Seulement

I've been struggling about writing on this topic that is bothering me... aside from it being a difficult topic to discuss, it glancingly involves friends who I know read this blog. But I figure they're my friends, they'll understand, and I need to get this off my chest.



A couple of weeks ago, I had this "minipiphany," one of those little moments of clarity where you realize that something's been bugging you and you can now identify what it is. It's kind of like when you finally notice something is missing or added to your surroundings after a long while of wondering why things don't seem quite right. I have these minipiphanies all the time, being a rather scatterbrained individual. Like the time I was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee one morning and I suddenly realized my pet finch Alexander was no longer chirping... he'd been dead for several days, and I hadn't noticed, though something about the kitchen had seemed somehow wrong. Or the time that Grandmother and I were driving up the main road to our house, a road we've traveled several times a day for years and years, and we suddenly noticed that there were new stop signs at the intersections; and when we asked our neighbor if she'd noticed them, too, she told us they'd been there for over six months.



Anyway, to return to the point, I had this minipiphany a couple of weeks ago when I realized that for the first time in a long, long time, I was without a Social Escort Friend. I have always had a friend who worked less than I did and who was socially presentable and who was usually available for social occasions. In most of my 20s, it was Kevin, except when Kevin was in a relationship. Then it was Shiloh. And now Shiloh is in a new relationship, and he is no longer available to me as an escort. I went to a party alone for the first time in sober memory, though it didn't strike me at the time why I felt so strange at that party (I mean, I knew almost everyone there, so it wasn't like I was alone alone, I just arrived and left alone). It felt wrong, and it felt lonely.



More than that, for the first time in a long time I don't have a Special Friend, someone in whom I am romantically interested. Again, I'd always had Kevin, and then I had Shiloh, to fill this particular slot in my life. There were others, as well... Billy and Todd and Jason and Dalton (in that order), people I pursued as friends even though (or because) I was romantically attracted to them. For the first time in a long, long time, I am not in love or lust or even intrigue with any particular person. And it feels kind of empty.



Well, this minipiphany didn't count as a real epiphany because I didn't think much about it. I just had an "Oh, how interesting" kind of moment and I moved on. But this last weekend something happened that brought this to the foreground of my consciousness, where it has been jumping up and down and screaming and otherwise calling undue attention to itself.



On Saturday, I made plans to hang out with my two best male friends... it started off as intending to spend an evening with Dalton, and then I invited Shiloh along, neither of whom I have seen very often in the last couple of months. Along with these two, one automatically includes their boyfriends, Dean and Zach respectively, who I also like very much and am always happy to have as companions for an evening. This is not the problem... the problem is that both of these relationships are new, in the rosy honeymoon stages, where the participants in the relationship find it difficult to keep their hands off each other and impossible to go more than five minutes without gazing at each other with dire smiles and kissy little endearments. Again, this behavior in and of itself isn't problematic... it was the way this behavior made me feel: that is, intensely lonely. Excluded, even.



It took me back to high school, where by stint of my shyness and Other sexuality I was the only single in a vast circle of couples. I remember once going to the movies with a group of friends, which by happenstance was comprised of my best friend of the time, Eva, her boyfriend of the time, and two newly-conjoined boy-girl couples. The couples of course, being hot-hormoned teenagers with fresh physical discoveries to explore, spent most of the afternoon making out with each-other wherever we happened to be, while I was completely alone in this group. And it was one of the most miserable afternoons of my life.



Then there were the parties that we always had, one whole summer there was a party at someone's house every weekend, and everybody but me (and I do not exaggerate) was dancing with a Special Someone and making out in the dark corners with that Special Someone when they weren't dancing. And there would be me alone, talking to one of my many girl friends (when she wasn't dancing with or making out with her Special Someone) or dancing or eating and what-have-you with them, while everyone else was getting their groove on and romancing eachother and making stupid plans for the future. And from this I was excluded and alone and it made me miserable.



So miserable, in fact, that I started dating a girl, just to be included. I mean, I knew I was gay, and she knew I was gay, and everyone in the world (except my Grandmother with her amazing powers of denial) knew I was gay... but I was so tired of being excluded from the Hetero Mating Dance that I allowed friendly flirtations with Eva (who was between boyfriends at the time) to turn into a Publicly Recognized Relationship. We made out at parties, we made out on group hikes in the parks, we sat together and danced together and went to the Prom together. This went on for about a year, I think. And what ended it was that Eva wanted to take our relationship to the next physical level, and I wasn't able to do so... and it also occurred to me (as I was running scared from her house the afternoon she went for my fly) that I was being terribly unfair to her, keeping her in a sterile social coupledom rather than letting her roam and be free to explore with a nice straight boy who would appreciate her physical charms (which were many).



It was after this that I focussed solely and intently on boys as romantic objects, but again I was miserably unsuccessful. I wanted to be part of a couple, and they boys I knew and found attractive only wanted sex and exploration. But eventually I met someone who seemed interested in a Relationship, and on that rather flimsy pretext I built my life around him. He was an awful person, a mean soul with a tiny penis and a nasal voice, but I moved in with him and defended his arrogance to my friends and basically tried to make a life with him, just because he would allow me to so do. That only lasted a few months, but when you're 20 a few months is long enough. I finally broke up with him because 1 all of my friends and several of my enemies loathed him violently, 2 he didn't have any furniture in his apartment (he'd had to move out of the place we lived together, since the roommates whose house it was hated him) and 3 he hung up on me when I refused to argue with him (nobody hangs up on me and gets away with it). He thought it was because he'd cheated on me, but really the only thing about that was that he'd managed to sleep with someone I found very attractive and I was a trifle jealous.



Throughout the rest of my 20s, and partway into my 30s, it was my deepest desire to have a boyfriend, not for the sex or the love, but rather for the social aspects. And when I discovered that this was the case (I'd thought it was for sex and love and affection), I made a decision to remain single for the foreseeable future. I still believe that this was the right decision, for how can I build a relationship with a man when all I want is someone to dote on and trot out to parties? I don't even want to have sex with anybody right now... I just want a man on my arm, someone with whom to hold hands and make kissy faces and (this is key) to prove my worth as a person in society.



And I was fine with this. I have come to understand, during this period of purposed celibacy, that some people aren't emotionally capable of carrying on a romantic relationship, and I was one of those people. I don't know if it's something that I am going to have to accept as permanent, or if it's something I will eventually grow out of, but I feel that either way I cannot pursue romance at this stage in my life. I mean, aside from my sexual hangups (which are many), there is my Grandmother-dominated lifestyle. I don't have the time to give to a man, much less the attention or even the sleeping accommodations. For me to maintain a romantic relationship, I would have to learn to be much more giving, both emotionally and sexually; and on the other side of the equation, to bother with rocking the boat of my life, the man has to be pretty damned special... and someone that special deserves more than I right now have to give, with my trust issues and my physical touch issues and my many other issues.



So logic dictates that this period of my life is one of growth and of learning to be alone with myself. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it until I was walking along with two couples who can't keep their paws off of each other. Like I said, I know these people read this blog, so I want to stress that it is not the public displays of affection in general that bother me, and I do not want anybody to change their behavior for me.



I guess the thing is that I discovered, from the intensity and suddenness of that isolated and excluded feeling, that perhaps I haven't grown as much as I'd thought and hoped I had. That wholeness of person that I wish to become, before I can offer myself to another, is still over the horizon. And in the meantime I feel a little lonely, a little sad, and a little horny too. I want something in my life to feel passionate about, a person or a thing or anything. I miss having passion... and the bracelets and books and sweaters aren't quite enough to make me feel passion. And I miss having single friends with whom to hang out. The only people I spend time with alone are Grandmother and Caroline. And as much fun as I have with them, it's not the same as gay male friends.



So my Seventh Year Change... is this it? Is it learning to be alone? Or is it learning that I am not meant to be alone? I don't know. But I'm glad I got to talk about it, get it off my chest. Now I absolutely must dash, I have to get all the way to Pleasanton, in rush hour traffic, to get my computer repaired at the Gateway Store. I hope they can fix it right away. I'd hate to have to return the damned thing, I really do like it despite my disappointment over its not working.



Thanks again for listening! Big smooshy hugs!

Elevenses

So here we are at the eleventh day of the eleventh month (though I missed the eleventh hour, having been curled up with a slim volume of Wodehouse at the time). As is my custom on national holidays that do not come entailed with family celebrations, I am sitting around the house in my pyjamas doing as little as possible. But rather than just take the holiday and not care why I don't have to go to work today, I have been trying to think about the things I am supposed to be thinking about, namely Veterans (or, if one prefers to be old-fashioned, Armistice).



Thinking about veterans and armistices and war-in-general makes me very uneasy. I am not completely sure of how I feel... war is one of those things where ideals and ethics and practicality get all mixed up. I mean, I am a pacifist... but what does that mean, exactly? I don't believe that war is ever the best solution; but then, I cannot think of a better solution to the problems war has been used to solve. I guess I tend to think of violence of any kind as a sort of last-ditch expedient that should only be used when all other avenues have failed. And that, as an expedient, war should never be glorified or sentimentalized or used as an economic stimulus.



The whole problem with pacifism is that it only works if everyone does it. There comes a time when other nations or individuals are bent on destruction, and one has to rise up in defense. Now a pacifist would prefer to find peaceful measures of defense, passive resistance and diplomacy and what-have-you. But a violent person or culture will not necessarily be swayed by such things.



And of course, so very few people really are pacifist to the point that they turn the other cheek. I know I fantasize about killing people, especially in traffic, and I enjoy the hell out of RPG video games where you have a selection of powerful guns and a lot of ammunition and you can just run through a building killing everyone who comes near you. I know that when violence has been offered to me, I wished to respond with violence on an even greater scale... but I do not do so because I have no talent or ability in those realms. If someone walked up to me and punched me in the face, there wouldn't be much I could do to defend myself. I simply don't have the strength or training to fight hand-to-hand, and am in fact unable to so much as make a fist in a moment of anger.



Which begs the question: am I unable to make a fist because I am a pacifist, or am I a pacifist because I'm unable to make a fist? So you can see why I become uneasy in regard to these things... it's unpleasant to ponder that line between pacifism and cowardice. I know that, as an ideal, I embrace pacifism because it is the right thing; however, I wonder if that ideal is more easily embraced by people who are physically incapable of violence. But the definition of cowardice is acting dishonorably in an attempt at self-preservation; and so I must measure whether or not my pacifism is intended on any scale to preserve my own life. Self-preservation is not one of my main motives in life, being more concerned with doing something good with my life rather than with merely continuing it... but then you have to take into account the Pain Factor. Being punched in the face hurts a lot. And let's not forget the Vanity Factor... being punched in the face is humiliating. To act dishonorably in order to avoid pain and/or indignity is cowardly, as well. And knowing myself as I do, I wonder if I would do something cowardly and shameful to avoid pain or preserve my vanity, two things that I fear more than death.



But as I think about it, there comes a question: there are lots of things that are worth dying for; but how many things are there worth killing for? If one believes that killing another person is the worst thing you could possibly ever do, that killing another is worse than dying oneself, then what could possibly be worth the act of killing? And I do believe exactly that, despite my murderous road-raging and gleeful slaughter of DataDyne security guards in the person of Joanna Dark. If presented with the option of killing or being killed, I would choose the latter... because I know that dying isn't the worse thing that can happen to a person: betrayal is, I think, much worse, particulary betrayal of one's own principles... pain and torture are worse than dying, too (but then, I'm an absolute wuss when it comes to pain, just ask my dentist).



But all of this is neither here nor there when it comes to honoring veterans. Even if I don't believe that war is good or glorious in any way, I do have to honor people fighting for what they believe... not just struggling and strategizing and orating, but actually getting out there and putting their own lives in danger... and when what they believed they were doing was keeping me and mine safe from interntational threats, then I feel it's necessary to honor their efforts (if on the other hand, their motive was merely to kill gooks, gerries, and wops, then I withdraw my honor... but I give all Veterans the benefit of the doubt).



Yesterday, I was talking with the Grandmother over our usual après-l'église brunch, and I somehow stumbled onto the topic of memorials on The Mall in Washington DC, and how moving those memorials are, particularly the war memorials, and in such different ways. The Vietnam Memorial is interesting in its simplicity, and in the way it illustrates the real scope of our nation's loss in that action... not just the innumerable individual precious lives, but the character of and faith in our nation that were lost, these were brought home to me as I walked along that simple black marble wall with those hundreds of thousands of names.



In another part of the Mall, one finds the Korean Memorial, a group of patinaed bronze statues portraying a small platoon of men in jungle gear slogging through what seemed to be a swamp... but rather than being surrounded by a swampy jungle, they are surrounded by flowers and cherry trees and rolling parkland, peaceful and glorious; the care and worry and loneliness in these men's sculpted faces were so eloquent of the Conflict itself, this useless war fought after the Glory of WWII but before the Ignomy of Vietnam, a sort of forgotten war that never went one way or another and was only immortalized on film by M*A*S*H, a rather dull and go-nowhere movie and later TV series. In another part of the park, I came across a small monument of funerary aspect, dedicated to the men of the Washington DC area who died in WWI; it was sweet and dignified, a pretty in memoriam rather than a lesson in human ghastliness... it illustrated to me the change in our ideas of warfare since then.



But one way or another, though I disapprove of war and of the military, I do honor those who, for whatever reason or sense of duty, put their lives on the line for our country. I honor those who undertook to committ the worst act available to humanity, Destruction of Life, in order to defend something in which they believe.



The people who start these wars, however, are beneath contempt. And I don't necessarily mean our flop-eared buffoon of a President, either... I don't know enough of what's going on in his tiny little mind to judge his motives... I mean everyone and anyone with the unspeakable gall to believe that they have the right to kill others in order to forward their own agendas or exert their wills on others. Defense is one thing, but offense is something else altogether. It may be a quibble to wait for the offendor to draw first blood before one attacks in defense, but it is within these quibbles that our principles reside. For though I do believe wholeheartedly in pacifism, I also believe wholeheartedly in Honor.



Unfortunately, like the difference between pacifism and cowardice, the line between honor and vanity is a fine one, and unpleasant to ponder. So unpleasant, in fact, that most people don't ponder it at all, preferring to address all vanities as honor and all pacifism as cowardice... or vice versa. Like I always say, the evils of this world are mostly rooted in a lack of thinking about things.



Well, at any rate, these are my thoughts this Veteran's Day (previously Armistice Day). I am now going to go back to bed and read Anne Rice's newest novel (I didn't even know she'd written one until I saw it on the table at Barnes & Noble) with a nice cup of coffee and an orange-cranberry bagel. In the meantime, here is something pleasant to ponder:

Marlénè and the Blustery Day

So the storm season seems to be upon us, and everyone is freaking out all over the place, forgetting how to drive, how to walk, and how to dress. Grandmother posed a question this morning that I think bears repeating... in response to all of the people who do stupid things on difficult freeways under cautionary conditions, "are these the same people over and over again, or are these all new people moving to California every day?"



For an example she cited a young man who was interviewed by one of the TV "news" correspondents who had been posted at one of the most storm-affected sites in the Bay Area, Highway 17 (which runs through mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz, one of the most dangerous roads in the State)... he apparently was trying to drive 70 mph up a steep grade in a Volkswagen. Before he reached the top of the hill, his tires lost purchase on the road and he spun out all the way back down the hill and into a ditch. Personally, if I had done something so spectacularly foolish, I wouldn't be caught dead giving an interview on television about it... I would be hiding in my car hoping it would explode in a mercifully fatal fireball, as is proper.



There are also those people who live on the Russian River, whose houses get washed downstream every time we have a good rainy season... do they keep rebuilding in the same spot, in the idiotic hope that the river will never rise again, or are these all new people every time? Are they too stupid to realize that rivers tend to overflow, not to mention the fact that they change course regularly, and that building a house right next to one is a really bad idea? Grandmother believes (and I agree) that people who build houses next to oft-overflowing rivers deserve whatever they get (same as the people who build their houses on the sides of muddy hills, or who live in friable pine forests... do they believe that they're safe? Nobody is safe from Nature).



But I understand how people get nutty in this kind of weather... the wind makes me very uneasy, and the humidity in between bursts of rain makes me uneasy, and the little flashes of lightning make me very uneasy. So I am staying indoors as much as possible (though I usually stay indoors on nice days, too) and refraining from driving any more than is absolutely necessary... because between the people driving ten miles an hour from terror of the weather and the people driving fifty miles an hour despite the weather, along with the weather itself, the roads aren't safe or sane at all. But what I can do without is this sense of surprise, as if people had never lived through storms before. Perhaps because I have lived in the same place most of my life, I am not as surprised by the weather of Northern California the same as people from other, more predictably-weathered places might be. One simply learns to expect the unexpected here.



I think most of the alarm, however, is generated by the news stations in the area. One of these days people are going to figure out that the media overblows everything in order to be dramatic, that the "news" has become a form of back-door entertainment that masquerades as a serious source of much-needed information. I asked my Grandmother what benefit she thinks she derives from watching the news... what benefit does she derive from knowing all the terrible things that happen in the world, things that are only reported if they are horrible enough to catch the attention of the masses? She thinks it's imperative that one know what is going on in the world around one, but she doesn't see that the newspapers and stations don't impart that information - they only tell you of the dramatic and emotional things that go on around one. Big waste of time, if you ask me. Of course, nobody did.



For me, though, this uneasiness with the weather has been exacerbated today by the fact that I slept very poorly last night, having made the blunder of going to bed angry. I am angry at the work-people I am usually angry with (the evil Department Chair people, the Napoleon, and the rest of the Membership), and I am angry at my computer (which I have spent more time trying to fix than actually using, and in which I am disappointed in exact ratio to how exited I was when I first got it). I'm even a little bit angry with the book I finished last night, Stephen Fry's latest novel Revenge. I found the book beautifully written, with a character with whom I identified immediately and almost painfully ("floppy-haired innocence" being one of the most evocative phrases I've ever read in my life). I'm not sure why I felt so angry about it when it ended... I didn't find the ending very satisfactory (there was no redemption, which is what I look for in an ending, along with resolution), but then so many novels end unsatisfactorily that one would think I'd be used to it by now. I know from my own experience that it is often more difficult to end a story than to start one, and I can often tell the exact moment where the author just gives up and lets things rumble to a close rather than try to squeeze some meaning out of the resolution itself.



So having finished this book angrily, and given up on fixing my computer angrily, I got angrily in to bed and started reliving all of the things I wished I'd been able to say at the meeting yesterday... how badly I wanted to call one of our members a "vicious, idle cunt" (she is, but it would be unprofessional to say so) and how badly I wanted to accuse the Napoleon of using that vicious, idle cunt to undermine the president, not to gain her seat but simply to feel more powerful in himself (but of course I can't prove it, so I must belt up). How badly I wanted to take hold of these people and shake them by the lapels, screaming into their faces "Don't you people have anything more important you could be doing with your time? You're overpaid and underworked and need to get a fucking grip on reality! You sit here bitching and moaning about irrelevant things and unnecessary concessions when you make double the average American salary and aren't dying in the streets of a third-world county. You people are teachers, for chrissakes, and you're wasting your time and and the community's by being a bunch of fucking pussy-babies!"



I visualize myself in the role of Avenging Goddess, as portrayed by Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck, slowly making my way down the room and smiting the evildoer with flashing eyes, distended nostrils, and well-enunciated streams of invective that will leave them cowering in awe and shame at my feet. And as fun as this is to visualize, it's not conducive to slipping into the dreamy slumbers. I should have taken the time out to meditate and pray and hand over all this anger, but I didn't... I just let it boil and slosh and keep me awake. And when I wasn't thinking about that, I thought about the horrible things that were done to the protagonist in the novel, and the horrible things he did in retribution; if not that, I thought about the fragility of youth and beauty and the criminality of wasting or marring them; and when not that, I fumed about how much fun I am not having with my new computer and how I perhaps should have spent more money at the onset instead of trying to get something cheaply.



So now I'm a little tired. But I have a nice three-day weekend ahead, without any major claims on my time, so I think I may be able to get some much-needed rest along with hopefully achieving some necessary household activities like laundry and room-cleaning. Or, if I can get that damned computer running properly, I might just start a new novel. One of the bonus outcomes of being angry with a novel I read is that it inspires me to write something better.



And I've been thinking about retraining myself to write in the third person instead of the first... I have always created a character to be and then wrote everything through him. I have attempted to work in the third person, but I always had difficulty nailing down my own role as narrator... who, exactly, am I as a narrator, and how much can my personality intrude into my narrative style? When writing in the first person, it is easy to know where to focus and how the narrator ought to react to something... the personality of the first-person narrator is part of the story; but on the other hand, the first-person narrator can't know what's going on in other rooms and other situations and other characters' minds unless one engages in a lot of expositional dialogue. So I think for the sake of honesty, I need to learn the third-person style better so that I can report what's really happening with the protagonist, rather than relying on the protagonist himself to correctly interpret his own actions and feelings... for if he could do that, he wouldn't be getting into the messes that are required to set up conflict and resolution and redemption.



Well, anyway, I will be giving that some thought. I guess I'd better go do some filing and stuff... I had intended to update my membership database with the national affiliate, but the national database is offline today so I can't. That leaves filing. On the other hand, the file room isn't heated, and it's a bit too chilly to stand on cement and handle steel cabinets for very long. Maybe I'll just sit here and do nothing. Or I will think. Or write. Or something.



Until next time... XOXO

In Which We Revel in Our Citizenship

Brace yourselves, kiddies, she's going to talk about party politics now...



I haven't really been watching the news today, because the Republicans have taken over the world and I am a little bit afraid. Republicans tend to not be gracious winners... and Democrats are almost never gracious losers. Between the right-wing gloating and the left-wing whining, augmented by the media's bizarre fascination with the Winona Ryder shoplifting trial, I decided that MTV was the only safe channel this morning, so I watched Missy Elliot grabbing her crotch instead (I wish I knew what the hell she was saying in "Work It," but nevertheless it's got a nice beat and you can dance to it).



Here is why I think the Republican Party is in the ascendant right now: because they make concrete statements, they build a platform and stick to it, and they come off as good-old-boys, just like the guys at your barber shop or your church or your Rotary club. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, seems to take no stands at all, shilly-shallying all over the place and compromising previous platforms by trying to sucker in new voters, and by throwing people to the top who are really rather unpleasant and reprehensible. I mean, when Bill Clinton called my house (via recorded message, which I think is rude) to urge my Democratic vote, I hung up as soon as he pronounced his name. Bill Clinton is the most embarrassing president we've had in my lifetime, and being more of an embarrassment than Reagan or the flop-eared moron currently in office is pretty hard to do.



Why is it that the Democratic Party suffers from third-party candidates, but the Republicans don't? It's because the Democratic Party has lost its spine. It stands for nothing but business-as-usual fence-riding political sliminess. The Republican Party has grown over the years as age-old Democrats fall for the Republican Party's polemic stances, and others abandon the party for third parties. My Grandmother, who voted straight Democrat tickets at every election between Roosevelt and Reagan, has taken to voting almost entirely Republican. I myself voted mostly a Natural Law ticket, and am registered to vote as a "decline to state" party member.



But I do feel this quandary, that if we (the liberal-type voters) continue letting the Republicans have their way just because they have the more efficacious political machine, we defeat ourselves no matter what... with the merest consolation of having voted our consciences instead of suckling blindly at the Democrat teat. But what I hope will happen is that these third-parties will force the Democrats to actually get to work on platforms and issues, to develop a character and a spine and a side of the fence. I mean, you can only go so far on a platform of "at least we're not Republicans." The most unforgiveable stance in election politics, as far as I can tell, is arrogance. And the Democrats have become arrogant. I think the main lesson of Ralph Nader's candidacy in the last Presidential election (which the Democrats cite as the main reason Gore didn't win, drawing off Democrat voters rather than Republicans) is that the Democratic Party needs to take itself a little more seriously and not assume that they will win just because they aren't Republicans.



On the other hand, we have to remember that, in a democracy, there is no such things as a High Speed Solution. Everything moves very slowly, sometimes taking an entire generation or more to effect change. It is unfortunate timing that the country's voters just stuffed Washington with Republicans when we have a Republican president bent on war... but then, since he wasn't being seriously opposed by the Democrats in Congress anyway (many of whom are still riding the fence on the war issue), it doesn't seem that it will make much difference.



In the meantime, I have become very interested in the Natural Law party. I visted their website yesterday when I was investigating the persons I was thinking about voting for as Governor, and discovered that I agreed with many points of their platform. They don't fall into liberal and conservative sandtraps that descend almost automatically into demagoguery, but rather base everything on a reasonable and thoughtful approach to solving societal and economic problems. They're overly-idealistic, certainly, but they have a cohesive approach that focuses on education and economic stimulation instead of silly legislations that do nothing constructive. Since it has long been my opinion that you cannot legislate morality or stop anything at all by passing laws against it, and since one of the keystones of the Natural Law party is a reduction of ineffective or moralistic legislation, I felt myself in accord with their stances. And so I voted Natural Law in most candidacies, except where I voted for a Democrat or Independent I already knew and admired.



So, anyway, Grandmother and I found ourselves agreeing on most of the county and municipal issues that came up this year. There were a number of them in our city and county, most interestingly Measure EE, which is designed to prevent landlords from evicting tenants without reasonable cause (as happened so often during the late DotCom Boom, when many of my friends were evicted from their apartments and houses so their landlords could raise the rents). The lobbies working against this measure were trying very hard to convince everyone that it would prevent landlords from evicting subletters, thereby allowing Hell's Angels and pit-bull breeders to rent in any neighborhood we, the voters, happen to occupy. Of course, most leases prohibit subletting, and lease violation was one of the allowed reasonable causes for eviction, so this was nothing but hot air. I don't know if the measure passed or not (PS - according to the League of Women Voters, it did pass)... but then, it wouldn't matter to us, anyway, since we own a house in a neighborhood where everyone owns (and those who rent pay such high prices that they might as well own). I just voted for it because it seemed the fairest solution to a problem.



Both of us routinely vote against bond issues, and many of the bonds that were on this year's ballot were amazingly frivolous. Unfortunately, a large number of them passed. People don't seem to realize that bond issues just put the city or county or school district further and further into debt. People seem to think that bonds are just free money — but a bond is a loan, and those loans are guaranteed by property taxes, which will in most likelihood have to be raised (without voter input) when the bonds come due. Then, they also don't seem to realize that, in California, school bond money cannot be used for salaries or equipment, only for material improvements to structures and facilities. So our schools get new buildings and new swimming pools and new trees and new vanity projects whose only real purpose is to give the District or City a lot of contracts that they can bid out in exchange for political support... but the kids still have the same underpaid teachers and inadequate materials to work with.



Well, this is all very interesting, but my discussion of it is going nowhere... I keep losing my train of thought. I have been felled once again by a niggling little cold, which I seem to have caught from my Boss-Lady and/or Boss-Lady's foster-baby. My chest is congested and my throat is raw and I feel very weak and my joints ache. No fever yet, and I am not dizzy or too tired to sit up, so I came in to work anyway (cautioning coworker JB to keep her distance and to spray Lysol everywhere). But I do feel a little stupid, and my train of thought keeps wandering away into different places. Like wondering why I remembered to choose and wear a bracelet on my right wrist but forgot to put on my watch on the left. Or trying to remember the really interesting dream I had last night, which was narrative in nature like a made-for-TV movie. Or wondering what it would be like to live in Victoria, British Colombia, instead of here. Is constitutional monarchy better than two-party democracy? One wonders.



Well, God Bless America, anyway. It needs all the blessing it can get.

(PPS: I have just been made aware of the beautifully-written obituary of actor Jonathan "Dr. Smith" Harris, with the most wonderful descriptor of a character I've ever heard: "Flamboyantly fussy." I think I may just have a new Blog title)

*SIGH*

It should come as no surprise to regular readers (and others who know me) that there is a vast number of things in this universe that spin me right into a flurry of indignation and exasperation... so many things, in fact, that indignation and exasperation are almost the status quo of my life (and if I didn't spend so much time sleeping and watching videos and reading novels and pretending to meditate, the indignation and exasperation would take up most of my life).



Most people have these sorts of "pet peeves," little seemingly inconsequential things that drive one mad, the flies in our ointments, the burrs under our saddles, the peas under our princessly mattresses, the little reminders that this life is not perfect. My Grandmother has three which I think are funny: people who pronounce American as "Amurrrcan"; soap opera actors who kiss each other as if trying to swallow each-others' faces (or, as Grandmother more colloquially puts it, "Like a donkey eating a cob of corn"); and people who begin ball games by singing the national anthem as if it were a Motown/Gospel Patti LaBelle crossover hit, replete with pointless flights of nasal-toned scales, completely ignoring the notes as written.



I, on the other hand, have about three hundred pet peeves. I have pet driving peeves, pet fashion peeves, pet behavioral peeves, pet retail peeves, pet artistic peeves, pet architectural peeves, pet animal peeves, and so on and so forth... there isn't a known facet of this universe that does not contain at least one peeve. One might go so far as to call me "peevish."



But more than these are the language peeves. There are the pronunciation peeves, like people who say "nuke-you-lar" instead of nuclear, "hunnert" instead of hundred, "pin" instead of pen, "warsh" instead of wash, etc. Then there are the spelling peeves, the commonly confused words that drive me insane, such as the whole their/they're-your/you're-its/it's complex, the usual homonyms, using possessive apostrophes on plural words... not to mention simple bad spelling; there are the punctuation and other typographical peeves, people who over-use commas or who refrain from using capital letters or who communicate almost solely in web-based acronyms and abbreviations.



But more than anything else, I am peeved by misused words. I think many people are terribly sloppy about the denotations and connotations of words, preferring to let one word blanket a number of disparate issues or phenomena rather than spend an ounce of brain-power in pondering the correct definitions of things... and I don't mean having a grand flowery vocabulary, being able to say "pulchritudinous" rather than "pretty" or "glabrous" rather than "bald"... I mean the proper usage of everyday words, words like Love and Beautiful and Mom. Not to mention the actual seed of today's rant (about time you got to it), the misuse of the word Gay.



When most people say "gay," they aren't really being very precise, usually applying it to absolutely anyone of a homosexual orientation; some people use the word "queer" in the same context. This is wrong, it is sloppy, and it must be changed. "Gay" has not only denotations, but also connotations, as do "queer," "lesbian," "transgendered," and a whole slough of other words. And people tend not to bother with exact connotations, making the smallest, easiest word stand for a whole plethora of different and mutually exclusive concepts.



For example, I always cringe when I hear the phrase "closeted gay." You cannot be gay and closeted at the same time... "gay" means "uncloseted." People who are homosexual but do not live a gay lifestyle are not gay... they are simply homosexual. Furthermore, "queer" and "gay" are not interchangeable... they mean entirely different things. These things overlap in many places, but some people can be said to be queer and others cannot; some can be said to be gay, and others cannot. The same goes for "queen." The same goes for a lot of words.



The way I see it is this: you are born homosexual or heterosexual or somewhere in between, and that is all about the sex of the persons with whom you desire to copulate; you become gay or queer or lesbian or dyke or whatever you choose to become, which has to do with your culture, your choices, your support system, your paradigms, and the gender of the persons with whom you fall in love. Now, I omit bisexuality and transgenderedness from this, because I think these are entirely different concepts from "gay/lesbian" and "straight." I simply don't understand the whole bisexual thing, as a lifestyle, and transgenderism has little or nothing to do with the gender of those with whom you copulate, but rather with what you feel you are (plus I don't know about being born that way or choosing that way... these things are outside of my knowledge and experience, so I must refrain from expostulating).



Now, if you are a man who is married to a woman but sneaks out to have sex with other men, you are straight, not gay... you are a pansexual or bisexual or a homosexual with heterosexual abilities (and a reprehensible liar and cheat), but you are nevertheless straight. It's about who you are on the surface, what things you hold dear, how you conduct yourself in the public eye that makes you gay or straight; what you do to 'get off' is your sexuality, and how you align your social surface and your sexual selection is what makes for a Lifestyle Choice (and yes, being straight is a lifestyle choice, just as surely as being gay... it's simply an easier choice if you happen to be heterosexual, since that is the norm in this world and it's always easier to fall in with the norm if you can).



What brought this up for me today was the description of a blog I encountered when perusing through the Globe of Blogs... in which the author rolled off several descriptive nouns for himself which concluded with "who happens to be gay." That bugged the hell out of me for a few minutes, in the way that it always bugs me when people say that being gay isn't a very important thing. It bothers me because I have made many sacrifices and suffered many insults, both verbal and physical, because of my gayness... or, most specifically, my queenliness... and it irks me when I'm told that this is not very important.



As far as I'm concerned, nobody just "happens to be" gay. You can and do "happen to be" homosexual or heterosexual, but becoming gay is a lifestyle choice, and not one of the easiest choices to make. I feel minimized when it is suggested that my choice to be openly and publicly gay is rather less important than other things which I have chosen or which were dealt to me at birth. I understand, of course, this drive to minimize one's sexuality as a self-definition... there really are a lot of thing that go into making up a single human being, and sexuality is only one of those many things... and it is one that is most often used in an unfairly discriminatory manner (along with race, nationality, and sex).



But when the Thing You Are was a struggle to achieve, it is natural to demand recognition for it. I struggled for my lifestyle choice, it did not happen naturally or easily or without obstruction, like my education or my ability to color-coordinate. It was hard, and there were times I was tempted to crap out and pretend to be just like everyone else, just so people would stop beating me and teasing me and excluding me and throwing my otherness in my face. It was harder than recovery from alcoholism, it was harder than college-level Statistics, it was harder than building washboard abs... and it has more to do with other choices I make in life than my education or my sobriety have had. For me, it is the issue around which all others are built.



Perhaps this is wrong of me, but that is where I am. Still, to return to my original point, I think it behooves us as social animals for whom language is the only real method of communication, to learn to express ourselves properly and clearly. When you call yourself or someone else "gay," you should mean exactly that. If "gay" isn't the right word, find one that is exactly what you mean. And when you say something is beautiful, don't use the word unless the thing really is beautiful, rather than comely or cute or attractive... and the difference between pretty and handsome has nothing to do with the gender of the person described. And something is not beautiful just because you want to have sex with it. Furthermore, the woman who gave birth to you is not necessarily your Mom, sometimes she's just your mother, and your Mom is somebody else entirely.



Using the wrong word when you speak or write is the same as using the wrong name when you introduce one aquaintance to another. If you introduce Bob to June by calling him Bill, you will offend Bob and confuse June (and quite possibly insult anybody named Bill who happens to be standing nearby). And if you're not sure what the right word is when describing a person, ask him or her how s/he describes him- or herself... the same as if you didn't know his or her name.



And never, ever use the word "love" out of context... that's just asking for trouble. You have to know exactly what you mean, and make sure that the person you're talking to will know exactly what you mean, or else just keep your trap shut . When you say to someone "I love you," and the context is such that the person thinks you are in love with him or her, but your meaning is "I love you like I love Jell-O" or "I love you as much as I love all people," you have essentially told a lie... and it is these lies of omission that land us in the fire.



Well, anyway, that's what's on my chest today.



That and the voting thing... I hate politics. It makes people rather more vile than usual or necessary. The whole paradigm of competition destroys the ideal of democracy.



And my computer... turns out the CD drive is misfunctioning, which caused many misfunctions in the rest of the computer because the program information wasn't being loaded in properly from the operating system and applications disks. I will have to get that repaired, I think. Which means physically removing it from my room and taking it to a Gateway store somewhere.



And the home-repair thing... Grandmother scheduled another person to come look at the windows, and this time she wants him to look at my windows... in front of which are my (appropriately queen-sized) bed, a set of bookshelves full of sweaters that is supporting my TV and VCR, and a nightstand filled with videos and socks. All of these things, and everything in the vicinity of these things (that is, my entire freaking room) will have to be moved so this window-guy can look at and measure my windows. Oh, and did I mention that this man is coming at 9am tomorrow morning?! So not only do I have very little time in which to move all these things, but I also have to get up early in the morning to move the bed and greet the window man.



Sucks to be me, I guess.



We now return you to your regular life. Thanks for absorbing yet another rant from me. Here's the usual payoff:

There's something so HOT about beautiful twins... that the one guy is really gorgeous is miraculous enough, but the fact that there're TWO of such is just too much!

Hi, How Are You?

I have nothing to say, really. I just didn't want to go on not blogging for too long, especially when my last entry was so, well, dated. And since I am going to be busy tomorrow and the next day (my sister is moving, and I promised to help her with the final clean-up at her old place this weekend), I figured I'd better jot something out while I'm up and unoccupied.



So, what shall we talk about?



Politics? I'm so sick of election advertisement, each ad makes me wish to God I didn't live in a democratic country. Even the people for whom I had planned to vote have irked and irritated me with their smugness, their blatant propaganda, their grotesque truth-twisting. I don't ask for honesty (though that would be nice), all I want is a little style, some good acting, and some worthwhile camera-work. Is that so much? And don't even get me started on the National scene, with the warmongering president and the congress that's actually afraid to stand up to him. Pussies. Okay, let's not talk about politics.



Weather? The weather has turned a trifle chilly. But then, it's autumn, so one rather expects it.



Jewelry? I just got a new bracelet, a gorgeous art-deco style diamonite piece from the Real Collectibles by Adrienne range of HSN. I didn't get it from HSN, mind you, but rather from eBay at about half the price including shipping. It's a beautiful thing, it catches light so nicely with two different kinds of stones, small brilliants in the usual pronged framing around channel-set baguettes on six oblong medallions, connected to each other with six stone-studded circles (very Cartier). Here's what I wonder, though... what, exactly, is diamonite? And what exactly is cubic zirconium? How do they differ? Where can one go to find out? I suppose I could do a Google search, and if that fails I can do a Lycos search, or just Ask Jeeves. But I don't feel like doing it right now. One of the drawbacks of the Information Age is that there is now actually no excuse for ignorance.



Fashions? I went shop-shopping, shopping at Ross today, and bought two gowns and two scarves. Many people think that I wear vintage clothes when I perform, but in fact the lion's share of my wardrobe comes from Ross... the rest come mostly from consignment shops, and then there are the random here-and-there purchases from other places, but most every piece of drag I own is less than ten years old. A lot of my jewelry is from the 50s and 60s, though my favorite pieces are quite new (though some are repro). I guess, though, that my sense of style is rather firmly rooted in the 30s, so the modern things I choose tend to have a vintage look about them.



Television? There's nothing on television. But that's about to change, since November is a Sweeps month, and so everyone is pulling out the heavy guns for the biannual Nielsen suck-up. There will be Special Guest Stars from the ranks of superstardom, there will be Special Episodes where dramatic things happen on comedies and someone's butt will appear in all the dramas; there will be Double Episodes that take an hour or two to get through, and you realize why the show was originally only thirty or sixty minutes. First-run movies will infest every network channel, and all the movie channels will have special series and sitcoms. I think the practice of Sweeps is counterproductive... everyone saves their best shows for November and May, leaving the other ten months rather bereft of interest. Quite silly.



Music? I don't understand music anymore. I just don't. Give me my Ella and my opera and my demographically tailor-made pop-40, and leave me alone.



Movies? I just rewatched Gosford Park on video and really enjoyed it... it's ever so stylish and well-made. I would like to see Bowling for Columbine, many people have recommended it to me, but I am waiting to be struck by the proper mood. I am anxious for the new Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to come out, not to mention The Two Towers (I need another dose of Orlando Bloom as Legolas, such a hot elf!) Other than that, I can't think of anything I'd like to see.



Well, that just about dries me up. Here's a picture... ogle slowly, it may have to last you a few days.

Don't you just love his shoes? But don't ask me what he's doing to that cactus... I just don't want to know.

Ahem (kaff, kaff) ahem..."BOO!"

Twice in a twenty-four hour period. Aren't you lucky? Just a couple of things I have to share:



I am finally amused by Halloween. This morning as I was performing my daily Snooze-Button Gavotte (in which I leap out of bed, nimbly dance across the room, push the snooze button, then pirouette back under the covers, and repeat every nine minutes for two hours... the most work my abs ever get), I decided that instead of reading a book, I'd turn on the TV. Now, I only keep a TV in my room to watch movies, so it doesn't have cable or even an aerial... and so it only gets stations in the first twelve channels (which you old folks will remember used to be referred to as VHF). So the only things I had to choose from for morning fare were Ricki Lake (love her, hate her show), Dr. Phil (whom my Grandmother thinks is a Holy Prophet and she keeps trying to get me to watch his idiotic show), Martha Stewart (she creeps me out somethin' fierce!), Live! with Regis Philbin and Kelly Rippa, and Reading Rainbow with Lieutenant Geordi LaForge (I know he has a real name, but damned if I can remember it).



Okay, so obviously I would settle on Regis and Kelly, being the lesser of five evils, and it was the funniest thing I've seen in forever! It was a cross-dressing Halloween show, with Kelly dressed up and impersonating Regis (with a devlish cunning... for a minute I thought she was him) and Regis impersonating Kelly (not as convincingly but with a more wicked lampoon), with the elderly portly director dressed as Wonder Woman and the much put-upon producer Gilman dressed as Britney Spears with an albino boa constrictor around his neck. It was so gay!



Anyway, I watched about half of the show and enjoyed every minute of it, and it seems to have put me in the Halloween spirit. So I wore the only two articles of orange clothing I own (a sweater and t-shirt, which are actually Papaya and Tangerine, respectively, but close enough) and my new rhinestone spider choker (which I finally figured out how to wear without the legs touching me... it took some intricate knot-tying and I can only hope I'll be able to get it off without scissors).



Then I got to the office, and this was waiting in my email:

Subj: FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION: Your word of the day from www.yourdictionary.com

Date: 10/31/02 9:42:12 AM Pacific Standard Time

From: wotd@yourdictionary.com

Reply-to: info@yourdictionary.com



Today's Word: Floccinaucinihilipilification (Noun)



Pronunciation: [flak-si-na(w)-si-ni-hi-li-pi-li-fi-'key-shên]



Definition 1: Holding or judging something to be worthless.



Usage 1: The word's main function is to be exhibited as an example of a long English word, longer by a letter than the word most people think is the longest, "antidisestablishmentarianism," but no match for "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." There is also a widely underused verb, "floccinaucinihilipilificate." (A more useful noun with the same meaning is "floccinaucity" ['fla-si-'na(w)-si-tee].)



Suggested Usage: The word was first recorded in a letter by William Shenstone written in 1741 and published in 1777: "I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money". Don't forget that the verb is just as useless as the noun: "It is difficult for Flossie to avoid floccinaucinihilipilificating her nearly otiose husband, Otis."



Etymology: Back in the eighteenth century, the Eton Latin Grammar contained a rule that mentioned a set of words all of which meant "of little or no value": flocci, nauci, nihili, and pili. Someone, obviously, had to combine them and add the suffixes -ation to the result. Flocci is the plural of floccus "a tuft of wool" and pili, that of pilus "a hair." "Nihili" is from nihil "nothing," while "nauci" just means "worthless."



—Dr. Language, yourDictionary.com

Isn't that just about the best word you've ever seen? I'm going to spend the rest of the day learning how to pronounce it, and then finding a way of working it into a conversation. It's little things like this that make my life suddenly seem worthwhile.



And finally, here is a Trick or Treat for you:

Why does it have to be Trick OR Treat? Can't I do both?