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"Jonathan says it is a defect of the aristocracy that they say what they please..."
Mr. Stoker apparently never envisioned a society in which we all prided ourselves on doing just that--saying whatever we please. And last time I checked the balance in my bank account, a member of the aristocracy I am not...
Among others who are saying exactly what they please (as is their right to a degree) is the religious right as many of the New England states are debating full marriage equality in their states' legislative sessions, including New Hampshire and Vermont (which was the first state in the union to come up with the separate yet inherently unequal "civil union"...)
My inbox has been biblically flooded (figuratively and literally!) with emails from all the right-wing nuts, hoping that my voice can be included in those standing up for "traditional" marriage and "family values" in a world "increasingly gone awry"--as if...
I know we've tread this ground before, dear reader. I know you're saying to yourself, "Well, don't have to read this!" as you obviously consider yourself well-versed in the ways and means in which I am not afforded the same 1,138 benefits any straight couple with a $20 will receive at any state, church, or tackle shop in the nation!--all due to the penis/vagina ratio in your nearest Motel 6...
Ah, the sacredness of marriage. (I know--I threw up a little in my throat there too!) While we all know what a farce this "traditional marriage" crap the right spews on a daily basis from their pulpit, street corner, or cardboard near you (as the tradition of marriage is actually one of female slavery, taxation, and inheritance issues), I am reminded once again of that wonderful passage from one of my most cherished titles, The Bostonians, by Henry James. The novel is a brilliant satire of the women's rights movement back in the day, but this impassioned speech by one of the characters brings the passion bubbling forth in me every time, so much so that I do believe this is perhaps the third time it has been posted here. Nonetheless, until full equality is recognized at the expense of the dreamed-of theocracy on the right, I bring you once again one of my most cherished life quotes:
"But you really do strike me as stupid even about your own welfare! Some of you say that we have already all the influence we can possibly require, and talk as if we ought to be grateful that we are allowed even to breathe. Pray, who shall judge what we require if not we ourselves? We require simply freedom; we require the lid to be taken off the box in which we have been kept for centuries. You say it’s a very comfortable, cozy, convenient box, with nice glass sides, so that we can see out, and that all that’s wanted is to give another quiet turn to the key. That is very easily answered. Good gentlemen, you have never been in the box, and you haven’t the least idea how it feels!"
No idea indeed...
I think it important that, while we are all busy screaming for our positions and invoking our right to speak and worship as we do (or don't) please, we must keep in mind--you may have the right to believe and say what you wish, but that should in no way trump my right to enjoy the same freedoms and rights. It is not a request of a "special right" to marry the one I love any more than it is a "special request" on your part to marry the one you love...
And it was, dear reader. After a splendid afternoon hanging out with my friends, a few of us decided to go check out Rainbow Mountain's dance club...
It felt like coming home...
We haven't been to a club in years, mind you. With the buying of the house six years ago, my body's predilection toward evicting organs, and a myriad of other issues, the money just hasn't been there. Mind you, we'd go out to see the odd band, go to the straight event here and there (like Bally last week)... And they have been fun times...
But upon entering the dance club...
Home. Surrounded by hundreds of gay men and lesbians all there for one reason--to be together, dancing, drinking, and having fun. Celebrating life. I didn't want it to end...
One of the more mysterious things to me is how I automatically become 600% more attractive upon entering a club. (Seriously, it's not just the Long Island's and Snake Bites!) The cruising, the eye contact, the brush-up here and there, Rich symbolically "claiming" me by constantly touching my shoulder, placing an arm around my waist (you gotta love that jealous streak!)...
Oh, not to worry, dear reader! I use my powers for good! Dancing with the geek who just isn't pretty enough for everyone else. Pecking the older gent on the cheek who feels lonely sitting at the bar getting the cold shoulder from the twinks. Being the first to walk up and give the nervous male dancer a dollar when everyone else feels--shy? too "good" for that?--they'd be viewed as "dirty" or something... (Hey, get this--he's putting himself through medical school! He might be next in line to remove another organ from this aging body!) The best part is ignoring those who are in good with "everyone else," the "pretty group." Those same twinks who won't give Ray or Harold even a polite hello... The ones who are "too pretty" to be seen with the aged, the over-weight, the "unattractive." It worries me that they have not the foresight or the inclination that one day they might--or will be--part of that group. An accident, a medication, or just age, will place them at that lonely spot at the bar... That dark corner where those just wanting to be seen as human, congregate and grow bitter at the shallowness of young gay culture...
Granted, when I was new, young, and hotter than poached eggs on the scene, I had that streak--but it doesn't take long for some people to realize how the game is played, and if the rules should be followed... And lord knows, I've never been one to really follow the rules...
This is American society, dear reader. Obsessed with beauty, youth, sex. It's not just a trait of my subculture--just glance at the magazine rack, a passing billboard, and number of beauty shops. We have elevated unattainable beauty to even higher levels of perfection while at the same time allowing ourselves to become obesity capital of the galaxy, this United States. Held together by our views of beauty and love of cheeseburgers, the oxymoron is that we idealize what we won't be, worship what we refuse to attain, envy what we won't work for (take a look around you next Sunday in the pews...)--a very disingenuous magic, if I do say so myself. And while this part of our culture has been philosophized to the point of the proverbial dead horse, it is nice to be reminded that, while none of us will be the ideal person with the ideal body and the ideal life...
You can still have a wonderful, fun, vibrant, magical life...
As long as you learn to live your life with respect for everyone else and not just those that fit into your idea of "perfection"... What a piss-poor world this would be if we all were the same. I like to believe each individual life is made just a bit better, a bit richer, when we all take just a moment to acknowledge that...
One might almost call it magical...
It's just a tad bit scary when you go into work and see a real estate sign out front. What's even scarier is when you get lied to about why it's there: "Oh, no, that actually is supposed to be in front of the building next door--they put it on the wrong lawn."
Uh-huh. That's why it's still there four days later...
...and why I can find it on a certain realty web site for commercial businesses...
...showing our building as "For Lease."
What it doesn't say is when the building is available for occupancy... I'm half tempted to call the realtor to see when it would be, just so I have my doomsday date, you know?
Perhaps I don't want to know...
On the more optimistic side, perhaps we're just moving buildings again, yeah? To a new location maybe? A new office?
But I abhor being lied to.... Especially when my livelihood is at stake... Which makes me seriously doubt the validity of my usually optimistic outlook on life at the moment...
I'm sure it's not as dire as my mind is making me think it is...
And why in Sam Hill does spell check demand that "realtor" be capitalized? Last I checked, "garbage man," "plumber," "house wife," and "project supervisor" aren't capitalized on a regular basis--who do realtor's think they are, gods or something?
Tell you what, Merriam Webster--when we start capitalizing everyone's job description and title, then I'll go along with this little charade... Until then, I'm lower casing it, if only because it's one small portion on my world that I can control at the moment...
(Isn't it amazing how obstinate we get when things are happening beyond our control?)
I'd like to be the first to make a motion that St. Patrick's day from here hence forth shall only be recognized, celebrated, and acknowledged on either Friday nights or Saturday nights...
So how Irish was I last night? Let me count the ways:- 1 Irish car bomb (pictured)
- 2 pink fruity things
- 1 Mike's Hard Lemonade
- 2 rum and Pepsi's
- 1 gay kiss at a straight bar in small town PA at a "traditional" Irish wake
... and me back at work with only four hours of sleep...
And I promised myself I would call off today. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for the guilt-ridden work-ethic they passed on to me, their 2nd of 5 offspring...
Such a blast, though, such a blast... The town of Bally didn't know what hit them--especially when I ran into two cousins and an aunt!! OMG!
Here's the weird circle of my life--I have a hubbie named Rich. Together we went to the Bally Hotel with his cousin Courtney, our friend Trace, Trace's cousin Rick, and his friend Debbie. When we ran into my cousins Megan and Matt, it came up that Courtney, long before she knew anyone in my family, used to cut their hair when they were but wee lad's and lassies. And Matt knew Rick from Zern's where he has a stand (Zern's is the farmer's market in Boyertown my great-grandfather used to own most of)! It was like the six degrees of Jason in Bally! (Okay, okay, all this seemed a lot weirder when we were all heavily buzzed... Huh.... "were" buzzed?)
Come on, you know you wanna start singing "It's a Small World After All!" And even if you didn't, you're singing it now in your head. Consider it a traditional Irish curse. :) We didn't get due representation on the ride in Disney, thus you are cursed to have it swimming around your noggin for at least another hour or two...
We did manage to earn ourselves a lot of Mardi Gras beads (I know, I know, but something tells me beads are becoming more and more universally accepted at EVERY holiday...) I think there was at least two spilled green beers, a broken camera, at some point someone did the Hustle (mistaking it for a dirge), and we all joined hands and tried our hands at River Dancing.... That last was thanks in large part from the car bombs--taste like chocolate, hits you faster than Obama's economic recovery package, and leaves you feeling much better than either on it's own...
It was a good night... I'll post some pics as soon as my fellow Irishmen and women wake and upload from their various broken and unbroken technological appendages--after all, the proof is in the car bomb...
For those who wish to make their own Irish car bomb:- 1/2 oz. Irish Cream (Bailey's)
- 1/2 pint Stout (Guinness)
- 1/2 oz. Whiskey, Irish (Jameson)
Mixing Instructions:
Pour half a pint of chilled Guinness into a beer mug and let it settle. Take a shot glass filled with 1/2 oz. of Irish whiskey on the bottom and 1/2 oz. of Irish cream on top. Drop the shot glass into the Guinness and chug.
Chug, chug, chug, chug-chug-chug-chug-CHUG-CHUG-CHUG-CHUG...
Makes us all wish we had just a bit more of the Irish in us, yes? Hubba-hubba...
Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody!
Thanks to Restoring Love for the pic.
We dream of the day when, the very men and women who were "created" equal are actually treated that way. When no one goes hungry, no one get sick, the old die peacefully and the young grow up healthy, strong, well-educated, with respect and dignity...
What is the cost of this Utopia? Some seem to think it's in giving your life over to a god, or an equally-worshiped deity of some kind. Others grasp at platitudes and proverbs and turn them into mantras for life.
I've just finished watching the 1988 version of the film Appleseed, which I first heard about over at Exploring Our Matrix in this post. Granted, I haven't seen the actual movie James McGrath is speaking of here--it's sitting on my coffee table as we speak, waiting for me to first finish the 2004 remake Appleseed of the 1988 version of Appleseed I just finished watching so that I can then watch the third installment in the series also named Appleseed... (You follow all that?)
Basically, in the city of Olympus, 80% of the humans have been genetically modified since birth to be happy in this Utopia, created after WWII, while the other 20% have been brought in "from the outside," "saved" as it were, from the fate worse then death they had been living beyond the walls of Olympus...
And it was killing them, these humans. (Some of them anyway...). Right from the outset we witness a woman go off the deep end (quite literally!), unable to live in the perfect society to which she has been brought, longing for her freedom from the "perfectness" of it all...
What is the cost of Utopia? Is it our freedoms? In Christian mythology, after this life full of its hardships and toils surrounded by a curse of "original sin" and pain and death, we will be brought to a place of perfect peace and tranquility, where no sadness exists, food is plentiful, pain not even a memory, and joy abounds like a two-year-old boy in a mud puddle!
Trust me, you wouldn't be the first person to cry, "Ugh! Sounds like hell!" (One wonders how many Christians will actually end up there and come to the same conclusion!!) Most Western religions actually vary very little on this theme (although one wonders what happens when the Muslim has slept with all seventy-two of his virgins... Does he apply for new ones? Or simply live the rest of his eternal afterlife being nagged by seventy-two different women?), and since I've been told multiple times that hell is exactly where I'm going, I can't help but wonder if that means I'll be in their heaven after all... (unfortunately, however, this would ruin the promised experience for them...)
I can't help but think that if it was bliss and peace we as humans truly desired, we'd have it by now... What, after all, can we not achieve if we but try? And to be honest, the effort these days is hardly much more than a whim. Sure, we love the stories of how billionaires spend money to rid the malaria from the tiny corners of the Earth where it still thrives (and true, too, that it thrives there unnecessarily!). But we also love the story of the man or woman who brings themselves up by their own boot straps, creating a better life for themselves and/or their children through sheer will power and guts alone--could it be these romanticized stories of hardship and pain are the reason alone we haven't achieved are own Utopia already? Are we just too lazy to be bothered with those backwoods corners of the Earth that haven't eradicated malaria (or whatever) themselves, waiting for the heroic story of the local person who did it without Bill Gates' money?
Or could it be that we already know that, were we to even try, something else would come along and ruin the dream?
What is the price of Utopia? What is the cost?
I recently read on a chat site where our planet would be a lot better off if we as humans didn't even exist--better off for who? The animals? As if they wouldn't continue hunting each other for food and territory... As if animals still wouldn't go extinct... As if volcanoes weren't just as effective--if not better--at spilling carnage and pollution into the atmosphere... "Better" is very subjective, as we can see. Additionally, how could something be labeled "better" if no one were around to say what "better" actually was? And how could it possibly be "better" for us--the very keepers of such whims and notions as "better" and "worse," "good" and "bad"--to not be here?
Utopia may be the dream for most--call it "heaven," "nirvana," "Abraham's bosom"--it all means the same thing--and end to Life.
"Life is pain, highness!" the man in black cried to the weeping woman who wished simply to be back safe in the palace with the man she did not love. To finish the quote? "Anyone who says differently is selling something..."
Selling heaven, selling salvation, selling a gadget for $19.95 that slices, dices, and does the dishes afterward (for an additional $5.95, of course, and only in the next five minutes...)
This post may seem a bit dreary to you, dear reader--after all, if life is nothing without the pain and suffering which made us--continually makes us--who we are and what, pray tell, is the point?
Perhaps you missed it--Life is the point. If eternal bliss means feeling nothing, I'll kindly take a pass. If peace forever means giving up being me? I'll wait for the next car. If reaching Utopia means I must give up my flaws and imperfections, then what's to become of me? Who will I be? What will keep me human? How can it possibly be an afterlife if the life part has been eradicated?
Yes, it sucks to being born with nothing and having to struggle for that first breath of air. It blows even bigger monkey chunks to die after struggling for so long to make it however far you make it in life--what with the cars, the house, the 2.5 kids, and the dog that thinks you're god... But the reason you appreciate them so IS because of the work involved--the struggles, the pain, the adversity, and ultimately the triumph--all before the next thing comes along that needs a good conquering.
It could be that perhaps Utopia would be best--after all, how can you possibly miss living if you don't remember having lived? If all the pain and sorrow and whatnot have been removed, how are you going to know all that you're missing out on? All the living you had done to reach this Utopia? If Utopia strips you of everything that made you who you are and everything you have experienced, perhaps you can be brainwashed into loving the fact that nothing ever happens for eternity...
Of course, you may as well just call it death... After all, isn't death what comes after life?
A preacher was telling his congregation that anything they could think of, old or new, was discussed somewhere in the Bible and that the entirety of the human experience could be found there. After the service, he was approached by a woman who said, "Preacher, I don't believe the Bible mentions PMS mood swings." The preacher replied that he was sure it must be there somewhere and that he would look for it.
The following week after the service, the preacher called the woman aside and showed her a passage which read, "And Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way to Bethlehem."
Rich is seriously considering revoking my status as a gay man...
Let me explain: About seven months ago, he decided on a whim to buy the movie Mommy Dearest, claiming this was a "must see" movie for any and all gay men. I shrugged.
Off and on every few weeks on a night when no Netflix movie had appeared in our mailbox, he would tentatively offer, "We could watch Mommy Dearest you know," as if I were simply dying to watch a movie I had never heard of about Joan Crawford, you know?
Granted, my membership as a gay man was already questionable, what with my aversion to anything labeled a "musical" and a distinct distaste for Bette Middler and Barry Manilow albums. But my passion for dance music generally and a dying devotion to Moulin Rogue has thus far kept my membership from lapsing, you see?
So as I lay healing, contemplating my navel (quite literally the Frankenstein version thereof...), his words drifted through the air once more and my will power collapsed:
Me: Fine, put in Mommy Dearest and let's see what all of the hoopla is all about.
Rich: When you put it like that, I'm not sure I want to anymore.
Me: You have been ragging me to watch this for months! Either we watch it now or it goes on eBay.
Rich: But it's my movie!
Me: Anything we do not use is fair game, I'm sorry--those are the rules we made.
Rich: Fine--but you're going to love it!
"Love" isn't exactly the word to describe it. "Boring," perhaps, or "Blah," but Love? Not quite.
Adding to the utter amazement at how such a movie could ever have become a cult classic was my own confusion: Yes, I heard the references to "Joan Crawford," but in my head I kept picturing "Joan Rivers"! I kept asking things like, "This is a biography?" and "This is supposedly a true story?" and always met with a resounding, "Shh! Yes!" as Rich sat enraptured by the show playing on our television.
Then there was the ending.
Me: She's dead? I thought you said this was a biography!
Rich: It is!
Me: But she's not dead!
Rich: She's been dead for a while, darling.
Me: Then who's the chick doing the E! fashion stuff? With the big mouth?
Rich: That's Joan Rivers.
Me: Oh... Oh, so this is the woman who wrote that Valley of the Dolls book?
Rich: That was Joan Collins.
Me: Then who the hell was this?
Rich: Joan Crawford. Big-time actress.
Me: Yeah, I got that, but what's she been in?
Rich: Oh, things like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Torch Song--a bunch of others.
Me: Well, I've heard of the first one...
Rich: You've never seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?!
Me: Based on other movies you've been excited about recently? I'm not missing much.
Rich: Are you sure you're gay?
Me: What?
Rich: I think you're in danger of having your license revoked.
Me: Because I found this movie wanting and haven't seen the other?
Rich: Among other things.
Me: Okay, Mister "I wish the eighties were back." Talk to me when you can pick out something not in neon orange on your own, okay?
Rich: Is that so, Mister "I still think Jeans and T-shirts are a classic look"?
Me: They are.
Rich: I wonder if WalMart has Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Me: Oh, god... If I lose my gay membership, you lose your WalMart privileges--fair enough?
Rich: (He grins) Fair enough.
Now if only I could locate that damn agenda everyone keeps telling me I'm supposed to have...
