Chivalry, Bravery: Part II

I still hold Chivalry in high regard. I always have. Even after the ominous warning from Lynne all those years ago, it's something upon which I've placed a premium. In myself, not necessarily in others... or so the history of my interpersonal relationships would suggest. And yes, frankly, it has caused me a great deal of frustration and pain in the intervening years - probably more than its been worth - and yet I still endeavor to make it a part of my daily life and behavior.

It's not just about opening doors, or serving others before you serve yourself - such behaviors are easily mimicked and co-opted by those without a shred of Chivarly in their heart. It's about actually CONSIDERING others before yourself. It's things like remembering to say goodbye to the people you enjoyed talking to all night, regardless of how quickly the person dragging you out of the party would like to make their exit.

I don't want to be that sad, sad Sally that says Chivalry is dead... but it's wounded and lost somewhere in the woods. It's certainly not something you see often anymore. Yes, part of that is because these insufferable Millenials have started to stake their claim on the world-at-large, and myopic self-fulfillment is quickly becoming de rigueur. I think it's also because a misled generation of shrill, hypervigilant harpies (male AND female) decided that "Chivalry" was code for "sexist," and ruined a good thing for EVERYONE.

"as if I NEED you to do that FOR me."

No, bitch. No. I did it because I wanted to, and in doing so I have taken NOTHING from you and instead OFFERED you something you didn't have before. It's an act of kindness, not of oppression, and if you fail to see the difference then excuse me but you're not fit to be a parent, a lover, or - frankly - in public.

It saddens me that general acts of decency don't seem to garner any notice or import anymore. And I'm not talking in an old-fashioned, morally subjective way. Show some ankle - hell, show some cleavage for all I care - and be proud of who you are. BUT, show some love for the people around you, too.

THIS is part of why I feel like a fucking alien anymore.

This weekend I acted as Emcee for Boulder Pridefest. I was a last-minute replacement, many things changed drastically in the days - hell, even HOURS - before the show. I ran with it as best I could, was professional as I could muster, and even had a lot of fun doing it. Pridefest, in and of itself, was a great success and very fun. My sole reward was a VIP ticket to the After-Party... an event which I would have been better off avoiding.

The After-Party began when the Boulder Pridefest crowd was shooed onto Pearl Street Mall for an hour while the crew worked to transform the theatre into a nightclub. Having been on stage for the past six hours, I decided to rest understage in the Green Room, where the headlining band and their friends handily ignored my attempts to be friendly. Shortly thereafter (but still more than 15 minutes late for their "call") the Andrew Christian performers arrived. They proceeded to loudly complain about the lack of a private bathroom and seemed entirely too eager to break into the alcohol that was apparently demanded in the rider of their contract, except that the ice in which their bottles were chilling and the stemware provided were both sub-par and that was, apparently, highly vexing.

After hissing a venomous warning that I was a fellow performer and NOT their servant, I decided to pack up my things, put all my valuables in my pockets, and flee to the relative safety of the upstairs - let the headliners deal with the naked divas.

From the vantage point I had in the VIP "lounge" (a cordoned off section with a table of food), I watched a perplexing array of 18 year olds, homeless people, and stripper groupies stumble through the doors and into the room. A constant stream of "Now THAT'S what I call Music #47-69" blared through the speakers, sending everyone into a vibrating, gyrating, humping, twerking FRENZY that, if submerged, would have made a great episode of River Monsters. Then, after the first 90 minutes, the older, richer crowd started to show up. This is when the real "party" began.

The rest of the night is remembered to me as a thick, flavorful stream of bile waxing and waning in the back of my throat. There were numerous young heterosexual couples dancing in scandalous ways - one dude leaned so far back to rest the back of his head on the apron of the stage that his stomach and private parts literally provided a table on which his girlfriend could gyrate. The Andrew Christian performers circled around the place, making eye contact with the unwashed masses only long enough to say the name of the event and/or encourage people to drink more, then participate in the contests coming up later.

The contests were two-fold. The first contest involved proving to one of the "models" that you were not wearing underwear. The prize was... underwear. The second contest was - I shit you not - a twerking contest. The eight entrants were all cis-gendered, thin-to-emaciated white people under the age of 21 (with one 30-something man in nothing but high tops and sport briefs). The prize here was also... underwear.

While all this feverish amorousness raged on at the stage, the Wealthy Elite gazed on, ravenous and enraptured, from the sidelines. They sipped their $10 cocktails and licked their lips at the visual feast laid out in front of them. A couple of them were friends of mine - friends who seemed genuinely pained to have to choose between the warring pleasures of interacting with friends and staring obsessively at the clearly-visible outlines of private parts being squashed by elastic fabrics.

I tried dancing a couple of times. I fell flat on my ass because part of the dance floor was soaking wet with some fucknut's drink (and a single, tiny, wadded-up napkin). Then I got smacked in the face by a haphazard hand so hard I drove home later that night with a headache. I still don't know who hit me - they didn't bother to notice or apologize. Considering my options for "strike three" (an instant case of the herp? Someone's high heel in my ear?), I decided to heed the warnings of the Universe and stay the fuck outta there.

Around 11 o'clock I realized that I quite literally wanted to scream. What the FUCK did all this have to do with the spirit of the event? How the FUCK did twerking and strippers - yes, STRIPPERS I don't give a fuck whose name is embroidered in the waistband of their panties - get mentioned in the same sentence as PRIDE?!?!?! Don't straight girls get to shamelessly bounce on the barely-contained erections of their sires in EVERY OTHER CLUB ON THE FUCKING PLANET? Don't skinny people with dubious dancing skills get to win free shit EVERY OTHER FUCKING DAY OF THE YEAR?! And hold the FUCKING phone - did the guy in this rap song really just use a fucking GAY SLUR?!!? WHY THE FUCK IS THIS BEING PLAYED AT PRIDE?!?!

I... lost my mind a little bit, and actually contemplated the pros and cons of puking my guts out right where I stood, but decided a better display of my distaste would be to leave. I slunk understage - was stopped by the fucking "security douche" the strippers brought with them to protect all their NO CLOTHES they were storing down there - and wasn't going to be allowed to access my stuff until one of the theatre staff who had seen me there for the last TEN MOTHERFUCKING HOURS told the guy I was allowed past that point. I grabbed my stuff (which had obviously been rifled through - luckily I had the foresight to hide my valuables) and booked it the fuck out of there.

I spent the drive home nursing the aforementioned headache and my sense of personal outrage. This... this is NOT the community for whom I've shed my own blood, sweat and tears. What happened this night had NOTHING to do with the world I helped build. These were not the people for whom I fought. These are not the rights for which I continue to fight.

It occurred to me as well that almost no eye contact was had. No exchange of names, of information, of affirmation. This "pride" party had been reduced to a series of deafening thumps that weren't so much "heard" as "sensed" through the vibrations that traveled in the collected transfats of my body.

There was no love for those with whom each was surrounded. There was no consideration of those who were neighboring. There was only the pursuit of immediate pleasure, noise, and body parts.

In that moment, in that space... Chivalry was not only dead, but its corpse was being used as a disco ball. An ugly disco ball, covered in acne and soiled (but expensive) panties. No... no wait. I'm thinking of the strippers again...

Chivalry, Bravery: Part I

I remember a time from my childhood when my mother, myself, and one of her close friends went out to dinner. I had to have been around 11 years old - not yet out of the closet, but  it was obvious to anyone with any combination of two of the five senses that I was gay. I was precocious, sensitive, misunderstood... my best friend in the world was my mother, followed by my cat. I would have days where I would forget I was a boy. I would have days where I wished I wasn't a boy. I would have days where I didn't believe I was a boy. Not because I felt dysphoric about my gender - I have always appreciated and adored having a penis - but because me being a boy didn't make sense in the worldview of my peers, and my male friends often treated me like I was the "token female" who was cool enough to love video games but not cool enough to collect XMen cards.

Before the car accident that changed her entire personality, my mother was the epitome of what I call "Beautiful Feminism" (for reasons I hint at but won't entirely go into here). She had been a tomboy in her youth, just a year younger than her very raucous brother, and had picked up what were considered "male" personality traits. She was brash, extremely confident, impetuous but with wisdom. The very incarnation of courage. She was also utterly comfortable with her sexuality, and recognized that, so long as SHE was the one holding the reigns, it could be a powerful tool and sometimes a powerful weapon. She had been an excellent provider my entire life - even when we were destitute in my very early years, she NEVER stopped running the machinery of our family. But she was also gloriously "female," an effortless chiaroscuro of gender. Her motherhood was pure, unbroken warmth and love - I was 15 before I ever for a second doubted that my mother loved me entirely and I her. Her capacity for sacrifice remains unparalleled by anything I've ever experienced from any other being. And she was a KNOCKOUT beauty.

In case you were offended by that last paragraph, let me just make it perfectly plain: yes, the pictures I painted of male and female, the traits which I "assigned" to each, were intentionally ironic.

Lynne was - and pretty much still is - her closest friend. In those days Lynne was on the other end of Feminism: Militant. Men are controlling pigs. Voracious rapists. Oppressive idiots with only enough blood to run a dick or a brain but not both. But Lynne was also possessed of a magnetism you simply could not escape. Her humor was erudite, ubiquitous, and deadly sharp. She was impossible to quiet, impossible to forget, impossible to outshine. She'd drink, smoke, and captivate a room like a Mercury or a Tyler or a Jagger - the closest I've ever been to a real, in-the-flesh, Arena Rock LEGEND, and the first time in my life I identified with the feelings other people had toward God: I at once feared her and wanted her approval.

As far as I ever knew, Lynne LOVED me... probably not entirely independent from the fact that my sexuality was starting to become apparent and the only thing with which I'd be raping sorority girls was my incendiary fashion advice. She mistrusted me because of my unfortunate pre-existing penis, but she loved me as much as she could love any man or boy.

My mother and Lynne knew one another from working at CU Boulder together. My mother was a high level admin, her friend a Professor whose impending tenure had threatened an until-then-entirely-white-male regime in her department. It was entirely the actions and courage of my mother that won Lynne her tenure, and for that Lynne always felt utterly beholden. And for a gorgeous few years we were the three amigos - or they were and I was the tagalong, though neither of them ever made me feel that way.

We showed up to the restaurant in my mother's car - with Lynne's propensity for the drink, my mother knew better than to trust her with keys. I got out of the back seat and held Lynne's door open for her, and I noticed her make a very confusing facial expression, but she got out of the car anyway. I saw the same look on her face when my water glass got filled last. And by the end of the night she'd had enough wine that when her 11-year-old escort opened her car door to let her back into the car, she finally let it out:

Don't. Fucking. DO. That. Like I can't DO that MYSELF. Like I NEED a MAN to DO that FOR me. You and that waiter BOTH treating me like some DELICATE ROBOT who can't be bothered with HEAVY THINGS.

I may not remember her words verbatim, but I can never forget my mother's face as we all got into the car. She could see I was thunderstruck and totally humiliated, and was coiling around herself like a cobra trying to decide the best way to flash a danger warning without committing to a kill. But then again, part of the beauty of her maternal instincts was to let me stand up for myself when I felt I needed to. So she gave me right-of-way, and stayed coiled.

"It wasn't like that" was what I finally managed to blurt into the silent car.
"You don't think that's how you meant it, but it's always like that" came Lynne's slurred reply.
"Lynne, he's just a boy" my mother finally spoke up, voice thick with restraint.
"Boys become men, Patti. And Boys who don't respect women become MEN who don't respect women."
"I was just trying to be a gentleman, Lynne. I thought that's how I was supposed to do it." And she looked back at me and smiled her huge smile.
"WHY would you want to be a GENTLEMAN? All it will ever do is hurt you."
"Don't tell him stuff like that. Some women appreciate chivalry."

That was the last word on it. I sat in the back seat with a belly full of icy rattlesnakes because, as she turned back around, Lynne's facial expression was unmistakable: "Oh Patti. That's not going to help him at all."

Every Story Has a Beginning. I'm Choosing to Make This Mine.

I keep thinking to myself: "Have I really become that person?"

 There's this blank, white field on a website on my computer screen. The cursor blinks at me, clearly annoyed at being summoned only to have its time wasted. It reminds me of when I was a teenager and I’d receive a new journal as a present – I was into that kind of thing – and I’d open it and stare at that first page for what seemed like forever, agonizing over WHAT could POSSIBLY be worthy of its innocence. I’d keep it somewhere handy, for when that delicious tidbit of wisdom would arrive and I could cement it into existence forever and the book would be proud to be a part of history. And then someone would buy me a new one, that would supplant its predecessor, and the whole process would start again.

 I still have dozens of journals from that era – empty tomes I’ve trucked from place to place in the intervening years, having never found the perfect words to deflower them. As books tend to do, they’ve amassed to a considerable weight, yet it never even crosses my mind to get rid of them. Like a monk whose vow of silence encompasses EVERYTHING. And though I never wanted to admit it – and probably still wouldn’t admit it out loud – the symbolism of their emptiness has transformed for me. I no longer see them as innocent and virginal. I see them as undeniable proof that I’m afraid I have nothing to say.

 And that’s why, staring at the angry cursor in the blank text field, my thoughts are “have I really become that person?” rather than “I can’t wait to put this out there.” We live in a world where one of the most popular websites simply superimposes babytalk over mundane pictures of housecats. A lady in a teddybear onesie humping a foam finger generates four days of nonstop news coverage. Our culture hangs on the words of an overweight, under-educated 7-year-old beauty queen, going so far as to have them emblazoned on clothes.

 And I’m afraid I have nothing to say.

 I’m a 30 year old gay man. I am a Gemini, and whether you believe in that stuff or not I fit the description so well I probably did it on purpose, if subconsciously. I am owned by a dog. I eat too much. Sometimes, I drink too much. Often, I masturbate too much. I curse a lot (FUCK. See?) I think BOOBS is the funniest word in the English language, followed closely by TITTIES and TWAT. I have almost 700 Facebook friends. I do my laundry regularly, but fold it once in a blue moon. I sing: very well. I have four novels and six screenplays in my head. I’m terrified of death. And I have something to say.

 I’m statistically the “most intelligent” person in a room of 10,000 people, but it thrills me when people think I’m dumb. I talk twice as much as I should, read half as much as I should, and very legitimately have squandered an astonishing amount of my adult life NOT doing the things I’m OBVIOUSLY meant to be doing. And I have something to say.

 Currently my heart is broken. At night I’m terrified that it will never feel whole again and I will die alone and bitter in obscurity. During the day I pat myself on the back for how well I seem to be doing and how adult I am being about the whole thing. There are minutes when I want to die. There are hours when I marvel at how beautiful life is. There has never been a second when I hated him for breaking my heart, but there have been plenty of seconds when I hated myself for “losing him.” And I’m self-aware enough to know those last two words deserve their quotation marks. And I have something to say.

 I’ve developed a razor sharp wit that I can summon at the speed of light, and it has earned me a reputation that arrives in a room an hour before I do. People around me seek my approval because they fear my judgement. I am at once pleased and horrified by this. I affectionately refer to it as my “Dragon Complex,” hence the name of this… collection of thoughts. Okay, blog. I fucking said it. I’m becoming “that person.” I’m starting a… a blog. I fucking HATE the word “blog” and I’m starting one.

 I want people to read this. I want to be so interesting that they make a movie out of my blog and Meryl Streep will be in it somehow and everyone will love her part of the story but hate my part of the story and wish it were all about her. I want to go viral, to have my posts shared bazillions of times on the internet and have 16-year-old rappers advertise their shitty singles in the comments section of websites that exist merely for the purpose of sharing blogs like mine. I want fat Christian moms and vengeful twenty-somethings to disapprove of me while pre-pubescent transsexuals and elderly cancer patients find inspiration in me. And despite the fear that nobody will read this and that I have nothing to say… I want people to know that I DO have something to say…


 Boobs. Fuck. Boobs.