07 octubre 2008

anti-lg brigade

It's the 'I'm not going to sugarcoat something or try to be eloquent and diplomatic' journal entry!

Fred Phelps and Friends (they need a morning television show of their very own filled with cardigans, slippers, and hate speech!) arrived on campus and stayed with us until 3:30 today, I hear, holding signs protesting 'Gay Mizzou.' It's 'Coming Out' week so I imagine he couldn't have had better timing. Do you ever stop and think to yourself 'Wow, I am really flattered that someone is so impassioned by what goes on in my bedroom that s/he stopped to make signs and drive miles from home to protest my relationships and sex'? I do, and you know what, it sort of makes me feel a little special inside.


Anyway, like I had said in an earlier entry that was posted in another blog and is probably no longer visible to anyone now reading, these people - extremists - are the least of our problems. They are a problem to be sure, but according to Fred Phelps, God hates everything. God hates Missouri, Republicans, cable television, Target. God hates coffee, God probably even hates cats. God's allergic to cats. He's ridiculous - Phelps, I mean - but for as ridiculous as he is, he is still espousing the notion that unless you are heterosexual, you are inferior. Okay, maybe people don't think about it in such blatant terms. But for someone like me that is what it comes down to: you aren't Fred Phelps and you aren't holding signs, but you're still disgusted.

If you think I am talking about you, then I probably am. Maybe you are a very nice person. You have a gay friend. You say 'But I have a gay friend!' You refer to him as 'the gay friend.' Everyone gets one, right? Your 'gay friend' is also probably male and makes you laugh so hard because he loves pop music and fashion, oh isn't your life just so Will & Grace. You're okay that he's gay. You say that to him and to other people, 'I am okay that you're gay.' Thanks, wow!

You are a very nice person. You smile at people when they pass. You are always very polite even with people you don't like very much. You don't wish harm on anyone.

You just don't think we all deserve the same rights.

Somehow who you love or sleep with or both entitles you to certain rights that others shouldn't have because there is something about their loving or fucking that makes you feel all icky inside. Probably as icky as I feel when I think about really old people having sex, or my parents having sex. I can't imagine refusing them rights, though.

So in the end, yeah, you're not Fred Phelps, but you're still kind of a POS.

04 octubre 2008

quotes

There is no discussion of how they feel or what they want out of life; there is only the descending order - grandmother, mother, daughters - with the back yard outside under rain, and the dead vegetable garden.
The Virgin Suicides,
Jeffrey Eugenides

June Second, 1910.

When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

The Sound & the Fury, Faulkner.
La mujer de mi padre vino a decirme que había muerto y que a ver si podía ayudarla algo para pagar el entierro. Hice lo que pude, que no era mucho, y cuando ella se fue, por un momento, sólo por un momento, de pie en medio de mi comedor, me vi pequeña con un lazo blanco en la cabeza, al lado de mi padre, que daba la mano y andábamos por calles con jardines y siempre pasábamos por una calle de torres que tenía un jardín con un perro que, cuando pasábamos, se tiraba contra la verja y nos ladraba; por un momento me pareció que volvía a querer a mi padre o a parecerme que le había querido mucho tiempo.
La Plaza del Diamante, Mercè Rodoreda

The grief which sweeps over me is the grief of anticipation. It is a grief in expectation of grief, and it carries with it a certain degree of guilt, since one feels that what one really should be doing is enjoying the moment, being together now while it is possible to do so, rather than giving in to some gloomy sense of incipient loss ... The future's an absence, a dark space up ahead like the socket of a pulled tooth. I can't quite stay away from it, hard as I may try.

Heaven's Coast, Mark Doty