The Death of Imagination

So here's a couple things I'm trying not to let prey on my mind.

I've been know to say that "I don't do jealousy". For the most part this is true. I often feel envious of other people for various reasons, but I try to feel jealous of them. Jealousy seems to me a pure negatively emotion, one driven by pure possessiveness and that's not how I want to behave in relationships.

So it's especially frustrating to be confronting these feelings with--you guessed it!--BB. The most recent flare-up was occasioned by something that should have been amusing to me: I texted him last night to chat. He mentioned meeting a friend of mine, which mildly surprised me, since neither he nor this friend are much for going on, especially on school nights. He was cagey about how they met so I messaged the friend directly and he confessed that it was a Growlr hookup. (He happened to see my text come through and was like, "Hey, you know Da too?")

What I wanted to say at this point was, "Good for them!" They're both good guys and deserve to have a little fun. Instead, I found I had to avoid any concrete thoughts of the two of them getting busy together in order not to turn green. Compounding this all was the fact that I've felt attracted to the other guy but I hadn't pursued it because he's married and I'd seen no indications that the relationship was open. (Obviously if I were really attracted to him, I would have done more to find out.)

I've been struggling for months with feeling in some way entitled to BB's attention--including his sexual attentions--and it was annoying af to be reminded that, once again, I'm not where I want to be on this. I really don't know where this delusion of mine comes from. I think there might be some racial component, but that can't explain it all. Ironically, before I initially texted him yesterday, I was once again at a place of equanimity regarding him and this just threw that into the garbage. Anyway, I've invited them both to cocktails on Saturday (with their explicit knowledge), so that should be interesting.

The other thing I've been trying not to think about is Nuphy. His children have moved him into assisted living in Naperhell and though he's trying to be positive about it, I know he's not happy about it. He'd been warning me this was coming and now I'm kicking myself for not doing more to spend time with him before it happened.

I've tried not to get too invested int the Presidential race because it's early days and, ultimately, it's not nearly as important as it's made out to be. But I guess I was more in denial about Warren's prospects than I admitted because I definitely have a sad right now. I know her becoming a compromise candidate at a brokered convention was a long shot (and isn't technically off the table) but at least it was something to cling to.

I'm not a fan of Sanders, but at least I can get behind his agenda. Sadly, though, that's becoming increasingly moot. He hasn't turned out the youth vote like he claimed he could and a lot of folks who like what he and Warren stand for are getting spooked and running to Biden. Fucking Biden. He should never have been in this race. He should have had the good sense and humility to stand aside and throw his support behind someone younger and more forward-thinking. But of course expecting good sense and humility from a career politician is a mug's game.

He's not the worst of the mediocre centrist candidates the Dems have run (last night I was struggling to recall, "How did Dukakis happen?") but he's harder to accept because we've been offered glimpses of something better. But just three years of Trump has been enough to get people to abandon their dreams of something better in the desperate hope of keeping things from getting even worse.

Well, it was quite the weekend. From Friday afternoon on, it was a rollercoaster being disappointed and delighted by my interactions with the wider world. This let to a lot of bad sleep (with particularly nasty dreams on Friday and Saturday), which made me more emotionally fragile, heightening the impact of each bad experience.

This nearly led to a crying jag at the grocery store Sunday morning. Whatever internet radio channel they have there played a snippet of an interview with a member of the Cranberries talking about how Dolores Riordan ignored the advice of vocal coaches because "she didn't want to sound like everybody else". Then they played "Linger" and it was touch-and-go whether I would make it out of the store before I began ugly crying.

(When I got home and tried--for the umpteenth time--to nap again, I first bawled my eyes out to "To My Family" to try and get the sadness out of my system.)

I kind of wanted to stay in and focus on self-care but I'd committed to another wine-tasting event in the early afternoon and I was bringing the wine for both me and a recently-unemployed friend. (Might've been better if I had because my choice came in dead last in a field of 18.) That ultimately went well, but it was a harrowing ride getting there.

The event was in Lakeview so I decide to take the El down. After checking the location again, I decided my best route was to get off at Sheridan and either take the 151 or a cab/rideshare the rest of the way. It was a lovely Sunday and the train was pretty full--all seats taken, a number of standees. Among them were two women tucked into a corner of the vestibule having a lively conversation in Chinese.

As I got up and headed toward them, I heard someone bark "English!" Kitty-corner from them, a sour-faced young guy was slouched in the corner with headphones on. He yelled English again and I said to him "They have the right to speak whatever language they want to." He ignored me, so I repeated it. He just muttered something about being in this country and not speaking English. I told him "Shut the fuck up."

That was the wrong thing to say. He turned to me and very belligerently said "What are you going to do about it, punch me? Faggot, bitch! What are you going to do, punch me?" At this point the doors were open, so I pushed past the Cubs fans in front of me and called over my shoulder as I was stepping out, "You're just making all sorts of friends today!" A middle-aged woman standing between the two of us still wore a look of shock and horror at his invective.

I had a moment of doubt after I stepped out. Did I have a responsibility to ensure that he didn't assault anyone else after I'd incited him? I decided to trust in the capabilities of my fellow passengers and put my own safety first (not to mention the fact that I was still very focussed on making it to the gathering in a timely fashion).

I exited to the street and started waiting for the bus, peering over my shoulder at the entrance on the very off chance that he might ride back to the station and look for me. (I've had stuff like that happen before.) Finally, I decided that for my own piece of mind, the best way forward was to call a ride even though it meant arriving about ten minutes early.

I was hoping one of my pals might be waiting outside so I could tell them about the incident and decompress a bit. Instead, I ran right into one of the co-hosts and got ushered into the backyard. Things were in a state of chaos as they rushed to have things ready and I got swept up into helping out.

Eventually things settled down and I did have a chance to talk about what happened. I still felt unsettled about it afterwards so when I got home I posted about it to FB, which netted a lot of supportive comments and some very good advice on bystander intervention. (As I kinda suspected I did everything wrong, addressing myself to the instigator and escalating the conflict instead of showing solidarity with the targets.)

The gathering was very nice, despite our wine's terrible showing. As always, I met some lovely new people, had some nice drinks and nibbles, and got to see the interior of another lovely homosexual apartment. I got home (by bus this time) in a pleasant alcohol haze that fortified me against any run-in with the neighbours (more on that anon) but didn't prevent me from launching into dinner preparation and chores.

I got jumped by Jesus freaks today and I didn't handle it well.

I was on my way to lunch, which is never a good time to try to start a conversation with me. I'd politely refused a flyer and was continuing on my way when the young woman asked me, "Do you have any spirituality at all?" and I felt compelled to answer, "Nope, I'm a total atheist." And that's how I got sucked in.

A couple things about this sort of interaction offend my sensibilities. The first is the overweening arrogance of these 20 year-olds thinking they've got something worth sharing on the subject of belief. I outright said, "I'm 48 years old. What could you possibly tell me about Jesus that I haven't heard before?" Predictably, all they had in response was platitudes about "opening your heart".

The other is the pathetic inability to acknowledge the particular harm this belief system has done. I don't like to lead with the gay thing because it feels like a bit of a cop-out--I think I'd still be an atheist even if I were straight. But the truth is that being told from an early age that there was no room for faggots in Heaven has forever coloured my attitudes toward Christianity.

I made this point indirectly when I told a young man who'd come to the aid of his struggling co-prosyletiser, telling him I'd be fine with people believing whatever they wanted if it didn't invade the political realm. He admitted to me that there was no way of preventing his morality from informing his political beliefs and I don't really think he was able to think through the consequences of that for a queer atheist like me.

When they saw how het up I was getting, they abandoned ship and wished me a good day. This was another sort of harm: You've got to realise when you're confronting others with your Christian beliefs that you may be forcing them to deal with difficult, painful, and even traumatic experiences. To do that and then not be prepared or willing to deal with the consequences is shitty.

I pondered these things while wolfing down my sandwich and eventually decided to go back...and apologise. Regardless of how ill-though-out their approach was, it wasn't ill-intentioned. And regardless of the unfairness of the situation, I wasn't happy with how I'd handled it. But I couldn't locate the faces of the pair who'd talked to me in the crowd; the pamphleteers were different (and took "no" for an answer this time). So no closure for me, just a resolution to think this through so that I'm better prepared next time.

Well, dang. Postillero just texted to cancel our date tonight. He's got a trip in the morning and he's freaking out about not being ready. Which is totally reasonable. But desire drives one to do things which aren't reasonable--like keep an assignation even though you've got to be up early in the morning. And it hurts to not be as desired as you thought.

It also doesn't help that this is only the most recent in a string a such incidents. Last week, knowing I'd have some time off, I messaged Clueless Furball asking for the book I lent him back. I might have given it to him as an excuse for contacting him, but I'd concluded that that gambit had failed and I really did just want my book back. He invited me to come over on Friday afternoon to pick up the book, even though he's working nights and would be trying to sleep, letting drop in passing that he kept it in plain view in his bedroom.

This was ambiguous enough to give me hope--enough hope that I even slipped a couple of rubbers into my bag, just in case. I like to do things like that to make myself feel even stupider when things don't pan out, which in this case they of course didn't. I did get to see him in a Pusheen onesie, which was fucking adorable, as he met me at the door to the foyer to hand over the goods. And then he had to go and kiss me and remind me that kissing him is far more fun than I'd remembered and dammit if I might not be stuck pining for him just a little longer.

And since these things never come singly, at the same time I also made contact with another big boy I'd made out with all the way back in the summer. He was pursuing me aggressively for several weeks, but I was ambivalent. Then Postillero showed up and I felt like I had things covered, so I let him drop. I felt bad about it, though, so I touched base with him again on Wednesday. I thought he might well tell me to go pound sand--as he'd be entirely justified to--but instead he was friendly. Then on Thursday night, he sent me a passive-aggressive "wanna-fuck" and when I begged off got aggressive-aggressive. Ironically, I'd already been planning to propose we get together the next day and I followed through with that, but it was too little too late and I haven't heard from him again.

Then Saturday, the same sort of thing happened again, this time with a boy I met through Liver Ladoo back in June and who'd made himself scarce ever since. He called me as I was leaving Friendsgiving and we agreed to meet up for "dessert" after he finished dinner. That led to a nightcap at Touché which I hoped would lead back to some fun at my place but didn't. I thought about making a pissy reply the next day when he messaged to ask if I'd gone back to the bar after he'd bailed and decide I didn't really care enough about the situation to do that.

And there's more to come. The same evening back in summer when I made out with that one guy, I met a moustachioed daddy just in town for Belly Rub Weekend. This was just after my oral surgery and I wasn't up to much so I told him I'd catch him next time he was visiting Chicago. That's this coming weekend. Some time ago we made plans for some afternoon delight on Saturday and he asked me to send pictures of my junk to get his motor ready. I did, he reciprocated, and then I suddenly stopped getting replies. So do we still have plans or what? I don't know and I only want to know if the answer is "yes" so I haven't contacted him. He'll remember or he won't, right? And I've got cocktails planned for that evening anyway so whatever happens I won't just be sitting at home crying into my beer.

It's exhausting, finding this sweet spot where you stay interested enough that you actually keep creating opportunities (and get into things if they actually do happen) but maintaining enough remove that when they fall through, you shrug and move on. I'm not sure how much patience I have for it at this stage of life, to be honest. Ironically, when I told Ladoo about Postillero, he teased me about doing just fine without going on any apps. Which I thought was true, but I wonder. Are they are a low-cost way of multiplying opportunities (increasing my chances that at least one of these will come to fruition) or just a gateway to more disappointment?

I unwisely let myself get dragged into some family drama yesterday. My stepmom is out of town until tomorrow evening so Sis wanted Dad to come stay with her for two nights. He balked, so she went and stayed with him instead and then asked me to try to convince him to change his mind. That went about as well as any attempt to change Dad's mind has ever gone, viz. he told me I was pissing him off and ended the call. If I'd been a little less tired, maybe I'd've been able to softsoap him more, but I just don't have much patience for his shit. You can't remember what day it is and when your wife is getting back, but you'll know the day and hour when you can no longer take care of yourself without assistance. Okay, sure.

The thing is, I can understand his viewpoint: He would literally rather die than sacrifice an ounce of autonomy before it's absolutely necessary (and perhaps not even then). When Monshu was dying, it was of utmost importance to me that we did everything we could to respect his dignity and that meant leaving all important decisions to him. Of course, the difference there was that he was completely lucid literally until he drew his last breath whereas Dad has dementia. He hates it when we point that out (which is why the call ended how it did), but it complicates everything.

But as stubborn as Dad is, Sis matches him with her bossiness. It really is immovable object meets irresistible force. Both accuse of the other of ruining what time they have left together; both of them have a point. I'm content to let Dad enjoy his last days on his own terms; if that means he dies months before he would have otherwise, so be it. But Sis can't do that. It occurs to me now that when we were kids and we resented her for being his favourite, maybe what was really going on was that he was her favourite and he treated her so favourably because she was willing to go above and beyond what me and my brothers would to please him.

This may be my circus, but they are not my monkeys. Next time there's a clash, they can work it out without me; I don't think the ultimate result will be any different. I already wasn't looking forward to visiting next weekend, so much so that I was about to try putting it off for several more weeks. Instead I just want to get it over with. I promise I'd visit, so I'll visit, but then it's back to my real life here.

This election cycle is another gradual coming-to-terms with the fact that I'm not anywhere near as progressive as I'd like to think myself. Because if I were, I'd be on fire for Cranky Grandpa and his New New Deal. You can call it pragmatism--it's been clear since the beginning that the DNC is only interested in nominating the Den Mother of Wall Street; show me someone hoping for a repeat of 2008's insurgency and I'll show you someone with way more faith in Millennials' ability to find their way into a voting booth than I think is warranted--but I think it goes deeper than that. I think at this point I honestly prefer the moneyed centrist who I know won't try anything crazy to the untested luftmentsh who dares to dream big.

I really have to feel sorry for my Republican friends this time: so many options, so few choices. It looks like the GOP is drifting to Rubio by default, which must come as something of a relief after seeing first Trump's star rise and then Cruz'. I'm still expecting Angry Toupee's narcissism to lead him down the road to an independent run, in which case it's a guaranteed loss for their man and another four years of relentless obstructionism for the rest of us.

The one good thing to be said for the whole circus is that it's distracting us from the total shitshow on the state level. Rauner's turning out to be just the big government small government conservative we feared with the stubbornness to match Madigan in dick-measuring while Little Rome on the Prairie continues to burn. And the less said about our lame duck scumbag of a mayor, the less of a desire I have to drink until I wake up in the White City.

My emotional reactions to the attacks in Paris and everything they've stirred up are complex and messy and probably not something I should be trying to sort through in public. But, fuck it, this is LiveJournal, so who's reading this anyway? Somehow I managed not to hear about what happened until I was seated at the dinner table. I hadn't checked social media before leaving work and had to deal with condo nonsense the moment I arrived home, so it was only once that had settled down and I was sipping soup with the Old Man that he brought the conversation around to the events of the day.

My first reaction was to grab my iPhone and scan the news reports. I immediately felt sick to my stomach. It was a stronger sensation than reading the news from Beirut a day earlier. Then my heart sank as I thought, "This is not what they need." Beirut for me is like an elegant and accomplished person who suffered a terrible tragedy years ago and has been struggling ever since to get back on their feet again. Paris, on the other hand, is someone so powerful and celebrated that they should be well insulated from those problems.

But why should they get off easier than Madrid or New York City? No real reason at all. And it's not like the city is any stranger to political massacres either. The last one of this magnitude wasn't carried out by non-state actors but by the French state. None of this was in the forefront of my mind as the attacks were still in progress; they came bubbling up the next day as I began to sift through the news updates and the shitpile of responses and responses to responses.

Far from consoling me, the "flood of solidarity" only depressed me further. I don't know if I'd noticed before just how problematic expressions of support can be. Their value consists of their authenticity, but the mediation of a prefab platform very easily gives them the appearance of something else. I felt less like I was witnessing an outpouring of genuine emotion and more just the workings of habitus. Explanations of why a particular person felt strongly connected to Paris or the French in general read like a form of social positioning (since naturally these connexions are far more characteristic of some socioeconomic tiers and segments of society than others).

It got worse when Facebook released an app similar to the one propagated around the time of the same-sex marriage decision which allowed one to overlay profile pics with the Tricolore. With a "gesture of support" only two clicks away, my Wall began to fill up with doctored selfies. Could you find a better metaphor for making a distant tragedy all about yourself? A couple days later and I still see a trickle of Friends playing catchup. Which makes me wonder: How will they know when it's time to stop draping themselves in the flag? Which cool kids do they look to for their cue on that?

Naturally it took very little time before people began pointing out the disparity in reactions between Paris and Beirut, or Ankara a month earlier, or any other place east of Alsace that had been bombed or shot-up. This quickly became it's own kind of tedious posturing and attention-policing, whatever valid observations lay behind it. The covertly-politicised calls not to politicise the tragedy blended in with the overt politicisations and I just had to get away from it all.

What is the "proper" response in this situation? I don't know. I don't know that there is one, to be honest. People respond how they're going to respond, in a way you can largely predict based on their class background and their ideological poles. Is that a surprise? Is that cause for handwringing and headshaking? Isn't that just as determined a response as any other?

I may have managed to catch a summer cold. (One day after switching the AC on at home. Coincidence?) I only meant to take off half a day yesterday, but by the time I woke up from my nap it didn't seem worth going in. And since NetFlix had sent me Midnight Express, I thought I might as well spend the afternoon watching it.

Poor monshu got an earful at dinner when he asked me what I thought of it. To summarise what I ranted to him: technically accomplished, politically awful. I guess I'm just automatically supposed to identify with the protagonist because he's a good-looking middle-class White American guy like me? Never mind that he was actually guilty of the crime he was convicted of and only started out with a reduced sentence due to his family's money and pull. Yeah, the conditions inside the prison were terrible. But know what? They're every bit as terrible for the rest of the people in there. But (except for Randy Quaid, whose sad fate is also supposed to pain us though he brings most of it on himself) they're not Americans, so fuck 'em.

Honestly, any bit of sympathy I had for Hayes is extinguished halfway through by his grandstanding speech in the dock where he goes way beyond lamenting the fact that the Turks unaccountably aren't willing to give him special treatment and personally insults every one of them in the most brutal and vicious terms. And the director has the judge look abashed by this? I'd be like, "Fuck your slowly rotting living corpse."

What makes it even worse is the historical perspective that the movie was released just as the USA launched its "War on Drugs" in earnest. We all know how that turned out: sky-high incarceration rates, overcrowded prisons with conditions eventually ruled "cruel and inhumane", the decimation of inner-city communities, etc. It all makes his self-righteous speech about "justice" ring very hollow.

Ironically, those developments helped inform the script: In the featurette, Oliver Stone goes on about how the Turks were just a stand-in for oppressive authority in general. How convenient! Why take on your peers at home when you can demonise a whole country of brown people on the other side of the world who aren't in a position to put up much resistance? And since this is a Stone script, as a bonus we get the consensual homosexual relationship in Hayes' original memoir downgraded to a "thanks but no thanks" and a completely gratuitous (not to mention ludicrous) climactic male-rape-cum-revenge scene.

I'm glad I watched the "making-of", since hearing how Puttnam and Parker had to fight the studio to keep in even the hint of homoromance at least took some of the bad taste out of my mouth. The details of production, from the grueling shoot in Malta to the struggles with casting and the dramatic reversals of Cannes, were interesting to. But mostly, I'm just glad I can cross it off my list--and sad to see the late Paul L. Smith in another thankless part that probably contributed more than the rest to his relentless typecasting.

This is for febrile, who was lamenting on That Other Social Network that he misses the political discussion we used to have on LJ. If you see this, pal, post whatever you like and I'll do my best to respond in kind.

Naturally, the uproar over the disturbances in Baltimore is laying bare the limitations of Fakepuck for informed discourse in a particularly heinous. I'm expecting at least one deFriending (no big loss) despite doing my best not to get too deeply into it with anybody. But it's hard to hold my tongue when others are doing so much sanctimonious clucking about a few incidents of looting. (Almost solely from light-skinned people of privilege who have never had to live anywhere as shitty as West Baltimore, natch.) 'Cause that's really the main problem here, not--for instance--the fact that, just since 2011, eleven people have died in police custody in Baltimore and the force have been forced to pay out sums totaling over $5.7 million to settle cases of alleged undue use of force.

And then of course there's Gray's rap sheet, which has been circulating around the conservative blogosphere with such alacrity you'd think it'd just been leaked rather than being something which was widely reported in the dirty liberal media two weeks ago. But that's the most important thing to establish at this juncture: He Got What Was Coming. 33 counts in 8 years, only two violent, and every one of them a misdemeanour. Fully two-thirds are drug offences: possession, possession with intent to distribute, or distribution. Almost all the rest (e.g. violation of probation, lying to a cop, second-degree escape) are related to going through the wringer of the criminal justice system. His last arrest was for possession of a switchblade, which they had to run him down, tackle him (injuring him severely in the process), and search him to find. In other words, he's just the kind of low-level victim of the War On Drugs libertarians would leap to defend--if he were White. (But this isn't about race, oh no, it's about ethics in games journalism or something.)

You know how every time anyone--but especially a Muslim--goes on air to try to explain the reasons why it might be that young Muslims are so fed up with the world that some of them decide to blow themselves up or take hostages or whatever, they always have to preface their remarks with a ritualistic denial of support for terrorism? I think we all agree this is bullshit, but since the expectation doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I'd like to propose an equivalent for any time White people try to talk about the police. We should all be expected to say upfront that police brutality and extrajudicial murder are a Bad Things and that everyone in blue should really try the durnedest to stop doing them. Because I keep seeing people jump right into slamming the victim and condemning the outcry and it makes me honestly wonder if they don't see this as a problem the way the rest of us do.