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Bisexuality, COBRA, coffee, Eccentricity, Essay, Everybody looks better than I do in heels and I can't stand it, Faggot, Familial exile, G.I. Joe, Gay, God...I am really Gay, history, Homophobia, Homosexual seduction, Homosexuality, I Love Penis...Mug, Lipstick, Merle Miller, On Being Different, On Being Diufferent: What it Means to Be a Homosexual, Sexual identity, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, SuperGay is just like Gay but twice as Fabulous, The "Fairy", What it Means to Be a Homosexual, Writing
It’s a god-awful small affair, to the girl with the Mousy hair
-Life on Mars, David Bowie
The only thing I wouldn’t trust myself around is someone else’s coffee, not because I have a fear that I would attempt to “seduce” the cup into becoming a homosexual, but just because I have a very real coffee addiction and I would almost certainly drain the entire glass in one sitting. I do not believe that I have a problem, as coffee addiction demonstrates only that I am a cool and interesting person, and the tragedy of existence is because I’m a queer man some people wouldn’t even bother to learn this fact about me before telling me to go to hell.
On one side note I’m not sure how one would “seduce” a cup of coffee into becoming gay. What would that look like? Would the coffee turn into a rainbow? How would it demonstrate its affection for members of its own sex? And would it look better in jeans than me. These are serious questions and I need answers damn it.
But another concern rises, which is that because I am gay, there are some that would be afraid to leave me around their children. This is not an unfounded accusation as this
entire essay will focus on Merle Miller’s canonical essay On Being Different: What it Means to be a Homosexual, but I should set up the intro first. You see working in my job I’m usually stationed either in the Local History Room where I serve a largely adult (typically senior citizen clientele) community, but when I work at the information desk at least a quarter, if not half, of the patrons needing help are children. They want to know about the 3D printer, they want to know if we have Dog Man or Percy Jackson, they want to compliment my rainbow glasses (more on this later), or else they want headphones for the kid’s computers. These little interactions are often one of my favorite parts of my job and despite my awkwardness around kids I try to be helpful and informative. They don’t know that I’m pansexual, that I find men, women, and everyone in-between as sexually attractive; it’s just not even on their radar. And in this interaction is just doesn’t come up because there’s no reason for it. There is however, some concern on my part, that if any parents knew about my sexuality they may be concerned that I was attempting to infect their children with the “gay agenda.”
The “gay agenda” of course, was a subplot of COBRA in the G.I. Joe cartoons to sway children to become members of the terrorist organization. I can prove this by the fact that Cobra Commander spoke in a really sharp lisp and wore boots that accentuated his butt. Only gay men, you see, have lisps and wear nice boots.
My regular contester might interject here and say that my concern is unfounded. We’re living in an information age where acceptance of homosexuality is better than it’s ever been. Queer people can get married, sign up for the same legal benefits as straight couples, they can even adopt children. In this kind of age there should be no fear for any queer person to be afraid of being out and open.
To this I can only sigh and respond that, yes, no queer person should be afraid, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t. 
Yes there have been incredible advancements over the last few decades for queer people, and because of these advancements I know and trust that will not be terminated from my job, exiled socially by my friends and loved ones, and will not be imprisoned in mental facilities or actual jails for being gay, but at the same time I find myself often in a territory that, while it is not openly hostile, still bears the mentality that there are some things that should not be said outloud. Being a queer man in East Texas is often akin to being Boo Radley: 
there’s nothing specifically wrong with you, but most people would just prefer that you stay out of sight. The fear is, as I began, that you will somehow “seduce” the next generation into being gay and that returns to me Merle Miller’s powerful essay.
One of the most pernicious charges against homosexuals is that the “lifestyle” is something that is seduced into children’s mind. The image is that of a homosexual hypnotist luring children into the sexuality the way the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang lured the children out with twinkle tarts and lollipops. This isn’t a conversation that has died away much in the time since Merle’s essay, but it should be noted how the charge was leveled towards gay people, even by the people who were supposed to be friends. In quite possibly the most heart-rending passage in the essay Merle describes two instances of this perception:
The fear of it simply will not go away, though. A man who was once a friend, maybe my best friend, the survivor of five marriages, the father of nine, not so long ago told me that his eldest son was coming to my house on Saturday: “Now please try not to make a pass at him.”
He laughed. I guess he meant it as a joke; I didn’t ask.
And a man I’ve known, been acquainted with, et’s say, for twenty-five years, called from the city on a Friday afternoon before getting on the train to come up to my place for the weekend. He said, “I’ve always leveled with you, Merle, and I’m going to now. I’ve changed me mind about bringing ———[his sixteen year old son]. I’m sure you understand.”
“I said that no, I didn’t understand. Perhaps he could explain it to me.
“He said, “———is only an impressionable kid, and while I’ve known you and know you wouldn’t, but suppose you had some friends in, and…”
I suggested that he not come for the weekend. I have never molested a child my whole life through, never seduced anybody, assuming that word has meaning, and, so far as I know, neither have any of my homosexual friends. Certainly not in my living room or bedroom. Moreover, I have known quite a few homosexuals, and I have listened to a great many accounts of how they got that way or think they got that way. I have never heard anybody say that he(or she) got to be homosexual because of seduction. (19-20)
This passage is heartbreaking, and I know I should be shocked and appalled after reading it but, people don’t really change all that much. I often hear friends mystified about the current political and social landscape being shocking for the fact that repugnant statements that were spoken in the sixties and seventies seem to be repeating. And while I am disgusted by such statements, sentiments, and expressions, I can only shake my head and remember what I said before: people don’t really change. Miller’s passage here is one that I heard spoken in some varieties and fashions growing up, either by adults or fellow classmates, and reading as much history as I do I’m aware of the fact that being a queer man or woman often meant that one had to suffer.
The argument that homosexuality is an infecting vice that aims at children is as old as humanity itself, and while the treatment of queer people in society is one of constant fluctuation (sometimes we’re in fashion other times we’re in the closet planning out next fashion statement) Miller offers a sentiment that feels terribly accurate:
A fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room. (19).
I’ve been called a faggot before, never to my face fortunately, and as I have embraced my sexuality more and more I’ve felt a greater and greater target attached to my back. Then again I wear rainbow glasses to work so I suppose that doesn’t help. Living in East Texas, and in fact, living in a town that has been listed as one of the worst places in Texas to be Queer, there is always this concern that my sexuality will be perceived as a threat. Working in a public library, I encounter a fair number of children approaching the desk looking for a copy of Dog Man, Drama, Dork Diaries, or whatever Rick Riordan has published this week. This means talking with kids, interacting with them, and sometimes walking with them to the shelves to find the books. It’s impossible for people to know that I’m gay without announcing it, but at the same time all it would really take is one person to assume and make a complaint.
And speaking honestly and plainly, I live in a constant fear that my sexuality could cost me my job. And this fear causes me to sit on my sexuality a lot, altering aspects of my behavior I normally wouldn’t alter. The tone of my voice, the way I walk, or even just 
having a conversation with a coworker when a patron is nearby. This in turn just fuels an life-long established internalized homophobia and I feel like, well, a pathetic old closet-case queen.
This honesty isn’t just for the sake of creating pity, it’s keeping in line with something Miller writers about early in his essay:
I have always thought that one of the obligations of a writer is to expose as much of himself as possible, to be as open and honest as he can manage—among other reasons so that his readers can see in what he writes a reflection of themselves, weaknesses and strengths, courage, and cowardice, good and evil. Isn’t that one of the reasons writing is perhaps the most painful of the arts? (36).
These essays aren’t always easy to write, mostly because I check my stats daily and I 
know very few people read anything other than my early work about Finding Nemo or culture’s obsessions with black penises. But I live by the notion that I’m a writer and that real writing is about honesty. I try to always be honest with my reader in these essays and after finishing On Being Different I honestly felt like I was often reading many of my own thoughts.
I feel different, a lot of the time. And just as often I find myself trying to conform and “sell” myself off as just another guy, or just another public servant, or just another East Texan instead of the ridiculous East Texas Queen that I am. My life feels more and more like a battle between cowardice and ambition, conformity and security, virtue and lies. And while I struggle with this conflict, I feel often that I’m missing the chances to simply be. Even just saying, or writing really, that I’m a ridiculous queen and a silly fag feels like bold efforts rather than just enjoyable self-declarations.
Being different, isn’t enjoyable. Or at least it’s not enjoyable the way it was when I was a kid.
Miller offers one more passage that, while it seems a dramatic turn feel accurate for everything this essay has been about. And if nothing else it’s an excuse to return to the library. Miller elaborates on his youth and the introduction of sexuality:
Growing up in Marshaltown, I was allowed to take as many books as I wanted from the local library, and I always wanted as many as I could carry, eight of ten at a time. I read about sensitive boys, odd boys, boys who were lonely and misunderstood, boys who really didn’t care at all that much for baseball, boys who were teased by their classmates, books about all of these, but for years nobody in any of the books I read was ever tortured by the strange fantasies that tore at me every time, […]
And in none of the books I read did anybody feel any compulsion, and compulsion it surely was, to spend so many hours, almost as many as I spent at the library, in or near the Minneapolis & St. Louis railroad station, where odd, frightening things
were written on the walls of the men’s room. And where in those days, there were always boys in their teens and early twenties who were on their way to and from somewhere in fright cars. Boys who were hungry and jobless and who for a very small amount of money, and sometimes none at all, were available for sex; almost always they were. They needed the money, and they needed someone to recognize them, to actually see them. (15).
I’ve spent a lifetime wanting to be different, wanting to be unique, and wanting to be my own person, yet constantly struggling against larger systems, organizations, or collected 
sentiments. Whether it was the oppressive environment of attending the most expensive private school in my hometown, whether it was being bullied for being effeminate, whether it was laughed at for being strange, and whether it’s just the perception that I’m seen as some kind of freak by certain members of the community being different feels very much like being invisible. Or, perhaps more clearly, it feels often like people would prefer I was invisible.
These are perceptions, but these are honest perceptions about my sense of self and so Miller’s On Being Different felt painfully relevant almost 47 years after it was originally published.
Miller’s essay is very much of its time, and several critics have observed that the work is not as significant to our contemporary period. In an age where gay people can get married, adopt children, purchase property together, enjoy the same kind of insurance benefits as straight couples, and even get a third of the air of air time on Modern Family it would seem that the morose reality of the past would be “over and done with.” The problem with this perception however is that it’s not a universal reality, and even though this is probably one of the best times be a queer person, there are still a great many of us who are struggling both internally as well as externally.
Being different, and being labelled unwillingly as different is a drag because it promises you a lifetime of being an outsider. And even if one embraces this term, this kind of isolation can inspire paranoia, depression, and sometimes self-loathing. And for my own part I don’t have an answer to this. As I said before I live with a fear that at any time someone could take offense to my existence and raise a stink, and my life could be over.
I don’t want to seduce anybody into becoming gay, I would only ever want them to be themselves and be ready to be themselves whenever they were ready. It took me 26 years to find myself and I’m still figuring things out.
My fears aren’t going to dissipate or disappear anytime soon, but rather than simply dwell on these negatives I try try try to stay positive, to stay ridiculous, to try on new lipsticks, and to try and figure out how a cup of coffee could be gay. Like seriously would little arms and legs pop out of the mug? And if they did what kind of shoes would they wear?
I can only hope that it wouldn’t look good in pumps because damn it, everybody looks better in pumps than I do, and it’s not fair.
*Writer’s Note*
All quotes cited from On Being Different were quoted from the paperback Penguin Classics Edition.
**Writer’s Note**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2gbcVaZ448
***Writer’s Note***
So I have come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to “seduce” a cup of coffee into becoming gay…HOWEVER, I have found what is, to my mind, the gayest and most accurate coffee mug for myself that I have ever found. My wife agrees, as when I showed it to her she simply went “Ha, gay.” Which is usually her way of saying I love you dear. Whatever the case I have a mug to buy.
marathon probably wasn’t what she needed) but was in fact a member of the graphic novel book club I’m a part of.
who’s supposed to be dead but who turns out to actually be alive or a clone or some shit), Saga is drama about family centered in race, specifically race mixing.
discomfort, but it should be noted that pregnant women also tend to poop because, well, shit’s happening.
Zero Comics, and because of this prestige position he gets to decide which books are read in the group.
species and peoples, all of whom are impacted by the war between the two races.
of physiology, anatomy, or whether you’re a pothead actress made out of moss, people are people, and their qualities are what ultimately define them.
about when I’m shoveling my eggs, donuts, and tea down my throat as I get ready for work.
Noah’s memoir Born a Crime doesn’t just mirror Saga, it could almost be its own spin-off.
all of these concepts are realities that are still plaguing society.
story which, as Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime demonstrates, is an ongoing narrative.
and of course my ultikilt.
so I’m a little fretful to use that term on myself because, looking at the path my sexuality has taken, I’m not really sure I can use that term for myself.
kids have fun, the moment had a real sense of purpose and joy.
consult necromancy just to bring me back and kick my ass.
iscovered several passages of the book dealt with the recent suicide of his sister Tiffany.
sister’s life:
possession are ones my wife has brought home after one of her endless shopping trips and these tend to usually be from Hobby Lobby.
appeared before in Albert Camus’s book The Myth of Sisyphus. 
our mutual associations and our working together, and I suppose Gay Movie Night.
they come, and he couldn’t have been more excited.
was 26 I envy this next generation of young queer people who hopefully, if I make my life something that matters, won’t be afraid to come out and live their sexuality as they so chose.
because when I think of boobs I think of pornography. I think of beer commercials. I think of skinny women with their boobs packed into bras which are designed to press the flesh and blood of their bodies up close to the base of their chin so that we can see that flesh flex and ripple and flex while the women smile and entice.
have all written about the sexualization, and in many cases over-sexualization, of human breasts. It’s important to note that these theorists have almost entirely centered their attention on the female breast because that tends to be where this sexualization takes place.
performances and music videos. This includes, but is not limited to the following: whipped cream dispensers, candy, muffins, cupcakes, shells, pockets, a banana, film reels and even Elmo’s face. This last was purposefully salacious because she had recently appeared on Sesame Street performing her song Holt/Cold with Elmo and many mothers of children who viewed the program complained that her outfit was “unnecessarily sexual,” specifically, her boobs were bouncing around through the whole thing.
Perry’s body has to do with the big bouncing mountains of writing and blogging material on her chest: her boobs.
you’re going to do in college level English classes, apparently. Discuss how boobs feel like peaches, or jelly, or pillows, or sponges. Why can’t men write about a woman’s breast without using something else to describe them? Why do boobs have to be anything apart from boobs?
woman’s body: soft and alien. There isn’t any real frame of reference because there’s nothing a man can feel on himself that compares to a woman’s breast, and because fruits tend to be soft and “fleshy” and sweet it stands to reason that they’re the first thing a man is likely to think about when he’s trying to give his reader an erection.
to quote the great French philosopher Michel Foucault, pretty fuckin bummed in myself. Still there are a few books about women in my library, more than a few, and between my considerations of Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj (she’s next you see) I found a few books that deal with women and their anatomy.
have formulated about breasts, and while I haven’t read the book in it’s entirety I’ll open it from time to time and read a passage, and this one struck me at this reading:
videos I’ve watched.
being displayed or encouraged. Her breasts are not earthy or biological, they are part of some sterile sexual performance which is at the heart of her entire public persona. Sex is not about procreation it’s about fun, and her boobs are just part of the fun. Great big
Vivian’s bed despite her protests. Put aside the fact the scene would flop appallingly if Cay were a man, Cay’s refusal eventually succeeds and the pair of them finally making love and thus providing a sexual denouement to the tension which has been building during the entire film. The first time I watched this scene however was not when I was twelve and supremely and erotically fixated upon “lesbian” sexuality (and I quote that because “lesbian” porn exists and it definitely wasn’t made for lesbians, or at least not the ones I know, they clip their fingernails). It was Gay Movie Night and I was hanging out with a group of friends all of whom were queer women.
book, and only one has an entire quote, it reads as follows:
outward from her physical form was not just for show, she was actually pregnant. This was not the first time Amanda Palmer “revealed” her breasts to the public. The internet abounds with pictures of her either in concert, in videos, or at public events periodically bare chested and simply not giving a fuck. As she is want to do. Even beside me while I write is a copy of her book The Art of Asking, which 
has her naked and covering her breasts with her arms while holding a flower.
chest where the babe is suckling gently. The cover, and the book itself, garnered widespread condemnation by certain comic book fans who objected that a “family book” had such advanced material. The only problem with this criticism is that Saga was never a “family” book as it contains numerous scenes of violence and sexuality, however the initial charge of corruption due to breastfeeding remains the best example of the final separation between Breasts and Boobs.
It’s been a strange sort of year, one that has come with numerous changes and developments, but the most recent one was finishing yet another in a long line of 1000 page books, however my most recent challenge was unique because it was not a novel but in fact it was a history book. Since I was a child my father has owned a dense tome wrapped in a black dust jacket marked with a swastika. I knew a fair amount about Nazis because my father would often tell me stories of men like Patton and Ike Eisenhower who defeated these evil monsters that were almost on par with orcs from The Lord of the Rings. I could never understand then why my dad had a book with their logo on the front. This was largely because I didn’t take the time to read the cover. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer is an incredible book, and while I would hope one day to write about it’s significance to World War II history discourse, I began to observe, somewhere in the three hundred pages of Russian-German diplomacy, that I really, really, desperately wanted to read Moby Dick. Again.
refers to as “Jammer Moments.” I’ve yet to contact Oxford English Dictionary because the term has yet to develop a significant etymology and I also don’t have the merchandizing rights yet. “That’s so Jammer” will look great on t-shirts, and I intend to make a killing.
That’s for later. Ishmael is caught by a near-constant desire to travel specifically to go whaling on the ocean for it provides his spirit an unknown, or indescribable satisfaction. The fact that he surrounded by men is unspoken, but I hope my reader will agree, it’s clearly all about the dick, whale.
the sentence he has admitted that he’s not overly picky about the sort of man who shares his bed. But perhaps what’s worst, or best of all, I’m not sure which at this point, Ishmael states outright that he’s willing to shack up with any guy if it means being warm and dry. I mean I’m as much of a slut as the next guy, but show at least a little deference in selection of sexual partners Ishmael. There are some Creeps out there, and you always find out far far too late in the game. That orthodox priest was not happy when I said I had an early meeting.
storm. Well my reader has some very intriguing ideas concerning Ishmael’s sex-life, however I’m afraid I must continue to the juicy parts.
slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty-pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! (38).
to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. (73).
disservice to literary analysis. What is being described is not an openly homosexual relationship. Melville is merely using words like “honeymoon” to show a deepening friendship that is developing between Ishmael and Queequeg. They would also like to remind me that strong homosocial bonds were common between men of this time because it was just not socially acceptable to share emotions between people of different genders. Men and women kept their personal selves to themselves, and preferred to share such intimately with members of their own sex. They would also like to tell me that I’m obviously trying to write contemporary homosexuality onto these characters which is unfair because the homosexuality of today’s society is an entirely different animal than homoeroticism that existed in the past.
towards a sexual dynamic with men. I guess then I should give my reader one last chance to argue with my interpretation of these early passages of Moby Dick.
two men, using the language of domestic partnership to allow the reader to see how much Queequeg becomes the most important person in Ishmael’s life. The language of Melville shows that men in the past formed strong homosocial bonds between other men and found some kind of emotional solace in it. So strong were these bonds that often times men found, in other men, more emotional and physical comfort in the arms and bodies and company of other men than they might have had with women. And some men, in these relationships, might have found something akin to a romantic partner who gave them a stability and foundation of love that they could then build a life on that might, as time went on, save them from any and all kind of emotional problems.
language of cinema to imply perversion without ever outright showing it.
the center of the everything. The viewer first sees Lolita from the back, sunbathing and wearing nothing but a large feathery hat, dark sunglasses, and a pink bikini (the film is black and white but some color photographs exist revealing the outfits actual color). The shot shifts from behind Lolita to Humbert’s shocked and obviously aroused expression before going back to Lolita and from there Kubrick works his ability as a director. Charlotte Haze describes the garden while the viewer is left to “gaze” upon Lolita. Lolita herself looks up from her book, stares at the viewer, slowly removes her sunglasses, and offers up a look that hints at curiosity and mild erotic interest, meanwhile she never steps out of her pose. The scene lingers and the viewer becomes aware that they are not looking at a young girl who is beginning to, if I can 
borrow the botanical term, “blossom” into womanhood. In fact they are looking at Humbert’s desire, for the lingering shot and her entire suggested sexuality is entirely Humbert’s imagining. And so the so the viewer is invited to participate in Humbert’s erotic fascination with Lolita, looking at her body and wondering to themselves if this gaze that is centered on her isn’t just implied, but something that is actually erotic.
It’s just crush. As I age however, I notice more and more that whatever initial erotic feelings I had at this image feels creepier and creepier. It’s now at a point where I can remember being young and attracted to girls that age, but I refuse to acknowledge any kind of erotic fascination with the image. That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying that when I watched Lolita again I felt absolutely repulsed at the erotic suggestion.
The reader actually gets a moment when Humbert is surrounded by young women, many of them wearing swim-suits, and the viewer is left watching the image of all these young girls displaying their bodies. The shot works because the viewer is invited to consider the sexual nature of all these girls, but at the same time is reminded that, because of Humbert’s presence that this erotic display really isn’t one. It’s just girls being girls. Likewise later on in the film Delores Haze participates in a play by the corrupt playwright Clare Quilty. The “play,” when the viewer actually sees it, is in fact a kind of fertility display and this lets the reader observe the sexual undercurrent running throughout.
after watching it again. And of course, that reaction troubled me immensely because it neglects the reality that Humbert Humbert is a pedophile who seduced Lolita’s mother so that he could get closer to Lolita so that he could ultimately rape her.
recent events have left me feeling depressed and beaten, and far more important, it’s left my hope a little damaged. For reasons that are Kafkaesque and absurd I cannot actually write about the details of the event in question, but I can at least write honestly that the events have left me worried about being honest publicly about my sexuality, or with trying to offer up public information about queer people and our history. The short version is, I feel like I’ve been pushed back into the closet by an idiot and several people who are too cowardly to stand up to said idiot. What’s worse is that people close to me, people who I have nothing but respect for, who have tried to fight have either 
been silenced or, even worse, had to apologize to the aforementioned idiot. I’ve had to watch my queer friends actually shed tears and tell me they feel like they’re being shamed and hidden away. And I’ve had to bury my anger and cautiously consider my actions for fear of personal and professional safety. And the worst part of the whole ordeal, is that I’ve lost a bit of hope that there’s anything I can actually do.
So much for that. Why are we here? Why are gay people here? And what’s happening? What’s happening to me is the antithesis of what you read about in the papers and what you hear about on the radio. You hear about and read about this movement to the right. That we must band together and fight back this movement to the right. And I’m here to go ahead and say that what you hear and read is what they want you to think because it’s not happening. The major media in this country has talked about the movement to the right so the legislators think that there is indeed a movement to the right and that the Congress and the legislators and the city councils will start to move to the right the way the major media want them. So they keep on talking about this move to the right.
and con. In every radio station, in every TV station and every household. For the first time in the history of the world, everybody was talking about it, good or bad. Unless you have dialogue, unless you open the walls of dialogue, you can never reach to change people’s opinion. In those two weeks, more good and bad, but more about the word homosexual and gay was written than probably in the history of mankind. Once you have dialogue starting, you know you can break down prejudice. In 1977 we saw a dialogue start. In 1977, we saw a gay person elected in San Francisco. In 1977 we saw the state of Mississippi decriminalize marijuana. In 1977, we saw the convention of conventions in Houston. And I want to know where the movement to the right is happening.
Then again Democrats never have been very good at winning and holding something so I probably shouldn’t speculate about future demographics. This passage at first doesn’t have much to do with “hope” and the importance of queer people to have hope for the future. In fact at first it seems to suggest nothing except that it would be a great time for queer people. It would appear as such, but in fact this recognition that republicans are not the ones in power reveals a real problem. Queer people were not enjoying a time of provenance despite the Democratic party’s majority, and that was largely because Democrats at the time were not very good friends to the queer community.
many democrats still saw queer people as a threat to political capital rather than a bonus. Being tolerant or even supportive of homosexuals could be a political death sentence (unless you were Bernie Sanders), and so as queer people in the 1970s were beginning to assume more and more of a cultural identity they were looking to some kind of leadership. The problem was, all of the leaders were straight.
And thus I return to the recent events that I can’t talk about and that reality is what most disturbs me. I never hide from my reader. I offer up my honest ambitions, thoughts, feelings, and reflections about works of literature while always speaking honestly about my own life. It’s my way of making amends for making my reader sit through the long boring analysis.
It’s only been 19 years since Matthew Shepard was killed in Wisconsin. Suicide is still the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 24 and this number is 4 times greater for LGB youth. The reason the T is absent at the end of this statement is because the numbers for Trans people committing or considering suicide tends to be higher with at least 40% of the population saying that they have attempted suicide.
front, will not walk away from a responsibility and be afraid of being tossed out of office. After Dade County, I walked among the angry and the frustrated night after night and I looked at their faces. And in San Francisco, three days before Gay Pride Day, a person was killed just because he was gay. And that night, I walked among the sad and the frustrated at City Hall in San Francisco and later that night as they lit candles on Castro Street and stood in silence, reaching out for some symbolic thing that would give them hope. These were strong people, whose faces I knew from the shop, the streets, meetings and people who I never saw before but I knew. They were strong, but even they needed hope.
who’s also bisexual who was also disgusted by the events which have recently taken place. It’s a nice addition to my rainbow colored bow-ties, and it also keeps my hope alive.
essays, and so what was once “Recent” at the time of writing was actually months ago. My “process” aside, if you can call it that, I did take the time to watch the film Blade Runner this year with a group of friends. I’m a hermit by nature who tends to enjoy his isolation because it gives me time to read what I want and watch the movies that I want without having to worry about what’s new with the people I spend my time with. But, I still recognize that part of self-preservation is having some kind of social contact with people who aren’t my cats and dogs and immediate family members. That and the demon who lives on my bookshelves voted for Trump and won’t let me forget about it.
watching the original film, I took my wife to see the sequel film Blade Runner 2049. I can honestly say that I’ve never been so terrified to see a movie. Blade Runner is an important film to me, and I’ve seen lately how Ridley Scott has attempted to expand some of his previous films with sequels and prequels, successfully with Prometheus, and tragically with Alien Covenant. I was waiting for Ridley Scott and the director Denis Villeneuve to turn the Blade Runner universe into something akin to a Marvel movie where characters are nothing but action figures and product endorsement.
are fighting in a ballroom in the ruins of Las Vegas, the hologram projections of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and show-girls flicker in and out of existence providing only snippets of sound. It’s not that there isn’t any speaking, talking, or music during Blade Runner 2049, it’s just that after a while the reader becomes aware that the world and the design of the world, coupled with electronic music that honors the original film tend to be far more important than any of the dialogue.
just another sound in this universe. And so looking back to the original Blade Runner my question feels terribly important: Are the two films actually just silent movies?
Dvd and Blue-Ray, or else played on TCM (We miss you Robert Osborne) are always accompanied by some kind of musical score. My little sister’s copy of Nosferatu includes two different scores, one of which is a horrifying as fucking-fuck organ. And recently when I checked out a Blue-ray of Metropolis I discovered it was a remastered cut in which the producers had sampled hit songs from Eighties pop bands to play over the film. This is all just a way of saying that Blade Runner 2049 and Blade Runner, despite the sound in their films, could be construed as Silent Films.
Vangelis, who produced the music for the original Blade Runner, manages to create a world that, while it isn’t dying, is more electronic than it is real. Along with his score, which manages to balance sound and silence brilliantly, are the various sounds which make up the world. When Deckard is studying the details of a photograph the clicking of the computer and the various switches broken by his drunken “enhance” let the reader disappear into the film. Watching the original Blade Runner, at least to a contemporary audience, is like listening to the sounds and world of a video game.
Having watched a few Silent movies, and I do mean few, I’m usually struck by the concern for visual detail. Part of this might have been fortunate accident on the part of these filmmakers, however it is important to remember that many of the great masters of the early genre of film created wonders the likes of which have only been dreamed of by many current film makers. A film like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, yet another brilliant horror film from the early days of film which still manages to be actually terrifying, pays attention to the “place” of the story, allowing that “place” to become it’s own language.
or else the constant concern with the idea of procreation sex is constantly part of the landscape of Blade Runner 2049 culminating with K’s initial walk through the ruins of Vegas.
one room being nothing but a small island in a room filled with water which shines reverberating light across the walls. Even if language is spoken in these rooms, it’s obvious over the course of time that the words are immaterial.
private room decorated with gold and columns, or else if it was the Doll Room of Sebastian’s home colors created their own language. The designs of these rooms, and the details packed into them often allowed for the dialogue to be rather secondary if not irrelevant. Even if you heard batty asking Sebastian to help him into Tyrell’s office, the reader was probably more concerned with Prius’s make-up or else the way Sebastian’s home was a menagerie of toys, robots, and rotting walls. When Deckard is walking through the streets of Los Angeles the color of the light-up umbrellas, or the asian script made up of neon lights manage to tell the viewer more about the world than any of the later exposition. If nothing else about the “place” manages to capture the reader, then 
surely the ever-present rain should be enough to create the feeling of the world and what it is about.
would understand the message of the shot. Likewise if they see a director holding the camera still while two people eat in silence the scene will have it’s own meaning and context. This idea of film creating its own language is something which has existed since the early silent film era, and directors and artists have tried to build that language into something meaningful since the establishment of the medium.
of the language of cinema. The images and lights and colors are far more important because they communicate more about humanity than most of the dialogue.
