Category: books i’ve read

I’m a Believer

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, Huzzah! It’s been a pretty decent week, overall, which is pretty amazing and pleases me endlessly. Is it just me, or is this summer just swimming by? It’s almost mid-July already, holy crap. I’d fully intended to be further along in my book than I am, so I need to kick it up a notch. Now that I have most of the busy work done around the apartment, I don’t need to spend as much time on that on the weekends and can start focusing on getting back into a strong writing groove again. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the book and developing the characters out further–I need to do some more work on that as well before moving on–so I am working, just not in the way that gets me closer to a finished first draft. A chapter a day for the rest of the month should do the trick, really, but that’s also a lot of writing to cram into a short period of time and I don’t know if I have the mental stamina to do that without burning myself out a bit.

I guess I need to stop being afraid to find out, right? Fear is such a useless emotion when it comes to living your life, really. Sure, if a spree killer is coming for you, you should be afraid–but you need to stay calm so you can think your way out of the situation. (I’ve always wanted to write my own take on a slasher movie; I have a couple of ideas that could be a lot of fun to explore.)

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day at all. I managed to make it through the entire day without getting tired or worn out. I came straight home from work between the rain storms (Beryl’s remnants are still plaguing us in New Orleans, but there was no flood warning last night, either) and we watched Presumed Innocent and more of Outer Range, which is very strange. There’s only one more episode and there’s no way they could possibly get everything wrapped up and explained in one, so it’s either going to be continuing into a second season and a lot is going to be left unexplained at the end of the series. It’s entertaining enough, and the acting is pretty good, so it’s involving us, but part of that involvement is “what the hell is going on?”

Not a way to end a first season or a mini-series, I’m afraid.

I was a bit tired when I got home yesterday, not going to lie about that. Not worn out must lie in chair all night doomscrolling social media while the television plays as background noise, but still fatigued. Today is my last day in the office for the week, so here we are at the end of another week with the weekend looming. I really need to get a to-do list together, because I know I am forgetting things I need to be doing. I think I am going to try to use this weekend to do a few things on the apartment, but get everything looming finished and caught up. I also want to finish Hall of Mirrors this weekend, so I can select my next read, and I have a pretty good idea of what that is going to be–it’s either the new Lori Roy or the new Wanda Morris–and of course I have some other blog posts I need to get finished. Ironically, I was already writing one about “the art v. the artist” re: the recent publishing community scandals when another broke yesterday, involving someone I know slightly and have always liked…so now I can write it from a more personal headspace. All of the scandals were surprises, but once the surprise wore off, it really wasn’t as surprising as I’d initially thought.

I also discovered yesterday that a short story I need to write isn’t actually due until December, so that was very good news. One of the things I need to do is also keep working on short stories. Maybe I’ll work on editing some this weekend; there are quite a few in progress and I really would like to get the collection finished and turned in. It can be very daunting sometimes when I think about all the things I have in progress and the fact that I am probably going to work on two of the more recent ones before I go back to anything else. I also think I am going to start working on the next Scotty book, too. I mean, what’s another thing to have on my plate, really? But I’ve written two at the same time before–going back and forth; when I’d get stuck on one I’d go work on the other, and by the time I’d get back to the original I wouldn’t be stuck anymore. It IS a lot to be juggling two books and a short story collection at the same time, but I have a lot of free time now, which I am still trying to get used to and wrap my mind around and figure out how to manage that time the most effectively I can–it is very easy to get sucked into doing nothing, particularly since I am so damned lazy and “a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest,” which has been true most of my life.

Ironically, I was writing a post about the “art v. the artist” argument this week in the wake of the last two authors outed as shitty people from the outside perspective of someone with no skin in the game (I’ve admired Gaiman’s work, but was never really vested in it; was aware of Munro but hadn’t read her; I bought a collection when she won the Nobel Prize), as has been the case pretty much always; I’d read the Harry Potter books as an adult so wasn’t vested in them, so that author’s descent into homophobic TERFdom wasn’t hard for me…but yesterday news broke about someone I actually do know and have worked with before, which means scrapping that post and starting over again. But even that acquaintance wasn’t much, and while I admired his writing successes, as I do with everyone, but I’d only ever read some of his short stories…so it’s again not something emotionally wrenching for me. So this brings a whole new perspective to it, and so I need to roll it around in my head a bit more.

Jesus, the world in which we live.

And on that horrific note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back probably later.

Last Train to Clarksville

Well, we made it to Wednesday, didn’t we? This is my first full week of work in over three weeks, thanks to holidays and a canceled trip, and I am rather surprised at how well I am doing. Monday was a drag, but yesterday? I was wide awake and energized when I left the house yesterday morning, and listened to Berlin’s Pleasure Victim–which is still a bop, forty years (!) later–and got to work early. I also got to leave early, which was delightful, despite the remnants of Beryl dumping rain on us off and on all day.

The concept of the art vs the artist has reared its ugly head again this past week or so, and yeah, I don’t have any answers to this question. I’m not particularly vested in this most recent pair of artists being exposed as bad people outside of their craft; I don’t have a dog in either fight. I have enjoyed one’s work in the past, and admired their craft, but…but the other I’ve never read. It’s easy for me to say the credible accusations are enough for me and to never read them again, but it’s not painful. I think the message from all of this is to be very careful who you make into a hero? I myself have been disappointed by celebrities and authors who’ve turned out to be terrible people in the real world; but actors aren’t their roles and authors aren’t their books, either. Performances and writing are necessarily of the person, of course, but…just because you love a character doesn’t mean the creator or the actor is a good person; the character is. Someone I’ve been reading for years and was probably my biggest favorite writer of my life has been disappointing on social media lately, and yes, I’ve allowed my politics and values to impact how I feel about him as both a person and as a writer…and if I cut other people off for being TERFs or homophobes, it’s hypocrisy to not cut off someone I admire for the same things. It helped me clear out some room in my bookshelves, and relieved me of the need to catch up on his work, which I was years behind on anyway, and you know what? I’m not sad about it, either. The books I loved I still love, I just don’t need to spend any more of my money buying new ones. Does it make me sad? It’s more disappointing than sad. They don’t care if I don’t buy another one of their books; one amongst millions is beneath even being noticed. But I blocked them on social media, which I didn’t have on my 2024 bingo card (didn’t have the media trying to pick the Democratic presidential candidate this late in the game either–and I will never forgive legacy media for this 2016-like “but her emails” reaction to ONE bad debate after three years of extraordinary leadership, either. I also didn’t have “legacy media not learning anything after 2016 and 2020” on my bingo card, either. I will not watch anyone ever again on television who are doing Project 2025’s dirty work for them (bye bye Rachel, we had a very good long run) and I will certainly never subscribe to or click on a link from a newspaper whose editorial board has gone all-in on Fascism under the arrogant guise of “we know better than Democratic voters who turned out for President Biden and have never once questioned his ability to do the job so best do what WE say”….um, excuse me? Who fucking died and made the opinions of arrogant political writers and pundits who think they know better than the voters? I trust the people around the President to help him run the country the right way, as opposed to the other candidate’s people; we’ve already seen the grifters and criminals he’ll surround himself with so they can loot the country. He doesn’t even have to be impaired for this to happen.

I certainly never thought I’d see the day when a third of the country and the media would be all-in on Fascism. Do the people at CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times actually think they’d survive a Fascist government in this country? Or are they prepping for their collaborationism by collaborating now, so they can say see, we helped your rise to power?

And that cadaver James Carville, who’s been out of touch for at least twenty years, needs to crawl back into his coffin. Don’t forget what he married; the fact that he could happily marry a reich-winger, and stay married to her after 2016, tells me all I need to know about how craven and shallow his beliefs and values are.

God, the world has changed so much since I was a kid, hasn’t it? And I cannot say for certain it’s for the better in many instances. I do think trying to end bigotry of all kinds is an improvement, for sure, and while schools aren’t 100% safe for queer kids today, at least they may not feel as isolated as they did when I was a kid–even if they live in a red state.

Even in trying to look back to the world as it was in 1994 for my WIP shows such incredible changes in the country and the world in that thirty years (half my life at this point) that it almost seems like a different world, like that Earth was in a parallel dimension. But that’s the thing about the past–it was a different time and things that are problematic now were just normal and every-day things back then. And let’s not forget it wasn’t that long ago that marriages between tweens was an acceptable practice–and still is in some parts of the country.

Some deep thoughts on this damp Wednesday morning. We’re going to continue having thunderstorms on and off through the weekend–the tail end of Beryl moving through–which is fine with me; as long as I don’t caught in a flash flood or something. We were in a heat advisory all day yesterday, and then a flash flood warning from about seven p.m. on. Just another typical summer in New Orleans. We got caught up on House of the Dragon last night, and watched two more episodes of Outer Range, which is very bizarre but really interesting. It’s reminiscent of shows like Lost or Fringe, where there’s some kind of strangeness going on that no one is really sure what it is; it’s fascinating but I have literally no idea what is going on in the show. But it’s very well done, the acting is terrific, and visually it’s very stunning to watch. We’ll probably finish it this week and then will have to find something else.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I’ll probably be back later.

Sexy pro wrestler Finn Balor is a favorite of mine for obvious reasons–and he’s a great wrestler, too.

A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You

Well, yesterday was one of those days at the office–the kind when you’re really grateful that you get to go home at the end of and shut your mind off completely. It wasn’t a terrible day, by any means; my job is never like that, but it was one of a lot of frustrations and small problems that usually are nothing but…the day went off the rails early in the morning and everything seemed to pile up on top of that, so the solutions, usually so easy and effortless, required thought and a moment to think it through…so yeah, not really a lot of fun there for anyone. But I got some writing done last night, and that third chapter I was really struggling with has managed to work itself out. I also am going to try, really hard, not to make every chapter the same length; there’s something to be said about the erraticism of varying chapter lengths…and the real truth is the reason I’ve always gone by chapter word counts and kept them around the same is to easily figure out the word count and where it all stands without having to pull it all into one document. I can’t work from a master document until I am in the final editing stage, and always operate by chapters. It’s methodical, and I also wonder if that methodology might be stifling creativity?

You see, I can always turn anything into a version of Imposter Syndrome, no matter what it is.

I am awake and feeling okay, too, which is a pleasant surprise. I slept well last night. I stopped and made some groceries on the way home, and spent the evening reading Rival Queens, which is about Catherine de Medici and her daughter, Margot. We’re almost up to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre–a religious genocide–during which Margot saved her Huguenot husband from the bloodthirsty Catholic mob. It was, sadly, yet another failed attempt by the Queen Mother to end the religious strife in France by killing everyone who wasn’t Catholic. It sometimes feels like I’ve been reading this book forever, and that’s probably because I have been reading for well over a year now. I’m still having some trouble focussing on reading, and thus it’s taking me far longer than it should to get deeper into my TBR pile. I am hoping to finish Hall of Mirrors this week; I just need to manage my free/spare time better. I’m not used to having free time, or at least, not this much, and I am trying to adapt to that so I can still have relaxation time in addition to reading/writing.

A nice problem to have in my sixties, methinks.

It also was raining when I went to bed last night, which certainly helped me to fall into a good, deep sleep. It’s been a very wet summer thus far–the humidity has been brutal on my sinuses, frankly–which isn’t a good thing for New Orleans; the more rain the more soaked the ground becomes and the less able to soak up water when it comes, which makes it easier to flood. They’re putting up a house on the one remaining vacant lot on the block; it started going up a couple of weeks ago (which reminded me of my unfinished short story “Condos for Sale or Rent”), so yet another place where water can go during a flooding rainstorm is now gone. We’ve still been fortunate that our block has only flooded once in all the years we’ve lived here (and it wasn’t after Katrina), and can only hope that our luck continues to hold. I think it’s going to rain again this evening as I run errands on my way home from work (mail, prescriptions), which will be annoying but livable, really. I don’t think we’re going to be busy in clinic this morning or this afternoon, which is very cool…I did manage to get caught up on things yesterday, and just have a few more things before I can wrap up the month of June completely.

I also have some chores to do tonight when I get home.

So here’s hoping for a good day, rather than a slightly irritating one. Every day is a new day, after all; and it is what you make of it, methinks. I am going to take my leave of you now and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later, most likely.

The Streak

Good morning, Sunday, how are you all doing? I’m feeling pretty good. Yesterday was a pretty good day. I took four boxes of books to the library sale and was thus able to pretty much finish the overall of the living room. I also worked on the filing, finished the laundry room, and got the kitchen back under control. I do have to spend some time this morning working on the work space here, but I feel like I have the apartment back for the first time in years. I feel very accomplished, not going to lie. There’s still more to do, but at least it doesn’t look like the abode of a hoarder who hasn’t seen the floor in years anymore. There’s still another book purge to come, of course, and there’s the boxes on top of the cabinets that need to be removed as well. I think most of it is paper, too; I don’t think I have that many copies of my own books still in boxes anymore–but I’ve also kind of decided that I can dispose of the vanity book case soon, too. If I can clear out enough other spaces, I can box up my books, carefully archiving and labeling them, and store them in places where I have books that can be donated; and then I can pick up all the stacks of books off the floor and store them in bookcases.

I’m feeling very ambitious about the apartment this year, can you tell? And it was marvelous to come downstairs to an uncluttered and more spacious living room this morning. There are just a few more bits and pieces to get done today down here–things to put away and so forth–and then I can vacuum the entire downstairs! HUZZAH!

I slept late again this morning, much to Sparky’s dismay, but now I am up and my coffee is tasting magnificent this morning. I do have to make a grocery run today, which means organizing the fridge and so forth this morning, too, so I know what we need as well as make room for it. I am resisting the temptation to stock up the freezer–part of being prepared for hurricane season, empty your freezer and don’t fill it with anything other than things you’ll use right away; there’s nothing more frustrating and maddening than throwing away a lot of food after a power outage in the summer–which isn’t easy because yet another mental issue for me is food anxiety; I am always afraid we won’t have food in the house and I won’t have money to buy more (I think Mom was the same way, which is why there was always so much food in her house). I’ve always been this way; living paycheck to paycheck when you don’t make a lot of money can be very scarring for the rest of your life. Maybe some day I’ll get over it, but at least I recognize that it’s an actual thing now and can resist it.

Also, no need to stock up on anything fresh, as everything spoils quickly here in the heat, too. It’s amazing how quickly bananas will ripen here in the tropics, you know.

I am hoping to get some writing done today, too. Tomorrow I am going to get the mail and go to the gym on the way home from the office, and hopefully that will start a real streak of me going to the gym. My arm actually looks better than it did, which is yet another reason I really need to get into the three times per week habit again, even if I’m not doing heavy weights just the exercise itself will help my metabolism. I am getting closer to two hundred pounds and my goal weight (I remember back in the aughts when that was my goal weight to build up to; now it’s a weight loss goal. Sigh. The ironies involved with being gay never end until you’re in the grave.

I read a comic book yesterday; it was a Comixology original and it was quite good. Liebestrasse was the name of it, and it’s main character is a very closeted gay businessman returning to Germany in 1952 and remembering the Weimar times there, when he moved there for work and lived openly as gay and fell in love…as the Nazis were rising. I may give the comic its own entry, but then again I may not. Gays in Weimar Berlin always interest me (especially these days, as the similarities between now and then are even more sharply drawn), but the stories never end happily–how can they–and it’s all really just another version of Goodbye to Berlin, which is a seminal work in queer canon, methinks. I also got a copy of Stephen Spender’s novel of the time (he, Isherwood, and Auden were all friends in Wiemar Berlin) The Temple, which I am also looking forward to reading at some point if I can ever get all my reading caught up (it’s never going to happen, and I really need to stop deluding myself that it will). I’ve always been interested in that time, once I learned about the queer freedoms, and I started clocking the similarities in the 1990s…even coming up with a book idea about the fall of democracy in the United States, when dissidents, queers, and racialized people were imprisoned in “relocation centers.”

Of course, I’ve been saying this for years and no one has ever listened…and here we are.

Chilling thoughts for a Sunday morning, am I right?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; stranger things have happened, after all, and continue to happen.

I really wish I had discovered rugby players years ago. I actually would have loved to have played, too.

You Make Me Feel Brand New

Saturday morning and we had a marvelous thunderstorm last evening. Paul got caught in it, coming home from the gym, but it was also a flash-flood alert storm, too. I should have curled up in bed with a book, but settled for the easy chair, my chair blanket, and a sleeping kitten. We wound up watching Godzilla Minus One, which was enjoyable. It’s funny that I can watch these movies so comfortably and easily now and enjoy them, when they terrified me as a child. I think it was WGN in Chicago that would run them and call them “creature features” (which was probably the case everywhere) and that always stuck in my head. I had such bad nightmares that Mom and Dad banned me from watching the monster movies, but the vampire/wolfman/Frankenstein monster movies also were nightmare material for me. I know I also used to have Dark Shadows nightmares, too.

Having a big imagination when you’re a child isn’t always a good thing.

I haven’t had nightmares in years, at least not ones I remember–I don’t remember any of my dreams anymore when I wake up, which used to be a thing for me. Not sure how or why that changed over the years, but it did. Maybe it’s because I use my imagination so much to write and create that it’s too drained for me to dream anymore. That might be the case, but then again who knows?

I spent some time in the laundry room working on the shelves, and I did purge more books to take to the library sale today. I am going to do that and go to the gym today–errands are first, of course–and then I think tomorrow morning I’ll cross over to the West Bank to go make some groceries. I have to clean out the refrigerator today, too. I’ve been kind of low energy this three day weekend; and not getting nearly as much done as I would have liked this weekend, but that’s life these days, you know? There’s also today. I want to work on the files and do some writing today, get rid of these boxes of books, and maybe clean some. I need to do the dishes and the kitchen, too. I also need to clean myself up; I haven’t shaved since Monday and my face is itchy and scratchy. I’ve really been a slacker this weekend thus far, but I am also not beating myself up over it. It is what it is, and sometimes I need down time just like everyone else. (I do miss my old energy levels, though.) I haven’t checked today’s weather, either. I am hoping for some rain this morning so I can curl up with my book for a while this morning before lugging the books to the library–but that’s going to open up so much space in the living room! I am really enjoying this progress I am making on the house, you know. I may even attack that last file drawer today, too.

As you can tell, the coffee is starting to work its magic on my brain and I am starting to feel alive and awake. I definitely am going to get through some of this stuff this morning, huzzah! (A quick check of the weather indicates rain at ten, so huzzah!)

I have also been thinking about the book projects a lot these last few days, which has been cool and helpful. I keep getting Imposter Syndrome every time I think about the WIP–but not the usual kind, thank God; this time it’s more “are you sure you’re telling this right?” before realizing that the plan for this book was to always over-write it to begin with and then trim it down and turn it into something I can take pride in; which isn’t how I usually write books in the first place. I also realized that I am not in fact finished with Chapter 3, either; I rushed it and did one of those “I can fill this in later because I want to call this done now” things that I always regret and resent during the revisions, so this weekend I need to get back to that chapter and really finish this draft so I can move on to the next. I also need to get back to work on some short stories, too. I’ve really got to stop letting my mind have the night off more regularly!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to get the books organized in their boxes for ease of transfer, get the dishes finished, and maybe–just maybe–work on the floors some. I’ll also probably be back later at some point, too. Have a lovely day and catch you later, Constant Reader!

That’s Why God Made the Movies

I love nothing more than a good horror movie, unless it’s a well-written horror novel…and with his latest, the amazing Paul Tremblay has somehow managed to give his readers both.

Our little movie that couldn’t had a crew size that has become fluid in the retelling, magically growing in the years since Valentina uploaded the screenplay and three photo stills to various online message boards and three brief scenes to Youtube in 2008. Now that I live in Los Angeles (temporarily; please, I’m not a real monster) I can’t tell you how many people have told me they know someone or are friends of a friend of a friend who was on-set. Our set.

Like now. I’m having coffee with one of the producers of the Horror Movie remake. Or is it a reboot? I’m not sure of the correct term for what it is they will be doing. Is it a remake if the original film, shot more than thirty years ago, was never screened? “Reboot” is probably the proper term but not with how it’s applied around Hollywood.

Producer Guy’s name is George. Maybe. I’m pretending to forget his name in retribution for our first meeting six months ago, which was over Zoom. While I was holed uip in my small, stuffy apartment, he was outdoors, traipsing around a green space. He apologized for the sunglasses and his bouncing, sun-dappled phone image in that I-can-do-whatever-I-want way and explained he just had to get outside, get his steps in, because he’d been stuck in his office all morning and he would be there all afternoon. Translation: I deign to speak to you, however you’re not important enough to interrupt a planned walk. A total power play. I was tempted to hang up on him or pretend my computer screen froze, but I didn’t. Yeah, I’m talking tougher than I am. I couldn’t afford (in all applications of that word) to throw away any chance, as slim as it might be, to get the movie made. Within the winding course of our one-way discussion in which I was nothing but flotsam in the current of his river, he said he’d been looking for horror projects, as “horror is hot,” but because everything happening in the real world was so grim, he and the studios wanted horror that was “uplifting and upbeat.” His own raging waters were too loud for him to hear my derisive snort-laugh or see my eye-roll. I didn’t think anything would ever come from that chat.

Horror that is “uplifting and upbeat.” Oooo-kay then.

I’ve been a fan of Tremblay since I read his brilliant A Head Full of Ghosts, which was so real and believable and so original that it blew my mind. It was one of the more ambitious horror novels I’d read this century, and having enjoyed that thoroughly, delved more deeply into the Tremblay canon. I’ve yet to be disappointed in one of his novels–they are always very original, even when taking on a horror trope; they are hard to stop reading or put down at any point over the course of the narrative; and his characters are always believable, absolutely real, and completely relatable, even if they aren’t the nicest people around.

The “cult horror movie” trope is one that has been used before, of course, both in fiction and on film. The primary reason for the success of The Blair Witch Project back in the day was due to no one being certain whether it was a work of fiction or if the film’s conceit–found footage of something that actually happened–and that huge success resulted in the rise of the “found footage” trope. Tremblay plays a bit with this here–the original film in this book, Horror Movie, is also named Horror Movie. Five kids made the movie back in the day, with everyone participating and everyone having off-camera duties as well as their on-camera performances. The movie was never released, but about ten years earlier than the time of the novel, the director released some scenes on line and also published the script, posting links on every horror film board and horror fan board she could find. This has stirred up interest in the movie again…and the book is about the “reboot/remake” of Horror Movie, and the person telling the story is the only survivor from the original movie…but we don’t learn that right away. (Part of the lore of the movie is its “curse”.) He also played the monster the kids in the movie “create”, by isolation, torture and mind control–and the use of a mask that he (only known as The Thin Kid) is forced to wear.

The story has two timelines–the current day with the making of the new version, and his memories of making the original. There are also flashbacks to periods in his life between the bookends of the film being made–the film being made reminds me of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door–and as the book goes on, the timelines cross over and over again and once again, we have a completely unreliable narrator–but that doesn’t become very apparent until the book continues to move on and this blurring of fact and fiction is done so incredibly well that you can’t help but wonder how all of this is going to play out and what is real and what isn’t–while the tension keeps building and building as everything spirals out of control.

This book is utterly amazing, and I am so grateful I started reading Tremblay. Highly recommended, and will make a lot of Top Ten lists this year.

I Won’t Last a Day Without You

Good morning! For me, at least, today is the midpoint of the work week. I am delighted to have a four day weekend, and it will be glorious once it arrives. Yesterday was another odd one, to be honest; I felt fine when I got up, but gradually grew more tired until by the time I came home I was pretty exhausted. We did watch House of the Dragon–which felt like more filler than anything else, yet again (this series we’ll show the aftermath of the battles instead of the actual battle!) and I did some reading, but other than that the evening was pretty much wasted for the most part. I slept really well last night, and this morning I am awake and feeling good. That hasn’t happened in the morning for a while, so here’s hoping the energy and the good mood and the feeling good lasts all day, shall we? I am going to run errands after work tonight and go to the gym on the way home.

I also got a bit unhinged yesterday because someone on my Facebook feed posted one of those namby-pamby, we-can-disagree-politically-but-still-be-friends bullshit, and I will not apologize for seeing red. I unfriended and blocked so fast my keyboard was literally smoking. That level of privilege nauseates me, because it reduces me–and others who don’t fit the white nationalist/American Nazi definition of a real American–and my existence, my rights…to nothing more than a “political opinion.” This is what I mean when I talk about casual cruelty–and what posting bullshit like that means to people like me. Do any of you have any idea what it feels like to be dismissed so completely in this manner by someone who has never, ever had to wonder “I wonder if I didn’t get the job because I was too gay-presenting” or “was that person a homophobe or just an asshole in general” or “what is this carload of young men acting like idiots up to?”

And really, isn’t that the primary problem we have in this country? People who just want to put up their hands and surrender because it’s difficult and bigotry against you doesn’t really harm me so why should I lose friends because they think you’re not human? Ha ha ha, can’t we all just get along? and the answer, for the record, to that is always no. You see, I have no problem with homophobes being homophobic. I don’t care if you’re homophobic. You want to leave those braces on your brain, be my guest. But you don’t get to pass laws that make me not a whole American citizen.

It was also ironic that after a lovely Pride Month on-line for the most part, this shit-bird decided to turn into a good little German on July 1. “Okay, Pride’s over, time to shit on the gays some more! You should be nicer to the people who tell you you’re going to Hell and you’re a pervert and an abomination and a groomer and a pedophile because it’s just a political opinion.”

Sorry you had to feel a little discomfort there, Mr. Straight Ciswhiteman! Good thing you don’t have to deal with it every fucking day, or have to worry every election season that you’re rights are going to be voted away (or stolen by a corrupt, illegitimate Supreme Court), right, since you have so much trouble dealing with discomfort…and then ask yourself this: how would I feel if someone told my queer daughter that her entire existence is reduced to being considered simply an opposing political opinion?

That should make you feel extremely uncomfortable. But most Americans tend to avoid things that make them uncomfortable. Imagine being told to “straighten up” because I am making some straight person squirm.

Well, it’s not my fault that you immediately think about gay sex whenever I am around or I am talking to you. I don’t think about straight sex whenever I am around or talking to a straight person, so maybe you should take a long hard look at your own obsession with sex, and maybe start working through that on your own, or with a therapist if you can afford it or your insurance will cover it. Who’s the sex-crazed pervert in this instance, freak?

And I don’t want to be friends with anyone who thinks that way, or can rationalize things like “Well, I’ve known Jimmy since we were kids and he’s a good guy. It bugs me when he says he thinks all homosexuals should be killed, but I’ve had good times with him before and I know he just says that for a reaction, so we just don’t talk about politics.” I am “white” but I refuse to be friends with racists, or with misogynists just because I also have a penis. But then I know what it feels like to watch your friends die while ‘christians’ cheer about the fatal disease “because it’s killing all the right people.”

Evangelical Christians were perfectly okay with letting us die in the 1980s and laughing about those deaths, like their cohorts in the Westboro Baptist Church. Why would I ever believe they’ve changed their minds when they still are out there advocating for stripping us of our full citizenship and would actually like us all to start dying again?

Ugh. It’s sooooo tiring. And it’s always, always the same old “what about the children” bullshit. Groomer, pedophile, “they need to recruit” on and on and on, lather, rinse, repeat. What’s even worse is that the current crop are really in it for the grift and attention. I honestly believe that Anita Bryant, horror that she was, actually believed what she was saying and she wasn’t doing it for money, power or attention. She did evil while thinking she was doing right….but the present day professional homophobes are all about money and power and grifting less worldly religious freaks out of what little money they have left.

And on that bitter note, it’s off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I may be back later. I do need to write another Pride post, and I need to write my entry about Horror Movie. Sigh. Onward and upward.

The Show Must Go On

Ah, Monday the first of July, and a very short work week it is, too. Huzzah for my four-day weekend! It was very nice this morning to come downstairs to a clean workspace. It does make a difference. I feel like I slept very well last night and feel very awake and alive this morning, at least so far. I was tired all weekend, which was odd but probably had something to do with the daily pills issue I was talking about yesterday. My biggest wish is that the situation with that would work itself out within my body while I slept last night and I’d be back to (what passes for) normal this morning. So far, so good, and my coffee truly tastes amazing this morning, too–always a good sign.

I forgot to mention this weekend that the awesome Barb Goffman selected my story, “Housecleaning”, to spotlight this week at Black Cat Weekly. You can order it here! How cool is that? This is my second story to be picked and featured by Barb, and it’s such a thrill–particularly given how little confidence I have in short story writing.

I also submitted my story yesterday to that anthology; we’ll see how that turns out. It probably needed to wait another day and reread another time, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I didn’t do any actual writing of fiction this weekend, but I did make a lot of notes and think about what I am working on; hopefully tonight after work I’ll settle in and get back to work on the book. I have to write my entry on Horror Movie at some point, too; it was a really terrific read that I do recommend, and I started Hall of Mirrors yesterday, which I am also really enjoying, at least so far. While I was working on the files this weekend, I also started paging through my old journals–which will always survive purges–and it was very interesting. I don’t really go back and look through them as often as I should (I do when I’m looking for notes on something I am currently working on) and what was interesting was seeing, in some places, where books and short stories I’ve published actually began–a scribbled title, a theme, what I want to explore in it–and of course, other ideas that never progressed further than that page in the journal. I am still missing some of the ancient ones–going back to the 90s, when I started using bound blank bound journals–but I’d love to see those sometime, especially since I am now writing about that period. I imagine they somehow got put in a storage box….and since the goal of the summer is to get rid of as many of those as humanly possible from the Lost Apartment and the attic, I am sure to find them again this summer, which will be great. I also worked out yesterday how to rearrange the books in the living room. I decided I no longer need a “vanity bookcase”, overstuffed with copies of my own work, for one–properly labeled for ease of discovery, they can go in the storage boxes while I fill the bookcase with the books stacked on the floor and on top of the bookcases, making the whole place look a little less cluttered and opening up more space.

This morning’s hurricane check shows that Beryl is a massive monster already but it looks like her course hasn’t changed, and Chris went ahead and developed into a tropical storm and came ashore in southern Mexico. There’s a D storm in the Atlantic heading towards the Gulf, too. Hurray! When we watched the weather report last night, Paul said, “A category 4 in June already?” and I seriously asked in reply, “Gosh, where do you want to live after New Orleans is wiped off the map this year?” And y’all ain’t seen a recession like the one we’ll have this time if New Orleans ceases operating as a port and oil hub. It’s also supposed to rain today, and we’re in a heat advisory where it will “feel like” 114. Yay. It’s going to be a brutal summer by all accounts here. Guess I better start saving to pay the power bills. But Beryl doesn’t appear to be a threat to us here, although she will impact our weather, so the second named storm of the year–and a big one–is a bullet dodged for New Orleans.

Unfortunately, that means the bullet hits someone else, which always makes me uncomfortable. I never want it to seem like I’m hoping other people’s lives get disrupted and/or destroyed, because I would never wish that on anyone else, under any circumstance.

And on that rather dreary note, I am heading into the spice mines. Should you have a moment today that is upsetting or depressing or knocks you down–remember, Steve Bannon is now behind bars and it’s just one step in the right direction.

Life Is Just a Fantasy

One of the best places for a young gay kid to see almost naked, really muscularly developed men was on the covers of fantasy novels, like the Conan books and others of their ilk. There were also a lot of fantasy cartoon magazines, Heavy Metal and others like it, that often had scantily clad, beautifully built men and women…and the occasional full frontal male nude.

Did these magazines play a role in my love of muscles (and society’s adaptation to sexualizing men for women and gay men), or did the magazines just give me something to look at that played into said obsession with muscular male bodies? I was very desperate for that sort of thing when I was in high school–and my interest in this kind of fantasy art wasn’t a giveaway clue to my sexuality. Because of the naked big breasted women, most boys liked looking at them too–and the artists and more intelligent of them loved the artwork itself and the stories– there was more going on there than just gratuitous nudity and sex.

The books, of course, were called “sword-and-sorcery” books, as were the few films that came out of them (or were inspired by them), that had a time in the sun during the 1980s, thanks to the Conan movies that made Arnold Schwarzeneggar a star, and also influenced every sword and sorcery movie that followed. S&S books were always a successful niche market, and the success of Conan as a film led to a lot of S&S movies in the 1980s.

Two of the biggest names in the S&S fantasy art field were Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. I absolutely loved their work.

Boris Vallejo’s “Egyptian Warrior”

As an Egyptophile, I love that image and would love to have it hanging on my wall.

Heavy Metal magazine launched in the late 1970’s, and even was made into a great animated movie in the 1980s–its soundtrack includes Stevie Nicks’ “Blue Lamp.” We used to get high and watch it when I was in college, and just got sucked into the vividness of its art and color and style and music.

A work by Frank Frazetta

I don’t know if S&S ever went out of style in books and magazines, but you don’t see many book covers with this type of art on them anymore. It’s a shame; they were very fun tales of treachery and betrayal and magic and vengeance. I never read any of the Conan stories, or any of the other fantasy S&S type books, but I did watch a lot of the movies–those scantily clad musclemen are lots of fun to look at. These movies also don’t get made much anymore–John Carter‘s failure at the box office (which it didn’t deserve; it’s much better than critics and audiences thought it was when released) pretty much killed any interest in these style movies.

Ironically, Game of Thrones was really another one of these style stories; the primary difference being it was done on a much grander scale than the classic S&S genre usually permitted.

And it might be fun to try to write a gay one…..

Science Fiction Double Feature

Lips! Lips! We want lips!

The first time I went to a midnight movie1 was when I was either eighteen or nineteen. I still lived in Kansas then, and the midnight movie was playing at the old movie theater on Sixth Street that was rarely open other than for some special occasion. They’d been doing midnight movies for a while before I went that first time, and I was going with a co-worker who promised me I was going to have an amazing time. I wasn’t so sure. The line outside the Granada Theater was a bizarre sight–many of them dressed up freakishly, and a lot of them were carrying paper bags full of stuff, which I also thought was odd.

I was about to watch, and experience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time.

I had no idea what was to come.

At the late night, double feature, picture show…

The crowd started chanting for “lips” as the lights in the theater went down, and then I saw what they were chanting for, as two bright red lips appeared on the black screen and started singing as everyone cheered….and started shouting responses to the opening credits.

And I liked the song.

What followed was ninety-eight minutes of insanity. I had never heard of an “interactive” movie before, and it really caught me off guard. How did people know what to yell, and when to yell it? They sang along with the movies, and I soon was caught up in it; getting sprayed with water, ducking out of the way of flying pieces of toast and toilet paper and tampons, and it was all so delightfully subversive in terms of questioning gender and sexuality. You still couldn’t swear on prime time television shows, and you definitely couldn’t say “sex” (I always hated the coy and cheesy ways television writers came up with as a workaround).

And then of course, there was Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-n-furter.

I’d never seen anything like that before in my life…and I howled with laughter as he removed his robe to reveal what he was wearing beneath, and several people shouted in unison, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Liza Minnelli!”

And after ninety-eight minutes of madness and mayhem, I was a convert. I walked out of the theater with my head still reeling from all the subversion a still moralistic 1970’s American culture had taught me was wrong on every level, disgusting sin and decadent morality, and I wanted more.

I bought the soundtrack shortly thereafter, both vinyl and eight-track, and it didn’t take long for me to have the entire thing memorized. I don’t remember seeing it again while I lived in Kansas–we moved to California shortly thereafter–but I did discover the theater in Fresno that showed it, and I started going weekly. It was more of a production in Fresno–people dressed up and acted out the parts in front of the screen (they tried to recruit me once to play Brad, but I said no; it would be over another decade before I was comfortable enough to wear only underwear in public; I was really uptight). Eventually, after memorizing the film and soundtrack, learning everything there was to know about the movie and play, I finally stopped going to the midnight movies. HIV/AIDS ripped a lot of the joy out of life in the 1980s for me, and once I was out of the habit of the movie, I was out of the habit and looked back on it as a past experience with nostalgia and joy.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the perfect amount of subversion at precisely the right time for me. It opened a world of possibilities to me, but at the same time, it made me very aware that I needed, more than anything else, to get out of Kansas. Much as I loved the movie, those memories of seeing it that first time–and the self-actualization and realization that came in its wake–are also tied up with my growing misery and dissatisfaction with living in Kansas. It’s also tied to discovering actual queer people in Fresno, and recognizing that even this little bit of subversion, something I could go see with the straight friends without any questions or fears, kept me going through the early 1980s as everything started turning even darker than they had ever been in Kansas.

Watching it on television just isn’t the same, either.

But the movie always holds a special place in my heart–and I imagine it does with many other queers for whom it proved an awakening of their true freak selves–and I became a lifelong fan of all the stars, whose careers and successes I followed…but one is now dead to me forever, and Her Name Must Not Be Uttered….and her being in the film has also kind of tainted its legacy with me.

But seriously, what a great movie. I may write an essay about the movie someday, you never know!

  1. I’m not counting the night of the senior prom, when the school districts got together and got the Twin Theaters (I think that was the name) to show a midnight movie to keep us all out of trouble. It was Smokey and the Bandit, by the way. ↩︎