treat.

“unknownbluesguy”

. . . and soon to be revered.

“The [gay] View”

It’s been exactly thirty years since the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the women on ABC’s The View, still actively ponder the “age-old”, o-so-mundane question, is being gay a choice? Who would choose such a thing? Such rejection? Such misery? Such unjust persecution? Such unfair, second-class treatment? Such lack of basic, equal human rights/dignity?

No one. No one chooses to be less than equal. Whether one identifies as a woman, as black, as Jewish, as republican, as gay, as straight white male.

I have as much lived experience of not being “straight” as I do of being “gay”. I “choose” the latter.

I would trust the question of “choice”, if self-identified heterosexuals first applied it to themselves. What makes me heterosexual? When did I first realize I was “straight”? God, why am I like this? What’s wrong with me?!

As the t-shirt reads, “Heterosexuality isn’t normal. It’s just common.”

I’m sure I became “boycrazy” in my life around the same time Sherrie did in hers. And just like her, I didn’t know/imagine anything else. I just had a thing for boys. “He’s so fine”, right Sherrie? (Can this woman discuss anything other than how big her breasts are?) And Philadelphia brothers? Especially damn fine.

And there’s no competition. He’s either into you or into me, or maybe a little of both, on any given day. Imagine “gender-fluid”. Today’s teenagers do. I’m not the least bit curious about women’s bits, and I can redily imagine Whoopi in a strap-on. “Let’s go harness shopping, girl!”

The greatest thing about the marriage laws now in Canada is that you can no longer assume that it means “boy weds girl”. Boy can also declare his love for boy. Girl for girl. Man for woman. Man for man. Woman for woman. Love is love. The choice of beloved is equal. I know this disturbs a number of straight people who think their love is greater, somehow more sacred. More right. But I know you know that love is love whether you have a penis or a vagina or a mouth or an anus; we all have a heart. A capacity for love. And desire. And a seemingly innate will for joy and happiness.

And, against all odds, I’ll choose to be as gay as I am. Like many of the women, and some men, on The View, I’m a penis-lover. Now, if I chose or tried to be “straight”, there would be a real problem. Right, Larry?

Nobody Cares Who Wins

Nobody cares who wins wars.
They care at the moment:
they like the parades, the cheering;
but after that, winning diminishes.
A silver cup on the mantle
engraved with some year or other;
a hoard of buttons cut from corpses
as souvenirs; a shameful thing
you did in white-hot anger shoved
back out of sight.
Bad dreams, a bit of loot.
There’s not much to say about it.

That was a fine time, you think.
I’ve never felt more alive.
Nonetheless, victory puzzles you.
Some days you forget where you’ve put it,
though younger men make speeches about it
as if they had been there too.

Of course it’s better to win
than not. Who wouldn’t prefer it?

Losing, though. That’s different.
Defeat grows like a mutant vegetable,
swelling with the unsaid.
It’s always with you, spreading underground,
feeding on what’s gone missing:
your son, your sister, your father’s house,
the life you should have had.
it’s never in the past, defeat.
It soaks into the present,
it stains even the morning sun
the colour of burnt earth.

At last it breaks the surface.
It bursts. It bursts into song.
Long songs, you understand.
They go on and on.

MARGARET ATWOOD, The Door

What’s A Girl To Do?

Current pleasures:

Dean & Britta, Back Numbers
Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out Of This Country
Devendra Banhart, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
The Field, From Here We Go Sublime
Joel Krivy, The Radiation Sessions
Colleen, Les Ondes Silencieuses
Mark Almond, Stardom Road
Akron/Family, Love Is Simple
Sandro Perri, Tiny Mirrors
Bat for Lashes, Fur & Gold

loveloveloveloveLOVE this song/vid:

Jump

A pretty boy
in his underwear.

A pretty boy
in his underwear.

If there’s a better reason
to jump for joy
who cares?

Underwear

  
from THE MAGNETIC FIELDS,  69 Love Songs

Finally.

“9/11 Is Over”.