Agonistic · Vesper · Theories

It looks as if the gays got shoved back into a little box. The good folks at noonprop8.com are still holding out hope against hope for the absentee ballots to narrow a slight gap, but I’d be pretty shocked if the tides turned against Proposition 8. How absurd is it that the state of California voted to remove equal rights for same-sex couples? But propaganda works. And the truth of the matter is that a campaign funded largely by religious affiliates (I’m looking at you, Mormons) succeeded in imposing religious judgments of morality on a secular institution, which is absolutely NOT what America is about. And they did it by lying and cheating, and throwing brash not-truths in the faces of California voters. Almost everything they ran in their sick ads was misinformation built on a shifting house of sand and hate. Whatever your stance on same-sex marriage, I don’t see how anyone can possibly respect the Yes on 8 campaign.

The real problem is that our country promises the separation of church and state but still votes on the side of “God.” And of course, everyone has a right to their own opinions and their own vote—but as long as we still define the rights associated therein by the word “marriage,” people will cling to this absurd, archaic idea of “family values,” and same-sex unions won’t receive the legal respect that any two loving, consenting adults deserve. This country spent a long time even getting the idea of love into their conceptual “idea” of marriage, so how does it follow that we need to somehow preserve traditional marriage? The only answer is that America still has a major uneasiness about homosexuality. We’re achieving equality (slowly, slowly), but there will always be a backwoods hostility to our cause. Because we’re different.

You know what, change takes time. We’ve only been truly fighting this battle for less than a decade now. Backlash should be an expectation. The venom of the Yes on 8 campaign, however, should not be tolerated by anyone interested in social justice. Sorry about the soapboxing. I’m finished. If the election results are any indication, we have an excess of hope for everyone.

GObama!

This is not about faith. It’s about experience.

I’ve been losing myself in nostalgia for quite some time now. I have periods where I just get lost in memories of my time here. Sometimes I forget that I have a weird new life now—half old friends from college and half new beautiful people who work retail and go to bars and generally behave like amorous twentysomethings (a developmental step I assumed I’d skip). I love them all, but my heart (in which I DO have faith but less experience than I’d like) is twisting itself into knots and I fear there’s a trump card in the deck.

I sit around smoking cigarettes and reading Ondaatje and flirting with stock boys, and it’s all very nice you see but there are these clouds descending and this chill surrounding me and I know that the Cold Time in the Northwest is coming again and I’ve got to hightail it ‘cause I get too depressed in the winter. And I don’t talk to my mother enough and I’ve spent enough time resenting my father for things he could never help and my brother and I are so similar yet we don’t know each other as adults (which is a shame). I’ve spent such a long time distancing myself from them that I don’t remember why I was doing it in the first place.

The more bitter and jaded I get, the more sentimental and forgiving of the world’s sins I become.

I’ve done enough head-work. I need to focus on heart-work. I need to pack up the ‘stang and go home to Texas.

I need an apartment in Austin and my cat and my beach and my sunshine. I’m finished with this role (you know... prince of darkness and all that) but not with acting. Or the theater. Or words in general.

So if you live in the NW, come say goodbye to me at Brie and Chanel's place on the 26th. And if you're in Texas, expect me to roll in around early Octoberish. But don't expect me to stay in one place for too long. I'll be back to visit-- with a motherfucking tan. Because (damn it) I guess I did learn something. Treat people better. Learn to let them in. Because everyone is equally fucked up and therefore worthy of the same amount of love and understanding. I used to abandon my friends emotionally. I can't do that with you guys. I never want to not be a part of any of your lives. But I've just got to figure out what I'm going to do with mine.

That said, I'm leaving the library now to watch the not-sun slowly fade to dark for a few more weeks of revelry and open hearts. And then I'll cut to black. Peace.

You know, after 43 years my wife still likes to play games.

Whoa ho. Ha ha. Awww.

I'm driving back up to WA with the brother FridaySaturdaySunday, and Michael's flying out earlyearly Monday morning (for all you curious Tacomafolk). My landline phone in Washington is twofivethreefivezerothreeonetwozeroeight. I share it with danneely. Please call it. I'll also have a Ford Mustang when I return to my state, so for those of you whom I consider long lost but still close to my heart, rest easily knowing that I'll be able to better facilitate my heart's lusty desires.

I guess this is mostly about long lost friends. Reacquainting myself with the world. I drove down to Port Aransas by myself yesterday and spent a day at the beach walking down the jetty and smoking cigarettes while the waves crashed onto the rocks, thinking quite a bit about ideas of home and journeys of life and just where exactly I am emotionally and physically at this point in my life.

We're good. Full of something less than noir.

Revelation: The boring people in my family are all in public relations. My father was in public relations for a while, and I used to think he was boring but now I understand that he's mostly happy which I guess is good enough.

I'm aware that I'm self-medicating, but I think medication after the past few years will probably be a good thing. After that I can detox and maybe even be a good human being. But it's a process, an artistic process, an alchemical process (yes, a journey), and most of all a necessary process. I'm growing tired of the big city lights. Or, maybe I'm just growing tired. Cicadas. Heat. Creeks. Summer Evenings. Home. If the journey is the road there, I'm probably lying in a field of poppies right now. But it's okay, 'cause I'm made of straw.

I smell like Bare Bronze. Sorta dig it. Need moisturizer. Ah!

Oh no. Emmylou stopped. It was Nick Drake, and then it was Emmylou-- oh! what next? As my landlord creeps outside my window and the light slowly faded to reveal the artifice of interior lighting, designed to amplify, but in need of music. !!! I decided on Kid A. Good choice, oh!!!! good choice.

Dexter is amazing. You should all look into it. The character with whom I identify the most in recent pop culture is a blood splatter forensics expert moonlighting as a serial killer / vigilante. Is that sad? And I think he's hot.

What about Stephen? Where does that sit? He thinks about it, because he always has to think about it. The impossibility of letting other people into the daily routine… because our hero spends so much time thinking about himself that sometimes he doesn’t think about other people. Maybe it’s a power play. He wishes it were easier, but accepts the road that he has, working on the way to peace and harmony. Maybe it’s good that it’s hard. Maybe it’s a challenge for both parties. He looks out the window, and it begins to snow. Hard. Like gales and cycles -- cyclones -- and then it’s all sleet. He pulls open the blinds and three housemates look outside at the blasts. He’s glad he already had his morning cigarette.

Disconnect. Shift. Everybody doing something except for him. How does he fill a day? When he looks back on this year, what will be the importance? The retroactive significance placed therein? Why are there never children playing in our neighborhood? Out of place by the meth addicts, it seems like this life is cold and hard in the late February winter, with those gusts again shifting into sunlight.

Maybe it’s worth something. See, there’s the sun. Drastic, just ready for life to shift again, remarkably just in time for it to set. And… he goes to the kitchen for lunch.

What was he dreaming about? He can’t remember. He tries to recreate, but it’s gone, and of course it only lasted three seconds. Something about his mother’s old house, he remembers waking up in his Austin bedroom (spartan, with fewer mementos of identity, and Indian throws covering the windows so that the light filters through patterns of elephants green and purple, no direct sunlight but forever in the shade of trees outside and inside). In the shade of a room, a high (lofty) bed, condoms on the dresser from when he emptied out his pockets the night before. There’s a whole history of waking up in beds. And the beds have character, and dimension, and influence. That bed was old and stately; this bed is a futon mattress on the floor. He aches for the security of a real bed.

Here he finally makes it out of comfort, bundles up, and goes outside for a morning cigarette. The nicotine and the wind fight for control of his body, and he shifts again. That’s the second moment, when the reality of the world confronts the reality of his body. An hour has passed since the first moment, and now he’s really awake, ready for the day, ready to play catch-up but realizing that life for nocturnal folks is always playing catch-up, and the true sequence of events can only be shared with other nocturnal creatures. Catch up, you dirty fool (hem, hem)! Make it matter! Make it worth it! Find the peace and the happiness in the moments! It first comes with the buzz, the feeling of the body in the cigarette, as he comes back to his room and lays in the bundles of clothes, and cocoons himself for one more moment before the rest of the things must happen.