Tonight I was in the locker room at the gym (so many of my blog entries seem to begin that way), when I noticed that one of the handsome young men who regularly frequent the gym was pulling down his underwear unexpectedly (rarely do the handsome ones show what we all want to see). So of course I was drawn to the sight. One could sense a flutter in the crowded locker room, as if the birds were stirring in the canopy of trees above, though I suppose that was imagined by me alone—my own private flutter. And so he did pull down his underwear, and I got a look at his nicely rounded butt as I entered the room and approached him from behind. I found an empty locker behind him and saw his full moon, nicely shaped, though tanned and completely hairless—two strikes against it, though it was still a fine sight to greet me. As no one had a view of me, nor of my wondering eyes, I was free to stare, and so I did as I loaded my things into an empty locker. When the young man finally covered himself, I looked up, and there in the distance, standing naked in the large open shower beyond the young man, was an older man staring at me staring at the lovely exposed ass. There was no way to cover my own greedy eyes. He knew what I was doing and what I was thinking, and he didn’t like it one bit. His eyes told me that. I don’t blame him, I guess. It seemed almost criminal afterward, what I’d done, the lurid gawking. I had to convince myself afterward that I hadn’t broken any laws, that it was unfortunate (that I’d been caught, that is), but that people look and are looked at sometimes. Big deal. I’ll no doubt stare again if given the chance. I half expected the older guy to tell the young man about me, so that I’d be confronted, accused, fingered, outed hostilely by one or both of them there in the gym. A part of me fantasizes these scenarios in which ogre straight guys confront me about being gay, and I admit it happily, or at least I admit it unflinchingly. (In fact, I sometimes also imagine situations in which women confront me with accusations of leering at them, or of being sexually inappropriate, and my brilliant retort is, “I’m gay.” What more needs to be said? Of course sometimes I do leer at attractive women, but they don’t need to know that – I’m simply gay to them and so couldn’t possibly find them sexually appealing.) Well, anyway, my approach to the situation was going to be to appeal to the young man’s vanity. “Yes, I’m gay. You have a great ass. How could I not look?” or words to that effect. Doubtfully effective if actually used, but for a second or two that was where my mind was going.

Since I last wrote in this blog, Ann and I have gotten engaged and had many discussions about wedding plans, rings, ceremony, etc., we’ve taken a trip to New York City, and we’ve put our cat to sleep. Yet, here I sit with little or nothing to say. It’s funny what I regard as worthy of discussion.

An engagement is really about the wedding, not the marriage. I shouldn’t be surprised at that, and I’m not, though I did take notice of how quickly the wedding planning kicked in. It is funny how so many people have clearly defined rules and ideas about how things should be, both for the wedding and for the marriage, things that are accepted without question. You must have a wedding party. Family obligations will necessarily increase after marriage. I hear such comments and think how little room people allow for deviation from accepted practices and behavior. You make it your own wedding by tweaking things at the margins of an otherwise settled and tightly scripted ceremony—choosing this widely used wedding hymn over another, adding a Beatles song for the recessional, reading lyrics from a popular song. Ann has always wanted a wedding. She embraces traditions. I almost uniformly shun them. I like and appreciate traditions in some contexts—when the traditions are deep-seated and long-standing, the sort that define a culture. I like to view them from a distance—when they are another’s tradition, or a very old tradition that has either been completely absorbed so as to loose its identity as a tradition, or become meaningless rote behavior. Anything less than that is not for me.

We met the Unitarian minister who is to perform the ceremony. I don’t like ministers. I don’t like the pretense (inherent in the position) that they are somehow privy to things the rest of us aren’t. We come to them at critical moments in our lives, seeking guidance. But what do they know? They’re all so uptight, filled with ideas about how things ought to be. Unitarians are no different--they’re just more circumspect about expressing their ideas. This minister irked me a little by suggesting that I didn’t believe in a deity because I hadn’t yet faced serious challenges, such as the death of a loved one. I wouldn’t have been irked if she’d said something to that effect openly, but of course she didn’t. That wouldn’t have “respected” my views, I suppose. Instead, she let me say my piece about not caring much about such issues as god and not having religious beliefs. And then, in a fit of passive aggression, she asked ever so pointedly if I’d ever lost anyone close to me. The implication was clear-- “Oh, you can hold such naïve opinions because you haven’t really been tried in life yet like some of us less fortunate.” The arrogant moral smugness. In what sense does she have any authority, moral or otherwise, to comment on my life and our fitness for marriage? I simply reject her ministerial functions in relation to me. I can respect the experience of ministers in handling people in troubled times. Those involved in such matters, I’m sure, learn a thing or two that can be useful and worthy of respect. So I don’t reject their usefulness in that respect. And I understand that they have experience and usefulness in acting as a sort of master of ceremonies in certain situations. It’s all fine. But I just cannot tolerate any overt or covert invocations to religiosity or spirituality. It’s all bullshit. Period. lol There. So as you see, I’m a little testy on the religion issue.





Some days I look in the mirror and am horrified at my face—it’s gaunt, showing its years, the mouth is too big, etc. And some days I catch a glance and think, “Not so bad.”

A few days ago I had a lengthy discussion with a colleague, a soft-spoken man in his early fifties, thin and frail, balding yet in need of a haircut, a man who carries all the markings of a genuine, likeable nerd. There he was standing in his short-sleeved dress shirt at the entrance to my cubicle, speaking with clarity and earnestness about work-related issues in a pleasant and personable style, gesturing in controlled motions with his forearms and always maintaining close eye contact. And all the while the fly to his tan trousers was completely open. I couldn’t possibly mention it to him there, but all I could think about was the moment sometime later when he would feel a draft below, inevitably and with some embarrassment. Actually, a draft might not tip him off, but if he pees sometime later while wearing the same pants, he’ll wonder how long his fly was down. And then he’ll consol himself with the possibility that the fly just recently got pulled down, without notice by anyone.

At my gym there are three urinals along a wall, and then three stalls along an adjacent wall. The urinals sit on the floor rather than hang from the wall, and they have no cover on either side. Consequently, anyone using a stall or the exit on the other side can see urinating penises. There was a time when I always had an interest in seeing such sights, even unattractive men. But now I truly don’t want to see most urinating penises. Yuck. I avert my eyes.

Yesterday I emerged from the gym and the sky was an eerie, jaundiced yellow. Rain was falling sporadically—there but not over there—and there were two rainbows extending across the eastern sky, one above the other. The lower rainbow was complete. I could see both ends clearly, with well-defined colors in between. A small group of us stood outside at the entrance to the gym, looking up at the sky and occasionally smiling at each other silently. There’s something about a rainbow that brings out goodwill in people.

I loathe the current flip-flop craze.

After some discussion with Ann last week about our old, sickly cat, and the ridiculous vet costs, I thought this observation of Gertrude Stein was interesting, “No Frenchman or Frenchwoman is so poor or so careless or so avaricious but that they can and do constantly take their pet to the vet.” Well, in this I differ with the French, I guess.

And here is an interesting comment by Picasso that she records. He was talking about how the painters of his early days dressed. It struck me because sometimes these days you’ll hear older people talk about how silly it is that kids pay so much for that used, well-worn look—worn or faded jeans, etc. Picasso says this in response to a remark about how well the painters of the day (before WWI) were dressing, “You have idea how hard it was and expensive it was in those days to find English tweed or a French imitation that would look rough and dirty enough.”

Ann and I have been going to a dance club on Saturday nights. Every weekend, come Saturday evening, I feel like I’d just like to stay home, but we go nevertheless and I always manage to have a good time. I feel like a regular among the crowd, exchanging looks of recognition and near complicity with other regulars. It reminds me of earlier times when I was alone and dancing on Saturday nights at a different club, with a different crowd but with the same feeling of loose association and good will towards familiars among the crowd. Back then it was a darker club, more seedy and rife with the feel of gay cruising and casual sex. Or maybe that was my own private attitude. Hehe I do remember seeing familiar faces most weekends, people I didn’t know and didn’t speak to, but whom I’d watch and smile to, and in some cases wish I knew. I remember years ago one girl in particular who was very attractive, almost always alone, and who smiled at me often as we danced around each other on the same end of the dance floor. She seemed very cool, too cool for me almost, and I always felt tongue-tied the few times she spoke to me. I could never decide if she was a lesbian or not. She didn’t seem like she was, but why was she there? Later I saw clearer signals that she was. It was disappointing.

Occasionally I come across people who capture me in some way, people I watch and admire for some reason, a reason not exactly founded in sexual desire, but in a recognition that they have a quality I never quite possessed but always desired, a sense that they were in command of the times or fit exactly and perfectly into the world I always wanted to occupy. We all have notions of what is cool, or what is admirable, what is to be emulated, the enduring ideal of the hip crowd we want to be a part of but can never be, no doubt rooted in adolescent insecurities never quite put to rest. Ann has lamented at times, particularly after a night of dancing, that she wished she was young and beautiful like the kids we see dancing. I have the same feelings sometimes, though I feel it less poignantly as I get older. Still, sometimes I fixate on someone. Lately it’s been this young man--perhaps he’s 25 or so. He’s at the club every Saturday night, always dancing in his characteristic way, with big, bold moves of his arms and legs, never dancing to the crowd, but inwardly (at least I imagine), absorbed in the music and enjoying it all with a shining smile and a somewhat timid glance at the crowd around him. He’s not trying to be anything (again, so I imagine), dressing simply and without any sort of statement. He does have a very thin, carefully sculpted line of a beard on his cheeks, his only trace of affectation. He knows lots of people, who let him dance and give him space, occasionally intruding into his world to say hello and to move on. I even notice the beginning of baldness in the back of his head—a fact which makes him even more endearing to me. As I try to describe him I realize even now that I still can’t quite pin down what it is about him that I find so interesting. I don’t know. Ann believes I think he’s sexually attractive, but though he’s attractive enough, there are many other young men at the club whom I find more attractive. I just think he’s very cool. He may not be if I got to know him, but I imagine that he is, cool in a not-trying-to-be-cool way, which is the only kind of cool for me. I mostly want to know him, to be a casual friend. But it’s impossible. I could never be comfortable around him.

Of course, it occurs to me that this casts a pall over my current collection of friends. Are they people I’m comfortable with because I don’t find them particularly interesting?
Gertrude Stein, writing through the voice of her companion, Alice Toklas, claims she has known three geniuses--Picasso, Alfred Whitehead, and Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein! Imagine writing that about yourself. Even if Toklas might have said such a thing to Stein, would you dare write it?

It occurred to me just yesterday that Stein (and Toklas too) was Jewish, or of “Jewish ancestry.” Could she then be an anti-Semite? Maybe. One source characterized her as a “conservative fascist.” She’s buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery. I missed her grave when I was there, but after a quick review of a list of famous persons buried in that cemetery, I missed a lot of graves I’d like to have seen. Why am I so drawn to cemeteries and the graves of greats? I don’t know. I want to return there, to take the metro ride in the morning, to stop at a little bakery and grab something to eat, and stroll through the cemetery for hours under the sun and the canopy of towering trees. Why do I always want to put an ‘a’ in ‘cemetery’? Stein was born in the Pittsburgh area.

Gertrude Stein, in her book, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” writes, “I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.”

I’ve just begun the book. I’m going to love it, but she does seem to be impressed with her own art collection, which diminishes my own interest in it a little. I’ve read about her Paris apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, and its art work stacked to the ceilings—Picassos, Matisses, etc. Part of its aura, its legend, relates to the privacy of the collector, and to the sense that Stein was collecting out of a private, almost unconscious understanding of the value of the art in the first decade of the new century, at a time when others didn’t see its beauty. It lends her own appreciation a greater credibility, knowing that she collected not because the artists were important or to be valued, but because she liked them. So if later the public catches up with her tastes, I’m happy that she was also eventually rewarded with a collection impressive in value as well. But to speak of it in almost boastful terms later lessens my impression of her. Maybe I just need to give her some slack so early on in the book. I did just run across one seemingly anti-Semitic remark in the first few pages, which jarred me a little. I hope she’s a likable person, but already I have reason to worry.

I was just reading a profile of some kid in a chat room. In an otherwise fine profile he writes something like, “Don’t hold it against me that I went to XYZ University.” He’s clearly impressed with himself that he went to this university. If he’d just left that out, I’d have a much higher opinion of him. I try to be careful myself not to make such telling remarks.

A few weeks ago I took a week off of work to work on my rental house. It was a nice week. The entire effort has drawn me in, and I’m obsessed with it now. Maybe it has something to do with making something nice out of something so dilapidated, or about having a nice space of my own. I don’t know. But I’m enjoying it. Anyway, after a long day of digging holes for a fence, carrying bags of gravel and cement, and preparing the posts, a neighbor stopped by to see how things were going and to give me some tips. He seemed to know what he was talking about, so I appreciated it. His advice was mostly that I should go 3 feet deep at least, maybe even 4! This after I’d just finished 8 hours of digging. Of course he was not the one digging, pounding against stones, and scratching around roots, I thought to myself. But I took note of his advice, worried about it, and made a trip to the hardware store to get a post digger. I finally decided to go with what I’d done—2 feet or a little less for most posts. Later, as I was mixing the concrete, he returned and asked if I’d dug deeper. I replied that I had given it some thought, but had decided not to. He responded in a very pleasant and non-disapproving tone, “Well, hope for the best,” and waved and walked on. The bastard.

Earlier in the same week I went to the convenience store across the street to get a lighter. I needed something to light the propane torch I was using to solder copper water supply pipes. I walked up to this young black woman behind the counter and asked if I could have a lighter or even a pack of matches. She looked at me and then asked for my ID! I’m sure I gave her a momentary look of confusion, but then I handed her my driver’s license without comment. When she saw that I was 42 years old, she could not believe it. She was serious.

When I was in Chicago last week I went for a walk during the lunch break of the conference I was attending. I started walking in a random direction for some food, and finally arrived at a busy pizza place. I ordered two pieces of pepperoni pizza, took them outside, and walked to a little park nearby. I sat down on a ledge in front of a bed of orange tulips and began eating and listening to the three construction workers talking in front of the ledge next to mine. A train (the “L”) passed by above us. A moment later a pigeon landed chest first onto the sidewalk in front of me. It then began flapping its wings lethargically and spewing blood from its mouth. One of the men said that the bird had been hit by the train. For about a minute the pigeon flopped around in front of me. One had the sense that someone should do something, but no one did. What was there to do? The bird eventually stopped moving, leaving a trail of blood that ended at its beak. It was funny to note the reactions of people when they first noticed the bird. A few were visibly disturbed. One woman averted her head and quickly moved away. Some just walked by and avoided getting blood on their business shoes. The blood did spark some talk among the men beside me, not all of which I could hear. But I did hear one guy say clearly, “I’ll wade in the red tides, but I won’t drink from them.” Whatever could he be talking about? Heheh Chicago is a nice town, a livable city.

I find myself sometimes thinking of absurd crimes that I might commit, absurd impulses that one never acts upon but that cross the mind nevertheless. For example, I recently saw three beautiful young men walking along the sidewalk. They were maybe 18 or 20 years old, and each beautiful in a different way—one with dark reddish hair and long sideburns that stretched nearly to the corner of his mouth. Another was smaller, thin, with dark brown hair that fell to his shoulders and a delicate but attractive face. And the third, the tallest of the three, had a buzz cut and a strong jaw, with a chiseled nose, thick lips, and a cleft chin. I imagined that somehow the three of them would be forced to undress for me. I would get to examine their bodies and choose my favorite. No sex is involved, mind you, just the joy of seeing them naked. But then I worried about how they’d feel. What if I chose one of them and another felt slighted, as if he were somehow less appealing (which of course he would be, to me, at least). Since they are all three beautiful, it doesn’t seem right to give any of them cause to believe they are not attractive. If I actually did this, would they simply be overwhelmingly relieved when I let them go, or would they also, while happy to be free of me, have doubts about their appearance. If I declared that one had the most beautiful ass, would the other two (presumably heterosexual men with no interest in my sexual preferences for them) worry about their asses? Why do even the most absurd fantasies devolve into troubling moral dilemmas. Why must one chose the best of the three? No reason to. I could simply enjoy all three asses.

Oftentimes when I’m holding a large, sharp knife, I worry that somehow some involuntary impulse will overtake me to stick it into the belly of someone nearby. Immediately after impaling the person I’ll return to my senses again, and call the police. And I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison, my live thereafter forever altered by this single, decisive, yet involuntary impulse. I don’t have the actual impulse to stab someone, but the fear that I might suddenly develop such an involuntary impulse makes me uneasy when holding sharp knives. Maybe it’s related to my belief that everyone is capable of despicable acts of violence.

I often try to imagine how someone, a murder, reaches the point in his mental life at which he’s capable of murder. I don’t think it’s that difficult. That is, I don’t think there’s a bright line one crosses. It’s a matter of imaging the act and of the aftermath, and of beginning to make room for the possibility in one’s mind. Maybe you feel the pressure to commit the act, and are vulnerable to another’s expectations or desires for you to kill someone. Expectation that you *will* do the act itself helps to make room for the possibility. This is what peer pressure does. The people you associate with affect what you do—of course.

The most horrible acts can be performed by accommodating the mere possibility in one’s mind. I was reminded of this in the movie “Capote.” The killer was already in a violent setting. His partner suggested in this setting that it would make sense for them to kill, and that he should be able to do it if he were strong. He made one quick motion with a knife to kill the first victim, without witnessing or confronting it directly. Then suddenly the realm of possible actions for him included killing people, and the other murders were easier, ones that he could face directly. It’s this broadening of one’s world view about what one can do, or how one should act, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. In one sense this expansion of one’s world is a very good thing—the liberalization of the mind. You know—contrary to how I grew up, or to the community standards that I once lived in, it’s acceptable for me to dress differently, or to marry a black woman, or to kiss a boy, or even for a gay to marry a woman. My happiness in adulthood was founded upon this broadening world view, a slow, evolutionary liberalization of my mind. There are limits, however. One has to be vigilant about how far the liberalization goes.

Vigilance is a bit of an obsession for me. It keeps me slavishly adherent to a workout schedule. One must avoid the slippery slope of skipping a day, which then makes the next day easier to skip, etc. I’m also vigilant about irony. I had an uncle—still have him, in fact—who used to suggest when I was a kid that we’ll be punished by god with the tools of our very own desires. That is, our greatest desires or obsessions will kill us. I forget exactly what it was that he was suggesting would get me in the end, but the notion has stuck with me. (Of course, since I’ve forgotten, that will surely BE the very thing that gets me. We all know that.)

I imagine such things as that one day my very obsession with weight lifting will maim me—I’ll be squatting some ridiculous weight to keep myself health and fit when I’ll have a bizarre accident, causing the weight to fall on me and render me a quadriplegic. And I’ll spend the rest of my days getting fatter and fatter, bound to a wheelchair. My passion for stained glass will eventually give me blood poisoning and ruin my mind, or will it be the daily dose of mercury from the “healthy” diet of tuna. My compulsion for finger-picking, causing open cuts on my hands, will make me vulnerable to HIV-infection. As long as I’m aware of the potential irony, I’ll be safe from it. But what of those that haven’t occurred to me? What ARE they?!

Lately I have a passion for Sartre. As I’m reading about Genet, I’m learning a bit more about Sartre, as they were friends. Sartre was a genius. He was of course a brilliant intellect and an intellectual. But more than his intellect, he understood people. He formalized his understanding in Being and Nothingness, but he also understood people in a less formal way. He wrote of his study of Genet (his book Saint Genet), “Whatever mistakes I may make, I’m sure that I know him better than he knows me, because I have a passion for understanding men and he a passion for not knowing them. Ever since our first meeting I have no recollection of our having spoken of anything other than him: which suits us both.” Genet said he liked Sartre because he was funny, amusing, and because he understood everything. “And it’s rather pleasant to be with a guy who understands everything while laughing about it and not judging it.” That’s the sort of person I want to have as a friend. He should be very intellectual, but even more important, he should understand people and himself. So often you know bright people, but they have stunning blind spots in their own understanding of others, or about how others perceive them.

Lately I’ve been down on friends. “Who needs them?” I say to myself. Maybe I’m just brooding that friends didn’t come to my party, people that I’d expect to come. But it’s not really that. It’s caught up in a series of reminders I’ve had lately that people have their own agendas and their own insular pursuits, and the rest is all filler. This happens as we get older. People begin to turn inward, I guess. We don’t want distractions from our routines and rituals. We do what we have to do in the world, and then we return home, not to be disturbed. I’m exactly that way. I don’t want distractions. I want to be left alone most of the time.

Today a manager at work was talking about the difficulty of getting people involved in a volunteer organization like the GLBT group at work. Someone from his church calls him, for example, looking for people to help with some activity, and all his mind can do is to race for an excuse to give to the person. I’m the same way, except that I don’t even let the person get as far as talking to me—I’m simply not answering, or Dan is not at home at that time. These days I want to pursue my own things. If I’m not at work or at the gym, I want to do stained glass, or read something from my reading list, or work on a design, or write in my blog. That’s all. Somehow I believe that my activities are more worthy of respect than the lists of others—at least I’m trying to be creative, making things, thinking, learning, etc.—but of course it’s all just a load of shit. We all are.

Back to Sartre. Sartre seems not to have fully understood homosexuality. He was fascinated by it, but I’m not sure he got it right. He wrote, “A person is not born homosexual or normal. He becomes one or the other, according to the accidents of his history and to his own reaction to those accidents. I maintain that inversion is the effect of neither a prenatal choice nor an endocrinal malfunction nor even the passive and determined result of complexes. It is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.” I’m not saying Sartre’s wrong, exactly, but I believe there are many factors that might lead someone to gay sexuality. There is no single explanation. And though it is cliché by now, certainly it is more fluid than previously thought. But to his credit, he was very interested in it, and non-judgmental. And what more can you ask of a person. I always like to trot out my favorite examples for how situations can influence or skew sexuality—prisoners who, when faced with no other outlets for their sexuality, turn to homosexuality, and priests who subvert their sexual drives and find it released in other, less acceptable ways—pedophilia. Of course some may challenge the causation in these examples—only the prisoners who are already pre-disposed to homosexuality turn to it in prison, and the priesthood attracts those with pedophilia tendencies. I suspect both are true. Anyway….

Here are a few interesting facts related to Genet. The American premier of his play “The Blacks” featured such people as Maya Angelou (who knew) and James Earl Jones. The film version of Genet’s play “The Balcony” featured such people as Shelley Winters, Leonard Nimoy, and Peter Falk. (Note to self: Try to find and see Genet’s short film called Un Chant d’Amour, or Song of Love. White says it’s a minor masterpiece in gay cinema.) In October, 1955 Genet had dinner with William Faulkner in a restaurant in Paris. Edmund White says of the meeting, that it was “reminiscent of the equally taciturn earlier encounter between Proust and Joyce.”

Today I had an HIV test. While I sat in the waiting room for the required 20 minutes, after swabbing my gums with the test stick, I couldn’t decide quite how I should react. It’s so easy to take the dramatic turn and view it as a chilling experience in a clinical setting, which it is. We poor gays, woe is I, to have to live with this, etc. But then I think that, well, HIV is not the death sentence it once was, and to react that way is to dishonor those living with HIV, blah blah blah. I didn’t expect to be positive, but that makes me want to prepare myself even more for the possibility that it might deliver the unexpected. For we have to preserve the unexpected in our minds, don’t we? My mind is constantly playing these games of balance and counterbalance, the mental ticks of the mildly autistic. Every morning when I cross the street between the parking garage and the office building I note in my mind how long my foot hit the curb before a car passes behind me, the car which might have hit me had I been slower or the driver faster. This bit of information in case I am hit one morning by a car and am testifying in my own personal injury suit months later. I have a million of these private rituals that clutter my mind. The truth is that had I been HIV+, I would have remembered that scene the rest of my life—the dark hallway between the testing room and the empty waiting area, the glass between the waiting room and the reception area, where two workers talking softly about a man’s unlikely story of his sexual history. I would have remembered the darkness of rooms, and the janitor running the vacuum as I thumbed through the Out and About magazine. I would have remembered the blue line across the stick, but even more, the jolt I felt upon seeing it. I felt some relief upon getting the result, but then guilt for being in any position to feel relief. I truly had no good reason to worry, but neither do I want to be complacent. I want to feel this and that, but never too much of anything, just so that my mind balances perfectly between all ends, as if I’m standing tall above it all on a thousand different tight ropes, boasting about how deftly I keep my balance while all the while moving the pole forward…in a thousand different directions, to the awe of an adoring crowd below. I need to sleep.

There are words that I come across in my reading that I want to incorporate into my ready vocabulary, but they never seem to make there. Abstemious is one such word. Let it enter my head please. And obsequious. And sardonic.

Ann said the other day that she thinks she’s opposed to hate crimes laws. These are typically statutes which provide for enhancing punishment for regular crimes that are motivated by some form of bigotry. I think the recent hate crime against people in a gay bar in Massachusetts brought the issue to her mind. I think I agree with her.

There’s a man at my gym who wears blue hospital garb every day for his workout, and black leather clogs. I hate him for the clogs more than for the hospital attire. The clogs can be overlooked only if he is very European, which he is not. He’s just an ass. The clogs are unforgivable.

A few days ago at work we were all in a meeting in the middle of what, at one time, I would have regarded as utterly intolerable—a fruity discussion about what it means to be an engaged team member. I’ve mellowed somewhat, and now I regard it merely as silly. Silly but tolerable. We were brainstorming ideas, spit-balling, as it were, and someone mentioned that an engaged person is focused, focused on their job or tasks, or something. She gathered up a head of steam, muttering about engaged persons being interested and involved in multiple things, having multiple focuses, and they’re likely to. . . I started to laugh, visibly laugh so that everyone turned to look me. And I said simply, playfully, I thought, “If you have multiple focuses, aren’t you then unfocused?” Later I was asked by a co-worker how I get away without being called to the carpet for such behavior. I don’t know, but I thought I was just poking fun in good humor. I was.

I’ve bought a lot of new music lately, and I’ve been trying to listen to it. But little has interested me much—a Strauss opera, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, some orchestral music of Grieg, piano music of Satie, etc. There are a few exceptions to my indifference, however. In the right mood, usually in the morning, when I’ve just sat down at my desk, while I’m still groggy and my mind hasn’t been focused by a cup of coffee, I’ve been listening to Bach keyboard music, the Partitas and the English Suites, and enjoying their perfection. I could go on about them, but I don’t want to talk about Bach. The one true pleasure in my listening lately, even above Bach, has been a collection of American orchestral music that I bought on a whim—pieces by Hanson, Piston, Diamond, and Creston. It’s all wonderful music. It’s the first time I’ve really appreciated Hanson’s music. His first two symphonies always fell flat on my ears, but these other pieces are different. And of course I like Piston, and this is the first Creston I’ve really listened to. But towering above the music of these other American composers is Diamond’s music, which again has captured me like no music has for quite some time. I can’t stop listening to his music for Romeo and Juliet, especially the balcony scene. It evokes for me nothing at all related to the play—it has no programmatic feel to it at all. When you think of Romeo and Juliet, you of course think of Tchaikovsky’s piece, which DOES suggest the Shakespeare play. But this Diamond piece is so beautiful in a completely different and unassuming way. Like much of his music, it doesn’t have immediate appeal. You listen and wonder why you spent your money for this bland American music. And you do it again, and again. But eventually it begins to creeps up on you. Now this music is so emotionally satisfying to me. It’s so authentically American, written in the early 40’s before the war. It has an innocence to it, but not a naivete. It’s melancholy but hopeful. I love Diamond for this piece alone. It’s become one of those handful of pieces that can always move me, always make me happy.

I’ve been listening to this collection while I work on stained glass, and it seems to fit me perfectly--the music of this generation of American composers, easterners, many from New York. For the last two weeks I’ve been dragging myself through my work days, bored but not really discontented. For much of the day I’ve been listening to whatever is lying around. Late in the afternoon, when most have gone home, I’ve been pulling out this Romeo and Juliet piece by Diamond and listening to it in the stillness of my cube, as I empty my mind. It’s fortifying, genuine music that makes me happy. Like many of the pieces that I really cherish, it doesn’t remind me of persons I love, or of times, places or ideas. It’s beautiful beyond those things. If I had none of those things, if I lost all of that, this music would still be beautiful to me, would still speak to me.

Like most people, I sometimes become tired of the routine in my life. Things that I'd normally want to do no long appeal to me. I don't want to be around people, and I don't want to do what I'd otherwise enjoy. Mostly I want to be left alone to sleep. But I never, ever get tired of the food that I eat day after week after year. In the nearly 15 years that I've been taking the same bagged lunch to work (chicken sandwich, yogurt, egg, banana, apple), never have I pulled it from the refrigerator and complained or grumbled. Routine in my eating habits has never been a problem with me.

I’m reading a play by Eugene Ionesco called “Rhinoceros.” There’s a character in the play named “Logician.” He keeps giving examples to his friend of syllogisms which are incorrect. “The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot both have four paws. Therefore Isidoe and Fricot are cats.” From this faulty syllogism it’s possible to derive nearly anything.

Genet became close friends with Sartre just after WWII, when Sartre was at his intellectual peak. It’s odd that Sartre would be interested in Genet, since Genet was so gay, and Sartre so straight, and since Sartre was more of a philosopher than a novelist or playwright, and Genet was more of a poet than a thinker. But apparently Sartre recognized Genet’s genius, and Sartre was very interested in homosexuality. Sartre eventually wrote a large volume on Genet, which I’d like to read some day. Of course Genet became friends with Simone de Beauvoir as well. Beauvoir claimed she entitled her feminist text “The Second Sex” because “since pansies are called the ‘third sex’ . . . that must mean women come in second.” This is the first time I’ve ever heard of gays being called the third sex. I wonder if gay men are the third sex, and lesbians are the fourth?

White very correctly characterizes Genet’s writing style when he says that although Genet may have themes and schemes, they never “mitigate the reader’s sense that the author is improvising notions and discovering linguistic possibilities line by line, not the global, level, in the language, not in the plot. . . Sartre is fun to discuss, Genet more absorbing to read. Genet cannot be read rapidly just as Sartre cannot be read slowly.” Genet isn’t easy to read. He’s not even fun to read.

I’ve been chatting online with some kid off and on for a few months. He’s very young, and very inexperienced. It’s often the case that the young gay boys are the most imaginative in their sexual fantasies. And those who’ve only ever fantasized about sex always seem to have the wildest fantasies. Those with some experience know the difference. This kid really wants someone to cum multiple times into a container, and to save it. Later, at his convenience, he’d eat it while jerking off. Our tastes aren’t quite aligned in that way. Heheh I can’t imagine anything quite so repulsive. I suppose you’d have to refrigerate it, and then it’d be cold, like a chilled oyster, or like unsweetened yogurt. How would it work? Would he put his face in the mayonnaise jar and let it drip slowly onto his face while jerking off? Could it be simulated with pudding of some sort? Or maybe he’d dip his finger into the specimen like sampling peanut butter? It’s hard for me to place it in an erotic setting. He wants lot of public sex, of course. Slapping, hitting, nipple twisting, toilet head. Lots of photographs, wardrobe changes, mirrors, and videotape. A full array of underwear, g-strings, thongs, jock straps, and razors. There are no limits while the fantasies remain within his head. I’m sure that the moment reality intervenes, it would be something like, “Ouch. Could I just feel your chest?” But it’s sweet to hear him go on about what he imagines he’d like. I never initiate conversations with him. But I’m happy to play along. As our conversation ends, he always promises to call me the next day to come over and begin working our way through his list. He never calls. Still, I always pretend that I’m waiting for his call.

I’ve heard from men all over the country who’ve found my blog entries about the Russian boys Ivan and Sergey. Some take it more seriously than others. Some are indignant; others just want to tell someone how idiotic it all is. It is. No one has been truly deceived by these Russians.

The Russians have become a burden. They write as faithfully as ever, and as voluminously, but they say less and less. At the beginning and ending of each email are paragraphs of giddiness about how delighted they are to receive “letters” from me, and how happy they are to have found me. In middle paragraphs they write that they’re convinced I’m genuine and “different” from others, as if to reassure themselves, and they beg for me to be honest and truthful to them in all matters—for it is the only way love flourishes.

Both have announced their love for me, and have spoken of our lives together, this together with a perfunctory allowance for the possibility that I may think of them as mere boys, that I many not feel quite the same as they do. But in the next sentence there’s more discussion of when we’ll meet, our undying love, etc. In any email there are perhaps two or three sentences upon which I can build any sort of reply. I can’t muster the energy to keep up this correspondence much longer. Sergey writes that I give him “new vivifying strength.” Vivifying? I don’t even use that word. How do Russians know such words?

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Since writing this I’ve heard from another person who was contacted from his gay.com profile by a Russian, an “Ivan.” We’ve been comparing notes on our Russians, and he’s done some research about this Russian scam. He tells me the letters he receives are numbered consecutively, presumably to keep tract of which pre-written, canned letters have been sent and which have not. He he These scam artists are smooth. I told him that I was continuing to write because it was entertaining, but that lately it’s become more burdensome than amusing. I had thought I might continue until these people either tire of my non-committal, frivolous emails or actually get to the point of asking for money. Today that point was reached. Sergey says he went to an agency to see what it would take to get a visa to the U.S. Options were laid out, and costs were enumerated. All told, it’ll take about $420 in U.S. dollars. To save this much himself it will take 4-5 months, after he pays his bills, and assuming he does not help his parents. I’m tempted to reply, asking if I should then plan to see him sometime in June?

But what about the cost of the flight and other travel? Maybe I should offer to make his arrangements for an apartment here in Rochester, once of course he sends me the $1000 in U.S. currency for a security deposit. He mentioned 3 times that he’ll have to take an HIV test before he’s allowed a visa. Is that supposed to elicit empathy or something, or maybe put me at ease that he’s HIV negative? I haven’t answered him yet, but I think I’m going to ask about the cost of the flight, and then act disappointed that it’ll be another year and a half before he’s saved enough money. What a test of our love!

(Actually, I just responded to him. This is what I wrote: “What about the cost of the flight? You haven't considered that. It will surely take a $1000 or more. To save that much will take you a year or two. I'm willing to wait that long. Are you?”) ha ha

Just a quick word about Judge Alito. He will be confirmed, and he’ll take his place with Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts. The court will be more conservative than it is now, deferring to legislative and executive power in nearly all significant cases. This group of justices will marginalize the Supreme Court. That is what they want, though I don’t understand it. But there have been long stretches in the nation’s history in which the courts have been marginal players among the three branches. We’re entering another. It’s not the end of the world. Those seeking redress in the courts will have to sift their focus and their efforts to the legislatures. I don’t think this is necessarily bad. For too long legislatures have been protected by the courts from their own bad legislation, and their own bad animus. When the cover of the courts is taken away, I think public opinion may well be advanced in some cases. I’m thinking about gay rights. It’s on my mind. But the same may be true of other things. I heard today that if Roe v. Wade were abrogated (which I don’t believe it will be), 9 states have laws on the books to outlaw abortion. A considerable majority believes in the right to an abortion. Let those 9 states try to sustain their ban, and let’s see how those states stand up to the pressure of a far more progressive nation than is represented in that ban. For gay rights, maybe it’s time for the public opinion to catch up to where I believe we ought to be in the law. It takes time, and the best thing we can do to advance gay rights is to be open about who we are and to let our neighbors know that we’re queer. Invisibility is our greatest enemy, still today. Ok, enough on the political soapbox. I could write volumes, but I force myself not to write about political matters in this blog.

Saturday I went to Spot Coffee. As I found my way to a table along the window at the front I saw an acquaintance from the gym. Let’s call him Ed. We waved and that was that. I booted up my laptop, opened a book, and began looking through my art glass lamp book while intermittently chatting on gay.com. There I was with a half a dozen gay chat windows open, profiles of nude men, and a busy conversation going on with a chatting man calling himself (I am not making this up), something like HungHugeInRochester. At one point I noticed Ed rise from his chair—I thought, to go to the restroom. But before I know it he’s headed directly toward me, no doubt to exchange a few words. He’s a chatty fellow. I scramble frantically to open a new browser window that will cover my sordid activities, but I can’t manage to do it. My friend has no sense of boundaries or discretion, and he bends over to see what I’m working on at my laptop. The look that came over his face spoke the words, “Oh, I see.” The stammering of my voice said, “Yes, I’m a raging homo. Now leave me the fuck alone you stupid twit.” He he Neither of us addressed the pink elephant staring at us from my laptop, and after a few minutes—truly a few minutes of senseless babbling—we both regained our heads. He lifted his head after examining what I was “working” on, and retained a smirk on his face for the rest of the encounter. I felt like an ass—first for chatting so openly on such a site, and then for being embarrassed for chatting on such a site. I’m certain he had assumed I was perfectly straight—or rather it wasn’t even an issue. Why would he think anything on the issue? We never talked about anything but workouts, houses, and our jobs (actually mostly his job—he liked to talk about himself mostly). As we chatted and pretended that all was fine, he tells me that he’s taking voice lessons through the Eastman community outreach program. He wants to be able to join a music group, a chorale group. And then he tells me he’s taking dance and ballet lessons. And soon I’m thinking I may have a recruit on my hands. Well, not really. He seems pretty straight to me, but goofy straight. He’s goofy. And he speaks out of the side of his mouth, like a Flintstones character might do. It’s . . . unsexy, to say the least. This is the guy who told me of an earlier career in modeling, before the civil engineering. He also writes poetry. I’ve been outed to a straight guy who’s a bigger homo than me.

The Russian boys are persistent. Every day they write a voluminous amount of text, ticking off the details of their lives as if accounting to me for their whereabouts these past 25 suspicious years, as if reading from their curriculum vitae in an interview in which they’re clearly not quite qualified for the position. And every day I return their voluminous text with a small paragraph or two of hastily written text addressing their points in summary fashion.

Yesterday Sergey said he bowed out of a birthday celebration for his boss to go to the Internet café, where he waited for over an hour to get an available computer. It took him three hours to write the email, with dictionary in hand, and the fluttering heart of an excited school boy. He tells me of his first and only boyfriend, a lifelong friend who arrived at his home one day when he was in the bath. Sergey answered the door in a towel. They looked at each other awkwardly, and he risked their friendship to speak his heart. They were together for two years before a heart-rending breakup which, if one were to credit all that he said, nearly ended his desire to be with other humans.

He wants me to send a picture, but not a naked one, so that he can frame it and put it in his bedroom in order to see me before he goes to sleep. And I swear that I’ve written nothing to encourage this sort of indulgent lovey dovey fall-off-the-precipice puppy love. Is he playing me? I can’t tell, but I don’t think so. These Russians seem to wear their earnestness and emotions on their sleeves, sweet but utterly humorless. And so dull. But I’m interested to hear about Russian life.

I’ve returned to reading Edmund White’s biography of Genet, and I’m enjoying it greatly. Edmund White is a great writer, and I have this latent desire to contact him in some way, for no good reason. He’s an immensely underappreciated figure in American gay culture. When you learn about White you begin to understand how shallow much of gay culture is. Maybe I've said that already? (I've also returned to the Gide diaries, which are getting interesting as we proceed through the '30s and toward WWII. The poetry of Rimbaud awaits me, and I still have not made it through Pride and Prejudice. And Ann bought me a few books for Christmas which I'm eager to jump into. Never enough time. )

Genet once noted how he differed from Proust and Gide, a difference rooted in the full acceptance of “the antisocial implications of homosexuality.” He says that a homosexual is a “man who by his very nature is out of step with the world, who refuses to enter into the system that organizes the entire world. . . To live with surprises, changes, to accept risks, to be exposed to insult: it’s the opposite of social constraint, of the social comedy. It follows that if the homosexual accepts more or less to play a role in this comedy, like Proust or Gide, he’s cheating, he’s lying: everything he says becomes suspect. . . I reject deception; and if I’ve ever exaggerated and pushed my heroes or their adventures in the direction of what’s frightening or obscene, it’s been an exaggeration in the direction of truth.”

I like that. I think one of the things that motivates me to write so openly about various things is a certain rejection of deception, not that discretion is antithetical to truth. But often it feels truthful and right to me to speak and act openly about things that others think should be kept private. In the same passage Genet claims that for the homosexual “romance is a kind of stupidity or deception—for him only pleasure exists.” I don’t quite see that, or rather, that it may be true of only a segment of the gay population, perhaps of the world of prisoners, criminals and sailors that Genet preferred.

The first portion of the quote above—about the homosexual being one who is out of step with the world—I have come to believe. There was a time when I was younger, more judgmental (yes, even more judgmental than now), and less able to accept different points of view, when I was very critical of such things as gay cinema, gay literature, or gay culture. Why should one’s mere sexual preference color everything else about one’s life, I argued. But it does. As I’ve heard gays say before to straight people, imagine living as a straight person in a gay world, a world in which all the men were coupled with other men, where the norms were inverted. You’d be uncomfortable. You’d want your world back, a world that reflected yourself. Gays live in a minority status, but it’s based on something very fundamental to our identity, something perhaps even more fundamental than race. Gender roles and sexual identity and preference are as fundamental as it gets. Anyway, so yes, I tend to want to watch gay films, and to read gay authors, and I’m unapologetic about it.

Ann and I were just laughing about the movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” and about the lead character whose organizing principles and value system seemed to hang in large part upon the notion of favorites—proclaiming x his favorite comic book superhero spoke volumes in his world about the kind of person he was. It reminded me of my Russian boys. Both of them insisted I tell them my favorite color, as if I have a favorite color. What is your favorite season? What is your favorite kind of music? What types of television do you watch? What is your favorite singer? What is your favorite food. Your favorite drink? It’s these types of questions they fire at me as if their answers held any significance to our compatibility or our future as lover boys in our big gay yankee love nest in the states. Who over the age of 12 has a favorite color? After listing his favorite things Sergey writes, “What about you? Please, answer at the same questions.” How could I not . . . make up a favorite color. Of course I did. My favorite color is now blue.