Sunday, November 21, 2004

In 2008

An openly gay man will be elected president, because:
a) he will run largely under the radar screen, on the net

b) he will get the youth, urban and swiftly growing minority vote

c) he will get the women vote because he won't be pushing a moral agenda that is prohibitive

d) the media will come up with names of people he has had sex with. It will be a long list. He will beam while proudly admitting to having had sex with them all (even the ones he can't quite recall)

e) the Libertarians will toss in with him just before the election, giving him the support of guys like Clint Eastwood and Kurt Russell

f) The two party system, which is as close to death as the electoral college, will once again produce two candidates who will be distasteful to most of America. Americans will look about for a hero and will sense something in the voice of the gay candidate: that long-lost sound of sincerety.

g) Other countries (need I name them?) will toss in with the gay candidate, as will Oprah

(h) It will help if he has military and government experience)

i) Barbra Streisand will get to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom again.

Early in his presidency, he will be assassinated, and will become instantly heroic in memoriam. Gay issues will reach resolution. He will have been the catalyst.

I know that all this sounds Messianic, but that is rather what is born of oppression.
Who's it going to be? I've been scanning the horizon for sight of him. He hasn't yet appeared. He's out there somewhere maybe just beginning to sense his responsibility and destiny.

Friday, November 12, 2004

Skin Flint

(As I said in askisadora.com)

Sean,
There are gradations to which you must pay attention if you are to get this:

a) heterosexual men do not moisturize, unless they are farmers who use a product called Bag Balm. It was designed for a cow's utter and comes in a nifty tin with some green and rose campion colored graphics. It is vile smelling, but efficient.

b) Suburban metrosexual men of the lowest rank will moisturize but only after they are married, have begun to see wrinkles, and reaching first into their wives' side of the medicine cabinet, uncork potions that don't smell butch. The more persistent of this group will go to the CVS or to Costco, and stock up on Lubriderm or a similar generic.

c) The next rank of metrosexuals are single men who discover that they are better looking than their buddies (mostly because girls tell them this, but sometimes because they are narcissies). They nurture a fascination with their own looks that is free of the boundaries set by heterosexual men.

There are two subsets of this group:
1) black and hispanic men who have been using nail polish for decades
2) television weather forecasters (also known as meteorosexuals)

d) the highest rank of metrosexuals are those men who have extended the investments made by their ego to encompass their face and body. Not only do they have to have the best car, condo, job and babe, but they have to have the best skin, hair, muscles and suits. These are the guys who study grooming products and sometimes consult with their gay friends. These are also the guys who stand on the precarious edge of actually having sex with other men. Afterall, their preoccupation with the whole "men" thing can't help but lead them to appreciation of some men as sex objects.

e) And finally, Sean, there are the homosexuals who have been moisturizing since kindergarten. (No joke, I begged my Aunt Claire to let me use her Noxema, and I knew, even at the age of five, that this was something best kept between her and me.)

Homosexuals don't need to shop in the "Men's Grooming" section for their products. We head straight to the L'Oreal Plenitude Revitalift with brazen assurance (when the jar is empty, the labels are easily removed and you can refill them with pesto for freezing and gifting through the winter.)

The way-high level of this group is the New York homosexual who gets advance notice that Kiehl's is opening a new store on the Upper West Side. He's there right away, and because he drops a hundred bucks on 1.7 ounces of cryste marine cream, and a small jar of multi-purpose facial formula (and because he compliments the salesgirl on her thick mahogany mane), he walks out with enough sample packets to furnish his gym bag for months.

The very highest level of homosexual is inhabited by only one man: me. I am the person who, while visiting the island of Montserrat (two years before it blew up) brought a dozen zip lock bags with me and filled them with various colored muds from the simmering volcano. This made for some very heavy luggage which I forced my very annoyed partner to share. Getting through customs was hilarious. When we got home, I ruined my Cuisinart food processor by trying to mix the mud with some almond paste and eucalyptus oil. Within a few weeks, the baggies of mud hardened into bricks. I set them out as the threshold of the herb garden we put in that year. They were soon covered with glorious lichen and moss. And yes, while putting in that garden, the only thing that replenished my hands was a good dollop of bag balm.

And that, Sean, should answer your question.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

We are a what?!

Someone on the television just reminded us that we are afterall a "faith-based nation". He offered this as explanation for the election of Bush to a second term. Never before has this concept been clear to me. I now see that this nation is viewed by most of its citizens as a club of God-fearers. This is not at all the collection of tolerant, freedom-loving and courageous folks who, despising oppression and able to endorse with conviction the welcoming inscription of the statue of liberty, set up this country as a refuge. Don't get me wrong. I am well aware of the enormity of conservative America, but I thought a larger portion of that mass was tempered by compassion for the rest of us. I was wrong.

We are nolonger about inclusion. We are now about the enforcement of someone's boundaries for right and wrong.

The idea that a President should give us comfort by steering a moral course for us is so foreign to me that I wonder how I could have actually grown up amidst these people.

I thought the President was supposed to keep us safe (even while we are performing sex acts he may not agree with).

If you say "faith-based nation" three times fast, you end up saying "faith-bashed nation".

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Just like in nature,


blue balls of Bloomfield, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

Just like in nature, one of these balls is slightly larger than the other.
But really, what were they thinking?

a) "Look Honey, the shiny things are on sale. Let's get two."
b) "Might as well put it out there with the one she gave us last Christmas".
c) "Well, we figured we had two windows..."
d) "That'll show those Hendersons a thing or two."


Feel free: