Category: homophobia

We Found Love

I’ve always1 been interested in Weimar Germany, and Berlin during that period particularly. My interest grew, obviously, as it became more and more aware of how tolerant and progressive the period was; one of the first periods of true freedom for queer people in history. I’m sure there was still homophobia, but the culture and intelligentsia of the period were more interested in examining and studying queerness than eradicating it. This was part of what the Nazis sneeringly referred to as “decadence2” and opposed; everything began changing (for the worst) after 1933.

Sometimes I wonder if the more time passes after the fall of Berlin in 1945 and new generations come along that are farther away from the horrors of the second World War also make it seem less real and more history? It was very recent history when I was a child. My paternal grandfather served in the Pacific theater in the south Pacific, people on the street where we lived in Chicago when I was a kid was chock full of veterans and war refugees, people who lived through the war in Europe. A friend’s father had numbers tattooed on his forearm, and wasn’t Jewish, just an ethnic undesirable. We watched documentaries about the war and the camps as far back as I can remember. There was also an amazing PBS documentary that aired all the time–it was a series, The World at War. War fiction and non-fiction were still being published, still new, and still horrifying. I was a teenager when I read Herman Wouk’s definitive war novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, which became mini-series in the 1980s and I still think should be required reading for US History classes. (Granted, the two books are about three thousand pages long in total; it would take most students the entire class year to read them both, but putting a human face on the war by showing it through the eyes of people who were living through it has always been the best way, in my opinion, to teach history; by putting the students into the place and minds of the people who did experience it.) Anyway, clearly the history of the period isn’t taught correctly in this country else we wouldn’t be facing the rise of fascism here not even a hundred years after defeating it so thoroughly in the 1940s3.

Liebestrasse4 was suggested to me by Kindle Unlimited after I read Sins of the Black Flamingo, and I’m always up for a compelling queer story. My German isn’t good anymore, but I could read the title of this as “Love Street,” and given the nervous way the two embracing men are looking around, I gathered it was a Weimar Republic story.5

How could I pass that up?

And it didn’t disappoint.

It is, as always, both heartening and disheartening to see how open and inclusive Berlin was in those years leading up to 1933; how queer people could be open and live their best lives. Sure, there was oppression–there always has been and probably always will be–but it was easily skirted and just part of the risk expressing yourself has always held for queer people (I was explaining to a co-worker the other day how freeing going out to gay bars used to be for all of us, an escape from the stifling heterosexual world we are all trapped in, all the while knowing a police raid could, at any moment, possibly destroy your entire life.)

Leibenstrasse has no happy endings. Queer lives didn’t have them back then as a general rule, and those who managed it somehow didn’t broadcast it, either–because that would have ruined the happy ending. The main character is a deeply closeted American businessman, one of those alpha sharks we are always taught to respect, admire, and aspire to be–but he’s single, dodging all attempts to avoid being set up with women and dates, parrying all commentary about his private life–and finally decides to take an opportunity to go to Berlin to look for business opportunities for his company as well as to establish the company in Berlin. He does this not only to escape the stifling world he is living in, but also because he’s heard about the freedoms in Berlin, and that is very appealing to him. The story is cast several years after the war, with him returning to Berlin again, and remembering that lost time, and falling in love with an anti-Nazi gay activist and becoming a part of his circle. He gets arrested, and fired, from his company, and decides to go back home to escape the coming Nazi storm. He wants his love to come with him, but he wants to stay in Germany and keep fighting the Nazis…and they lost touch. Is his love still alive? DId he make it through the Nazis and the war?

Or did he die in one of the camps?

It’s a very heavy subject, and it is also one I would love to see more fiction and non-fiction about; how do you handle the guilt for fleeing and leaving your great love behind to potentially die horribly? What does that say about you?

This was an excellent read, and the art is also fantastic. Highly recommended.

  1. Always is an interesting word choice; obviously I didn’t come out of the womb with an interest in Germany between the wars. But as I grew up and became more and more aware of the period, the higher my interest. ↩︎
  2. Decadence, sin, sodomy: it’s all the same thing, so you see why it’s irritating when modern American fascists lie about the Nazis to fool people into thinking they don’t, you know, share beliefs and values with the most disgusting and horrific political ideology of all time. ↩︎
  3. Or maybe not. There’s always been a pro-fascist element in this country–look up “America First 1940” and see what comes up. They were pushing for us not to enter the war at all, or if we did, our natural ally was Hitler against the Soviet Union because communism. ↩︎
  4. In actual German, it would be spelled with a scharfes s, but I don’t know how to make that symbol on here…ß! There it is! ↩︎
  5. I recently bought a copy of Stephen Spender’s novel of the time, The Temple, and intend to reread Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and Christopher and His Kind. ↩︎

You Just May Be The One

Thursday and my last day in the office this week. I am taking tomorrow off because of appointments with doctors and so forth, and when I am done with all of that we’re going to Costco for a minor visit. I have some things I’d like to get done around here this weekend, but I am mostly going to try to relax and be chill and have a nice time as I gear up for the very next week. We had some rain yesterday, and maybe some overnight as well. I’m turning more and more into my mother with every passing day, as I am now getting to the point where I am getting obsessed with what the weather is going to be like (she always had her television in the kitchen on to the weather channel with the sound off), but there are worse things in life than being like my mom. I’ll do some more pruning of things this weekend, but mostly I want to write and read after I get all of my errands run and taken care of.

I don’t feel tired or groggy or sleepy this morning, either. I haven’t felt that way all week, either, which has been very cool. I don’t like feeling like I need more sleep–I don’t think anyone does–and that’s what I’ve always hated about working full time and having to get up early. I guess I am finally used to this shift after all these years. I think our work-at-home day is going to be phased out, and then I have to get used to being at the office five days a week. Woo-hoo.

I managed to avoid the news and social media for the most part yesterday for my own mental health reasons. Both are just infuriating to me now, and I can’t waste that energy or head space any more getting angry about things I cannot control. The media and some old elite straight white people have decided to try to throw the election, because they learned nothing from 2016 and the garbage’s original term. Corporate greed will be the undoing of this country, and you can’t tell me the pundits who’ve turned on democracy aren’t agitating for keeping their tax cuts. Of course, currying favor with people who already hate you, have always hated you, and always will hate you is a fools’ game–and none of MAGA is going to see any of you (or minorities) as “the good ones.” I get my news now from the Philadephia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. I am done forever with the NYT and Washington Post, as well as CNN and MSNBC–and I will never go back to any of them.

And for the record, polls showed Hillary in a landslide in 2016, and Trump trouncing Biden in 2020. But sure, elites, let’s base our decisions on polls taken from people who accept landline calls from UNKNOWN CALLER. Let’s listen to polling, which has rarely been right since 2016. But straight white people will always turn on their base–especially when the base isn’t made up primarily of straight white people. The Democratic Party is falling on its sword to keep their tax breaks and get more from the Republicans while the country burns. Never forget that. Project 2025 is a fucking real thing, and rather than rallying behind the candidate, they just want to throw in the towel and disenfranchise how many millions of their voters? How…undemocratic. And if this happens, I’ll still vote for whoever the candidate is–but that party will never get a dime from me again. And the only candidates I will give money to will be primary opponents for the elected Democrats who are taking a dump on their base. That’s the main difference between the two parties–the Republicans always fall into lockstep with their leadership, while Democrats will always shoot themselves in the foot and betray their big party tent base while claiming to be the party where everyone is welcome and has a say. No, we really don’t, because when push comes to shove the leadership will never listen to their base, always think they know better than their voters, and are tepid at best at uniting behind the leadership. My party support has always been resigned; at least they’re better than Republicans was always my mantra when voting for a party that will stab queer people and other minorities in the back at every turn despite calling us their “base” because they don’t want to fight or negotiate or anything.

So, I am tuning it all out and praying for the best. All I can control and all I can do is take care of myself and fight off despair because there’s never any point to giving in to it. I will check on things when I get up in the morning as my brain wakes up and then tune it all out again until the following morning. The American Experiment, noble and high-minded as it was intended to be, had a good run and never quite got the point of making its ideals for liberty, freedom and self-rule actually work the way it should; the situation we are in now is because the founders–many of whom were lawyers–never dreamed that lawyers would become judges with no respect for the law and precedent and twist and pervert the law and the Constitution to strip the federal government bare and leave citizens to the mercy of soulless corporations and rich elites.

Because that’s always worked out well in the past.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I hope to have a good and productive day, and I hope you do, too, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later most likely.

Randy Scouse Git

Tuesday morning. Huzzah! Yesterday actually turned out to be pretty good. After that initial sick feeling yesterday morning, I perked up once I ate and had some coffee and the rest of the day went beautifully. I had a great day at the day job, got everything caught up that I needed to get caught up, and so, overall, it was a great day at the office. Huzzah! I feel pretty good this morning, which is great. I slept really well, and feel rested this morning, which is all one can ask for after waking up to an alarm (I’ve never been a spring out of bed with the alarm person, as I would always rather not wake up). My COVID test yesterday morning was also negative, which was all kinds of awesome (I was worried when I didn’t feel great yesterday morning on rising). I picked up the mail on the way home, so tonight I can just come straight home after work and chill. I see blue skies out there through the branches of the crepe myrtles this morning, so probably no rain. We’re also in a heat advisory until at least seven p.m. last night.

I managed to work on the book some, so it’s not like the high-energy day I experienced at the office swirled its way down the toilet once I got home. The work went slowly, and I only managed somewhere between 300 and 500 words at best, but they were words and it was progress, so I will happily and gladly take it. My main character is slowly taking shape, as is the story, and I am adding characters to the story to flesh it out more. My New Orleans of 1994 is also taking shape in my head; the question is how accurate are my memories of the city in that year? I see some visits to the Historic New Orleans Collection are probably in order. I can’t remember, for example, what kind of store was in the building that is now Coquette at Magazine and Washington; was it hardware or paint? What was in the Starbucks building across the street from there? Where were the empty lots on Camp Street in those days? And above all else, cannot forget the Camp Street on-ramp to nowhere, which kind of looked like a modern art installation until it was torn down, and when was it torn down? When did the Coliseum Theater burn down? When did it close from showing films? (It’s the theater Brad Pitt walks out of after seeing Tequila Sunrise in the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, and when he walks out you can see the on-ramp in use, so that means it was disconnected from the highway system after the movie was filmed…) And what brand was the grocery store that was the Rouse’s on Tchoupitoulas back then? Was it a Schwegmann’s Super Center or was it a Sav-a-Center? It was both at some point, and there was also an A&P on Carrollton right after the intersection with St. Charles.

Today will be slightly easier than yesterday at the office, as I managed to get caught up on almost everything yesterday so today I have some administrative things to get done and see clients. The schedule didn’t look terribly busy when I left the office yesterday, so I should be able to get my other work done around clients. I am also trying to get my shit together still from the long years of survival-mode, and have got to make that damned to-do list. I also need to start outlining the book–what’s written, so I can easily look when I need to rather than having to reread every chapter to find something, or find out if I already said something or ensuring I am not being repetitious (which is always a problem with my manuscripts). I also figured out how to solve a problem with a story I’ve written and can’t seem to sell anywhere; the tone is wrong. I was trying to show the shift from acceptance to murderous anger in someone who is down on their luck, but it struck me last night that the shift doesn’t work, especially given what the story is about. That also means changing the opening line, which I thought was a winner, but it’s not…otherwise I would have sold the story by now. There’s a flaw I didn’t see until this past weekend, and so I have made notes in my journal and will get back to working on that story. I’ll pick a day to work on it and will shut off the novel for that one day at least. I know I am almost finished with the collection, and the revision of this story for the last time will bring the collection to almost completion. I’d like for it to be over ninety thousand words long, and I am right around eighty right now, so it needs two more stories, and I think I know what the other one will be already. Woo-hoo! Progress of a sort, any sort, is still progress.

I also got an idea for a short story to write for an anthology I’ve agreed to write a story for last night, too. It’s a Sherlock of 1916 New Orleans story, and the title I came up with, “The Adventure of the Voodoo Queen’s Necklace,” is a winner, I think. You know I’ve been trying to write a lengthy story around the destruction of Freniere in the 1915 Hurricane and Julia Brown; it occurred to me that I could set it in 1916 and write about her shortly after her death. “When I Die” is still a workable story, about desire curdling into hatred–and how that thin line between love and hate in our minds is so easily exploited by supernatural forces. Oooh, that sounds even better. Also, when I was getting home from work last night I noticed the construction on the last vacant lot on our block and it occurred to me how precisely I could write my “I hate the construction on our street” story, “Condos for Sale or Rent,” and made note of that last night as well. So…the spring of inspiration is certainly not running dry around here, I just need to force myself to actually do the writing, which…a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest, doesn’t he?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a delightful Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely be back later.

I‘m not sure why I find beaten wrestlers lying prone in the ring so sexy, but it’s probably best left packed.

Daydream Believer

Hello, Monday morning and how are you? I am feeling okay this morning, all things considered. I slept well last night but am once again unused to getting up early in the morning so feel a bit groggy this morning and like I really want to go back to bed, if I am being completely honest. I wrote quite a bit last night, which was terrific, and went to bed later than usual because I was trying to finish chores before going to bed. The laundry did get finished, and I did run the dishwasher last night. I’m not feeling so great this morning, but my COVID test (several co-workers were out last week with it) is negative so it’s probably something else other than that. I am feeling better at the moment, which is great, but man did I have some serious nausea there for awhile this morning. Sparky is trying to get something out from beneath the couch, like the sweet little apex predator he is, and I am hoping I feel better within the next few minutes. The shower will probably help, but I also need to shave–never a lot of fun under the best of circumstances1–so I need to be able to pay attention and be awake before I press a razor against my skin.

It was nice having a do-nothing weekend (untrue, I did some things) for the most part and also found myself thinking oh, so this is what it’s like to for people who do not have a second job and have their weekends and evenings free and it’s rather seductive, I have to say. It’s also nice to spend time with Paul again on the weekends, and that will always trump anything else I might have to do. Even as I sit here this morning, waiting to wake up and feel better before getting ready for work, I think to myself maybe it’s time to step away from the writing, or keep taking time off. I probably won’t have a book out this year, which is fine with me, actually. I write because I love to write, and sometimes it’s hard to find that joy when I’m writing now. But sometimes you do have to force it, even when it doesn’t feel organic or good or like you’re doing your best work, because if you wait for inspiration or when you “feel” like doing it, it would never get done.

In fact, the problem with do-nothing weekends are how seductive they are. Even now I find myself thinking oooh next weekend I can do nothing other than chores and errands and that is NOT a good thing by any means.

Obviously, I am more awake now (thank you, coffee!) and feeling better. I guess maybe it was just the getting up early again adjustment thing. I don’t know. But tonight I know there’s another load of laundry to do, clean dishes in the dishwasher to put away, and I need to get the mail on the way home from work. We’re in yet another heat advisory today, hurray, which will make driving around this afternoon unpleasant at first.

We wound up watching more Evil yesterday, which took a very interesting turn that I didn’t see coming, and now I am really interested in what’s going on in the continuing arc of the show. It also made me (again) think about how horror tropes inevitably always require an affirmation, not of Christianity but of Catholicism. Exorcisms, trappings of Catholicism are used against evil or vampires, and so on and so forth. Catholicism is the oldest form of Christianity, no matter what you think of that brand, and so it only makes sense that the legends and myths that come down through history use the signs and symbols of the Roman Catholic Faith–which I’ve always wondered about; wouldn’t Vlad Tepes, as a Transylvanian, have been Eastern Orthodox rather than Catholic? But the West never thinks about Eastern Orthodoxy, do we? Ah, Western bias–it IS a thing.

And on that note, I am going to get ready for work and head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back probably later. You know how I am.

  1. I would happily give up my ability to grow facial hair so I’d never have to shave again. It’s not like I can grow a beard in the first place. ↩︎

Pleasant Valley Sunday

It’s Sunday morning, I overslept, Sparky is chasing a bottle cap and I’ve been watching kitten videos since I got up while slurping down my morning coffee. Kitten videos really do have a lovely effect on the soul, don’t they? I would definitely foster kittens if we had more room in the house. Humans really are not good enough for our pets and don’t deserve them (I woke up this morning with Sparky cuddled up with me on my pillow). I will never understand people who give their pets up or just abandon them to fend for themselves.

Then again, I’ve never really understood how people could abuse or kill or give up their children, either. I thank God every day for my parents, you know? I really hit the lottery with mine, despite their conservative values and beliefs because they were terrific parents in almost every metric that is measurable. I ended up taking yesterday off. We were in a heat advisory for the day, so I didn’t want to go out in the misery and I did manage to get some things done before Paul got up, and my favorite thing to do is just hang out with him in the living room watching television, which is what we did. We finished Outer Rang1e and began watching Evil, which becomes really interesting once it revs up and gets going (I particularly enjoyed the ‘ghost hunter’ episode). I also finished off one journal and began another, and most of what I scribbled in there was work on the new book–which I must absolutely 100% work on today before I go make groceries. My plan for today is to do some work in the kitchen, do some writing and then head out to the store. I don’t need much, actually, which is great for my budget, but it’s all stuff that is entirely necessary and needed. (Sparky needs treats!) It felt good not to do much of anything other than journaling yesterday. I made Swedish meatballs for dinner, and that was probably the best batch of them I’ve ever made (and sadly, will never be able to make them the same way as I do it from memory and so it’s always different every time). I’m having fun cooking again, and I’m looking forward to trying to make some new stuff and teaching myself more recipes and so forth.

I’ve also got some scanning to get done today. I also managed to get down some boxes from on top of the cabinets and got rid of two of them. I have more books to donate next weekend to the library sale (need to fill the box up first), more paper to throw away, and now I can start on the other side of the kitchen cabinets. Once the tops of the cabinets are cleared, I can start taking things down from the attic and getting rid of/going through those boxes. I’d like to be able to move all my own books up there and get them out of the way–which would open up an entire bookcase, which would help the books stacked on the floor situation, which would be super nice. I am determined to end this year completely decluttered and a former packrat. Stranger things have happened, after all.

I’m going to try to avoid the news and social media today. All it does is enrage me, and I can’t afford to waste that much energy on things I cannot control. My identity as a gay male pretty much decides my politics for me, and for the record, I am far more socialist in my beliefs and values than we are even remotely close to as a country, but I am also pragmatic, and my own brush with the world of politics back in the aughts only served to reaffirm that stance. I don’t think it speaks well of the wealthiest country in the history of the planet that we do not care about the most vulnerable citizens and don’t care if children go to bed hungry. I’ve never understood the vicious, selfish mentality of punishing children for the sins of their parents, and poverty isn’t a crime in this country yet; neither is mental illness. We should as a society be far more concerned with helping the less fortunate…but then we’d be a Christian nation, and despite all claims to the contrary we are most definitely not a Christian country–because the best measure of a truly Christian nation is how we take care of the poor and the sick and we definitely fall down in that respect…but ironically the Nat C’s are, as always, only interested in symbols and ideas, rather than actually living a Christ-like life. I don’t know how anyone can read the New Testament and come away from it not caring about the sick and the poor. It’s pretty clear.

But then, the Nat C’s aren’t big on reading comprehension.

Glancing at my Substack, I see yesterday’s post there (“Tell Me Why,” an entry I posted yesterday about art v the artist) apparently cost me a subscriber. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. This is one of the reasons I never wanted to do a newsletter in the first place; having people unsubscribe made me self-conscious about what I say in one if I can see those numbers either going up or down, and obsess about them. I don’t want to censor myself. I’ve censored myself for so long…but seriously, if you don’t support my values and my beliefs, or understand how my sexuality colors those, why are you even here? Not everyone agrees with me, not every queer agrees with me, and certainly not every white cisgender gay man does, either (Log Cabin Republicans do exist, after all). There certainly are plenty of gay men who are transphobic or racist or misogynist (or any combination of the three), which I don’t understand and will never understand how the cognitive dissonance doesn’t drive them mad, but here we are.

And I am done censoring myself to coddle the feelings of people who think I’m a disgusting pervert pedophile? They can fuck right off. They don’t care about my feelings, why should I give any of my time, brain space, or energy worrying about theirs?

And on that defiant note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a terrific Sunday, Constant Reader, and remember–under Project 2025 everything will be closed and nothing will go on other than spending time with loved ones, most likely at church (but hey, doesn’t the preacher work on the Lord’s Day? Maybe he shouldn’t get paid…) on Sundays, and no more NFL. What a glorious future.

NOT.

I’m not really sure about this pose, to be honest. It just looks weird and not sexy at all. Not sure what they were going for here, frankly.
  1. Really enjoyed this show’s second season, and not sure if there’s a need for a third, even though a lot was left up the air and it was never fully explained other than “time is a river.” Okay then, but it did feel rather satisfying when it ended. ↩︎

Tell Me Why

The question of whether one can enjoy art by an artist who is, in some way, problematic in modern sensibilities has been raging off and on almost this entire century; the conversation will die down without any real resolution until someone everyone hero-worships is exposed. This always lends itself to the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth as people question whether it’s okay to continue enjoying art by someone who your ethics and values find to be problematic. I understand why people have these reactions, and there is something to be said about a world in which there was no social media or Internet around to expose artists the way they are now, you know? With the changes in publishing, artists have had to start putting themselves out there a lot more than ever before to connect with readers and hopefully sell some books to keep our careers going; as someone who (despite the blog) tends to be a very private person (“never bleed in public!”) I try not to be controversial about things that, to me, aren’t controversial; anyone who thinks I am not going to support queer equality or fight misogyny and racism with every breath in my body and every keystroke in my fingers…that isn’t controversial to me.

And if you think a gay man who constantly has to justify his existence as a human being and therefore should have the same rights that everyone else has isn’t going to belittle, insult, and rip to shreds people who think I’m subhuman? Go fuck yourself with rusty razor wire and do the world a favor and don’t breed.

And don’t even get me started on the abuse I’ve endured over the years.

The first time I ever was confronted with this ethical and moral question about art was, I think, with Orson Scott Card. Card was a highly successful science fiction writer, and his book Ender’s Game is (was?) widely regarded as a classic of the genre. I read it and enjoyed it, but there were some kind of creepy things in the text that set off an alarm in my head, and the book didn’t leave me with any desire to revisit that universe or any of Card’s other books. So when he turned out to be a devout Mormon actively working to stigmatize and deny rights to queer people…well, that was an easy decision for me. I don’t actively work to deny him rights as a Mormon, do I? So, yeah, his homophobic activism was actually causing harm to an entire community, and was pushing to do more. As far as I know, he’s still a homophobic POS, but he had the decency to fold his tent, pick up his marbles, and go home with the marriage equality fight ended with Obergefell.1

This question has reared its ugly head again recently, in the cases of immensely popular and respected writers Neil Gaiman and Alice Munro2. Gaiman for sexual predation and Munro for not supporting her daughter who was being raped as a child by Munro’s second husband (and yes, Lolita came up a lot in those conversations, and it never ceases to amaze me how many warped people DO NOT understand that book in the slightest. It’s not a beautiful romantic story of forbidden love and a child-temptress; it’s a horrific story of abuse and survival, even if beautifully written. Nabokov was too good of a writer to tackle this subject, clearly). I was going to address this question regarding them in the abstract; I have no skin in either game. I’ve enjoyed Gaiman’s work in the past, but have never met him and don’t have any connection to him other than his work and mutual friends. But hold the presses–someone I actually know was arrested for possessing child sexual abuse pornography.3

That was a shock.

And the more news that came out about this crime, the worse it has been.

There’s no question he’s guilty; possession of child sex abuse pornography cases generally don’t lead to an arrest unless they are 100% certain of conviction; 91% plead out and those who go to trial have a 95% conviction rate, so they have you dead to rights. The sheer volume of this vile imagery on his computer negates any excuses that a defense lawyer could conceivably come up with. I did see, as soon as the news broke, some people urging others to not jump to conclusions and “everyone is presumed innocent”–yeah, that clamor has died down as more information has come out. It’s also made me think about other instances where someone’s horrible behavior has been exposed; there’s always the people who don’t want to believe it–which I think is more of a subconscious defense mechanism in some way; we all want to believe that we can spot these people in polite company, that there are little tell-tale signs we may not have noticed at the time but now make sense, and we don’t want to believe that someone we’ve met, worked with, been around and liked can be a monster.

But as the queers can tell you, people can pretend to be supportive and pretend to be your friend while happily voting against your rights in every election. They can equate drag queens with pedophilia, and deep down think queer people shouldn’t be around children–or when presented with queer people around children, shudder and say “well that’s inappropriate”–so deep down your instant reaction is homophobia, so you’re actually homophobic at heart and need to do some self-work…and don’t be surprised when you spew out something homophobic you get dragged for it, and then pull the “I didn’t mean it that way”–yes, dear, you did.

And it’s not my fucking job to educate you.

It’s a shock, of course, anything like this will rock your world. We don’t want to believe we are in the company of monsters…but you’ll never go wrong as a queer person slightly holding back on straight people. Given the chance, they will always throw queer people under the bus to maintain their own privilege.

That’s how the monsters get away with it, after all…they look like everyone else. We do ourselves no favors thinking we should be able to tell when we’re in the presence of evil. The fact that we can’t makes knowing and liking a monstrous pedophile feel like a personal failing, like “how did I not see it?” Because they are very adept at fitting in…which is how they get away with it for so long.

The crime community has done a very good job this week disassociating with him, but it’s a excellent reminder to always be careful. Always.

And another reminder: Brendan DuBois? Not a drag queen.

  1. I don’t know if he has resurfaced in his role as unrepentant homophobic asshole in the years since, but he’s no longer on my radar and I don’t care what he’s doing. ↩︎
  2. A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER! ↩︎
  3. Not even the first time this has happened; the last time was someone I knew much better than the colleague arrested this week. ↩︎

(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone

Friday and I am working at home today. We’re probably going to be losing our work-at-home day in the near future, so I am going to have to get used to going back to the office five days a week. It’s been a hot minute. I haven’t had five office days since March of 2020, so it’s been over four years. And what a four years that has been. Yeesh. Pre-March of 2020 seems like a different world, doesn’t it? But that’s my entire life, really.

I have come to the conclusion that social media and the news–particularly as it’s being reported by the MSM–has been so infuriating lately that I just can’t with it. I am resigned to the election now and knowing that there are enough people willing to risk it, despite the potential consequences of that risk, but narcissists are incapable of thinking beyond themselves. Idiot pundits and rich white “Democrats” seem to be willing to just toss the election to the fascists without a qualm, because ultimately fascism won’t harm them. I honestly think CNN and MSNBC have decided they’re better off under Project 2025 than under Biden–and it’s those expiring tax cuts doing their thinking for them. I don’t know what else to do, myself. I do not know a single person who voted for Biden in the primaries who has changed their mind; this is entirely a pundit/rich white people issue–you know, less than one thousandth of one thousandth of a single percent of voters.

They learned nothing from 2016 and her emails.

No surprise that rich white straight people are willing to throw the rest of us under the bus because they’re “concerned.” They always put themselves first, which is why you seriously cannot trust anyone in a higher tax bracket. Tax the fuck out of them, since they can’t be trusted to use their extra money in a positive way, ever.

Last night was a bit of a loose one; I didn’t do a whole lot when I got home from work because I was a bit tired and worn out from the excessive heat. It didn’t rain yesterday at all, so it never cooled off, and getting into my car was like getting into a sauna. I didn’t stop anywhere and just came straight home because I wasn’t in the mood to handle cross-town traffic. I’ll go later on to get the mail and stop at the Fresh Market for a few things, and hopefully get some writing done. I think I’ve thought about Chapter Four enough so that I can actually write the damned thing now. I also realized a deadline for a short story I need to write isn’t until December, which is a bit of a relief. We watched The Boys and finished Outer Range, which is just incredibly bizarre–and more like Dark than anything else I’ve already compared it to–and that’s a really high bar to clear. I also plan to finish reading my book this weekend and move on to the next. I also want to get some of these other blog drafts finished before the end of the weekend. I also have chores and cleaning to do around here–the living room looks so nice now, but the workspace still needs some additional work. I also need to figure out meals for the weekend. I think I’m going to just order a pizza tonight or Sunday, but we’re both home at night now, which is awesome, so I am going to start experimenting with meals again.

I also need to clean up the recipe files, and my address book. Those are projects that have been languishing for years, because I will always just shove recipes or scraps of paper with addresses on them, into the folder or file box where they go without concern to organization with a flippant I’ll organize this later but never do. I did get my easy chair area carefully set up so I can use my laptop in my easy chair, and so we will see how that goes.

It’s hard to believe football season is drawing nearer, too. (The laptop set-up in the living room will be surely tested during football season.) And the Olympics! So much has been going on that I keep forgetting that is happening this summer.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I have ZOOM meetings starting soon, and lots of things to get done for the day job today. Have a lovely Friday, I’ll probably be back later, and if not, I’ll be here tomorrow morning again.

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.

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.