was trying to brush my teeth in the bathroom, I lost my balance and stumbled backwards, landing awkwardly against the toilet and cracking the basin open. Water spilled everywhere and then my father woke up. But that’s another story.
In my foolish, adolescent heart, I thought it awfully romantic that Anthony had carried me inside. I was that young.
A couple of months later, when I was in Florida at college, Rebecca called me. I had given her my friend Kelly’s number, as I had no phone of my own. I remember sitting on Kelly’s floor with her ridiculous pink phone in my lap when Rebecca told me that Anthony had been at home trying to get high, sniffing Scotchguard from a plastic bag. He lurched out of his bedroom into the crowded hallway of that pastel-colored house, clutching his heart. He died there on the floor.
I am happy to say that none of my other crushes, nor boyfriends for that matter, have ever died. And it’s been years since I fell for a straight boy. I wish I could say that I never fall for unavailable men, but it seems we all have a few of those to endure. It’s the unrequited attractions that hurt so beautifully, but only from this end. I don’t romanticize the ones I’ve hurt, because for me there’s no longing there. It’s an adolescent urge, to create a tragic art out of the loss of those two boys; to find greater meaning in something simple. As if in memory I could conjure something more from them, something beyond a desire for friendship.
Poor Rebecca. To this day I deceive her. Whether it’s wishful thinking or a trick of memory, I don’t picture her with me in that garden. Although I know it’s not true, I picture Anthony, his arms wrapped around me as we shuffle drunkenly in a circle to that song, my voice sounding better with each passing year.
5:39 PM | link
Monday, August 18, 2003
So I went out on a date last week. But the guy had never even heard of Everything But the Girl.
I sat there, going "...you know, that one song....And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain..." singing in the restaurant off-key. Nothing. Blank look.
6:16 PM | link
Friday, August 15, 2003
Iraqis gloat over U.S. blackout; offer 10 tips on how to beat the heat
(08-15) 06:06 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --
Iraqis who have suffered for months with little electricity gloated Friday over a blackout in the northeastern United States and southern Canada and offered some tips to help Americans beat the heat.
From frequent showers to rooftop slumber parties, Iraqis have developed advanced techniques to adapt to life without electricity.
Daily highs have soared above 120 degrees recently as Iraq's U.S. administrators have been unable to get power back to prewar levels. Some said it was poetic justice that some Americans should suffer the same fate, if only briefly.
"Let them taste what we have tasted," said Ali Abdul Hussein, selling "Keep Cold" brand ice chests on a sidewalk. "Let them sit outside drinking tea and smoking cigarettes waiting for the power to come back, just like the Iraqis."
Here is a top 10 list compiled on the streets of Baghdad:
* 10: SLEEP ON THE ROOF. Without power -- and hence without air conditioning -- Iraqis have taken to climbing up stairs in the hot nights. Some install metal bed frames on rooftops, while others simply stretch out on thin mattresses. "We sleep on the roof," said Hadia Zeydan Khalaf, 38, wearing a black head-to-toe abaya in the hot sun. "It's cooler there."
* 9: SIT IN THE SHADE. Many Iraqis go outside when the power's off. "We sit in the shade," said George Ruweid, 27, playing cards with friends on the sidewalk. Of the U.S. blackout, he said: "I hope it lasts for 20 years. Let them feel our suffering."
* 8: HEAD FOR THE WATER. "We go to the river, just like in the old days," said Saleh Moayet, 53. Several people said they had seen American beaches on television, and suggested they might be a good place to sit out the blackout. "They have so many beautiful beaches," said Hamid Khelil, 44. "They should go where it isn't so hot."
* 7: SHOWER FREQUENTLY. "I take showers all day," said Raed Ali, 33. "Before I go up to the roof to sleep, I take a shower and I'm cooler."
* 6: BUY BLOCKS OF ICE. When refrigerators shut down, there's no better way to keep food cool. Mohammed Abdul Zahara, 24, sells about 20 a day from a roadside table. "When it's hot people buy a lot of ice," he said.
* 5: CHECK FOR BITTER-ENDERS. "They should go to the power stations and see what the problem is," suggested Ahmed Abdul Hussein, 21. "Maybe there are followers of Saddam Hussein who are sabotaging their power stations. That's what happens here."
* 4: GET A GENERATOR. Abbas Abdul al-Amir, 53, has one of a long row of shops selling generators in Baghdad's Karadah shopping street. When the power goes out, sales go up. "I sell about 30 generators a day," he said. "When the shutdown lasts I can sell even more."
* 3: CALL IN THE IRAQIS. Some suggested the Americans ask the Iraqis how to get the power going again. "Let them take experts from Iraq," said Alaa Hussein, 32, waiting in a long line for gas because there was no electricity for the pumps. "Our experts have a lot of experience in these matters."
* 2: USE FOUL LANGUAGE. "When the power goes out, I curse everybody," said Emad Helawi, a 63-year-old accountant. "I curse God. I curse Saddam Hussein. And I curse the Americans."
* And the No. 1 suggestion among Iraqis for Americans suffering without power: TAKE TO THE STREETS. Some said demonstrations can be effective in persuading authorities to turn on the switch. "We held protests. After that we had fewer blackouts," Ahmed Abdul Hussein said without even a hint of sarcasm. "I'd suggest Americans go out and demonstrate."
6:29 PM | link
Monday, August 11, 2003
Thank you, gorgeous. I needed that.
11:29 PM | link
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Pour le soldat atomique, si je suis qu'il veut.
"Do not allow yourself to be confused in your aloneness by the something within you that wishes to be released from it. This very wish, if you will calmly and deliberately use it as a tool, will help to expand your solitude into far distant realms. People have, with the help of so many conventions, resolved everything the easy way, on the easiest side of easy. But it is clear that we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us. It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it...
...Love is a high inducement for individuals to ripen, to strive to mature in the inner self, to manifest maturity in the outer world, to become that manifestation for the sake of another. This is a great, demanding task; it calls one to expand one's horizons greatly."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"
and
"Alice: Oh, Gertrude, we had wonderful adventures. Remember during the war, we were caught in the snow and I was sure we were on the wrong road, and I wanted to turn back? But you said, 'Never mind. Right or wrong, it is the road we are on, and we are continuing on it.'
Gertrude: And we did. That is what we did.
Alice: Yes, we continued.
Gertrude: We always continued. We do still. We shall. We always shall."
-Win Wells, "Gertude Stein and a Companion"
6:13 PM | link
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Ha ha, I spelled it Dalai "LLAMA". I crack myself up. Thanks for the keen eye, Bill.
8:45 PM | link
Friday, August 08, 2003
I have this completely irrational fear that I will be turned over to the Fab Five. Some well-meaning friend will call the producers of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and report me. They will descend upon my apartment and I will cower in the hallway with a queasy smile on my face as they rummage through my bathroom and bedroom closet. Shrieks will arise as they discover that I am lacking in moisturizer, pre-shaving balm, and a basic black suit. All of my flannel shirts will be thrown into a pile on top of my blue plaid comforter as the food guy searches hopelessly for lemon-fused olive oil in my kitchen. The culture guy, lacking anything better to do with his time, will cluck his tongue over my Bruce Springsteen CD’s. The interior decorator will stand in one place, mulling over possible “themes” for the bedroom. I will be the first gay guy on the show, and it will be merciless.
One would think that with two gay parents, I would have turned out a little more queer. But they weren’t so queer themselves. My father bought his clothes from Sears. My mother couldn’t fix a car and she was a better decorator than my father. Neither of them could cook anything that didn’t come in a box.
When a friend of mine and I emerged from Tower Records last year we compared purchases. I bought Springsteen, he bought Cher. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that the expiration date on my gay membership card was long past. Over the last few years, friends have referred to me as being “masculine”, and they’ve informed me that my infrequent attempts at campy humor disturbed this image. I’ve never thought of myself as all that masculine. I always wished as a child that I would turn out that way. Although I’ve never been accused of having effeminate qualities, my own self-image was of a very scrawny, oversensitive, artistic boy. The scrawniness I dealt with at the gym. The sensitivity may not be immediately apparent in person, nor is my tortured inner poet. My masculinity (I can’t even write the word without wanting to put quotation marks around it) is more of an external skin.
My queer sensibility is all on the inside. I may not know how to dress up very well, but I sure can cry during Oprah. My feelings get hurt easily and I could be accused of “processing” my emotions frequently. My writing is very “personal”. I don’t watch sports. I lean towards women writers, singers (Bruce excluded), and politicians. I understand Eleanor more than Franklin Roosevelt. I prefer making love versus fucking, and one partner versus many.
The most effeminate man I know collects vintage Cadillacs, drives a motorcycle, and spends his weekends jumping out of airplanes. Gays and lesbians have that masculine/feminine balance more developed than heterosexuals. I get irritated by all those commercials riffing on the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” concept. Where the men are hapless creatures who can’t cook or clean but who just love love love their sports. Women, on the other hand, all love shoes. All of them. They get weak-kneed even thinking about shopping. They’re forever twirling about with enormous shopping bags clutched in their hot little hands, beaming in near-orgiastic delight. I know that I shouldn’t expect much social insight from commercials, but I can’t help but feel a little transcendent in comparison. I at least do my own laundry.
I’ve been thinking about this balance ever since coming across a quote from the Dalai Lama: ...homosexuality, whether it is between men or between women, is not improper in itself. What is improper is the use of organs already defined as inappropriate for sexual contact. I guess in my ignorance of world religions I expected a little more from Buddhism. To be fair the Dalai Lama opposes violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation, but I don’t think that any major religion is going to come rushing to our defense any time soon.
The Vatican recently issued a strongly-worded 12 page document outlining its stance on homosexuality and marriage: There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family, the document said, asserting repeatedly that marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.
Eager to join the party, President Bush recently declared at a White House news conference: I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think we ought to codify that one way or the other. And we've got lawyers looking at the best way to do that. Never mind that the Defense of Marriage Act was passed while Clinton was in office, Bush would like to amend the actual Constitution in order to protect the future from the moral bankruptcy of the queer “agenda”.
Meanwhile there are gay people all over television and entire shelves devoted to gay magazines and major corporations all too happy to market to a community with abundant disposable income. It takes a healthy amount of denial, or maybe just displacement, to be walking around gay in this country.
People who view same-sex unions as unnatural aren’t inherently evil. They honestly believe that their views are informed and correct, just as we do. They believe that they are protecting an American tradition from desecration.
This word, “unnatural”, is nearly ubiquitous in these debates. I can’t speak for all gay people, but for me sleeping with a hot guy is the most natural thing in the world. There isn’t much thought involved; the chemical attraction, the physiological reactions; all of it seems perfectly natural. As the saying goes, “A hard-on never lies.”
It’s hard to be patient while so many people are still hung up on this idea of homosexuality being a choice. I personally don’t know anyone who’s ever chosen to be gay, at least nobody that’s stuck with it longer than two years out of college. If anybody out there has actually chosen to be gay, by all means I’d love to hear your story.
Of course, there are the people who understand that it’s not a choice, but who still believe that homosexual sex is wrong. “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. They use words like “tolerance”, but they don’t want you to have sex. They get to have all the sex they want, but you can’t. It’s all very convenient for them.
Whether it was God or Nature, I turned out gay. I do believe, considering my family background, that there is a biological element at work. But it will take a lot of research to understand why I turned out gay, for example, and my brother turned out straight. If it was God, I don’t believe that He would make me a homosexual just so I could go my entire life with blue balls, while everyone else fucks like bunnies.
This insistence on natural vs. unnatural behavior is a spectacular failure of imagination on the part of religious and political leaders. Homosexuality is anything but unnatural. If they would just take that extra little step and ask why, why are there so many queers? My own personal belief is that gays and lesbians are either God’s or Nature’s attempt at a little population control. The problem isn’t that we use our sex organs for non-reproductive sex, the problem is that more people don’t. The world could use a little more birth control.
All of these polls asking Americans their opinions on same-sex marriage annoy me as much as the polls asking what everyone thinks of Britney’s new look. People are asked their opinion way more often then necessary. It’s another opiate for the masses: corporations like AOL and CNN conducting useless polls to make people feel involved. It’s a type of armchair activism that is about as influential as your opinion on Terminator 3. Until someone asks me if I think straight people should have the right to marry, I don’t care much what anyone else says. I wasn’t celebrating in the streets when the Supreme Court ruled that I could fuck another guy. I’ve been doing that for years. I understand the broader historical and political significances of the ruling, but frankly I don’t care if people tolerate or approve or condone my “lifestyle”. I’m a white gay man living in San Francisco, and I take full advantage of those privileges.
I’m beginning to understand those first colonists that made “Don’t Tread on Me” their flag and motto. Americans are getting pretty damn good at telling other people how to live their lives. Witness our recent foreign policy. Witness daytime talk shows. Witness the explosion of moronic polls, the influx of make-over shows. People actually volunteer to be on television shows where other people vote on their potential suitors.
Maybe the only hope for people who still believe that homosexuality is unnatural is to become best friends with a queer or two. But as long as guys like me leave small town America to live in more cosmopolitan cities, this will be a slim hope. So perhaps it really is up to television. I’m not holding my breath, but perhaps a few more Will and Graces, a few more Fab Fives will break down those walls, one chip at a time. I understand the arguments comparing such programs to the black minstrel shows; it’s our version of the shuck and jive, make ‘em laugh, look at the funny homosexual, mom! Personally I feel that camp’s humor isn’t performed for heterosexuals. It’s a short hand among queers and enlightened heterosexuals, open for other people’s amusement, but not acted out for their benefit.
What I find most revealing about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is that the exterior transformation of each straight guy is often part of a more important goal: to get the guy to pay a little more attention to his girl. To step a little outside of himself in order to make her feel special. Maybe it’s that masculine/feminine balance. Maybe it’s a little easier for us to understand what a woman wants. Maybe we have something to teach the rest of the world. And it’s for that reason that I believe I will never appear on the show. I may not have a decent black suit, but I’m a hopeless romantic, and I already know how to give love away.
2:11 PM | link
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
I’m a little heartsick. As in, I want to throw up. So it’s safe to say that I’m a tad oversensitive this week. Check back next week - I might be a little more solid. So it was a little disconcerting to read about myself on a couple of other weblogs this week. One of them said that I was a good writer but that my site was “depressing”. Another blogger said that I was a good writer but that I “wasn’t ready” for publication. I won’t identify either source because I have a personal rule about not critiquing other bloggers on my site. I’m not much of a critic and I don’t really think the world needs another one. Besides, I generally find that such behavior ends up biting me in the ass. So out of self-preservation and a fear of confrontation, I resist judging other bloggers publicly.
I am not mentioning this as a way to elicit your pity (or maybe I’m deluded and that is exactly what I am trying to do). I’m mentioning it because the comments left me feeling a little defeated, and as a result I’ve been thinking a lot about writing and criticism.
As for the charge of being “depressing”; I’d like to think that my subject matter may often be depressing, but that my writing isn’t. Here again I may be hopelessly deluded. This comment about my writing doesn’t interest me very much; it’s clearly a matter of individual taste, and there’s not much more to say than that.
As for being ready or not for publication, my immediate reaction was to defend myself with a disclaimer: I’ve always considered dogpoet to be a rough draft. There isn’t anything on here that I would send out for publication as is. Even the linked “stories” need more work. In fact, I cringe a little when I even think about them now, months after I wrote them.
I would also point out that a blog is a blog; it’s not the New Yorker. The internal push to post several days a week almost precludes the idea that the posts would be anything but rough drafts. And no writer I know gets his first drafts published. So the judgment seems misled; critiquing out of context. And if I can be snarky for just one second, I believe that there is a saying that would apply well to this critique: “Consider the source.”
You don’t get to make disclaimers, however, when you want to be considered for publication. Your writing will stand or fall on its own merits. Being judged is just part of the business. Someday, if I am ever lucky enough to be ready for publication, there will be negative reviews (if I’m even lucky enough to get reviewed). So I might as well get used to it. “Following your bliss” sounds like a path strewn with pastel-colored rose petals, but the reality is far less romantic. Once you declare your passion, you’re fair game. It’s far safer to never admit any aspirations than it is to call yourself a writer, for example. Some may argue that it’s far wiser. The stakes are raised; you are no longer just a guy with a website. You’re that guy who thinks he’s a writer.
Part of me actually agrees with this blogger. Maybe that’s why I haven’t yet sent anything out for publication. I think there are definite weaknesses in my writing: I think I lean towards sentimentality almost automatically, and it takes a little distance for me to weed that out. And when I’m tired and it’s late and I haven’t posted in awhile, sometimes that internal editor loses out over the easy, sentimental shit. There’s a sentence in my last post that I wish I had edited. I also don’t think I’ve mastered the art of the final paragraph; my ability to end a story or essay isn’t quite strong enough yet.
This is becoming an entirely self-absorbed post, but I want to get at the truth. That was always my intention, when I started this site: honesty. I thought I was being honest a few months ago, but now I see that there are several more layers of truth underneath. I want to avoid the easy answers, I want to dig past them.
There’s that part of me that longs for those early days, a year and a half ago, when nobody read my site, when I could post anything I damn well pleased. When I didn’t have to take into account other people’s feelings or privacy. Before my father found my site, for example.
But if I didn’t want anyone to read my writing, I would keep a personal diary, not an Internet site. And there is the crux. I have that need to communicate with others, to share my writing with others. And then there are my less honorable motivations, like selfishness and insecurity. Needing people to think I’m talented.
I would like to prove my homosexuality by saying that this issue of public criticism reminds me of not just one, but two scenes in Madonna’s Truth or Dare. The first is backstage following a concert, and she tells us that while 99% of the people may have loved her performance, she cares more about what the other 1% thought. The other scene is when Warren Beatty, her then-lover, gets fed up trying to have a private moment with her, away from the camera. He says, sarcastically, “Yes, well, what’s the point of living if it’s not on camera?”
Now, I last saw Truth or Dare when I was like 21, so it must say something about me that I have remembered those scenes, and that I identify with Madonna. (Perhaps every queen does, at some point). I care more about the 1%, and I wonder what the point is in writing off-camera. I’m not proud of this, but pride doesn’t take well to honesty. I think it speaks volumes about my insecurities that I have failed to acknowledge that both bloggers said I was a good writer.
I think it says even more that I have gone on and on about two minor critiques. I know people, whom I admire, that let such words roll like water off their back. And honestly, by the time I finish this paragraph I’ll be over it. Each critic is just one person, with one opinion. At the end of the day it’s just me, alone with my work, and what matters then is only how I feel about my writing, whether I’m proud or wincing in embarrassment over some sentimental turn of phrase. If I don’t like what I’ve written, it doesn’t matter where I get published. Publication doesn’t stop the little voices that come in the middle of the night. The voices that like to point out when you’re being a phony. What matters at those times is whether I’m satisfied with my own work. And that’s a whole other story.
1:20 AM | link
Monday, August 04, 2003
And thank you for exchanging war stories with me last night. It helped. Now take me back to New York with you.
2:10 PM | link
I had this recurring nightmare, when I was younger, in which the proportions of everything were all distorted. Nothing exactly happened in these nightmares, but for some reason they were the worst kind. A small room would suddenly expand to limitless proportions. A book which had been a short reach away was suddenly all the way across a room the size of a football field. A large piece of furniture would receed and shrink to the size of a thimble. In every room I was the only person around; the entire world around me was shifting, and I was alone and feeling like I was going insane. They were the kind of dreams that, even at the age of fourteen, made me want to wake up my mother, so that someone could comfort me, so that someone could witness with me the world returning to its normal proportions.
A ten-minute conversation on Friday night has suddenly thrown my entire life into disarray. Things are not what I thought they were. A ten minute conversation that flipped on a light; a light that is shining backwards over a year's worth of conversations and e-mails and emotions, and I can't seem to move from this spot. I'm rooted with my head looking back over my shoulder, examining the shadows and contours of this newly-lit trail. I'm not sure what is real and what isn't. 24 hours after that conversation I was sure that everything was an illusion, but now, after three days, I can see that it is far more ambiguous. There really is love in there, if only I can pull it apart from the surrounding mess. I will be okay, he will be okay. Whether or not there will still be an "us", remains to be seen. If so it will require of me more patience and understanding than I thought myself capable of.
Yesterday the Ex dropped off the dog. He was going to watch him for a few days during the space monkey's visit, and so I had to tell him, like I've had to tell all my friends, that he didn't come. "Honestly," I told him, "I feel like this is payback for all the shitty things I did to you when we were together."
"No. You were a great boyfriend."
"No, I wasn't."
"Yes, you were. You brought me here to San Francisco. You adopted Louie..."
He was forgetting all the times I had cheated on him, all the drunken arguments and the depressions.
"You're a great guy," he said. "Is this guy really all that special? Aren't there any...locals you could date?"
Yes, he really is all that special, in spite of everything. I did so many things when I was drinking and doing meth, things which people have had to forgive. Who would I be to deny that forgiveness to someone else?
Friday night, after the ten-minute conversation, I wanted an escape . I hadn't wanted a drink that badly since my mother died, and in some ways I wanted it even more. My mother's death was nobody's fault. But this pain, this was somebody's fault. I wanted to blot everything out, I wanted to never trust another man for the rest of my life. But I didn't drink, I didn't snort crystal. Instead, after eight months of monogamy/celibacy, I went back to the chat rooms. At least I can get laid, I thought. Two guys said hello, but I just didn't have it in me. I couldn't even reply. The thought of anonymous sex, of a one-night stand, made me nauseous. I've never really been built that way. I just went to bed, and dreamed all night of a new world with constantly shifting proportions.
1:07 PM | link
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Okay, so I overreacted a little. I guess I don't give up so easily. Not lately.
Bearbait and I were over at Prometheus' house last night. The three of us had rented a movie, popped some Lightly Buttered popcorn, and were enduring an amazingly long series of previews. There was one rather dull-looking movie where the narrator was droning on and on about how "Life for Bill and his brother Charlie had always been fairly normal..." and then the music changed, a shimmering sound indicated for us a shift in mood; "...until one day Love Walked In..." and some woman walks through a gate in their fence.
I turned to my friends. "It'd be really great if someday Love just Walked In. You know, I'm just hanging out minding my own business and it just walks in."
My life would not make the best movie. I suspect that most people watching would fall asleep or demand a refund, waiting for Love to walk in. I'm still waiting. I'm learning a lot about patience and forgiveness and this may be making me a better man. But sometimes I'd rather not work so hard. I'd like a little instant gratification, a little sexual healing. Some wild behavior that could be videotaped and sold on late-night cable for $19.95.
And characteristically I am being vague and coy about all this. Because I am working hard, and I am becoming a better man, and because this involves another person. If I were an even better man I might keep all of this off the Internet. But it's the only thing I can concentrate on lately, and if I didn't say something it would turn into the elephant in the living room and I'd keep writing as often as I have been lately, which is to say almost never.
2:09 PM | link
Friday, August 01, 2003
I am the biggest goddamned fool who ever lived. I'm not sure when I will post again.
9:06 PM | link
