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07 January 2004 - 4:28 pm

Today on the List Of Things To Do are all the mediocre chores, such as go to the grocery store, change light bulbs, and shower. Unemployment's fun and all, but sometimes I wish it came with at least a small sense of responsibility--or perhaps the real problem is that I don't come with a sense of responsibility. Make good use of my time? Shit, who do you think I am? What I love about internet journals (or "blogs" as we're so inclined to call them these days.) is the consistency with which they're used for bitching about our procrastination. I've yet to come across a journal that doesn't include at least one post about future plans, goals to accomplish, some kind of empty promise to work harder and better, be happier.

ON ANOTHER NOTE

I've been reading a lot of articles about the TSA, airline security, anti-missile devices--the millions of dollars we're spending on screening and re-screening every grandmother with a tin of fruitcake that the x-ray machine can't penetrate and every dyke wearing a leather jacket the bomb experts can't figure out. What are the chances of the plane going down due to terrorism or a rocket launched from the ground? Pretty nil. We've stepped up security enough that most idiots wouldn't try it at this point, and if they did, the chances of being caught are fairly high. But the thing about terrorism, or warfare in general, is that if someone is serious enough they will eventually succeed, especially if they're willing to sacrifice their own life in the process. It's what made guerrilla warfare so successful, it's what makes terrorism so terror-inspiring. Lack of concern for your own well-being will always make you a more dangerous adversary.

What I�m concerned about is actual airline safety. I�m afraid of flying. I�m not the seat-clenching, sweat-dripping anxious traveler type; my version of fear is more along the lines of being so genuinely convinced I am going to die on that particular flight that I spend most of take-off and landing trying to clear my mind of petty thoughts and prepare myself for annihilation. I keep my head down and my hands in my lap, and try to stay as physically relaxed as possible on the off-chance that I am the only survivor in a devastating plane crash and I need the energy and focus to wrangle through baggage and bodies to an exit. Over holiday, I flew on three planes. Each time I went through this to the point that I was almost in tears by the time we arrived at the gate. It�s morbid and traumatic and, I admit, ridiculous. Planes are generally safer than automobiles; my problem stems from the fact that at least in car accidents there�s a chance of survival. If a plane goes down from 39,000 feet you�ve no such luck. So as I read of the millions, billions being spent on counter-terrorism gadgets and retrofitting airliners with laser beams and high-tech flares, I notice the word �retrofit,� and my little heart goes bump bump. We�re flying around in planes built in the 60s, good lord. Engineers are trying to RETROFIT technology to planes designed over 30 years ago. Theoretically, we�re flying dinosaurs. Engines fall off, computers fail, the retrofitted technologies of today don�t mesh quite the right way with that gyroscope from 1971, and suddenly you�re wingless or finless or merely suffering from no landing gear, no power, whatever, and yup, there�s the ocean coming up really fast. Huh.

05 January 2004 - 11:54 pm

oh, i've just read new york magazine's article on the boi culture of new york. i'm a mixed bag of proud and pissed and wanting to write an angry letter, "you didn't get it right, you didn't get it right at all!" but then i remember there's nothing to get right--it's different for all of us, every queer and andro and trans and etc etc, this culture is getting to the point where it's brimming almost as much as the straight world, and that's a good thing.

but one girl, sarah, says, " [a]nd, you know, at the end of a hard day, I would like to come home from work and have my wife suck my cock." that's a hot statement, no doubt, because it's something i and a lot of other women have thought or done or desired, but at the same time i want to shove sarah into a corner and ask her if she's trying to screw us, saying something like that to a mainstream magazine with a readership way beyond what we're used to. on our backs, fine, bitch, fine, but new york? oh shit. the rednecks will be all over us, girls sucking girls cocks! that's the fear in me. i've just come back from a holiday where i've had to deal with my own queerphobic family. sometimes it seems like the easy thing to do is to give everyone the finger, scream "fuck you!" (like i did to my father this weekend, in a wonderfully childish showcasing of my wounds) and go storming away, hoodie hunched tight around the shoulders, fists clenched. the harder thing to do is to stand ground and find the logical, intelligent language. but i digress--that has nothing to do with sarah's statement. and when i read it, sitting in my room here in brooklyn, i laughed out loud, really laughed, because it was just the kind of thing you'd want to hear your friend say to the uptight business man on the subway, coming home from work. it rattles his brain because it's the same shit he's been thinking during happy hour after work, and it rattles me because i realize it's the same shit he thinks during happy hour after work, are we becoming like them? have we gone from queer to worse than queer? the confrontation gives a sense of glee and power. we fuck with them with our honesty, our visceral sexuality. is our poly sexual liberation the new queer movement? or are we just embracing typical gender roles in our own anarchic ways, repeating in three-quarter time the binary dichotomy of traditional straight culture?

great, now i'm sounding like an academic.

either way, we'll still be out there on those nights, half shy and half embarassed and half horny, trying our best to be standoffish and conversational and easy and wrinkled-shirt-cool, and i'll still be waking up the mornings after those nights wondering why i can't make it easier for myself--care less, fuck more.

03 January 2004 - 7:19 pm

I'm drinking a glass of pinot noir and hiding in the guest room-slash-office of my parents' apartment because I am in serious need of hiding time. I have decided that, if for no other reason, I love the holidays for the sheer mass of nasty familial angst fodder it provides for later brooklyn-house drunken storytime. Which I feel should be a national holiday. "The President wishes everyone a flippant and self-depricating Drunken Storytime day." Thanks!

In the other room I can hear my mother watching some science fiction show on television. There is dialogue going between a young woman and a mad-scientist type man. She talks calmly and plainly, "Sir, we simply don't have enough operatives for that mission" and he only screams in response, "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT, DAMMIT! GET SOMEONE OUT THERE, NOW! OR THIS PLANET WILL BE DESTROYED!" Along with his rage, presumably. What's funny is that while I was in the middle of typing that up, my mother waddled in an asked me if I was interested in watching Steven Segall's On Deadly Ground with her. And now my transcription of the dialogue makes perfect sense, because I see how the plot must go: not enough operatives, world in peril, dammit! bring in that ponytailed man, HE'LL take care of our problems.

20 December 2003 - 3:01 pm

I went last night to watch my brother E play in a tennis match in Brooklyn. I've never seen him play competitively, although I have vague memories of him working as a tennis pro when I was younger, and he was younger, and we were altogether a little more spry.

I bundled up, bought a sandwich, and jumped on the F to Prospect Park, wandered cautiously into the trailer that is supposed to be the clubhouse, and made a few little "ahem" sounds until the fellow behind the counter looked me up and down, and I made a short motion to my brother's name on the leaderboard, and he said "oh, yeah, right out the back there."

I haven't been in an indoor tennis court in a long time, and I'd totally forgotten that they keep the things pressurized, like airplane cabins, so that the inflatable bubble doesn't collapse. When I entered, I clapped my hands over my ears like I'd just heard a sonic boom, they popped so painfully. A little boy in a tracksuit laughed and said "don't come in here very often, do you?" and then proceeded to whale a giant serve at his playmate, much harder than I could ever hit a ball, ever.

E was on the second court, so I settled into a plastic chair on the edge of the bubble and took off my homeless-man style army jacket (the label on the inside says "USA-STYLE JACKET!" and the rest of the label is in arabic--I picked it up for a few dollars at the Soho Salvation Army and wondered why I'd gotten such a good deal until I got it home realized it really did smell like homeless man) and my black hoodie, and felt a little conspicuously booted and black-garbed among all the bouncing, high-energy athletes in their tiny white tennis shorts and pristine sneakers.

I used to play tennis in high school, but not like this. E is no slim fellow, he rather looks like a linebacker. At each serve he'd screw his face up into a grimace, bare his teeth like a dog and suck in air, and then explode at the ball with a echoing "gggggrraaahhh!" E had tossed me a New Yorker to peruse during the match. I'd glance up from reading about Lorca to see him diving for the ball with that same distended, angry look, and now I can't help but wonder if perhaps he has some pent up issues regarding our mother or his father or his wife or something. If I ever played a true competitive match against him, I'd be cowering in the corner while he yelled "IF YOU DON'T START COMING THE NET, I'M GONNA mumble mumble..." I half expected the match to end in a fist-fight, what with the other guy muttering to himself as well, shaking his head and waggling his racket after every point. But my brother lost, and I huddled under my jacket and tucked the New Yorker back into my bag and stole a few glances and yeah, huh, they shook hands and laughed and everything was hunky-dory. At the pub after the match, I asked my brother why he was screaming at his opponent, if that was some kind of scare-tactic. "Isn't that, like, not really proper behaviour for a match?" I said. Turns out he was screaming at himself.

I have never felt more like a soccer mom* than I did last night at that game. There's something strange about going to sporting events alone, sitting on the sidelines and having everyone know you're there to root for a family member. I should have been sipping a Diet Coke and golf-clapping at every point, but I guess reading a magazine and draping my jacket over my legs to stave off the chill was enough.

*soccer mom or slightly-disinterested-yet-supportive grandmother, I can't decide.

Anecdotal sidenote:
A few nights before, I was out drinking with my two flatmates. I decided to try to hit on a boy, you know, give it another go at the old quarter-century mark. A beer or so into a conversation, I stepped out for a cigarette. The next night K recounted this to me:

"So you know how you went outside for a smoke?" "Yeah?" "Well, while you were out there, Moby-lookalike asked me about you." "Really? What'd he say?" "He asked me if there was something wrong with my friend."

Just another proof in a long list of reasons why I am queer. Thanks Moby-lookalike!