I know, I know, it’s not funny. It’s not meant to be, I guess. It’s faux-profound. Faux-profound because…it isn’t, really. I’d actually planned to do the second out of three comics detailing the rest of that scene with R and the mistletoe, but figured I might as well make some token acknowledgment that tomorrow is the start of a new year - especially with all the anticipation building towards 2008 as the year when the American people (supposedly) have a say in who will replace GW.
Since it’s New Year’s Eve, that means it’s time to make New Year’s resolutions - promises to ourselves that we know we won’t keep, but that we strive for anyway. My New Year’s resolutions are to:
Sell/publish my first novel.
Write a second novel - either the sequel to the first, or the completion of my NaNoWriMo project.
Some time between April and November, pack up and move out of this Texan hellhole and back to Chicago where I belong.
Advance my writing career in some way or another, even if it means just picking up another steady contract job on the side. Every bit of progress counts.
Take better care of myself and stop neglecting the gym so much, before I start to go soft. (Isn’t that everyone’s resolution?)
Work towards not just being content with my life, but being really, truly happy with it.
Try not to be such a crotchety, antisocial old bastard. Sometimes. For at least five minutes a week.
That’s it. I know some of it’s cheesy, some of it’s far-reaching and possibly impractical or unlikely - but it’s better to shoot for it and fall short with some progress made rather than to try nothing and remain in the same place, stagnant and rotting, forever. That’s why people make New Year’s resolutions: to give themselves goals to reach for, to enact needed changes.
Feel free to share your resolutions, or your plans for celebrating the new year and the inevitable midnight countdown. Whatever your plans, I hope you enjoy them. I know I’ll be enjoying mine.
Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s hoping that 2008 becomes a year of change for the better.
I knew I’d forgotten to do something today. That’s what I get for sleeping until almost sunset.
Second DR Live Webcast
After the first webcast, I had my doubts about doing it again - possibly because I came quite close to fainting the first time through. However, general consensus seems to be that I should do a second…and frankly, if I can’t think of something to talk about for 30 minutes for just once a month, I should really be ashamed of myself.
So the tentative date and time for the next webcast is Sunday, January 20th, 2008 - from 5p-5:30p CST. If you missed it last time due to the time and want to tune in this time, let me know if there’s a conflict and if enough people have a problem, I’ll see what I can do. Also, if you tried to tune in and had any problems with the streaming plugin or the java chat room, please let me know what browser and OS you were using and I’ll see if I can tweak it any more.
Hopefully this time I can slow down and mellow out a little, rather than rattling on in sheer terror and sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk on speed.
1,500 Comments Contest Update
I’m not sure how you guys pulled it off, but we’re already at 1,415 comments. Just 85 left to go before someone’s taking home a pink monstrosity of an MP3 player. The next goal after that will be 2,500, and we’ll see what I can scrape up for a prize.
We may try something different for a little fun, though. After we hit the 1,500 mark, I think I’ll put up a post just for the sake of commenting and see how many comments we can get in 24 hours. The goal will be 100 comments to that one post in 24 hours, starting precisely at 12a CST on the appointed date. The person who posts the 100th comment to that post will get some prize or another. Probably another MP3 player, but…I have no idea. We’ll see when it happens. It’s just an idea. If we do it, I’ll clarify the rules in the post. Hopefully by then the Akismet filter problem will be fixed, so I don’t have to manually approve each comment.
And I’m just rambling, so I’m off now; I have a bit more novel-tweaking to do before sending it off to a publisher in the hopes that someone will bite, so I’d better get to work. Wish me luck.
Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you Monday with a quick comic.
Today is a day to discuss world news, and the death of a woman who accomplished many things in her life and will now influence even more in her death.
If you’ve kept even one ear open to the news, you know that yesterday former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, killed by a bullet to the neck before a suicide bomber detonated near her vehicle, killing at least twenty other people at the election rally she’d attended. Bhutto was the first democratically elected female PM of Pakistan, and a voice of opposition against other Pakistani political leaders.
Her death has sparked worldwide concern over the fate of elections, Pakistani democracy, and even the overall stability of a nuclear-armed country - and has thrown Pakistan into chaos. Over a dozen have died in protests and riots; buildings and vehicles have been bombed, burned, and ransacked. Police have been called out in force to suppress violence. Supporters are already pointing fingers and handing out political propaganda accusing her rivals, including Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The grief and anger of a nation are felt on every street, in every home. Across the globe, people hold their breaths and wait for the tide of chaos to ebb, to see what will remain washed up on shore.
Bhutto’s life was one of turmoil and unrest as she sailed through unstable and even dangerous political seas. She represented change and progress - but even more, she represented choice. In her absence and with her strongest rival boycotting the elections after her death, there will be little choice for the Pakistani people and the upcoming elections will border on a farce.
Here in the United States we watch, we listen to the statements of our president, and many of us find it difficult to comprehend that the death of one woman could possibly change the political tenor of an entire country. We thank whatever deity we believe in that such things rarely happen here. We cross ourselves and pray that Pakistan’s unrest will not spread to touch our shores, and whisper over nuclear capability in what-if situations that change little but that make us feel as if we’re “on top of things” by discussing them. Little in our world has changed. Little in our world would change, if we found ourselves in the same situation.
If Hillary Clinton was assassinated before the 2008 presidential election and the nation suspected rival Mike Huckabee, we wouldn’t riot in the streets. We wouldn’t protest. Very few of us would take action at all. We would press our fat, soft fingers to our mouths and make distressed noises. We would stand on our soapboxes and preach angrily, and yet rally to do nothing. We would talk about it over business lunches and coffee breaks. We would point fingers from the comfort of our sofas and wait for the television to tell us who did it, to give us our neatly-packaged daily dose of current events. We would obey any edict that our governing bodies laid out, and accept their promises that they would handle everything even if we didn’t quite believe it. In a nation of millions only a small few would gather to raise their voices, to speak their hearts and minds - and they would quickly be silenced and sent to their homes by police officers, riot armor at the ready.
Why? Because we are complacent, compliant, and even a little afraid. We are afraid to lose the comforts of our lives, and know that the death of but one politician cannot strip the nation of said comforts - but the acts of one in response to that death can strip that individual of his or her possessions, freedom, possibly even their life. We weep in the name of patriotism, but these are no longer the days of JFK. We feel little for our leaders. They are neither beloved nor trusted. Most people don’t even know exactly what it is they do, or care. This is not the nation of our fathers.
And this is not Pakistan, where the silencing of a single voice can change the political face of an entire country - where the death of one woman can shape the lives of a nation.
You can view this in whatever light you want, positive or negative. You can say that we’ve grown apathetic, or you can say that we are stable. You can say we’re blind followers, or you can say that we have faith in the process, and that our nation is so large and so secure that not even the death of a major political figure could shake it beyond dominating news headlines and initiating changes in federal security policy that the people would have little say in. We are safe from riots, and from mass violence. We are safe from everything, because we are everything and while headlines are interesting, we’re more worried about making it to work on what little gas is left in the tank. We play the short game, the nine to five, the game of life and all its minutiae. We are the trees, and we rarely take notice of our existence as part of a greater arboreal entity that is comprised by us and yet at the same time encompasses us.
We are people of small lives and small concerns - but our nation is a large and slow-moving beast, ponderous and difficult to sway in its path, often little caring for what other creatures it tramples underfoot.
And I think that, even if we could see clearly that our path wound its way towards a long and unforgiving cliff, very few of us would try to change the beast’s direction.
I feel as if I should write something profound this morning, and yet I’ve got nothing - and I’m out of Seagram’s. Anyone can be profound after a few shots of Seagram’s. It’s a pretty slow gay news day, there’s no point in spending more time hashing through the same recycled political points (just have the bloody election already; we’re damned either way) and the most interesting thing I’ve stumbled across lately has been some wanker in a local Iowa newspaper claiming that a barely-gay film on ABC ruined family TV on Christmas. The comments are priceless (and a little disjointed, but it’s Iowa, after all).
Yeah. Merry Christmas, we dragged your head out of the sand for you; no need to thank us. Gay people exist. We’re a part of the population, which means there’s going to be a percentage of representation on television - especially when television struggles to reflect real life. No one’s trying to force anything on anyone. You can’t close your eyes and wish your gay next-door-neighbor away. At least on TV you can change the channel, so stop your griping and use your thumb for more than a navel cork. Jerk.
Anyway. It’s been a little while since I’ve done an “Ask Adri” question, and I’d saved this one for a slow day when one might need some amusement. I certainly hope the person who wrote it isn’t serious, but either way, I’m going to take a stab at it.
hi Adri I really like your comic
I like to read yaoi slashfic
But its weird
No one uzes lube
Is that true
Do gays use lube
Sweet Pea
Kind of reads like a weird kind of haiku or tanka, doesn’t it?
Sweetie, here’s your first problem: you’re reading gay porn written by girls. Specifically by girls in their late teens and mid-twenties who’ve probably never taken it up the back door (or the front door, most likely) and thus have no idea how the mechanics of that work. I know there’s a huge craze in the female-dominated yaoi fandom; I used to help fuel it with a yaoi webcomic. (If you don’t know what yaoi is, have a gander here.) I know that porn written by girls is more appealing. It has plot, characterization, and descriptions of sex that don’t involve words like “sloppy”, “squishing”, “gaping”, “gushing”, and…well, I’ll spare you the rest.
But to dispel a few illusions created by yaoi fanfiction and slashfiction: the bum does not self-lubricate. It is not a magical transformative thing that instantly takes on properties of the vagina at convenient moments when the bumsexing is about to occur.
Water is not lube. Saliva is not lube. Blood is not lube. Cooking oil is not lube. And for all that’s holy, unholy, and somewhere in between, soap of any kind is not lube. Stuff a bar of soap up your nose until your mucosae rip, then give your nostrils a good swabbing with Palmolive before jamming a finger in and out of there a few dozen times at rapid speed. Tell me how good it feels, eh?
With that said, yes, real gay sex does involve lube (unless you’re dealing with an idiot or a masochist). There’s KY Jelly, Platinum Wet Glide, various body oils that do dual duty, pre-lubricated condoms, the list goes on. It’s not an option. It’s a necessity. He may say “oh, I like it rough” now, but he won’t be liking it so rough when his doctor is giving him a prostate exam and lecturing him about the damage done to his rectal tissue. Not to mention that penetration isn’t particularly easy without lubricant and preparation, and it’s not just uncomfortable for the recipient. Friction is a scabies-ridden b*tch.
Real gay sex is not as pretty as the fiction makes it seem. No sex is as pretty as fiction makes it seem. Sex is messy, crude, awkward, and funny as hell no matter the gender of those involved; human beings are some oddly-put-together things, and when you’re trying to cram two or more naked bodies together in certain ways the limbs start going everywhere like you’re doing the wild pony with a Gumby doll. Funny thing is if you keep a sense of humor about it and just relax…sometimes you find something even better than the fiction. It may still be messy, it may not be perfect, but there’ll be something there in that wild meeting of bodies and the hiss of skin on skin that makes it not matter anymore, because every touch is just right and it’s hard to care about how silly you both look when you can’t even manage to think for the distraction of each sensation.
I’d like to see any virgin-written fanfiction capture that.
Your 2.5mL of silicone-based lifesaver,
~Adri
Have a question you’d like to see answered on Ask Adri? E-mail your question to adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject “Ask Adri Question” or use the Contact Form to send your question in.
I hope you all had a lovely holiday/government-sanctioned day off of work yesterday; for the most part, I did. Christmas dinner yesterday went swimmingly, even if my mother just had to call before bed last night and make sure she said just the right things to ensure that the grand tradition of tears on Christmas continued for a 27th year. She still didn’t spoil dinner; nor did she entirely spoil my night, as an absolutely lovely man did a stunning job of cheering me up. Thank you.
Dinner began as just R, one of the Reds, and I. When it got around that I was cooking (and what I was cooking), suddenly it became R, Red, girl!R, girl!R’s girlfriend, C, and C’s girlfriend (and J stopped in later to get a nibble of what was left). I made rainbow trout stuffed with watercress and chestnuts, then wrapped in more watercress and baked in a white wine, lemon, and butter sauce, a spinach and cheese bake with pecans, lightly sweetened beer bread, baklava, and cinnamon and nutmeg cupcakes with whipped almond icing and little almond slivers on top. I was expecting to have leftovers. I wasn’t expecting to feed so many hungry mouths.
We had a generally good time; some of us got mildly tipsy, while R! and Red had enough sherry to end up lip-locked on my couch before passing out (and this morning, waking up with shrieks of “oh my god, I made out with a man!” “oh my god, I made out with a WOMAN!” Who needs to mess with glutamate when they have alcohol?). We watched Deja Vu (horrible film), chatted, and everyone except C’s girlfriend enjoyed themselves immensely.
C’s girlfriend sat in the corner, sulked, threw in nasty comments whenever she could, and demanded to leave over and over until C was forced to excuse himself before the film was even over lest she stab him with a fork. She’d been happy to come before, but wasn’t so pleased once she arrived. Why?
She was the only straight person there, and it made her uncomfortable.
Even C is bi; he just happened to fall for a woman this time. His girlfriend has always been nervous about his bisexuality, wondering if it meant he needed to fool around with men on the side and couldn’t be happy with just her, but for the most part she’s not homophobic - just a little sheltered and somewhat ignorant. She’s the kind who’ll ask an offensive question not out of a desire to be malicious, but because she really doesn’t understand and wants to learn.
Okay, she’s also a raging b*tch and I can’t stand her, but I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here. She was being nasty, yes, but we did make her feel ostracized without meaning to. We talked about old same-sex partners, there were a few raunchy gay-themed in-jokes, we even talked GBLTQ politics over dinner, and those inclined to (read: everyone but me) talked gay gossip in TV and films as well as in our local community’s little circle. We didn’t mean for it to become a “gay old time”, pun intended, but since it was a common thread between us, it did dominate perhaps 30% of the conversation with other topics liberally sprinkled in - topics she could have joined in on, but that she was sulking too much to participate in.
When people started to notice that she was pouting and withdrawing, we asked if she was all right, made efforts to draw her out and cheer her up, but by then it was too late. Once we finished dinner and took dessert with us to watch TV, she’d retreated to a corner of the couch to hide behind C and refused to talk save for to lean over to whisper to him until, 20 minutes into the film, he abruptly stood up, apologized, and escorted her out. She spoke only to thank me for the lovely meal and then threw on a rather snottily-toned “and the hospitality” as an afterthought, glared at everyone, and then left.
We just sat there and stared at each other.
While it was her choice to behave brattily and I have zero tolerance for that, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. How many times have I found myself in an uncomfortable situation as the only gay person there, in which many aspects of the conversation went beyond my realm of experience and I wasn’t comfortable joining in to add my own experiences? Hell, that’s one reason I avoid my family. Only one other person in the family (that we know of) is gay, and so at family reunions we inevitably find ourselves dealing with uncomfortable heterocentric questions about when we’re going to bring home an opposite-sex partner, or becoming the circus sideshow of the gathering with people interrogating us about our “lifestyle”. Gays everywhere deal every day with being the odd man out in a predominantly heterosexual society, and we all know how it is to feel utterly isolated even in a group of our peers.
So even if I can’t stand the girl, I felt horrible for turning around and doing the same to her.
Just as a thought exercise, I wrote a post about heterophobia quite some time ago. This situation wasn’t as extreme as the one described, but it was one in which a heterosexual person was left out of the loop and made to feel uncomfortable because she wasn’t “like us” - the same thing that heterosexuals do to us regularly, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
What could we have done to make her more comfortable? I don’t know. We could have avoided anything gay-oriented in our conversation, but then that deliberate stifling would have ruined the mood and made everyone uncomfortable. We can’t help that most of our friends are gay and thus the majority in any gathering will be gay, lesbian, or bisexual; we tend to cluster together just so we can avoid feeling ostracized among our heterosexual friends - so we can have somewhere where we are the norm and we don’t have to feel left out. It’s a vicious cycle of self-segregation that causes us to perpetuate the same social divisions that made us so uncomfortable in the first place.
Whether we realize it or not, we’re part of the problem.
I, for one, would love to try as many solutions as it takes to fix it.
When I woke this morning to the sounds of very loud carolers wandering through my apartment complex, my first thought wasn’t “Yay, it’s Christmas.” My first thought was “If they don’t shut up, I’m going to take my cat” - who has not, by the way, been declawed - “out there and stuff him down the front of someone’s pants. It’ll certainly improve the quality of that bloody yowling.”
Yeah, I’ve got the Christmas spirit, don’t I?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Christmas. I hate the materialism of it, I hate that people use it as an excuse to shove religion down my throat, and oh dear gods, do I hate the crowds of Christmas shoppers.
But I love the smiles on my friends’ faces when they open their gifts, even though just a week ago they were scowling because I absolutely forbade them from buying anything for me. I love the way the city looks at night, when you can walk down the street and see Christmas lights in almost every window. I love the sense of exhilarated peace that seems to come with the season, once the sun sets and those artificial stars twinkle from every rooftop and every lawn. I love the general spirit of the holiday, even if I don’t believe in the current Christian principle behind it.
And I love that this is the first time in recent memory that I haven’t had to deal with a boyfriend’s parents on Christmas.
I can not stand the “meet the family” ritual around Christmas. They always seem to think that since I don’t particularly want to spend Christmas with my drama-llama family (where it’s not unlikely that someone will have to separate my mother and aunt Mary before they draw blood in a front-lawn fistfight over something or other, usually something related to pie), I have to spend Christmas with someone’s family. Just once, I’d love to drill it through someone’s head that I am not a family person.
Especially since my boyfriends’ mothers inevitably hate me.
Fathers, brothers, sisters, etc…we all get along great. The maternal units, on the other hand, view me with unbridled loathing no matter how polite, gentlemanly, and respectful I am. I dress nicely, tie the hair back, make myself look presentable enough to meet Mother Theresa at the pearly gates, but it’s never good enough. Arturo’s mother pitched a fit at the dinner table when he brought me into the room; I suppose I’d have been more upset if I’d understood enough Spanish to catch anything she said beyond a sudden English burst of “harlot”. Patrick’s mother took one look at me and said “Oh, dear, I didn’t raise you to date wetbacks.” That offended the hell out of me, and I’m not even Hispanic. I’ll spare you my response, as it involved more ethnic slurs than you can likely imagine.
There has not been a single “meet the family” Christmas gig where I didn’t show up with a smile on my face and determination to make a good impression only to quietly excuse myself within minutes, ostensibly on the polite premise that I didn’t want to disrupt the family’s happy gathering - but really so they wouldn’t see me struggling to hold back tears at being so viciously attacked by these women for doing nothing, when I was trying my damnedest to do the whole family-holiday thing for the boyfriend’s sake. The only matriarch who ever liked me was the mother of the British-Chinese boy that I dated in the years between Try #1 and Try #2 with The Ex, and with her overseas in England the closest I came to meeting her was voice conference via Skype. Maybe if I’d met her face to face, she wouldn’t have been nearly as welcoming.
I don’t know what it is about me. Since other people don’t generally have that sort of vicious reaction to me on sight, I can only conclude - for the sake of my self esteem, among other things - that it’s not me at all. It’s what I represent: a visual confirmation that yes, her son is gay, and no, baby boy likely won’t be bringing home any fat, happy grandchildren any time soon.
Either that, or I just date men with really rude mothers. It’s gotten to the point where if anyone says “I’d like to bring you home to meet my family”, I start wondering if I should carry a concealed weapon or just show up with blades out, ready to tussle, because it’s going to get ugly.
In the case of Arturo’s mother, at least, I know it was the grandchildren thing. Nevermind that he had an older brother and sister, both happily married and pumping out babies at exponentially growing rates. Arturo was her youngest, her baby boy, and she wanted grandchildren out of him. I was just some man-harlot keeping him from finding the right woman.
And then they wonder why I won’t bring anyone home to meet my family. As if the varying degrees of insanity among my relatives aren’t enough, who knows when someone will start with the snide comments about not having children, never getting married, and of course embarrassing the family. I already got that when I would show up on my own, back when I was still willing to cross the Louisiana state line and risk my own sanity by dealing with those people (and it’s been at least five years since the last time, thank gods).
At least my mother is giving up on the grandchildren thing. My older sisters are hopeless, chasing off men with teeth and claws every chance they get. The only one of them who actually wanted children is now past healthy childbearing age and doesn’t even want to risk artificial implantation, with the next in line nearing that age rapidly. I’m a lost cause as far as impregnating anything with ovaries is concerned. And my mother…well, let’s just say that right now she’s had enough of children to last her a lifetime. My cousin is on an active tour of duty in Iraq (and you wonder why, despite my stated apathy towards my family, I’d like to just bring the soldiers home?), and my mother’s taken on the responsibility of looking after her kids while she’s overseas. The boy and girl, ages 10 and 12, are driving her out of her mind. She’s actually told me, “God, I thought I had it bad with you and the girls? I didn’t know what bad was. They’re going to drive me into an early grave, but on the positive side they’ve made me realize that I had good kids.”
Frankly, I’d rather have that admission than any high-priced Christmas gift.
But in truth? I’m happy to forget that it’s even Christmas. I…honestly don’t have any good memories of Christmas, not even from my childhood. It was always family drama, people sniping at each other, people using each others’ unwitting children to be nasty to each other. The one time I spent Christmas with my father’s family was horribly uncomfortable, because my stepmother and I made a vague pretense of ignoring our loathing for one another and I got to meet the predominantly-white members of my family tree for the first time. It’s lovely to be introduced to an aunt-something-or-other only to have her look me over and then turn to speak to my father as if I wasn’t even there:
“Why, honey, why didn’t you tell us your other baby was colored?”
…
What’s so great about Christmas, again?
Today, I intend to try to find out. This is my first Christmas alone, my first Christmas where I have the freedom to do what I want, to enjoy the season, to just relax and enjoy the day off. I have a few friends coming over tonight; I’ll be cooking, and we’ll be having dinner and then sprawling out to hang out like we always do. Maybe for once I’ll get those warm Christmas fuzzies everyone else talks about. Or maybe I’ll just enjoy a great night with some of my closest friends.
Some people think it’s sad that I won’t have family with me on Christmas - neither mine, nor a loved one’s.
I’ll have a family. A family that I chose.
And I’m happy that for the first time in my life, I won’t be spending Christmas miserable, humiliated, and in tears.
…yes, that’s pretty much the extent of my acknowledgment that it’s Christmas eve. Oh woe, etc., blah blah. Shut it.
Bonus points to anyone who can name the film that line came from.
The haircut is quickly becoming less and less of an option. The longer it gets, the more I start to look like a drag queen (…though that shirt probably isn’t helping…) or a sad little twee attempt to copy the purple-prose travesty that is Wraeththu. No bloody effin’ thank you.
I think everyone out there has that one friend who’s had a crush on you since time immemorial - or at least since you’ve known them - and who doesn’t give up hope no matter how many times you gently, carefully say no so as not to hurt their feelings so badly that it destroys a valuable friendship. One of those friends, for me, is R. R’s the big guy who’s embarrassed to admit that he cried during Waiting to Exhale; he’s a big teddy bear with a great sense of sardonic humor tempered by a sweet streak that’ll give you cavities, a gorgeous body, handsome face, and hair I could play with for hours. If he didn’t have a pot habit, I might consider dating him…but that’s a big, fat no in my book. I’ll look the other way when my friends do it as long as they don’t do it in my presence or bring it into my home (you’ll find yourself on the welcome mat staring at the closed front door so fast you won’t know what hit you), but I refuse to date anyone who routinely tokes up.
Not even if he offers to quit for me.
Especially when I don’t exactly trust that he’d stop that when he won’t even stop his at-times-amusing efforts to get a foot in the dating doorway. I still can’t believe he whipped out the mistletoe while we were curled up on the couch watching Vongo downloads on the laptop Saturday night. (By the way, if you ever get the chance to see The Quiet, take it. It’s not exactly profound cinema, but it will startle you with its depth and the direction it takes. I was expecting it to be awful, but was pleasantly surprised.)
I’ve even told him why we wouldn’t work out, beyond dating briefly; he’s too nice, and I’m too mean. I’ve been down that route, dating nice guys who have an outwardly thick skin but who secretly get their feelings hurt by the tiniest teasing comment, even if it’s said out of caustic affection by someone who isn’t comfortable openly expressing affection, feelings, etc. (what? I’m a guy; don’t give me that look just for being typical of the species). I’d break the poor boy just by being myself, and the worst part is that he’d keep forgiving me over and over again. Not only that, but he’d spoil me.
No, wait, wait - that’s a bad thing. Trust me.
See, when someone spoils me, I rise to the occasion. I can be a bit of a brat on a normal basis, but the more I’m spoiled, the more of a brat I become, until eventually I’d be able to score a 100% on the Diva Quiz with my eyes closed. Not good. Not good at all. It’s nice to be treated well, little thoughtful gestures and such, but taking it beyond a certain level will just bring out the diva in me and make me impossible to deal with.
I’m impossible enough already, thank you. As my friend Kate loves to point out: we are monsters, we are unrepentant, and we are glorious.
R, I know you’re reading this. I know you’ve heard all this before, too; it’s not news to you. I’ve told you why not a thousand times before, and I know you’re over there shaking your head and smiling, because you’re a persistent bastard. I’ve just about given up on getting you to quit; I guess it’s my turn to start smiling, shaking my head, and shoving a palm in your face every time you move in for a kiss. Guess I’m stuck with you. I could think of worse friends to be stuck with. Call me; we’ll go see Sweeney Todd next weekend.
And if you try to grope me in the theatre, I’ll break every last one of your knuckles, one at a time.
The rest of you: Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it. I’m out of here. There’s some brandy-laced egg nog calling my name.
Addendum: I don’t know why, but the Akismet spam filter recently started eating everything, and I can’t turn it off. Sorry if your comments don’t seem to show up on first try; I’m checking the filter periodically and fishing out the legit comments from the spam.
This morning in Wal-Mart, I got my a** pinched by some random little Hispanic rent-a-tart.
I swear to gods, every time I go into that store is an utterly surreal experience. The stories I could tell…
This time I was quite calmly perusing the men’s grooming section, trying to pick out a decent rotary shaver for under $100 and completely lost in my own world, when I heard a simpering murmur of “aiy, Papi” and suddenly felt the sharp sting of two fingers doing a quick topographical survey of my nether regions and possibly trying to snatch a sample of topsoil for further study (he pinched hard; that hurt!). I nearly jumped out of my skin, whirled around, and there was this tarted-up little culo, smiling at me like I’d just told him he’d won Diana Ross’s part in a Broadway adaptation of Lady Sings the Blues.
I admit that at first, I had no idea what to say. No witty retorts tripped off my tongue; no scathing remarks cut him down to size. I was too flabbergasted that I’d just been groped by a total stranger in the supermarket, all while minding my own business.
“Did you think that was cute?” I managed, amazed irritation dripping from every word. He actually batted his eyelashes at me.
I sh*t you not. I felt like I was dealing with a cross between RuPaul and Scarlett O’Hara.
“I think you’re cute, Papi.”
I suppose I should have been flattered. Instead I was just aggravated by the most crass, trashy, tasteless pickup attempt I’ve experienced in years, even if you have to give the boy credit for having the balls to pull something like that with a completely unknown entity. I guess he saw what he wanted, and he went for it. That takes courage. It’s also annoying as hell.
When I’m annoyed, I get a little caustic. Especially with uninvited physical contact.
“Mmkay.” I crooked my finger at him, beckoning him closer. “C’mere. I need to know you’re listening to me. You listening?”
He wiggled - yes, wiggled, I swear he made me look as straight as Chuck Norris - closer and smiled up at me, admittedly rather sweetly, and lisped, “Si, Papi, I’m listening.”
“Good.” I mustered the best smile I could, which probably looked more like a pained grimace. “Because I want to make sure you understand: if you ever touch me again, I will break your sh*t off. Mmkay, pumpkin?” Now granted, I stole that line from Alex Hitchins, but it was extraordinarily useful in that situation.
He pouted. I grabbed the Norelco I’d been eyeing and fled to the cash register.
I’m just…left in awe, honestly, that anyone of any orientation would think that was an acceptable way to approach someone. I suppose he thought since he was tiny and cute, I wouldn’t hurt him. If so, he was right, in a way; I wouldn’t hurt him, because despite my consistent snarling and threats I’m a primarily non-violent person. Basically I’m a harmless, crotchety old bastard. My friends know this and take delight in baiting me.
He didn’t know that, though. I could have turned around to plow a fist into his face. He was half my size, and I could have done some serious damage to him all because he decided to provoke me. Not smart. Not smart at all. I hope he doesn’t try pulling that on a meaner guy (or a straight guy angry that the little rent-a-tart’s gaydar missed the mark that time); he could get seriously hurt, and that’s a hard lesson to learn where a little common sense would suffice.
Besides, I really prefer a “hello, what’s your name” before anyone tries to cop a feel.
Honestly, what happened to a little tact and subtlety?
You know what? I’m not in the mood for serious discussion this morning. It’s Friday, it’s been a horribly long and busy week, and I have one more day of work to get through (and about six articles to finish) before I can go anywhere near my Don Rodolfo Malbec and a few chunks of nice, aged asiago. So you’ll have to pardon me if today, I randomly blurt out pretty much anything that comes to mind, tongue firmly in cheek and heavy on the snark. It will likely be silly and pointless, but most of life is anyway.
First, I really can’t imagine why anyone would care if Lindsay Lohan is potentially swinging from the fence. Who gives a rat’s? Celebrities play on ambiguous sexuality all the time, especially those noted for bouncing in and out of rehab like yo-yos on Prozac (or LSD, or heroin, or whatever the trendy drug of the week is…). They’re not gay/bi, they’re just vapid and indiscriminate in their partners, and think a girl/girl kiss makes them as edgy as Madonna. This is news pretty much only to Slashdotters and other such socially inept dwellers in the parental basement, who’ve just found new fodder for their Lindsay Lohan girl-on-girl fantasies. Make sure to lotion up, boys. Your palms will start to chap pretty quickly.
Despite aggressive spam filters, I routinely get hundreds of spam e-mails a day. The majority of them are overly concerned with the size of my endowments, with a fixation oddly reminiscent of my cat’s unhealthy obsession with watching me undress. (Or unsure of what they want to say about my pen, as they start out so often with “Your Pen Is…” My pen is what? It’s right there, on the desk. What about it?) The concern is admirable, really. Too many men aren’t concerned enough about their sexual health, so all these lovely solicitous e-mails are a heart-warming reminder to schedule my annual doctor checkup.
I’m horribly distressed to see, though, that my spam e-mails just aren’t politically correct enough. They always assume that I have a girlfriend or a wife, or am desperately seeking one, or just “want to know her how she is from the inside”. For shame, spammers, for shame. Have you ever thought that I, your target customer, may not be interested in the young woman whose image you’ve kindly provided to illustrate your point, however lovely she may be? What if I want to know him how he is from the inside? I’m shocked and hurt by your lack of consideration, really. Especially since your constant comments that Concetta has a conspicuous f***stick are really quite insensitive to MtF transgenders.
Or is it a veiled compliment? Are you somehow implying that not a single gay man on the face of the earth needs your enhancement products, and that our online profiles tell the truth and we are, in fact, all gifted like John Holmes?
A weighty point to ponder, indeed.
Any transgendered individuals who read Darkside Rainbow will no doubt be relieved to know that, according to American Daily, your gender dysphoria is just an affliction indicating a disconnection from reality that should be treated and ultimately cured with therapy and prayer. Liberalism is also a mental disorder, transgender rights are ridiculous, and gender identity is pure nonsense. Prayer should be able to fix that, too. The FtM gay male he’s talking about in the article? Just a confused straight girl in plaid shirts and dockers who’s an absolute fool for trying to do anything that would allow her to live more comfortably with the lot she’s been given. There. Don’t you feel better now that Matt Barber’s cleared that up for you? Run along now, pray for a few hours, and maybe his God will be kind enough to “cure” your gender dysphoria and make you so happy with your birth gender that you’ll happily fall into your appropriate 1950s-esque gender role. Remember to start your prayers with “Dear Lord.” He likes being called “Lord.”
To close things off on a more serious note: I’m not a praying man despite my seeming familiarity with the Captain’s Almighty’s titular preferences, but if any of you out there are (well, or praying women, considering the demographics of my reader base) , keep Mehdi in your thoughts; the young gay Iranian is awaiting the decision of a Dutch court over whether to return him to the UK, where he will likely be summarily packed up and sent right back to Iran - and we all know that gays don’t exist in Iran.
I’m done, and out. See you Monday. Yes, I’m posting a comic on Christmas Eve. Just call me Scrooge, baby, and get your plebeian butt back to work.
Most gays and lesbians rarely know our sexual orientation right off the bat, and it’s not so strange that the majority of us fumbled around with opposite-sex partners - whether briefly or in prolonged relationships - before slowly finding our way. Most of us have one or more opposite-sex exes in our histories…but sometimes they won’t stay comfortably in the past.
When I was eighteen, I had my first long-term girlfriend. By that time I’d pretty much figured out that I was gay, maybe with a few of those fluid overtones to make me occasionally bisexual - but sometimes attraction doesn’t limit itself to physical attributes. I made friends with a girl with whom I had a great deal in common, back then: similar interests, similar activities, similar hobbies, and the bonding factor of being able to gripe about the difficulty of university studies. We had a great deal of fun together. Not only that, but I was uncertain enough in my confidence about my sexuality that I was willing to be swayed towards women - perhaps hoping to alleviate a secret shame that I’ve since discarded utterly. Somehow common ground progressed to flirting, flirting progressed to more…and suddenly I had a girlfriend.
The problems, surprisingly, didn’t begin with a lack of attraction to her naughty bits. The problems came with discovering other things we had in common: nasty tempers and vituperative mean streaks that made every small argument turn into a vicious catfight that didn’t end until we were both bleeding heavily from a number of proverbial mortal wounds. The fact that my (admittedly somewhat forced) physical interest in her waned the more we fought only made the fights worse, and finally I had to cut it off. I had to tell her that I couldn’t do this; we were too incompatible personally, beyond the point that the relationship pretty much confirmed that yes, I’m 99% gay and unfortunately she didn’t fit into that rare 1%.
She lost it like Mariah Carey finding out she didn’t get top billing.
I wish we could have ended it cleanly, with no prolonged hard feelings. That was rather naive of me, in truth. The next several months after the breakup consisted of constant attacks over what I’d “done to her”, pleas, accusations that I had used her, even threats. You can imagine that promises to show up at my front door with a dozen roses and a butcher knife didn’t make me feel particularly inclined to make amends. I’d always known she was a little mental, but until then it was just cute quirks; I had no idea she had mental malfunctions severe enough to make Hannibal Lecter look like Rainbow Brite. The entire fiasco divided our friends, with most of them taking her side because she’d managed to demonize me utterly.
Since I was to be demonized anyway, I went ahead and let myself be the biggest bastard I know how to be (and trust me, that’s one big pile of bastardry); might as well live up to their expectations, right? Anything to get her off my back; anything to make her hate me enough to just…leave me alone. It worked, after another month or so in which I inflicted every verbal cruelty on her that I could to discourage contact. I’m not proud of my behavior or even of who I was back then, but it was a matter of desperation.
So why, now, is she still a part of my life?
I wish I had an easy answer to that.
I suppose part of it is guilt. We didn’t talk for years. Wounds healed; we both matured a great deal, and I at least learned to keep more of a leash on my temper and my acid tongue. She turned to lesbianism; I was the last man she ever tried anything with. When we ran into each other again, we approached each other on guarded terms, wary of each other (with me halfway wondering if she was going to pull a butcher knife out of her purse). Eventually we were able to talk, apologize for our reprehensible behavior in the past, and come to terms with how our relationship ended. I was relieved that she seemed calmer, less unstable; she was relieved that I’d put the venom away, sheathed the claws, and wasn’t such an a**. Over time we even began to develop a tentative friendship.
And I found out that she really hadn’t changed at all.
Every aspect of our friendship revolved around compensating for “what I’d done to her”, and she had a set list of expectations that her friends all had to adhere to in order to be considered “good” friends. Not surprisingly, that list and her subsequent drama fits over meeting the minimum requirements have lost her more than one friend. Pointing out to her that part of friendship is wanting to do things for your friends without expectations or demands…well, that was a near-suicidal mistake. It didn’t help that she threw everything I’d said years ago back in my face. I didn’t even remember saying those things; I’m a guy, for hell’s sake. I don’t remember what I had for dinner last week, let alone something I said years ago. When a fight’s over, it’s over. I forget about it. She, obviously, didn’t. Attempts to nudge her towards seeking help in coping with her issues met with furious responses followed by more guilt trips.
So eventually I started to distance myself again - only this time, the guilt went deeper and I still couldn’t let go entirely. I’ve made her like this, I thought to myself, likely with a bit too much hubris. It’s my fault she’s this insecure and insane, because I dug her insecurities deeper when I broke up with her. I limited contact to brief conversations here and there every few months and let her friend me on LiveJournal, but filtered her out of most of my entries. I still read her entries now and then, and it’s the same old song: nobody loves me enough to dance to my tune, I hate everyone, people suck, my life is awful and it’s all someone else’s fault. Sometimes, honestly, she disgusts me - but mostly, I feel sorry for her. Beyond certain family members of mine she’s the most emotionally abusive person I’ve ever known, but there’s a certain lonely desperation to it that makes me rather sad.
And yet slowly, I’m starting to break away more and more. Sometimes your opposite-sex ex can turn into one of the best friends you’ve ever had; sometimes you just need to cut loose, both for your sake and for theirs. Eventually I’ll be able to walk away from her completely. A recent fiasco is helping me make the separation and get over my guilt; she was staying here in Houston for a while as part of a short-term job, and for some reason she didn’t bother making plans to go home when the job was over…and was somehow surprised when she suddenly had no more job-sponsored housing and was left wondering where to go. She contacted me, acting like she was desperate for somewhere to stay and if I didn’t let her live with me she’d be on the street, penniless and living out of her car (why she didn’t drive said car home, I don’t know).
I…panicked. I really did. No matter how much anyone changes, you never forget threats of a butcher knife; I’d rather share my space with a few thousand angry scorpions than live with her. I told her that I couldn’t, because if anyone who isn’t on my lease stays here for more than three days I’ll be evicted (that’s the truth, actually), and frantically started making phone calls looking to see if I could find her an affordable hostel or a friend who wouldn’t mind a couch-guest for a few days until she got herself sorted enough to go back home. I even offered to give her some money to help make sure she’d be all right, even though I was mostly broke at the time. The whole time she guilt-tripped me over saying no, reminding me of how bad her situation was and making me feel like a total jerk for not wanting her in my home. The offers of money were conveniently ignored even though she could have used it for food, hotel or hostel fare, gas money, etc.
It turned out she was already in a rather nice hostel, and had other people who were perfectly willing to let her stay with them. She also had money, and more due in a few days. She was just manipulating me, pretty much. Exaggerating, most likely to gain sympathy.
I haven’t spoken to her since.
If I’m lucky, I may never have to speak to her again - though that would be the coward’s way out. Eventually I will have to take the last steps to sever ties, and make it concretely clear that she’s not welcome in my life. Part of me doesn’t want to face that; that’s why I’ve avoided it for so long, as visits from the Drama Llama tend to leave me with headaches that last for weeks (and raggedly chewed boxer-briefs, for it’s well-known that the Drama Llama has an appetite for underwear). There’s also that lingering guilt, but it’s finally starting to fade enough that I can end what was an unhealthy relationship to start with…for both of us.
Despite being wary of her, I don’t hate her. She’s got a number of issues, and I hope she manages to work them out and finally find a way to be happy without depending on others to make that happiness for her (or else). But I can’t continue to let her stress me out and make her misery into my misery. People in my family already grey prematurely; I don’t need her accelerating the process.
So in the end, what was the point of this meandering story? I suppose to share an experience that I know others out there have been through, in the uncertain, blind fumble to find their way. Many gays and lesbians end up forming toxic, guilt-centered relationships of this sort, that do nothing but drain them and foster unhealthy and even obsessive behavior patterns. It’s happened to me, and I’m at fault for letting the situation get even worse than it had to be.
If you’re in a relationship like this, you’re not alone - and I suppose you should take my tale as a precaution. Learn to walk away, and learn that you can’t take blame for someone else’s issues. They will tell you that those issues are your fault, but really, you’re just a target. It’s okay to sever ties with that person, and to not take responsibility for the harm that they would have caused themselves and others with or without you.
When I was in university, I had to walk to classes - twenty miles, barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways. We weren’t allowed to have clothing; my school’s uniform was the meal sack, with a few holes cut out for the arms and head. If you didn’t follow tradition you were flogged and made to walk across a bed of broken glass to the school monument, which was forty miles uphill both ways. And they only fed us on alternating Tuesdays.
…
All right, maybe not. But at the risk of being called an old geezer, in my generation kids were raised to know better than to pull the kind of stunts this Princeton University student almost got away with:
(Mount Laurel, New Jersey) A Princeton University student who argued that his conservative views were not accepted on the campus confessed to fabricating an assault and sending threatening e-mail messages to himself and some friends who shared his views, authorities say.
Princeton Township police said that Francisco Nava was not immediately charged with any crime, but that the investigation was continuing.
Nava claimed to have been assaulted Friday by two men off campus, police said. But he later confessed that scrapes and scratches on his face were self-inflicted, and that the threats were his work, too, said Detective Sgt. Ernie Silagyi.
[...]Nava, a 23-year-old junior politics major from Bedford, Texas, found himself at the center of one campus controversy recently when he wrote a column for the student newspaper criticizing the school for giving out free condoms, which he said encouraged a dangerous “hook-up culture.”
A short time later, Nava made his first report to the university public safety office that he was receiving threatening messages in his campus mailbox. A friend says Nava told him one message read, in capital letters: “ONE MORE ARTICLE AND YOU WON’T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.”
Other members of the Anscombe Society, a conservative student organization, who have spoken out against premarital sex and same-sex marriage, said they received similar threats. So did Robert George, a professor in the politics department.
Robinson-Brown would not say exactly how the university responded to the threats. But she said that, in general, when students are threatened they are given access to counselors, assured that the campus security force will take their calls right away and can be moved to new dorm rooms.
Another student wrote in the campus newspaper Friday that the threats Nava received did not get the same forceful response as anti-gay graffiti that appeared this semester outside the dorm rooms of some gay students.
Brandon McGinley called it a double standard, which made it seem OK to “use intimidation tactics to silence the voices of morally conservative students.”
If I’d ever pulled anything like that and been caught - and you can bet I would have been; my parents always knew when I’d done something, even if they didn’t know what just yet - my mother would have torn me a new one and my father would have taken a belt to my behind (yes, even at 18+, for something like that). Once they were done, my grandmother would have taken me out in the back yard, made me pick my own wooden switch, and then given me a good lashing with it. College kids from any generation are known for stupid antics, but there’s a line you just don’t cross, not if your parents raised you to know what’s good for you. Francisco Nava crossed that line.
In a way I can see what he was trying to accomplish, by proving that there’s a double standard regarding discrimination and protections for those who face threats for their beliefs or simply for their state of being. There was a strong reaction to anti-gay graffiti; people were roused in support of gay rights. There was a lesser reaction when he faced supposed threats for his articles, as if his rights weren’t as important.
But he botched it in more ways than one, coming at it from the wrong angle - and I don’t just mean by getting caught. One, while the article isn’t wholly clear on this, he didn’t seem to make it apparent that the faked threats were because of Nava’s anti-gay stance and participation in an anti-gay group on campus, which removes the double standard right there. It’s only a double standard if gays are threatened for being gay and receive better responses than anti-gays who are threatened for being anti-gay, rather than just being threatened on general reasons of being “morally conservative”. As far as I can tell, the article written before he started his hoax wasn’t even about homosexuality; it was just about promiscuity in general, encouraged by the dissemination of condoms on campus.
Two, it’s hard to make a solid case for directly parallel discrimination when gays are discriminated against for what we are, while anti-gays are discriminated against for what they believe. I think Nava and many of his ilk may have problems grasping that because they believe being gay is a choice and a lifestyle. While causality doesn’t make discrimination against any group any less heinous and certainly doesn’t justify threatening anyone (if there were real threats involved, anyway), people tend to be roused more by those victimized for traits they can’t help than those victimized for something they chose and that, in turn, discriminate against others for who or what they are.
The third problem is that doing something like this weakens the case for believability where a double standard is concerned in the first place. There is a double standard, even with the point above regarding the difference between a state of being and a choice; we, as gays, are widely seen as the victims, and anti-gay groups as the aggressors - but in terms of rights, as we struggle to find equal footing we all become victims of attempts to completely remove our rights in order to grant them to the opposition. Because gays have fewer rights, though, we’re given more benefit of the doubt, more support, and more sympathy.
Few people see our struggle for equality as an attempt to take rights of expression and belief away from anti-gay groups. They may see things differently. Does that mean that I think our struggle for equality is wrong or that their attempts to suppress said equality are right? Not just no, but hell no. Something’s got to give, and I’m sick of it always being us. They have the right to their beliefs, but we have the right not to have them enforced on us. So yes, there’s a double standard. It’s an unfortunate necessity and it can’t be avoided in any situation of opposing groups struggling to win out against one another; that’s just life, and fairness really has no place in it. But in between that double standard, there is a balance to be found somewhere, if we can try to find a happy medium that recognizes equal rights for all without discriminating against anyone - meaning each side’s got to give a little and take a little.
But valid points regarding that double standard, which may actually open ground for talks between opposing groups as each side recognizes the viewpoints and concerns of others, are completely eroded when one has to fabricate acts of persecution in order to prove it.
During Sunday’s live webcast, I addressed a reader question asking what I think of the Iraq war; I pointed out that Americans don’t understand enough about Iraqi culture to even try to govern it. After reading the news this morning…I can’t help but conclude that we don’t even understand enough about Iraqi culture to comprehend the slightest effect that we have on their society. Unfortunately, I think most of us don’t really care, either. Many Americans are of the opinion that Iraq will be fine once it’s become a homogenized little mini-America, just another annexed territory with a bit of a transAtlantic leap between.
Hopefully for the Iraqi people…that will never happen.
BAGHDAD — In a city and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he wanted to.
Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him, this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men have always been publicly affectionate here.
But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.
But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially vilified.
In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their last names not be used.
They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment — four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood gossip can scare them enough to move.
“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed, nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”
His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier. There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their hair and forcing them to eat it.
It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq. According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 for being gay.
Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past. [Read more for a description of gay life in Iraq before the occupation.]
Truth told I, like anyone, often don’t fully appreciate the impact of something until it touches on something deeply personal to me. This, more than anything, more even than the body counts and the horrific news reports of bombings and siege, has made me realize the profound and lasting effect that the American invasion has had on Iraqi culture. It’s sobering, it’s painful, and it’s probably entirely selfish that it took that for me to view the occupation through such personal eyes and really take a moment to feel something for the Iraqi people beyond logical assessments of why Americans shouldn’t be occupying Iraq. I can’t help that. That’s human. Willful blindness, self-absorbed preoccupation.
That’s the way many of us are, to some extent. Iraq is “over there”; it’s a political issue, not a matter of real people with real lives that have been forever altered by something beyond their control. We feel strongly about the politics, about the people who agree and disagree with us, but we don’t extend our compassion and our understanding of the Iraqis as people unless we’ve been there or unless we find something that strikes a chord in us and makes it so very deeply personal.
Mohammed’s story and the stories of other gays in Iraq have made this personal for me. I’ve felt for a long time that America should pull out of Iraq, but that feeling has only intensified as this forces me to look beyond not just the issues of how the American occupation has changed gay life there, but how it’s changed other aspects as well. Their entire society has changed; we’ve destroyed parts of their culture that can never be retrieved, affected political balances, increased religious, social, and political intolerance, and in some cases created the very atmosphere of fear and terror that we claim to be fighting a protracted and useless war against. Life is naturally made up of disastrous changes, and one either adapts and survives, or fails - but the changes we’ve wrought in Iraq aren’t natural. They aren’t beneficial. And the Iraqi people won’t recover from them for a very, very long time.
It’s like engaging in battle over fertile fields. Your battle, won or lost, may be all that matters to you at the time…but in the process the fruits of those fields are destroyed, trampled carelessly underfoot while you’re too busy looking on to your opponent. Eventually the battle will end; the land will clear, and the bodies will be removed, enshrouded, and buried. But the great trenches of war will remain; the land ravaged and stomped by a thousand feet, razed by fire, poisoned by the substances of war. It’s only when the fight has moved on that the land may start to recover, and the people of that land can move in to nurture it slowly back to health - even though its shape and character have changed entirely, and it may never be what it once was, may never grow as it once did.
The Iraqi people are both that field, its fruit, and its tenders.
Ah, yes, the joys of a bored Saturday afternoon in my apartment. Some people might not get part of that unless they’ve seen Hot Fuzz. I love that film; it’s hilarious, plus the subtext between Nicholas and Danny just leaves me rolling (and I don’t normally even look for things like that).
For the record, the other half of that conversation was:
“…you are going to put more clothing on if we go out, right?”
“Nope.”
“Heathen savage.”
“Tkele’cho’g.”
What? She calls me a heathen savage, I call her a dirty word in Navajo/Di’ne. Fair’s fair, right?
I could argue that that whole thing is about being politically correct and “reclaiming” derogatory words by using them ourselves and taking some of the sting out of them, but honestly? My friends and I are just a**holes to each other. It’s how we show love. Trust me, I’d never seriously consider calling anyone any of those names, and neither would they. It’s just something we do to mess with each other. (…does that sufficiently cover my bum? Yes? Good.)
For those of you who missed it, yesterday was the first experimental Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, complete with musical interludes to give me a second to catch my breath and stop panicking. The people who listened in thought it was good; I thought it was a train wreck. Eh; subjectivity. I almost died when my landline started ringing in the middle of it; I don’t even use the thing save for as an anchor for my DSL, and no one ever calls it.
Until last night.
There’s an MP3 stream of the broadcast posted, along with a partial log of the chat that took place afterwards. (Parachat started eating things from the top down and I didn’t notice until I logged out; damn. Missed some of the best death threats.) Maybe if (big if) I do this again, next time I can calm down enough to speak with some hint of inflection beyond that of a prepubescent boy stuck in “omgscaredkillmenow” mode. I swear to gods I don’t normally sound that flaming; that only happens when I’m nervous and talking way too fast. I’m just amazed that Windows Media Encoder held out for the full broadcast, as on half my trial runs it copped out with random errors at various points.
…then again, in my trial runs I never tripped over my words. While live, of course I fumbled over a thick, clumsy tongue at least four times. Eh. You win some, you lose some.
Anyway, I’m roasted, done, and sorely in need of some Nyquil. Be back tomorrow with the usual ranting.
The Flash player won’t work with variable bitrate encoding (does some wonky stuff that makes me sound like one of the Chipmunks), so for replay of the webcast you can either listen below or download the full MP3 (including musical interludes) here. [Side note: you are listening to a recording and not a live broadcast, so please do not IM me while listening to the recording. Unless I'm broadcasting live, I will not respond.]
Sorry I’m a little late in updating today. I stayed up too late last night, indulging in one of my secret guilty pleasures with one of my best friends: curling up on the couch and watching chick flicks until we cried and laughed all at once. Sometimes you just need a night of Smirnoff Ice, cigarettes (hush, Sihaya, I only had one; you know I don’t smoke anymore), and laughing over the fact that you can both still remember the lyrics to Brandy’s “Sittin’ Up in My Room” perfectly and you can’t help getting up to dance when you hear “so I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low”.
The funny part about that is that while I can get away with that without shame, just by being the type of guy who just does what he does without caring whether it’s considered masculine or feminine…he’s this big, butch bruiser who always has to be the manly-man. He’d be utterly humiliated if I mentioned him by name here, or if anyone knew that he actually watched a chick flick…and enjoyed it. Ha. He was crying thirty minutes into Waiting to Exhale; it took me at least an hour to start the waterworks. (I think the line that got me was “Someone felt that way about me, once…but he stopped.”) Still…as a result of our escapades, I went to bed rather late and overslept today. And here I am now, looking for something to talk about for today’s post before I head off to the post office to finally mail off a certain insufferable a**hole’s package.
Well, for starters, don’t forget that this Sunday, December 16th, at 5p Central Standard Time (if you don’t know when that is in your time zone, check here) marks the first (experimental) Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, in which I will try my damnedest to keep from tripping over my tongue for an hour of live interactive talk radio…even if I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to say and my stage fright is mounting more and more the closer we get to the date. I’ve worked out how to get the bloody thing to work in IE (sort of), so there shouldn’t be too many people barred from listening. If you miss it or if the live broadcast player doesn’t work from your OS or browser, I’ll be posting the chat transcript and an MP3 of the audio later, using the Flash player currently in use for the streaming radio.
Next, we’re already close to the halfway point on the 1,500 Comments Contest. We’d jumped off again at 1,000, with 500 comments to hit the goal. We’re currently at 1,205, in a surprisingly short period of time. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, check out the second half of this post with the rules and the prize (a 1GB MP3 player).
Moving on to more serious news: I’m a few days late on this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a valid point for discussion. Every time I start to think that we as a society have begun to make forward-thinking cultural progress, someone proves me wrong. It’s only a little more disturbing when that “someone” is a prominent political figure and presidential hopeful.
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.
Surging in the polls, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee campaigns Saturday in Asheville, North Carolina.
Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to “isolate the carriers of this plague” during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.
He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.
“I had simply made the point — and I still believe this today — that in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted,” Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 1985 that AIDS was not transmitted by casual contact. But Huckabee said at the time, “there were other concerns being voiced by public health officials.”
He disputed the characterization that he was calling for individuals infected with HIV to be quarantined.
“Now, would I say things a little differently in 2007? Probably so,” Huckabee told Fox News. “But I’m not going to recant or retract from the statement that I did make because, again, the point was not saying we ought to lock people up who have HIV/AIDS.”
Huckabee did not explain how individuals with HIV would have been isolated.
During his Senate run, Huckabee also told the AP in the questionnaire that he found homosexuality to be “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.”
As always, I’ve got to play the Devil’s advocate first. It makes me feel better about turning around and calling someone an absolute arse.
To be fair, Huckabee refused to retract his words not because he’s still just as uneducated about HIV/AIDS, but because he’s trying to point out that at the time he made that statement, he was speaking with the more limited knowledge that he had available and making a statement based on what he thought was his best judgment and in the interests of public safety. (Although really, Huckabee was still pretty far behind, considering he made that statement in 1992 when the transmission methods for AIDS were known by 1985, but I’m trying to be a little lenient here.) I’m not saying that I think his judgment was right, but I do think the media are putting a more sensationalist spin on his intentions by making it sound as if he’s still actively advocating sequestering HIV/AIDS sufferers. He admits that with the information available about HIV/AIDS today, his judgment would likely follow a different slant. That should be enough; a retraction really isn’t necessary, though a more clearly stated, honest admission of his ignorance would be nice.
But the media are using his statement about HIV/AIDS to cast an even uglier light on his already-reprehensible stance towards gays, because there’s an instinctive association between the two subjects. If he was talking today about isolating people with some new, viciously fatal disease whose methods of transmission were unknown but that wasn’t in any way related to a divisive political and personal issue, people would say that he was acting in the interests of public health and safety by making sure that the disease couldn’t become an epidemic while we endeavored to understand more about how it’s communicated.
Ech. That almost makes me sound like I support the arse’s foot-in-mouth syndrome; really, I just can’t stand media sensationalism even when it’s turned on those I oppose. But without further ado and fairness aside…
I refuse to listen to rhetoric about sin from a man who had a role in pardoning a convicted rapist. Follow your own damned dogma; aren’t those who scream about the sin of homosexuality also the ones who advocate “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone”? I’m really getting sick of religious ideals being used to sway people’s political choices; how many times have I ranted about separation of church and state? How many times have I snarled about people trying to force their personal ideals on others through manipulation of the law? How many times have I said that one’s sexuality should be one’s own business and not a matter that concerns either church or state?
You know, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some kind of fear underlying people’s religious endorsement of their viciously antipathetic reactions to homosexuality. No, I don’t mean the cliched argument of “you’re afraid of homosexuality because you’re denying your own homosexuality”, although at times that has been the case.
I mean fear of admitting one’s own subjectivity, and owning one’s own biases and flaws without looking for excuses to make them acceptable. I’ve yet to find anyone who could explain a logical reason for their vituperative condemnation beyond that it’s “sinful”, “unnatural”, and “against God”. I just want one person to say “God’s got nothing to do with it; homosexuality just personally grosses me out”. I’d think it was a bit immature, but it would be refreshingly honest, and founded in someone’s personal feelings (kind of like me saying bananas gross me out, frigging fruit of the devil) rather than using a smokescreen of faith to make themselves feel justified in acting on a base dislike with no rhyme or reason.
Hiding behind faith ensures that people aren’t exposed for enacting such gross hatreds towards other human beings based on irrational gut feelings alone, and possibly judged by others for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were truly afraid of admitting such, when really it would do everyone a lot of good if homophobes could approach it from the simple perspective of likes vs. dislikes rather than looking for a torch to wave as an excuse to force their opinions and their dislike on others. It would sure as hell make a lot more sense.
After all, I don’t try to make everyone stop eating bananas, do I?
DarksideRainbow.net is 451 Press's look at the darker side of the
rainbow - where gay life takes a decided turn away from the happy, the
shiny, and the pink, complete with news, gossip, and a healthy dose of
caffeine-fueled cynicism from gay blogger Adrien-Luc Sanders. Check in
Monday through Friday for a decidedly tongue-in-cheek slant on current
events in the GLBTQ world, spiced with a few fun rants.
I know, I know, it’s not funny. It’s not meant to be, I guess. It’s faux-profound. Faux-profound because…it isn’t, really. I’d actually planned to do the second out of three comics detailing the rest of that scene with R and the mistletoe, but figured I might as well make some token acknowledgment that tomorrow is the start of a new year - especially with all the anticipation building towards 2008 as the year when the American people (supposedly) have a say in who will replace GW.
no style, gay comics, webcomics, humor, gay comic strip, 2008, new year’s eve, fireworks
