Fags around the world

Well, it was only a matter of time before I started getting lj-inspired dreams. Last night, I dreamt I was hanging around a bunch of dopey high-school kids. One of them threatened to "fag-punch" another, so I turned to him and said, "How does a fag punch?" He showed me, bending his wrist and ineffectually bumping my upper arm. "Okay, what's a real punch look like?" He slugged me in the arm. I "practiced" to make sure I had the distinction down, alternately "fag-punching" and slugging him in the shoulder. Then I said, "Thanks for the demonstration, because, you see, I'm a faggot and it's important that I know how to punch appropriately." He earnestly grabbed my right hand, as if he was going to shake it, and said, "I was just kidding." Without smiling, I replied, "So was I." Then I said, "You can let go of my hand now. I've already got a boyfriend."

I'm sure this visualisation exercise will serve me well some day.

The other night, after dining with welcomerain and spookyfruit again, I rode the bus back to my place and started reading a novel I'd picked up before Witch Hunt on Saturday. There was a brief (one-page) dream sequence which I read with interest. Then I asked myself, why is it that everyone complains about how boring it is to read an account of a living person's dream, but they feel differently about fictionalised ones? Is it because we expect the author has woven the dream into the narrative so that paying attention to it will actually help us understand the action further along whereas we have no such expectations with a real dream? But we know that real dreams aren't simply effluvia, that they can tell us something about a person's hopes, fears, anxieties, etc. Why should we find these more interesting for a fictional person than a real one?

I suppose that question opens a massive can about why we read fiction in the first place. I'm not sure to what degree fictional people are more interesting than real ones and to what degree it's simply safer and more convenient to read self-contained stories with a strong narrative flow than to get involved with a real person and try to comprehend the vagaries of their way of living.

But that wasn't all I had to ponder that night. ("I do my best thinking on the bus.") We returned to the Peruvian place and, once again, spookfruit left us in the dust by completely demolishing his lomo saltado. "You guys are wimps!" he said. He turned to el buen padre Augusto and repeated it. "Qué significa wimps?" he asked us. We were stuck. "Maricones?" suggested welcomerain. And I felt a little shiver.

Why? A maricón is a fag. But whereas I feel I've successfully reclaimed "fag", maricón is not my word. I don't understand the nuances of its usage, I don't know how people will react when I say, "Sí, soy maricón. Entonces...?" I'm much more confident in German. A native speaker I knew in college said he wasn't comfortable with the word schwul, because to him it had the baggage of "queer" or "fag". But I simply learned it as the German equivalent of "gay" and never think twice about it. (Interestingly, Homo is a more neutral term in German, but I like it less since "homo" is an insult in English.) Still, I wouldn't shrink from using a more negative term, like warmer Bruder or Schuchtel, since I know more-or-less what these mean and how a native speaker will react to them.

As it was, Augusto was rather put off by the word, but bemused, as if he wondered if we really knew what we were saying about ourselves. He taught us to say cobardes instead--"Con comida--cobardes." ["When talking about food, 'cowards'."] So my miniscule vocabulary has once again been expanded an infinitesimal amount. (I've picked up Borges again in the hopes of stretching it still further--or, more realistically, not losing more than I already have.) Perhaps if we keep eating there, we'll eventually be able to call ourselves 'tards, dweebs, fuckos, gaywads, tools, buttlicks, and geeks with equal facility in Spanish and English.

The burden of being Linguo-Boy

So that novel I just started reading is called Lives of the Monster Dogs. It purports to tell the history of a group of fabulously wealthy, talking, intelligent, bipedial dogs with prosthetic hands and the culture of late-nineteenth century Prussian gentry who take up residence in New York in 2009. And what about that is giving me trouble? The fact that (a) a supposedly Swiss servant is named "Fritzl", which is a patently Austrian name and (b) a female human character is named "Prinzi", which is a traditional name for a male animal (much like "Prince" in English). Typical. The whole thing is a feverish fantasy and what threatens my suspension of disbelief are a couple of poorly-chosen German names.

sigh