What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, November 28, 2007

   THERE'S POWER IN A UNION

Today was the International Day of Solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, STILL on strike in an attempt to gain an adequate cut of the money that studios are poised to make from Internet downloads and streaming of content the writers create. To put it in perspective, the last time Hollywood writers went on strike was in 1988. The resulting deal had nothing about the yet-to-come DVD format that ended up making billions for the studios. In the current strike, the writers are asking that the 0.3% they now get from DVD sales of their work be increased to 0.6% -- and the studios ARE REFUSING.

So yes, a day of solidarity -- with protests in Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, Germany and France. I decided to go down this morning to add another body. This isn't just about Hollywood. I've seen in recent years how journalists are paid less because of a new belief that any blogger can do what they do; meanwhile, the bloggers are expected to write for free because they're not 'real' journalists. It's a tidy little scheme they've got going but hopefully one with a short shelf life.

Walking in circles in the cold, I thought of Toronto's own Joe Shuster, the co-creator of Superman who was poor and going blind in a nursing home while DC Comics was making billions from his character. Lex Luthor himself couldn't have been as evil as those guys.

But as we marched in formation this morning, chanting slogans coined by the unstoppable Denis McGrath, I turned around to see David Cronenberg walking along with us:



Now THAT'S a surreal morning. He was warm and very friendly, patiently indulging me this fanboy photo. "I'm a writer too," Cronenberg said, "This affects all of us." Exactly.

Labels: politics, repair, Trawna, writing

I vowed to lose hope
To walk steady on clear ice
But I’ve slipped again

Labels: introspective, oh l'amour, writing

There’s been a lot of fuss this fall about the decline in ratings for last year’s hit show Heroes. In its first season, the show I was prepared to ignore as an X-Men retread won me over with its offbeat characters, crackerjack pace and wild cliffhanger-ending plot twists. How many times did an episode have us saying, "Whoa. Didn’t see that coming!" Gorgeous!

Consider then, however, the painful tedium of this season’s big plot arc (spoilers follow, be warned!):

-- A shadowy, cloaked figure starts bumping off the shifty parents of the main characters.
-- They all warn of one of their own who went bad: the mysterious Adam Munroe.
-- Our engaging time traveler Hiro Nakamura is separated from the other characters in an endless subplot set in feudal Japan. The samurai hero whose legends he heard as a boy is revealed, oddly, to be a British man.
-- Hiro makes a mess of history and this new man, who seems to heal from any injury, vows revenge.
-- That man is then shown in the present day and introduces himself as Adam Munroe.
-- Hiro returns to the scene of his father’s murder and discovers the cloaked assassin is...Adam Munroe.

And this blindingly obvious tale has taken nine hours to tell, why?

Personally, I was hoping the killer would be Nathan Petrelli. Why? Because that would make no sense and it’d be fun to see the writers come up a reason. Also because, nine episodes in, they haven’t done a damn thing with the character yet. I hope actor Adrian Pasdar is being paid well, because he must be as bored as the audience by this point.

But here’s an interesting thing: Tim Kring, the show’s creator, has actually apologized for the season so far, admitting: "We didn't give the audience enough story to justify the time we allotted it...The message is that we've heard the complaints — and we're doing something about it."

Whoa. Now there’s a plot twist. You don’t hear sentiments like that coming out of Hollywood every day. Alright, Mr. Kring, since the writer’s strike leaves Heroes with only two more episodes left, that and your apology will keep me on board.

Oh, and Claire’s dad coming back from the dead?
Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.

Labels: comic books, TV, writing

Dating a married man seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d gone through a long rough patch of singles hell -— false starts and heartbreak I both suffered and inflicted. One-night-stands and 'friends with benefits' weren’t making me happy either. I craved something safe.

Jeff seemed ideal. A fantastic guy in an open relationship, he wanted to play around but remain emotionally faithful to his marriage. He and I had inventive sex and good conversation and it was all like the best parts of dating but without messy insecurities or jealousy. His lovely partner invited me for dinner at their place and was impressively relaxed about the whole business. To me, it all felt very open, liberal and 21st century, until Jeff told me one night that his partner wanted to start having someone on the side too. The very thought of this made him sick with jealousy. "But you’re the one who’s been sleeping around," I said. Not any more -— they decided to close their relationship to one other married couple. This monogamy-for-four was "safer," Jeff told me. But safer for whom, I thought, surprised at how hurt I felt.

Weeks later, I met Sean, who liked me as much as I liked his boyfriend. This time, I abandoned any delusions of polyamory and told myself it would just be about sex, nothing more. Simple and tidy. The couple came to my home one night, bringing along another friend (who Sean obviously wanted to sleep with) and everyone seemed clear-eyed on what the night had in store. But as things heated up between the four of us, Sean was all over his new friend and utterly ignoring his partner, who stormed out of the room. Suddenly, I was sitting on my living room sofa playing marriage counselor, listening to this guy pour out his every frustration with his partner’s poisonous neglect. "I hate him," he cried. So much for safety.

Studies suggest that anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of gay couples are or have been non-monogamous but I’ve found that, for me at least, the truly honest, above-board, jealousy-free open relationship is a theory that only works on paper, like communism or Ikea furniture. Polyamory might be inevitable but I’m going to stick to dating single men for a while. It’s just safer.

Managing editor Scott Dagostino changes names to protect the innocent.

[reprinted from issue 333 of fab]

Labels: fab, health, homo-a-go-go, introspective, oh l'amour, writing

That deadpan line from a Thrill Kill Kult song always made me laugh but "Sexplosion" is not what you'd call my weekend. It's a Saturday night and I'm staying in. I can't seem to muster up any desire to leave the house. This is not good.

It's strange because I did have a lot of fun last night. I went to Shane Percy's "Grapefruit" anniversary party at fly (80s pop, mixed crowd, zany drag shows -- what is not to love?) with Robert and Darcy. The latter was blue because he'd just broken up with his boyfriend and couldn't figure out why.
"Well, we broke up because you always got possessive and weird," I not-so-helpfully said.
"But I wasn't this time!" he whined, "I was trying a whole different tack!"
All this time and I still wonder: is he ridiculously adorable or adorably ridiculous?

So we danced together all night; me being guarded around him, fearing that we might end up sleeping together if not careful. Sex is the only thing that worked in our relationship (boy howdy) but I like to keep looking forward. Trouble is, I kept looking around the packed room at this wonderful crush of people -- tall, short, young, not-so-young, gorgeous, peculiar, you name it -- and feeling no pull toward any particular person whatsoever. Even the hot boys were just bland eye candy to me. I don't know what's going on.

I was waved over by Andrew, who I had a fling with once. He's brilliant and has that geeky-cute thing I love but way too young for me. Still, we were glad to see each other and I was chatting with Andrew until another young guy wearing similar chunky black glasses came over and stood beside him. I was introduced and said, "How do you know Andrew?" He gave me a bored look and said, "Uh....we're dating." His tone was enough to add the unspoken-but-obvious capper, "...idiot." It's moments like these when I really hate gay men. Does that make me homophobic? And if so, would I then get laid a lot more often? The answer to both questions is yes.

Later on, a really cute guy in jeans and a black T-shirt approached me and we danced for a bit. He said he liked my tattoo and he smelled really good. But I felt nothing. I couldn't think of anything to say that would intrigue him and didn't really want to anyway. A few years (hell, a few months) ago, I would have run off with him right then but last night? Nothing. Darcy walked me home, said he didn't want to come up and I was relieved.

I'm confused because my sex drive has vanished. It's not like I was ever a Love Machine exactly but I was happy with my Goldilocks status -- more slutty than a schoolmarm, more chaste than a porn star. Now, however, even the few times I have had sex in the last few months have been rather lacking on my part. Celibacy is fine, sometimes even restful, but having sex and being bad at it is an awful feeling. Not that I should ever admit that here on a blog. It's like the worst personal ad ever:

Clean-cut Irish guy seeks similar for feelings of apathy and occasional impotence. Likes thai food and long walks on the beach.

But so it goes. Was it the Baconator? At my nadir of paranoia, I start to fear I'm already turning into one of those fusty blank-faced old men you see walking their dogs at night. I've got the dog and yeah, I'm fusty but c'mon, I'm not even forty!

In rolling all this around in my head, I wrote a piece for the magazine about a couple of my dating travails this year (I'll post it later this week). I wrote it in hopes that people might look at their own search for love and think about what it is they want from it. Learn from my mistakes and all that. This here, however, is just me feeling confessional. It happens from time to time. I'm Catholic.

I'm a somewhat rare Catholic, however, in that I somehow grew up without much shame around sex. Whatever's going on with me right now is, at least, not rooted in that. At least I hope not. I've witnessed many an act of depravity (and occasionally joined in) without any judgments but I do admit I was rattled by a recent piece by Warren Ellis called "America Broke Sex" (rather horrifying and obviously NSFW so click if you dare):

This is how you know you're living in the future: when the pornography bears no earthly resemblance to sex as even the filthiest of us know it. You may as well be renting DVDs of aliens fucking. And America, as Martin Amis once said, is where they road-test the future.

Warren's piece makes me nervous because he's describing a world where the need for sensation (the type I'm desperately feeling right now) has escalated to the point of monstrousness. Clive Barker saw that coming -- it's what drives Hellraiser -- and, as a fellow Catholic, he always joked that he saw sex as horrific as well as sacred.

Excitement lies in the tension between both states. But what if you feel neither? Where's the enthusiasm gone? I don't know what I want anymore, except at least that I know I don't want any donkey punching.

Labels: homo-a-go-go, introspective, repair, writing

Fearing that the models he hired wouldn't show up for fab's "holiday entertaining" photo shoot today, Paul wisely asked me, Matt and Nick the intern to come along as "background artists" (as Ricky Gervais calls them on Extras) or -- worst case scenario -- as models ourselves.

Which is exactly what happened. The two models didn't show, nor the third one Paul asked for just in case, nor the emergency fourth who was promised to arrive "in 20 minutes!!" (We won't be exactly leaping to use Velocci again!)

So I ended up sitting in a chair, getting made up (for the first time since doing high-school theatre) by the charming Gregory Graveline, who has not only worked his magic on Canadian Idol (gasp with me now!) but regularly charges $125 a face! I felt so exotic! He eased the bags under my eyes, assured me that I won't go bald as quickly as I think I will and left me looking ready to hold my own with the 20-year-old cute boys I'd brought with me.

If I'm sounding terribly vain by now, here comes the karma: first off, I may love my Chuck Taylor sneakers but no one else did. They had to go. I grumbled but Paul said I was "a meat-puppet" and would have to wear the shoes they gave me. Then I had to lose the tee I was wearing under my button-up shirt. Then I was moved to the back of the group, pretending to chat up Nick, and then it occurred to the photographer that everyone but me was wearing black and wouldn't it be great to have a more symmetrical look? A fine round of "you so ugly" jokes followed and I was soon sitting in the living room, while the shoot carried on without me.

So much for my modeling career!

But the host and cover subject made some gorgeous dark-chocolate almond brittle and insisted we all take some back with us and then I got an email from Rick Mercer mentioning that he liked the interview we did in September. Whew! My ego restored, I was able to get back to work. I will never be a supermodel but, even when I'm old and ugly (2009?), I'll still be clever (and I'll still have the almond brittle recipe)!

Labels: fab, homo-a-go-go, introspective, media, writing

There's a charming interview with David Lynch in Entertainment Weekly on this week's release of the beautiful "gold box" DVD set of my favourite TV show, Twin Peaks (oh how I need this!). Lynch explains how the series was hobbled in mid-stream by the network's panicky insistence on wrapping up the show's central mystery as quickly as possible:

"[The] question of what happened to Laura Palmer was the goose that laid the golden egg. Then ABC asked us to snip the goose's head off, and it killed the goose."

This is ironic to me for two reasons: first, ABC is now the home of Lost, a maddening show that has remained popular over three seasons by constantly unveiling more mysteries than it solves.

Second, and more important, is the example of artists treated badly by their business partners. Companies like ABC are now panicking over the writers' strike set to begin on Monday. There's been some terrific new TV this fall (I'm loving Life and Reaper) but it's all about to dry up for quite some time because producers can't see why they should share profits from DVD and Internet versions of shows with the writers who created them. They argue that the whole Internet distribution thing is so new, there's no guarantee they'll make any money from it. This thought obviously occurred to them while passing the owners of Amazon and Google panhandling for change on Sunset Boulevard.

Here's the point: since I won't be buying the Twin Peaks set just yet (not until someone can explain to me why this brand-new product is $90 in Canada and $65 in the States), I decided to soothe my lust by buying the fabulous new soundtrack album from iTunes. I could have easily found it for free on the BitTorrent sites but I happily paid the ten bucks and had it playing on my computer within a few minutes. The network people, along with the movie studio executives, record industry thugs and software developers, don't understand this because they view their customers as potential criminals. They refuse to understand if you treat talented people badly and fill the marketplace with crap, the public will respond with the same amount of respect, no matter how many "you're a pirate thief" ads they place before the movie begins.

David Lynch created a weird and wonderful little series and I'm happy to reward him for it...well, him and the pack of corporate weasels who killed the golden goose but still get 95% of its egg. Stay strong at the bargaining table, Writers Guild of America!

Labels: media, music, technology, TV, writing

I blame Darrell.

It's bad enough that his Whisky Prajer blog has been routinely wiser and wittier than mine, but now he's pointed out that November has apparently been designated National Blog Post Month. The idea is to commit yourself to blogging once a day, every day, for the entire month. Since this blog hasn't been updated since August (the poor wife abandoned by my infatuation with the sexy siren Facebook), this is a tall order.

It's not that blogging is hard or anything but I do find writing about my own life tricky. I worry about privacy. Not my own, of course -- I'm the king of Too Much Information -- but that of the friends whose personalities make up so much of my inner and outer concerns. I've been wrestling with this notion this week in regards to a fab piece I'm writing -- I can't discuss my life without dragging other people into it and that feels unfair somehow.

But why worry? I've always been too cautious and, besides, it's not like these people are dating a songwriter. I won't be performing mean-spirited yet incredibly catchy songs about my ex in concert halls for years to come, now will I? Thirty years on and people are still trying to figure out who the hell Carly Simon was so pissed at.

So yes, more blogging. I'll need to get over my fear of being accused of narcissism. This is funny because, hello, it's a blog. Narcissism is the point. Besides, Facebook didn't become a cultural juggernaut overnight because people are naturally shy. I never get when people are criticized for being narcissistic, as if their audience has no choice but to pay attention. You, dear reader, have every choice. I'll continue to ramble while you can read, ignore, agree with or mock any little scribble I put down. If I'm lucky, you'll even write back and start a conversation.

After all, it works for Darrell.

Labels: fab, friends, introspective, media, writing

His heart, crushed again.
He dips his fingers in pulp.
And paints, like a child.

Labels: oh l'amour, repair, writing

I finally put my profile on John Amaechi to bed yesterday, by the way. I'm disappointed to see that the Advocate beat me to him by a week but Amaechi's PR person told me that they'd set up a deal with ESPN in advance. I'll have to settle for landing the first Canadian gay Toronto bi-weekly newsprint magazine interview.

I spent half an hour on the phone with him last Thursday and he was every bit as kind, intelligent and elegant as he'd come across in his book. And it's been really delightful to see the sports world support him, especially after Tim "I hate gay people" Hardaway sprayed venom everywhere.

Now we'll just have to see if a pro sports player can come out during his career. It's like that morbid joke that floated around the premiere of Philadelphia and Tom Hanks' Oscar win: everyone cries for the dying AIDS patient, but it's the ones who live they can't stand.

Which makes for an unplanned-yet-effortless segue into mentioning the piece I did in the current issue on a new plastic surgery treatment for people with HIV-related facial wasting. The foundation director I interviewed read it and said she was thrilled with how "kind and complimentary" the piece was. I was pleased but surprised, since I thought the tone was just matter-of-fact. I guess I'm just a big softy!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, homo-a-go-go, sports, Trawna, writing

Molly Ivins died this week at the age of 62 from what she joked was "a scorching case of cancer":

"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that...I had been in great hopes I would become a better person as a result of confronting my own mortality, but it actually never happened. I didn't become a better person."

This was the kind of quip she was famous for. Ivins was a Texas political journalist who described her early career in the late '60s as "making heroes of militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers." She became a nationally-syndicated columnist but never a rich and famous TV pundit like so many lesser writers (though she's great on camera in this 1986 commentary on "fine ort" in Texas and in this amusing video on their sex laws). TV didn't know what to do with her -- she was too outspoken, too Southern, too sharp and too liberal.

Molly Ivins could listen to tedious speeches, read thick and dull budget reports, wade into the most polluted swamp of political spin and then explain, with wit and punch, what it all meant for ordinary working people. She knew a liar when she heard one and a fool when she saw one, and she'd write about them both, but always fairly: "I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth." I'd agree, if not for the fact that, well, Molly always told the truth. She did it well, she did it often and, on the occasions when she did make a mistake, she owned up to it in print (check out this incredible exchange between Ivins and famous misanthrope Florence King, for instance). Her obituary for her father both charms and haunts (it's well worth the annoying newspaper registration) so, rather than try to match that, the best tribute I can give Molly is to show you why I became a fan:

"I guess that was the first shock. Ronnie and Kaye had prepared me to find all manner of vile, venal types in the Legislature, villains without scruples and self-interested dastards without remorse. I didn’t find them. I found only stupid men. I found representatives so dumb they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. There are no villains: there are only asses."
-- June 18, 1971

"I have long maintained that Texans are not easy to love: we are, like anchovies, an acquired taste. I myself feel that we should be given points for our enthusiasm...At least Texans retain a capacity for awe in the face of something as awesome as the Colorado mountains."
-- December 30, 1977

“If [Rep. Jim Collins'] IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”
-- sometime in the early '80s

"Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -– it's vulgar."
–- December 9, 1991

"Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German."
–- September 14, 1992

"I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."
-- July 19, 1994

"Politics in this country isn't about left and right; it's about up and down. The few are screwing the many."
-- September 8, 1994

"Sometimes I think I made Warren Chisum up for my own amusement...The egregious Representative Chisum is once more trying to get gays taken out of coverage under the hate-crimes bill because, he says, gays bring violence on themselves...'They go to parks and pick up men, and they don't know if that someone is gay or not.' Sure. Right."
-- February 9-23, 1995

"If it weren't for the automatic teller machine and the self-cleaning garlic press, we'd have no evidence of progress at all...Let's face it: the evidence is always on the side of the pessimists. In fact, one of the few pro-optimism arguments that work is to point out that things can always get worse, which means we should be cheerful right now, because now will eventually be the Good Old Days."
-- May 7, 1995

"I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle."
-- May 30, 1995

"I have wasted more time and space defending Clinton than I care to think about. If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied."
-- from the introduction to her 1998 collection, You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You

"Arguing against the death penalty in Texas is such a bootless enterprise that over the years, I have worn down to merely advocating that we not kill (a) the innocent; (b) the mentally retarded; and (c) people who are so mentally ill that they think they’re black dogs in the seventh circle of hell and run around on all fours barking. As you know, these arguments have not prevailed, and we continue to bump off people in all three categories."
-- February 5, 1999

"The sponsor of the tax break in the Senate, J.E. 'Buster' Brown, explained simply, 'The oil industry is hurting.' And there’s nothing like pain in the oil industry to touch off compassion in a conservative."
-- March 5, 1999

"George W. is the unexamined candidate, and the extent to which he is unexamined gets eerier as Election Day approaches. At least half the country is prepared to vote for the guy; if asked why, they reply, 'Seems like a nice fella.' I like him myself. But he is often clueless, he does not have a nice record, and the idea of electing him president scares the living fantods out of me. I like my nephew, I like my mailman and the lady at the dry cleaners. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to be president."
-- November 3, 2000

"If killing more people were the answer, there would have been peace in the Middle East 50 years ago. The answer is justice, and there is nothing weak-kneed about it."
-- October 26, 2001

“I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. [Iraq] is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’”
-- January 16, 2003

"I have never lost a political storytellin’ contest in any category: crooked pols, dumb pols, out-goddamned-rageous pols. We win -— and we never have to make up anything. How can I lose with material like the time Rep. Mike Martin paid his Cousin Eddie to shoot him in the arm with a shotgun, and then claimed it had been done by a Satanic and communistic cult. You think I can find stuff this weird anywhere else? This is why I’m still in Texas."
-- December 3, 2004

"We can now safely assert that W. has stacked much of the federal government with people like himself. And what you get when you put people in charge of government who don’t believe in government and who are not interested in running it well is...what happened after Hurricane Katrina.
Often in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn’t annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, “I told you so.” But, dammit all to hell, I did tell you, and I’ve been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents -— all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and “Christian” moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.
Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention [emphasis mine, of course]."
-- September 23, 2005

"On the general subject of political corruption, do not fall into the fatal error of cynicism. You do your country a great disservice by saying things like: "Eh, they're all crooks. Nothing anyone can do about it. Money will always find a way."
The answer is perpetual reform. Fix it, and if corruption comes back again, you just whack back at it again."
-- January 11, 2006

Those last two are the ones that really get me. She spent a decade warning her fellow Texans about their useless Governor, yet they and the rest of America elected him President, with disastrous results. Nevertheless, she never lost hope, she never went silent and she never stopped believing in the decency and, yes, power of ordinary people. This is the end of her last column, published January 12, 2007:

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Yep, Molly Ivins went out the way she came in -- kicking at the pricks with a grin on her face. I discovered her columns during the Clinton impeachment, loved her ever since, and regret that I've never praised her in print before. Somehow I believed that, despite the cancer, she would outlive us all. As she famously wrote:

"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce."

Goddamn, what a woman.

In tribute, the Texas Observer has reprinted many of her classic columns, including the one she penned when leaving the paper to join the New York Times in 1976. It was charming then and appropriately lovely now:

"And for me, it’s leaving time. I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky, laughing at Clarence Zugenbuler’s stock report. I’ll remember. I’ll remember the way the printer’s feels at 4 a.m. What it’s like to read The Dallas Morning News editorial page. Sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people...
I wanted to call this The Long Goodbye, but Kaye wouldn’t let me. She wanted to call it, Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.
I love you. Goodbye, my friends."

At her memorial today, Andy Ivins told the crowd that he'd once asked his sister why she always walked so fast. She told him, "What you do is you look up at the horizon, and you go quicker." Then, blues singer Marcia Ball sang Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire." Perfect.

Labels: America, evolution, politics, religion, tributes, war - what is it good for?, writing

Despite once knowing a guy who insisted that government-sponsored flu shots were part of a grand science experiment on the public, I've faithfully taken one for the last few years. That guy was too paranoid -- even for me -- and I knew that the government's motives were more mercenary: the cost of flu shots is far less than the cost of nursing a public epidemic. Even with doubts as to their efficacy, I always got the shot.

This year, however, a packed work schedule combined with an apathetic 'oh, what's the worst that could happen' mentality and I skipped the shot. One week into the new year and I have been destroyed -- brought low by the worst thing I've had in years.

So yeah, I think the flu shot works.

This past week has been a nightmare of phlegm, no sleep, body pain, cough syrup, diarrea and...oh why go on? We've all been there.

If there's any bright spot, it's that my cover story on New York photographer Joe Oppedisano was already put to bed before I was, and I've certainly been able to catch up with what's on TV. I've been watching Dexter and The L Word and Nip/Tuck -- all them fascinating, clever and taboo-busting in various ways -- but I confess it's the sitcoms that have really helped me through this flu.

First up, I was able to track down 30 Rock, the new show from former Saturday Night Live headwriter Tina Fey, who also wrote the witty movie Mean Girls. As a parody of her former workplace, I expected her new show to be more snide but instead, it's like soda pop, sweet and fizzy like its adorable 50s-pop credits. The best thing about the show is that it's providing a solid showcase for the man-who-can-do-anything, Alec Baldwin. If Fey's aiming to be a 21st-century Mary Tyler Moore, Baldwin is playing Ed Asner and Ted Knight at once.

Of course, it also reminds me of the days when Fey and Baldwin first met -- he's always been great hosting SNL and this National Public Radio parody still makes me laugh out loud:



Meanwhile, there's the aforementioned How I Met Your Mother, a show that seems like a standard Friends clone until you realize that, with each week, it's getting smarter, funnier and stranger -- like this bit with the gang worried for Robin's little sister, followed by the now-nearly...wait for it...legendary "Slap Bet" episode where she reveals her dark Canadian secret:





Of course, if that's all just too silly for the rest of you, there's always the intense 24, a show I've long avoided, out of a belief that its politics and mine wouldn't get along. From what I'd heard, the show's hero was way too fond of using torture as a quick-and-simple way to foil terrorist plots (by that logic, the horrors of Abu Gharib should've ended the War on Terror by now) and the show is absolutely beloved by right-wingers. Last summer, the Heritage Foundation hired Rush Limbaugh to host a panel discussion called "24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" "Does it matter?" What the hell kind of question is that? Oh wait...next week's seminar is "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." Never mind.

At any rate, all this had me avoiding a TV show that people have talked about for years, one that then won the big Emmy awards this year -- Best Drama, Best Actor. Meanwhile, in his Entertainment Weekly column, Stephen King echoed my misgivings about the show's "gleeful" use of torture while still calling it "the best thing on TV" so when the first four episodes started floating around the Internet this week -- in advance of this weekend's two-night, Sunday-Monday premiere -- the curiosity finally got to me:



Hours later, I can see exactly both why I resisted the show and why so many people love it. The opening episode hinges in part on whether or not the nice Muslim family down the suburban California street are terrorists. That's the kind of paranoic race-baiting that makes my teeth clench. Meanwhile, an innocent Muslim leader is unfairly detained (okay, some balance, I guess) but wait -- he uncovers part of the terrorist plot while in custody. You see? Locking him up was a good thing!

Yes, the underlying biases in 24 are unsettlingly fascist if you stop to ponder them but the reality is that the show never stops moving long enough to let you. I've never seen anything so relentless -- not on TV, not on film. Kiefer Sutherland is indeed terrific and the plot grabbed me in, held me there and then, at the end of episode four, threw out a truly-jaw-dropping climax to an hour that was already the most harrowing thing I'd seen on TV since the infamous car-jacking on Six Feet Under. Yep, I'm forced to admit it -- I'm hooked, dammit. I was already watching too much TV as it is!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, Orwell says hi, silliness, TV, writing

Three days away and I've barely started my Christmas shopping -- oh, the stress! I've been obviously quiet on the blogging front these past few weeks as most of my energy has been going into the magazine. But it's been fantastic. The new issue features a lengthy piece on gay activists in Iran and a little wrap-up on this year's 'outing' spree in the press. Meanwhile, I had a lovely series of interviews with New York-based photographer Joe Oppedisano. He was surprisingly open and friendly, just a incredibly-cool guy, and I can't wait for the piece to be printed.

Yes, after a tumultuous year (I changed jobs twice!), I've had a great autumn, full of friends, writing, my little dog and watching America start to wake up from its six-year nightmare. Life feels a little better for me and hopefully all of you, your friends, your family.

In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens wrote:
"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour."

With that in mind, happy holidays from me and the gang at -- oh dear -- Star Wars:



I could only make it about three minutes in -- it's a brilliant car wreck! Have a wonderful holiday and I'll check back in before the New Year...

Labels: fab, holidays, homo-a-go-go, Middle East, writing

I fear YouTube is making me soft.

For a man who calls himself a writer, there's been precious little writing lately! While I love my new job, I also worry that most of my energy has been going into improving the work of others rather than my own. I get home and there's nothing left. Plus, like I said, making these little YouTube clips has been great fun, a terrific distraction. It had to stop. So I decided to hold a little TV party here, showing you the stuff I've loved lately, before I hunker down and start working on the next article.

First up, I was blue for a day because a perfect storm of work, schedule and money conflicts kept me from catching the Pet Shop Boys' visit to Toronto last week. Having seen them twice now soothed the sting, but along comes a YouTuber named uccbob who apparently recorded the entire show in little 2:57 bursts. Shame about the sound but hey, look at that stage set...



The link I'd posted to a Six Feet Under promo a couple years back is long gone, so coming across it again feels like a little present. It's the only ad not included on the DVDs but, more importantly, it's a cool blast of Nina Simone...



This of course left me wanting more, and this one's a tiny gem...



I adored Stephen Colbert's brilliant visual aid explaining the media's coverage of Republican political scandals (Josh Marshall has been keeping a list of indictments and wow, it's even bigger than I thought!)...



Pixieish singer Lily Allen's new ode to London is utterly delightful and completely depressing at the same time -- just like the city itself...



There are smarter, funnier comics than fratboy Dane Cook but do they fight monkeys? I didn't think so...



I think everyone on Earth has now seen Matt dancing everywhere on it but, in case you haven't, give the guy a cheer...



I'll never travel that much, sadly, but my name is well-known in New York City, thanks to the D'Agostino supermarket chain. Move closer!



In a follow-up to my last post, here's Russell T. Davies talking about Torchwood -- I love that a guy writing a sci-fi show is so set on telling stories about ordinary people. I find his enthusiasm endearing and infectious...



And finally, my own little creation. I actually got an e-mail from someone who loved my Doctor Who video and asked me to make more! Flattered, I began thinking of a stream of Who videos I could craft but reason thankfully kicked in. While I would've absolutely adored and exhausted all this YouTube video editing stuff when I was a repressed and dorky teen, these days, I do have a life (okay, sort of). I just don't have the time.

So I decided to take everything I love about Doctor Who -- the character, the show, the institution -- and cram it all into one clip. Whether you love it, laugh at it or don't have a clue, consider this a tribute, a warning or a primer. I called it 43 years, 10 Doctors, 5-and-a-half minutes and it does what it says on the tin:



That's it! I'm spent! No more TV!
Well, except for Heroes, which Josh tells me I should be watching.
Oh, and Dexter, which looks nastily funny.
Oh, and Lost Of course.

Sigh.

Stephen King says that people are always asking him where he gets his ideas. I want to know how he writes 1400-word novels every month and still finds time to write essays on Veronica Mars!

Labels: Doctor Who, England, MeTube, music, Pet Shop Boys, Trawna, tributes, TV, writing

Wow, where did two weeks go? Oh yeah, the new job as fab magazine's Number 2. In a word, awesome. I'm so happy. In a perfect world of better luck and smarter choices, this is the job I would have had after Glad Day books a decade ago but who cares? I'm thrilled and very busy working to advance the Dreaded Gay Agenda.

I only half-joke because this is the secret issue I have with my magazine in particular and a good chunk of homo-dom in general -- it's all a bit silly, no? Skim through an issue of fab and it's all parties and dancing and sex and art and music and joking and costumes and sex (yeah, I know, twice). But so what? I've read Maxim magazine, I've watched NASCAR, I've listened to 'bitches'n'hos' gangsta rap -- 'straight culture' is plenty ridiculous too.

The difference, however, is that heterosexuality never has to justify its existence. Oh sure, that Gay Agenda notion is thrown around by people who find it less funny than I -- people who think that the human race is dying off because Vermont lets men marry one another. In reality, however, the world has been, is and will be 90% heterosexual. If I have to justify the content of fab magazine to myself, it's because I have to justify myself to the rest of the world. Why? Paris Hilton doesn't have to. But then, she's not a fag.

LAND OF A THOUSAND WORDS

Yeah, it's hard not to sound snide but I've been bristling all week over the gay witchhunt spawned by Florida Congressman Mark Foley's gruesome e-mail exchanges with the teenage boy pages on Capitol Hill. The media's calling it Foley-gate; I'm calling it Where-the-hell-have-you-been?-gate (April, people!). The pleasure I'd take from the imminent and long-deserved collapse of the Republican party is quashed by the disgust and sadness I feel over this whole mess.

Plus, it ties into an e-mail I got from my old friend Darrell, responding to the "Jesus Camp" post below. Darrell has always provided a thoughtful and eloquent counterpoint to my 'Christian-bashing' (like that time I passed legislation to stop them from teaching, or marrying, or joining the army). With all honesty, I say that his own blog is far more interesting and well-rounded than mine but, before you rightfully click on over to it, stay with me for a while as I think it's past time I answered his honest, wise and pertinent thoughts. He's had me mulling for a long while so it's only fair I try to get it all out. Let's go:

IT CAN'T COME QUICKLY ENOUGH

Re: the questions you raise on your post - I'm thinking you know the answers to most of them already, which makes them rhetorical. I'll raise one of my own, which we touched on in an earlier e-mail exchange: what are the chances the North American Gay Community (a term I use without irony), given its singular and revolutionary experience in the last half-century, will promote a sexual paradigm of trust, respect, sensitivity and safety - a commonly recognized "manifesto" for humanity at large?

This ploy might seem cagey of me, but I think it touches on surprisingly common ground. The religious impulse and the sexual impulse are not that far removed (I still blush to recall a Pentecostal meeting I once attended). I do, in fact, grind my teeth when I see footage of this woman and her vile little camp. But turning tables: if some evangelical had the fortitude for it, he could walk into a bath house with a video camera and put together a documentary designed to get His People similarly "put off".

I'm the quiet guy in the corner who considers sex a sacrament, as well as marriage, and thinks the two work best when they're purposely housed beneath the same roof. To my mind, the bath house is not a physically or spiritually (I don't separate the two) healthy environment in which to experience the sacrament. I believe a human being actually needs to recover from (as a for instance) group sex.

Furthermore, it would sadden me if either of my daughters' coming-of-age experience included some time in a bath house.

But the human spirit is a resilient thing. It can survive a Warrior For The Lord boot camp; it can survive extended exposure in a bath house. But I'd say in both cases, there is more than a little "figuring it all out" required when the tenure is up.

My question to you is this: what purpose does this video serve on your blog? My guess is that most of your readers don't need convincing of the malign intentions of Evangelicals and Republicans, just as most of their number don't need convincing of the unhealthy lifestyle of the Gay Community. I'd propose that the truths which both camps need to face lie in a very uncomfortable spot between the two extremes. If we can't be the first ones (sorry - I'm gay now) to take tentative steps in that direction, I don't see much hope for progress.

But I'm just a crazy liberal that way!

Much love,
Darrell

LIGHTS

So snarky, this talk-back from that brainy Mennonite. I'd slap him but he'd just go and turn the other cheek so where's the fun in that? Seriously though, much love to Darrell in return for standing up to my ranting. Contrary to popular belief, I don't blog just to force my own opinions on people, I'm aiming at a dialogue here (for years now, I've been hoping some irritated American will write me and explain exactly WHY the Bush Republicans must remain in power -- just ONE good reason, please! -- but, alas, only silence).

Let me move along through Darrell's questions with each paragraph. First, he asks:

what are the chances the North American Gay Community...will promote a sexual paradigm of trust, respect, sensitivity and safety - a commonly recognized "manifesto" for humanity at large?

Hmmm. I'd say the chances are not bloody likely. No, I'm just kidding. Half-kidding. See, don't ask me -- I'm a misanthrope. The problem with gay people is that they're people -- they carry forth the same trust, respect, sensitivity and safety as their heterosexual friends and family, no more and no less. And, watching the evening news, I'd say hopefully no less whatsoever.

LOVERS IN THE BACKSEAT

But I'm being snide. It's unattractive. More importantly, I'm dodging the real thrust of Darrell's question which is, why do gay men have cheap, anonymous, unhealthy, promiscuous sex more often than straight people do? Sorry, my homo brothers, it IS a legitimate question but -- ah! not so fast, my straight pals -- not THAT legitimate -- I've been on craigslist lately and I also know that gays did not (as rumoured) invent the sexual revolution, we just happily rode on its coattails. No, as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle so let's talk promiscuity.

I'll get the self-blame out of the way first -- it's easy 'cause it's flimsy. We're men. We're pigs. One of the big 'Mars vs. Venus' differences I always hear about men and women is that, when it comes to sex, men want quantity over quality; women, vice-versa. That seems generally true to me. Take the ladies out of the equation and guys will happily have sex in gas station washrooms. Women only do that in movies and even then only with Brad Pitt. So yeah, there's just a lot more of it with gay guys. Variety is the spice of life and we want the whole rack. In one bowl. Now. A little self-control wouldn't be such a bad thing once in a while, fellas.

But here's where -- having cheaply attempted to exonerate slutty men based on weak theories of biology -- I now return to the more fun side of the blame game and point my finger at religion. Whether it's Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism or what-have-you, religion has always served as a handy check on sexuality. Every horny adolescent has been stopped dead in his tracks by a lecture on how God watches everything (eeeeeeverything) a person does, that He thinks sex before marriage is sinful, that He finds your masturbation horrifying, that He absolutely hates those faggots, and that He created AIDS as a punishment for all of it. Personally, I think this makes God sound like a miserable and sadistic bastard but that's just me.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

What does all that have to do with gay men not keeping it in their pants? Plenty! We get the worst of it. From the moment somebody thinks that we're gay (always before we do), we're told that our very feelings are disgusting, that it's impossible for men to feel love for one another, that every wildly-depraved sexual act possible (or impossible) is only performed by gay men, that we'll inevitably contract AIDS and deservedly die and that, because we just didn't learn our lesson from all this, we'll go to hell and burn forever in a lake of fire. Hey, they're just trying to keep us from making the wrong "choice"!

Given that twelve-ton-loaded-against-us scenario, damned either and every way, it's no wonder most gay men reject religion altogether but the real dirty secret is that their internalized belief in it all never truly goes away. Imagine how those years of self-loathing, that fear of damnation, simmer away until you're just screaming for sex, drugs, something, to quiet the voices in your head telling you how sick and filthy and worthless you are.

The people who did this to you have a solution, of course -- just accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour, give up your life of sin and live a celibate life! Wow! I could've had a V8! Of course, your heterosexual friends and family won't be joining you. They'll get married, raise children and have a healthy sex life. Everyone but you, because you're a filthy faggot. Hey, stop that crying! God loves you!

KISS YOU OFF

That's not a solution. So we're back to option B: if you're going to lead an unhappy, loveless, diseased life leading to the pits of hell, you might as well have fun on the way down. Gas station toilet sex, here we come, woooo-hoooo!

This leads us neatly into Darrell's next point about bathhouses and yeah, they're not actually spiritual places, are they? The first time I went, I envisioned a brave adventure deep into the heart of darkness. I was actually disappointed to discover, well, just another bar scene -- only with towels. There was a very fine room of weightlifting equipment and a truly gorgeous little hot tub that was literally better than sex. I left feeling a bit gutsier but with little desire to return.

But I've always been a little more...flexible in a couple. Years ago, on a dare, I went to a spa with my little blond boyfriend and we discovered certain accessories and equipment that we'd never have been able to try at home. We felt supremely naughty about it all and laughed over it long afterward. And, just this summer, I ran into someone I'd gone on a disastrous date with a couple years ago. Reunited, we danced at a club before he suggested going for a swim. "A swim?" I asked. This was downtown Toronto. What I didn't know was that the bathhouse down the street has a large outdoor pool. At 3 in the morning, we swam under the stars and soaked in a hot tub afterward as he told me his stories. I found it all very soothing.

COMFORTABLY NUMB

But enough romanticism. I'm not trying to sell anyone on a bathhouse -- far from it. If you never go, dear reader, you're missing nothing and probably gaining. The problems with bathhouses are obvious -- they're geared towards quick, anonymous trysts between people too shy, too impatient or too creepy to chat someone up in a bar, and that sheer pace makes them breeding grounds for disease. But so is the Internet. And before bathhouses, it was public parks and toilets. None of it's right, you can argue, but it's happening (for reasons I'm saving for my Big Finale coming up). Bathhouses, at least, are controlled environments with attentive staff and bowls of condoms everywhere. The debate has been going on for two decades now and there's been no 'smoking gun' either way. Personally, I think the cons outweigh the pros but, in the end, bathhouses are simply venues -- what goes on within them is as friendly or as horrible as their patons' motives. Play or prey.

That's what leads from our bathhouse conversation into the bigger picture. After telling the good and the bad, there's still the ugly: I caught a relatively minor but wildly-unpleasant sexually-transmitted disease from a guy I went home with one night. No bathhouse was needed; this was a clean, comfortable condo that was home to a tall, blond, fun-loving guy I felt comfortable with. Until things got frisky and his games proved less open to negotiation than most. I put a halt to things but only long after the encounter had gone south. Finding out I'd contracted a disease from it was the cherry on the cake.

Now I can easily imagine some uncharitable type out there saying, "Well you see? Sex with a stranger? A homo? You were asking for it!" I can imagine it because he's in my head somewhere, actually. This is where I must be clear on this -- I didn't blame anyone during this. Not Republicans, not the Christian Churches, not gay advertising egging me on, not even the guy himself, really. It was my choice. I decided to go, I decided what I was comfortable with, I decided when to leave. No one controls me.

RETURN TO OZ

But there is one nagging thought in all that -- why did I let it go on so long? Why did I (why DO I) have so much trouble standing up for myself? Why is there always that inner voice that asks me, "Who cares what YOU want? A good person wouldn't be so selfish. Who do you think you are, anyway?"

Where does that voice come from? My parents? My teachers? Eight years of Catholic grade school? I feel we're getting warmer. My scientific curiosity about the world always quashed by people who insisted that the Bible must never be doubted, that the ones holding the Bible must never be doubted. The only person I could doubt was myself. And I did. And I do. Unlike them. They've got all the answers right there in that book.

But they've never been able to answer my questions and certainly not the ones in regards to sexuality. That's the crux of the problem here. Telling a gay teen to shut up and not be gay is not an answer. Telling him he's an abomination is not an answer. Telling him he's going to hell is not an answer. If that's all the Bible has to offer, then how can anyone be surprised when people reject it and seek answers elsewhere?

I got out when I was thirteen. Faced with the prospect of going to a Catholic high school, I snapped and told my parents I had to go to a public one. My first brave act of self-protection. One of my classmates called me a traitor. He meant it.

THE OTHER SIDE

Looking back on my religious upbringing, I don't think my childhood was a bad one -- I was a bit banged-up but not damaged. Nothing severe. Beaten by nuns but not molested by priests. As Bill Maher once joked, frankly I'm a little insulted. I can joke about it, inspect the dents in my psyche like it was a car fender, but I fear how much worse it's been for others, the ones who stayed.

To stick around, trying to reconcile two utterly conflicting worldviews, leads to a particular kind of soul-death. And I could never dream up a more apt, more grotesque example than this sad bastard Mark Foley, a man who devoted his career to crafting legislation for harsher penalties against paedophiles, while secretly trying to lure his teenage congressional pages into having sex with him. The news media is horrified at this bizarre double-life, this shocking self-destruction. Idiots. I remember what I was like at eighteen, screaming in my closet, and imagine what I'd be like if I stayed like that for the next twenty-five years. I'd be Mark Foley.

I imagine him spending his days working alongside Republican family-values conservatives like Marilyn Musgrave who -- in a time of war, torture, terror and lies -- says that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today." Foley wants to be one of these people, he always has been, but he goes home to an empty house, drinks a few glasses of alcohol and thinks of that beautiful 16-year-old page who smiled at him yesterday. I'd feel really sorry for him except that he's a grown man who chose to hide from these people and, well, those e-mails really are gross.

The real scandal, of course, is that Foley's right-wing buddies knew how pathetic and creepy he was but, as long as he stayed quiet about it, he was still useful to them ($100,000 useful!). They just ignored the chatter:

Mark Beck-Heyman told The Washington Post warnings were circulated to steer clear of Foley, R-Fla., after he began inviting pages to his office for ice cream in notes and e-mail.
...
"Mark Foley knew that he could get away with this type of behavior with male pages because he was a congressman," said Beck-Heyman. "But many people on Capitol Hill," including many Republican staff members, "have known for over 11 years about what was going on and chose to do nothing."

Well of course not, Mark -- Republicans couldn't possibly have devoted any attention to a possible sex scandal involving one of their own trying to molest teenage boys because they were all too busy with a certain sex scandal involving Bill Clinton and an adult intern. Maybe you heard something about it. While Al-Qaeda was growing like a malignant tumour in the Middle East, America's guardians were holding month-long hearings about the President's penis and quietly hushing any talk from the congressional pages about that creepy old guy from Florida being "overly-friendly." One can't let the safety of teenagers take precedence over a big juicy impeachment.

MIGHT TELL YOU TONIGHT

My point (yep, here we are!) is that all of this nastiness might have been avoided if Foley had been allowed to come out as gay a long, long time ago. He would have run for Congress with Florida's support and found himself a solid conservative 40-year-old banker (okay let's face it, a 30-year-old banker) and settled down, leaving the teenagers alone. They could be as friendly to him as their ambition allowed and he wouldn't care. He's a married man, after all. The opposite of this is what we see far, far too often -- closet cases trolling parks and toilets, bathhouses and chatrooms, looking for intimacy-free ways to get what they need so badly. Such encounters are fleeting and rarely fulfilling so they have to keep going, faster and with greater desperation until something terrible happens. The closet kills.

EVERYBODY WANTS THE SAME THING

Darrell talks about 'sex as sacrament.' I believe that too -- or at least I used to. Clive Barker wrote a lovely book called Sacrament that took that theme, celebrated it, shook it around, warped it and came out the other side into beauty. Such a wonderful guy. I've been lucky enough to have had that feeling of sinking into another person on every level -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- and frowned at the big city 'sex as handshake' model. I used to try and see their side when right-wingers railed about gay sexual excess. Big warehouse orgy parties ARE over-the-top and safe-sex is not practised nearly as much as it needs to be. Road to hell and all.

The gay marriage revolution seemed to be the compromise we needed. Homophobes would have to accept our relationships, while we gays 'settled down' into comfy pair-bonds just like them. Couples would all be united in suburbia together, waving over the fence and inviting each other over for barbeques. But, like the joke goes, a liberal is someone who thinks his opinion IS the compromise. Suddenly, the conservatives were no longer complaining about gay promiscuity; they were complaining that faggots dared to equate their relationships to their own. What nerve! Suddenly, the compromise I saw was instead the end of civilized society. Was I wrong? Should I doubt myself? Nope, because I realized that this wasn't about marriage, this wasn't about society, this wasn't about rights. This was merely the same old song: shut up, go away, who do you think you are, anyway?

Conservatives don't really care about the health of gay people or the well-being of society or the state of marriage -- they just want us gone. Or at least tucked away in silence like Mark Foley. They knew for years that he was a quiet, pathetic, predatory pervert and they liked him that way.

Well, sorry kids, but I thought we settled this argument years ago -- silence=death, remember? We're here, we're queer, get used to it. This is what frustrates Darrell as much as myself -- the louder and angrier the Christian Right gets, the louder and angrier the militant gay activists become, and vice versa. The crazier the right gets, the more frustrated I get; the more I spout off, the more threatened they feel (and they feel threatened by everything). In a time of jihad, the reasonable middle ground seems shakier than ever.

But hey, I've got a little magazine now. It's silly and shallow and generally worthless but it's up against Newsweek and Fox News and billionaire Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Feels almost like a fair fight.

TAKE YOUR MAMA

My only real obstacle is that hoary old lie that 'the gays are coming for the children.' That's what all of this is about. Even the most violent homophobe could accept me if I'd just 'keep it to myself' (whatever that could mean) but they panic when they realize that the teenagers are listening. They think our tales of ribaldry are SO fascinating, SO intoxicating that entire high schools will go queer overnight. How flattering! Such a delightful notion but an utterly impossible one. Darrell can rest easy knowing that I'll never be able to lure his children into a bathhouse [attention crazy people: I am SO kidding! xo!]

You see, Mark Foley notwithstanding, we've never wanted the children -- at least not all of them. We could never turn their children gay (How? I was never turned straight) but, in the long run, we WILL take their children. We'll take the gay ones. The ones they teach to hate themselves, the ones they toss aside as worthless, the ones to whom they offer no hope. We'll take them in and give them the answers their parents never did.

Me, I'll be doing what I've always done -- listen to them, talk to them, rant at them and help them look at the bigger picture. I won't even have to work that hard -- they're coming out younger and younger now, with less and less damage. Many of them don't even like being called gay, even though they'll openly hold hands with their boyfriend in the street. Yes, I've worked hard to destroy society and replace it with this: young people happy in love. Read the paper lately? We need more of them, not less.

FILTHY GORGEOUS

I wrap up with one last anecdote, surprised at how chatty I'm being for someone who's never wanted to discuss his sex life on a blog. See? Repression! Look what it leads to...

A few years ago, I was madly, madly in love with that little blond boy who, well, just didn't feel the same. He did at first, I know that, but not after a year or so and I was too stupid or too in love (same thing?) to understand the change. I wanted to marry this boy -- sex as sacrament -- but there was one night too many lying in bed with a stranger who looked like him. No cheap one-night-stand could ever be as grim and soulless as this.

Finally facing reality, I broke up with him. I was 30 and convinced that my life was over. My love was gone, my youth was gone. Yeah, I know -- I was an idiot. But a dismally-unhappy one and I tried to make myself feel better by 'getting right back on the horse.' So I was at a dance club one night and found myself being eyed by someone really adorable. I felt hopeful again for the first time in weeks. We got to talking but, as it often happens, he had a boyfriend. I slinked away, only to soon find the boyfriend wanting to dance with me. In my lingering fog of heartbreak and disappointment, it never occurred to me that one of them would want me, let alone two, but I was invited back to their hotel room.

Now again, there's always risks. They could've turned out like a double-version of that horrible one-night-stand guy; they could've just been leading me on for kicks; they could've even robbed, beaten and left me for dead like Matthew Shepard. I only knew I had to try. We stayed up most of the night before I fell asleep tucked between them, arms and legs everywhere.

The next morning, we heard the cleaning women talking out in the hall. One of the guys sat up in a panic. "Did you put the 'do not disturb' on the door?" he blurted. "I thought you did!" said the other. He leapt out of the bed, down the hall and locked the door just as the cleaner was turning the handle. Hollering an apology through the door, he hopped back into bed and, a moment later, the three of us erupted with laughter, picturing the woman's face if she'd walked into the room. We chatted, we had breakfast and I went home.

It was a bright Sunday morning and I walked down Bay Street with a huge goofy grin on my face. I felt big. I felt brave, I felt funny, I felt sexy, I felt healed, I felt whole. Mournful thoughts of my ex-future-husband, like cobwebs in my head, were brushed away. I'd had a lovely night of trust, respect, sensitivity and safety far better then anything in the past year. This skanky little encounter in a bar had given me hope. It was fun and open and honest and it felt like a sacrament.

Labels: back in the day, evolution, fab, friends, health, homo-a-go-go, insanity, introspective, politics, religion, Trawna, writing

[I've got a day of paperwork and a weekend of editing facing me and just don't feel like writing so, yeah, it's YouTube day!]

Premiering last week at the film fest, Design by Future is a new documentary on, well, designer and futurist Jacque Fresco. At the age of 90, he's still working on experimental cities of the future, visions both strangely nostalgic and boldly avant-garde. Here comes some serious eye-candy:

Labels: evolution, writing