Tag: Ronald Reagan

Don’t Cry Out Loud

..when you check your 401k. I checked mine yesterday, which is risk-adverse and there’s not much in it, and it was still a shock. Mine had declined in value by 10%–and it’s risk averse. I can only imagine what happened to those that were higher risk/higher reward but also higher potential for loss.

Remember how the Republicans have always wanted to make social security investment accounts, just like they changed pensions to investment accounts under Reagan? How’s that working out for y’all? They have never had the best interests of the American people at heart, ever.

Gah.

We’re supposed to have thunderstorms all day today, which will be a nice way of dealing with the humidity we’ve been “enjoying” over the last few weeks. It’s also supposed to be in the fifties at night this week, which means better sleep. I slept pretty well this weekend, Sparky getting me up early for food but I’ve also been going to bed early every night; really getting tired around nine these last few nights and dozing off in the bed. We finished watching The Residence last night, which I highly recommend. It’s a witty, well done, and deeply clever murder mystery set in the White House, and it’s very Agatha Christie. WE then started watching season three of The White Lotus, which everyone has been talking about; we’d started season one but gave up after the first episode. Parker Posey is perfectly cast, as is everyone else; and God, Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character is such a douche bro; I despise him so far, about three or four episodes in? LSU also won their regional final yesterday was yet another score over 198.00; this is their sixth straight competition with a score of that or higher–and they left points on the board yesterday. GEAUX TIGERS!

I just looked out the windows and the sidewalk is wet, and it hasn’t rained…which means the humidity must be getting unbearable outside. I am looking forward to the thunderstorms arriving, because that’s when I am going to curl up under my blankets and read some more. I wanted to go to yesterday’s protests, but correctly assessed in the morning that I was fatigued, and other than some chores, I wasn’t going to get much of anything done. I’d planned to run an errand, but stayed inside and rested, hence the television bingeing. I hate that I wasn’t able to go; but I feel rested and good this morning (so far) so maybe it will last and I can get things done. There was insane turnout yesterday all across the country (and even across Louisiana!), and of course, it was largely ignored by State Media (Fox) and State Media-lite (everyone else). The utter failure of the legacy media to meet this moment in US History will be studied for centuries, provided the coming collapse of the United States doesn’t result in the world being plunged into a reoccurrence of the Dark Ages.

I hate that I am now so old that I can’t even go to protests anymore. But the massive turnout nation-wide yesterday gives me some hope–even as cishet white people don’t seem to quite understand what protests are, and they can be dangerous? Especially under this administration? Everyone who actually was able to attend yesterday was basically putting their bodies, lives and freedom on the line to take a stand; for those of you who still don’t get it try googling Kent State, or any of the protest marches in Alabama in the 1960s. The insanity I saw yesterday on social media–I still can’t believe the “bouncy house” thread was serious–just is another indication of why most marginalized communities don’t trust the cishet whites. One of the reasons I don’t feel sympathy for any MAGA voter with regrets or pulling the “I didn’t vote for this” Pilate handwashing of their crimes–is because you did vote for this. He didn’t lie to you about any of this. He told you he was going to do all of this, but he did lie about everyone getting rich; but…he was talking about rich people and corporations, not the voters who worship him. Sorry not sorry I don’t believe your claims that you aren’t transphobic or racist or homophobic now and were just misled; any rational adult could see you were being given Flavor-Ade to drink and were lapping it all up and asking for more. I feel so owned, you have no idea.

And on that cheery note, I am going to head into the spice mines while I wait for the thunderstorms to arrive (although the sun has just come out again). I have cleaning to do and taxes to organize, and I had hoped to make it to the gym today…but my shoulder is feeling sore again, so probably best to stay home and rest it, I guess. I hate being frail. I doubt I’ll be back before the morrow, so have a lovely Sunday fun day and I will see you in the morning.

Renegade

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. I’m now recognizing that I need to appreciate every day I get to go into work because my job could easily go away at any moment, with a traitor in the White House who hates everything and everyone and has handed everything over to an unelected foreign illegal immigrant billionaire who essentially bought our country. Yay, tyranny!1 The Founding Fathers would be so proud. The American experiment had a decent run. And again, apologies to our former allies. DO your worst, we deserve it–even those who didn’t vote for it, because we were unable to stop it, and it goes back way further than 2015 and the ride down the golden escalator (an apt metaphor–our worship of the wealthy was literally a ride down to hell paved with gold). We didn’t start paying attention soon enough, complacent with our rights and our Constitution and our mythology that our institutions were strong enough to hold–despite being under steady and regular assault for the last forty years. (This really got going under Reagan, for the record. He was the first step on the path that led us here–the first cosplay Christian divorced celebrity to win the White House.)

I am a little groggy this morning, as getting up at six after not having to for the weekend isn’t an easy transition anymore. Damned disorienting blizzard, anyway. But I had a good day yesterday. I managed to get some writing done (yay!) and some stuff done around the house as well as did some reading. It was a a lovely relaxing day, and we finished watching season two of The Recruit, which turned out to be a lot of fun. I definitely recommend. The lead actor is terrific, and he’s also very good looking, which doesn’t hurt (I’m shallow, okay?). But there are so many of these international affairs/espionage shows now that it’s hard to tell them apart anymore, really. I do enjoy them, too–even if they are pretty much from the same cookie cutter and there’s always insane fight scenes and gun battles and things–which goes back to my love of Robert Ludlum novels and their intricate plotting. (I admire nothing more than an intricately plotted novel–see also Carl Hiassen and P. G. Wodehouse.) I had always wanted to try writing a spy adventure–spinning Colin out into his own series–but I haven’t traveled internationally very much and showing Colin working outside of New Orleans would be kind of weird. I have one idea I’ve been sitting on for a very long time for Colin; maybe someday.

The Super Bowl is also this weekend, and two major arteries for me to get home have been shut down–Poydras and Howard Avenues. I guess I’ll just have to go uptown and run errands this week on the way home rather than going straight home. Yay. And then it will be Carnival, and then…augh. I really need to get cracking on my writing. I know, it’s shocking that I’m having trouble focusing while living through an existential threat. I guess I need to really just push all of that out of my mind while focusing on writing as an act of activism. Writing queer stories has always been important, a way of shedding light on what it’s like to live and operate and love on the margins of society and culture. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about the political aspect of breathing life into queer characters and their stories, my focus is writing the best narrative that I can. But showing queer people existing, showing that they are normal and want the same things everything else does, is inherently an activist act when you live in a homophobic country2.

I don’t know why I am letting this bother me so much. I mean, after all, we have the Democratic Party fighting for us rolling over and playing dead but still, somehow, asking for money. Never again. Your party has died because of its inefficacy and its cowardice in the face of a threat. You’ve been cowards since 1980. “Oh no Fox might say something mean!” isn’t the position of strength we’ve been asking you to model for us for over forty years. Bravo for not rising to fight the threat to democracy–but your social media posts are really showing your constituents what you really think about us and how much you care about us…by doing absolutely fucking nothing. And when you do, you’ll simply blame us for not fighting hard enough or not donating enough money or something, I don’t know. Of course, the legacy media has also failed us completely, and continue to fail us on the daily, too. I no longer believe anything that comes from our legacy corporate media, frankly. I guess the irony of the legacy media becoming actual fake news after years of being accused of it will be more appreciated at some point in the future, I suppose.

Ironically, my idea for a dystopian novel set in the aftermath of the collapse of the US hasn’t been trying to invade and overwhelm my creativity. I guess when you’re watching as a country jerks through its final death throes writing about the collapse of civilization isn’t an intellectual creative pursuit anymore for me.

And on that cheery note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a great Monday, and I’ll be back tomorrow most likely.

  1. To Mitch McConnell’s eternal shame and disgrace. ↩︎
  2. Miss me with the “not all straight people” bullshit, thank you very much. ↩︎

Don’t Just Stand There

Let’s get to it, strike a pose there’s nothing to it VOGUE vogue vogue…

Sorry, couldn’t help myself there! Hard to believe how old that song is now, isn’t it? Still a bop, too.

It’s forty degrees outside this morning and it’s a biting cold today. I overslept this morning, not stirring out from underneath my comfortably warm pile of blankets; I also laundered the linens yesterday so they were clean so it was that marvelous snug, clean feeling beneath the blankets, and maybe, just maybe, it’s the weight that makes me sleep better, like how a weighted jacket will help keep a dog calm. Who knows? I have some things to do today, but this morning I am just going to drink my coffee and read for a bit before I get to work on chores and writing and some other things I need to get done. The kitchen/office isn’t nearly as messy as it can be, so won’t need much effort to get it together. There’s also LSU Gymnastics to watch today–some kind of quad meet with some of the top teams in the country–so that could be fun to watch, and I can also read during it, too. I read more into my new read, Herman Raucher’s Ode to Billy Joe, which reads well but sometimes seems inauthentic, but more on that later. We also started watching Disclaimer, which is exceptionally good, and what incredible performances from the cast! I am really curious to see how this all turns out, to be honest–and I may even want to read the book on which the show is based–because yes, I need more books on hand to read, but I’ve been good about buying books for the last two years and so splurging on another isn’t a terrible idea. (I’ve been trying to only buy non-fiction, if I buy anything. Caveat: I am still buying the books by writers I love to read when they release a new one–or an impressive debut or something. But I also don’t bulk buy anymore, either. My book budget has dramatically declined over the last two years while I try to get my spending and my overall finances back in order.)

I’m still doing my German lessons on Duolingo, and I am kind of pleased with not only how much is coming back to me (and it’s been decades), and how much I am retaining that’s new. I am hoping that doing a German lesson or two every day will also help me with my short term memory loss.

I had a lovely time dancing on Anita Bryant’s grave yesterday, how about you? I also blocked some people who dared to tell me I was a terrible person for celebrating her death; I don’t need your permission to feel, nor do I need your sanctimonious self-righteous judgment,1 nor do I need to either explain myself to you, nor do I give two fucks about what you think–so, yeah, bye bye bitch, it’ll be my great pleasure to never under any circumstances ever deal with or talk to you again. I’m too old for your nonsense, nor am I going to waste any of my time educating your stupid ass. Some gay on Threads posted about not understanding the vitriol toward Anita Bryant–who made “life difficult for a few people in the 1970’s.”2 How can anyone be so fucking stupid as to not draw the connecting line from Anita Bryant and her principle backer, Jerry Falwell, to his involvement with Ronald Reagan to the callous Republican response to HIV/AIDS. So, she is indirectly responsible for the deaths of everyone in this country from AIDS, not to mention all the kids who committed suicide because of her “christian love.” Yes, I am officially embracing my ‘grumpy old gay” persona, so watch yourselves. I am reclaiming my time, and if you ever say something stupid or ignorant or bigoted–whoooooosh, that’s the sound of you exiting through an airlock. Have fun trying to breathe in airless space, okay? (Just kidding, enjoy suffocating.)

Get back to me when you’ve acquired a soul.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday doing whatever you so choose, okay, Constant Reader? I may be back later, one never knows.

Tom Holland in Men’s Fitness.
  1. I laughed really hard at one older gay writer who pulled out the old “I’ve forgiven Anita Bryant, and how you react to her death tells me more about you than it does about her.’ How he can breathe up there on his high horse of moral superiority, but then again I didn’t become famous for writing the stupidest episode of a popular television series, so CLEARLY he’s a better person than the rest of us! However will I go on, being judged by such an enormous talent? For the record, I turned on Stephen King after aftr decades of fandom, beginning with Carrie, for lauding The Chatelaine of Castle TERF and asking about her next book under a man’s name about a man when her most recent work was a transphobic hate crime. Donated all my copies of his books–including unread ones, stopped following him everywhere, and haven’t bought anything new of his in several years. I stopped reading STEPHEN KING; you think you mattered more to me than my favorite writer for forty fucking years? ↩︎
  2. I am still shaking my head at the stupid ass (whose profile picture was of him flexing his muscles shirtless). Maybe fucking crack a book before opening your stupid mouth and making an ass of yourself publicly? ↩︎

I Care

How is it only Wednesday? It feels like it should be at least Friday by now, doesn’t it?This has been the longest week, seriously. It’s cold again this morning–in the forties–and the rain has stopped. The bipolarity of winter in New Orleans is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, no matter how long I live here. I don’t feel tired this morning, but the cold does make me want to get back in bed again and burrow beneath the covers. I was all kinds of warm and comfortable under my blankets this morning when the alarm went off, and by the second beep Sparky was up, trying to get my attention to get up and feed him. I don’t feel worn out, but I don’t think I’ll make it through the afternoon without my energy flagging. Ah, well.

I even left work early yesterday for my podiatrist appointment, and the good news is the toe has healed perfectly and he was most pleased with not only how quickly it healed but how properly as well. His absolute delight when he looked at was very clear. (Apparently, I am some kind of medical marvel of healing; Paul heals pretty fast, too–how many people are discharged the same day they get a hip replaced?) But that’s a good thing, and there was some callus where he’d cut the nail and the scab had been, so he got rid of that with an exacto knife (it didn’t hurt at all) and then I was done and walking out to head home. I wasn’t even super-tired when I got home, but I worked for a while and that wore me out enough to finally put it all aside and relax for the rest of the evening. I hate that I am not catching up as quickly as I would like to, but that’s life, you know?

I also keep forgetting the Super Bowl is here in February, which will make getting around the city so much easier. Yay. And of course, there’s a massive facelift (or at least temporary patchwork) being done to New Orleans to get ready for it, so you never know what detours lie in your future.

I also watched Matt Baume’s documentary about Lance Loud, the gay son of the first reality TV show, An American Family, from the early 1970s on PBS. we didn’t watch it, but everyone was talking about it, and I remember hearing about the gay oldest son, and how the marriage ended in a divorce. I think my parents thought being filmed for a television show was exploitative and kind of gross? My mother certainly wasn’t one to get into reality shows–she even stopped watching soaps about twenty years ago. I was never really sure why, but Dad has told me over and over again about how deeply conservative she was (trust me, I knew but it still came as a surprise–I always thought it was Dad and she was just trying to make him happy. Ah, the things we are led to believe as children but never really give much thought to…Dad became more conservative because she was so conservative), so I have to assume the soap thing (I used to watch them with her when I was still in school) might have had something to do with that? I know my sister stopped watching them because they encouraged you to root for adulterers. My grandmother also used to watch them when I was a kid (I actually think she was the one who got me and my sister started on Dark Shadows), but also stopped. Anyway, it was an interesting documentary, and I learned a lot more about Lance Loud than I’d ever really known before, other than he was the gay son on that show.

The tale of Robin Hoody keeps getting more and more interesting the more information that comes out about him, and I keep being more and more amused at the way the country has almost completely united (see what I did there?) behind him. That really should tell everyone about the mood of the country, shouldn’t it? I keep being amused at how the story is being reported, and how much resources the NYPD expended on searching for this person while no one is even talking about the immigrant stabbed to death by racists on the same day in the same city, and certainly the NYPD isn’t making that a top priority. I’d love to see the price tag for justice for a health insurance executive, and why the NYPD and the media made this into such an insane priority. Yes, by all means, do tell me about how everyone is equal in the eyes of the law! And of course, the more information that comes out about both shooter and victim, the more noble the shooter sounds and the more awful the victim was. The media was certainly unprepared for the way people reacted, and the fact that the media so completely misread the mood of the country makes you wonder, again, just how shitty they are at their jobs; and the right-wing grifters attempt to frame this as a right-left issue blew up their faces…as some angry Americans slowly began to realize the media they consume manipulates them to make money, and people saw it as more of a class war kind of thing that apparently everyone has just been waiting for to happen.

And that’s what has the elites and their puppet media terrified. They cannot allow the country’s division to heal and anyone who is not an elite must be persuaded to fight a culture war when the real problem is and has always been the class war the billionaires have been waging against everyone else since Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in 1981. I also think a lot of the angry people are recognizing that they voted in the rule of an oligarchy and are not very happy about that, either. For the record, I don’t have any sympathy for those who voted for this and now have regrets. Too little, too late, too bad, so sad. You voted to make people suffer, and sadly, you’re also one of those. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible those people were before the election, and how they absolutely refused to listen to anything anyone had to say.

And the newspaper coverage and most editorial commentary has shown how deeply out of touch they actually are from everyday citizens, and how they prop up the elites at every possible turn. Imagine if the media hadn’t gotten sucked into the cult of Trump in the 1980s and started turning him into a celebrity for no good reason. Seeing them trying to lead ‘the resistance’ after doing everything they could to reelect him (so much for that “liberal media bias,” right, Richard Nixon?) is not only craven, but disgusting and people are starting to see very clearly what our “news media” actually has become: completely incompetent and not good at their jobs. The news shouldn’t be a for-profit business, just like health care should not be.

And on that note, I am bundling up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and here’s hoping the rest of this week flies by.

Screenshot

Tired of Waiting for You

Thursday morning and my last day in the office for the week. It’s not been a bad week at the office, and of course, seeing my clients always ground me from everything else. I may not be able to change the world or affect hearts and minds on a large scale, but I do make a difference in their lives–and helping people on the smaller, one to one scale, is very rewarding. Back in the days before PrEP and undetectable viral loads, my job was to find new infections and get those people set up with treatment and medical care. That was difficult, and while rewarding, it was also emotionally draining. My job taught me the importance of listening to people’s fears and concerns while only responding with kindness and empathy. Even now, finding out that you’re HIV positive is severely traumatizing for people; and while members of my community are more knowledgeable about risk, infections, and preventive measures to keep themselves safe…it’s still a shock to the system, and it’s vitally important for their mental health that you talk them down and keep them from spiraling into depression and despair. Being kind and reassuring in that moment is crucial…and giving them self-empowering messaging about their health and body in the wake of a positive diagnosis makes a huge difference. I generally don’t talk about my work because people tend to idealize it–being told “thank you for the important work you do” always makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t feel like this work gives me any moral authority about anything other than the history of HIV/AIDS and how we’ve been treated by Americans as a whole. Sometimes I wonder if my job is a way of atoning for surviving those times and never being infected when so many good people died, but I know I wish I could have been even more there for the friends I lost–for everyone we lost.

Of course, they have all been pretty on edge this week. They’re worried about their access to PrEP; what insurance companies are going to be allowed to do (whatever they want, the way it was before the ACA), and whether we will still be funded to provide the services that we do. All I can do is shrug and say “well, this organization was founded during the Reagan administration, and we survived George W. Bush…”

I never thought I’d miss that presidency.

My job has actually been a wonderful education in examining my own prejudices and biases, and also realizing that everyone is the same, no matter what color their skin or what their native language is or what their gender or sexual identity might be. Everyone taking an HIV test is terrified–even with all the advances in treatment and prevention–and it’s my job to provide a warm, welcoming and friendly place to lesson their fears about the entire process and how it might go. If I had a dollar for every time I said, “It’s okay to be nervous or afraid, even if you’re pretty certain you’re not infected” I wouldn’t have to worry about retiring anymore, would I?

I should take my own advice more, you know? I am not a fan of conflict–which is why I try to avoid it whenever possible; my mother was the same way, and even with the anxiety medications I’m on that have made my life so much easier than it used to be, I’ve still been spiking since the election (big shock), but it’s not as horrible as it used to be, and those anxiety spikes are easier to get under control then they’ve ever been before. Imagine what a wreck I would be without it! Perish that thought, you know?

I’ve also not written anything besides blog entries, some emails, and a couple of essays for Substack this week, and I really need to circle around back to my book this weekend. This week is already toast for all intents and purposes, but being done wasting my time watching college football on the weekends is going to free up a lot of time. Most of college football players, coaches, and fans are all MAGA anyway; and I’m not even sure I can bother watching the Saints anymore since most of the NFL owners, players and coaches are as well–at least the white ones. I actually took comfort last weekend in the embarrassing loss in knowing that most of the other people disappointed in that game voted for the monsters, and it actually made me smile. Good, I thought when it occurred to me, I hope they’re all embarrassed and upset and angry and heartbroken. Then they’ll get to experience one tenth of what marginalized people in this country have been feeling since the election, even though they won’t learn a fucking thing from it.

They never learn. And while I know it doesn’t speak well to me as a person, I do smile and enjoy it when they suffer. Someday I might be able to dredge up sympathy who laughed as they slit the nation’s throat.

Then again, this isn’t the country I was raised to believe in anymore. It never was that country, and apparently has no interest in being that country. We’ve been conditioned to admire and respect the rich–no matter how they got rich–and now, here we are, heading into an oligarchy like the one they currently enjoy in Russia. The signature achievement of Reagan’s presidency, according to those who worship at his altar, was defeating Communism and ending the Soviet Union. Current Russia is exactly the same as the old Soviet Union–the difference is the Republicans have rolled us over and exposed our belly to our biggest enemy. We are now Russia’s little bitches, beta soy boys to one of the worst gangsters of our time.

Never been prouder to be an American.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need a to-do list (the world keeps turning even as its burning) and get everything together to get back to my own work for as long as I can write and publish. Have a great one, and I promise I’ll be back to being my usual cheerful self.

At least, I hope so.

Rocky Mountain High

I was really into soaps in the late 1970s and up until the mid 1990s or so. My fandom, how it came to be, and how much of an influence soaps were to me as a writer is a topic for another time, perhaps after Pride Month is over because it’s really not Pride related, except for how they related to me as a gay man. But by the late 70s, I was strictly an ABC guy: All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital and Edge of Night, with me having a special attachment to Edge, which will also be a subject for another time. But soaps were strictly a daytime medium for a very long time–at least until Dallas premiered. Originally, each episode was a stand-alone but the show very quickly moved to the serial format, and the ratings went through the roof–and of course, “Who Shot J.R.?” was a global phenomenon (I figured it out early on–when I saw that Mary Crosby was only contracted for four episodes in the following season and the reveal that the shooter’s identity would be revealed in episode 4…it wasn’t too big of a leap from there to “it must have been Kristin”. I was right.), and Dallas ruled the ratings from there on out..

The success of Dallas, of course, lead to copycats from other networks trying to cash in on the new craze; television is nothing if not a place where imitating success is seen as a no-brainer; the irony was that so many of the other soaps that launched at night in the wake of the huge success of Dallas…failed for the most part. The only post-Dallas night time soaps that enjoyed long runs were Knots Landing, Falcon Crest, and Dynasty.

I first learned of Dynasty in a People magazine profile on Linda Evans, who at the time was best known as the woman John Derek left for Bo (who was a huge star at the time), and it mentioned she’d done a two hour pilot for a night time soap called Oil. By the time the fall previews started dropping, the show’s name had been changed to Dynasty, and there was going to be a gay character on the show. Once I read that, I knew I was going to watch. And then the premiere of the show was delayed months because of a strike. The show also had some other cast members I knew of and was interested to see–Wayne Northrop, who’d played Roman on Days of Our Lives; Pamela Sue Martin, of Nancy Drew and The Poseidon Adventure fame; and of course long-time television star John Forsythe as Blake Carrington, the patriarch of the family.

The first season was interesting enough, but the show didn’t really catch fire until the second season, when Joan Collins joined the cast as Blake’s first wife and mother of his children, Alexis. By the end of the season Dynasty had climbed from middling ratings to the Top Five, and it had become must-watch television.

But my primary interest was the character of Steven.

Al Corley as Steven Carrington

Originally played by Al Corley, Steven’s storylines were made clear in the pilot; Steven is coming to terms with his sexuality, coming back to Denver for his father’s wedding despite the fact that Blake is homophobic and he’s been living with a man (Ted Dinard) in New York for the past few years. Steven still isn’t entirely sure of his sexuality (it never occurred to anyone in production that he could be bisexual; he only had a binary choice during the entire run of the show), and decided to go to work on an oil rig to “become a man.” His co-workers pranked and hazed him for being gay at first, and then tried to “straighten” him out by buying him a hooker, which doesn’t go well. He then embarks on an affair with his boss’ wife Claudia (played by Pamela Bellwood, who was probably one of the best actresses in the cast), who was also mentally ill and her sanity wavered throughout the run of the show. Ted comes to Denver to get Steven to come home, but Steven’s decided to stay in Denver and try to get on with his life and ends things with Ted. Unfortunately, Ted comes to the Carrington estate (which was ‘played’ by Filoli, gorgeous place that was also the ‘setting’ for Laurie R. King’s superb Back to the Garden) to say goodbye, Blake comes home already angry, becomes angrier to learn Ted is in the house, rushes upstairs to see them hugging goodbye, and in a homophobic rage pulls Ted off Steven, punches him and knocks him down–only he is killed when he hits his head on a fireplace guardrail–and now Blake has to go on trial for murdering his son’s gay lover; and now the entire world nows.

Alexis returned for the trial, entering the courtroom wearing a veil, and Fallon gasps, “oh my god that’s my mother” setting the stage for season two, and night time television’s greatest villains, Alexis.

Season 2 was disappointing in terms of Steven as he spent season two trying to be straight, getting involved with and marrying Sammie Jo (Heather Locklear in the role that made her famous), but eventually telling his entire family that he’s gay, he’s tired of trying to be someone he’s not, and leaves Denver. He is reported killed in a oil rig explosion in the south China Sea in season three, which was their way of recasting–“plastic surgery so he doesn’t look the same”–and he was replaced by Jack Coleman (at the time best known for playing a serial killer on Days of Our Lives).

Jack Coleman, the second Steven

Coleman was fine, but he was different, and the character changed to match the actor. His entire storyline for the rest of the series involved him getting married, ruining that by getting involved with another man–before deciding what to do with him again for the sake of storyline; showing how hard it was to actually integrate someone with a same sex attraction into the cast of a soap. Every man he was involved with was a new character, and soaps–whose mainstay bottom line is thwarted romances, marriage and divorce–really didn’t know what to do with a non-straight character, other than throwing him into relationships with women (???) to have them end badly and so on.

When the reunion film was done in the 1990s, Al Corley returned as Steven (no explanation of why he looked the way he did before the surgery) and he’d made peace with his sexuality, again living in New York happily with another man and raising his son (oh yes, the gay character also impregnated one of his ‘women’)…while never once raising the possibility of bisexuality; I guess getting the 1980’s home audience vested in a gay character was risky enough without bringing in bisexuality–which tells you where we were as a country in the 1980’s…and we shouldn’t also overlook the fact that it was Dynasty that brought HIV/AIDS to the forefront of conversations in this country. Rock Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis became public shortly after he appeared on the show, and there was a lot of panic because he’d kissed the Linda Evans character–had he infected her? (We didn’t know as much then as we do now; now that fear is laughable but it was palpable back then because there was so much ignorance about it then, thanks to the Reagan Administration and the deeply embedded homophobia in post-war American culture.)

I started rewatching the original show once it was available for streaming, and that first season really is a slog; Blake was the primary villain in the first season (Alexis took his place, turning him into a more traditional soap hero–flawed but a good person at heart) and he just didn’t have the gravitas to relish being evil the way Joan Collins jumped in with both hands and feet), so while I was enjoying seeing the more honest and realistic to life way Steven and his dilemma was displayed in that first season–even the affair with Claudia made sense the way it was written–they really didn’t know what to do with him after the recast, and he descended from the fully developed realistic character Corley played to the two-dimensional soap hero he devolved into after the recast.

But…it was still pretty daring for the 1980s, and I did appreciate the attempt at representation. I know the reboot, which I didn’t watch, made Steven straight up gay; even gender swapping Sammie Jo by turning her into Sammy Joe. Progress is progress, and we cannot ever dismiss out of hand the brave attempts at using homosexuality and familial homophobia as a source for story; they were fighting the network censors, the right wing, and most of the country was homophobic, too.

They did the best they could and it was important at the time…even if it doesn’t hold up well under modern understanding.

Tell Him No

I did get tired yesterday afternoon, but I think it was more from malnutrition somehow than anything else. My breakfast and my lunch did not fill me up1, and after I had lunch I did feel like my batteries were starting to run down a bit. It was, all in all, a good day for the most part. I did make it through the workday. I ran errands after work (got some things for Sparky from Chewy, and the last batch of new shirts arrived); started organizing the draft blog posts to determine which can be combined (same topic started on different days, months, years) and which can be finished and which can be deleted; I finished the revision of “Passenger to Franklin” (and I think it’s much much better now); and started getting my (delayed and extended) taxes together. Ideally, I can get that done this week and to my accountant by Friday so that will be one thing more that’s been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles out of the way. Huzzah! I also took a look at “When I Die,” and while this one is going to take a lot of fucking work, it’ll be so much better when I finish it!

I slept well last night, and my coffee is rather delicious this morning. It was cold yesterday morning when I left for work–surprisingly so–but it warmed during the day so my car was very hot when I got into it after work. It’s going to get warmer consistently later in the week–I still can’t get over it being eighty-eight last Friday, it’s only April for Pete’s sake–which means it’ll probably be hot and sunny as I visit graveyards with Dad the weekend after next. I was thinking last night, as we watched Vigil (it’s terrific, highly recommended), that I’m almost in a good place again for the first time in almost ten years or so. My stress levels are way down, my moods generally are good and even, and I don’t have flashes of anger anymore (mostly while in my car). Other idiot drivers are still annoying, but don’t send me into a rage anymore. Now, it’s more like I get annoyed, say very calmly, “yes, you’re an asshole who can’t drive” or “yes, you are so much more important than all the rest of us”, but as I said, it’s calm–and I can absolutely live with that.

I got a short story rejection email yesterday, and I was completely ambivalent about it. The problem is you’re never sure if the story just doesn’t work for them or if the fact that the main character is gay was a problem for them. Sure, the rejection had the standard form please submit to us again, but…yeah, not so much. This is what straight white cisgender people don’t get, with all their whining about “merit”–the only people who they think actually earn their careers are straight white cisgender people, after all–because you can never be certain that it’s the story that they didn’t like enough or whether homophobic concerns come into play: our readers might get mad at is if we shove queer down their throats or we don’t want to become known as the queer crime publication and every other iteration of that you can imagine…any excuse not to publish a queer writer. Many years ago, I decided that I would never allow suspicions of homophobia affect my writing career, and I would always assume it was the story that was the problem. But…you have to wonder. When a magazine only buys your work when you send them things with straight main characters (twice) but rejects everything with a gay main character or even a gay theme, you have to start to wonder.

And given how few of the magazines that actually pay well for short stories (or pay at all) there are and how little queer work they actually publish…you begin to wonder. You don’t want to believe it’s homophobia or homophobic concerns, but here we are, you know. The stories I am working on now aren’t really crime stories, they’re more supernatural/horror stories, but I do think “The Last To See Him Alive” is not only a good story but it’s written really well. I need to revise it and edit it, of course, but it’s in really good shape already which is pleasing. “When I Die” needs a complete overhaul, but that’s fine. It’ll be a better story for it when it’s finished. And while these stories I am working on could complete the collection, this morning I am wondering if I should include horror in this book or not.

I really do not understand these new state laws (here in Louisiana we got one, too) allowing people to drive their cars into protestors, something which inbred morons Tom Cotton of Arkansas and eternal bitchboy Josh Hawley of Missouri are all about. Nothing says leadership like telling people to kill or injure other people. As always, these kind of Nazi-lite fascistic laws come to you courtesy of the Republican Party and MAGAt. I personally am looking forward to driving my car into a crowd of Trump protestors and hitting the gas pedal, frankly. When I saw this on social media yesterday, I responded with Never thought I’d see the day when the Kent State massacre would have fanboys, which prompted some responses which, of course, made the most sense: they had them at the time. I was too young to remember the right-wing response to the Kent State shootings, I just remember being appalled that the National Guard murdered four students on a campus, and I have always viewed it as a disgrace and a tragedy…but of course the right did not see it that way–just as they backed William Calley as a hero after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Even I–who have always known how vile and unpatriotic the right in this country is and always has been–didn’t think they were that callous and awful.

They are, they always have been, and they always will be.

The thing that always amuses me about this is the “patriots” of the right always forget that the only reason we exist as a country was because of mass protests….which led to a revolution. So, by that way of thinking, the most patriotic thing you can ever do is protest, really. Remember the Tea Party, the seeds that grew into MAGA? Remember the stolen election of 2000? Remember how Reagan dismantled and changed (and ruined) Social Security? The only reason there’s an issue with it now is because of Reagan, St Ronnie of the Right. The Republicans are the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and people like Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz are their heirs.

Remember back when I was thinking about starting to read and study poetry? I got a great recommendation from a dear friend at S&S of where to start–Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early–and I’ve been paging through it randomly, reading poems here and there, glimpsing fragments, and I think I’m slowly starting to come to an understanding of poetry I never had before. I am not going to review poetry on here as I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself self-teaching and coming to what regular readers of poetry already understand from studying it. It’s a wonderful education, and one I kind of wish I had started earlier. Ah, well.

I also decided to postpone reading the Paul Tremblay and take it with me to Kentucky to read. Instead, I’ve decided to reread a book I don’t remember much of–Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford. He published a sequel this past year that I would love to read, but not remembering the first one was a problem, so I decided to go ahead and reread it. I don’t talk about Ford much, but he really is one of the most underrated queer writers of our time. He can basically write anything (a blessing and a curse, as I know all too well), and he does it extremely well. Rereading the first chapter last night pulled me back into the story effortlessly, and the voice is so compelling and hauntingly real…and likable. I’m looking forward to reading more of it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

  1. I also ate dinner late on Sunday night, which I usually don’t do and am sure that had something to do with it, but given I don’t really get hungry all that often it was kind of cool. ↩︎

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Easter, which really should be the highest holy day of Christianity–but it’s not. That would be Christmas, which again–really doesn’t make sense. But at least the date of Jesus’ birth is fixed–as opposed to how the day of his death floats.

I overslept again this morning and I suspect my exhaustion–which carried me through yesterday as well–has everything to do with the situation on Friday. Yes, I know I am being vague, but I also never am sure about crossing a privacy line for someone else. Essentially, I lost the entire day, and let’s just say that I am glad I am on anxiety medication because my mind would have exploded this past week, probably. But it was exhausting and draining, both emotionally and physically, and that all kind of caught up with me yesterday. I did get some things done–laundry and I did run an errand–but was completely worn out yesterday and had excessive fatigue. I feel better this morning than I did yesterday, but I also have a lot to do today and hope that I can manage somehow. I feel motivated today, which I didn’t have the energy for yesterday, and as soon as I finish this I am going to get cleaned up and finish cleaning the kitchen and dive into my day.

Sounds good, anyway.

It’s also a very bright and cheery day out there–it’s been cold since around the festivals–and I am hoping to cook out today, too. We spent most of the day relaxing with the television on. I did read some of Last Summer, too, which I am really getting into, and I think my next read will be an old Michael Koryta, The Cypress House. He really is one of my favorite writers, and I need to read more of his backlist as well as get caught up on recent releases. I pruned the books a very little yesterday, and we did watch some great stuff yesterday. We watched Quiet on Set Friday night, which was grim and creepy and horrifying, and then yesterday we watched Thanksgiving and moved onto Will Trent, which we’d been meaning to get around to but kept forgetting–it’s quite good. Thanksgiving was another holiday slasher movie, kind of clever and didn’t take itself too seriously (always a plus in a slasher movie) and I enjoyed–but it didn’t say anything new or do anything wildly clever or original. Quiet on Set, on the other hand, was deeply disturbing–which brings me to another point about the falsity of the right and it’s anti-queer lies about grooming and pedophilia. Every day I see pieces posted on social media about another male (sometimes with a female accomplice) convicted of raping and/or sexually abusing children…and getting off with thirty days in prison, or three months, or suspended sentences.

Where is all the outrage about THAT? Judges and juries giving light sentences for raping children? That’s how I know the right is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to these issues. They chose to attack a small minority and accuse them of not being safe around children, but where is there concern about all these religious figures, church leaders, your counselors, and COPS who are getting away with destroying children? Watching Quiet on Set made me aware just how hypocritical they are. If they really cared about children and keeping them safe, they’d go after actual people who, you know, commit the crimes and the disgusting sentences they get for said crimes. It’s hard to take any country seriously who doesn’t punish actual perpetrators of crimes against children, but instead accuses innocent parties while looking the other way when the criminals don’t fit their narrative.

I’m tired of liars using children as a bait-and-switch to come for queer people.

Sigh. It’s easy to get frustrated and fearful these days with the world in the state it is currently in; I take no pleasure in seeing my predictions about the rise of modern American fascism, made in the early 1990s, coming true in my twilight years. You see, I recognized the rhetoric of the right, and how they were using queer people as scapegoats for everything, in the decade as the same language and dialogues that Germans used on Jews and queers in the 1930’s, and I also saw, with the rise of Fox News, the further decline of the American system and way of life. We’ve never really achieved, as a country, the democratic utopia the founders strove for–but it seems like a significant portion of the country no longer sees patriotism as country over party anymore. The Divine Right of Republicans to run the country was part of the unholy marriage of conservatives and evangelicals that Reagan fostered as a Machiavellian scheme to retain power. The right has been smearing the left as communists since the fall of the Tsar in 1917–it’s still a slur they sneer today (communist, commies, socialists) while painting themselves, quite offensively, as the real patriotic Americans.

Sometimes I think I am thinking overly optimistic and that more and more Americans are beginning to see the tin god as precisely that; a golden calf they worship despite their Holy Book’s continued warnings about false gods, false witness, and liars.

And for the record, I have always believed that faith in religion should be shown by works, not words. Anyone can say they are a Christian and they love Jesus–it’s their behavior and what they do that truly matters.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy Easter, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Stagger Lee

Thursday last morning in the office this week blog. I get to go in a little later because I have to stay until five tonight; and of course tomorrow morning I have PT at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. Gah. But it’s okay, really. I slept super well last night–probably the best night’s sleep of the week–and I finally got my keyboard for the iPad yesterday: huzzah! It works beautifully, too…which is the last excuse I had for not getting any writing done (or as much as I would like). Now I have a functional laptop and a functional iPad for writing anywhere in the house, which is kind of fun. I can get my iPad in the morning and write in bed if I want, or I can take the laptop up there, or…so many plethoras of options, and NO MORE EXCUSES.

Oh, I’ll still make excuses, of course, to get out of doing the day’s writing. And I did do some yesterday–I wrote about seven hundred or so words on “Passenger to Franklin” (an Agatha Christie title homage that really pleases me far more than it probably should)–but very little of anything else other than watching Part II of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion (Kyle Richards remains a disgusting piece of shit bitch who doesn’t need to be on my television screen anymore). I then spent the rest of the evening watching the news (or clips from the news) and despairing further about the future of the country and grateful again that I am old. It’s about the only benefit to being old, really, and not having children: the future isn’t really my problem, but at the same time, I also don’t want the adults of the future to have to deal with a destroyed and/or increasingly hostile and damaged planet, either, because I am not a monster. Sometimes I think I worry about the future more than people who actually do have kids, or are young.

I watched a really interesting conversation between Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace last night–and they were both right: the Republican Party of today wants to eliminate our democracy and set up an authoritarian state where they are always in charge and they can get rid of everyone they don’t like. Sound familiar? See Berlin, 1933. It’s scary to contemplate, and even scarier to realize The Handmaid’s Tale was actually very prescient. I became worried about authoritarianism coming to the US during the Reagan years and what followed, when the Republican party became convinced that they had a divine right and mandate to always be in power. As I watched people get subsumed by Fox Propaganda in the 1990s (when the character assassination of Hilary Clinton truly began), I saw it for what it was: definitely not a news organization, and it’s partisan nature had everything to do with the rollback on rules about what is and isn’t news…during the Reagan administration. It’s astonishing how little people think about the recent past, or even try to put the present in the context of the recent past.

Let alone thinking about the older history, which no one knows1. Then again, I am from a part of the country that proudly claims hatred and bigotry as their heritage, so maybe knowing history might not help as much as I would like to believe.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

I’m doing a panel for a Sisters in Crime chapter on-line event this weekend, do tune in to any or all of the antics this weekend. It’s called Murderous March, and it’s being put on by the Upper Hudson Sisters chapter, and you can register to view the panels here. My panel is at 2:30 eastern, it’s called “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,” and is being moderated by the wonderful Richie Narvaez. My co-panelists are the amazing Carol Pouliot, Edwin Hill, Tina Bellegarde, and M. E. Browning. It should be a pretty good time, I think.

And on that note, I think I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

You Make Me Feel Mighty Real

Growing up as a queer kid in the 1960’s and the 1970’s wasn’t the easiest path to trod. First came the realization that my wiring was different from everyone else’s, followed quickly by the shame from being different and of course, the ever-popular feeling among queer kids when they recognize their queerness that I was the only one in the world and no one, under any circumstances, could ever know. I honestly don’t remember the first time I came across a gay character anywhere–it had to be in a novel, though–and I slowly became aware that it wasn’t just me, but there weren’t any others like me anywhere around me. (I do sometimes wonder how differently my life would have turned out had we never left the Chicago suburbs for the empty plains of Kansas; I certainly would have met other gay men much earlier in my life but….being an out gay man in Chicago in the 1980’s might not have boded well for me otherwise in the long term, if you catch my meaning.) I do remember the first gay characters I saw in film and television; I remember being highly entertained and feeling connected, in some way, to celebrities like Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly; but Liberace’s flamboyance repelled me. The few times I’d seen gay characters they were horrific stereotypes, and I can remember being confused, thinking I’m not like that, though. I can remember TV movies like That Certain Summer which was about a gay man coming out to his son and his son having to deal with it; I didn’t watch because I was afraid that watching it, even though it was an ABC Movie-of-the-Week, would tip off my parents and my sister that I was like that–or even just curious about it, which wouldn’t fly.

It was Billy Crystal as Jodie Dallas on SOAP that gave me my first real exposure to a continuing regular series character who was a gay man–and his confusion (which had a lot to do with the writers fighting with the network censors and trying to appease the gay community) about his gender and sexuality in that first season struck me as a bit on the absurd side–but I also understood his thinking well had I been born a woman this would have been all a lot easier.

Of course, now, as an adult gay man with years of living the life behind me as well as writing about it, I see how incredibly absurd on its face was that story-line.

I first found Matt Baume’s Youtube channel during the pandemic, as I was scrambling to find things to watch while i made condom packs and did other make-work at home duties to maintain my paycheck. I may have found him through James Somerton’s channel? But while Somerton is often very dour and doom-and-gloom and “this is how they betray us” (don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for that and it’s needed), Baume is much more cheerful and positive about representation: he presents queer rep in popular culture in the context of the time; what the show/movie creators were trying to do with the rep; why they chose to do the rep in the first place; and the battles and struggles they had to make sure their rep made it to the viewers the way they wanted it to–and how that representation may have helped change hearts and minds when it comes to queer representation in art and culture. So when I found out Baume had written a book about queer representation in network sitcoms–written versions of his Youtube channel most likely–I had to have it.

I’m really glad I read it, too.

The essays contained within are well-written in a light, easy to read and comprehend way, without all the academic language that inevitably drags these kinds of things into the impenetrable territory that gets cited in other academic papers but otherwise never get read. Each chapter, from Bewitched through Modern Family, also contextualizes the queer representation in its time and place within the sociopolitical climate of each show, as well as the queer influences. Bewitched was probably the queerest show to ever air, be a hit and win Emmy Awards before Will and Grace; which makes it all the more memorable is that it was all coding and subtext, with witches standing in for queer people–and the similarities were obvious: they had to hide who they were from mortals for fear of persecution, bigotry, and violence. Sound familiar?

Baume also names and shames all the anti-queer activists of my lifetime, from Anita Bryant to Donald Wildmon (my own personal nemesis) to A Million Moms and so forth; Wildmon himself is probably the worst of them all; much as I loathe Bryant, I think she sincerely believed that queer people were a danger and sinful. I also think Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly were the last true-believer homophobes to lead movements; everything since has been a cynical grift for money and political power. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans saw, in 1980 and with the evangelical turnout in 1976 that carried an actual Christian to the White House (Carter was perhaps the most truly Christian president we’ve ever had; his religious values colored his policy. It’s ironic that Christians hate him as a general rule and always point to him as an example of a failed presidency rather than what his presidency actually proved; a true Christian believer isn’t pragmatic enough to lead a country; because sometimes, as The West Wing noted in an episode title, sometimes you have to kill Yamamoto; things for the greater good that are horrific on a personal level) and noted that “lip-service” to “Christian ideals” was all it took to get “Christians” to vote for you.

And this is a good place to serve as your regular reminder that the “party of family values” elected our only divorced presidents, yet are the same people who tried to remove Bill Clinton from office for lying about a blow job because it was evidence of his poor character and someone with such poor character shouldn’t be president.

I recommend this book, not only because it’s an interesting look at the evolution of queer representation in television comedy series, but because it also is educational by tracing the opposition to queer equality during the same time period.

I also learned by reading the book that Baume was the Communications Director for AFER, an organization that fought for marriage equality. So, buying and reading his book is also an excellent way to say thank you for his advocacy.