Ummmm….yeah.
You are Superman
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You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
It’s official.
Back in December, I submitted an application to the University of Utah and their Masters of Social Work program. I got a letter from them today.
I'm in.
Queer eye on a straight guy.
I have a gay friend who, because of choices early on in his life, finds himself married with children. He thus plays the role of a straight man, but anyone who knows him well will likely suspect "tendencies" even if it's never actually discussed. We'll call him GG (for Gay Guy).
Now GG has a friend who we'll call SG (for Straight Guy). SG married a woman who would not countenance sin of any kind (well, visible sin anyway). So when SG's wife discovered he was less than perfect she divorced him. SG is at a stage in life that makes dating eligible women difficult, so he remains single though years have passed since RB (for Raging Bitch) left him and went in search of the "perfect" mate.
Whenever SG has pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve, GG is the one he asks for a massage. I asked GG if SG is aware of the extra mental processes that are involved with GG giving SG a massage. His reply: "He's not stupid, but it's not something we talk about."
At this point, many a homo will pounce and say that SG isn't as S as he thinks. I suppose that is one possibility, but I'm not convinced. All too often gay men skip the other possibility: that SG is really S, comfortable and secure in his Sness and isn't threatened by GG's Gness. GG also has the sense to maintain decorum and not go where he has not been invited. Thus a trust exists between the two of them that allows both to gain some measure of fulfillment without the threat of events taking a turn for the worse.
I have to wonder if there isn't something else at work here. Having been where SG is (divorced and single and having difficulty finding eligible (in my case) bachelors), I understand the need, indeed craving, for intimate contact. GG is a trusted friend, so there is a bond and an intimacy that exists that would not exist if a professional masseuse were sought out. (Not to mention any man who is divorced knows that cash is exceeding scarce.) For all we know SG has turned the tables on GG and is imagining [insert SG's concept of a beautiful woman here] while GG is massaging him.
The interesting thing for me is I don't remember that craving before I was married. Afterward is a completely different story. Now I'm fairly independent and always have been, so I can go stretches without feeling that need. The more of it I get, however, the more I need it.
It's not about simple touch, otherwise friendly hugs would be enough. It's about a connection, some kind of intimacy. That probably has a good deal to do with why I never found anonymous sex satisfying and preferred having friends with benefits. Friends with benefits is its own can of worms, however, and we just won't go there right now.
Anyway, where I'm trying to go with this is there seems to be something addictive about intimate contact. Some will point to this as evidence of the chemical nature of love and attempt to then refute any mystical aspect of love. I have never understood this point of view. We don't teach mysticism in science class because some people can't distinguish between the two. That doesn't mean they can't coexist.
In my mind who we are is something that exists beyond our current sight and understanding. Our bodies are a reflection or the manifestation of that being on this world. I see the chemical process that seem to govern our bodies and reactions similar to the strings of a marionette, something the master uses to control the puppet. Sometimes the strings become tangled or even severed and the master cannot properly exert its will on the puppet.
To my mind, it seems pretty incredible that there is a physical process through which our physical beings are impacted and influenced. Strectching the analogy a bit, early man believed that thunderstorms were the physical manifestation of God's anger. Hell, some of modern man still believe that. Is a hurricane a sign of Mother Earth having a bad day? Is it the planetary version of PMS? Who knows. I can't say that with any more certainty than I can say my marionette analogy is the way it IS.
On the other hand, I won't be surprised if that turns out to be the case.
P.S. Just for the record if hurricanes and such are the result of Mother Earth having a bad day, I do not believe that she focuses her wrath on anyone in particular. Like any woman who is having a bad day (for whatever reason), if you are in her path you tread lightly and bunker down or you are pretty much screwed. 
Unbelievable.
Congress has once again shown us just what a bunch of fiscal morons they are:
Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) acknowledged that the debt has risen at a remarkable pace but said he and his colleagues had no alternative. "Without an increase in the debt limit, our government will face a choice that we shouldn't make and we wouldn't want to make, a choice between breaking the law by exceeding the statutory debt limit or, on the other hand, breaking faith with the public by defaulting on our debt."1
I thought there was a third option, you know, blance the @#$@*&@#&*)(!! budget? I know. I know. God forbid someone should have to do without pork for a while. Idiots.
This should be a wake-up call for every member of the Senate, every member of Congress, and a wake-up call for the president of the United States," said Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?"1
A wake up call? Are you saying you're all snoozing on the job? Are you all really so dense that you didn't see this coming?
God help us all. We have a bunch of toddlers running the government. I can just see Don Young sitting on a big pile of cash shouting "Mine! Mine!" The really sad thing is: we put them there.
Surf’s Up
I continue to be swamped with work and have little time to do much here. It doesn't help that I am tired a lot these days and just don't have the emotional wherewithal to blog about everything that is going on right now. So instead, I'm going to post this fantastic photograph by a man who goes by Avie.
Apparently Avie has had problems with people stealing his work and pawning it off as their own. My thanks to him for allowing me to post this here.
Enjoy.
Oh, my heck.
My friend Greg, who also blogs over at Uncorrelated, highlights this tid bit from his Uncorrelated co-blogger, Mick.
After my wife informed me that Crash had gotten the best-picture nod, I went to sleep with the thought, "there will be hell to pay."
Brokeback wasn't just a movie, it was a cause. We were going to accept gay romantic leads whether we liked it or not (not too different from gay marriage). Dismal box office was spun to become 'per screen revenues', and the fact that anyone at all saw the film in Utah was a sign of a cultural tidal wave (In spite of Utah Jazz-owner Larry Miller putting the kibosh on screening Brokeback in his theaters, the film did play in an art house theater in Salt Lake City)1
Where to start? How about it opened at an art house. Brokeback actually played in several mainstream theaters in Salt Lake County. I'm sure that down in Utah County (a.k.a. God's County) they were better able to resist the temptation to see this subversive and wicked movie.
Dismal box office? Compared to what? Current domestic grosses for this year's Oscar nominations: Brokeback(79M), Captoe(25.4M), Crash(53.4M), Good Night and Good Luck(31.2M), and Munich(46.7M). Yeah. Dismal. It is true, I must admit, that none of them have even come close to such box office smashes as Meet the Fokkers(279.2M), The Wedding Crashers(209.2M), and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me(206M).
A cause. How exactly? Because it's a movie about a minority? Crash is a movie about a minority. Isn't it a cause, too? Or is it because people generally agree that racism is bad, but there is still general disagreement about two men being in love? If it was "a cause," where is all the outcry? Where are the throngs of homos taking to the streets to decry the injustice of "our" movie not being chosen for this year's Oscar? Where are the letters to the editor shaming The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its rampant homophobia? (OK. That's funny.)
I sat and watched the Oscars with a bunch of homos. Did any one of us go into hysterics when Crash was chosen for the Oscar? No. We turned of the TV, hugged everyone good night and went home. It didn't ruin anybody's life. It didn't even ruin anybody's evening. So much for there being "hell to pay."
And the only reason anybody saw it was because of a cultural tidal wave... A tidal wave. Hmmm . . . cause . . . tidal wave . . . cause . . . Does that work for anyone? Which is it, Mick, cause or tidal wave? I'm afraid, luv, you're going to have to pick one.
Now, I was a little put off by the self-congratulatory nature of the Oscars this year. It's always that way a to some degree, but this year it was over the top. Still, if Meet the Fokkers, The Wedding Crashers and Austin Powers are "American mainstream," you can keep it. Titantic is the all time winner coming in at 600.7M and it's a movie about disobeying your parents and premarital sexual relations. I guess that just proves that Falwell, Dobson, Ratzinger and Co. aren't mainstream America either.
The "mainstream" is overrated. Where would we be without radicals such as Tomas Paine, Martin Luther, and Rosa Parks? So you guys can stand over there and make faces at us. We'll stand over here and make faces at you. We'll both congratulate ourselves on how much better people we are than the other and the world will go on as it always has, without so much as a hiccup.
All box office numbers came from BoxOfficeMojo.com. Subscription (free) is required to view the tallies.
Piety: Reality or Facade?
I have just been swamped lately and haven't had time to post much of anything, but I just couldn't let this pass. Today I stumbled on to this bit from The Nation, originally published May of 2005.
Back at Asbury, Hager cast himself as a victim of religious persecution in his sermon. "You see...there is a war going on in this country," he said gravely. "And I'm not speaking about the war in Iraq. It's a war being waged against Christians, particularly evangelical Christians. It wasn't my scientific record that came under scrutiny [at the FDA]. It was my faith.... By making myself available, God has used me to stand in the breach.... Just as he has used me, he can use you."
Up on the dais, several men seated behind Hager nodded solemnly in agreement. But out in the audience, Linda Carruth Davis--co-author with Hager of Stress and the Woman's Body, and, more saliently, his former wife of thirty-two years--was enraged. "It was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," she recalled months later, through clenched teeth.
Davis, a former beauty queen, was a disengaged student eager to get married and start a family. A Hager-Carruth marriage promised prestige and wealth for the couple; her father was a famous Methodist evangelist, and his father was then president of Asbury. "On the surface, it just looked so good," she remembers. The couple married in 1970, while Hager completed medical school at the University of Kentucky.
"I don't think I was married even a full year before I realized that I had made a horrible mistake," Davis says. By her account, Hager was demanding and controlling, and the couple shared little emotional intimacy. "But," she says, "the people around me said, 'Well, you've made your bed, and now you have to lie in it.'" So Davis commenced with family making and bore three sons: Philip, in 1973; Neal, in 1977; and Jonathan, in 1979.
Sometime between the births of Neal and Jonathan, Hager embarked on an affair with a Bible-study classmate who was a friend of Davis's. A close friend of Davis's remembers her calling long distance when she found out: "She was angry and distraught, like any woman with two children would be. But she was committed to working it out."
Sex was always a source of conflict in the marriage. Though it wasn't emotionally satisfying for her, Davis says she soon learned that sex could "buy" peace with Hager after a long day of arguing, or insure his forgiveness after she spent too much money. "Sex was coinage; it was a commodity," she said. Sometimes Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex. Davis protested. "He would say, 'Oh, I didn't mean to have anal sex with you; I can't feel the difference,'" Davis recalls incredulously. "And I would say, 'Well then, you're in the wrong business.'"
By the 1980s, according to Davis, Hager was pressuring her to let him videotape and photograph them having sex. She consented, and eventually she even let Hager pay her for sex that she wouldn't have otherwise engaged in--for example, $2,000 for oral sex, "though that didn't happen very often because I hated doing it so much. So though it was more painful, I would let him sodomize me, and he would leave a check on the dresser," Davis admitted to me with some embarrassment. This exchange took place almost weekly for several years.
Money was an explosive issue in their household. Hager kept an iron grip on the family purse strings. Initially the couple's single checking account was in Hager's name only, which meant that Davis had to appeal to her husband for cash, she says. Eventually he relented and opened a dual account. Davis recalls that Hager would return home every evening and make a beeline for his office to balance the checkbook, often angrily summoning her to account for the money she'd spent that day. Brenda Bartella Peterson, Davis's friend of twenty-five years and her neighbor at the time, witnessed Hager berate his wife in their kitchen after one such episode. For her part, Davis set out to subvert Hager's financial dominance with profligate spending on credit cards opened in her own name. "I was not willing to face reality about money," she admits. "I thought, 'Well, money can't buy happiness, but it buys the kind of misery you can learn to live with.'" 1
I'm not sure who I'm more enraged with the asshole of a husband or her stupid, idiotic "support network" who told her "you've made your bed, and now you have to lie in it." The thought of one of my daughters in a relationship like this makes me damn near homicidal, and you can bet good money if my daughter came to me with a story like this she would be out of that house so fast the bastard's head would spin. That her bastard husband publicly pretends to piety and a Christ-like love for women is just salt on the wound.
While it seems common to at this point launch into a diatribe about the personal hypocrisy of "religious types," I really don't want to go there. I am suspicious of anyone publicly flaunting their "righteousness," and I do believe religion encourages silence and pretense. Still, I hardly believe every religious person is a fraud. What really bothers me is how the religious right holds up marriage as some holy sacrament, while turning a blind eye to travesties such as this. While they'll publicly claim to "obviously" be against such behavior, they don't do much to stop it either. When was the last time you heard Pat Robertson or James Dobson talking about spousal or child abuse? The advice of "the people around" Mrs. Davis (interesting she doesn't call them her friends) doesn't speak well of "compassionate conservatism" either. It seems to me if they want to improve the stability of marriage as a social institution, they could make a good start by teaching men what it means to be a husband. (Not that there aren't women who need to be taught what it means to be a wife, but the story is about a bastard of a husband, not a bitch of a wife.)
If the government wants to be in the business of licensing marriage, then maybe they should start doing a better job of vetting candidates. "I'm sorry, sir. Your application for a marriage license has been declined because you're a self-centered, controlling bastard."