Tag: Johnny Weir

Doing the Best That I Can

Sunday in the Lost Apartment and all is quiet here. Today’s four parades start later this morning and literally run all day. I suspect I’m going to skip them all today. I wandered out to Iris, but just can’t stand for very long; I’m just not in good enough physical condition yet to exert myself into anything other than sitting in a chair resting and icing my ankles, which I did for quite some time yesterday. I overslept in the morning–Sparky was cuddled up with me again, with the occasional plaintive “mew” to try to wake me up. The bed did feel marvelous yesterday morning, but the morning was already pretty much over by the time I was caffeinated and finished with yesterday’s blog entry. I read for a while (and this reread of The Secret of Hangman’s Inn is showing me, at long last, the primary flaw in kids’ detective fiction–which is also why The Three Investigators have held up better than most of their contemporaries), and did some here and there chores. I don’t, after all, have to go back to the office until Wednesday morning, so having another day that was mostly for resting my body and my brain didn’t seem like a waste, you know?

I finished rewatching Judgment at Nuremberg and it remarkably holds up still in modern times. Not going to lie, and if the reasons I rewatched it aren’t quite as obvious in this modern time, let me explai it to you: we are, despite all the lessons and warnings from the past, sliding into that same kind of world where “just following orders” is no longer merely about ‘doing your job’ but doing evil. Nuremberg is one of the best films–if American propaganda heavy–dealing with these questions of national guilt and national morality; I remember someone writing (or saying) after 1945 how amazing it was that no German was really a Nazi and how none of them “knew.”

Did people admit shamefacedly to being in the Klan after? Still?

I’ve always given the common German people a bit of slack about being Nazis, simply because, monstrous as Nazism was, they weren’t making the plans and the decisions. So, how much culpability did the rank-and-file people actually bear? The cogs in the killing machine?

For example, how culpable are all Americans in what is going on in the country now? Was it possible for every day Germans to not know what was being done in their name?

We don’t know what’s going on in our own concentration camps, do we? But we know they exist and more are being built, don’t we? As Americans, how much culpability do we have as citizens? It is easy to say “we didn’t vote for this” or “I was opposed to Vietnam” or “dropping nuclear weapons on Japan was necessary to save American lives” or “my ancestors didn’t own slaves/weren’t in the Klan/didn’t benefit from systemic discrimination” but…wasn’t enslavement human trafficking, and on a scale modern minds can scarcely comprehend how big it was, how horrible it was, and historians and American propagandists have done an excellent job of downplaying the horrors and dismissing the immorality of owning other people. Human beings had less rights than animals in the so-called land of the free; and this is not even taking into consideration the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the mistreatment of those survivors for generations. History will not look back and think all of that horror was unknown to most Americans. They will say it was a horrible part of US History, a spreading stain that soaked in and spread for hundreds of years. Is not the whole world responsible for not stopping Hitler when they could have? The Allies knew about the camps as early as 1940, if not sooner, and did not only nothing but actively worked to suppress the information. Why?

And there were American Nazis before the war–lots of them. Still are, in fact. So much for never forgetting, right?

Heavy thoughts on Bacchus Sunday, but Judgment at Nuremberg is a still important and necessary film.

After the movie finished, we watched The Fighting Tiger, the ESPN documentary on D-D Breaux, the legendary LSU Gymnastics coach for over forty years, who single-handedly built the program up from nothing, which was incredibly fun and also reminded me of how long Paul and I have been watching LSU Gymnastics. I had been meaning to check out this most recent season of The Traitors, because Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski are both on, so I switched over to that. We’d never watched the show before, but MY GOD were we entertained! I was kind of hesitant because I despise Lisa Rinna (a complete turn on her, by the way; I was a fan before she was a real housewife), but this show is perfect for her! She stopped being fun as a housewife, but this is the Rinna I enjoyed in her first seasons on the show. We stayed up much later than we intended because we simply couldn’t turn it off–and there are former seasons to catch up on, too! HUZZAH!!!

It looks like its going to be another gorgeous day out on the parade route–maybe I’ll wander down there to take some pictures; tomorrow I plan on walking over to Office Depot and take some current pictures of the bead trees; one of the many things I miss about our office on Frenchmen Street is walking to and from there during parade season, and all the bead debris along the way. There was also a racist moment in Tucks yesterday, apparently, with some riders hanging a black doll over the side of the float by the neck with beads–so it looked like a lynching victim, which is completely and totally disgusting and unacceptable. I hope the fucks who did it are publicly named and shamed; they deserve worse. There’s no excuse for that shit ever–let alone during Carnival. They should have been pulled off the float and had the shit kicked out of them.

And on that note, my easy chair and my ice machine are calling me this morning. Seriously, I cannot wait for Paul to get up so we can get back to The Traitors, which is my new addiction! Have a great Sunday wherever you are, and I’ll be back for a Lundi Gras post tomorrow.

C’est la Vie

Wednesday morning and I’ve made it thru the long days of my week. Today is a short day; I am free after three thirty, and then it’s back home to the spice mines and getting the house cleaned, organized and so forth, all around me not only writing at my desk but preparing a new taste treat for dinner–shrimp and baked potatoes–which is the same as my shrimp-and-grits, only substituting a baked potato for the grits. I saw this somewhere on social media recently, looked at the recipe, and realized it simply meant making baked potatoes instead of the grits…and realized that with a baked potato, timing the meal isn’t quite as important as it is when you’re making grits at the same time as the shrimp.

I managed another good night’s sleep last night, which was incredibly lovely; it’s amazing what a difference that makes to your quality of life–and productivity. I’m still behind on everything this morning, just as I was last night when I went to bed, but this morning I feel like I can do anything and everything. We’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we?

But as I face my computer with my first cup of coffee this morning, I do feel almost as though I can do anything and everything.  I had a slight minor panic attack last night about everything I need to get done this week, but it passed quickly, as I remembered my favorite mantra: sometimes, it just is what it is. Simple, but helpful and rather wise; there’s only so much one can do, there’s only so many people one can please, and sometimes you just have to let the worry go–because it just is what it is.

I sat down with Royal Street Reveillon last night, and opened the book up. When Paul got home he told me that someone whose opinion I deeply value had told him to  let me know she’d read and loved the book, and invited me to be on her radio show. Yes, it was Susan Larson, the long-time books editor of what was once the Times-Picayune and now has her own show on WGNO, “My Reading Life.” This naturally made my day, if not the week or month; Susan has read practically everything and everyone, has been a Pulitzer Prize judge (!!!!!), and is one of the most respected reviewers in the country. Her opinion means, obviously, a lot to me. As I sat in my chair last night holding a copy of the book–and it’s a beautiful looking book, probably my favorite cover of all time–I thought about how it never gets easier, no matter how many books you write; at least for me, it’s like the first one every single time. Will people like it? Will people hate it? Is it any good? Writing the books never gets easier over time, either. If anything, the only thing that’s changed with the actual writing is efficiency; I am more efficient in the use of time when I write now. But the self-doubt, the insecurity, the imposter syndrome–all of that still plagues me, even after all this time and all these books and all these short stories.

So, I opened the book and started skimming through it. My goal when I wrote it was to make it the best Scotty book thus far; I don’t know if I achieved that goal, but I am pretty pleased with the book. I think it turned out well. I also realized, as I was reading through it last night, that the reason I don’t like to reread my work–why I never go back once its published and look at it again, isn’t because I always wind up dissatisfied and disappointed with it (although that’s some of it), but primarily because I only reread my work to correct, edit and fix it. So, I am so trained from revising and editing my work that when actually reading it in a print format my mind automatically switches into editorial mode and I want to fix things and oh this sentence could have been better or look at this, you used the same word twice in the same paragraph and so on and so forth; it’s impossible for me to read it as a reader coming to it for the first time. And with Royal Street Reveillon, I don’t feel like I rushed the ending the way I inevitably feel about most of my books–which is a direct result of deadlines. So, I’m kind of glad I don’t write on deadline anymore; it’s relieved that bit of stress from my life, thank the Lord.

I also got out a copy of Bourbon Street Blues last night, because one of my co-workers wants to read it. She was reading the latest Janet Evanovich, and we got into a bit of a discussion about Evanovich, mystery novels, and so forth. SHe eventually said, “I really need to read one of your books”, and me being me, I said, “I’ll bring you a copy” and then realized, hey, I can give her a copy of Bourbon Street Blues,  my first Scotty!

So, I actually looked through it as well. I remember so little of the story now; I barely remember writing the book now. It was all so long ago; I turned the book in to Kensington on May 15th, 2002. Christ, we were so broke then, cobbling together an income from Paul working part time and teaching aerobics, me writing, doing some part time work for a friend as their assistant, and eventually getting a part time job at the LGBT Community Center to supplement the writing income, as well as doing some freelance editorial work. I was mostly working for Bella Books then–yes, I got my start as an editor working for a lesbian publisher–before moving on to Harrington Park Press and then Bold Strokes Books. Bourbon Street Blues is, of course, the Southern Decadence book I’d been wanting to write ever since I first came to Decadence as a tourist back in the early 90’s. I was also writing the book, ironically, on 9/11–I didn’t actually work on it that day, but I always associate 9/11 with Bourbon Street Blues because I can remember being glued to the television in horror all day, and glancing over at the pile of pages on my desk and wondering if I could distract myself by working on the book. I never tried…I didn’t get back to working on the book for a few days. As I looked through Bourbon Street Blues last night, thinking about how Southern Decadence had just passed and how much the world, the event, the city, everything had changed since the days when I was writing this book.

My career as a published writer of fiction dates back to 2000, with the publication of two short stories in the month of August, one in an anthology and the other in a magazine. It’ll turn twenty the month I turn fifty-nine; but I of course started getting paid to write (journalism) in 1996. I moved in with Paul and within a month had published my first column in a local queer newspaper in Minneapolis; as I used to say, Paul was my lucky charm for my writing career; it truly started when we moved in together.

So yes, he never has to worry about me going anywhere, since I do emotionally consider him entirely responsible for my career–and all of it tied up in a nice New Orleans bow. New Orleans inspired me, and I knew I would become a writer if I moved to New Orleans. I met Paul here, and while I was already writing before we moved here, New Orleans made it possible for me to meet the love of my life and create the career I’ve always dreamed of and wanted.

And you know what? As I paged through Bourbon Street Blues, reacquainting myself with the original story I came up with for Scotty all those years ago, I thought, this is a pretty decent book, really. There’s never really been a character like Scotty in crime fiction–and certainly not one like him in gay crime fiction. I also never dreamed that people would connect with him the way they did–I may not sell books in Harlan Coben or Stephen King numbers, but the people who read the Scotty books love him, and that means I did my job well.

I also realized, looking through both books last night, that the occasional charges of “political agenda” I get on Goodreads and/or Amazon are accurate. I never really think of the Scotty books as having an agenda or being political, but I forget that any book centering a queer character is still radical and political; let alone a book centering a queer character who is perfectly happy and loves his life and has some terrific adventures, finding love to go along with the wonderful loving family he already has. This is still, sadly, for some a radical concept; as is the idea of having Scotty never change the core of who he is,  no matter what happens or how awful a situation he’s in might become. The Scotty books were never intended to be, nor ever will be, torture porn. Bourbon Street Blues was all about homophobia and the religious right. Jackson Square Jazz, long before Johnny Weir and Adam Rippon, looked at homophobia in figure skating and Olympic sports…and on and on it goes. Royal Street Reveillon actually goes into several things–familial homophobia, for one, and date rape/sexual assault for another–and ultimately, I am pretty pleased with it.

And yes, for those of you worried I may never write another Scotty book–there will be at least one more. Hollywood South Hustle is already taking shape in my head; I have several disparate threads of plot to weave together for it, but never fear, they are most definitely there. I don’t know when I’ll get around to writing it–I have several books to write before I can even think about starting work on it officially, and yes, that includes a new Chanse–and so it goes, on and on forever and ever without end, amen.

And now I should perhaps return to the spice mines. This shit ain’t gonna do itself.

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