Tag: Catholic Church

Love and Affection

Sunday morning, how are you doing this morning? Shockingly, Sparky let me sleep super-late this morning, so I am beginning the day already feeling behind, which…is just anxiety I need to let go of, isn’t it? Yesterday was pleasant. Paul ended up rescheduling his trainer from yesterday to today, so I didn’t have the alone time I thought I’d have. I did spend some time with Megan Abbott’s superb new novel, and I did some chores for sure, but overall I didn’t feel like I managed much. We watched a couple of movies, and then started watching the second season of Shiny Happy People, which focuses on the “Christian” cult of Teen Mania.

Seriously, freedom of religion is important, but sometimes it gets taken too far. Sexual abuse of children under the guise of “religion” should be a dealbreaker, period, regardless of religion. How much money has the Catholic Church paid out in settlements for child rapist priests? Madness. And yet, the raping and covering up continues, unabated….while the Church maintains it has moral authority over its flock.

We rewatched Jaws yesterday; I can’t remember the last time I saw it, but I very much remember the first time I saw it: Mom took us after church shortly after it opened, and the only three seats together in the theater was in the center front row, so the screen was right there in front of us–and it was terrifying. The movie is very well-made, the performances of everyone other than Brody’s wife were terrific, and it very much followed the formula of the classic disaster movie–officials, worried about money, ignore the experts and open the beaches anyway, which leads to more death–only with a very big audience so the existence of said enormous shark is no longer in question. It’s also a monster movie, so when we finished we watched Wolf Man, which wasn’t great but wasn’t as terrible as reviews and commentators made it sound. Julia Garner is always terrific (loved loved loved her in Ozark), and it was entertaining enough. I thought the suspense was good and the story itself was pretty simple; I don’t think the prologue was necessary but other than that, it was a solid B score from me.

I had groceries delivered yesterday, and this new modern-day experience is one that I quite enjoy. It’s much easier to go on an app, order the food, and then wait for it to be delivered, rather than getting cleaned up and dressed and driving around town then having to do the shopping myself once I get to the store. One delivery came around noon, and the other arrived about half an hour later, which was marvelous. There are some other things I forgot to order, but they can all wait until I go to the store (or order again) on Wednesday on the way home from work. I am trying to decide if I want to make Swedish meatballs today, or ravioli, or any of the other options there are in the house today.

And obviously, I have a lot of reading, writing, and editing to get done today. I need to make a fresh to-do list, and one set of cabinets really needs to be better organized. I also need to find a place to store the endless boxes of tissues we got at Costco the last time we went. I also have some filing to do; when I finish this I’ll probably go watch some news and read until I feel like getting to work. Reading is often a risk because Sparky will see me in the chair as an invitation to sleep in my lap, and once the cat starts sleeping it’s all over for me. In my own defense, he’s awfully cute and sweet. I am so happy he’s more comfortable around us and more affectionate–he loves riding on my shoulders–and he’s also, after months, decided his cat bed is a perfect sleeping spot.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; if not, it will be tomorrow morning. Until then, ta!

Anubis

The Old Rugged Cross

As an adult, it has always amused me that historically gay men (or men who were attracted to other men) inevitably became/were artists, and just as inevitably were commissioned to sculpt and paint and create religious art to adorn Catholic cathedrals and the palaces of the church hierarchy. I loved that they used their art and their patron’s money to create images of beautiful men in various stages of undress or nudity, but since it was within the context of a religious scene, it was okay. Even the crucifix inevitably shows Jesus in nothing more than a modesty loincloth, with his lean muscular frame carved lovingly to look beautiful and sexy. The eroticism of classic religious art, that competing duality of religious fervor and sexual ecstasy (look at depictions of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa sometime, if you want to see some straight up erotic imagery; I’ve always wanted to use “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa” as a title sometime), confused me as a child–it wasn’t until much later that I realized most classic and Renaissance religious art could be easily be categorized as “Revenge of the Homosexuals on a Repressive Institution”–but it also interested me. When I was a kid hungering for erotic masculine images, I could never go wrong with religious art.

I mean, this is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel:

And don’t even get me started on depictions of St. Sebastian.

I love that they sculpted his pubic hair onto that last statue. Nice authenticity!

Someday I may write about St. Sebastian…or a boarding school named after him, which would be nice imagery for a queer crime/horror y/a set at such a place.

There was also a lot of homoerotic art in depictions of Greek and Roman mythology–the Laöcoön statue is one; and any depictions of Hercules/Heracles, Achilles, Apollo, etc.

And we’ll talk about Ganymede another time.

I was raised as a Christian, of the Church of Christ brand of Protestantism–and a hard, cruel, you’re-going-to-burn-in-hell-for-believing-anything-else faith it is indeed. I can’t speak to what that denomination is like outside of the South, or even Alabama for that matter–I did notice that the version in Kansas wasn’t nearly as hard or unforgiving; but still pretty unforgiving, in comparison to other sects–but I do know that where I am from, the Church of Christ is hard, rough, and sees a lot of stuff as sin. (Southern Churches of Christ are also very argumentative–which hardly seems Christian, does it? Members are always getting up in arms about something and wind up going to another congregation, sometimes having to move churches more than once.

And when I was about eight or nine, my grandmother bought me a copy of The Children’s Bible, which was filled with illustrations (amazing how all those Middle Eastern Israelites were white, and even some had blond hair and blue eyes)…and maybe (probably) it wasn’t the intent of the publisher, but there was some seriously homoerotic imagery in the book. About ten years ago I was thinking about The Children’s Bible and wondering whatever happened to my copy…and remembering some of the illustrations in it, I thought no, you can’t be remembering that correctly and so I went on eBay and bought a used copy.

And when it arrived, my memories were actually correct.

I mean, look at the muscles on Goliath. That image was burned indelibly into my brain, and it’s entirely possible my appreciation of muscles comes from….The Children’s Bible.

Perish the thought!

Grooming!

Indoctrination!

And of course, my favorite story in the book was David and Jonathan.

I mean, look at how they drew David!

I mean, it may not be Michelangelo, but damn.

(I also love that a Bronze Age Middle Eastern Jew somehow had pearly white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.)

Though David has awesome legs in both depictions, seriously.

When I was a kid, I’d always reread the David and Jonathan story (can’t imagine why it was my favorite…). I wanted a best friend like David–I always saw myself as Jonathan, the supporting player, the way I always did–gorgeous and charismatic and beautiful and beloved of God. I would think about the story and while I was too young and innocent to conceive of it as anything other than friendship–the same way I thought of the “friendship” between Achilles and Patroclus in tales of the Trojan War–when I got older, whenever I thought about the story I wondered about how deep that friendship between Prince Jonathan and David son of Jesse was. Why include the story at all? It really doesn’t add a whole lot to the tale of David’s life, and did it really matter for King Saul to have a son who was David’s friend and great love? Jonathan dies–not even the Bible was immune from bury your gays–and David mourned him with a great grief that seemed a bit more than “my best bro died.” I wanted to write the story myself, despite my lack of historical knowledge of the period or even when it was actually set, but I wanted to write about their love, their falling in love–and let’s face it, God didn’t really seem to have a lot of problems with their relationship, did he? He didn’t come to David and tell him to stop giving it to Jonathan; God didn’t curse the two of them or punish Israel for it; and yes, Jonathan is eventually killed…but even then God doesn’t come to David and say, did you not read Leviticus? I could hardly let you go on fucking him forever, you know.

So, I guess I am supposed to read it literally and just think they were best friends and loved each other as brothers. Yeah, no. There’s absolutely no reason for this story to be included in the David story in the Bible; none, unless of course there’s a kernal of truth in the story (don’t come for me, I’ve never bothered to find out if the Bible’s Old Testament kings of Israel were real people; I do know that real people turned up in the Old Testament that existed in history–Babylonians and Assyrians, for example, as well as Egyptians)but the mystery for me of why this story was included, why it was included if its merely legend or why was it included if they were real is the real question. There’s no moral lesson to be learned from the story of their friendship; their love and loyalty to each other was an issue for Jonathan because his friend’s greatest enemy was Jonathan’s own father, a king anointed by God–despite God capriciously turning His back on Saul for really such an insignificant reason that it really just boiled down to God just liked David better; I always felt sorry for Saul–how much would it suck to lose God’s favor for no good reason? Just because God found someone He liked better? (And considering the things God forgave David for, or just overlooked, really makes the hard turn away from Saul that much more petty and bitchy.)

God’s kind of an asshole in the Old Testament, frankly.

But yes, I’d love to write this story sometime. (Because I don’t have enough else to do, right?) I’d also want to write it from Jonathan’s perspective, although the death would be hard to do (Madeline Miller managed it with Song of Achilles quite beautifully) story-wise; but is the kind of challenge I love. Maybe someday, and maybe writing it will help me in my constant and never-ending life quest to come to terms with the religious grooming drilled into my brain as a child. I even have a great title for it, too.

I also have a novel in mind revolving around Michelangelo’s statue of David, too; maybe I could combine research and do them at the same time. THAT would be a challenge, would it not?

True Blue

Easter Sunday, which I keep forgetting about. Last year the day job changed holidays; we used to get Good Friday off (New Orleans is very Catholic) but they changed it to Juneteenth, which is better. That was how I always knew when Easter was because it was a three day weekend. Now that it’s isn’t, it’s just another religious holiday I don’t give two shits about. Even when I was a child, I wondered, how does the anniversary of the crucifixion and resurrection fall on different dates every year? It’s just another example of the falsity of the bedrock of Christianity, and really was just the Catholic Church absorbing and rebranding pagan spring celebrations and fertility rites–which is where the Easter Bunny and easter eggs come from.

Granted, these Christian fertility celebrations aren’t nearly as weird or frightening as say the ones in Thomas Tryon’s classic Harvest Home (which I need to reread), but still.

Now that I’m thinking about it, has there ever been a horror book or film written/made focused on how creepy Easter can be?

I’m feeling lazy today–not really a surprise, really, is it? I feel lazy every day, and always feel laziest on days when I have to do things I’d rather not do. I have to run out and make groceries at some point–probably this morning, while most everyone is celebrating Easter mass and so forth–and I also have to get to work on ordering my taxes for my accountant, which I keep forgetting to do. I slept really well last night–feel very rested and relaxed this morning–and I managed to get some things done yesterday. I got my desk area cleaned up somewhat; filing and putting things away and so forth. My electronic files are still a horrifying mess, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon because what I really need to do is go through everything, file by file, eliminating duplicates and so forth. Maybe when I have enough time accrued I can take a week long staycation and just work on things around the house like that and the storage attic.

I started reading Margot Douaihy’s debut Scorched Grace, and while I am only a couple of chapters in, I am already in awe of everything about the book. The writing, the characterization, the setting, the way the sentences and paragraphs are rhythmically drawn, like the best poetry–and the voice itself! Oh my God, Sister Holiday’s voice is so refreshingly different, vital, and new. The tone is very hard-boiled; imagine Chandler or Cain writing about a lesbian nun in New Orleans. I cannot wait to spend some more time with it today–even if it does make me feel like I am a rank amateur; truly great writers have that kind of power over me. It’s hypnotic and compulsively readable. The fact that the book opens with arson and a possible murder is even more genius; few things are feared more in New Orleans than fire. This book is a fine addition to the annals of New Orleans crime fiction, which is always exciting when you find a new such author.

We also watched Jordan Peele’s Nope last night, and it was really quite excellent. It was more suspenseful than scary, although that can sometimes be much worse and more intense. Who knew Peele would go from sketch comedy to being one of our best and more creative filmmakers with a strong focus on horror? I’m sure a film critic and/or academic can talk about Nope in a much more intellectual style than me; I don’t look for symbolic meanings in images and so forth. But I think what he was trying to do with Nope was not only to show how dangerous it can be to live isolated from the rest of the world (the vast emptiness was beautifully shot and displayed; the most terrifying thing about the entire movie was that feeling–which reminded me so much of Kansas). I’d like to watch A Knock at the Cabin tonight, or The Pale Blue Eye, or perhaps even both; I guess it depends on how much work I can get done during the day today. I honestly don’t want to do any, but that really isn’t an option.

Yesterday was kind of like that, too–I really didn’t want to do much, so I wasn’t motivated enough to get as much done as I would have liked or had hoped. Part of it was being on social media yesterday morning as I tried to wake-up and get my brain jump-started; people really are horrible on social media, aren’t they? The misogyny, the homophobia, the racism, and the transphobia can be a bit hard to take sometimes (most times, let’s be honest); it fills me with rage, which then triggers adrenaline, and when that passes, I’m tired and in no mood anymore to be productive. Social media is the enemy of all that is good and productive. I have always wondered why and how people have so much time to spend on social media. What isn’t getting done while you’re being a bitch on-line to people you don’t know, will never know, and will probably never interact with again? Who wins in that situation anyway? I know people say there are bot-farms and troll farms, where people in eastern Europe (Romania?) are paid to troll on-line? I can’t imagine that being a great job, although I would imagine any number of people would leap at the chance to be get paid to be an asshole on line; there certainly are plenty of people who’ll do it on a volunteer basis, for sure.

I posted the other day that, in wake of their state’s anti-queer legislation and since the racist conduct of said state legislature was on full display this past week, I had made the personal decision not to go to Nashville Bouchercon in 2024. I didn’t ask anyone to join me in not going; I didn’t proselytize or ask anyone to write to Bouchercon and ask for it to be moved; or anything else: I simply said I had decided that I personally cannot support any event in the state of Tennessee, nor would I feel safe if I did attend. That was it. Period. I don’t think that’s terribly controversial, really. I’ve always believed that it’s up to everyone to make their own personal choices, and the reasons for those choices are none of my fucking business (see how easy it is, evangelicals, to mind your own fucking business?). I also don’t judge people for those choices because I don’t know–or want to know, or need to know–the reasons they made them. Everyone is on their own path, and my path often veers away from the paths of others; I don’t want or need or owe anyone an explanation for my choices and decisions. If things change in Tennessee in the meantime I also have the ability to change my mind and attend. But I am not asking anyone to straight-splain to me why I should go, or try to change my mind. It’s kind of insulting and condescending, actually, for anyone straight to try to talk a gay man into attending a conference (or anything, really) when they have already stated they’ve thought about it and decided not to go because they may not feel safe. I am a sixty-one year old adult gay man. I think I have enough life experience to make my own decisions, and I don’t need anyone to tell me my thought and decision-making processes–thoroughly grounded in my life experience–are wrong.

Fuck. All. The. Way. Off.

I was also thinking a lot about my writing future yesterday, so the whole day wasn’t a total waste of not-writing. I’ve had an idea for a New Orleans crime novel for quite some time, but always thought it had to be told from the point of view of, well, Venus Casanova, and I didn’t think I had the right to write from the point of view of a Black female police detective. Well, maybe not the right, but the experience and emotional intelligence to tell it properly. But yesterday that story popped into my head again, and I realized I could tell it from Blaine’s point of view, her partner, who would and could have his own doubts about Venus and her personal stakes in the case. I even took it further and thought maybe Venus could bring the case to Blaine after she’s retired; because of her personal relationship with the victim’s family, and then my mind started spinning round and round and following the paths branching out from this re-centering of the point of view, which definitely seems workable. And I’ve always liked my character of Blaine, wanting to delve more deeply into who he is and his own history and path.

And on that note, I am going to read some more Scorched Grace in my chair until it’s time to go make groceries this morning. Have a lovely Easter if you celebrate, and if you don’t, have a lovely Sunday.

Rude Boy

And we’ve made it to Wednesday, Constant Reader! Isn’t it marvelous? Paul is moving into our suite at the Monteleone today; I will be moving (sort of) down there on Friday, but will be going back and forth between the Lost Apartment and the hotel over the weekend. Scooter is going to lonely and needy and definitely not happy, but who knows how their brains work and what their concept of time is? I am going to not head down to the Quarter until later in the afternoon on Friday anyway, and I’ll probably head back home after the reading/anthology launch on Saturday night before heading back on Sunday morning. I also have to do a reading on Saturday afternoon, so I probably should decide what I am going to read sometime before then and maybe practice a little bit?

I did get some work done on the book yesterday (huzzah!) which always feels good, and overall, outside of how cold it was at work (seriously, it felt like we were working in a refrigerator at the office yesterday; my knit cap was on most of the day), was a pretty good day. Yay for good days! I’m starting to feel more like myself than I have in a very long time, which is pleasant. I was beginning to think old Gregalicious was gone for good, another casualty of a pandemic, a crumbling society, and too much change too fast in too short a time. It’s nice to have the old Greg feeling again’; one where I am not stressed and have anxiety non-stop and can actually come home from the office, do some chores and some writing, and then relax in my easy chair with a purring kitty sleeping in my life and actually not feel guilty for not doing anything.

Because you know , sometimes you just have to do nothing. And enjoy it.

I went down another research rabbit hole the other day, too–I really want to write a book set in a foster-care home or an orphanage; crime or horror or some combination of both. One popped up on Facebook the other day on one of my old New Orleans pages; I think ain’t there no more is the page. Anyway, there was a Catholic boys’ orphanage in the area (actually, it was Marrero, so on the West Bank) called Hope Haven, where the boys were emotionally, physically, and sexually abused for years. (Thank God it’s closed now.) But it hits all my sweet spots, especially with the Archdiocese and the Catholic Church as the villains of the piece. And of course it was closed down after the scandals started hitting, about ten years ago.

I slept okay last night–not the greatest; I didn’t want to wake up this morning and I feel sleepy still, which means I’ll be dragging unless coffee comes to my rescue. I suppose I should be grateful that this is the first iffy night’s sleep I’ve had in a while. A lot of it, I think, has to do with Paul packing last night. I had already gone to bed by the time he got home, and he started packing once he was here. I woke up when he came home, and then had some issues falling back asleep but finally did. But here I am, forced out of bed at an ungodly hour, gradually and slowly waking up as I slurp my coffee and hope that time will slow down so I can put off going into the office. It’s really more the getting ready and driving over there that I dread more so than actually getting to the office, being there, and working. I just wish today were Thursday already, so the weekend would be closer. I am taking Friday off, so I don’t have to worry about any working-at-home duties, and can just spend the day at home doing things and getting packed and prepared to head down there before I actually do.

And of course, Paul won’t be coming home tonight or tomorrow, so Scooter is going to be needing lots of attention, so after I get home tonight and do some work–it’ll be over to my easy chair to be a cat bed for the rest of the evening.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Holy Ground

I came across the coroner’s obituary last night.

As I typed it, I realized what a New Orleans-like thing it was to say; and it made me smile a little bit. The coroner in question wasn’t currently serving New Orleans; he had retired in 2014 after ten terms in office, and his name was Dr. Frank Minyard. He played the trumpet, and was actually a gynecologist rather than a pathologist. Was he good coroner or a bad one? A little of each, I would gather, based on the obituary by John Pope you can read by clicking here.

But he was, like so many New Orleanians used to be, quite a character. New Orleans has always been a city full of characters, which is why so many people write about New Orleans, and write about it well. Not only can you probably get away with writing anything crazy-seeming about New Orleans; chances are if you dig a little into our history here, you’ll inevitably find crazier shit than anything you could dream up on your own. I have to say I have really been enjoying reading up on our local history here.

Hurricane Sally came ashore earlier this morning, and it had continued turning enough to the east that we didn’t get much of anything here in New Orleans. The panhandles of Alabama and Florida (in particular Mobile and Pensacola) are an entirely different story; my heart sank down into my shoes (well, my slippers) on seeing footage and images from that section of the Gulf Coast. Hurricane season is so emotionally exhausting, really; all that stress and tension and worry, and then when it goes somewhere else the enormous guilt one feels about the relief that your area escaped unscathed while others are losing everything–including some lives–is horrible, just horrible. It’s oddly gray and hazy-seeming outside the windows this morning, with the crepe myrtles and the young live oaks in the yard on the other side of the fence doing their wavy dance thing they do when the wind blows; the sidewalk outside also looks wet so we must have gotten some rain as well overnight, but not enough for me to notice anything as I slept through it all. (That’s the other thing about hurricanes, particularly the ones that come ashore overnight; you go to bed wondering what you’ll wake up to find in the morning–or worse yet, disaster will rip you out of a deep sleep.)

So, yes, this morning I feel very emotionally drained; well rested, but exhausted emotionally.

And then, of course, once the danger has passed, you have to reset yourself and get back to normality–whatever the hell that is, or what passes for it, at any rate.

Yesterday’s entry in the Cynical 70’s Film Festival was The Omen, which was a huge hit back when it was released in 1976 and spawned two sequels, Omen II: Damien and The Final Conflict. I had never seen the sequels, and I think I originally rented the film–I don’t think it played at the Twin Theater in Emporia–but I did read the book (the book was written by David Seltzer, who apparently, according to the opening credits of the film, wrote the screenplay; which came first? I don’t care enough to look it up) and of course, was put in mind of it by paging through The Late Great Planet Earth, which laid the groundwork for the movie. Obviously, it’s about the anti-Christ, who is Damien Thorn; the movie opens with the Robert Thorn (played with an almost wooden-like quality by Gregory Peck) arriving at a hospital in Rome only to be told that the child his wife has given birth to has died; he worries about her mental stability and how she will handle the news–and so a priest offers a substitute baby whose mother died giving birth. (And this is the first place I called shenanigans on this rewatch; one, he is about to start a lifetime of lying to his wife and two–was there any need to tell Robert Thorn his child died? If the idea was to have the Thorns accept the anti-Christ into their home as their child, wouldn’t it simply make more sense to swap the babies, so neither of them knew? Because how could they have been so certain Thorn would accept this literal deal with the devil?) The movie is paced fairly well, and it moves right along–there’s not a lot of gore or blood and guts, but it does beggar credulity at more than one point–and perhaps I am looking at it with jaded eyes some forty years later, but both Peck and Lee Remick, who plays his wife, seem to just be phoning it in for the paycheck and there’s also the element of their age; they seem to be fairly old to just be trying to start having a child at the opening of the movie. (I think the book plays this up more, stating that Kathy Thorn has suffered innumerable miscarriages leading up to this birth and it has shaken her mental stability; kind of hard to do that on film but it certainly would have made his motivation in accepting this needless deception–again, they could have just as easily substituted the baby without having to go through this entire risky rigmarole.) After finishing, I looked for Omen II but it’s not streaming for free anywhere; I then watched The Final Conflict, which was simply terrible (outside of Sam Neill, who was terrific and charismatic as an adult Damien, saddled with an incredibly bad and far-fetched script).

The movie does fit, however, with the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, because here we have yet another conspiracy, one in which some members of the Catholic Church have turned to Satan to try to bring about the end times as well as the birth of the Antichrist–because whereas in the 1950’s and the early 1960’s, it would have been unimaginable for such a film to be made, but also to be believable; who would have ever believed such a thing was possible? Of course, both book and film of Rosemary’s Baby set the stage for The Omen, but both were later 1960’s, when things were starting to change, times were getting more cynical, and so were people. Rosemary’s Baby changed almost everything, both in the world of novels and film, in showing that horror was both bankable and mainstream. The early 1970’s saw the publications, and enormous success, of books like Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Thomas Tryon’s Gothic horror masterpiece The Other, and eventually, Stephen King’s out-of-nowhere bestseller Carrie. Soon Peter Straub would publish Ghost Story and Carrie would become a hit movie, triggering a horror revival that brought both the literature and the films into the mainstream. This revival didn’t lose steam until the 1990’s, and frankly, I think horror is on the verge of another revival.

I could be wrong, of course. I certainly have been before, but I am seeing some really terrific work as well as amazing new voices–over the past year alone I’ve read some astonishing work by new-to-me writers, and I only wish I had more time to read everything I really want to. Paul Tremblay is amazing, and so is Bracken MacLeod, Christopher Golden, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, among others; I’m seeing a lot of new and interesting looking titles being announced or reviewed almost every time I turn around.

I guess today is Wednesday? I am really not sure, living in this weird world that comes with hurricane watches, where it is very easy to lose track of dates and times and what day of the week it actually is. But a quick glance at Weather.com assures me that all the other storms out in the Atlantic basin pose no threat to Louisiana, so I guess we can relax for a little while, at least.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.