I ♥ Fred the Plumber. He's adorable and cuddly and he's my closest friend.
People have said we look alike...big round bald heads, facial hair, short & stocky powerful builds. But I never believed it. Until my own mother's first comment after she met Fred was “You guys could be brothers.”
I love him like a brother. And like a sister.
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Cake!
Yeah, on that kick again. Well, shoot me. I have the time, and the box mix, and it's one of the few physical things I can do to any sense of completion, so I made another cake. This one is a yellow “butter recipe” cake with chocolate frosting.
So I had to go for a 13x9 cake than a layer cake because, well, easier. Helloooo.
Those are easy to frost because you really just need to drop all the frosting in the middle of the cake and spread it out to the corners. Also quick. And easy.
Except this is where “easy” gives out to “gay” (just when you thought “easy” and “gay” were complementary!). I simply had to swirl a pattern into the frosting. I was always trying to get my mom to make layer cakes instead of 13x9 cakes and when I did manage to convince her to buy the round pans and make the damn thing, I'd try so hard to get the frosting to look like the box that I'd end up tearing up the cake by the time I was done. Leading to never using the round cake pans again and going back to 13x9 pans until the tragedy was forgotten and then, well, lather, rinse, repeat (which reminds me, I once did sit through the first Lord of the Rings movie).
So I empty the can of chocolate frosting into the middle of the box cake (oh, how I relish that imagery) and spread it out to get even coverage using the knife in just one direction to avoid ruining the cake (a gay boy learns a lot from his earlier mistakes, at least in baking), and then I'm swirling a certain pattern into just the surface of the frosting before I know what I'm doing. That done, I dragged the knife around the entire perimeter making a flat border.
Then it hit me: I had just fashioned into that 13x9 rectangle the same design that my father Jack, the stone mason, fashions into each concrete form he pours. He makes a sort of squiggle pattern across a slab of concrete using a nylon-bristled broom and then uses a special type of rectangular trowel called an edger (brotherman Sam will correct me on that term if I'm misremembering it) to frame each sidewalk with a flat surface.
I bet you didn't know there was a sort of signature to poured concrete sidewalks. Next time you're walking down the street, just look down! (well, unless you're in San Francisco, because they only pour small squares everywhere with nothing interesting about them).
So the cake tastes ok, but as soon as I took the first bite I remember why my mother never went in for the “butter recipe” cakes. They taste, well, like butter. Once again, the wisdom of Marie trumps the superficial application of cultural faggotry.
Maybe that's why we shun box cakes?
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I was sitting in Joe the Barber's waiting for Sam to get done with his haircut. I'd already gotten mine (and if you've never had your head shaved with a straight razor, you haven't lived) and I was reading gloss. gloss is a small-format, local periodical that's made up almost entirely of ads for dance clubs and choir-preaching editorials, but it's better than nothing (well, arguably).
[beat]
Ok, right now Joan Rivers and Shannen Doherty are on an episode of The Graham Norton Effect and I uttered to Sam words that I never thought I'd say: Poor Shannen Doherty. Joan is telling her trademark two-part tasteless jokes and Shannen is mortified. Nuff said.
[beat]
Anyway, I was flipping through gloss and near the back were the horoscopes (or, given that it's gloss, whore-oscopes?). I read mine, and for the first time, I felt like I couldn't even try to apply this or any horoscope to myself. It made assumptions of mobility and participation and ability. I mean, how was I going to keep my life on track when it's not on track now? Have you ever noticed that horoscopes don't ever answer that type of question?
Then again, am I so desperate that I'm insisting that a gloss whore-oscope come through for me? Then again, I'd missed a couple of doses of neurontin, so my brain was [mis?]firing again on all cylinders.
Then again. Stir crazy. Yeaaah.
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Remember all that bitching I did about 2005? And then it decided to bite me on the ass on its way out by kicking my Vespa out from underneath me at 17th & Sanchez?
Well, in inaugurating 2006, I've decided that the flip on the old time odometer from 2005 to 2006 isn't enough. No, more work needs to be done. And thanks to Glenn, I've learned a new word! That word: pogonophile. A pogonophile is “one who loves beards”.
In this town, and in gay culture bubbles everywhere, a bear is defined generally as someone who is hairy (including facial hair, preferably full facial hair), perhaps overweight, wears flannel and likes selfsame (oh, and male, just in case you were thinking 'lesbian').
I never liked that definition, primarily because I fall into that category. And while I may look like a bear, I don't buy into the whole bear-community thing thing.
The thing I like about “pogonophile” is that it's about one's internal world. Oh, and it collapses the pantheon of animals used to pigeonhole gay men (even though there are no pigeons in the pantheon!), such as otters, cubs, wolves (oh my!) into a single designation.
So. Pogs. I wonder if the meme will travel anywhere. Maybe I should post to that great bear echochamber, LiveJournal; there, it might have legs.
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Go here. Apparently, God of Biscuits is one of their “Popular Gay Blogs”. Go vote for me! And while you're at it, vote for Mikey, the DogPoet for “Best Reviewed Gay Blog”.
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The Constitutional Court of South Africa has uncovered the Horrors of the Gay Agenda™ and applied them to the South African state:
A democratic, universalistic, caring and aspirationally egalitarian society embraces everyone and accepts people for who they are. To penalise people for being who and what they are is profoundly disrespectful of the human personality and violatory of equality. Equality means equal concern and respect across difference. It does not presuppose the elimination or suppression of difference. Respect for human rights requires the affirmation of self, not the denial of self. Equality therefore does not imply a levelling or homogenisation of behaviour or extolling one form as supreme, and another as inferior, but an acknowledgement and acceptance of difference. At the very least, it affirms that difference should not be the basis for exclusion, marginalisation and stigma. At best, it celebrates the vitality that difference brings to any society. The issue goes well beyond assumptions of heterosexual exclusivity, a source of contention in the present case. The acknowledgement and acceptance of difference is particularly important in our country where for centuries group membership based on supposed biological characteristics such as skin colour has been the express basis of advantage and disadvantage. South Africans come in all shapes and sizes. The development of an active rather than a purely formal sense of enjoying a common citizenship depends on recognising and accepting people with all their differences, as they are. The Constitution thus acknowledges the variability of human beings (genetic and socio-cultural), affirms the right to be different, and celebrates the diversity of the nation. Accordingly, what is at stake is not simply a question of removing an injustice experienced by a particular section of the community. At issue is a need to affirm the very character of our society as one based on tolerance and mutual respect. The test of tolerance is not how one finds space for people with whom, and practices with which, one feels comfortable, but how one accommodates the expression of what is discomfiting.
Those bastards! How dare they subvert the Will of God[-followers]?
They have no shame. The document also states:
The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples. It reinforces the wounding notion that they are to be treated as biological oddities, as failed or lapsed human beings who do not fit into normal society, and, as such, do not qualify for the full moral concern and respect that our Constitution seeks to secure for everyone. It signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual couples.
Wow...they've come a long way from the Apartheid State of just fifteen years ago.
I keep thinking about this “activist judges” concept. Considering that the courts don't get to write new laws, only knock down those which conflict with the abstract ideals of our country as laid down in the Constitution, I don't see the opportunity to be an activist of any stripe. In fact, the Judiciary, at least in the upper echelons, is the closest thing to idealism as any government gets.
By the way, the Constitutional Court of South Africa did not vote unanimously to legalize same-sex marriage and order the rest of the government to make it happen within twelve months. There was one dissenter: she wanted the government to make them happen immediately.
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I've known for about fifteen years now—ever since I'd met Allen, who then worked for the Midland (TX) Reporter-Telegram—that Texas was ass-full of backward-ass homophobic, racist, gun-toting fuckheads.
And after today's election results, I have quantitative evidence to support that assertion, for about 70% of them.
Dear Lone Star State: you suck.
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I think National Coming Out Day is a huge success. I will cite you the only statistic that matters; it is not universal, but personal. It is not objective data, nor should it be. It is well-researched. It is hard-fought and hard-won. It is the end of a long road. It is an end that happened years ago.
The success is this: I have no one to come out to! I haven't for some time. Or at least no one I've had to save it for until October 11.
When I started work at Apple in March, for example, the HR form for benefits had multiple checkboxes for “others to be insured”: Spouse, Domestic Partner, Dependent. That's it. That's how Apple “found out” I was gay: a benefits form with a checkbox that had equal footing with those to whom marriage is an earnest option. My employer is so extreme.
My new boss knew I had a partner because I said so. He told me about his wife, so I told him about Sam. I'm such a flaunter.
All that said, I have to say that the day...today...National Coming Out Day...holds a bittersweet place in my heart and head. It reminds me of the hard work still ahead, where difficulty takes the form of the base insult of having to discuss on such a conscious and direct level something which is so fundamental, so basic to one's very nature, that one can't do it real justice, can't convey the true experience of it. Our very lives and livelihoods set out on display for the enlightenment-challenged and enlightenment-unwilling out there to cast stones upon, to inveigh about, to use as a masturbatory exercise of their own Fundamentalist cosmology. Yes, even a chance to flaunt their chosen lifestyles in our faces.
I would offer that coming out has the strange benefit of being both the most effective and the least radical thing that any gay person can do to help the cause of equality. Christians, like most humans, find it so much easier to hate a phenomenon rather than hate a person. They'll tell you as much: hate the sin, not the sinner!
Everyone I know, to whom I have come out, has found understanding where there was only surface reaction or has found empathy where perhaps there was only sympathy or has found that siding with the better angels of their nature is preferable to throwing a tantrum in Leviticus' no-fun zone.
Coming out is not flaunting anything. Insofar as any given heterosexual's (true heterosexual or chosen-lifestyle) sexuality is a fundamental aspect of their lives and families and societies, my homosexuality is fundamental to who I am. If it seems to some that Pride and Coming Out Day and Halloween (yes, that one is ours :) are an exercise in self-promotion and self-gratification, well, you're right. But you have Easter and Christmas and the Fourth of July. If it seems from our parades that all homosexuals are either drag queens or leather queens or dancy nancyboys, well, remember that we don't assume all heterosexuals are cheerleaders, band members or Mummers. If it seems we have an agenda, well, we do. But that one is your fault. Just as Pride is a response to the Shame you have foisted on us, an agenda is the natural consequence of organized defense against those who would treat us as less. It's really as simple as that.
We don't want more homosexuals in the world; we just want the ones that are already there to be as fabulous and as unimpeded in their lives as you seem to fancy yourselves.
So for those of you who have not come out to everyone, do it because it's the right thing to do. For the cause of equality. For your fellow gay folks. Most importantly, for yourself. It's the most selfishly selfless thing you'll ever do.
Also sprach der Gott der Plätzchen.
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The Governor has vetoed AB 849 (Leno) the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act!
Fuckyouasshole.
•••
Update: If you're in San Francisco, just heard about this:
RALLY AND MARCH TOMORROW(FRIDAY 9/30) San Francisco, at Castro and Market/Harvey Milk Plaza.
5:00 PM
www.markleno.com, eqca.org for updates
Pass it on!
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You came to this country to show off ornanamental muscles. Style over substance, form over function. Aesthetics over athletics.
Like the cuckoo among nobler, more honest birds, you deceived your way into place. You hooked yourself into the glam slam no-work no-talent ironic celebrity and milked and bilked millions to make your own millions.
Like the cuckoo, you did no real work yourself—you tricked others into building your future for you. And counting on the baser instincts of the mob mentality, you took your recognizability and co-opted yourself an executive position. Still on no-talent. Still with no-work. Still by subverting someone else's machinery.
You, the man who got so much on so little, you who came to this country as an alien but were welcome and were lavished with abundance, see fit to pass the buck, pass the responsibility of fairness, of balance, of equality, back off to the mob of people out there who stab and swipe at fear with their torches and their pitchforks.
But then again, you haven't vetoed such profoundly, humanly important legislation yet, so you may yet do the right thing. Such an in-kind act on your part may open up a bright world for yourself and the rest of us.
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I hear lines like, “It flies in the the face of natural selection (any hereditary gene for homosexuality would have selected itself out many generations ago). Therefore I ask again, where is the SCIENCE that supports homosexuality?”
Siiiigh.
Maybe I should start a little series of lessons to let these ignorant-yet-bellicose folks in on science's dirty little secrets?
Til then, don't give them too much credit, folks. Don't assume that they've taken basic science plowshares and perverted them into swords of christian kindness. No, they don't even know where to find the plowshares in the first place.
It gets worse, though. They won't actually go look up what 'natural selection' might be, in fact, instead pushing the legwork onto those of us under the onslaught of this kind of stupidity. Ironically, they know there are those who old fact and scientific truth on a bit of a pedestal, so they exploit our care and rigor to keep us busy while they just continue to blather utter nonsense.
Last time I checked, one typically challenged what they knew to be incorrect, not what they didn't bother to understand in the first place.
I guess they figure, if it works for secular conservatives, why not us?
Wait...did I just say “secular conservatives”? Are there any left?
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In the third Harry Potter movie, Hermione utters, “Is that really what the back of my head looks like?”
Turns out, time travel isn't the only way to catch yourself in action from a third-person perspective! All you need is a $500 DV cam, a dirty, dirty boyfriend and a reminder from said boyfriend that you do, in fact, deserve to be called Piggy.
It's pretty damned hot to watch, even as it also serves as serious incentive to get to the gym a whole lot more often. -wink-
And for my dear, dear friends in Eastern Washington State, I assure you at least I was open to the possibility of procreation, as was LOML, but I'm not sure our parts were. Funny, it doesn't look disordered. God [of Biscuits] bless!
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How much did ya
How much did ya
How much did ya get?
— “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?” by The Pretenders
It seems that the Canadian Roman Catholic Church has put a price tag on the soul of a newborn. Or maybe that's too harsh and I should just say they're using the infant's immortal soul as a cudgel to get same-sex parents of said child to lie to the Church and to God in order to preserve the Church's very very earthly need to consolidate its own power.
It seems that Cardinal Marc Ouellet is willing to risk the soul of a newborn just to remain unequivocal about how reprehensible the Church believes same-sex unions to be.
Which just adds to the notion that the Catholics are militant about the Sanctity of Life and Soul only until the human is born. Then the Social Engineering kicks in where they care more about the home life than the life of a child out here in the world.
Cardinal Ouellet? With all due respect, go fuck yourself. I'm sure you can find a loophole in your chastity vows.
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Condition: vampire dogs from outer space.
Reminder: the healer has her own Home.
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Ow. My head hurts. What a fun weekend.
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Today is Transfer Student Orientation for Sam.
For the last hour-plus, I've been sitting in a too-warm room with too-burnt-orange carpeting in a low-ceilinged meeting room called the Rosa Parks Room. Earlier, Sam noted that we were sitting in the back.
I'd had to sit through a too-perky presentation with too-square cartoons cribbed and scanned and placed on an outdated PowerPoint presentation done up in canary yellow seriffed text on a light blue field.
Straight people, I swear, sometimes.
I'm here while Sam is at the student sessions two floors up in Jack Adams Hall. The man doing the preso is the director of the Career Center, and he's giving a big verbal chuck-on-the-chin to all the “other parents” in the room, encouraging their children to stay vigilant and take the initiative in learning how to be presentable.
Parents laughing at the silliness of haircuts, tattoos and piercings. I'd have to admit that there's no love lost between me and tattooing, but I'm more neutral than anything else. Piercings? Well, some people do look like they've fallen face-first into a tackle box, but a piercing isn't the end of the world.
I guess it's one of the things in not being a parent that makes me less affronted by body manipulation, or less adversarial to the “new generation” at all.
Though, come to think of it, I guess I can see why certain crazies come around here and call me categorically “old”. They've moved through their lives along a certain path that prevents them from being agonistic to “today's youth”: they draw a line at an arbitrary age difference and stand apart. They are old, themselves, no matter what the calendar says.
I'm not saying that chronological age doesn't figure; I'm just saying that culture plays a bigger part in affinity.
Besides, these parents are OLD!
Sometimes you have to improvise, that much we all know. But sometimes, sometimes you choose to do it. Sometimes you improvise because you can, because you enjoy exercising your intellect or other talents. Sometimes you do it to entertain others. And sometimes you improvise out of love for another. You find ways to spin bad things into not-so-bad, or distract with the good things to give some breathing space to the bad things.
This past weekend was up at the River, with Fred, Donovan, Derek and Marcello. It was all for Marci's birthday, and you know what? I got more out of it than I ever expected. And I expected a lot.
Things have been rough eventful lately, and even up at the River all was not a good time for me, even in the midst of a 3-day-long Good Time Had By All. But my friends were there. Whatever conscious efforts they made on my behalf I'll never know. I just know that I was surrounded by amazing people who wouldn't let me fall too far those couple of times when I felt like I was falling off of the face of the earth.
God is a red balloon at a picnic.
But mostly it was a great time. I know Marci had a great time and that was the single most important thing. Never underestimate the inadvertent payoff of making someone else feel good while having no expectation of payoff.
At every moment when I had a chance, the question would cross my altered or unaltered mind: how did I get so lucky to have these people in my life?
I need to know; but I suspect I'll never know. I guess I'll have to improvise.
No, I'm not talking about my weekend in Guerneville with the boys.
Just watching:
“Deadwood - The Complete First Season” ()
Lots of interesting anachronisms of idiom. Apparently we have the old west to blame for “cocksucker” being a bad thing! Clutches pearls. No wonder the show is called “dead wood”.
Hmmm...I wonder how they feel about reach-arounds.
A bunch of queens with easy-to-assemble tents, double-height, queen-sized air-mattresses (and other hyphenated-references as well!), 90 seconds away from a Safeway, all fighting to be next up on the portable speakers with their own iPods (it does an Apple body good), drinking cold beers and laughing our asses off.
In the middle (well, Northern Middle) of California, on a campsite that costs $222 per night, in a “resort” at the west end of the small town of Guerneville.
And here I sit in Coffee Bazaar (or, this weekend, Bizarre) with my little dream-catcher, sitting next to Marci at 7:30 in the morning drinking a latte made with rice milk.
You can take the boy out of the City—and now, apparently, he can bring the City with him.
I had every intention of sitting down at the Starbucks in the Castro to do some work. Core Image, a new technology in Mac OS X Tiger was the topic at hand. By “intending”, I mean to say that on the way to the Castro with Sam, Justin and Nathan I fully expected to work while Sam and Justin got haircuts at Joe's Barbershop. By the time we got out of the car to head to The Welcome Home for breakfast, as we walked past the Sit n Spin Laundromat & Coffeehouse, as we sat down at The Welcome Home and were served by a waiter who once gave Allen and me a meal discount because he noticed that Allen had “a touch of the flu”—The Welcome Home gave discounts to all Persons With AIDS if you asked for it, and, obviously, even when you didn't—I knew it was one of those mornings where my head would be filled with my own history and tradition. I knew I'd be lost in the memories of home turf.
I thought of Michael, specifically, when we passed the laundromat: he and I had spent the better part of an afternoon there one day last summer, not long before he headed off to New York. I wondered how he was doing, but then again, except for the day or two after I hear from him, that's always true. I don't worry about him, but at times I'm reminded of his being positive and I send good thoughts his way. I'll never stop caring about those people with HIV, about their health, just about them in general. Maybe that's just trauma from Allen dying almost ten years ago. Maybe it's just a sensitivity borne out of my biogeekness and having been surrounded by the spectre of HIV for so long. Who cares, though, really, about why? The thoughts are there, a part of me as much as any thing else is.
I thought of Allen, as I said, when we walked into The Welcome Home. He and I would go there often. He was a man of simple tastes in food and so that place suited him.
By the time that the Posse had headed up the street to Joe's and I made a left down 18th Street to “go work”, I knew already I would be writing instead of learning how to fake a motion blur in Core Image. I had hoped to flesh out a scene from a longer fictional work that I've been neglecting for far, far too long. And it was in this place where I wrote the original 550 pages of my first novel.
As I sat at a cafe table at the front windows, I looked outside and noticed the man pushing another man in a wheelchair, the ones I'd walked around in order to get down the sidewalk faster.
My heart sank, my jaw dropped, and I was right back there in that place that Allen's death had created. The man in the wheelchair was gaunt and not well. He was wearing shorts that I knew he'd worn even when his legs were enormous—the biggest thighs I think I'll ever see. Only now the shorts drooped like a sheet around thighs not even as big as my arms. I would not have recognized the man in the chair except for the man pushing him: his partner.
So many men have disappeared slowly and not slowly enough, quickly and not quickly enough. And here was another who was trapped by a pathology out of control. Here was a another whom HIV- people look at and think “That could be me” and whom HIV+ people look at and think “That will be me”.
For my part, I looked at his partner, someone with whom I have a very passing acquaintance, but with whom I suddenly felt a horrifying kinship. You want to protect him, you want to entertain him, you want to distract him. You want others to not look at him in that way even though you look at him that way all the time at home when you think he doesn't notice. You want to believe that he looks good today. You wish that today was all the time there ever was and ever will be. You are desperate and tentative, like chasing after an infant whose motor skills and capacity don't even increase and in fact diminish before your eyes.
I don't ever want to be in that place ever again, but there's nowhere else I'd be if I ended up there. I don't want anyone else to be in that place either, but I'm glad they stick around to see life through.
I deny no one frippery and shallowness since everyone should be so blessed and fortunate to be able to afford those luxuries.
I can see why people turn back to god, even though I didn't. I can see why people curse god or even the universe, but I only cursed those whose dogma and politics overrode their compassion.
I can see all the people whose sense of gravitas and respect for the seriousness of HIV remain compassionate and strong, those people, like me, who learned that strength sometimes requires a complete and utter emotional breakdown in order to dispatch grief far enough away and for long enough a time so that you can get to the business at hand: keeping yourself and others alive for as long as possible.
I could see all the people I've known and still know whose lives were inhabited by HIV in first person singular, second person singular or third person plural. I could see all of those whose chosen form of prevention of and protection against HIV is braggadocio or bluster.
Not that I'm criticizing the power of the mind. In fact, the subjective universe shows up far more often in San Francisco than anywhere else I know. I have written many times about the seeming ability for so many of us to conjure up the material from the ethereal. And today, in the bright sunny noon trying its contrarian best to dispense with my personal gloom-doom, it happened again: I picked up my head from my new little dream-catcher and there was Michael! I beamed, then wavered. He seemed to know what was going on with me.
It's not easy to live in these interesting times. It's not easy to live outside the consuming comfort of a smothering theology. It's not easy to live and see death. It's not easy to live with the dying. It's not easy to chart one's own path through the universe.
Not easy at all, but so worth it.
All this blathering and bluster from the crazies who see progress and see only the death of their own stasis. All this sinister intent tacked on to human rights advocacy in favor of their own Special Rights as Heterosexual Christian Men and Women. All this fear-peddling just to return to the good old days that never really were.
Time to end that. Or at least try to: I'm here to offer to all the Regressives out there the Sinister Plot of the Gay Agenda. It's time to come clean and just show it all.
Only I'm not going to be the one to do it, because it's already been done. And in the New York Times! And by a high school senior called Frank Paiva.
An excerpt from the New York Times article (free registration required to read it):
[...] I've got prom dreams of my own.
They involve buying expensive ingredients at the gourmet food store and spending the entire day making dinner with my date. We would enjoy the food even more knowing we put all the effort into making it ourselves.
When we walked into the dance, the two of us would initially stun people, not because we were two guys but just because we looked great. I wouldn't care if I had to learn to make clothes myself if it meant avoiding that awkward “I rented this, and it doesn't quite fit” look. I would be able to hold his hand all night without feeling weird or attracting attention. By the time it was over, we would be so tired we wouldn't even care.
So there it is: I would be able to hold his hand all night without feeling weird or attracting attention. Sixteen small words; one giant sentence.
That's really all it's about.
This young man is already a gifted writer and obviously beyond his years in observational skills and apparent wisdom. Gifted and open and honest human beings like this make me proud on every level. Proud to know there are others who remain accessible and vulnerable to life's rich pageant; proud to know that the world moves in generally the right direction even though there are so many who wish to stop it spinning absolutely; proud that I'm open and honest about who I am; proud that there are so many people who are proud of themselves.
In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is demonstrated that the nose knows.
The studies found that gay men's and straight women's brains react similarly to any one (or more) of a number of candidate compounds known as pheromones.
Now, maybe President Bush's appointee to the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs can find a pheromone to blame for the abuses (including anal rape!) he perpetrated on his wife and the mother of this children, so that he can have a clear conscience the next time he writes a book about Stress and the Woman's Body or his care of women As Jesus Cared for Women. Will the hypocrisy ever end?
That wasn't rhetorical. You know it's not going to end. You know that the Christians will start searching for their own excuses for extraordinary behavior because this whole god-thing can't last forever.
Speaking of...maybe there are pheromones or other biological triggers that lead us biological individuals to obsess on Invisibles, Unattainables and Absolutes?
Maybe the Supreme Designer will come down and become visible, make himself accessible, and hang the universe off his Giant Ego?
Naah, that has a certain bad stink to it.
It's comforting (and dis-comforting ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo) to wake up and walk through the living room and be reminded where you abandoned your clothing and your self-control the night before to get busy and get there with your boyfriend.
That was apropos of nothing, but it had to be said. No, actually, I'm kidding...thoughts of sex lead to thoughts of, well, more sex, and porn. And listening to Radio Alice this morning just brought in lots of the funny.
Naturally, Comedy + Sex = Funny Porn Titles!
I'm sure you all have your own, gay or straight, seen or thought of. It's not often that I actively solicit feedback, but I'm asking you humbly right now. I'd love to hear your favorites. Email or comment, and I'll post a full listing of them.
Two more to get you started:
I have to give Microsoft credit for finally—assuming this is the final stance—getting it right with the 3.0 version of their policyware: Steve Ballmer, the original Monkey Boy, wrote a far-reaching and quite concrete memo to his employees stating pretty much unequivocally that the wonderful diversity in its workforce is specifically related to its business and that Microsoft as a company would always support legislation that worked to include sexual orientation in laws that provided protections for all citizens.
You go, boy!
I can't wait to see what the crazy preacher from Redmond has to say in response. And for my own part, there seems to be a lot of god-ridden craziness coming from the Pacific Northwest. Maybe some St. John's Wart will help?
Wishing that we could be in New York City this weekend with the Muppets on Crack big gay bloggers. Sam and I had such a good time in New York in August, and there will be a ton of people there this time that we've been wanting to meet. Alas, the Mothership beckons for me, higher-education beckons for Sam, and there's just not enough time in all of time to do all the stuff we want to do.
I don't remember who said it, but in times like these, I think to myself: “Is life to short to put up with the stupid shit, or is life too short to care about it?”
The story goes that a gay rights bill in Washington State was backed by various heavyweights, including Microsoft Corp. The story also goes that the bill was defeated by a single vote when it finally came up, and the results were due, apparently, in no small part to Microsoft Corp having withdrawn its support of the bill that would have officially banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. That means that as a gay man, if I lived in Washington State, I could no longer exercise my freedom as an American to fire someone's ass because they were one of those nasty breeders*.
Anyhow, Microsoft Corp withdraws its support. The bill fails. People investigate and discover that the Right Rev. Hutcherson—a man who used to sin against Leviticus and get paid for it and is now controls the spiritual lives of his sheep-like followers in a “mega-church” in Redmond—put pressure on Microsoft to back away from its support of the bill, saying, “I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about.”
So, beyond the egregious sin of dangling his participle in front of people other than his wife, the Good Reverend clearly no longer needs to wield God as his weapon: now he wields his flocking parishioners.
Having been raised a Catholic, I had little exposure to the Christian Bible, but my favorite parts of it were always those times when Jesus, tired of cajoling, went around threatening friends, Romans and countrymen. Because, as Mark 29:1 states: And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, 'show them the love of my Father, and if that doesn't work, a well-placed threat or two should do the trick.'
* and by breeders, I mean those evil heteros. And by saying 'evil breeder heteros', I'm being sarcastic.
This morning I got up a bit early and went to the gym. After being cowed by Louk, a friend and trainer there, and by Frank and others for showing up at the gym every morning to hitch a ride to Apple but not working out, I did it this morning. Just cardio, but I've learned to ramp up when re-starting at the gym.
When I first got there, I saw our friend, James (as in, Sweet Baby James, the beautimous one) he said he'd hug me but he was all sweaty. Where is the downside, I ask you? Anyhow, when I was done with the cardio and got nekkid in the lockerroom with the other minz, there was a line for the shower.
“Guess we'll have to all double up,” I said, smiling.
Before James or any other other guys waiting could speak up—though they were all smiling as well—two shower stalls opened up. James took one, I took the other. Right away, he presses his considerably hot butt against the frosted glass partition and says, “Does this make my ass look fat?”
It was a beautiful moment.
As I was drying off, I looked over at the steam room door and thought, “It'd be nice to take a steam, but there's no time for makin' luuuv” (that was a little joke, friends).
I left the lockeroom, but not before giving James a big hug and smooch. Frank was standing next to Chip, who was on a stationary bike. Chip looked at my t-shirt and said, “'Muir Woods'? Look, Frank, he's the mascot: Stump.”
I love my friends.
No, I really do. And it won't be the promise of better health, a better body, that will get me back to the gym on a regular basis: it's the conviviality of happenstance and good folks.
We were sitting at Cafe Commons yesterday having lunch. We both were reading the SF Bay Guardian. I was looking over the voting form for their Best of the Bay annual thing, and Sam was looking over the ads on the backpage. I usually don't look there because it's all just stuff for mixology schools (those ads will lead with “BLOW JOBS”) and sperm banks.
Sam sees one entitled: “Gay sperm donors wanted by lesbians.” In response, he shapes his hand like a phone handset, puts it to his ear:
“Yo. Can I bust it up in ya, or you gonna make me use a cup?”
That's my boy.
Today was the day for our fortnightly haircut appointments with Joe the Barber. I love going to Joe's. it anchors the quotidian march of days like going to church on Sunday used to do.
What I really love about going to Joe's is Joe: gifted, twisted, wry, intelligent, sardonic, sarcastic and irreverent as fuck. And very very good at bringing people together. That's the best part of experience. People who are customers, people who are friends, neighbor-hoodies from the Castro, it all keeps the barbershop busy, lively, full of good spirits.
I was sitting in Joe's chair, feeling of a cold straight-razor being dragged across my scalp, mirrors everywhere. Sam was reading a magazine, his haircut already done. Jeff, the other barber giving a high-and-tight to a bisexual lesbian with a face full of piercings while her lover, a man called Lance (who I believe used to be a woman) sat near Sam. Another man, another Lance, was there just to be there.
We were talking about Nazi's and Catholics. You know, typical shootin'-the-shit kind of stuff. And the Pope. And whether he was a Nazi, and methodology aside, whether their goals were much different to the goals of the Vatican. I'm not saying that I believe the Catholics are Nazi's, or even that Benny is a Nazi. It's about purity, about identity, about ascendancy.
But in the end, it didn't matter what was being discussed. It was the fact that everyone didn't know everyone and yet an involved discussion took place. Not everyone agreed on everything but to be honest, there was little dissent about the Pope Benedict the Arnold being a totalitarian jerk.
The whole scene—5 gay men and a woman, or 2 barbers, 3 customers, a catholic and a transsexual, or just six people sharing company—was oddly reminiscent of the local barbershop back in Luzerne, PA, or the coffeeshop down the street from there. Or the “milk bar” that my mom and dad grew up with in the 1950s. Or Cafe Commons down at the foot of Bernal Hill here.
My dad had his people; my parents had their group of friends and other students around; my grandfather had his coffeeshop.
We have our people; we have our Castro; we have our Joe.
“It is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against one's conscience.” — Martin Luther
“Hoe dichter bij Rome, hoe slechter christenen” — old Dutch aphorism
(The worst Christians are those closest to Rome, or The nearer to the Church, the farther from God)
First out of the gate, Love Papem #9 Benny #16 goes after Spain's civil government. So much for taking after Benny-the-Healer (#15). Now, this isn't unexpected. The Catholics, after all, at least officially must condemn the homosexuals, because let's face it, bureaucracies and democracies both require scapegoats in order to maintain the appearance of being effective. Homosexuals make a terrific scapegoat (and many, it turns out, can make a terrific coq au vin!). Very versatile (and not just AOL-versatile) buggers they are.
Anyway, what was unexpected was the level of vitriol hurled by the Papists towards the civil government of Spain. Popey went as far afield of sanity as to accuse Spain's same-sex marriage laws as “iniquitous”. Now, as God (of Biscuits)'s well-beloved flock, you all know I loves me my words, but even though that word had a rather ominous familiarity to it, I had to go look it up. The familiarity? It's the adjectival form of “iniquity”:
iniquity noun ( pl. -ties) immoral or grossly unfair behavior
Holy Hannah! as my younger brother would say. That's a lot of immorality and gross unfairness must be up in hrrrr with the Spaniards! Let's look closer at the beginning of the end of christendom, shall we?
Oh the horror! Oh the shame! Doesn't Jesus feel kicked in the nuts right about now? And by Jesus, of course, I mean Benny #16, because the Catholics believe that anything that Pope-eye says ex cathedra (they do love their Latin) can be assumed to come from Jesus Himself. Can you imagine the historical Jesus forcing his followers to kiss his ring? To have other human beings—often boys—act as his furniture? I sure can't. But that's how the Catholics see his Holiness.
My favorite piece in all of this comes from ABC NewsOnline quoting Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo:
“They should exercise the same conscientious objection asked of doctors and nurses against a crime such as abortion.
”This is not a matter of choice, all Christians... must be prepared to pay the highest price, including the loss of a job.“
Cardinal Trujillo insisted the Church did not discriminate against homosexuals, but said they needed help.
I'm at a loss to imagine the bloodsport that would be practiced by the Vatican if they actually did discriminate against homosexuals. The Popes have a glorious history of all manner of horrific acts, according to the Frontline Fellowship, including a bit on Pope Benny #5, described by a church historian as ”the most iniquitous of all the monsters of ungodliness.“
The Vatican never says Vati-Can't when it comes to their iniquities.
Today was a very good day. It started off with getting busy, then getting up. Then getting out to eat. Then out with friends. Mid-afternoon, we met up with my friend Buck, with whom I used to work at that great photo place in the sky (where sky == East Bay) and his partner. And then a cavalcade of folks landed at the Lone Star: Gary, Eric, the ever-beautiful James, the ever-patient and hot Nick, Noelie and almost everyone else I happen to know in this great burg of ours.
After a few Hefeweisens, we headed to Daddys' Bar, where Donovan's softball team was having a benefit. Fred was there, of course, my bestest friend in San Francisco. And Mike and Alberto, the two most affectionate buggers (literally) we know. And David. Don't get me started on that one.
The entire afternoon was one long moment...one of those moments where more things make sense. Things from the past, the presence of the present....where the bad stuff and bad people of the past weren't so bad, just wrong for me. Where the present is the only place I would want to be (and, by fiat and by definition, the only place I could be), and the future opens up to include a revisited past, a more promising present, and a more pleasantly anticipated future.
“Authentic people,” he said. “That's what they are.”
I smiled, nodded. Not out of politeness or decorum or even mild disagreement, but as a cover for a vague jealousy that the doctor across the table from me had just uttered the single finest description of my parents I had ever heard. I was jealous that I wasn't the one—wordsmith that I fancy myself to be at times—who had devised it.
Cafe Puccini in San Francisco's North Beach is a bright place, almost too bright for comfortable conversation. Walls cross into strange corners, at angles that don't make immediate sense. Or later sense, for that matter. A large and vaguely threatening portrait of Giacomo, the Maestro looms on the only wall big enough to accommodate it. Too-happy Max's Diner-style tables and chairs crowd the floor uncomfortably, but they are plentiful.
We arrived there after a visit to Caffé Sport, my single favorite restaurant on Planet Earth—so far—for a meal of garlicky prawn scampi and even more garlicky pesto. Eduardo was there, as always, grousing that it's been too long since he's seen me. He always does that, whether I'm there 3 times a week or 3 times in a year. No matter the frequency, he feels more like family than most of my cousins—or even nephews, at this point.
Doctor H. has never been to San Francisco before; I had never met Doctor H. until this very evening. It was obvious quickly that he is an impressively kind man, generous of spirit. It was also obvious that he was expecting quite a lot from me, that my parents had boasted generously (too generously?) of their middle son. He came into their lives not very long after I had moved away from my parents' home, so he's known them for a very long time.
Like my parents, he's very Catholic. Like my parents, his faith is important to him. Like my parents, he lives his faith instead of merely preaching its conscious and more contentious elements. He asked about the Catholic Church here in San Francisco, and how the Catholic Church fit or didn't fit into such a lively and progressive and decidedly not-necessarily-Christian place like San Francisco.
“Pragmatism,” I answered. “The Church seems to remain unyielding,” I told him. “A while back, the City required that all organizations that did business with the City—such as Catholic Charities and other social services—provide domestic partner benefits for their employees. The Catholics balked, refused. Eventually, though, they decided to offer benefits to each employee plus one 'dependent', and completely sidestepped the issue altogether. The City got compliance, and the Catholics didn't have to recognize that gay people formed real relationships.”
“Same in Boston,” Doctor H. replied.
“The priests here, however...I expect that because of exposure to gay people day in and day out, in social service to people with AIDS, in just plain being alive in San Francisco, I expect that individual priests are less able to speak in broad condemnations of homosexuality, because they see that it's not so easily pigeonholed.
He nodded, and asked about Sam. And he asked about me, about my job at Apple, then about Sam's school again. I asked him how many kids he had, how long he had known my parents. I let him know how highly they spoke of him. He smiled and suddenly looked 20 years younger.
”It's different here in San Francisco,“ I added. ”Different from, you know, out there. When it comes to same-sex marriages, I see gay people who don't give a damn about ever getting married. I see gay couples who worry that they'll be kept apart if one gets sick or hurt. But mostly I see gay people who just expect to be seen as equal to everyone else in this country. Then I see people out there—Right-wingers—who say we're trying to destroy marriage, that we have some sinister agenda, or that we think we're better than the rest of you and we're trying to co-opt society. How the hell does that happen? I mean, where you live [Boston], has same-sex marriage destroyed anything?“
”The Catholic Church will never get to certain points, you know?“
Not an answer, but also none of the awkward discomfort of an impasse. And it was just about time to call it an evening anyhow.
As I walked him to the corner of Columbus and Green and got him a taxi, Moon River was blaring from overworked speakers outside a different coffeehouse and I remembered how he had described my parents and I smiled again.
”'Authentic people',“ I muttered as I kickstarted the Vespa, and I smiled again. This time because it was just true, no matter who said it.
Sam and I were at Guitar Center on Van Ness the other day—on my birthday, to be exact—after we went over to Point Bonita Lighthouse just to hang and swang and check out the views. This was only the second time ever I was to the Lighthouse and was Sam's first time. I hadn't been in a long while and thought it would be a nice thing to do as a special occasion.
Anyhow, we were back in the DJ section of the Guitar Center and there was a couple there also checking things out. Two men. Both gym-goers. One was more plain and handsome than the other, and more muscly.
And as they say, when he opened his mouth, his purse fell out. In other words, a bit on the nelly side. Which doesn't work for Sam, but is ok-dandy-fine by me. So long as it's not an affectation.
I'm sure I'll catch flack for that one more from the normal-gay crowd than I would even from the one-man-one-woman-gender-roles-go-with-biological-sex crowd, but who cares. Individuals in both crowds behave kind of stiltedly, possessed of that nervousness that suggests that their reach has exceeded their grasp. You know how it goes...anger at anything deviating from tradition because traditional gets confused with “natural” in their heads.
But me? I love 'em. Be you, gorl. Or Man. Or somewhere in between. Or whatever. Don't be a sister if you aren't a sister, but if you are....grrrrrrl, you're ok-fine by me. To say nothing of the odd at-odds pairing of 200 pounds of muscle and shoulders for days and a sssssssserioussss frequency of Ssssssss's emanating therefrom.
Hot.
An odd pairing of traits in a big man-girl? I'll call it syssygy.
Last year I started what I had hoped would become a tradition. As I'm not one of those people to throw a birthday party for myself, but because Sam was coming up last year for my birthday and I wanted to have a big event anyhow, I finessed a group birthday party. My birthday (which is today) last year was on a Saturday, so off we went and had a big party. I think there were about a dozen guys who were Aries and so it worked out well.
Last night's party at English John's house was for four of us in particular: Me (4/3), Fred the Plumber (4/12), English John (4/19) and Donovan (3/22). There were several others there whose birthdays were in the vicinity, so we celebrated those, too.
No presents were supposed to be given, but Mike & Alberto showed up with a little somethin'-somethin' (which they usually do, but this time their somethin'-somethin' didn't involve the need for condoms :). I ended up with a double shot-glass with the word “DIVA” on it. People seemed to think it apropos. Well, screw them, I'm better than that shit. Ooops.......
I like this idea of groups of birthdays celebrated in one sitting. At 41 years old, I suppose it's just a little too much to have all the attention heaped on me. Or, there's just so much loving attention to go around in my group of friends that sharing the wealth doesn't cost a thing.
Who am I?
Last night I had a profound experience: a whole evening spent with one of my oldest, dearest friends who created a space that was entirely about me and about what I was feeling.
Chalk it up to the one-off trauma or the emotional-aftermath abnegation thereof or both, but it seems like forever since my own well-being came first in my own mind and heart. My friend did that for me: he let me let myself off the hook, let me put myself on the front burner.
Accepting that I have friends who are there when I may need them is quite different from availing myself of their help and their wisdom when I do need them.
The complete man takes wisdom where he can get it, decides whenever he has opportunity and leans when his own strength runs out. Here's to a wisdom-seeking, decision-making, leaning, more complete me.
Stasis is not a natural condition. The stand-still does not appear in nature, except as attitude. Absolute Zero is only theoretical.
Such goes life, where it moves and moves. It turns and turns, both world and worm. And so it comes down to a choice: not whether or not to move, but in which direction you're going to go.
Time, tide and winds often dictate our fates, but there are those times when we allow them to. And in allowing, we make a choice: to do nothing. Back in the day when I handed my fate over to a god my heart didn't really believe in, I was a fan of the pray-and-wait. And that may seem strange to others, for how do you rely on something you don't have faith in? Well, setting aside the fact that this very thing is done all the time—reliance on drugs, alcohol, people who are undeserving, Republicans, government—I may not have had faith in a god's own presence, but I had faith in a large group of well-meaning people who all believed in the same thing. That was very powerful, and very comforting. Humankind's perfect soporific.
Last week, I chose. Several times, in fact. But first and foremost, I chose to decide for myself. I chose to stay put. I chose to stay true to myself as well. I chose to work hard for the things I want and need. I chose a nuanced path over a tradition, over bravura, over ego.
And Sam and I chose together. Yesterday I began the day with a first, professionally. Last evening, we found our way to engaging our lives back into gear. Only first gear, mind you...engines still rev high and hot and there's not so much motion, but there is motion. Forward motion.
And forward is my favorite direction of all, my chosen direction.
Yesterday was my “Uncle” Bill's birthday. Since he was born the same year as my father, he's just turned 67. He's not really my uncle, in the blood sense, but he's honest-to-god family, someone there like a gifting angel who was always just there. As I said, family.
I was to find out at a very late date that he's gay. When I was growing up, he was a bachelor who never had a girlfriend, just friends. It never occurred to me that anything was something to think about, but I do recall remembering that he was an example of the only alternative lifestyle that Northeastern Pennsylvania could or would understand: he was single.
And I suppose that was enough for me, as I came to discover that my sexuality wasn't just a phase, wasn't an auxiliary aspect of my life. It was enough to know that there were other options in life that made a person happy.
That said, I can't say how happy Uncle Bill has been in his life, except that he always seemed to be enjoying himself, was always the life of the party, was always that one person in every crowd that seemed almost magnetic. The guy that everyone wanted to be in orbit of.
Except in my life there were two men like that: Uncle Bill, as I said; and my father.
Quite a sight, seeing my father and Uncle Bill and all their friends that they stayed so close to from their High School days. I think it ended up serving as some connection between childhood and adulthood for me. Otherwise, “being an adult” in NE PA meant things so horribly foreign to a gay boy that adulthood itself was a far-off, far-flung thing that involved black-and-white TV families and twin beds. Crazy.
When I came to find out that Uncle Bill was gay—it was Marie that told me so, in somewhat cautious and doleful terms—I found myself outwardly comforting her that it was not disruptive news to me, and inwardly rejoicing that not only did I know a well-respected and much-loved gay man, but that I could be one day a well-respected and potentially much-loved gay man myself!
Life shifted gears as that news settled into me. I hesistate to use terms like “soul-soothing”, but that's exactly what it was: a cool salve across a scorched and wind-blown surface.
Hopefully, I've done Uncle Bill proud in how I've lived my life so far. I know I've done proud by my parents, my brothers and my friends and myself.
Happy Belated Birthday, Uncle Bill.
I'm one of those progressive types, one of those bleeding-heart types who prefers to bet on the natural tendency for a human society to generate more good will than its individuals consume. Or at least I bet on that with friends, know the true of it in family, and hope for it in the at-large.
If I have dissembled to my friends over details or small realities, I apologize for not giving them enough credit. As I have let more and more people in on the abject dreadfulness of what has been going on, about what happened in Saturday's early hours, and the details leading up to the horrifying event, the understanding shown towards us has overwhelmed me. Even moreso, my friends' willingness to admit they don't understand, that they don't know what to say, that they are at a loss to help me but are nonetheless willing to help in however each of us—or both together—might need it is touching beyond any reckoning.
There are good people in the world, some vastly unable to comprehend the nature of male relationships, some far too acquainted with the nuanced complexity of them, all willing to offer support as they are able.
I've been crying over the almost-loss, crying over emotional distances, crying over the reprieves, crying over the anger, crying over the gratitude for Sam still being with me and all of us, crying over the humble honesty of human beings I don't even know, crying over the joy of family and most-loved friends, and just plain crying because of too much of everything.
I'm a mess, but you're all there for me. I don't know what I'd be if I were alone through all of this. I'm glad I haven't had to find out.
It's odd to have had a good night's sleep. It's odder still that the sun shines again, like it did yesterday when I emerged from SF General. Sunshine in San Francisco shows up at the odd times—some might say the wrong times, but that's not for me—and it's either a providential punchline or just a karmic counterweight. Either way, the initial inappropriateness of Gaia's gesture gives way to sunny smile—something that may also seem inappropriate—but I guess I've learned to take the smiles where I can get them in more tenebrous times.
Reprieve or happy ending, though, there are two people in this house still breathing, still talking, and trying to look forward again.
And I'm smiling about that.
So a few weeks ago Sam and I stopped at the Potrero Safeway to get, I don't know, milk and avocados and emery boards, and on a lark, I ran into the Radio Shack next door figuring I'd spend $50 on an HDTV antenna because it seemed a rather cheap way to try to get a few HD signals into the house.
Of course, as we walked in the door, I remembered that one needs an HD tuner and not just an antenna. So the antenna sat in its box until a couple of weeks ago, when I ordered—also on a lark—the eyeTV 500. I did this because a) we already had the necessary TV & Dual G5 PowerMac and b) after July of this year, you won't be able to buy ATSC-to-FireWire converter without draconian “copy protection” hardware in it.
I also did all this because months ago, my constant tinkering with our DirectTiVo ended up in a working box that could “dial out” over a network, could be programmed via webpage and was expanded in capacity and speed—except that we could no longer get local channels.
And it's Oscar night!!!!
So I got the antenna, the eyeTV 500 and the PowerMac G5 set up next to our TV, and now we're watching the Gay Super Bowl in glorious, glorious HD.
Beyoncé looks even more impossibly beautiful, Robin Williams more cuddly and grizzly, and Annette Benning substantially more elegant as she continues to both glow and resist plastic surgery (you GO, girl!).
I think this HD thing is actually going to catch on! Next up, we're going to try out the TiVo-like features of the eyeTV 500 and its accompanying software.
Knowing that this is going on, Sam and I are hoping to get our asses back to NYC to visit our most beloved friends, especially Jennie, Michael, Crash and Walt, my former next door neighbors Bill & Edgar, and a whole bunch of others.
And linking of Homer, by the way, and thinking of late about Richard, I have to say that I miss being in Tucson every now and again. Last time for me was when we moved Sam here back in June. Homer had posted a picture of the Catalina Mountains and it made me nostalgic for the area's particular majesty. Maybe we'll make it back to AZ before my brother and his betrothed move back East from Phoenix.
We're also talking about going to LA for a party, and several other travel destinations. But hell, if my professional situation changes in ways I'm hoping for, I think most of our plans are kaput.
Oh, well. Here's to hoping. Maybe Crash, et al will keep a couple of seats warm for us at GB:NY2 just in case?
Update: for those non-Safari folks, here's what this entry is supposed to look like
Northern California is a strange place. Speech is slower, at least a bit, than in other urban areas. The rate of social change is significantly higher in our more rural areas than in other urban areas. Voices are softer, burnished. Talk goes to areas most would deem 'radical' with ease, but the gift of directness is an elusive thing.
I have talked often—at at length—about how I'd taken to San Francisco like a fish to water, but there are, of course, aspects of it that elude me. I'm too trenchant, even too brusque, for many here. My expectations, even insistences sometimes, that others cast aside the politesse and just be honest and be candid are serous.
That's gotten me into big trouble, as one might expect. Gravitas is not always welcomed: I come across as blunt, not direct. I come across as churlish, not candid. I guess too much of my developmental years were spent not in San Francisco, specifically in a more East Coast/Midwest setting.
That's not an entirely satisfying explanation, either. Perhaps it's one of those “Is Life too short to put up with shit, or is Life too short to care?” scenarios. I generally come down on the side of not wanting to be the source of that kind of shit, and of generally wanting to keep at a safe distance those who do generate that kind of shit. Maybe it's an avoidance tactic, but I'm not so sure it is.
I think it's more of a preventative. It's about taking care to be a good social citizen, and gathering together with others to provide a sort of nucleation site for good will. And along those lines, it turns out that it's a pretty good litmus test for gauging friendships. I mean to say, friendships vs. those you just happen to see out and about.
It may seem like a no-brainer, calling this one a friend, and that one merely an acquaintance, but the lines are forcibly smudged here in San Francisco. You meet people you've happened to see around a few times at the same times in the same places and a dialog is struck. Pleasantries are exchanged, topics are shallow—it is just at a bar, after all—and a nice time is had by all.
But before you know it, these people are calling you their friend; people are speaking about you in glowingly praising profundities, calling you one of their favorite people.
Uhhhh, what?
Sometimes it feels merely weird; other times it feels forced; still other times it feels like a setup. A setup, as if they're wrapping up an alterior motive in warm-fuzzies, in wait of some future payoff.
It's all so tedious, having to set aside the incongruous overtures, having to set aside the quest to uncover the real motives (if any), feeling somewhat a lonely despair that you're the only one who still remembers the difference between wheat and chaff, between pleasantness and pleasantry, between friendship and base familiarity.
Maybe there's a quiet desperation that personal worth can only be calculated by external metrics: how many friends do I have, how many people know my name, how many people have I fucked, and so on and so on. Maybe people really are that shallow, or at least only truly comfortable at that lack of depth, that acquaintance and friendship are actually one and the same.
No one is immune from wanting external corroboration at least, most especially myself—I mean, I do have a blog and I am writing here. Different people do have different depths, however, different comfort levels at different depths—and even different comfort zones on the geography of each level. Some of us can resolve the differences, some of us cannot. Some of us choose not to notice the differences.
The vigilance to keep a watch out for the differences isn't something that can be done fulltime...otherwise, you'd have no time for anything else. So sometimes mistakes are made and the declarations of 'friendship' are taken to heart, taken as real. But this comes back, always bites back. That's an eventuality, a certainty, if friendships (acquaintances?) last for time intervals considered by mammmals to be signficant.
But then again, I suppose, not all mammals are created equal.
There's a positivity to it all, too: those people who never plant a flag to declare a friendship, whose first utterance of friendship is one of cognizant of an existing truth instead of predictive. Those are the people who value what they already have instead of—or yes, in addition to—despairing over what they may not yet have. Those are the people who make sure you know you can count on them, instead of just assuming they can count on you. Those are the people who are there for you and not just there around you.
Those are the people who talk less and say far, far more.
Those are the only people who I call Friend.
Today was fucking cool. Started off not so great, arguments—old ones—and sullen moments and silent moments, but a nice day and our natural affinity for one another won out. We spent the whole day together, starting off with walking around Golden Gate Park, through the Fern Tree Grove, through the AIDS Memorial Grove. Allen's tree is there. Back in July of 1996, a year after Allen died, I sponsored a Workday in his name. I was one of two people who had sponsored the day, and after several hours of uprooting cyprus seedlings and blackberry brambles around what is now the western end of the Grove's Meadow, there was a little ceremony where we planted a seven-foot redwood tree in Allen's name. I was still in a funk during that Workday, and come to think of it, it was a day much like today. Though since it was July, it was much colder than our February spectacle today. His tree now stands three times taller.
There was a Parks maintenance vehicle right near the Grove's Circle of Friends monument, and Sam suggested playfully that we steal it. I laughed, said no, then went quiet again. I commented to Sam that this grove was the only real church for which I still had any natural or instinctive sense of the sacred.
“So I guess I shouldn't talk about us going into the bushes to do it, huh?” Sam asked.
I laughed again, told him that I thought the place wasn't so much about being quiet and solemn as it was about still being alive to enjoy it, “so, it's ok to talk about that kind of stuff.”
Sam wrapped his arms around me and we kissed. Ok, ok, we made out.
We did that a lot today...in the Fern Tree Grove, near a pond. Near the Conservatory. On JFK Drive. Later on top of Tank Hill.
We drove around Golden Gate Park for a while, then headed over towards Parnassus Heights, because it snows there every year, around this time of year, for a couple of days. We were a few days early, though.
I wanted Sam to see a few different houses that I've always loved, and we ended up above Cole Valley at the end of Belgrave Street. That's when we discovered Tankhill Park. Who knew it was even there?
It was good to have found it together; together is good, whether in the park this afternoon, or greased up like pigs going at it in the shower this evening.
Tonight I randomly caught the show called Project Runway.
OH
MY
GODDESS
(that bitch)
Forget Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and even Queer Eye for the Straight Girl, this is the show that makes the Bravo Channel the gayest network EVER.
Watch a bunch of fashion designers try to work together, all the while bitching about the lack of leadership qualities in the designated-for-the-week leader. Cut to the fashion show segment. Watch the one woman be honest and complain about the leader's lack of, well, leadership.
Watch the rest of those bitches leave her twisting in the wind by being spineless and saying nice things about the leader.
Truth: the complainer was spot-on. Truth: the leader wasn't one. Truth: the palace intrigue of it all was faaaaabulous
Oh, and one of the guys on there, Jay, is from my home town of Dallas, PA.
You bet your ass I added a Season Pass to the TiVo for this one.
Pat Robertson has the Ear of God. 'This is notable!' one might say. But plenty of people on the sunset-side of the American political day seem lay claim to God being on their side of the cosmic dodge ball team.
And God speaks back, apparently. But shhhhhh! It's a secret! Like the US getting messages to Iran through Jordan, or relying on the Swiss or the Canadians to pass notes around in class the world, apparently God won't just ring someone up on the phone to tell him. She, apparently, is a big fan of Pictionary, or even good old fashioned charades.
This is all well and good. Perhaps God's Direct Voice isn't bearable to human ears, like in Dogma when Alanis Morisette unhinges her jaw and the most torturesome sound comes out. [Word has it that that was Alanis' own unadulterated voice—Eds.] Maybe on the off1,000,000,000,000 chance that there is a god who takes precious time away from her cosmic badminton games to talk to her zoo creatures, maybe being so circumspect and introducing so many degrees of freedom in interpreting her words is her way of testing the good-faith of her followers.
So where is Pat Robertson when it comes to Phucket Island and the 25,000+ dead? Did god punish them for being non-christian? Or maybe the name of their island, like condoms, just encourages young people to fornicate?
And where is he on Reggie White's death? Punishment for saying awful, categorical things about his fellow human beings?
Say what you will about the capital-A Atheists (who, in my opinion, are just as crazy-dogmatic as their theist counterparts), but you won't find them doing any teleological finger-pointing.
Give the Ear back, Pat.
There's always been gaydar. I think the straight folks who either can't learn it (Christian Extremism and voting Republican are in that same locus) or won't learn it (irony-impairment travels on the same gene) treat gaydar with the same kind of paranoia that makes people go to Epcot instead of going to the real countries.
It used to be that you could get around this ghastly lack by singing “Clang! Clang! Clang!” to a potential Matachine and if they respond with “Went the Trolley”, well, you have a bonafide (hehe, I said 'bone') homosexual on your hands (so to speak). But that's an old song that most people probably don't even know anymore.
There is a new hope, however: The KitchenAid Stand Mixer.
Got one? Then you're a Big Ol' 'Mo. Sorry, you just are.
We never made it to the second floor and still spent over $800. It would have been $900 if we didn't have a coupon.
Sam gasped at the checkout when the total appeared, but I leaned over to him and said, "These are heritage purchases." Which is supposed to mean something you keep for a thousand years, like a good old well-seasoned cast-iron skillet that you pass on to someone else. I just take it to mean, "how I make myself feel better about a $200 food processor".
Seriously, it feels good to buy stuff together that's meant to last a long time. Awwwwww.
I've never bought my own pots and pans—inherited those from Allen. Never bought my own flatware—gift from Mom and Dad one year. I'm a gadget geek in the kitchen, too, but Sam talked me out of one of those 500 HP KitchenAid standing mixers.
Next time, for sure.
Like a lot of things that the stolid, staid, "moral values" sheep voters find "icky", the concept of outing (as gay) has been taken from its original concept and perverted into something that serves both their xenophobia and their "compassionate" conservatism.
Michelangelo Signorile is largely—and rightly—credited with bringing the concept of outing into the mainstream. Since then, of course, the perception of what it is, what it was meant to be, has become something else. Something that has caused divisions even among gay people.
I think it's time again to remind people what outing is all about. In a world where we know too much about Britney's corroborative efforts towards straight marriage and see far too much of Tara Reid's plastic surgery scars and hear far too much of John Ashcroft's chanteusing, people still screed "respect their privacy!" when it comes to homosex.
And by 'people', I don't mean "also journalists", I mean especially journalists! This is exactly the beef that Mike Signorile had with the supposed objectivity of journalism and other news reporting: the double-standard when it came to homosexuality.
Anyone remember Malcolm Forbes? Anyone remember his place in the History of Outing? I'm not going to launch into an entire history here, because you can check that out in the bio at Mike's site. And while I have every confidence that Mike's take is accurate, go google it and read more. Here's a relevant quote:
Signorile contended throughout that time that the homosexuality of public figures -- and only public figures - should be reported on when relevant to a larger story (and only when relevant).
That's it, folks. That's what outing is all about. It's a call for journalistic integrity. It's about ethics. Many might consider integrity and ethics dead concepts, especially in the media and even moreso in the proliferation of Bread and Circuses blogs, but I don't. Even though ethics rarely wins over making a buck and even though integrity never makes the headlines, what do we have if we don't have those?
So in any case where a public person's sexuality is relevant to a story, that person's sexuality, priorly openly stated or not, should be reported. And if I have anything to say about it (and I do, from this modest-sized podium, at least), it will.
So when you hear of Congress members talking about abridging my rights, implying that I am less and that people like me are less because we're gay, well, how much more relevant can you get?
I welcome the return of outing. Thank you, Mike, for drawing that line in the sand 14 years ago.