I don’t know; I kind of love rivers. Can you have too many? One of my favorite things about driving south to Mobile through Alabama is all the rivers and marsh you have to cross over; kind of like how you cannot leave New Orleans without crossing a bridge1. I think my affinity for rivers has to do with my love of history; civilization depending on rivers for millennia. Would there have been an Egypt without the Nile? Babylon or Ur without the Tigris and Euphrates? Paris without the Seine? London without the Thames? The North American rivers had a lot to do with the conquest of the continent and its colonialization, too–the St. Lawrence, the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri all were major thoroughfares for movement and shipping. I sometimes wonder if the home county was settled because of the Sipsey River, which drains into the Tombigbee. (It eventually drains into the Mobile River in the marshes north of the city that I mentioned earlier.)
It’s Monday morning and back to the office with me. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked yesterday but I also don’t mind. The rest felt marvelous, and I stretched to alleviate the muscle tightness from working out Saturday. Physically, I felt pretty good most of the day, and again had some trouble falling asleep last night, but eventually I did and slept very deeply and well. It’s forty degrees out there this morning (yikes!), so it’s going to be a layers day (the office is always cold) and I am going to try to run errands after work on the way home. Today is an Admin day, and I am pretty much current on everything, I think. There are some things I absolutely will need to do today, but it should be an easy one. Sparky kind of wants me to go sit in my chair so he can curl up in my lap, but alas, Spark; it is not to be today, at least not until I get home from the office tonight. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble falling asleep tonight, though. I miss my warm bed already!
Paul was out most of the day yesterday getting tattoos, and he didn’t get home until late. I was watching the Golden Globes, which was kind of dull, actually; as I’ve gotten older I’ve lost interest in awards shows (I used to enjoy the Golden Globes more when everyone got drunk). There are so many now, to the point where the Oscars are so predictable there’s not any point to even rooting for someone, or being very vested in it. I did read for a little while, wrote and cleaned for a little while, and basically just spent the day relaxing and resting from going to the gym on Saturday. My muscles feel a bit fatigued still–which could be frustrating, if I let it be; I practically did hardly anything, compared to the workouts I used to do back in the day–but I’m also a lot older and had to recover from surgery for over a year. Today I feel like getting it together–my life, my shit, my everything–so hopefully that will be my mindset going forward from now on. I’ll still have lazy days, of course–my tendency to be lazy always overrides everything else when I let it happen–but I no longer berate myself when I do so. That’s kind of nice.
It’s also Twelfth Night, which signals the opening of Carnival season for 2025. It’s also the four year anniversary of the insurrection that tried to overthrow the 2020 election; I will never forgive the voters for signing off on pardons for everyone who attacked the Capitol that day. I’ve tried writing about how that felt, to sit at work and watch the horror unfold, wondering if this was ushering in a new authoritarian government and the end of anything decent in this country (that’s right, MAGA, y’all are indecent people as well as traitors); as Paul and I say to each other on an almost daily basis–“thank God we’re old.” I can’t imagine how bleak it must be to be young now and to have absolutely no hope for the future. I will be stopping on the way home from work to get our first king cake, and I am sure someone will bring one into work; it’s a thing, you know, but since the season is so long this year I am sure we’ll get bored with king cake long before Fat Tuesday. We will be having Carnival despite the terrorist attack; “won’t bow, don’t know how” is our attitude down here, and we always hold our heads high even in the midst of tragedy. We had Carnival (abbreviated, but we still had it) after Katrina, and it was so cathartic; it remains to this day one of my favorite Carnivals.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Twelfth Night, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; stranger things have indeed happened.
The bridges of New Orleans is a very fascinating subject, and they have an insane history involving so much bribery, corruption, and incompetence that it’s amazing that somehow, miraculously, they managed to get the job done. ↩︎
Sunday morning and I hope it finds you doing well, Constant Reader. It’s kind of gray outside my windows this morning, and it’s raining, off and on; not a gully-washer like the occasional tropical downpours we get on occasion, but enough so that everything outside is wet and glistening. It’s supposed to be lovely today, but the temperature is dropping overnight and it’s going to be in the bitterly cold thirties the rest of the week. Yay, but this too shall pass. Tomorrow is Twelfth Night and the official beginning of Carnival; so on my way home tomorrow night I’ll stop and get our first King cake of the 2025 season. Yay, king cake! We are both fans. Paul picked up this year’s copy of Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide, a staple of the season. We’ve bought a copy every year we’ve lived here, and while the “parade watcher” app makes parade-going much easier, it’s also nice to have around.
What are we going to do when we lose Arthur Hardy? I don’t even want to think about it.
I have a lot to get done today. I did work some yesterday but not much; I was kind of tired after going to the gym (yay!) and making groceries, so I just kind of collapsed into my easy chair after putting the groceries away and just relaxed. I did finish reading Winter Counts (more on that later) which I enjoyed, and started reading my next read, Ode to Billy Joe by Herman Raucher. Last spring–and I don’t know why–I remembered Summer of ’42, the novel by Herman Raucher that was made into a film in the early 1970’s. I enjoyed both book and movie; it’s very poignant and sweet, and I later made the connection when I was writing my post about Robby Benson and my crush on him when I was a young gay…and then remembered he’d been in the film version of Ode to Billy Joe, which sent me down a rabbit hole–the song, the book, the movie–which is an interesting journey. I wound up ordering a copy of the novel from a second-hand book website, and so I started reading it finally. It’s weird; it was originally a haunting story song hit for Bobbie Gentry, and they decided to make a movie of it. They hired Raucher to adapt the song into a screenplay, and he went one better–not only writing the screenplay but writing a novel as well. So, is it a novelization of a movie, or a novelization of a song that became a movie? It’s actually very well written; the movie was dated and I didn’t enjoy my rewatch a few years ago, but the book still holds up. I also decided yesterday that I am going to alternate crime fiction with another genre or style of fiction, to broaden my scope and better inform my own writing.
I slept well last night, even if it took me longer to fall asleep than usual, which was odd. I wasn’t nearly as tired as I usually am when I went to bed, but I did drag my ass out of bed this morning. Sparky didn’t let me sleep late this morning–later than my usual, but far earlier than the last two mornings–so hopefully I’ll feel tired tonight. I made it to the gym yesterday, and so am a bit tight and sore this morning, but at the same time I am very pleased I did go. I tried to talk myself into waiting till today, but finally around one I snapped out of it and went. The one thing I’ve noticed besides the muscle fatigue is that mu shoulder is a lot looser and freer now–it’s been tight for a while, and sometimes it felt like it needed to, I don’t know, pop? Like a knuckle that won’t crack? But since I started working out again (granted, only twice but that’s also two more times than if I hadn’t, so there), it feels a lot better and more usable than before. Yay! Should have never stopped going last spring, but if wishes were horses and all that nonsense. Even the tightness of the other muscle groups feels kind of good. Now, if I can just remember to find time to stretch every day…
The weekend hasn’t been a waste for writing, either. I reread some works in progress, worked a bit on the synopsis of The Summer of Lost Boys, and reread Chapter 2 of new Scotty preparatory to revising it this morning. I have some short stories to work on and more to read–Saints and Sinners short story contest judging work–so I may not have as much time today to read for fun as I might want, but I think I can get through Ode to Billy Joe this week before moving on to my next read, which will be a crime novel from a marginalized author.
We finished watching Cross yesterday, and I have to admit we enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the show turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting. Shows produced by streaming services can often be hit-or-miss, and other than The Boys I generally don’t go into Prime shows with a lot of expectations. I think Cross could have been six episodes instead of eight, but they did an excellent job of juggling different crime storylines against each other as well as making the viewer wonder if it was two different cases or the same one. That’s not easy to do, and is even harder for a television series to pull off than a book. We then watched a really fun crime show called Killer Heat, which was a modern take on film noir/hard boiled private eye stories. Starring Joseph Gordon Leavitt (whom I will watch in anything), Richard Madden, and Shailene Woodley, it’s done very well and is quite fun to watch until they don’t quite nail the landing, but hey–it was an excellent attempt, and they got everything right–including excellent performances from the two main leads (Richard Madden was kind of wasted in the role of identical twin billionaires, one of whom’s murder opens the movie; the part wasn’t well written and any hot actor with a good body could have done the job)–and we definitely enjoyed it.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, and I may be back later. One can never be entirely certain, can one?
And it is now Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. Sparky and I are the only creatures stirring for now, and it’s kind of nice. It’s chilly again this morning, but that’s fine; all I have left to do this weekend is go to the gym and make groceries, and I haven’t decided whether to do that today or tomorrow; probably today so I can get it all over with and won’t have to leave the house tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. I need to do some writing and reading this weekend and some cleaning, too–I’ll have to make a list at some point.
Yesterday was a very good day. I was a little sore and achy–still am–from my return to the gym on New Year’s Day. I got all my work done, and then we made a Costco run; which wore me out and after getting home, lugging all of it inside, and then putting it all away did me in. I did read some more of Winter Counts, which I am really enjoying and hope to finish this weekend. I do have some emails to answer this weekend, and I slept deeply and well last night–Sparky didn’t annoy me out of bed until about eight thirty this morning, so that’s super cool and nice as well. I do feel rested, which is kind of nice, too. There’s no rush for me to run those errands today, either; I can run them at any time today I so choose. No college football today–and I doubt I’m going to watch any more of it this year; I am not only not a fan of any of the final four, but if I had to pick the four teams I absolutely wouldn’t want in the finals, it would be these four (there are a few that can be swapped out for Texas, and I don’t mind Penn State–but ‘not minding’ is a lot different than “that’s who I’m going to root for.” As far as I am concerned, the season is over. The Super Bowl is in a few weeks, which means getting home is going to be challenging for the next few weeks as they start closing streets in the CBD to get ready for it all. I don’t care about that, either–as long as neither the Bears nor the Cowboys nor the Falcons are in it.
I did write some yesterday, too–which was enormously pleasing. I have things I need to do this weekend, and right now I frankly don’t want to do something of them, but might as well get them out of the way. I’ll probably finish this and read for a while, to finish waking up and everything and ease my way into the rest of the day. We did watch LSU Gymnastics last night; they ran away with the meet against Iowa State, and they looked terrific. They were also getting dramatically underscored, which was puzzling, but they still won by over three points. I then spent the rest of the evening watching old clips from Game of Thrones, which I still kind of miss. When the show was firing on all cylinders, it was really was extraordinary; the production values, the acting, and the writing was all en pointe, and provided some of the best scenes of television ever produced. The Battle of Blackwater Bay? The demolition of the sept? The battle of the loot train? The Battle of the Bastards? The death of Ramsey Bolton? Lady Olenna Tyrell’s final dagger to the heart before expiring? The collapse of the Wall? Arya wiping out House Frey? The character arc of Sansa Stark? It really was exceptional television, even if they did blow the final season–and that is just a smattering of the show’s great moments; there are too many to really list. Paul and I were actually talking about rewatching the whole series again–the plots and subplots were so interwoven and plentiful that there’s a shit ton we do not remember about the show to begin with. But…time. The show last eight seasons, every episode is at least an hour long, and who has that kind of time? Maybe when I retire I can make the rewatch A Thing.
Stranger things, after all, have happened. I’d also like to rewatch The West Wing, if for no other reason than it was my comfort watch during the Bush II administration.
I’m also doing much better with my time issues; I am trying not to be motivated by the clock anymore and worrying about wasting time because I have so much else to do. I don’t have that much else to do anymore, thank you very much, and now that the anxiety is under control, I don’t get as frustrated as I used to or get stressed out as much: I don’t have TIME for this! used to run through my brain every time I would get delayed or stuck in traffic or something, and it’s really nice to not have to deal with that anymore. The solution to the Super Bowl street closures is simple–take the Interstate home from work every day, even though the bridge traffic always backs up. I used to tend to get very frustrated and stressed out every time I took the Interstate because of the bumper-to-bumper back up; now I don’t care and can just sit there and listen to whatever is playing through the stereo in my car. (I also forget it has a working CD player; I should start listening to my old CD’s in the car.)
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a few hours before deciding how to divvy up today’s tasks. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later–or tomorrow morning.
Yes, I am definitely pushing my boundaries with the social media puritans, aren’t I?
I had something go a little viral (in a very small way) on Threads; New Year’s morning when I saw, after what happened here, that garbage “humans” were blaming “the border”1 for it (um, well actually it was an American military vet, bitch) and posted MTG needs to keep New Orleans out of her hellmouth and at last count, I was at well over a thousand likes and an equally insane amount of reposts–and no “libt@rd” replies for me to block, either. Now, imagine had I put that on Twitter (fuck you now and forever, Elmo, I will always deadname your shitty app). Would I have escaped being swarmed by right wing trolls? Probably not, which was one of the many reasons that helped me break the addiction to Twitter and delete my account. Sometimes I miss interacting with people there (Jericho Brown, for one, and other friends, too), but I do not miss the toxicity and the really bad takes from trashy trolls and bots.
The energy around town yesterday was very off. Of course we all talked about the incident all day at work–the clients, too–and the vibe that’s always there, even when you’re not paying attention, just didn’t feel right. I saw a lot of social media posts yesterday that were love notes to New Orleans, and the love notes far far outnumbered the disgusting bottom-feeding ones (see MTG reference above). And reading those, I started remembering back over the years. Not just the years I’ve been so blessed to live here, but the ones going back to the day when Bienville came up Bayou St. John from Lake Pontchartrain to the island surrounded by swamp alongside the Mississippi River. New Orleans has had this kind of horror before; the biggest mass death event for gay men until Pulse was the Upstairs Lounge Fire in the early 1970s. Hundreds and thousands died during fever season. There was bubonic plague during the Wilson administration, and a massive hurricane a few years later that wiped out entire communities. New Orleans has always understood that death is a part of life, and no one knows when Death will come for you–so live every day like it’s your last; squeeze every bit of joy and pleasure and happiness out of life you can because it can all go away tomorrow, chér. And I remembered back to that time I came here for my birthday in 1994, and an entire new world and life opened up in front of my eyes as I got out of the cab at the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann–and I’ve said before, the city whispered in my ear come live here and I will make your dreams come true.
I love my city, and it will do what it does best. It will mourn its dead and raise money for survivors and celebrate the lives of those lost in this horrific act, the way we always do. New Orleans will not stop being what it is or who we are. We held Carnival after Hurricane Katrina and it was marvelous, absolutely fucking marvelous, and exactly what we needed when we needed it the most. New Orleans will always celebrate being alive, and that’s really part of the charm of this city; not only do we welcome everyone we encourage and celebrate difference, and find joy in finding community all together. What will Carnival be like after this? Joyous but cautious, I would imagine; but as always, Carnival puts everyone into a great mood and we celebrate that we’re still here.
I was tired yesterday–didn’t rest enough I guess after returning to the gym, which I am hoping to do again later on today–so I didn’t get as much writing as I would have liked to get done; I did take Chapter One to over five thousand words from slightly more than three thousand; not bad for a working week. I am hoping to get through the rest of the original chapters this weekend (no college football, nor do I have as much to do as I usually do on a weekend, either, which is absolutely 1000% awesome. The drive home was an exercise in Security Theater; cops and police cars everywhere, and they’d closed off the CBD around the Superdome completely, which was a nightmare as the CBD is the area closest to the interstate–how many people get home from work–so maneuvering around stupid drivers and closed streets and blocked lanes was quite the adventure in irritation and frustration.
Sigh.
Also: I am sick and tired of white racists saying “it’s not safe!!!!” about New Orleans when what you really mean is “too many Blacks live there.” This usually goes along with some pious weeping about how much they used to love New Orleans back when it was safer…newsflash, K-K-Karen: New Orleans is as safe as it ever has been. When you were a child, your parents never talked to you about crime, but when precisely was New Orleans this paragon of safety? New Orleans was always a major port–and major ports aren’t exactly known for decorous behavior and peace and quiet. Was it safer when the Mafia ran the Quarter? When the Upstairs Lounge burned with over thirty people inside? When prostitution was legal in Storyville, or when New Orleans was the liquor capital of North America during Prohibition? Crime has always been rampant here, and this vile racist pretense that before desegregation New Orleans set the standard for law-abiding American cities? Hardly. Just admit your parents or grandparents didn’t want the kids in your family to go to school with Black kids and be done with it, okay?
I feel pretty confident that twink-in-barely-more-than-a-thong will trigger the puritans.
I wonder how long before this post gets flagged by social media puritans as “adult content?” Yesterday’s post was flagged as porn by the cosplaying Puritans at Threads–a man in his underwear is pornography; bare female breasts or some woman with an enormous ass in only a thong proliferate everywhere. Seriously–fuck all of the way off, censors–and think about the message you are actually sending women with your selective application of “oops, this is porn! Shame on you!” to shots of men in swimsuits or underwear, but okaying degrading and demeaning pictures of women every fucking day.
But…Facebook began as a way to rank and score girls who wouldn’t fuck Zuckerberg by a hotness scale, so here we are.
It’s a work at home Friday for me today, and we’re going to Costco later, after I finish my work at home duties. The house is in better shape than usual (thank you, day off on Wednesday and cleaning), so there isn’t as much housework to get done this weekend. My muscles are tight this morning, so I am going to have to do some stretching, and then head back to the gym tomorrow. I also learned something else about myself yesterday–I always rush through my workouts and get extremely frustrated if I have to wait on a machine. When I went the other day, I took my time. I moved through the exercises relatively quickly, but I did them all slowly, didn’t allow myself to get frustrated, and didn’t try to rush through it. And again, I realized I was so focused for so long on using my time effectively and efficiently and trying to do everything as quickly as I can that…it was much easier to get annoyed and frustrated and cut the workout short or something like that. This time, taking my time and actually feeling the muscles work instead of going through so fast that I don’t notice any burn until I am finished isn’t the best way to exercise. I also don’t have the anxiety anymore, so I also don’t feel like I need to get through everything as fast as I can because I don’t have as much to do as I used to. But the good news is my shoulder and arm do not feel any more sore or fatigued than anywhere else; in fact, it actually feels better than it has in a while.
Louder, for those in the back: clearly I should have continued exercising after I was done with Physical Therapy. But…I wasn’t in a good place for the most part last year, so it is what it is and I can’t change that now so move forward and remember. And also remember how good it felt to go to the gym and exercise in the first place.
I also started writing a synopsis of The Summer of Lost Boys last night, too–which felt good and was kind of fun to do. I also need to work on some short stories this weekend, run a few errands, and do some picking up around here. I want to write some today after work, and I think I’m pretty much done with the college football play-offs. There’s no one left that I care about watching; in fact, not a fan of any of the final four, to be honest. LSU already played their bowl game2 and so…who cares? It’s Gymnastics season now, and LSU is the defending national champions, so that’s very cool.
We’re watching Cross, which we’re enjoying; we also finished Hysteria! earlier this week, and it was a lot of fun.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a terrific Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later today; one can never be certain.
They still are blaming illegal immigrants despite the fact the killer was born and raised here and was a veteran of our military! They are quite literally the fucking worst humans ever born. The next four years are just going to be a shit show. ↩︎
They did win, by the way, beating Baylor 44-31. ↩︎
Woke up to a new year! How exciting….although it doesn’t feel any different than yesterday, other than I don’t have to go into the office today, which is awesome. And of course, as soon as I signed into social media, I saw DM’s and posts asking me if Paul and I were “okay”, which was puzzling, so I went to NOLA.com and I guess there was a terrorist that attacked Bourbon Street last night, driving his truck into the crowd and shooting at police officers? I just saw where the attack occurred–Bourbon and Canal intersection–because I was wondering how that was possible since all the blocks are blocked off to traffic all night, so I knew it had to be an intersection on Bourbon Street, as those are only places on Bourbon you can have a car, or drive. How terrible–and I bet they lock the whole city down for the Super Bowl; shades of the 2002 Super Bowl here after 9/11–when I was coming home from training a client and was stopped at Poydras Street so the military (complete with tanks) could parade from the river to the Superdome in an act of theater designed, no doubt, to make us feel safer; it had the opposite effect on me. It just made me think about how I missed the days where we couldn’t imagine something like that happening.
Yeesh, indeed.
My New Year’s entries are generally about my goals for the new year, and I always explain why I have goals instead of resolutions–everyone inevitably breaks their resolutions, so I’ve never felt they were as important as setting goals for the new year. I don’t always achieve those goals, but they have been enormously helpful in the past and it really feels like I’ve done something when I accomplish one of the goals, or the goal makes positive change in my life, which is always very pleasant. One goal is to continue not participating in the legacy media, by never clicking or putting eyes on their broadcasts or articles. I will never subscribe to the Times or the Post ever again, and I do feel this goal is one that can be set and is completely attainable.
Another goal is to not do any emotional labor for anyone or anything that isn’t Paul, Sparky, my dad, or myself. I’ve been pretty good about that throughout 2024, and it is definitely one of the better things I did this past year was close myself off to other people’s problems. I am going to continue to not attend mystery conferences and conventions this year, and one of those important goals is to not financially support places that allow rampant homophobia and then do nothing when things are reported to them. I’m certainly not taking shit from anyone ever again in this community, so my decision to stay away and not participate in the community anymore is probably for the best for all y’all, because I’m calling this shit out now whenever it happens and since most straight people prefer no conflict, my calling shit out and calling out people for trying to gloss over outright homophobia from now on isn’t going to be fun for people anyway. Heaven forbid the racists and sexists and homophobes be made to feel uncomfortable, but it’s okay for us to feel unwelcome, uncomfortable and unwanted. Maybe we can start calling them convocations instead of conferences and conventions, since keeping Klan attendees is more important than keeping the people they target. FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF. And racist Bouchercon attendees? Feel free to go be racist on Bourbon Street at one in the morning and see how that ends for your skank ass. And for the record, hate is what leads to things like the attack on Bourbon Street last night, so by all means let’s keep encouraging that kind of behavior by glossing it over and acting like it’s not a big deal and it’s just “free speech” until someone is killed. American hatred, I swear, is like kudzu.
The most important goal for the year is to focus more on my writing career and give it the energy and the oxygen it’s always deserved but never got from me. I’ve always felt like I’ve always made my writing the lowest thing on my priority list, and that juggling between day job responsibilities, life responsibilities and the writing itself (let alone the promotion side of things) has always ended with me feeling like my writing isn’t a priority; part of the problem I have always had with saying no to people and to doing things is that fear and anxiety so controlled me and my actions for so long that I’d always end up making it the lowest priority–and “friends” who’d blithely dismiss my “well, I have a book due” with “you always get it done” aren’t really friends; any friends who’d want you to put aside one of the most important things in your life to do something for them aren’t really friends. Writing is what makes me happiest, and not writing always makes me miserable. Part of the depression of the last year or so was enhanced because I wasn’t writing–and whenever I tried, it was hard to get words down and they were terrible; I did some pretty terrible writing this year (as I am finding as I edit these first six chapters of the next Scotty; I did some work on that yesterday after work which was cool) and plan to do some more today, too. I need to get the ebook of Jackson Square Jazz edited and sent to the formatter–BIG priority, especially since it’s the twentieth anniversary of the trade paperback and its Lambda nomination (the hardcover came out the year before). I need to get my website finished, and I need to learn how to do promotion in the digital age, don’t I? Kind of sad that I’ve been doing this for twenty three years this January 20th, and still don’t know what I am doing. I also want to push myself more with my writing going forward, too. This Scotty is a tricky one, since I want the entire thing to take place between the arrival of a hurricane’s first bands and have the story finished before the final band passes and the storm is completely over.
I also need to be better organized going forward, and need to stay on top of things better. I need to file as I go and clean as I go–thanks again, McDonalds, for burning that into my head–and that includes cleaning out the attic and the storage space so I can stop paying for it. My memory is pretty much gone these days, so I need to be better about making lists and consulting them (they don’t do any good if you never look at them), as well as doing things when I get home and I am still in work-mode from being at the office. It doesn’t hurt to feed Sparky, file stuff, do dishes and so forth before writing or reading. I also need to be better about reading; if I read for an hour or so every day I’ll gradually get through that TBR pile for sure. I also need to be better about keeping house.
I know I say this every year but I am going to be healthier this year, and by that I mean taking better care of myself. After Mom died, I intended to be better about all this stuff, but I’d also injured myself so I couldn’t go to the gym either. And I did get some of it taken care of–I got hearing aids so I can hear better and finally spent the money to get my teeth fixed–and of course I needed about a full year to completely recover physically from the surgery. But if I stretch every morning when I get up, and if I go to the gym two or three times per week, and take walks on the days I don’t go to the gym–I’ll get healthier. Sounds easy, doesn’t it, but the reality is much harder to stay on track. I’ve also noticed in the last few weeks that I am not as groggy and tired as I was getting up so early for such a long time; I think I am finally adjusting to it, and I am not always tired when I get home from work, either.
All attainable and doable, I am pretty certain. So on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get some things done around here so I can head over to the gym. I am going to read until it’s time to go to the gym. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again at some point.
Sparky let me sleep later this morning, which was greatly appreciated. I have work to do today, some errands to run, and I am just going to push through it all today. There’s no football on television today (or if there is, I don’t care about it) to distract me from working and reading a bit. I want to drop another box of books off at the library sale, and I’m planning on going to the gym later on and getting back into that habit. Yesterday was nice and relaxing, too. I got all my work-at-home duties done and we went to Costco, which is always a joy. I don’t know why I love going to Costco (probably because Paul always pays), but I do. We watched some more of Black Doves last night, which we are really enjoying, and finally went to bed a little later than I would have liked. I slept well and woke up to a sunny day in New Orleans; it’s going to be in the low seventies high sixties today–which means I should think about washing the car, too, or at least cleaning it out. I do have a hand vacuum, so I can just do that. Excellent plan, Gregalicious!
I also picked up and cleaned up around here both Thursday night and around work-at-home duties yesterday, so the Lost Apartment is actually in pretty good shape this morning. There are some dishes that need to be done, but the laundry is finished for sure and all that is left is the floors. Yay, me! I even did the filing yesterday, too, which is all kinds of awesome. I hate it when my desk is a mess and my inboxes are loaded down with paper and other shit. I also decided on the opening of the new Scotty; this time I am going to parody the opening of The Lords of Discipline, and it came to me yesterday how to make that work and be funny. So I even managed to get some “writing” done. No wonder I woke up in such a good mood; yesterday was truly a good day for me. Paul’s going to his office today, so I’ll be home by myself this afternoon, and so there’s no reason for me to not get everything done today that I want to get done. I also want to read some more today; that’s what I’ll most likely do this morning before I run the errands; probably do some picking up and book-pruning, too.
I’ve been doing that “twenty books that influenced or stayed with you” thing on one of the social media channels (I am on Bluesky and Threads; not sure how long I’ll stay on Threads, since Zuckerberg is a fascist collaborator) but I can never remember where I post things or reply to people since I left Twitter (whenever I do these things, the list is often different; some books make the list every time). Most of the people I enjoyed engaging with on Twitter (I will never fucking call it X; fuck you now and forever, Elmo Mush) have migrated over to one or the other, so people I was initially missing in the beginning have gradually turned up on one or the other. I have also taken the Bluesky/Threads methodology of just preemptively blocking annoying people to Facebook now–I told a friend I call it “reclaiming my time”–and thus far, it’s enormously freeing. I block early and I block often, and I wish I would have just done that everywhere from the beginning. Likewise, I’ve always required that anyone commenting here has to be approved by me before anyone else sees it–so there are any number of trolling commentary I’ve spared you all from. It’s the least I can do. Sometimes it’s a homophobic piece of garbage, or a MAGA troll, and I don’t owe you a fucking thing, let alone a forum for your ignorance and hate. However, I also keep those comments saved as unapproved, so I may eventually use them on here. Hey, you wanted it in a public forum; but I am not required to give that to you in the way you wanted. Instead, I can call you out on here while you gnash your teeth in impotent anger at my restricting your so-called freedom of speech (hey, it’s not my fault you don’t understand how the government or the Constitution works; you should have paid more attention at your free public education and taking advantage of the opportunity to be smarter and more intelligent–it was a free gift from the taxpayers. I already paid for your education once; I am not a teacher and therefore it is not my job to educate your stupid ass). Sucks to be you, doesn’t it? Better you than me.
The Luigi Mangione case continues to dominate social media and the news, as the news–ever in thrall to their corporate masters–tries to convince us we’re terrible people for being on Luigi’s side. The legacy media, of course, always do the bidding of the corporate masters (which is partly why we are in the situation we are in; they’ve been betraying the country for decades and doing the bidding of the right–we should have never forgiven them for helping perpetrate the lies that led to the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, or for patriot-washing Bush/Cheney for eight years), and the scolding from people who think “How can you support a murderer” isn’t landing the way they think it should–in fact, it actually makes me question your morality. Do I think killing CEO’s or executives who’ve made and implemented policies that put profit over people’s health care when they aren’t really medical professionals? Of course not, but I don’t have any sympathy for the dead man or his family or his evil company which isn’t going to change the way they operate.
That’s always the thing that has gotten me about health insurance; they operate under the assumption they know more about a person and their health and their needs than their actual doctors. Since the introduction of capitalism into medicine and health care–the profit motive–the quality of care and the quality of life for most Americans has declined. I have any number of my own horror stories with health insurance (no, he doesn’t need to have that precancerous lesion removed! It might be benign now, even if that might change, but we need to wait to be sure!) and the horror stories of my clients in the clinic that I have to listen to every day. I would shed no tears for any health insurance CEO, frankly; and I remember what it was like before the Affordable Care Act1, when my pre-existing conditions required me to be raped repeatedly by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I was so happy when the ACA took effect and I was able to change to my job’s coverage. (Now, alas, we are back with BC/BS–and there’s a reason the acronym includes “bs.”) If my lack of sympathy for the health insurance CEO’s and their cronies makes me a bad person, well, I don’t care. I save my sympathy for the people denied care and their families.
And it’s very privileged to react so moralistically about people not being on Luigi’s side. It doesn’t hurt that he has pretty privilege, and the general reaction to a pretty young man shooting a health insurance CEO because of his shitty corporate policies (how can corporations have all the rights of an individual but no accountability for criminal behavior? If a corporation can’t go to jail, then it’s not a person.) is bound to get support from all the people who’ve had a shitty experience with health insurance coverage. It took me seven months of doing without before I could finally get BC/BS to pay for a necessary medication for me. Seven. Months. When I had BC/BS before, they declined to cover a medication to help me quit smoking; I paid out of pocket because I wanted to quit smoking, but it was infuriating. They would have rather I kept smoking and hoped I’d die before they had to pay too much for cancer care. Think about that–a health insurance company refusing to cover something that would make a customer healthier. The three months of the drug cost me $300 in total. They refused to pay $300 to save money in the long run.
Insurance is, and always has been, one of the greatest scams perpetrated on the American people. Don’t even get me started on auto insurance, which is even worse than health insurance. I will never be shamed into feeling sympathy for health insurance employees–and when people say “but it was his job!” do you have the same energy for the camp guards and workers in Auschwitz? They, too, were just doing their jobs. How many people suffered and died from policies set and approved by that CEO? How can someone who has the power of life or death who chooses death for higher profits be worthy of sympathy? How is denying life-saving treatment and care for people not calculated, premeditated murder? And that doesn’t even take into consideration how much we fucking have to pay for them to deny us care.
And if you’re okay with THAT, yeah, you don’t actually have any moral high ground to stand on. But congratulations on judging mine!
And on that note, I am going to go to my easy chair to read before I run my errands. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. Stranger things have happened!
Screenshot
Yet another example of the lack of memory in Americans: people can complain about the ACA all they want to (and yes, it’s the same thing as Obamacare, trash) but health insurance before the ACA was so much fucking worse, and the insured were completely at the mercy of the corporate bean counters and the CEO’s pushing them for more profits for the shareholders–and the shareholders who profit from these policies are just as evil as those working for the corporation. ↩︎
Work at home Friday and was Mercury in retrograde yesterday? Is it still? My work laptop died yesterday morning when I tried signing into it after I got to work and it took most of the morning for me to get a new replacement one. So, I spent the morning without a computer–which meant outside of seeing my clients, I didn’t really have the ability to do much of anything. I finally got the new one around lunch time, but my day was already off and so was my energy, and since my routine had been disrupted, I had trouble getting back on track. Finally, I just made a list while I was eating lunch and that seemed to work, even though I still felt off all day. The replacement laptop (which is just temporary until they fix the old one) also had some issues with staying connected to my scanner, which was incredibly frustrating and resulted in my admin work taking far longer than it usually does, and I had a lot of documents to scan into patient files. The frustration was real, and I was exhausted when I got home. My brain was basically non-functional by the time I got home, and I actually fell sound asleep in my easy chair around nine-thirty. I didn’t get anything done once I was home–worn out from the endless frustration of the day–and didn’t even remember to charge my phone when I went to bed. I did manage to watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which is lit this season and definitely my favorite of these shows at the moment), though, since that required little to no energy on my part. I hope to get a lot done today, both day job and Gregalicious wise; and we’re going to Costco later after I am done with work duties. (Need to make a list!)
But I slept very well last night, and woke up feeling pretty rested this morning, which is a good thing. The entire place is a disaster area, and I never managed to do anything about the dishes accumulating in the sink and now it’s of course out of control. Heavy heaving sigh. Even my desk is piled high with things that need to be put away. It feels chilly, and per the weather the high will only reach sixty degrees here today. I think I am going to walk to the gym tomorrow morning and get started back up with that again, and hopefully today will be a great clean and organize day for the house. Christmas is coming, and I am really not feeling it very much this year, to be honest, and haven’t for a few years. Paul and I decided to not do gifts again this year–we are divorcing ourselves from the capitalist holiday by refusing to spend much money observing it (we’re going to go see Babygirl in the theater on Christmas day), and I have to say I am gradually growing more radical and anti-capitalist by the day (so much for that you get conservative as you get older bullshit; I grew up as a conservative and my adult hood has been mostly about shedding that foul and utterly inhuman methodology. Profits over people, corporations are people but living breathing humans are not–I could go on and on talking about the class war in this country. I am a radicalized Paw Paw, I guess? I did have a client this week whose birth year was 2006–which was highly traumatizing, and would have been worse if I cared about being old. It was more of a shock to me that kids born after Katrina are eighteen (and older) now. Kids born the year of Katrina will be twenty next year. Twenty years, a third of my life, has passed since that time.
I am also looking forward to some good reading time. Both of my current reads (Winter Counts and White Too Long) are fascinating and well-written, and it’s quite easy to get caught up in the narrative. I’d love to finish both this weekend so I can move on to my next reads (leaning towards Alter Ego by Alex Segura or Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett and The Exvangelicals for my non-fiction). I do want to get caught up on Donna Andrews’ two latest over the holidays, which are rapidly approaching. Soon it will be 2025 and even more insane chaos once the new “administration” is sworn in. The next four years are going to be bad, I think–signs point to yes–but I also survived the 80s and the 90s, so maybe I am a Cher/cockroach.
We started watching Black Doves the other night, and I really enjoyed the first episode. I love Ben Whishaw, and Sara Lancashire is a treasure. I am hoping we’ll be able to spend some more time with it over the course of the weekend. We also should go back to Slow Horses, which we never went back to for some reason; I think we got interrupted by something (a surgery? A funeral? Who knows?) and just never went back to it. I do also want to read the books by Mick Herron (got to love that last name), too. Ah yes, so many books to read. Heavy sigh. I have so many treasures in my TBR pile, as well as treasures from the distant past (I would love to read Anatomy of a Murder and A Summer Place and Summer of ’42 again, plus more of Margaret Millar, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Armstrong, and Dorothy B. Hughes) that I will probably never get through them all.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I hope that I have a really productive one. I’ll be back either in the morning or later today, it’s a mystery!
Gorgeous retired Olympic and world champion ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who also is a model.
Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment! We’re having a cold spell here in New Orleans (yes, I know a high of sixty and a low of fifty-one is spring from most of you that live north of I-10, and you break out the tanks and shorts and sunscreen, but this is the time of year down here where you don’t feel like the climate is actively trying to kill you when you go outside, and it’s lovely), which is wonderful; I woke up feeling very well rested yesterday and had a very productive day. I wasn’t tired the way I usually am on Fridays, and managed to get all my work-at-home duties done, my blood work taken care of, picked up the mail, and made groceries. I’ll have to run out to the store again tomorrow to pick up a few things, but I don’t mind. My new watch came in the mail–I lost the Fitbit charger, and realized hey I don’t need to have one anymore since our insurance changed–so I ordered a cheap Timex on-line. I spent some more time with The Reformatory (it’s so good, so compelling and so horrifying at the same time; societal horror on top of supernatural and just breathtakingly brilliantly done), and worked on my chores whenever I needed a break from my computer duties. I also think the weather change has something to do with my energy picking up again; it might be finally healing from all the medical shit I had done last year (coming up on the one-year anniversary of my first-ever major surgery), and I always sleep better when it’s cold…although that does make it harder to get up in the mornings. I mean, I never want to get out of a comfortable bed as it is, let alone a warm comfortable bed on a chilly morning!
I got all the dishes done and did the bed linens; I also started picking up around here a bit more. I’ve really let the house slide badly since the surgery; it’s more than a little horrifying to think I’ve let it all slide for this long. I am really going to utilize the time Paul’s gone to do a real nice deep clean on the apartment. It’s long overdue. I also am trying to decide what TV show to binge while he’s gone; I’ve never watched Sex and the City (I’ve seen one episode) and I stopped watching Desperate Housewives midway through the first season when I missed one and didn’t know how to get caught up on it. (Both of these came to mind from watching a Youtube video while I was doing some quality assurance on paperwork, whose theme was “When Your Main Character Becomes The Villain,” which focused on Teri Hatcher’s character Susan (I remember getting really annoyed with her that first season), and used Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw as another. I realized I’d never watched these shows that were hugely popular with other gay men (the show-runners on both were gay men), so it would be interesting to see them now, all these years later, and perhaps even make a project out of it? I’m leaning towards Sex and the City because the episodes are shorter, and I don’t there are as many, which is a terrible reason, isn’t it?
Embrace the dark side, Gregalicious.
I slept well last night. Paul was out at an event, so I was home alone for most of the evening, and went to bed early when I started getting sleepy, around nine. It must be the cold (to us) weather. I do have to run out to get the mail and make some groceries, but for the most part I’ll be lazing around here, picking up and cleaning and moving things to clean behind or beneath them and so on (I am waiting to move the couch until Paul’s not here; there’s no telling what Sparky has under there–although he doesn’t try to squeeze his way underneath there anymore). I did cruise through my streaming services last night to see what is on there that I want to watch (I was also searching for Sex and the City and The Assassination of Gianni Versace, of which I’ve never seen more than the first episode), and I cleaned off and organized my desk–which was really nice to come down to this morning–and it’s nice to have all the dishes and laundry done. I’ll probably do some more cleaning and organizing around the kitchen/laundry room this morning, around reading more of The Reformatory. LSU will probably lose to Vanderbilt tonight, and if they do, I won’t be too mad about it. I’m enjoying Vanderbilt’s improbable season, and I can’t help but pull for them since they are always such an underdog every year. Tulane1 is also doing well again this year, which is fun–New Orleans really gets excited for Tulane when they’re doing great, and it’s fun seeing people heading for the tailgating in their green garb waiting for the streetcar along the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue when I’m driving home from uptown. I’m working on an essay about religion, hoping to work on finishing a short story or two this weekend, and getting back to work on the book.
I also am thinking about rewatching Saltburn, so I can finish my essay about it. It’s not longer timely, of course, but it’s an interesting movie that I think bears some Gregalicious perspective on it. I still have some Imposter Syndrome (“who cares what I think? I never studied film as art.”) when it comes to expressing my opinions on art outside of my own form (literary arts), but reviews are basically what you liked and didn’t like, and I really enjoyed Saltburn, and want to dig through its multiple layers to get down to the heart of the matter. I think I’m going to read a queer mystery next, probably The Lavender House by Lev Rosen, which I’ve been wanting to dig my teeth into for quite some time. I am feeling so much better these days, and I have to say during this lengthy recovery from a major trauma to my body I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get back to normal, and if that exhaustion I felt almost constantly was something I was just going to have to live with and teach myself some work-arounds2 that I no longer need to do anymore. I don’t need to be constantly efficient when I am doing errands, planning and mapping out the route and order in which I do them to save a few minutes here and there, which is dumb. I also know it’s not going to kill me to leave the house again for something I’ve forgotten as it really isn’t a hassle to do so, or stop on the way home, and so forth. Tomorrow I most likely won’t leave the house at all, other than walking to the gym in the late morning–I need to get back into that routine, since I should be focused on getting into the best shape possible for what is coming3 under this new regime of horrors. My hopes aren’t high…when you have to depend on Republicans to save democracy…I just can’t believe more people didn’t think January 6th was disqualifying.4
So much for the “land of the free.”
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need to have breakfast and get another cup of coffee prepared before I repair to my easy chair with Tananarive’s amazing book–I really need to exhaust her backlist–and I suppose I’ll have the television on for games today that I won’t pay a lot of attention to for background noise–probably Mississippi-Florida, Kentucky-Texas, and LSU-Vanderbilt tonight. But I hope you do have a marvelous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.
It’s a mystery!
What are the odds Facebook will want to take this down as a sexual image?After all, everyone knows butts are for sodomy.
It’s also weird for Tulane to be doing better than either LSU or the Saints. ↩︎
Since getting properly diagnosed and medicated for generalized anxiety disorder, I have begun to realize just how many things I do are workarounds to lessen the anxiety–which I am noticing now because the anxiety is (mostly) gone. ↩︎
I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Project 2025 is coming, thanks again, MAGA trash. ↩︎
Then again, look how long emancipation took here, and how long Jim Crow lasted. The USA has been one long history of atrocity after atrocity, truly something for fragile white cishet people to truly take pride in as their heritage. ↩︎
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and I don’t have to leave the house today if I choose that option. I did take the car in for the oil change (only to discover the car needs about another $1500 in maintenance–it is almost eight years old. The battery needs replacing, I need new tires, etc. etc.etc. Woo-hoo for more debt! I’ll take it back when I figure out how to pay for the rest), and then made groceries on the way home, which I’d originally planned to do this morning. Instead, I am going to stay here, maybe run to the gym a little later, and get some work done. I am going to write today if it kills me–I’ve not written any fiction since before I went to Kentucky, and that needs to stop–and I want to spend a few hours reading this morning, too. I am behind on writing, I am behind on reading, and definitely behind on cleaning the house. It’s been a time since the election, hasn’t it?
This blog is approaching it’s twentieth birthday; yes, I’ve been doing this since December of 2004, only I started on Livejournal, where I stayed for the first twelve years or so before finally ditching the site because of many reasons. I stayed longer than most people; I even got teased originally for still being on the site, which had become déclassé; I still use my AOL email address, too, for that matter–which often is the subject of occasional mockery there, too. I hate gmail, and AOL works for me, so I still use it. Anyway, while I was in Kentucky I realized/remembered, on election night, how old this blog is and how long I’ve been doing it–and how and why it first started. I started reflecting on that, and thinking about it, and when I started censoring the content on it to make it more palatable and less offensive to the people I thought might be reading it. I started writing the blog in the wake of what happened to Paul in the spring of 2004, which derailed everything in my life and started what I call the Time of Troubles. Over the course of more than a year–spanning from Memorial Day through August of 2005–it was literally one blow after another. Paul spent two weeks in the hospital after that Memorial Day, and my primary focus in life became taking care of him, and making sure he was okay. I postponed finishing Mardi Gras Mambo for over a year, and was too damaged and laser-focused on dealing with the aftermath and being there for him that I stopped writing entirely.
People were very kind to me during that time, to us both, actually, and extended book deadlines and so forth were enormously helpful. Paul and I didn’t really venture out much from our cocoon, other than going to work and the gym (me) and running errands. Paul focused on his job, and I focused mostly on my editorial work as I couldn’t write fiction. I wasn’t really in a place to write a funny Scotty book, and by December of that year I was already getting to the point where I was worried if I could continue writing. I had dinner and drinks with a writer friend in early December who actually had a great blog that I read every morning, and he recommended that I try writing a blog, just writing the things that I was thinking about or experiencing, to get back into the habit of writing every day. I scoffed, “who would ever read such a thing?” and he replied, “You’re not doing it for other people, you’re doing it for yourself” and that kind of became the blog mantra: it’s really just for me, to talk about things that are going on, my perspective on things no one would ever pay me to write about or have an opinion on but did want to write about and have an opinion on. It was kind of a diary for me at first, and I wrote about things I was interested in–like figure skating and football and New Orleans life–and it was something I enjoyed. I was really getting into the swing of it when the next “trouble” came along–what I call the “Virginia thing.” And of course, later that year, we had Hurricane Katrina, and I blogged about my anger; how cruel people could be (Republicans, it’s always Republicans) and I was defiant. We’d just gone through an election earlier that year in which the Republicans’ entire campaign centered the evils of same-sex marriage, with all the expected homophobia and cruelty they’ve perfected. (This is who they’ve always been, and the cruelty is nothing new.)
I started dialing back on talking about politics and homophobia and the world a lot after I started working full-time for a non-profit, and started volunteering and serving on others having to do with writers’ groups. I didn’t want anything I said to affect negatively on either where I was working or any place I was volunteering; the rules on what we could do or say or talk about at work were very strict, and while we were always allowed to have personal lives and opinions, I thought why take the chance? It‘s an HIV/AIDS non-profit, and we’re in Louisiana, and it won’t take much to set off some evangelical idiot outside of New Orleans and make them target our funding or our non-profit status so I stopped. I’m a gay man; everyone should know what my politics and values are and what political party comes closest to working for the world I want to live in.
But when I was in Kentucky, I started thinking about these things again. I no longer do volunteer work for writers’ organizations and/or events. My day job is no longer a red flag to Louisiana conservatives–we’re no longer the NO/AID Task Force, and we have an even more innocuous name now that sets off no alarms. We also no longer merely focus on gay men; we are open to everyone up on the third floor (my department primarily still works with my community–people at risk for HIV infection) and so I don’t think I need to concern myself about doing or saying anything that might trigger the Louisiana Fascist Party. I’m free to be myself again on here, and I am very opinionated. I know my blog and Substack have picked up a lot of new readers since I ran out of fucks. I don’t know if I am actually making people think, or if people are coming here to watch what they think is me having a very public mental breakdown so they can point and laugh. I’m not, for the record. I’m not even angry or hurt. I’m just fed up, and tired of letting people get away with this shit. You’re either an ally or not, but I don’t think most people know what that actually means. And when you make it clear to me that you’re not, that you actually think people like me are gross or repulsive or whatever demeaning default your privilege allows you to fall back on–why on earth would you think I like you and want to be around you? Someone dares to call out the entire community, so he’s clearly having some sort of mental break? Yeah, that’s it. That puts it on me so y’all can sleep better at night, right? Whatever.
And yes, I know when I write about these things I write passionately and emotionally. The hurt has long ago passed–I dealt with those feelings when the things actually happened, you know1? Sure, my anger and hurt comes out when I do, because I am reliving the experience in order to write it about it properly. If I wrote about it when it happened, it would be even more raw and painful and expletive filled than what you’ve been reading this past week. This is me, after the fact, recounting horrible experiences far more calmly now than I might have at the time. Think about it–this is me being calm and rational about being demeaned and dehumanized.
I also do want to thank everyone for not gaslighting me this past week, either–for not pulling some “#notallstraightmen #notallstraightwhitewomen” shit on me. I spoke in generalities despite knowing that nothing is a monolith. There are some good straight people out there, and there are some amazing straight white women. I do have friends in this community, people I love and would take a bullet for. My friends, the people I actually really know and love and trust? I would do anything for, and they also knew I wasn’t talking about them. One of my most dogged, OCD-like tendencies is absolute devotion to the people I love. I will always come to their defense, I will not allow anyone to treat them badly, and I will fucking come for you if you make the mistake of coming for them. They also know who they are. That devotion over the years has worn out in some cases–but I always remember people who were kind to me, helped me in any way, or ever did something for me without being asked.
I’ve primarily written about all of this to begin with for two reasons: so people won’t ask me about going to conferences any more, and to let everyone know about my experience so you won’t allow people to pull this shit with the other queer crime writers. The fact this stuff still happens–look at how surprised people are at these revelations I’ve been making–in this day and age has me concerned for the queer crime writers. They are all feeling despondent, betrayed, and more than a little scared about what MAGA has up their sleeves for queer people and their art, and their futures. Christian Germany murdered twelve million people for being different, after all, and set the world on fire.
And you wonder why we are so concerned about people who hate us in the name of religion being in control here? We see good little Germans everywhere, the news media capitulated in advance, and it looks like the entire government is falling into lockstep. Nazis now feel empowered to go out in public with swastika flags in progressive cities. Nazis targeted Communists–what have Republicans been calling Democrats since the 1930’s? Communists. We also know straight people will abandon us to save themselves 999 times out of 1000. Sad, but true and even a little understandable. Who is willing to put themselves and their families in danger for strangers? Not many.
That’s why we ironically celebrate heroes who take stands against inhumanity. Because they are rare.
Paul walked to Walgreens for a prescription yesterday, and then had to go to the corner liquor store at Jackson Avenue for cigarettes. I’ve gone there myself for things like bread and milk when I didn’t feel like driving anywhere. It was a nice store, owned and operated by a Pakistani family. Always clean, neat, and organized; the family members who worked there always fell over themselves to be polite, friendly, and courteous. I generally don’t like to go into liquor stores in New Orleans for any number of reasons, so I don’t. You can literally buy liquor at gas stations here, and the grocery stores (which used to have bars in them here); pretty much anywhere that sells anything sells liquor so you don’t need to go to a liquor store here. When he got back, he said, “Have you noticed that since the election bro culture is back on the rise? Loud, obnoxious bros, everywhere. I guess the Pakistani family sold the liquor store, because there was a bro working there–and you know he’s not checking anyone’s IDs. I guess they sold the business and got out. I hope they got good money because that’s a prime location.”
GREG: I hope they sold the business. We don’t know that for sure, do we?
We just looked at each other grimly for a few moments.
Over dramatic? Maybe. I’d certainly like to think so, but as my mother used to say, “You can never go wrong imagining the worst.”
I don’t speak for my entire community; I certainly don’t speak for Paul. My experiences are my experiences, and no demographic is a monolith. There are MAGA queers, for example, and they are even worse than the inbred mouth-breathers we usually think of when we think MAGA–who clearly have a humiliation fetish. I always wonder if the Log Cabins shoot a load into their shorts every time they are barred from some Republican/conservative conclave, or if straight men start dripping when they make queer jokes. I will never cease laughing at the arrogance of straight men who think every gay man is out here trying to get into their pants.
Louder, for those in the back: just because straight women settle, doesn’t mean gay men will. There’s always a hotter gay man than any straight man I’ve ever seen. The reason you straight men go to the gym now and get in better shape than straight men ever have been before in history is entirely because of gay men. Calvin Klein did more for male body culture with his advertisements than Charles Atlas ever did with the cartoon ads in comic books–remember those? “Hey, you kicked sand in my face!”
Funny how Charles Atlas advertised getting big and strong as a way to stand up to bullies, isn’t it? Male insecurity and not being manly enough?
And there is the opening to my essay about being a man. Well done, blog!
I also want to give a shout out to the Crime Writers of Color, who have always been amazing and supportive of this tired old white queen. Kellye Garrett is a national treasure who should be protected at all costs. You fuck with her at your own peril, do you hear me?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need to make a to-do list, and I need to write and read and do chores.
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And it doesn’t even hurt that much anymore in the moment, either. Ultimately, I am rarely surprised when those who should know better don’t. I do get caught off guard sometimes, but after the initial shock it’s more of a world-weary are you really surprised? ↩︎
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. It’s raining, and has been since last night–probably related in some ways to the hurricane, Rafael–so I slept deeply and well last night. It was muggy and miserable outside when I ran my errands yesterday morning, and today I have to make a grocery run, but rather than what I usually do–go in the morning or right around noon–I am going to go later and try to get all the things done today that I need to do here in the house instead. That makes the most sense to me, because usually making groceries (going out in public and being around other people in general) ends up with me in the chair with a sleeping kitty curled up in my lap. I want to get these other posts/book reviews done this morning, and I want to do some more writing today; I really need to get back on the Scotty horse this week. I also am going to start going to the gym a couple of times per week. Protecting my mental health is my biggest priority right now. The nice thing is that now that LSU humiliated itself in front of the nation last night, we don’t really have to pay much attention to college football anymore this year. Really, it’s such an enormous waste of time on a free day that I really shouldn’t waste my time on it going forward. I will say that I was incredibly lucky when I landed Paul; we both have the kind of dark sense of humor that makes us laugh about this horrible world in which we’ve always lived. It’s gotten us through some really dark days, and at least I have someone to face down the darkness with–while pointing and laughing at it. Thank heaven for him, seriously.
But my relationship isn’t real, you know. Perverts can’t love, right?
I am completely out of fucks now, and so yesterday I wrote a Substack entry talking about some of the homophobia I’ve experienced in the crime fiction community, and it got me a lot of new subscribers. I called out some people in the piece, not by name–I can never really get over that polite thing that was instilled so deeply in me by my mother–but I said some things that have been bouncing around in my brain for quite a while. Bigotry is very insidious, and it pops up all the fucking time, whether it’s direct aggression or a micro-aggression. I’ve always been the kind to give people the benefit of the doubt–“well, they don’t know how homophobic they are being”, but no more. Straight men making jokes about being gay, or gay people in general, or our sexuality, isn’t funny. It isn’t funny to have a writer’s retreat you mocking call after a movie which is literally about how much it sucks to be gay in this country and one of the main characters is beaten to death for it, ha ha ha, how funny!1 Maybe we can have a gay male writing retreat we can jokingly name after a miscarriage, or a dead child? If my rights are going to be stripped away from me, why the fuck should I keep giving straight people the benefit of the doubt? (I know, I know, #notallstraightpeople, right? Yes, yes, those of you in the dominant culture are the real fucking victims.) I never completely trusted straight people to begin with–you know, the people who wanted us all to die in the 1980s and laughed about it–and have always been somewhat wary.
Clearly, that wariness was smart. I haven’t felt this way since 2004, when the entire country made it abundantly clear to queer people that they think we don’t deserve love or happiness or full citizenship.2
You can never go wrong expecting straight people to be horrible. Trust me, they’ll never disappoint–like the ones I actually know who basically called all queer people groomers and pedophiles and couldn’t understand why that was like punching me in the mouth. I’ve shared meals with you. I’ve hung out with you. I’ve been nice to you. But queer people shouldn’t be around children, right? Thanks for nothing, mediocre bitch.
But I no longer care about other people’s feelings anymore, or not wanting to make other people feel bad about their own fucking bigotry. I’m not explaining to you why you’re a problematic bigot anymore. You don’t like and there’s nothing I can do about that–so fuck you to hell and back. I’m not getting paid to educate your stupid ass, nor do I care about your fucking feelings. You have no idea what a fucking bitch I can be, and I am taking the gloves off now. I’m not playing nice anymore, and until proven otherwise, you’re my enemy. I don’t like being that way, but how many times do we have to be abused by our fellow Americans before we finally say fucking enough?
And if you ever ask me to be on a fucking diversity panel ever again, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born–or demand payment for being an educator to troglodytes.
Be nice we need their support.
No more fucks.
Have a great day, Constant Reader.
You want an idea how offensive that is? My partner was almost beaten to death twenty years ago and lost an eye. HILARIOUS, right, assholes? It’s no different than telling rape jokes. ↩︎
Funny how we still have to pay all of our taxes to a system with its boot on our throats. ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 