Category: history

Shame on the Moon

I have, as an almost fifty-six year old gay man, witnessed some history throughout the course of my over half a century on this planet. When I was young, I used to hear about the great wisdom you acquire with age; I’m still waiting for that to happen. I remember when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were shot; I remember the Tet offensive and when the first man walked on the moon. I remember the Watergate break-in, the scandal that followed, and how a newspaper toppled a corrupt presidency that was abusing its power. I remember the Iranian revolution and the taking of American hostage in the embassy in Teheran; I remember the slaughter of Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in Munich. I remember watching my gay brethren die from AIDS while the political establishment laughed and made jokes about the right people dying; and I remember the Towers falling that beautiful September day in 2001. I watched CNN non-stop while a military coalition liberated Kuwait,  when the Berlin Wall fell,  when Communism in eastern Europe collapsed.

There have been times in my life when I’ve shaken my head over the actions of my government, the ruling of our courts, and at legislation debated and passed by Congress.

But never did I imagine, in my wildest dreams, that I would bear witness to Nazis marching with torches in a college town in support of white supremacy, bigotry, anti-semitism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia in the United States of America in 2017–or that scores of people would be defending them.

Have I been a good ally to the oppressed people of this nation? I don’t know, but I tend to doubt it. I tend to focus, as most people do, on my own rights and that of my community; I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting for my rights as a gay man but have always advocated for people of color and women, because I do recognize that the oppression of one is the oppression of all; that none of us are truly equal until we are all equal. I’ve studied history; I’ve studied civics; I’ve studied the Constitution. The entire point of learning and studying is history is to learn from the mistakes of the past so as not to repeat them.

Sinclair Lewis was an extraordinary social critic and fiction writer who probably isn’t remembered, and studied, as much as he should be in this modern day.  I’ve not read enough of Lewis; most of his canon remains, sadly, unread by me. But I did read Elmer Gantry about ten years ago, and was stunned by how true it was; and how it still applied in so many ways today. Shortly after that I read It Can’t Happen Here, which is one of his lesser known works and considered to be highly flawed in terms of being a novel. The point of the book, written and published in the 1930’s, was that so many Americans of the time didn’t believe what was going on in Italy and Germany could happen in the United States; Lewis, ever the social critic and commentarian, took that as a challenge and titled his book that, and wrote a novel detailing exactly how fascism could rise in the US and take over our government. It was chilling reading it, in the wake of some of the laws and executive orders passed in the wake of 9/11. I don’t really remember much of the story, frankly; the days when I could remember plots and characters and quotations from every book I read have long passed. But it is, I think, due for a reread.

We often wonder how the good German people allowed what happened there to happen. It is easy  for evil to persuade basically decent people to take its side, and how, when things are going well, incredibly easy it is for people to only look at the good and turn their heads away from the bad. The towns near the concentration camps, who claimed they didn’t know what was going on? Bitch, please. You never noticed the smell? You never wondered what that smell was? But, hey, I’m prospering and we don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from and how to keep the lights on, and aren’t the streets clean and the trains running on time? I don’t believe those stories we’re hearing about what’s happening to the Jews! And since they’ve been oppressed, look at how much better things are!

That’s how it happens, people.

I will do better. We all must do better. No one is free and equal until we are all free and equal.

In 2006 I was invited to speak at the Virginia Book Festival in Charlottesville. I was given a tour of the town and a tour of the University of Virginia campus; I was shown where Edgar Allan Poe lived when he was a student there and other landmarks. I was not only impressed with how beautiful the town and campus were, by how friendly and welcoming the people who lived there were. I always meant to go back again, to spend more time there–I didn’t get to see Monticello–and it was with horror that I watched the news over the weekend, seeing what was going on in the lovely little town I remembered, appalled and ashamed that this was being broadcast to the entire world.

This is unacceptable. The state of the union is unacceptable.

I have to do better. We all have to do better. As a nation we can do better by our most vulnerable citizens, and we must.

The eyes of history are on us.

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you’d been a German in the 1930’s? What you would do during the Civil Rights era of the 1950’s and 1960’s?

This is your chance to find out who you are as a human being and as an American.

This is Heather Heyer, who gave her life on Saturday to oppose evil. May she never be forgotten.

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Baby, Come to Me

Yesterday was had a rather intense storm here in New Orleans; there was flash flooding all over the city, cars ruined, water inside buildings; that sort of thing. I don’t know if my street flooded or not (guess I’ll find out if my car got ruined tomorrow morning when I am ready to go to work), but we certainly were lucky and didn’t get water inside of our house. The rain is going to continue some today; there’s an advisory for everyone to stay inside and off the roads, just in case. We get these kinds of storms and flash floods every once in a while–the price of living in a low lying city surrounding by water where parts of the city used to be swamp and are now floodplains, and our pumping system tends to get overwhelmed when we get a lot of water in a short period of time. I’ve been caught out in these storms before, having to wade through water up to my hips at times. My car was flooded when I was on my way home from work the first year we lived here and I got caught in one of these storms. There’s no point in railing against these storms and short-term floods; they happen periodically and you have to deal with them, unfortunately. Last night was also supposed to be White Linen Night, an annual event every August in the Arts District where all the galleries serve food and alcohol, booths are set up on Julia and Magazine streets to sell food and drink, and people wearing white go from gallery to gallery looking at (and hopefully buying) art. Satchmo Fest was also this weekend; clearly, both annual events were cancelled yesterday because of the deluge. I ran my errands early–thank God–and so intended to spend the rest of my day inside and working on the line edit, doing some writing, and reading as well. I did no line editing and no writing yesterday; instead, I was caught up in the last half of Lyndsay Faye’s staggeringly brilliant The Gods of Gotham, and could not put it down until it was finished.

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When I set down the initial report, sitting at my desk at the Tombs, I wrote:

On the night of August 21, 1845, one of the children escaped.

Of all the sordid trials a New York City policeman faces every day, you wouldn’t expect the one I loathe most to be paperwork. But it is. I get snakes down my spine just thinking case files.

Seriously, is there anyone who enjoys paperwork?

The Gods of Gotham is the perfect historical crime novel. I’ve read a number of them, and there are some truly excellent ones (one of my favorite novels of all time is The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy, set in the 1930’s), but I’ve also staggered my way through some seriously bad ones. But even with the bad ones, I always have tremendous respect for the writer for even trying; I can’t imagine trying, much as I love history, because there are so many gaps; so many things to research, from small to large, intricate intimate details that may be impossible to find out–or you might find them out when it’s too late. To be truly successful, a historical piece of fiction has to be completely immersive; the author has to bring that world to life but make the reader understand it and how it was to live in that period without giving in to the temptation to put everything you’ve researched into the book/story, aka hitting the reader over the head with a history lesson. Writing a convincing, involving story with characters the reader can identify with, appreciate, and root for, is hard enough without setting it in another time period.

Lyndsay Faye has managed this incredible juggling feat, and pulled it off with aplomb. The Gods of Gotham is set in New York City (obviously) in the late summer of 1845; when the city has newly created a police force, identified by the copper stars they wear (which, obviously, is where the slang term copper, and its derivative, cop, came from; this is clearly made obvious throughout the story without Faye stopping to explain; a lesser writer certainly would have made that egregious take-the-reader-out-of-the-story error). Our hero, Timothy Wilde, is a bartender when the story opens; his older brother, Valentine, is a good-time Charlie who likes to get wasted, frequents whorehouses, and also works as a fireman. The relationship between the brothers isn’t great; they lost their parents to a fire when they were children, and they butt heads alot. Valentine is also involved with the Democratic Party. After an enormous fire leaves Timothy jobless and homeless and broke, he rents a room from a widowed German baker, Mrs. Boehm, and is then pressured by his brother into becoming a copper star; a beat cop in the newly formed city police, which not everyone in the city wants or approves of. Soon, Timothy is wrapped up in a bizarre mystery involving a child prostitute he runs across one night; wandering the streets in a nightdress, covered in blood; and soon the investigation expands to involve a possible serial killer of child prostitutes. Politics, nativism, religious and ethnic and racial bigotry all play a part in this tale; as do sexism.

The truly great historical novels not only shine a bright light on the past, but thematically show how little has changed over time. The Gods of Gotham could easily be set in the present day, with Timothy Wilde as a modern police detective. The bigotry against the Irish and Catholics could easily be translated to Middle Eastern refugees and Muslims; it is truly sad to read and see how we as a society and a people fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, repeating the same errors over and over to our own disgrace. Faye has brought New York of 1845 vividly to life with careful brush strokes that never are too big or too broad or invasive to the story; her city streets are alive with noise and people and sights and sounds and smells. Her characters are all-too-real; even the worst of her villains (particularly the diabolical madam, Silkie Marsh) are believable three-dimensional and live and breathe on the page.

I hated seeing the book end, quite frankly; but there are two more Timothy Wilde novels to savor and look forward to, as well as her Edgar nominated Jane Steele (The Gods of Gotham was also an Best Novel Edgar finalist), and her Sherlock Holmes work. (And yes, my recent interest in Holmes was triggered by Lyndsay’s interest in Holmes…and there were times when this book itself reminded me of, in the best possible ways, of Nicholas Meyer’s Holmes pastiches from the 1970’s, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror.)

The Gods of Gotham, if you haven’t read it yet, needs to be added to your TBR pile immediately.

Down Under

So, I started writing a new Scotty book yesterday.

It was, I have to confess, simply so I wouldn’t feel guilty about not working on the line edit, but it also felt good to be back in familiar waters again. There’s something comforting, at least to me as a writer, to going back to a series; I know this world intimately, the characters and the relationships and, of course, the city. And of course, this Scotty isn’t completely new; it’s a reboot of something I’d already written, published, and then withdrawn from sale: the second Paige novel, Dead Housewives of New Orleans. I never felt like that book did what I wanted it to do; I wrote it very quickly, and never believed afterwards that I’d had the time to say what I wanted to about reality television and the types of people that are drawn to appearing on it. I thought, at first, when I decided to reboot it as a Scotty novel that I’d be able to just switch the point of view and add some more things to it…but a reread of the original quickly made me realize the best thing to do was keep the original framework–the reality show itself, and the characters I’d created for it–and just completely start over from scratch. So, it’s not the same book.

I am pretty confident that it will be, actually, a much better one.

The good news is I woke up this morning without any back pain. It’s still a bit stiff–I’m aware something went wrong back there–but it’s clearly muscular, not spinal, which is an enormous relief. My hips–which also ached yesterday–also seem to be fine this morning. Of course, I am staring down a long day of office and then bar testing; twelve hours, woo-hoo! So I imagine tomorrow I will also be waking up sore and achy and tired. Yay! Can’t wait.

I also worked on the line edit yesterday; I guilted myself into it. I actually was enjoying writing the Scotty book, frankly, and I thought, see, writing is fun, remember? and then realized that I really need to stop procrastinating on the line edit. And this morning, waking up feeling rested and not in pain? I am going to tear through that bitch as much as I can today, and  see how much Scotty progress I can make at the same time. Huzzah! Maybe I can even get a first draft of Scotty finished in a month. Stranger things have happened.

I did not, unfortunately, have time for any reading of the brilliant Gods of Gotham. It is, without question, one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read. Clever and sly, witty, with some incredibly strong social commentary that certainly can be applied to today’s world, it is also strongly written and the main character, Timothy Wilde–well, it’s kind of hard not to love him; he’s such a good guy, and even his character flaws only serve to enhance his character. Lyndsay Faye is a towering talent–and she has at least another six books for me to read! HUZZAH!

And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines with me. Here’s a Tuesday hunk for you:

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Billie Jean

So, I didn’t get any writing done yesterday because I sat down with Lyndsay Faye’s The Gods of Gotham at long last, intending to read only one chapter–and then the next thing I knew it was time to make dinner and I was on page 100. Reluctantly I put the book down and made dinner; after which we watched Orphan Black, Game of Thrones, and the first episode of Amazon Prime’s The Last Tycoon before repairing to bed for the evening. Lyndsay’s book is extraordinary and exceptional; I’m both sorry and glad that I waited so long to read it–glad because I am clearly going to love every word of it; sorry that I could have savored it so much sooner. Heavy sigh.

So many books, so little time.

I am greatly enjoying this season of Game of Thrones, and am very curious as to how it is all going to shape up. Last night’s episode was terrific; when the credits started rolling I was like, “it’s over already?” That’s always a good sign, frankly; and Dame Diana Rigg’s final line as Lady Tyrell was just absolutely perfect.

We then switched over to Amazon Prime to try out The Last Tycoon. I’ve never read the Fitzgerald novel because, frankly, it was unfinished, and God knows I’d never want anyone to read anything of mine after I die that was unfinished. But I was curious to see this, as a sucker for old Hollywood. The show is set during the era of the big studios and their star system; where the studios crafted very careful images of their stars and turned out movie after movie after movie. My fascination with this time began when I was a kid and read Bob Thomas’ biography Selznick; I went on to read Tracy and Hepburn, biographies of stars like Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Clark Gable, amongst many others; histories of Hollywood, and so forth. I’ve always wanted to write about that period; it’s really a great time for noir and crime, but again–research. Anyway, I was curious to see how the show was, and I was more than a little impressed. Fitzgerald had first-hand experience with Hollywood and the old studio system, and clearly the character played by Matt Bomer (who is just breathtakingly beautiful, and would be stunning in black and white) is based on Irving Thalberg; the genius producer with a heart problem who is aching to make the perfect film before he dies. Kelsey Grammer is also good, as always, as the studio boss, and the rest of the cast, none of whom I really recognized, are all good in their parts. There was also a big plot twist at the end of the first episode that I didn’t see coming, so kudos to that! It’s also filmed beautifully; the sets and costumes are spot on and everyone looks like they just stepped off the set of a 30’s movie. I am really looking forward to seeing more. I hope it’s not disappointing!

All right, back to the spice mines. Here’s a Monday hunk to get your week off to a great start!

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Turn to You

Very tired this morning; a late night of bar testing concluded my twelve hour day yesterday and there is nothing like walking ten blocks on a sultry, steamy New Orleans night to stand in the upstairs of a bar whose a/c is set to “Econo”, and then walking ten blocks back.

I changed my socks three times yesterday.

But I have a short day today; only four hours to put in today, and I don’t have to be at the office until four. Huzzah! I also get to go in a little later tomorrow, and don’t have to work a full eight hour shift then, either. So, I get to sort of ease my way in to the weekend, which is lovely. I am making a Costco run this morning, making a grocery run tomorrow, and then I get to only leave the house to go see Wacky Russian Saturday morning. I do rather have to get motivated, though, which isn’t easy when you’re already tired. But if I have another cup of coffee, do my morning stretching, and then hop in the shower, I will be good.

One can hope, anyway.

My short story continues to putter along, and man, is it all over the place. I am trying very hard not to stop myself and correct the narrative–I’m just trying to get the story down, do the polishing and reorganizing on the next go round, but it’s kind of slow going. I kind of have a vague idea of what the story is and how it’s going to end, and I am writing a lot of chaff that will have to be separated out later, and the voice is all over the place as well. Ah, well, the great joys of being a writer; this constant internal struggle between confidence, over-confidence, and NO confidence. The Three Faces of Greg, as it were.

I’m still reading A Feast of Snakes; it’s very short, and I should be able to finish it soon. But I am going to absolutely reward myself with the latest Rebecca Chance, Killer Affair, when I am finished with this one. (I need a break from the Southern Gothic, frankly, but I’ll be jumping back in right after.) My copies of Barry Hannah’s Airships and Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet Please arrived, so I also have more short stories to read, and of course, there are more stories in Faulkner’s Knight’s Gambit to read as well.

I think it’s very important for a writer to read as widely as possible. I read scifi, fantasy, horror, romance, ‘literary’, ‘popular’, and historicals, in addition to social history and commentary, literary criticism, and biographies, as well as history. I also love comic books. But I’ve been reading almost exclusively crime novels for a very long time, and as such, there’s been such a narrow focus in my reading that I need to expand out a bit; I am enjoying the Southern Gothic reading I’ve been doing–some of which could be defined as crime fiction, which makes it all the more fun–and it also makes me realize that reading all these different types and styles of fiction should be helping make me into a better writer.

I am hoping to get back to the serious chore of the final edit of the WIP this weekend; one of the reasons I want to get all this errand running finished over today and tomorrow is so that I won’t be too tired on the weekend to get this accomplished.

And on that note, I need to get the day going.

Here’s a Throwback Thursday hunk for you, Constant Reader:

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Robert Kelker-Kelly, from Another World and Days of Our Lives

If She Knew What She Wants

Paul got home last night, later than expected, as there were delays in Dallas due to inclement weather–which I kind of figured would happen. I went to bed shortly after he got home as I was falling asleep in my easy chair–I’d rewatched Batman v. Superman, and was watching a really bad documentary called Aliens in Egypt, which was one of those wonderfully tacky documentaries about how the Egyptians didn’t build the pyramids, the Sphinx is actually much older than anyone thinks it is, etc. etc. etc. A tell in these things is that no one is ever attributed to anything; “some archaeologists believe” or “according to a prominent Egyptologist”. Don’t get me wrong–the theory of ancient aliens influencing the rise of Egypt is fascinating to me; when I was a kid I read all of Erich von Daniken’s books, from Chariots of the Gods on, and there are always points made that seem consistent with the theory; but there are also other points where it is obvious some stretching was made to have facts fit the theory. I’ve also read some of Graham Hancock’s books–I have a copy of his book about the age of the Sphinx somewhere, but I read the one that theorizes that the Ark of the Covenant is actually in Ethiopia and has been for millennia, and greatly enjoyed it.

I also greatly enjoyed Holy Grail Holy Blood, the book that attempted to prove that Jesus married Mary Magdalen and their bloodline still exists in France–even though I saw many holes in their logic and many logical leaps to make the whole thing hang together. (This theory was the basis, of course, for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, so I wasn’t surprised the way so many of its readers were.)

I wound up not reading Tomato Red yesterday as I had originally planned, I did some light cleaning after I got home, and was, for some reason, really tired. I repaired to my easy chair and, feeling a little mentally fatigued, watched some television before deciding to look for something to watch, finally settling on a rewatch of Batman v. Superman. I enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it, in the theater, but I also liked Man of Steel, which seems to be a minority position. While I grew up a fan of comic books, and have gone back to them at various times in my adulthood, I am also not a fanatic, and I am always interested in seeing the characters I grew up with taken in new directions. I also love Henry Cavill; have since The Tudors, and enjoy seeing him. I also like Amy Adams’ take on Lois Lane, and found Ben Affleck to be less offensive as Batman as I feared he would be. The movie is grim, of course, a bit grim for a Superman movie; Superman the character was always about hope, and there was little to none of that in this film (Wonder Woman, on the other hand, is all about heroism and hope; which is why it resonated so much more than this one did–and I am hoping that DC Films take the hint and go more in this direction in the future).

So, what am I up to today? Well, in a moment I am going to take the recycling out, and then I am going to make another cup of coffee and repair to my easy chair so I can finish reading Tomato Red and a Faulkner short story I started reading yesterday (Faulkner wrote some mystery short stories; collected in a book called Knight’s Gambit, that I’ve always meant to read; Tomato Red has inspired me to dip back into the Southern Gothic well). Once I am finished with these, I am going to come back to my desk and finish writing the first draft of “For All Tomorrow’s Lies” and (maybe) another rewrite of “Death and the Handmaidens,” which I’ve actually renamed “This Thing of Darkness.” This, by the way, is a complete rewrite; I am retaining some of the characters, but changing everything about the story outside of the shell–a hotel bar, a gathering of people who don’t see each other frequently, and a murder victim that everyone would like to see dead. I think the reason the story never worked was the details I filled into that framework didn’t work, and I know I didn’t delve deeply enough into the main character and who she was. The revision idea I have is pretty good, I think, so I am going to try that. I also have another story I’d like to revise, called “Cold Beer No Flies”, that I think could be really good.

And so, Constant Reader, it is time for me to depart. Here is a lovely shot of one Henry Cavill, to get your day off to a nice start.

 

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Roll With The Changes

Ah, Tuesday.

There’s a potential hurricane out there in the Gulf; yesterday the Gulf parishes and those adjacent went into hurricane watch status, with flash flood warnings and all that entails. Hurray! Only nineteen days into hurricane season…and we’re off to a good start. But I am very happy that this hurricane season I have a new car; which I still am in love with, I might add. I am still not used to the easy maneuverability; it catches me off guard sometimes with how easy it is to turn, or park, or get out of  parking spaces. All of which, of course, is lovely, as is the smooth ride.

Anyway, tropical storm conditions should be here sometimes this afternoon, which should make the drive home from work pleasant. It’s already gloomy and gray out there this morning; they’re saying this one might be named Cindy, and while I haven’t read everything on Weather.com thus far, it looks like Bret’s coming into the Caribbean Sea as well; although he looks to be more of a danger to South and Central America, Heavy heaving sigh. Looks like we’re going to have a highly active hurricane season this year.

Yay.

It looks like we might be giving up on Between; the third episode, which we watched last night, passed the campy enjoyability of overacting and bad writing to just bad. We may give it another episode–primarily because we don’t have anything else to watch as of yet, although we might go back to Turn, which we lost interest in during its second season (primarily because of a bad storyline that they seemed determined to drag out as much as possible) but was otherwise quite enjoyable; plus Jamie Bell, who plays the lead, was Billy in Billy Elliott when he was younger, so I am rather partial to him. I also love the time period, having a lifelong fascination with the Revolutionary War/colonial period (well, I love American history, and all history, really) but it was my fascination with the colonial period/Revolutionary War that initially triggered my interest in history.

I managed to rip through two chapters of the revision yesterday, and if I keep this pace going, I should be able to get the revision completely finished going into my long weekend of the 4th of July, which is when I intend to do all the polishing I need to get done. Paul will be off seeing his mother, which means I will get a lot of cleaning and reading done, and will probably be looking for old movies to watch–I’ll probably watch the live-action Beauty and the Beast while he’s gone, and of course there are a couple of shows we started watching that I can go back and finish–like MTV’s Scream–in order to keep myself entertained while he’s gone.

I also started writing a short story yesterday for a romance anthology I want to submit to; “Passin’ Time.” This is a story I’ve wanted to write for a long time; it’s kind of a sequel to “Everyone Says I’ll Forget in Time”, which was, I think, in the Foolish Hearts anthology (or was it Fool for Love?) about ten years or so ago. I’ve always wanted to write the sequel story, revisiting the burgeoning romance set up in the original story. (I very rarely want to revisit short story characters, so actually thinking about a sequel to a story I’ve written is in and of itself a curious enough occasion to make me want to do it.)

It’s now dark and raining outside; so I guess the outer, initial bands of  this storm i are starting to come ashore, or a storm front coming in ahead of the storm is here. (The bands weren’t supposed to be here until later this afternoon.)

So, I should probably head back into the spice mines before work.

Here’s your Tuesday morning hunk:

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All I Need

I had a lovely, relaxing day yesterday of reading and cleaning, capped up with watching three more episodes of Sherlock; tonight we will finish that off and hopefully, there will be a new Veep to watch, else we’ll have to find something else. I am greatly enjoying The Sympathizer, am almost halfway finished with it so probably will get it finished today, which will then beg the question of what to read next. I’m leaning towards James M. Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress…but there are any number of other books in the running as well. The riches contained within  my TBR pile are simply mind-boggling; and it’s continuing to grow exponentially. Heavy heaving sigh. I also want to start doing some re-organizing of the storage attic today; that, along with some work on the WIP as well as some more cleaning around the Lost Apartment will probably account for most of my day. Paul will undoubtedly watch some of the French Open, and around mid-afternoon I will cook out for our late lunch/early dinner.

Another exciting day in New Orleans.

It feels really good to be so well-rested; and tomorrow is a late night at work for more–bar testing, so I don’t even have to go in until later, pretty much freeing up my entire day to get some more cleaning and organizing and writing done before I head to the office. I rather do think that three day weekends are much better than regular ones; the extra day off is really lovely. I wish there was a way I could rearrange my schedule to work four ten hour days and take a three day weekend every weekend….but that’s just not possible, alas. It would be lovely, though, wouldn’t it?

At least this will be a short work week.

The Sympathizer is, while a bit hard to get into at first, quite compelling. The first book to win both an Edgar (Best First Novel) and the Pulitzer Prize, it’s also the first time I’ve read about Vietnam from the perspective of a Vietnamese–which is certainly rather American of me, isn’t it? Everything I’ve read about Vietnam has been from the perspective of Westerners–from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American through Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War; and certainly the Western/white gaze has been pretty aptly explored on film and television (I should rewatch China Beach again); but this view, from a character who is not only Vietnamese, but a Viet Cong undercover operative implanted in the staff of a South Vietnamese general–to the point of also evacuating and spying on the refugee community in Southern California–is quite interesting. (I also have a copy of Vu Tran’s Dragonfish, which I am looking forward to reading.) I had an idea for a noir centered around a young man of Vietnamese/American mixed heritage, set in a small town on either the Gulf Coast of Alabama or Florida–writing this would require a LOT of research, obviously–but I think it could be interesting, and certainly would be fun to write.

But I need to get this revision done by the end of June, so I can spend the rest of the summer writing the next Scotty book.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Memorial Day hunk for you.

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Vogue

I finally watched Strike a Pose,  the documentary which takes a look at where the dancers from Madonna’s “Blonde Ambition” tour wound up, and what happened to them. That tour was also documented in another documentary, Truth or Dare, which was also extremely controversial at the time of its release.

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It was ironic, as I reflected on watching Strike a Pose and how it affected me; what it made me think, and what I wanted to say about it on here, that I checked Twitter and saw a tweet from one of my friends:

A gentle reminder that using “it’s so much better than it was” when queerfolk are talking about their daily life is a dick move, “allies.”

The Blond Ambition tour was in support of Madonna’s fourth album, Like a Prayer (which is one of my favorite albums of hers; I’ve never tired of the title song or the second single, “Express Yourself”), which was enormously controversial when it was released…of course, back then almost everything about Madonna was controversial. She’d signed a mega-million endorsement deal with Pepsi, which was also geared to promote the album. When the video for “Like a Prayer” was released, people got up in arms about it and Pepsi cancelled the endorsement deal–Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” Pepsi commercial never aired–which only got her more publicity. (In an aside, I’ve never understood the issues with the “Like a Prayer” video; it was all about racism, and finding the strength through prayer to stand up to it–but everyone, as usual, got caught up in images from it without the proper context.)

I didn’t go see Truth or Dare in the theater; I rented it from Blockbuster when it came out on video. I had an enormous crush on the dancer Salim–he was just so handsome in the “Vogue” video–and as a Madonna fan, I was curious to see what it was like backstage on one of these massive tours. I was also–and remain–grateful to Madonna for all she did for the LGBT community, as well as bringing attention to HIV/AIDS, and being one of the first celebrities to do so. It was quite an unusual experience to see all these gay men in the film, so openly and brazenly gay and unashamed and just being themselves. The 1980’s was an incredibly difficult decade for me, personally–I’ve still not unpacked my twenties completely, maybe I never will–and the 1990’s didn’t start off much better for me. But at the time I watched Truth or Dare I had already started down a path to make a better life for myself, coming to terms with myself and who I was, and who I wanted to become, the kind of life I wanted. So the documentary resonated for me a bit; these were gay men who’d followed their dreams, and despite everything, despite all the hate and homophobia and prejudice and bigotry, made those dreams came true.

That was kind of aspirational, if not inspirational.

Seeing where the dancers ended up afterwards, some twenty-five years or so later, in Strike a Pose was kind of sad in some ways, but good in others. Being a ‘Madonna dancer’ was both a blessing in some ways and a curse in others, but they all seem to be doing well now, and it was fun seeing them all together–the ones who are left; one died from AIDS complications–again; it was also painful to listen, and see, them talking about their own personal struggles with HIV, the stigma and the shame–another legacy from that time.

Recently I was given the opportunity to talk to a retirement specialist, to help me come up with a plan for my retirement, and she was a little nonplussed about how “unprepared” I was for my looming retirement. “You should have started in your twenties,” she gently chided me.

I replied, “When I was in my twenties I thought I would be dead before I was forty.”

My reply made her feel uncomfortable, and bad–which wasn’t my intent. I knew she wasn’t being insensitive…but I wasn’t trying to make her feel bad, either. I was merely stating the truth, awful as it might seem now.

We all thought–no, believed, we were going to die young.

So, yes, it is very true that things aren’t as bad as they used to be, that things have gotten better in our society and in our world and in our culture.

But for fuck’s sake, that’s a pretty goddamned low bar–and progress doesn’t mean we’ve overcome everything, either.

Now I’d like to see Truth or Dare again. Strike a Pose struck a chord in me, obviously, and I do think it’s an important film…I’m glad I saw it.

NOTE: The Blond Ambition tour was also supporting Madonna’s album I’m Breathless: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture Dick Tracy. It was that album that contained “Vogue,” which is a timeless classic.

 

The Long and Winding Road

Good morning, Monday, how are you? I am a bit rested and ready to face the challenges of the week ahead. I know, right? Who am I, and what have I done with Greg? Hey, it happens, you know.

I started reading Victor Gischler’s The Pistol Poets yesterday and am enjoying it so far. I also finished reading Royal Renegades, which was about the English Civil Wars and the children of Charles I, and how the wars and the exile affected them. Charles’ wife, Henrietta Maria, really comes across badly, but then from everything I’ve read she was pretty much an awful person. It was interesting and informative to read, but that was one royal family that was ill-fated; so few Stuarts died in their beds, or if they did, with their thrones intact, going back to when they were just the ruling family of Scotland. If you’re interested in English history, I can highly recommend this book; it’s well written and moves along at  quite a good pace. I have now moved on to Anne Somerset’s The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Satanism, and Infanticide at the Court of Louis XIV. This is a subject that has always fascinated me, but I’ve not read much about other than what appears in French histories or biographies of Louis XIV, and I am really looking forward to sinking my teeth into a book that focuses solely on this story–and I think my next non-fiction will be How to Ruin a Queen, about Marie Antoinette and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

I love this kind of stuff.

I have edits to do this week, so it looks like my free time is going to be spent doing rewrites and edits for the rest of the week, all through the weekend, which is fine. I am taking a new approach to rewrites and editing my own work; I am looking at it as an invigorating challenge that will make my work better rather than as an odious chore that I hate doing. I don’t know why that never occurred to me before, really; so much of life depends, as Obi-wan said to Luke, on your point of view. I want to be a better writer, and I want my books to be better, therefore, edits and rewrites are a part of that process to make the work better. I am a good writer, I will never claim not to be, but I am not necessarily as good as I would like to be, and I certainly don’t ever want to get to a point where I can’t improve what I do.

And on that note, back to the spice mines with me.

Here’s a Monday morning hunk for you to get your week started.

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