Ok, so not really the baking part is that painful. Trying to bake my odd little apple pie for Enid's annual apple pie baking contest tired and hung over from the ridiculousness of last night while morning the loss of my beloved cell phone is painful. So the cooking was slow going and now it is down to the wire and I am going to have to snatch my pie out of the oven and take the piping hot thing straight down to the contest. Mason was more focused (only slightly so) and has already finished his and isn't pulling his hair out stressing over whether or not his pie is going to come out alright. Anyway, just wasting a little time while it bakes.
My phone decided to leave me at some point last night at Jake Shears' halloween party. Fun party, but my competitive instinct took over and for some reason decided that I was in some kind of drinking race with no one and was unintenionally downing beers at a much faster clip than necessary so some elements of the night are hazy but I just know that I lost my cane (part of costume), my phone, and my metrocard (thankfully that one not until I got on the subway). Upon calling my number this morning I discovered that it had been found/stolen by someone who then proceeded to sell for 20 bucks to some schmuck in the Bronx. Who hung up on me and quit answering the phone. So I reported it stolen and morned the loss of all the damn phone numbers that I have never written down and the many which I have no idea how to replace. So if you are reading this and I should have your phone number, be a sweety and email it to me or call me in a couple of days when I get my new one.
Ok, I gotta go check on the pie.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Why go on?
This has to be short, because I have a long commute ahead of me and have to get back to brooklyn in time to catch America's Next Top Model. But really, why bother? I totally don't care anymore now that Coryn is gone. Now who is going to call Lisa an alcoholic bitch? Can we pause for a moment to note how stupid that little staged "let's talk about our vices" un-intervention was last week? Ok, so yeah, any excuse to get Tyra to talk about twinkies is worth it, but really the set up was so lame and staged that I made me want to avert my eyes.
I was suggesting I might not bother watching anymore since I really don't care what happens now that Stumbles, Coryn, and Don't-get-it-twisted! are all off the show and it is just going to be a long protracted farce til they give it to that annoying geena davis looking girl with pale skin, but C- quickly set me straight:
Me: "Why bother watching?"
C-: "There's still Lisa to hate."
I was suggesting I might not bother watching anymore since I really don't care what happens now that Stumbles, Coryn, and Don't-get-it-twisted! are all off the show and it is just going to be a long protracted farce til they give it to that annoying geena davis looking girl with pale skin, but C- quickly set me straight:
Me: "Why bother watching?"
C-: "There's still Lisa to hate."
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
thoughts on inside/outside: stay in your place boy...
I just read an article by Eugene Robinson about condoleeza rice over at Steve Gilliard and Jen'sNEWS BLOG which really struck me, both the article and Steve's commentary. From Robinson:
"As we were flying to Alabama, Rice said an interesting thing. She was talking about the history of the civil rights movement, and she said, 'If you read Frederick Douglass, he was not petitioning from outside of the institutions but rather demanding that the institutions live up to what they said they were. If you read Martin Luther King, he was not petitioning from outside, he was petitioning from inside the principles and the institutions, and challenging America to be what America said that it was.'"
What the fuck? In a very literal way perhaps that is true, but only if you are talking about our national institutions and the raceless egalitarian language found in them. Yes, they were calling for us all to live up to what are ostensibly our guiding principles, but that meant destroying and dismantling the institutions which were in opposition to that. Like slavery. Or jim crow.
Those were institutions in our nation once upon a time and the exclusion of blacks from public office was institutional throughout much of our country until not so long ago. It was aggressively opposing the institutional racism in this country, particularly in the south, that the civil rights movement in the 60's was about. That blacks were required to move to the back of the bus was not some quaint notion that folks had just fallen into. It was enforced by local government institutions.
But really this is nitpicking: what is her damn point? Douglass and King were both inextricably a part of their times and they didn't withdraw and take a circuitous route through it. They fought injustice head-on and pointed flat out what was wrong instead of accepting things as they were, but that didn't mean they joined up with the shit that was going wrong in the country. Did you see King or Parks (peace be with her today) applying to be bus drivers? No, the bus system was fucked up so they boycotted it, they didn't join it. The reason I say this is because, and perhaps I am drawing conclusions as there is not a whole lot of surrounding context with that quote, dr. rice seems to be defending herself for throwing her lot in with republicans.
Which sounds a lot like the damn log cabin republicans.
Or best little boy in the world syndrome.
Which brings me to Steve's point:
"But what I think Robinson misses and is clear is that Rice has always been the special girl. Her parents made her special, her mentors made her special. At no time was she obligated to help or assist anyone behind her. Because she was special. Everything is all about her. Rice also has benefitted from the approval of her elders. Why challenge those who help you along and praise your manners?
"Her parents raised her with the idea that achievement was good enough. If she was cultured and smart enough, it would be a sign that she could compete with whites and that was important. The problem was that Rice is blind to the fact that her position was only possible by the sacrifice of others. So while Rice played her piano, other kids were being beaten by the local police. She has never thought she owed them anything, despite her success."
Again, "She has never thought she owed them anything, despite her success." Maybe with the republicans IS where she belongs. This idea of I-got-mine crap is what pisses me off about republicans in general, but gay republicans in particular. It seems to also be what gets Steve Gilliard and so many other black people pissed off at black republicans. The idea that making it yourself is enough. The idea that others aren't left behind, didn't help you get there, that you are where you are because you just chose to take care of things and if you did it, why didn't all those other miserable people do it? If some folks don't like getting targeted by the police, why aren't they just more careful? Why do they think they should get special treatment? If they want to go to college, why don't they get a job or a scholarship or something? I DID IT, WHY CAN'T YOU? And why should I care if you don't, as long as you stay in your place, boy?
Because that is what the republicans say to black people and it is what they say to gay people. Just do what you're supposed to and everything will be alright. There is a remarkable difference, in that (most) gay people can 'pass'. We can pretend to be something other what we are and pay that price internally. So sometimes we have an option to hide our otherness when confronted with bigotry. And when our families don't reject us, many of us who are white and gay have the backing of families which have been integrated into the local power structures for generations and come from well-educated backgrounds and are expected and encouraged to go to college (not to say that there aren't black families with all these things, but not the same percentage, which is exactly the disparity that affirmative action is meant to address). I come from a middle-class family that I could depend on protecting and sheltering me and that I could retreat into when my being different was dangerous for me during my developmental years. Which I guess is much like condoleeza. Her family provided her with that retreat and protection, which is what families are supposed to supply for their children, but what of her choice to stay in a bubble as an adult? Which is what she has done. She has hidden in the patronage of the neocons and bushes, and never looked out to those who didn't have the same shelter she did. She was friends with one of the girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church? How does this not haunt her?
Really, and perhaps I am getting too telling here, but I remember those who didn't make it out on the other side. I don't mean folks just getting killed, but getting crushed. Watching folks struggling to get the hell out of the mess they had been told was their place and not making it. I don't just mean gay folks, though I certainly do include some in this number, and I don't mean just a geographic escape though sometimes that is what it takes. How do you turn your back on those you could have been? I could have easily, very easily been a junkie or a hustler or beat the fuck up for being gay or have contracted HIV/syphilis/hepatitus before I knew how the hell to protect myself. Before I knew that I was worth protecting, because even though, thankfully I was blessed with a family that told me everyday that I was loved and that I mattered, the world out there was telling me that I didn't and that my family wouldn't think so either if they knew the truth about me. I was valuable, but not if I was gay. I would catch AIDS and die and I would DESERVE TO. Don't for a second tell me that wasn't the republican message in the eighties. I was young, I wasn't blind or stupid. And I dare you to say that isn't their message to gay kids now. It isn't accidental. It is on purpose and it is institutional. Bigotry and greedy self interest are the right's biggest selling points.
How do gay republicans not see themselves when they look back at highschool kids today? There are plenty of kids who are coming out and being more accepted today than ever, but high school is still a very dramatic and traumatic time and we have a president and his party who control both house's of congress passing laws prohibiting educators from teaching anything about condoms except to stress failure rates. That is tantamount to an attempt to kill kids, particularly gay kids, and I'm sorry, but if you are in your late twenties/early thirties and gay and not HIV+, you owe a hell of a debt to public education about safe sex. Democrats aren't perfect, but you will never see a democratic candidate trying to keep youth educators from teaching teens the importance of wearing condoms.
This is what conservativism is about: keeping people in their places and reinforcing consequences to punish those who step outside of those bounds. That is what the abstenance ed is about: making kids who don't wait until marriage more likely to contract a disease or get pregnant. It isn't about protecting kids, it is about making them stay in the societal bounds that some assholes want them to and making them pay if they don't. Be the best little boy/girl in the world or else you deserve what you get. Fags and whores get what they deserve.
This is what racial profiling is about: making visibility more precarious for black people. If a black person gets pulled over by a cop in this country, more often than not his car is going to be searched. Even if he is polite, even if he has registration, liscense, no record, so if (s)he is breaking even a minor law, they are more likely to be caught. Adding consequence to black people stepping out of line. Be the best little boy/girl in the world or else you deserve what you get. N****rs that don't stay in their place get what they deserve.
I guess that is the same purpose of the new bankrupcy/credit guidlines. Best little or else. Po folks get what they deserve.
Keep them faggots/n****rs/po folks running. I deserved what I got, they deserve what they'll get.
I come from AL, too. My dad saw dr. rice's motorcade go rolling by last week. I could have easily been Scotty Joe Weaver or Billy Jack Gaither and she could have been Denise McNair, but circumstance and chance and family protected us both from that. The difference is that I don't work for people who play to the people who wouldn't have cared if either of us had ended up that way. I didn't spend the day shoe shopping while a whole hell of a lot of the people I could have been (and was in a position to help) were left to die.
"As we were flying to Alabama, Rice said an interesting thing. She was talking about the history of the civil rights movement, and she said, 'If you read Frederick Douglass, he was not petitioning from outside of the institutions but rather demanding that the institutions live up to what they said they were. If you read Martin Luther King, he was not petitioning from outside, he was petitioning from inside the principles and the institutions, and challenging America to be what America said that it was.'"
What the fuck? In a very literal way perhaps that is true, but only if you are talking about our national institutions and the raceless egalitarian language found in them. Yes, they were calling for us all to live up to what are ostensibly our guiding principles, but that meant destroying and dismantling the institutions which were in opposition to that. Like slavery. Or jim crow.
Those were institutions in our nation once upon a time and the exclusion of blacks from public office was institutional throughout much of our country until not so long ago. It was aggressively opposing the institutional racism in this country, particularly in the south, that the civil rights movement in the 60's was about. That blacks were required to move to the back of the bus was not some quaint notion that folks had just fallen into. It was enforced by local government institutions.
But really this is nitpicking: what is her damn point? Douglass and King were both inextricably a part of their times and they didn't withdraw and take a circuitous route through it. They fought injustice head-on and pointed flat out what was wrong instead of accepting things as they were, but that didn't mean they joined up with the shit that was going wrong in the country. Did you see King or Parks (peace be with her today) applying to be bus drivers? No, the bus system was fucked up so they boycotted it, they didn't join it. The reason I say this is because, and perhaps I am drawing conclusions as there is not a whole lot of surrounding context with that quote, dr. rice seems to be defending herself for throwing her lot in with republicans.
Which sounds a lot like the damn log cabin republicans.
Or best little boy in the world syndrome.
Which brings me to Steve's point:
"But what I think Robinson misses and is clear is that Rice has always been the special girl. Her parents made her special, her mentors made her special. At no time was she obligated to help or assist anyone behind her. Because she was special. Everything is all about her. Rice also has benefitted from the approval of her elders. Why challenge those who help you along and praise your manners?
"Her parents raised her with the idea that achievement was good enough. If she was cultured and smart enough, it would be a sign that she could compete with whites and that was important. The problem was that Rice is blind to the fact that her position was only possible by the sacrifice of others. So while Rice played her piano, other kids were being beaten by the local police. She has never thought she owed them anything, despite her success."
Again, "She has never thought she owed them anything, despite her success." Maybe with the republicans IS where she belongs. This idea of I-got-mine crap is what pisses me off about republicans in general, but gay republicans in particular. It seems to also be what gets Steve Gilliard and so many other black people pissed off at black republicans. The idea that making it yourself is enough. The idea that others aren't left behind, didn't help you get there, that you are where you are because you just chose to take care of things and if you did it, why didn't all those other miserable people do it? If some folks don't like getting targeted by the police, why aren't they just more careful? Why do they think they should get special treatment? If they want to go to college, why don't they get a job or a scholarship or something? I DID IT, WHY CAN'T YOU? And why should I care if you don't, as long as you stay in your place, boy?
Because that is what the republicans say to black people and it is what they say to gay people. Just do what you're supposed to and everything will be alright. There is a remarkable difference, in that (most) gay people can 'pass'. We can pretend to be something other what we are and pay that price internally. So sometimes we have an option to hide our otherness when confronted with bigotry. And when our families don't reject us, many of us who are white and gay have the backing of families which have been integrated into the local power structures for generations and come from well-educated backgrounds and are expected and encouraged to go to college (not to say that there aren't black families with all these things, but not the same percentage, which is exactly the disparity that affirmative action is meant to address). I come from a middle-class family that I could depend on protecting and sheltering me and that I could retreat into when my being different was dangerous for me during my developmental years. Which I guess is much like condoleeza. Her family provided her with that retreat and protection, which is what families are supposed to supply for their children, but what of her choice to stay in a bubble as an adult? Which is what she has done. She has hidden in the patronage of the neocons and bushes, and never looked out to those who didn't have the same shelter she did. She was friends with one of the girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church? How does this not haunt her?
Really, and perhaps I am getting too telling here, but I remember those who didn't make it out on the other side. I don't mean folks just getting killed, but getting crushed. Watching folks struggling to get the hell out of the mess they had been told was their place and not making it. I don't just mean gay folks, though I certainly do include some in this number, and I don't mean just a geographic escape though sometimes that is what it takes. How do you turn your back on those you could have been? I could have easily, very easily been a junkie or a hustler or beat the fuck up for being gay or have contracted HIV/syphilis/hepatitus before I knew how the hell to protect myself. Before I knew that I was worth protecting, because even though, thankfully I was blessed with a family that told me everyday that I was loved and that I mattered, the world out there was telling me that I didn't and that my family wouldn't think so either if they knew the truth about me. I was valuable, but not if I was gay. I would catch AIDS and die and I would DESERVE TO. Don't for a second tell me that wasn't the republican message in the eighties. I was young, I wasn't blind or stupid. And I dare you to say that isn't their message to gay kids now. It isn't accidental. It is on purpose and it is institutional. Bigotry and greedy self interest are the right's biggest selling points.
How do gay republicans not see themselves when they look back at highschool kids today? There are plenty of kids who are coming out and being more accepted today than ever, but high school is still a very dramatic and traumatic time and we have a president and his party who control both house's of congress passing laws prohibiting educators from teaching anything about condoms except to stress failure rates. That is tantamount to an attempt to kill kids, particularly gay kids, and I'm sorry, but if you are in your late twenties/early thirties and gay and not HIV+, you owe a hell of a debt to public education about safe sex. Democrats aren't perfect, but you will never see a democratic candidate trying to keep youth educators from teaching teens the importance of wearing condoms.
This is what conservativism is about: keeping people in their places and reinforcing consequences to punish those who step outside of those bounds. That is what the abstenance ed is about: making kids who don't wait until marriage more likely to contract a disease or get pregnant. It isn't about protecting kids, it is about making them stay in the societal bounds that some assholes want them to and making them pay if they don't. Be the best little boy/girl in the world or else you deserve what you get. Fags and whores get what they deserve.
This is what racial profiling is about: making visibility more precarious for black people. If a black person gets pulled over by a cop in this country, more often than not his car is going to be searched. Even if he is polite, even if he has registration, liscense, no record, so if (s)he is breaking even a minor law, they are more likely to be caught. Adding consequence to black people stepping out of line. Be the best little boy/girl in the world or else you deserve what you get. N****rs that don't stay in their place get what they deserve.
I guess that is the same purpose of the new bankrupcy/credit guidlines. Best little or else. Po folks get what they deserve.
Keep them faggots/n****rs/po folks running. I deserved what I got, they deserve what they'll get.
I come from AL, too. My dad saw dr. rice's motorcade go rolling by last week. I could have easily been Scotty Joe Weaver or Billy Jack Gaither and she could have been Denise McNair, but circumstance and chance and family protected us both from that. The difference is that I don't work for people who play to the people who wouldn't have cared if either of us had ended up that way. I didn't spend the day shoe shopping while a whole hell of a lot of the people I could have been (and was in a position to help) were left to die.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Rotnee, your leash is too long...
So I decided to wander over to a Magnetic Fields cover website:
:..:::.:: Our Love is Meaningless::.:::..:
I needed some new music and I love covers (even bad ones) and the Mag Fields, so why not see what new stuff they have (even if Stephin did make a frowny face instead of answering the question when I asked him if he knew about the site)? So I bop on over and who happens to have sent an mp3 for our enjoyment?
Yakuza Dance Mob!!!
Who just so happened to be the band that headlined at my annual New Year's extravaganza down in the Southland home base (awareness is painful: Hit it til it breaks!!!!). The Dance Mobbing Yakuzatrons are a lovely and insane bunch who are fun to have around, on stage or off, and who in some form or another have helped me start my year for as long as I care to think back. Perhaps one of the best stage performances I have ever seen in my life was one of the Mob's members, Rotnee went with a crew of us to a local coffee shop/bar and performed a set at an open mike night. I can't begin to describe that performance and probably shouldn't, but a mixture of unintentional slap stick with absolute sincerity and lack of self-consciousness in front of a crowd of middle-aged local drunks who just want to hear classic rock covers is a pleasure to watch.
:..:::.:: Our Love is Meaningless::.:::..:
I needed some new music and I love covers (even bad ones) and the Mag Fields, so why not see what new stuff they have (even if Stephin did make a frowny face instead of answering the question when I asked him if he knew about the site)? So I bop on over and who happens to have sent an mp3 for our enjoyment?
Yakuza Dance Mob!!!
Who just so happened to be the band that headlined at my annual New Year's extravaganza down in the Southland home base (awareness is painful: Hit it til it breaks!!!!). The Dance Mobbing Yakuzatrons are a lovely and insane bunch who are fun to have around, on stage or off, and who in some form or another have helped me start my year for as long as I care to think back. Perhaps one of the best stage performances I have ever seen in my life was one of the Mob's members, Rotnee went with a crew of us to a local coffee shop/bar and performed a set at an open mike night. I can't begin to describe that performance and probably shouldn't, but a mixture of unintentional slap stick with absolute sincerity and lack of self-consciousness in front of a crowd of middle-aged local drunks who just want to hear classic rock covers is a pleasure to watch.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
He makes it sound so fun, don't he?
Via Pandagon, I found myself reading this nauseating pile of shit.
"Is motherhood instinctive or learned behavior? Both religion and science tell us that it is instinctive, much to the distaste of the feminist ideologists, who have never been overburdened by a solid grasp on either. But one need only watch the way in which a young girl mothers her stuffed animals to see the maternal instinct at work."
Really, the first paragraph tells you enough to stop right there. The snide, queeny tone delivering a patronizing dismissal of assumed objections is enough to make you laugh, but religitards wielding science to bolster their bigoted-ass claims always raise my ire. Dude, keep your grimey hands off my science and honestly, keep it off my Bible too. If you want to base your opinion of women on dirty jokes told in middle school, sci-fi novel sex scenes, and crude anecdotes told by drunk men at the bar or hunting lodge; do that, but don't try to dress it up as religion and science. You put down and carefully back away from your agenda of framing women as servile bitches that need a big strong stud to swoop them away and help them fulfill their baby factory potential, and we'll discuss instincts and human behavior in relation to evolutionary theory and studies in animal behavior and how that reinforces or contradicts the presentation of gender roles in religious texts. Til then, back away from the religion/science and just say "this is what I think" instead of using the higher power/post-Enlightenment scholarship schtick to try and dress up your dumb ideas.
Anyway, if you want to read volxwagon puppy's how-to-list for ladies to not ruin their life by becoming indepentant strong-willed tramps, you will have to follow the link. I will share this one last little chunk which is just unrivalled for its what-the-fuck factor:
"As for the likelihood that the technological future will eventually solve such problems, it is worth noting that no society that possesses artificial wombs, robot sex dolls, multiplayer video games and 24-hour sports networks is one in which men are likely to show a tremendous amount of interest in relationships or the opposite sex."
Uhmmm... yeah, this is definitely someone who has a strong and clear grasp of interpersonal relationships. This is the fellow I am going to from now on to help me figure out quandries about the kind of future I want and how to get there. Really now, we have 24 sports networks and multiplayer video games and some pretty realistic sex dolls, but do you see most fellows choosing those things over getting laid or thinking of them as substitutes for a relationship? Maybe there are a few fellows that do, just like there are some guys who choose the bottle or a hit over a girl, but technology is hardly leading to this mass exodus of guys from the arms of women into the loving embrace of a PS2 and a silicone vagina.
I went to his blog and read around for a while, but the dude basically just seems kind of crazy, like he doesn't have a whole lot of real interaction with adults. I don't know how old he is, but there is something pretty adolescent pervy about the way he talks about women. Hints in his blog suggest that he isn't in middle school, but his brain still seems to be.
(Amanda, I don't link to Pandagon near often enough, but a general thanks to you for the excellent writing. Keep fighting the good fight.)
"Is motherhood instinctive or learned behavior? Both religion and science tell us that it is instinctive, much to the distaste of the feminist ideologists, who have never been overburdened by a solid grasp on either. But one need only watch the way in which a young girl mothers her stuffed animals to see the maternal instinct at work."
Really, the first paragraph tells you enough to stop right there. The snide, queeny tone delivering a patronizing dismissal of assumed objections is enough to make you laugh, but religitards wielding science to bolster their bigoted-ass claims always raise my ire. Dude, keep your grimey hands off my science and honestly, keep it off my Bible too. If you want to base your opinion of women on dirty jokes told in middle school, sci-fi novel sex scenes, and crude anecdotes told by drunk men at the bar or hunting lodge; do that, but don't try to dress it up as religion and science. You put down and carefully back away from your agenda of framing women as servile bitches that need a big strong stud to swoop them away and help them fulfill their baby factory potential, and we'll discuss instincts and human behavior in relation to evolutionary theory and studies in animal behavior and how that reinforces or contradicts the presentation of gender roles in religious texts. Til then, back away from the religion/science and just say "this is what I think" instead of using the higher power/post-Enlightenment scholarship schtick to try and dress up your dumb ideas.
Anyway, if you want to read volxwagon puppy's how-to-list for ladies to not ruin their life by becoming indepentant strong-willed tramps, you will have to follow the link. I will share this one last little chunk which is just unrivalled for its what-the-fuck factor:
"As for the likelihood that the technological future will eventually solve such problems, it is worth noting that no society that possesses artificial wombs, robot sex dolls, multiplayer video games and 24-hour sports networks is one in which men are likely to show a tremendous amount of interest in relationships or the opposite sex."
Uhmmm... yeah, this is definitely someone who has a strong and clear grasp of interpersonal relationships. This is the fellow I am going to from now on to help me figure out quandries about the kind of future I want and how to get there. Really now, we have 24 sports networks and multiplayer video games and some pretty realistic sex dolls, but do you see most fellows choosing those things over getting laid or thinking of them as substitutes for a relationship? Maybe there are a few fellows that do, just like there are some guys who choose the bottle or a hit over a girl, but technology is hardly leading to this mass exodus of guys from the arms of women into the loving embrace of a PS2 and a silicone vagina.
I went to his blog and read around for a while, but the dude basically just seems kind of crazy, like he doesn't have a whole lot of real interaction with adults. I don't know how old he is, but there is something pretty adolescent pervy about the way he talks about women. Hints in his blog suggest that he isn't in middle school, but his brain still seems to be.
(Amanda, I don't link to Pandagon near often enough, but a general thanks to you for the excellent writing. Keep fighting the good fight.)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Thanks a lot, Spongedob Stickypants.
now look at how people are finding there way here:
dads taking a shower with there son - Google Search
It should say something that THAT search leads you to commentary on the fundy dummies and their retarded parenting advice. And this is the first google search that I have seen that turns me up as the top link that doesn't actually include "awareness is painful" in the search. Just my luck. You write angry missives about the bush administration, radical religious idiots, and the stupidity of gay republicans for a year or so and suddenly you are the top online stop for either sheepish yuppie parents trying to figure out if they are going to scar their toddlers by letting their kids shower with them or incest fetishists. I guess that always has been my target audience.
dads taking a shower with there son - Google Search
It should say something that THAT search leads you to commentary on the fundy dummies and their retarded parenting advice. And this is the first google search that I have seen that turns me up as the top link that doesn't actually include "awareness is painful" in the search. Just my luck. You write angry missives about the bush administration, radical religious idiots, and the stupidity of gay republicans for a year or so and suddenly you are the top online stop for either sheepish yuppie parents trying to figure out if they are going to scar their toddlers by letting their kids shower with them or incest fetishists. I guess that always has been my target audience.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Not if you do it right, honey.
I don't have all that much traffic on this blog, but it is amusing looking through and seeing how folks find their way here. The Altercation link was the biggest spike in traffic followed by the fights with homo republicans (thanks, malcontent/prismwarden) and then maybe friendster and a few from the couple of folks who link to me, but the most fun are the completely random searches that lead people here. People who I am fairly certain were not looking for an angry twenty-something bitching about politics. Having used the words "gay" and "sex" and "porn", amongst a few other choice words that my mother would disapprove of, I get the smut seekers on occasion. I have trouble imagining someone sitting at their computer, planning on whacking off and then seeing and choosing "Awareness is painful" from the list of choices in Google from their search for "hot men cock porn fucking" or whatever. But hey, everybody's welcome here. I'll take the hornballs over the gay republicans anyday.
My favorite are the ones where you can tell someone is looking for the answer to a question, although they often involve the word "painful" and kind of make me cringe. Here's the most recent example:
MSN Search: painful after using cock ring
Another truth-seeker asked "Is gay sex painful?" Maybe I should start treating this like an accidental advice column, answering these random quandries for these folks who likely will never stumble back across my site again. I guess I shouldn't start sharing my volunteered expertise with a quandry about cock rings, since I've never used one, but I'm guessing that if it hurts, you might want to try a different size.
I guess that sort of goes for the other question too.
My favorite are the ones where you can tell someone is looking for the answer to a question, although they often involve the word "painful" and kind of make me cringe. Here's the most recent example:
MSN Search: painful after using cock ring
Another truth-seeker asked "Is gay sex painful?" Maybe I should start treating this like an accidental advice column, answering these random quandries for these folks who likely will never stumble back across my site again. I guess I shouldn't start sharing my volunteered expertise with a quandry about cock rings, since I've never used one, but I'm guessing that if it hurts, you might want to try a different size.
I guess that sort of goes for the other question too.
"the best of America"
condi is going on a photo-op hunt with a diplomat down to Alabama? Give me a fucking break.
But hey, Alabama is synonymous internationally with racism and so is the bush administration, so what the hell?
But hey, Alabama is synonymous internationally with racism and so is the bush administration, so what the hell?
Friday, October 14, 2005
The Apprentice: Hillbilly Edition
So I have allowed myself two guilty tv pleasures which I count as only one because they are watched in rapid succession: America's Next Top Model and Martha Stewart's Apprentice. I never really liked the normal trumpified Apprentice, but originally I thought that was because I have always, ALWAYS found Donald Trump to be insanely annoying. I was wrong; it is because the contestants are insanely annoying. Sure, some of them aren't, and they aren't on the screen as much. The keep the retards front and center and you have to watch these freaks go on and on and on about whatever the hell stupid idea they came up with. L- was watching the show while I was eating dinner last night so I go sucked into most of last night's episode where I learned that they seemingly recruited everyone at shopping malls in the suburban south. The ladies' team was terrorized by a gaggle of those horrible medium sized perky blonde 'popular' harpy bitches that make everyone look back at highschool with horror. I don't mind a good southern accent; I have something of a drawl myself, but there is this certain kind of trailer park bark that perky evil sorority girls get that makes me wish someone were scraping their nails across a blackboard instead. Don't get me wrong, there are good perky southern girls and evil ones. There are four or five (they are hard to tell apart) of the evil ones on this season's apprentice. They spent last night ganging up on the brown girl to try and shove her in a costume that they knew she hated while they kind of tolerated/ignored the brunette, the black girl, and the much taller and reasonbly sane blonde former pageant queen. Those weird little clicks from hell are one of the things that I am happiest to not have to interact with in NYC. The hipsters can get annoying, but they don't quite have the same herd instict and appetite for blood and destruction that the southern deb squads do. If you want to see what is wrong with America, watch last night's episode and know that we are currently treating those people like they are anything other than selfish manipulative monsters.
On the boys team, there seemed to be a couple of sane people, who didn't get to say much and instead we were treated to a despotic southern closet case with another horrible trailer park accent and a napoleon complex. We get him going on and on to the camera about how he is regulating and making everything work, while they come up with a lame ass idea for some stupid genie thing which is just a thinly veiled excuse for him to talk about women and suggest that the character (to be used to convince children to eat icecream) have big breasts so he can pretend he ain't a 'mo. Yeah, fooled us there, killer. The other conspicuous southerner on the team was a somewhat cute but vapid Kentucky good ol' boy. Seemed nice enough, his accent wasn't as caustic as the other southtards, but why they let him talk into the camera about how wild it was for him to put on a costume that made him into a she. And gotta love how they managed to show as many shots as possible of him in just the skin suit that he put on beneath the costume with him teenie peenie poking out as the closet boy points out his bulge and suggest ducktape. Course country boy don't mind doing drag so long as he can let his pokey little puppy prove its really a man beneath the "big boobs", so he wants none of the duct tape extravaganza.
I was getting ready to go out and try to drink away all memory of this episode, so I missed some in the middle where basically the boys won, the girls lost hard core with their stupid ideas and super clique act. The boys went to play baseball and the girls preened in the suite getting ready to go to the boardroom and leader of this project (and the evil blonde clique) suddenly begins to realize that she was supposed to do something in this assignment besides try and humiliate and boss around the 'deeefrint' girls and that the other girls realized that they lost because the costume sucked and they basically spent the whole episode trying to put the uppity colored girl in her place.
I had all I could take and left so I don't know if the evil minions of hell prevailed and managed to get rid of the little brown thorn in their blond sides or if there is a God in the apprentice and one of them was sent home as a lesson to the other idiots that this is a business challenge, not middle school.
On the boys team, there seemed to be a couple of sane people, who didn't get to say much and instead we were treated to a despotic southern closet case with another horrible trailer park accent and a napoleon complex. We get him going on and on to the camera about how he is regulating and making everything work, while they come up with a lame ass idea for some stupid genie thing which is just a thinly veiled excuse for him to talk about women and suggest that the character (to be used to convince children to eat icecream) have big breasts so he can pretend he ain't a 'mo. Yeah, fooled us there, killer. The other conspicuous southerner on the team was a somewhat cute but vapid Kentucky good ol' boy. Seemed nice enough, his accent wasn't as caustic as the other southtards, but why they let him talk into the camera about how wild it was for him to put on a costume that made him into a she. And gotta love how they managed to show as many shots as possible of him in just the skin suit that he put on beneath the costume with him teenie peenie poking out as the closet boy points out his bulge and suggest ducktape. Course country boy don't mind doing drag so long as he can let his pokey little puppy prove its really a man beneath the "big boobs", so he wants none of the duct tape extravaganza.
I was getting ready to go out and try to drink away all memory of this episode, so I missed some in the middle where basically the boys won, the girls lost hard core with their stupid ideas and super clique act. The boys went to play baseball and the girls preened in the suite getting ready to go to the boardroom and leader of this project (and the evil blonde clique) suddenly begins to realize that she was supposed to do something in this assignment besides try and humiliate and boss around the 'deeefrint' girls and that the other girls realized that they lost because the costume sucked and they basically spent the whole episode trying to put the uppity colored girl in her place.
I had all I could take and left so I don't know if the evil minions of hell prevailed and managed to get rid of the little brown thorn in their blond sides or if there is a God in the apprentice and one of them was sent home as a lesson to the other idiots that this is a business challenge, not middle school.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Make a joyful noise...
My computer has been troubled and is getting fixed by an insanely kind and wonderful friend and our internet is kind of fucked up at home right now anyway, so I am not able to write as often as I would like these days. That said, we had an amazing weekend in our lovely greenpoint mansion.
There is something cathartic about the weather finally breaking and giving us a little cool and wet. Sunday felt like Christmas, waking up with the "family" and cooking a big meal together (for which one of my roommates made the nastiest smelling cheese grits ever) and watching movies and having friends over and just relaxing. Monday, Mason and I had a few friends over to have a little hootenanny. Our normal music making buddy C came over, but we also added a lovely new addition in A who brought with him an autoharp and a bass voice. It took a little while to get us all going and sometime figuring out songs which everyone knew, but it was nice.
That was followed up with heading off to the secret Kiki and Herb show at Joe's Pub. The show was amazing and I really can't do a proper review of it at the moment, so I will refrain from further comment, except to comment that turning the Scissor Sister's "Take Your Momma Out Tonight" into an emotively explosive, biting protest song is no small accomplishment.
I have to escape the computer now and hurry off to watch America's Next Top Model and Martha's Apprentice. You should too.
There is something cathartic about the weather finally breaking and giving us a little cool and wet. Sunday felt like Christmas, waking up with the "family" and cooking a big meal together (for which one of my roommates made the nastiest smelling cheese grits ever) and watching movies and having friends over and just relaxing. Monday, Mason and I had a few friends over to have a little hootenanny. Our normal music making buddy C came over, but we also added a lovely new addition in A who brought with him an autoharp and a bass voice. It took a little while to get us all going and sometime figuring out songs which everyone knew, but it was nice.
That was followed up with heading off to the secret Kiki and Herb show at Joe's Pub. The show was amazing and I really can't do a proper review of it at the moment, so I will refrain from further comment, except to comment that turning the Scissor Sister's "Take Your Momma Out Tonight" into an emotively explosive, biting protest song is no small accomplishment.
I have to escape the computer now and hurry off to watch America's Next Top Model and Martha's Apprentice. You should too.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Suddenly Riley seems progressive.
That idiot roy moore wants to run for governor of AL now.
Just fucking great. He won't win, but do the morons always have to find their way into the spotlight to further reinforce the idea that Alabama is the most backwards-ass place on the planet? He can't beat Riley, who to his credit could have been a really good governor if he hadn't let the national republicans advise him to make a racist veto right out of the gate. Some of his ideas seemed good and how he handled Katrina and the surge of evacuees to the state impressed me. He obviously thinks and cares about the job and the state. moore just wants attention. If he could get as many tv cameras pointed at him and as much congradulation from his moron neighbors by doing the pee-pee dance in his underwear with a bullfrog on his head, he would.
I don't know anything about the Lt. Gov. who is running for the democratic nomination, but siegelman is a fucking joke. He had plenty of people who were against him before he went into office and managed to piss off most of his supporter too. He needs to just go hide somewhere and leave the state the hell alone. Maybe he could just go hang out with moore.
(thanks Steve)
Just fucking great. He won't win, but do the morons always have to find their way into the spotlight to further reinforce the idea that Alabama is the most backwards-ass place on the planet? He can't beat Riley, who to his credit could have been a really good governor if he hadn't let the national republicans advise him to make a racist veto right out of the gate. Some of his ideas seemed good and how he handled Katrina and the surge of evacuees to the state impressed me. He obviously thinks and cares about the job and the state. moore just wants attention. If he could get as many tv cameras pointed at him and as much congradulation from his moron neighbors by doing the pee-pee dance in his underwear with a bullfrog on his head, he would.
I don't know anything about the Lt. Gov. who is running for the democratic nomination, but siegelman is a fucking joke. He had plenty of people who were against him before he went into office and managed to piss off most of his supporter too. He needs to just go hide somewhere and leave the state the hell alone. Maybe he could just go hang out with moore.
(thanks Steve)
Monday, October 03, 2005
Anonymous friendster viewing is for pussies
So friendster quietly snuck in its fun new little feature where it shows you who has looked at your profile in the last month. Some folks seem to be annoyed by this new little feature, but I totally love it. It is kind of fun to have some idea of who has looked at you and try to figure out how and why. Unlike everyone else that I have seen blogging about this so far, I don't instantly assume that everyone who looks at my friendster profile does so because they want to bone me. I don't have crushes on all the people I look at on friendster; why assume everyone who looks at me does? Half the time I look at someone on friendster it is because I want an email from them and haven't gotten one in a few days and looking at friendster tells me when they were last on and I can either say to myself "oh, they haven't had time to check friendster; they must be pretty busy and will write when they get the chance," or "Sure, they have time to piddle around on friendster but writing me a little letter is such a huge chore. Asshole, I didn't want a letter anyway."
Anyway, so maybe the anonymous viewing thing might have its occasional applications, like when you are interviewing prospective new roommates who you found on craigslist and don't want them to realize that your decision not to let them move in might have something to do with their 1000 word 'about me' description or the fact that they only have three friends who all seem like dorks. Really though, can't we all just let folks know that we looked at them and not assume that they are suddenly going to think we are in love with them or stalking them. Isn't the whole point of friendster that we can get these little glimpses of folks connected to us and the folks around us with really having to dive in too deep?
And maybe this makes for a subtle way for someone to gets the elusive someone's attention. My roommate has in the past used the 'bookmark' feature to great effect in that respect, but I didn't even know what the hell 'bookmarks' were until he started talking about it and it could never really be that useful for getting people's attention if people didn't really pay attention to it.
Anyway, at least they aren't showing how many times or when we look at folks profiles. That would really call out the stalkers amongst us.
Anyway, so maybe the anonymous viewing thing might have its occasional applications, like when you are interviewing prospective new roommates who you found on craigslist and don't want them to realize that your decision not to let them move in might have something to do with their 1000 word 'about me' description or the fact that they only have three friends who all seem like dorks. Really though, can't we all just let folks know that we looked at them and not assume that they are suddenly going to think we are in love with them or stalking them. Isn't the whole point of friendster that we can get these little glimpses of folks connected to us and the folks around us with really having to dive in too deep?
And maybe this makes for a subtle way for someone to gets the elusive someone's attention. My roommate has in the past used the 'bookmark' feature to great effect in that respect, but I didn't even know what the hell 'bookmarks' were until he started talking about it and it could never really be that useful for getting people's attention if people didn't really pay attention to it.
Anyway, at least they aren't showing how many times or when we look at folks profiles. That would really call out the stalkers amongst us.
Push coming to shove...
Since we have been talking about political outings lately, I can't help but link to this post
questioning the sexuality of vehemently anti-gay black ministers.
Funny the way the self-loathing pricks who are trying to deny their sexuality are always the meanest bastards to other homos. Men who are truly comfortable in their sexuality really just don't give a damn what another man does in bed so long as nobody is being forced. It is the uptight, guilt-fetishizers who get so worked up and are so repressed that the only way they can imagine connecting to their desires is to condemn it. It is the only way they can think to get near the subject without exposing themselves.
Well, if they feel so compelled to get near the subject, they better find a less vindictive way about it or folks are going to expose them. Keith Boykin and Jasmyne Cannick, go get 'em.
questioning the sexuality of vehemently anti-gay black ministers.
Funny the way the self-loathing pricks who are trying to deny their sexuality are always the meanest bastards to other homos. Men who are truly comfortable in their sexuality really just don't give a damn what another man does in bed so long as nobody is being forced. It is the uptight, guilt-fetishizers who get so worked up and are so repressed that the only way they can imagine connecting to their desires is to condemn it. It is the only way they can think to get near the subject without exposing themselves.
Well, if they feel so compelled to get near the subject, they better find a less vindictive way about it or folks are going to expose them. Keith Boykin and Jasmyne Cannick, go get 'em.
Friday, September 30, 2005
this is just to say...
We have just passed 1000 visitors here at awareness is painful. Perhaps that is not quite accurate as it was close to a year into this that I finally put a counter on the site, so we probably passed the real mark quite sometime ago. Of course 1000 visitors isn't really all that impressive to most bloggers and I won't really be throwing a party over it either, but for something that started with not much more of an intended audience than a couple of folks I'll take 1000 as a nice mile-marker.
thanks to everyone who has stopped by (even the homo-republicans). Hope to see you here again.
thanks to everyone who has stopped by (even the homo-republicans). Hope to see you here again.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
An Index to Creationist Claims
Here is a handy and comprehensive resource when you need to refute an enemy of the state: An Index to Creationist Claims
Wow. This is the most exhaustive rundown I have seen.
Wow. This is the most exhaustive rundown I have seen.
Homo say what?
Via the always charming TBogg I discovered that Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly posted this lovely piece:
"WHISPERING CAMPAIGN....Is every single liberal blog in the world planning to post a sniggering, wink-wink-nudge-nudge mention that David Dreier is rumored to be gay? Pardon me while I throw up.
"And spare me the drivel about the "principled" case for outing gay politicians. I'm not buying, and there's nothing principled going on here in any case. It's just childish nonsense that perpetuates the notion that there's something sordid about being gay. Conservatives were wrong to conduct a decade long witch hunt against Bill Clinton's sex life, and liberals are wrong to join in when the shoe is on the other foot.
"(Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm living in the past. Sigh.)"
I don't regularly read Kevin Drum, so I don't know a whole lot about him or his angle on things, but this annoyed me so I'll comment a little bit.
I will spare you the principled case for outing gay republicans; this has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with consequences. Any public figure who is gay and doesn't care to talk about being gay should tread very softly on gay topics and be very aware that how they vote on issues which effect gay people is not going to go unnoticed. If you are going to bash gay folks (and that damn gay marriage amendment had everything to do with gay bashing; its whole point was giving the GOP a public excuse for saying "we don't like gay people either" to the garner the bigot vote and try to put in the fucking constitution that gay people matter less under the law), you better believe we are going to come back swinging. No, we don't think there is a damn thing shameful about being gay, but if you are going to act like it is a dirty little secret and publically attack gay people, we are going to ask you why as a gay person you are doing it.
I can think of at least one prominent Republican senator who is gay and closeted whose sexuality is damn near never mentioned because he wouldn't touch anti gay legislation with a ten foot pole. And honestly, I don't really think it is because he is all that progressive, but a southern homosexual don't get so far if he doesn't understand a little bit of delicate quid pro quo. He wants to keep his sexuality quiet and keep from riling the bigot vote back home but he also knows better than to try and rally them by backing anti-gay shit. Why does drier think he can do that without incurring a backlash?
This is not the 1950's. Gay people don't just stay in their place and do what they are told. You can't treat us like trash and pretend you aren't one of us and expect us to shut the hell up. Homo say what?
Kevin's got comments and I want to comment on two of them:
"I generally agree with you, and I'm against outing under any circumstances. That said, the fact that the Republicans get a lot of support by fanning the flames of the worst sort of homophobia, while simultaneously tolerating gays in high-level positions within the party, constitutes such revolting and rank hypocrisy that it begs to be mentioned."
Why are you against outing under any circumstances? and if you are, why are you saying you are sort of for them?
and another commentor:
"Sorry, Kevin - gotta depart with you on this one.
It's one thing for a gay to be in the closet and just not think his sexuality is anyone's business. (Anderson Cooper springs to mind.)..."
Ok, this Anderson Cooper shit is annoying as hell. I'm tired of Michael Musto constantly picking at him to publicize him sexuality and all these other folks calling for him to come out. Where in the hell is he going to come out from? The man is out. He doesn't hide his sexuality, he doesn't sneak around with closet cases in secret backrooms, he doesn't strut around with a beard; he's out in gay bars, at parties, all over new york, but he doesn't have a serious partner (or hasn't for too long if he does now) so why in the hell would he talk about who he is dating publicly? Do other single newscasters bring up their dating life publicly? There is a difference between trying to keep the private out of your public life as a celebrity and being a closet case. Leave the man the hell alone and just let him be a reporter. He's been doing a pretty good job at that lately and we need every decent reporter we can get these days.
But yeah, if kenneth melhman and david drier and whoever the hell else want to push anti-gay public policy and use homophobic rhetoric to fluff the bigot vote they better find an ex-gay program that works (good luck) and start munching cooter or they are damn well going to have their cock loving ways shoved down their self-loathing throats.
"WHISPERING CAMPAIGN....Is every single liberal blog in the world planning to post a sniggering, wink-wink-nudge-nudge mention that David Dreier is rumored to be gay? Pardon me while I throw up.
"And spare me the drivel about the "principled" case for outing gay politicians. I'm not buying, and there's nothing principled going on here in any case. It's just childish nonsense that perpetuates the notion that there's something sordid about being gay. Conservatives were wrong to conduct a decade long witch hunt against Bill Clinton's sex life, and liberals are wrong to join in when the shoe is on the other foot.
"(Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm living in the past. Sigh.)"
I don't regularly read Kevin Drum, so I don't know a whole lot about him or his angle on things, but this annoyed me so I'll comment a little bit.
I will spare you the principled case for outing gay republicans; this has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with consequences. Any public figure who is gay and doesn't care to talk about being gay should tread very softly on gay topics and be very aware that how they vote on issues which effect gay people is not going to go unnoticed. If you are going to bash gay folks (and that damn gay marriage amendment had everything to do with gay bashing; its whole point was giving the GOP a public excuse for saying "we don't like gay people either" to the garner the bigot vote and try to put in the fucking constitution that gay people matter less under the law), you better believe we are going to come back swinging. No, we don't think there is a damn thing shameful about being gay, but if you are going to act like it is a dirty little secret and publically attack gay people, we are going to ask you why as a gay person you are doing it.
I can think of at least one prominent Republican senator who is gay and closeted whose sexuality is damn near never mentioned because he wouldn't touch anti gay legislation with a ten foot pole. And honestly, I don't really think it is because he is all that progressive, but a southern homosexual don't get so far if he doesn't understand a little bit of delicate quid pro quo. He wants to keep his sexuality quiet and keep from riling the bigot vote back home but he also knows better than to try and rally them by backing anti-gay shit. Why does drier think he can do that without incurring a backlash?
This is not the 1950's. Gay people don't just stay in their place and do what they are told. You can't treat us like trash and pretend you aren't one of us and expect us to shut the hell up. Homo say what?
Kevin's got comments and I want to comment on two of them:
"I generally agree with you, and I'm against outing under any circumstances. That said, the fact that the Republicans get a lot of support by fanning the flames of the worst sort of homophobia, while simultaneously tolerating gays in high-level positions within the party, constitutes such revolting and rank hypocrisy that it begs to be mentioned."
Why are you against outing under any circumstances? and if you are, why are you saying you are sort of for them?
and another commentor:
"Sorry, Kevin - gotta depart with you on this one.
It's one thing for a gay to be in the closet and just not think his sexuality is anyone's business. (Anderson Cooper springs to mind.)..."
Ok, this Anderson Cooper shit is annoying as hell. I'm tired of Michael Musto constantly picking at him to publicize him sexuality and all these other folks calling for him to come out. Where in the hell is he going to come out from? The man is out. He doesn't hide his sexuality, he doesn't sneak around with closet cases in secret backrooms, he doesn't strut around with a beard; he's out in gay bars, at parties, all over new york, but he doesn't have a serious partner (or hasn't for too long if he does now) so why in the hell would he talk about who he is dating publicly? Do other single newscasters bring up their dating life publicly? There is a difference between trying to keep the private out of your public life as a celebrity and being a closet case. Leave the man the hell alone and just let him be a reporter. He's been doing a pretty good job at that lately and we need every decent reporter we can get these days.
But yeah, if kenneth melhman and david drier and whoever the hell else want to push anti-gay public policy and use homophobic rhetoric to fluff the bigot vote they better find an ex-gay program that works (good luck) and start munching cooter or they are damn well going to have their cock loving ways shoved down their self-loathing throats.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
nobody knows my name
(this is another from the old email files, so it was written quite some time ago and was originally private corespondence.)
I can't stop reading James Baldwin. I am not reading his fiction now though. I have been reading his books of essays and interviews and I love them. I really don't know when I have quite connected so well with someone's way of thinking. I guess it is important to say that I don't really swallow everything that he says and really think that some of his stuff is really challenging (not in a difficult to read kind of way, but like in a "I challenge you to a duel" kind of way).
Most of the essays are about being an American Negro (his words, a little outdated, but appropriate to what he is talking about). I have been trying to put my finger on what it was that I really connected so much with in his writings, since I of course am not a black man and even though he is also a homosexual, that seems to have been the easier of his social baggages to come to terms with. Today I was really really struck by something he said about black people almost always performing, and when two met each other in a strange context (in this case, at a white cocktail party in Europe) they immediately size one another up and are connected if not by both being black, by both knowing the others appearance is a performance and thereby being both a potential ally and threat. They can "knock" the other's "hustle" if they chose, "give the other's game away." Not exactly an earth shaking generalization but an earthquake of an idea that broke through somethings that I have been trying (am trying, will always be trying) to get at the root of. I think that I did make a breakthrough in my connection to Mr. Baldwin.
Maybe what he is saying isn't just about the nature of black people so much as about the nature of black sheep, those on the outside looking in, anyone who has had to realize that the rules of the game had no room for them and that they would have to knoe more than the rules if they were going to survive. I think that it really doesn't matter why someone is a black sheep, or even if they are different kinds, they will ultimately know and understand one another. Not that they will agree or like one another, but they will be able to see things that the general populace can't, because there survival has always depended on this. It is one of those weird things that I think explains alot of things like "gaydar". Kind of a dumb example, but the less dangerous it has been for a person to be gay and the longer they have lived with it openly, the less they can tell who is gay or not. And on the same note, but a little differently, some people have laughed before when I have said this, but I meant it totally seriously, that you can't fool black people or children. I was talking about being gay, but I kind of think it extends to other things, and of course there really are plenty of black people and children who can easily be fooled about alot of things, but how little you can fool them about is a fuction of how disenfranchised they have been, and both groups are consistently, even today, still left on the outside (perhaps with children it isn't so much disenfranchisement as them not yet being fully enfranchised -is that a word?). More and more black people are beginning to be more often on the inside (at least officially and at least some of them) and so more and more don't really have to be able so much to see everything in such a bare, honest way, and so they don't. That is what any black person means when they accuse another black person of acting "white": they mean that they have reached a place where they are comfortable and are believing that everyone else has the same access to that comfort that they do and so dissconnect themselves from any real direct knowledge of that kind of suffering. this is not meant to be particularly condemning to black people who are letting themselves enjoy prosperity that they have found because not everyone has it, unless it is also condemning of anyone who lets themselves enjoy the prosperity they have found; this is just saying that the spaces within our social structures which black people can occupy have opened up to let them also live comfortably enough in some cases to forget that there are those who do not also have such opportunity. I no way do I suggest that many (perhaps most) white people are not guilty of the same myopia, rather that it is that shortsightedness which necessarily describes what has often separated whites (the general 'ingroup') and blacks (the general 'outgroup'), and finding themselves in a place where they can afford this loss of perspective is exactly what is meant when someone says someone acts "white". I think this is a gross generalization and that all of the most effective people anywhere have to know something about disenfrachisement that those who are 'there' and have always been 'there' can never relate to.
I guess I have begun to feel that something was slipping and I was losing something important as I began to feel more and more like I could act more naturally and felt more attractive and popular and less like a freak or an outcast. I guess this has just helped me begin to put a finger on that.
I also think this explains alot of why whites in the South are more comfortable around blacks than are northerners. And I don't think it is just about proximity and familiarity in a literal sense (although this is of course part of it), but in also in some way being connected in also feeling separated from and rejected from the 'ingroup'. This is the great legacy of the civil war that we are supposed to carry around as baggage. I think most of us in our generation have let go of any feelings of being beaten or resentment really directly relating to that conflict, but we still feel the effects of bearing the physical damage of the war on our soil relating to how that put the South back economically, socially, etc. and the intellectual attitude of being constantly represented as backwards, primitive, country, slow, dumb, etc. We know what it is like to walk into a room of people from all over and have them find out only where we come from and immediately assume that we are less of something (ally, foe, partner, student, etc.). And even if we don't so much feel that too terribly directly, it is blasted into our minds in popular media and bolstered by the people who represent us (pick any alabama govenor ever, Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond) nationally. Now I am not trying to directly compare southern whites to blacks and do feel that even as we may in general be more in touch with black people, we are still in a somewhat more priveleged position regardless.
I have to say that all this has alot to do with how I have always really felt that south carolina (Charleston in particular) strikes me as so different from most of the south. I feel when I am in Alabama or Mississippi like I am playing perfectly fair if I sort of politely sidestep things or embelish and play out every interpersonal interaction like a chess game. I feel like almost everyone works from this vantage point of having some idea that people take advantage of people and they know to watch their back and being conscious of what you are doing constitutes staying alive and being able to get ahead in the game. Here I feel like it is cheating. I feel like everyone expects everything to be so laid out and honest in a blankly boring way that if you really do what back home is just prudent consideration, here it is taken as underhanded and disagreeable. And I think that it is because this south is not the rural south and not really connected to it at all except in that same condescending way that the north also connects to the rural south. Now there are definently things here that I find familiar, but I am really often rubbed very wrong by the way in which things do still run with some of the old machinery that is (thankfully) a little more broken down where we are from. You can really feel in this city very clearly that it wasn't the same kind of civil rights battle ground that our state was. Not that progress hasn't been made, but the tops haven't quite been blow off of some of the institutions in the same way and some of the sentiments haven't either been driven underground or brought out in the open in quite the same way.
This wasn't meant to be such an analysis of the South so much as just about me trying to more and more understand how I fit in the world. I am beginning to feel perhaps like James Baldwin did in Paris, so separated from what was familiar and finally find my way in being able to really go at things directly instead of slinking around in the shadows, but I feel like it is something of a bitter victory. You find that you have sort of reached that position that will afford you some comfort and that you are finally allowed to join in the reindeer games, and with this you begin to feel some obligation to start to play by the rules, but you still feel connected to those still left on the outside. And maybe a place at the table isn't all it's cracked up to be if no one at the table is going to listen to you. The problem isn't totally about feeling that taking your place at the table leaves others to pick through the crumbs on the floor, but (recklessly switching metaphores midsentence) more that by agreeing to play by the rules, you have to make others agree to change the rules to even things out instead the old familiar standard of just playing your way and beating them because they are trapped and blinded by their rules. This all makes me think of an old Indian proverb I read somewhere: 'the big fish eats the little fish, and the little fish must get smart.' When you are invisible, ignored by the system, what you do doesn't matter to the system itself, you just have to be smart and stay alive. Once the world decides to see that you exist, you are stuck in their rules and you are expected to play by their rules. You can't just buck the system in the same way you did before, you have to change it. Just trying to side step things and slinking through the shadows either put you in a position of danger and will be attacked or you are making a declaration of wanting to be outside again. You are pulling yourself back to that familar place that you came from, which is not a place that I am trying to romanticize: life on the outside is brutal and dangerous. There you are in competition with EVERYTHING. It is exausting and painful.
of course in this analysis (I am sorry that you are so often the person who gets stuck with these musings from me, you know that none of this would ever be to preach or that I feel that I am speaking from a more informed or enlightened position, but that I just really think you have some amazing lucidity of thought and know me well enough to understand) is way too general and over dramatic and simplifying. But I just am really feeling that I am finally understanding something important and have really made some significant connection to James Baldwin's ideas.
One thing that i find sort of funny, is that so much of the language that I have been using (particulary, 'outside', 'ingroups', etc.) mean dramatically different things when I am talking about black people and gay people. With reference to being black or poor or disefrancised in most ways, being in the 'outgroup' means having not yet transcended this separating factor, while with gay people, the 'outgroup' encompasses those who have most embraced this seperating factor. The effect is potentially separating in that it is acknowledging that they are separated (something which may or may not have been apparent before), but it is when a gay person decides to live with this difference being baldly apparent that they begin to be stuck in the rules of society. I guess I am letting myself look at this in a offcenter sort of way. I guess I am kind of ignoring, that so many gay people don't take coming out as really an occasion to find their place at the table, but rather take it as occasion to set their own table and turn their back to the rest of the world. This is a tendency that I am finding myself fighting with. I guess this is where people get stuck...
well, actually, i am going to have to stop for awhile. I know this is abrupt, but I think if I don't pull out now, I am going to end up with you suffering a discourse that is much longer that anyone should ever have to read at one sitting at a computer.
I can't stop reading James Baldwin. I am not reading his fiction now though. I have been reading his books of essays and interviews and I love them. I really don't know when I have quite connected so well with someone's way of thinking. I guess it is important to say that I don't really swallow everything that he says and really think that some of his stuff is really challenging (not in a difficult to read kind of way, but like in a "I challenge you to a duel" kind of way).
Most of the essays are about being an American Negro (his words, a little outdated, but appropriate to what he is talking about). I have been trying to put my finger on what it was that I really connected so much with in his writings, since I of course am not a black man and even though he is also a homosexual, that seems to have been the easier of his social baggages to come to terms with. Today I was really really struck by something he said about black people almost always performing, and when two met each other in a strange context (in this case, at a white cocktail party in Europe) they immediately size one another up and are connected if not by both being black, by both knowing the others appearance is a performance and thereby being both a potential ally and threat. They can "knock" the other's "hustle" if they chose, "give the other's game away." Not exactly an earth shaking generalization but an earthquake of an idea that broke through somethings that I have been trying (am trying, will always be trying) to get at the root of. I think that I did make a breakthrough in my connection to Mr. Baldwin.
Maybe what he is saying isn't just about the nature of black people so much as about the nature of black sheep, those on the outside looking in, anyone who has had to realize that the rules of the game had no room for them and that they would have to knoe more than the rules if they were going to survive. I think that it really doesn't matter why someone is a black sheep, or even if they are different kinds, they will ultimately know and understand one another. Not that they will agree or like one another, but they will be able to see things that the general populace can't, because there survival has always depended on this. It is one of those weird things that I think explains alot of things like "gaydar". Kind of a dumb example, but the less dangerous it has been for a person to be gay and the longer they have lived with it openly, the less they can tell who is gay or not. And on the same note, but a little differently, some people have laughed before when I have said this, but I meant it totally seriously, that you can't fool black people or children. I was talking about being gay, but I kind of think it extends to other things, and of course there really are plenty of black people and children who can easily be fooled about alot of things, but how little you can fool them about is a fuction of how disenfranchised they have been, and both groups are consistently, even today, still left on the outside (perhaps with children it isn't so much disenfranchisement as them not yet being fully enfranchised -is that a word?). More and more black people are beginning to be more often on the inside (at least officially and at least some of them) and so more and more don't really have to be able so much to see everything in such a bare, honest way, and so they don't. That is what any black person means when they accuse another black person of acting "white": they mean that they have reached a place where they are comfortable and are believing that everyone else has the same access to that comfort that they do and so dissconnect themselves from any real direct knowledge of that kind of suffering. this is not meant to be particularly condemning to black people who are letting themselves enjoy prosperity that they have found because not everyone has it, unless it is also condemning of anyone who lets themselves enjoy the prosperity they have found; this is just saying that the spaces within our social structures which black people can occupy have opened up to let them also live comfortably enough in some cases to forget that there are those who do not also have such opportunity. I no way do I suggest that many (perhaps most) white people are not guilty of the same myopia, rather that it is that shortsightedness which necessarily describes what has often separated whites (the general 'ingroup') and blacks (the general 'outgroup'), and finding themselves in a place where they can afford this loss of perspective is exactly what is meant when someone says someone acts "white". I think this is a gross generalization and that all of the most effective people anywhere have to know something about disenfrachisement that those who are 'there' and have always been 'there' can never relate to.
I guess I have begun to feel that something was slipping and I was losing something important as I began to feel more and more like I could act more naturally and felt more attractive and popular and less like a freak or an outcast. I guess this has just helped me begin to put a finger on that.
I also think this explains alot of why whites in the South are more comfortable around blacks than are northerners. And I don't think it is just about proximity and familiarity in a literal sense (although this is of course part of it), but in also in some way being connected in also feeling separated from and rejected from the 'ingroup'. This is the great legacy of the civil war that we are supposed to carry around as baggage. I think most of us in our generation have let go of any feelings of being beaten or resentment really directly relating to that conflict, but we still feel the effects of bearing the physical damage of the war on our soil relating to how that put the South back economically, socially, etc. and the intellectual attitude of being constantly represented as backwards, primitive, country, slow, dumb, etc. We know what it is like to walk into a room of people from all over and have them find out only where we come from and immediately assume that we are less of something (ally, foe, partner, student, etc.). And even if we don't so much feel that too terribly directly, it is blasted into our minds in popular media and bolstered by the people who represent us (pick any alabama govenor ever, Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond) nationally. Now I am not trying to directly compare southern whites to blacks and do feel that even as we may in general be more in touch with black people, we are still in a somewhat more priveleged position regardless.
I have to say that all this has alot to do with how I have always really felt that south carolina (Charleston in particular) strikes me as so different from most of the south. I feel when I am in Alabama or Mississippi like I am playing perfectly fair if I sort of politely sidestep things or embelish and play out every interpersonal interaction like a chess game. I feel like almost everyone works from this vantage point of having some idea that people take advantage of people and they know to watch their back and being conscious of what you are doing constitutes staying alive and being able to get ahead in the game. Here I feel like it is cheating. I feel like everyone expects everything to be so laid out and honest in a blankly boring way that if you really do what back home is just prudent consideration, here it is taken as underhanded and disagreeable. And I think that it is because this south is not the rural south and not really connected to it at all except in that same condescending way that the north also connects to the rural south. Now there are definently things here that I find familiar, but I am really often rubbed very wrong by the way in which things do still run with some of the old machinery that is (thankfully) a little more broken down where we are from. You can really feel in this city very clearly that it wasn't the same kind of civil rights battle ground that our state was. Not that progress hasn't been made, but the tops haven't quite been blow off of some of the institutions in the same way and some of the sentiments haven't either been driven underground or brought out in the open in quite the same way.
This wasn't meant to be such an analysis of the South so much as just about me trying to more and more understand how I fit in the world. I am beginning to feel perhaps like James Baldwin did in Paris, so separated from what was familiar and finally find my way in being able to really go at things directly instead of slinking around in the shadows, but I feel like it is something of a bitter victory. You find that you have sort of reached that position that will afford you some comfort and that you are finally allowed to join in the reindeer games, and with this you begin to feel some obligation to start to play by the rules, but you still feel connected to those still left on the outside. And maybe a place at the table isn't all it's cracked up to be if no one at the table is going to listen to you. The problem isn't totally about feeling that taking your place at the table leaves others to pick through the crumbs on the floor, but (recklessly switching metaphores midsentence) more that by agreeing to play by the rules, you have to make others agree to change the rules to even things out instead the old familiar standard of just playing your way and beating them because they are trapped and blinded by their rules. This all makes me think of an old Indian proverb I read somewhere: 'the big fish eats the little fish, and the little fish must get smart.' When you are invisible, ignored by the system, what you do doesn't matter to the system itself, you just have to be smart and stay alive. Once the world decides to see that you exist, you are stuck in their rules and you are expected to play by their rules. You can't just buck the system in the same way you did before, you have to change it. Just trying to side step things and slinking through the shadows either put you in a position of danger and will be attacked or you are making a declaration of wanting to be outside again. You are pulling yourself back to that familar place that you came from, which is not a place that I am trying to romanticize: life on the outside is brutal and dangerous. There you are in competition with EVERYTHING. It is exausting and painful.
of course in this analysis (I am sorry that you are so often the person who gets stuck with these musings from me, you know that none of this would ever be to preach or that I feel that I am speaking from a more informed or enlightened position, but that I just really think you have some amazing lucidity of thought and know me well enough to understand) is way too general and over dramatic and simplifying. But I just am really feeling that I am finally understanding something important and have really made some significant connection to James Baldwin's ideas.
One thing that i find sort of funny, is that so much of the language that I have been using (particulary, 'outside', 'ingroups', etc.) mean dramatically different things when I am talking about black people and gay people. With reference to being black or poor or disefrancised in most ways, being in the 'outgroup' means having not yet transcended this separating factor, while with gay people, the 'outgroup' encompasses those who have most embraced this seperating factor. The effect is potentially separating in that it is acknowledging that they are separated (something which may or may not have been apparent before), but it is when a gay person decides to live with this difference being baldly apparent that they begin to be stuck in the rules of society. I guess I am letting myself look at this in a offcenter sort of way. I guess I am kind of ignoring, that so many gay people don't take coming out as really an occasion to find their place at the table, but rather take it as occasion to set their own table and turn their back to the rest of the world. This is a tendency that I am finding myself fighting with. I guess this is where people get stuck...
well, actually, i am going to have to stop for awhile. I know this is abrupt, but I think if I don't pull out now, I am going to end up with you suffering a discourse that is much longer that anyone should ever have to read at one sitting at a computer.
delay indicted: it's about damn time.
I'm signed up for Washington Post breaking news updates and usually they are so stupid I just end up annoyed and wonder why they even bother sending them, but today they finally hit on news worth sending folks an email alert about: DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
D is for Rover
Ok, so you are thinking "D is not for Rover, you idiot" but you are wrong. That is the title of my favorite book as a little child. It made absolutely no sense and was just about this obnoxious little kid who would get all his other letters connected to an appropriate word ("A is for apple") but absolutely refused to quit saying "D is for Rover" because Rover was a Dog and that somehow made sense in his mind and it didn't in mind but he was my hero in some weird way just for sticking to his guns and not budging a bit. I can't remember the ending. I want to remember that it had a happy ending and the adults finally realized that he was so far ahead of them in everyway and all laughed and made the connection that in saying "d is for Rover" he was saying "d is for Dog", but I am horribly afraid that instead he ended up doing something ridiculous like finally saying "R is for rover" and all the adults celebrating and congradulating him on getting it "right". How horrible! I hope that is just a bad nightmare and it ended the right way. I think I do remember that regardless of the ending, I think I continued to read it as "D is for Rover" even at the end, and pissing off whatever adult was reading over my shoulder. I do think that I remember that my parents somehow understood and saying "D is for Rover" totally made sense to them.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
You aren't in rural AL living with your parents.
I have been thinking about leaving New York. Not because I dislike it here. Quite the opposite: I really love this town. But I am not looking to be settled anywhere now and would like to move around a bit. I always get fairly wanderlusty in the fall anyway, but I have been in the city for a few years and don't care to go through another northern winter this year.
thinking of travelling has sent me rummaging through old email from times and places past. Since I have been on a big gay streak the last couple of weeks (not usually what I blog about), I thought I would insert this one into the public archives. This was a letter I sent to K- the summer after I graduated from college. After living in Charleston openly and comfortably for years, I was back home in AL spending the summer selling peaches off the back of a truck with my brother. After a supremely akward graduation dinner friends had cooked for me and my visiting family, I decided to break with tradition and bluntly come out my parents rather than just let them figure it out on their own. I generally prefer the more circuitous route and letting things fall where they naturally fall, but it wasn't working and it put my friends in the awkward position of not knowing what they could say around my family and having to act weird and not being able to introduce my boyfriend as such without turning the event into a fiasco.
So this is on into the summer, me missing my friends and Charleston and the small town life slowly sucking the life out of me. I'm having trouble psyching myself up for following through with coming out, but looking back these years later and how my relationship with my parents has gotten better and how much easier it is to stay in touch with my family and how much more 3-dimesional my life is with my kin, I don't doubt for a second that it was the right thing to do. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't talk to my family very often right now and certainly not with the depth that we do.
anyway, this isn't a public service announcement for coming out, more just a record of a time and a place and a warning reminder of where my path could have taken me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You aren't in rural AL living with your parents.
Just remind yourself of that when charleston feels small and annoying. I get to spend all day everyday smiling and wheeling and dealing with rednecks. It is terrifying how deeply you have to sink into good manners to keep from going crazy in this place. You just smile real big and say ma'am and sir and remind yourself that you are taking their money and smile just a little bigger still. I do that and go to class. A genetics class taught through the poultry science dept. at Mississippi's ag school. I am in class with people majoring in poultry science who had to take summer classes! Anyway, enough complaining, just reminding you that of all the places you could be, Charleston doesn't measure up too poorly.
I guess I shouldn't complain too much, I am kind of enjoying things here, but boy am I fucking bored too. I really don't mind selling peaches and it is nice to have money, but what in the hell can I do with it? The coffee house/bar that C- and I have always gone to has become really fucking lame and only really annoying unattractive people go there anymore. For however much you may think charleston has some ugly folks, you forget that far and away, ugly people way dominate the rest of the populace elsewhere.
I do have to say that I am remembering why it is important to have other gay people around you. Of course I miss all my gay buddies in Chucktown individually, but just what bad things it does to a person to be so inside themselves. Not really that I have to be that much more inside myself than I always am, but when no one gay really exists, it becomes so surreal. I can't find that gay bar that the internet said existed in Columbus and so the only way gay people have to meet that I know of around here is just by supersensitive gaydar and cruising.
It is weird for me because all of this is what I was around as I had to come to terms with being gay, but after being in Charleston and having the benifit of gay not really being something that you had to hide of worry about or that was strange or weird or subverted, I am just kind of repulsed at the whole thing. I am not trying to be on any moral high horse about people here or anything, but if you can't acknowledge being gay as part of you, the only outlet allowed to people is sex and because it isn't something that is really allowed to be dealt with openly, the sex that can be found has to be trashy, and I am just a little over all that stuff.
I am saying all this because it is strange to be in the position of being where there isn't anywhere that I can go to meet gay people just to talk, but because everyone gay is so repressed, I can walk down the street or through a store and just sight one person after the other who I could have sex with. No chance in hell that they would ever have a discussion about being gay or anything like that, but I could drive into Columbus and without really trying find someone to have sex with in less that an hour. At the bookstore, Walmart, the mall, the grocery store; you can just see and feel the people who are looking for it and half the time they have wedding rings on. Don't get me wrong; Columbus isn't exactly brimming over with gay men, but just imagine all the folks in Charleston if they were milling around and only had hopes of meeting someone else gay through eye contact and coded conversation. It is just really weird and it bothers me that it all seems really normal. Perhaps this is why I never really had much trouble dealing with Randolf: he is everywhere here. This is the battlefield that I was trained on, but I had kind of hoped that it had changed a little in my absence. I really just want to meet people to hang out with, not to have quick sex with in their truck or some bathroom. The closet does breed monsters, and there is nothing more tragic than the monster that you can't hate because you know how it grew. This is exactly what my course would have been set for if I hadn't gotten out. This part of why Randolf bothers me so much: he got out of all this but tried to bring it with him. I guess I should be more sympathetic to him anyway.
But back to what is going on here, coming out of the closet really doesn't mean a whole lot because you have nothing to do once you come out. You can't really just make good gay friends and get to know people. You can't just let it be a part of you and not really a big deal. You just have nothing to do with it except have sex and why bother coming out if sex is the only thing it can mean in your life? That's the part that isn't anybody's business anyway, gay or straight. I know that I still need to come out for me, but that is because I am moving on to bigger and better things and out of this hole and random sex with strangers isnt' all that being gay means to me, but it is just really bothering me that this is really all that is left to someone who lives here. I am sure that it isn't really totally as grim as I am painting it, and maybe there is some kind of gay culture hidden somewhere, but if it is so hidden that no one can find it, then it doesn't really make any difference anyway.
I am just a little bit irritated at the moment. I have come home and am planning on telling my family that I am gay, and I really am enjoying living with them this summer, but why tell them? All my reasons to tell them are past or future, nothing in the present. It will let me talk more clearly about life direction and plans and who I have dated and cared about, but what does being gay mean here? Nothing but having sex with a trucker/hairdresser/business man/cashier/(fill in any occupation) whose real name you don't know and who probably has a wife or girlfriend. Sorry to be so melodramatic and all, but I am just a little annoyed at the moment. Just to get to a point in my life where I am ready to stand up and be a whole person and take care of the things that I need to thinking that I am at this point because I have grown and matured and learned so much and that the reason that I hadn't come out before was because I wasn't really mature and confident enough; and then to come home and realize that I really did have reasons for thinking that coming out was ridiculous here and not understanding it and that nothing around here is really any better and that it isn't going to be any time soon. There is no good reason for a gay person to come out here unless they are moving away. It bothers me. It really bothers me that things are like this.
I guess I need to shut up and realize that change is affected slowly and that it is coming along, but I am spitfire mad at the moment. Cause I know it isn't just here. It isn't just Columbus, or P- Co, or AL, or MS, or even the fucking South. This is what it is like most places in the world and this is the way it has been for most of history. Sure there is progress, and sure there are welcoming places, but so long as most places aren't, it doesn't matter how moral or nice or good a gay person wants to be, most are relegated to just trying to hold it all inside and do nothing with it except for potentially some random sex sometime, and those who don't at least find that can look forward to all the mental problems that repression and self denial bring and are in good standing to turn into a schitzophrenic or a pedophile or an abusive husband. I know that I am being too intense about all this stuff. It just irritates me. I want to hate a man who tries to make eye contact with me and pick me up at mall with a wedding ring on his finger, but I can't because even as much as I am the big believer in ultimate choice and responsibility, I know how he got to this point, I know what options he has, I know what being a responsible gay person would require and how far away he would have to go and what he would have to leave to have that and why he is married and has kids. It bugs me so much because I had begun to get to the point that I felt strongly protective of young kids trying to make it as a fag in middle and high school and remembered and knew how real all of that struggle was, but I had gotten to a point where I felt that things weren't so bad for someone as an adult. That any adult should be able to find a place as a homosexual and that it wasn't incompatible with living a full open life. That the problems people percieved were more their own and not so much society. That people were ready for gay people to exist and be visible and that it really isn't that big a deal. It pisses me off that I can't really say that anymore. I know that even though you can make it as a gay person and you can survive all right, stepping out of the closet also means that you often have to step out of your community. That if you are in small town america, there isn't a place for you to be open because if you are open, you are suddenly put under a microscope and made to feel even more alone than before. If you are in the closet, at least you have the other closeted people in there with you. YOu may not really get to talk to them much except for maybe a small circle of friends, but you know they are there and they know you are there and all that. But you come out and suddenly you are a thing apart. You are out of the closet and stuck there with big dumb world of straight people and a few sitcom characters. This doesn't mean that you can suddenly have a boyfriend or a date; no one else is out and it is harder to pull off now because everyone knows and any guy with you is outing himself. Why bother? Why fucking bother ever coming out? Just so the people around you can know what you like and to give you an excuse for not having a girlfriend? Who gives a damn? So you can be better friends with the only people who are out, which are the super queeny hair dresser types who couldn't really hide it anyway? just what I have always wanted. So that those attempting to be supportive can play every dumb straight person's favorite gay game: "I know this guy who is perfect for you; he is gay," and try to set you up with some fat divorced accountant who is only out because his son found his porno stash and blew the cover? So sure it isn't really all that bad, but it bothers me that some of it is. It isn't supposed to be anymore and it still really really is. I am not much one to sit around and whine about the way things should be and think people should just stand up and do the best they can with what they have and where they are, but I guess I am just too aware of what people are left with. I hate being bothered with sympathy and all that crap. I don't have the time, energy, or personality for it; but I'm not blind or dense and I can see what goes on around me. Anyway, that is enough of my bitching and whining. Sorry, I kind of just let it fly in email.
anyway, things really are pretty good around here and I am enjoying hanging out with my family. I love having my brothers around. But I have a test tomorrow and I have to get up in about 3 hours, so I gotta run. Be nice to everyone, and tell them I said hi.
I miss you.
love,
D-
PS I have to send you a picture of me in the paper selling peaches. Full color front page picture in the Sunday paper. Says something about the town doesn't it?
thinking of travelling has sent me rummaging through old email from times and places past. Since I have been on a big gay streak the last couple of weeks (not usually what I blog about), I thought I would insert this one into the public archives. This was a letter I sent to K- the summer after I graduated from college. After living in Charleston openly and comfortably for years, I was back home in AL spending the summer selling peaches off the back of a truck with my brother. After a supremely akward graduation dinner friends had cooked for me and my visiting family, I decided to break with tradition and bluntly come out my parents rather than just let them figure it out on their own. I generally prefer the more circuitous route and letting things fall where they naturally fall, but it wasn't working and it put my friends in the awkward position of not knowing what they could say around my family and having to act weird and not being able to introduce my boyfriend as such without turning the event into a fiasco.
So this is on into the summer, me missing my friends and Charleston and the small town life slowly sucking the life out of me. I'm having trouble psyching myself up for following through with coming out, but looking back these years later and how my relationship with my parents has gotten better and how much easier it is to stay in touch with my family and how much more 3-dimesional my life is with my kin, I don't doubt for a second that it was the right thing to do. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't talk to my family very often right now and certainly not with the depth that we do.
anyway, this isn't a public service announcement for coming out, more just a record of a time and a place and a warning reminder of where my path could have taken me.
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You aren't in rural AL living with your parents.
Just remind yourself of that when charleston feels small and annoying. I get to spend all day everyday smiling and wheeling and dealing with rednecks. It is terrifying how deeply you have to sink into good manners to keep from going crazy in this place. You just smile real big and say ma'am and sir and remind yourself that you are taking their money and smile just a little bigger still. I do that and go to class. A genetics class taught through the poultry science dept. at Mississippi's ag school. I am in class with people majoring in poultry science who had to take summer classes! Anyway, enough complaining, just reminding you that of all the places you could be, Charleston doesn't measure up too poorly.
I guess I shouldn't complain too much, I am kind of enjoying things here, but boy am I fucking bored too. I really don't mind selling peaches and it is nice to have money, but what in the hell can I do with it? The coffee house/bar that C- and I have always gone to has become really fucking lame and only really annoying unattractive people go there anymore. For however much you may think charleston has some ugly folks, you forget that far and away, ugly people way dominate the rest of the populace elsewhere.
I do have to say that I am remembering why it is important to have other gay people around you. Of course I miss all my gay buddies in Chucktown individually, but just what bad things it does to a person to be so inside themselves. Not really that I have to be that much more inside myself than I always am, but when no one gay really exists, it becomes so surreal. I can't find that gay bar that the internet said existed in Columbus and so the only way gay people have to meet that I know of around here is just by supersensitive gaydar and cruising.
It is weird for me because all of this is what I was around as I had to come to terms with being gay, but after being in Charleston and having the benifit of gay not really being something that you had to hide of worry about or that was strange or weird or subverted, I am just kind of repulsed at the whole thing. I am not trying to be on any moral high horse about people here or anything, but if you can't acknowledge being gay as part of you, the only outlet allowed to people is sex and because it isn't something that is really allowed to be dealt with openly, the sex that can be found has to be trashy, and I am just a little over all that stuff.
I am saying all this because it is strange to be in the position of being where there isn't anywhere that I can go to meet gay people just to talk, but because everyone gay is so repressed, I can walk down the street or through a store and just sight one person after the other who I could have sex with. No chance in hell that they would ever have a discussion about being gay or anything like that, but I could drive into Columbus and without really trying find someone to have sex with in less that an hour. At the bookstore, Walmart, the mall, the grocery store; you can just see and feel the people who are looking for it and half the time they have wedding rings on. Don't get me wrong; Columbus isn't exactly brimming over with gay men, but just imagine all the folks in Charleston if they were milling around and only had hopes of meeting someone else gay through eye contact and coded conversation. It is just really weird and it bothers me that it all seems really normal. Perhaps this is why I never really had much trouble dealing with Randolf: he is everywhere here. This is the battlefield that I was trained on, but I had kind of hoped that it had changed a little in my absence. I really just want to meet people to hang out with, not to have quick sex with in their truck or some bathroom. The closet does breed monsters, and there is nothing more tragic than the monster that you can't hate because you know how it grew. This is exactly what my course would have been set for if I hadn't gotten out. This part of why Randolf bothers me so much: he got out of all this but tried to bring it with him. I guess I should be more sympathetic to him anyway.
But back to what is going on here, coming out of the closet really doesn't mean a whole lot because you have nothing to do once you come out. You can't really just make good gay friends and get to know people. You can't just let it be a part of you and not really a big deal. You just have nothing to do with it except have sex and why bother coming out if sex is the only thing it can mean in your life? That's the part that isn't anybody's business anyway, gay or straight. I know that I still need to come out for me, but that is because I am moving on to bigger and better things and out of this hole and random sex with strangers isnt' all that being gay means to me, but it is just really bothering me that this is really all that is left to someone who lives here. I am sure that it isn't really totally as grim as I am painting it, and maybe there is some kind of gay culture hidden somewhere, but if it is so hidden that no one can find it, then it doesn't really make any difference anyway.
I am just a little bit irritated at the moment. I have come home and am planning on telling my family that I am gay, and I really am enjoying living with them this summer, but why tell them? All my reasons to tell them are past or future, nothing in the present. It will let me talk more clearly about life direction and plans and who I have dated and cared about, but what does being gay mean here? Nothing but having sex with a trucker/hairdresser/business man/cashier/(fill in any occupation) whose real name you don't know and who probably has a wife or girlfriend. Sorry to be so melodramatic and all, but I am just a little annoyed at the moment. Just to get to a point in my life where I am ready to stand up and be a whole person and take care of the things that I need to thinking that I am at this point because I have grown and matured and learned so much and that the reason that I hadn't come out before was because I wasn't really mature and confident enough; and then to come home and realize that I really did have reasons for thinking that coming out was ridiculous here and not understanding it and that nothing around here is really any better and that it isn't going to be any time soon. There is no good reason for a gay person to come out here unless they are moving away. It bothers me. It really bothers me that things are like this.
I guess I need to shut up and realize that change is affected slowly and that it is coming along, but I am spitfire mad at the moment. Cause I know it isn't just here. It isn't just Columbus, or P- Co, or AL, or MS, or even the fucking South. This is what it is like most places in the world and this is the way it has been for most of history. Sure there is progress, and sure there are welcoming places, but so long as most places aren't, it doesn't matter how moral or nice or good a gay person wants to be, most are relegated to just trying to hold it all inside and do nothing with it except for potentially some random sex sometime, and those who don't at least find that can look forward to all the mental problems that repression and self denial bring and are in good standing to turn into a schitzophrenic or a pedophile or an abusive husband. I know that I am being too intense about all this stuff. It just irritates me. I want to hate a man who tries to make eye contact with me and pick me up at mall with a wedding ring on his finger, but I can't because even as much as I am the big believer in ultimate choice and responsibility, I know how he got to this point, I know what options he has, I know what being a responsible gay person would require and how far away he would have to go and what he would have to leave to have that and why he is married and has kids. It bugs me so much because I had begun to get to the point that I felt strongly protective of young kids trying to make it as a fag in middle and high school and remembered and knew how real all of that struggle was, but I had gotten to a point where I felt that things weren't so bad for someone as an adult. That any adult should be able to find a place as a homosexual and that it wasn't incompatible with living a full open life. That the problems people percieved were more their own and not so much society. That people were ready for gay people to exist and be visible and that it really isn't that big a deal. It pisses me off that I can't really say that anymore. I know that even though you can make it as a gay person and you can survive all right, stepping out of the closet also means that you often have to step out of your community. That if you are in small town america, there isn't a place for you to be open because if you are open, you are suddenly put under a microscope and made to feel even more alone than before. If you are in the closet, at least you have the other closeted people in there with you. YOu may not really get to talk to them much except for maybe a small circle of friends, but you know they are there and they know you are there and all that. But you come out and suddenly you are a thing apart. You are out of the closet and stuck there with big dumb world of straight people and a few sitcom characters. This doesn't mean that you can suddenly have a boyfriend or a date; no one else is out and it is harder to pull off now because everyone knows and any guy with you is outing himself. Why bother? Why fucking bother ever coming out? Just so the people around you can know what you like and to give you an excuse for not having a girlfriend? Who gives a damn? So you can be better friends with the only people who are out, which are the super queeny hair dresser types who couldn't really hide it anyway? just what I have always wanted. So that those attempting to be supportive can play every dumb straight person's favorite gay game: "I know this guy who is perfect for you; he is gay," and try to set you up with some fat divorced accountant who is only out because his son found his porno stash and blew the cover? So sure it isn't really all that bad, but it bothers me that some of it is. It isn't supposed to be anymore and it still really really is. I am not much one to sit around and whine about the way things should be and think people should just stand up and do the best they can with what they have and where they are, but I guess I am just too aware of what people are left with. I hate being bothered with sympathy and all that crap. I don't have the time, energy, or personality for it; but I'm not blind or dense and I can see what goes on around me. Anyway, that is enough of my bitching and whining. Sorry, I kind of just let it fly in email.
anyway, things really are pretty good around here and I am enjoying hanging out with my family. I love having my brothers around. But I have a test tomorrow and I have to get up in about 3 hours, so I gotta run. Be nice to everyone, and tell them I said hi.
I miss you.
love,
D-
PS I have to send you a picture of me in the paper selling peaches. Full color front page picture in the Sunday paper. Says something about the town doesn't it?
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