It’s not the

first time I’ve been to the Shaw Festival since he died. But suddenly it hit me. He’s not there. It’s not that I had seen Christopher Newton so very much in the recent past — the last time was about 2015  (and before that it was approximately in the year 2000). But he was always 'with me.' I don’t know how much I was 'with him'; but whenever we talked he was excessively warm with me, acting as if it was a blessing to have me around -- but he was always like that, beyond charming. I met him in 1981, in the dressing room of The Theatre Centre, at 666 King Street West, after a performance of my play Cavafy or the Veils of Desire. I can’t remember what he said —but he was effusive — something like 'you must call me, we must talk!' I was so excited, not daring to wonder what the artistic director of a giant theatre festival  might want with me. And lo and behold, in a couple of weeks I was invited to the Shaw to be his assistant director on The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs. I was enchanted; it was like a dream. When I arrived there that summer I had a house to myself, and there were all those amazing productions — especially Robert David MacDonald's Camille and my favourite — The Desert Song. Christopher confided that it was his very gay version of the old Sigmund Romberg operetta. 'Notice when she sings a kind of hymn to his sword — I wonder what that's about?' His favourite line was when some turbaned elderly actor -- before an exit --  announced ‘I’m off to the baths!’ Christopher was my friend, I thought. I would go over to his house every night after rehearsal, and get very drunk, and he would play me his favourite music, and we would talk about art, and I was on cloud nine. I know it sounds like a kind of fairy story; it definitely was. I didn’t know he was attracted to me -- as I was only 30 and I had just come out of the closet and my 17 year old first love had just dumped me; I had found a sort of lackadaisical love in Toronto, but suddenly down at the Shaw Festival Christopher made me feel like a young prince. And then one night, he casually said something like — ‘shall we go to bed?’ — and of course I said yes. He was 18 years older than me, but very handsome. Apparently the very short shorts I had been wearing (the colour of my shorts and my head bandanna always matched, I must have been quite the sight!) reminded him of the various Aboriginal outlaws that were usually his lovers. He told me their stories. One was in jail. He used to meet them at his favourite sleazy bar in Vancouver (The Shaggy Horse). He said that though I had the young hairless body of one of his Aboriginal bad boys, I was his ‘lawyer’ —and I didn’t know what that meant — and he said, you know ‘the one you really settle down with.' I was overwhelmed and charmed. I won’t tell you any more about our love affair. (Except for when we first saw a picture of Canadian actor/writer Paul Gross in the entertainment section of the newspaper, and Christopher blithely opined 'I think I'm dropping you for him' and when Tennessee Williams died, and the newspaper reported that the great writer choked on a bottle cap, Christopher said 'It was definitely poppers!') But like so many love affairs, it didn’t work out. We fought so many times, basically because he was trying to persuade me to be his associate artistic director (the job later went to Duncan Macintosh). I didn’t want any of that, and ultimately I didn’t want to be his lover, because that meant to some degree being his personal assistant, and forever his admirer (the amount of admiration Christopher demanded was kind of astounding, but I supplied it for as long as I could).  I needed to do my own work, and I was obsessed with younger men in Toronto. So that was that. Being back at Shaw today, in 2022 when he is dead, is so strange and sad, because even if I didn’t usually visit him -- I always knew his house was there, the house he loved so much. And he was always in it, tending the flowers, drinking some wine, writing in his journal (someone has to find that journal and publish it, he would have wanted that, and there’s good stuff in there, I just know it!). But I feel compelled to make it clear to you -- to anyone who will listen anyway -- what Christopher did for me. He did something for me as a young gay artist that no one had ever done before and will never do again. But it was absolutely necessary. I realize now that I won at least one award (The Pauline McGibbon Award) due to him — he kind of arranged it, he was on the committee and suggested my name. But most importantly — no one in the Toronto theatre scene would produce my work, and even when I founded Buddies no one knew what to do with me, especially the gay community, and everyone was frankly so mean and jealous, and he took me away and supported me and made me feel like I was important, and talented, and that my work mattered. He thus set himself up for ridicule — because I was a drag queen and a slut and (all that other stuff) and my work was always sexual, and his public association with me (even though he never revealed our private association, and wouldn’t hold hands with me in Niagara-on-The-Lake -- ‘the twitch of a curtain means a ruined reputation in this town!’ -- he used to say.) He gave me the courage to be, because I needed an older gay man brave enough to believe in me, when the rest of the world wouldn’t. And now when I go to the Shaw Festival, I prefer to imagine  Christopher is still there, tending his garden, getting stoned, being disappointed because I won’t smoke weed with him (it makes me paranoid), telling me that someone ‘wore’ the actor Leonard Chow to a party as an ‘ornament,’ sniffing poppers with me in bed, playing a new album by Philip Glass, teaching me proper table manners (“You’re going to need them some day at those fancy gay dinner parties!' — parties that of course, never materialized), popping antibiotics ('Well you can’t be too careful!') admiring a young actor from afar ‘That Dan Lett, he’s so slim, so easy on the eyes, isn’t it heaven?’). 

I could go on.

Sex is over.

That is clear. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of paranoia that — remarkably —  rivals the terror over AIDS. The fear of touching, and the naive notion that ‘good’ people (the virtue signallers who continue to avoid contact with strangers) will live longer than the ‘bad’ people (who touch everyone, willy-nilly) will not disappear fast. It’s been labeled the ‘new puritanism.’ Now if you wonder how we can possibly be puritans when ‘the children’ are probably watching porn on YouTube as we speak, welp --  that’s the way hatred of sex and hatred of the body works. When we deny ourselves, our urges and pleasures crop up in the oddest of ways; hence the panopoly of twerking prebuscent female singers along with an alarming number of misogynist TikTok videos. Consider also — the Oakville transgender shop teacher who appears in class sporting gigantic fake breasts, protruding nipples and all. Well you just try criticizing her! Under the new puritanism rules — where sex no longer exists — she is a paragon, her performance consistent with the gender illogic of ‘drag queen story hour. ‘ You see, long ago The Wokies separated gender from sex. It seemed like a good idea at the time (ie. when Judith Butler suggested it in the 90s). But the fact is that gender is sexy, and this is one of the main reasons we cling to it. Men dress as women for three reasons only (sure there are exceptions) — a) because they are transexual and wish to have a sex change, or b) they are drag queens i.e. gay men who dress as a woman to flirt and perform, or c) because female clothing is their sexual fetish. Obsessive male crossdressing nearly always has a sexual component. And that’s good. Because sex is a good thing, right? (Do I need to remind you?) Now when women wish to dress as men— it’s a different matter altogether,  because women are different than men -- due to both hormones, and social programming. Women are often raped and abused by men; and they are generally treated with less respect than men (need I remind you, of this, also?) and so they hold a ‘lower’ place in our culture. So if women dress as men they are likely to be taken more seriously, whereas men who dress as women are likely to be viewed in a more sexualized way. The Oakville stop teacher is obviously a fetishist, and proud of it (more power to her!). But she should not bring her fetish into the classroom, just as drag queens should not bring their big kissy lips and sheer nylons into kindergarten. I thought of all this while viewing the absorbing new Canadian film Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age. Yes its a great documentary, but — it's not so much that there is a ‘rise’ in misogyny, (it’s always been there in western culture) but that the blithe acceptance of the digital world and its toxic algorithms is destroying us. Honestly -- why are we we taking seriously anything some anonymous idiot says online, anyway? The ‘digital world’ is all about money, period. Yes I know. You are now reading my internet bog. But in my defence,  I will remind you that this blog is wildly unpopular, only faithfully read by a handful of nutty people -- and my friends -- as I am no longer taken seriously as artist or thinker by anyone. Thank God I am merely a sad old faggot - whose plays will lie dead, forever unproduced; a pathetic drag queen who insists on nattering on about how great sex is, when, as everyone knows, sex is over. I do not frequent social media for the very reason that I would  be demonized there --  for all this. Social media is — as some are beginning to realize —  a kind of blood sport. Your cellphone is the modern coliseum; we gather daily to gleefully celebrate the suffering of others, as nothing can compare to the joy of a good dressing down or cancelling (‘You're fat and ugly and stupid and nobody likes you! So there!’)  Now it is true that the women in the documentary Backlash — including the president of the Italian parliament Laura Boldini — have experienced not only the imagined slings and arrows of outrageous social media demonization, but the terror of real life home invasions and threats of physical violence. But this imagined ‘increase’ in misogyny is a digital magnification of what has always been there, admittedly exacerbated very much by the well meaning but ill-fated attempts to de-sexualize relationships between men and women that characterized #Me too. Duh! — you can’t remove sex from heterosexuality, try as you might. Attempts to de-eroticize male/female relations just serve to make straight men more misogynistic.  Rape is a crime, but sex, like unwanted touching, is a lot like hate speech; it’s very human, and sometimes very attractive, we all need it now and again just to keep the ball rolling. And if we attempt to erase it, this thing we have so demonized will just appear somewhere else in an even more disruptive way The whole concept of ‘verbal violence’ is a romantic invention of the digital world — we never thought of words as actual physical violence before social media. What ever happened to -- 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me?’ Now that was good advice. If ‘hate speech’ is banned, then I will be, too  because mostly I just want to write about politically incorrect sex (and all sex is politically incorrect anyway). Ergo, therefore, in conclusion, let’s stop pretending that sex does not exist. Instead, let's start having more sex, and starting admitting that we are doing so, and admitting that sex is all about power, and power is sexy (see: Foucault). Sorry, but if we decry rape and misogyny without speaking of the intimate and complex relationship between sex and power, we do women — and well, everyone — a great disservice — to say the very, very, very least.

Abandon the left.

 It’s time, I’ve had it with the left, haven’t you? No, this doesn’t mean I'm now officially a Nazi; but of course the polarized, demonizing state of left vs right-wing politics might of course lead you to think so. 'Abandoning the left' does not mean that you become right-wing. I am, officially — no wing; but I’ve got wings, and I can fly away, thank God, from this madness -- until the time when we  can somehow, somewhere all have a civilized discussion again. Haven’t you had enough? Of the cancelling? The cancelling that left-wingers claim is a figment of a right-wing demented imagination? Hey, I work in the arts and I’m tired of seeing my friends fired from jobs by mean vicious, ambitious, young wokists, most of them distinctly untalented, who take advantage of the fact that those ‘in power’ have misgendered someone or used the wrong word. The left is over; it’s become the Communist Party in Stalinist Russian, it’s become Joe McCarthy in the U.S. senate in the 50s, serving the needs of desperate, stupid, ungifted, mean people who now understand all too well if they name names -- and curse others for any number of imagined sins --  that those who hold the jobs they want will now hand them over, and the wokies can step into those jobs sans credentials, or good will. And this is not about me. I could care less what happens to me; I’m old, and my career is over, and I will most likely be dead soon. But I can’t be complicit in what has become the suicide of the left; its self-immolation, its flagrant, exhibitionistic, theatrical parade of self-destruction. Did you notice that Green Party president Lorraine Rekmans quit  — saying -- ‘The dream is dead?” Apparently, during some ‘virtual event,' a Green Party member misgendendered interim leader Amita Kuttner. So what? This kind of thing is happening all the time (not the misgendering, but when it does your apology should be accepted!). The right is gleefully watching the left eat itself alive by encouraging the lowest common denominator of the human constituency, the cockroaches who would eat their own in order to gain a smidgen of power. But don’t fool yourself. The choices on the left and right are equally appalling. The left believes that there is no gender and only white people can be racist -- while the right believes that Joe Biden and Barbra Streisand are eating babies. It pretty much amounts to the same thing; organized insanity, and finally those who aren’t getting laid regularly (that’s a lotta blue-balled folks of all 1000 genders) — can finally get all that sexual frustration off their chests by burning their ‘friends’ alive. For some reason all this seems related to a film I just saw — Anonymous Club, a documentary about Courtney Barnett — an Australian singer. (I went with trepidation.) As soon as I saw and heard her (she is kinda talented by the way, and also quite sexy in her own closeted way) I spent the the whole movie being irritated by how subtly woke she was, and trying to figure out whether or not she was a bonafide lesbian. You see, you just can't be a woke lesbian singer these days (where is K.D. Lang now?) because that would mean declaring you are attracted to vaginas, and acknowledging that women have them. So cagily, this flic makes us guess whether or not Courtney is a dyke. There are the usual signals — the bad haircut masked by a toque, the men’s clothing (some things never change) and the song lyric “I am not your bitch or your mother.’ It’s all a little like reading a novel by Anne-Marie MacDonald (I asked a friend once if Fall On Your Knees was a gay novel — as I hadn’t read it — and my friend, a woman — and a pretty sophisticated one at that — screwed up her face and intoned: ‘Um I don’t know, I think there might be a lesbian character part way through…?’ ‘Too late’ I said, ‘too late. I’m sure it’s a great novel and a great summer read, but if you can’t figure out of the characters are lesbians or not, it’s not a lesbian one.’ Towards the end of Anonymous Club Courtney stands in the rain carrying a rainbow umbrella, because young wokies know better than to ‘act’ gay — or say they are — as they want to fit in with the new fascism. So Courtney could be a straight girl with a bad haircut who loves toques, and men’s clothing, and sings songs about how horrible men are — until we spot the umbrella which might lead us to conclude she is ‘non-binary.' Don’t get me wrong. Courtney is ‘out’ in the press, but not in this movie, where all she does is talk about how fragile she — and other people — are, and how her music ‘helps’ them. Woke people demand that art ‘help’ people. This is killing art. This, along with all the really talented people who are leaving the arts, cuz it’s just too damn scary to try to make something real that comes from your heart, as you might be accused of being an ‘ist’ of some kind or other. Oh well. There was art once. And once, there was left-wing politics. I hope somebody remembers.

It’s not that UNCOUPLED

is bad. Though it is, kinda, I can’t say it’s not entertaining at times — but it paints such a bleak picture of gay life! And I’m not coming from a ‘GLAAD’ perspective here. I don’t think that gay men must, or should, be presented 'positively' in the media. Gay men are people; which means they are flawed. On that level Uncoupled is realistic; it represents the state of gay life right now -- it demonstrates how desperate all of us sad ol’ fags are for straight approval. I say this because Darren Star and his gang obviously yearn to impress on us how straight gay life is. Like,  if you’re straight, what agony to have your partner/wife (whatever) leave you just before a surprise birthday celebration you so carefully arranged for them! And how lonely life is -- after the breakup! We all feel that -- because gays and straights are so alike, aren’t they? Um…no. Gay men have dicks. And they can go out and have sex anytime they want to, and although there is such a thing as ‘gay rape’ there is no gay rape culture, unlike heterosexuality —  where rape and violence towards women is kind of a tradition. No. Gay life is not the same as straight life. Period. And no, AIDS did not stop us from hooking up. It just put it on line where we could lie about it and pretend we’re not. And besides -- there are still back rooms, bath houses, alleys and bushes —  and yes urinals (unless they disappear with the advent of non-gendered washrooms). In other words guys can pull out their thingy-dingies at any time (as long as no one else is looking) and get off --  pretty quickly -- which they can, and will, do, whether they are straight or gay. (The only problem for straight guys is they have to persuade women to co-operate, which in a rape culture, can be tough). Men are men, which is not always a good thing — and must be challenged constantly — but is nevertheless a fact, because of our plumbing, which frankly leaks if we don’t pay enough attention to it. Where is this reality in Uncoupled? What is this fiction that after a breakup you need to find a lover in order to get laid? Or even to get affection? Gay men have something called fuckbuddies. (Some gay men have them and their partners don’t mind.) Our romantic/sexual lives are simply not like yours.  And it’s not that we’re not romantic. We are exceedingly so, mainly because all the ideas we have about sex and love come from straight movies or gay porn. Uncoupled is fiction of the highest order — meaning it’s a double lie — i.e. it’s not real life but a tv show, and the lie it is telling is that gay relationships operate exactly like straight ones. It’s interesting though to think of Uncoupled in the context of Sex and the City, which I loved. I mean, yes, Uncoupled is a gay version of Sex and the City. But Sex and the City, as many have noted, was really about gay life, not about women. And is that a bad thing? Well, the fact is that Darren Star -- like so many gay creators -- writes better when he is not writing about himself (see: Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, etc -- though Star is obviously not in their league). First of all I enjoyed Sex and the City even more than some straight women, because whatever was inaccurate about it didn’t’ bother me. I could watch it without worrying whether or not it was accurate because I don’t know what it’s like to be a straight woman and never will. (But I can imagine -- and often enjoy doing so.) What I think was good about Sex and the City was that -- because it was gay life pretending to be straight -- it facilitated the depiction of straight women who were openly sexual and horny, something that we had certainly never seen on TV before. The tradition continued with Girls, and Lena Dunham got pilloried; we are still a very puritan, patriarchal culture and straight men just can’t handle women who crave ‘the dick’ —the bigger the better (and there are some women who actually do so). So will we ever get to see shows made by women, about women, that are truthful?  Or shows by gay men, about gay men, that tell it like it is — not like gays wish it could be? Probably not. This is why we have art, i.e. lies. And yes, I am going to go on about how wonderful lying is yet again —  because if you expect art to provide you with a moral prescription — that is to present you with an ethic that will help you to live a righteous life, well forget it. Shakespeare knew this. That’s what Titus Andronicus is about. A bunch of dumb folks who have read Ovid a little bit too much start trying to live their lives according to what happens in Ovid's poems. So, sadly, they end up raping people, cutting off their tongues and baking them into pies. It's kinda funny (kinda not). Shakespeare knew art should, and must, not present us with a lesson. I have no problem with the fact that Uncoupled is a lie, I just wish it was a better one, and not the one we hear all the time. Maybe I’m homophobic (and I am) but it’s embarrassing to watch the gay men in Uncoupled acting like a bunch of adolescent girls at a high school dance (should I return his glance? his caress?). But most of us gay men missed out on their adolescence, and therefore we are either too slutty or too celibate — which is what teenage girls are generally. If only people just had sex! And didn’t ever ever worry about it! (Sorry to paraphrase Marcuse, I know he's out of fashion) Anyway, is  that too much to ask? And sex, of course, is not the answer -- that is, to everything. But Jesus, it sure helps. 

Bullet Train is

fabulous. I had not discovered David Leitch, now I understand that he is responsible for a bunch of action movies, including Atomic Blonde, which I sort of enjoyed, but Bullet Train is a thing-in-itself — kinda what a work of art should be; it creates it’s own world that does not abide by the rules of ours (see, Adorno), and is in it’s own way as mysterious and fantastical than the construct we live in, only different. Part of the charm is Brad Pitt being Brad Pitt which is just sweet, and honest, and of course good-lookin' to boot, and with a wry sense of humour that lies at the heart of the movie. Bullet Train is almost camp (it’s not pathetic enough) but when all this damn woke stuff is over, Bullet Train will be in The Criterion Collection; as it can be appreciated merely from a visual point of view. It all takes place in Japan, and Leitch is obviously in love with the place — and why wouldn’t you be? A friend of mine went there many years ago, and he came back moaning over another universe of sight and colour and sound, of intense confrontation with fanciful images and bright lights and music, a literal bombardment of the senses. Leitch takes full advantage of this, especially when he has an anime character (I think that’s what it is)  that is performing for children on the train — start killing people. ‘Alright!’ I can hear you saying, ‘With all the violence and mass killings what do we need with another ‘shoot-out’ movie?’ But Leitch is making a statement here, about — not so much pro-gun politics — in fact Bullet Train is not about that at all — but about masculinity. Saying this movie is ‘pro-violence’ is like saying The Taming of the Shrew is about the subjection of women (which it is not — see my upcoming book from Guernica  Editions: Shakespeare Lied). Bullet Train will be vilified — and already has been, on Rotten Tomatoes — and for good reason, as it is anti-everything you believe in right now, i.e. an excessively feminine culture that is smothering us. I don’t have anything against femininity; I’m very feminine and a drag queen. But I take things from femininity that soften me and make me (or they once did) — for a few moments, lovely —i.e. vulnerability, generosity of spirit, beauty, flirtatiousness. What woke culture has taken from the ‘feminine’ is victim politics — and all this is coming as close to wrecking civilization as anything since the Goths took down the Roman Empire (see my upcoming production of Titus Andronicus at Red Sandcastle Theatre). For me the penultimate moment —and the moment when Leitch’s not so hidden agenda became gleamingly transparent is when Pitt is killing a woman — a woman, who by the way is no victim and can certainly take care of herself, and who has been doing quite a good job of fighting him off so far— and is chatting with her about something (it doesn’t matter what) and he apologizes — as she is expiring — and says “Oh sorry, I’m ‘mansplaining.’ For those with a sense of irony — and I know there are not many of us left — this moment might be taken in two ways (which is what makes it so witty) Leitch could be very possibly suggesting that mansplaining literally kills women (which I’m sure to some degree it does) or he could be making fun of woke sensitivity politics. The second is more likely though, because Pitt plays a recently psychoanalyzed assassin who is trying to be more ‘sensitive,’ It’s kind of Tony Soprano’s dilemma writ large, as caricature, but Pit makes it totally believable as he mumbles to his operative on a mic buried in his ear that “I’m really trying to work on things, to realize that another window is always opening, oh sorry, is that a door?” his obsession with the accurate semantics used to describe each new step in his quest for mental stability marks him as a student of wokeism. He is a little man, in a funny hat, trying to get in touch with his feelings; (we’ve all met them) but it’s tough because people keep trying to kill him, including some women. One might be tempted to call this, or me (in this blog) misogynist (Christine Blizzard certainly did many years ago, when I hosted s/m sex parties at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre which were in fact for women — i.e. dykes —  but that didn’t stop her) but remember women don't own femininity. However I assure you I am not a misogynist, just as I am not anti-trans. I am however anti ‘victim politics.’ For what woke has done is take this one aspect of trans theory and feminism, and utilize it daily as cudgel to batter us with. The result is, for instance, that you are not allowed to say anyone is beautiful anymore, literally, unless they are ugly.  ‘Beautiful’ as in a 1984-ish nightmare has come to mean ‘deserving of my charitable attention’ and the word ‘ugly’ is simply not allowed, unless of course it is hurled at someone like me who dares to suggest that there is such a thing as beauty (see my last blog). My boyfriend and I saw this ugly boy dancing in the window of a store during Montreal Pride, and my boyfriend said ‘I really don’t want to see that.’ Are we cruel fags? Yes, but life is cruel. God has programmed all of us to be sexually attracted to healthy-looking people -- not unhealthy- looking ones (see: Darwin), it’s not our fault.  Bullet Train is a movie that sneers at sensitivity, and this is the kind of movie we really need right now, when we are drowning in hurt feelings. If you can laugh out loud at it, like I did, then you are still —despite it all — somewhat human.

 

My therapist told

me that I have to remember the good sex I have -- which sounds stupid but in fact it might be an absolutely necessary component of my future mental health. This is, of course, where it gets complicated and embarrassing -- because I have to admit that I am still very attracted to beautiful young men. This fault is characteristic of a gay writer who I admire very much -- but I don’t necessarily admire this fault in him. Anyway, Tennesee Williams is supposed to have once said that he needed to ejaculate on the chest of a beautiful young man regularly in order to be truly happy. It doesn’t really matter where I ejaculate, or even if I ejaculate, but I do need to be naked with a beautiful young man now and then. I know, this is something you fully expected, and it makes me a gay stereotype, and it probably disgusts, or saddens, or disappoints you. Too bad. I couldn’t care less. I don’t judge you do I? I don’t care what you do in bed, really I don’t. The difference of course is that I tell you about what I do. But everything I write here is lies, don’t believe a word I say, because it’s all from my point of view, just like your notion that your sex life is somehow more mature or better or more stable than mine -- is also a fanciful construct of your abundant imagination -- which you have a regrettable habit of referring to as either ‘intelligence’ or even just as ‘the truth,’ Anyway, today's blog is an exercise assigned by my therapist -- and if you are erotically or psychologically inclined, you might find it interesting. Not that I care. I don’t care if you are not interested in what I have to say but I do want you to be interested -- and I suspect you are, even if you feel guilty about it. So, back to beautiful young men. Well I can’t seem to get naked with a lot of beautiful young men in Toronto. There are certain logistical reasons for this, and also some practical ones, i.e. I am rather old and not as desirable as I once was, and also in Toronto, I was — as of four years ago — once again, regrettably terribly infamous (I get infamous every few years for just being ‘me’ — don't ask me why, it just seems to happen). But in Montreal these disadvantages don’t factor in. Why not? I mean I'm just as old and unattractive here. Well perhaps more younger men fancy older ones in Montreal than Toronto, I don’t know. I do hang out at a great bathhouse here: that could be it. (And yes I’ve had the damned monkeypox vaccine -- but I’m not getting another one! Jesus. Are you nuts? How many vaccines are we supposed to get? And why is there no information about all this? I have been vaccinated against both monkeypox and smallpox-- so why do I need another vaccine? And there aren’t enough vaccines to go around anyway, so-). So this last week in Montreal there have been three beautiful  young men, who I will tell you about here, so I can finally stop counting. Yes I count. When I get back to Toronto I will be saying things like ‘I haven’t had sex with a beautiful young man for a month!’ And other stupid shit. I know, (I’m a very sad person.) But if I look back at this blog I will remember that I am desirable and that a beautiful young man will -- and does always -- cum my way at some point. Sometimes they even cum in droves. Anyway, the first one was Arab, at least he looked very Arab, and yet his name was Melvin. I don’t know what to say about him except he had beautiful brown skin and I sent him out of my room at the baths after awhile, because I got tired of choking on 'it' (I presume you know what ‘it’ is) as I occasionally do, but he kept coming back -- and then I would choke some more, and then we got into other things. And he was remarkable versatile, and just very nice to be with, in bed. Sensitive. The next night was crazy. I wasn’t drunk (which is unusual) and there were two boys in the room beside me — one tall and thin and hairy and another -- well he was just a beautiful blonde punk. I got into a bit of a threesome with them -- but of course it was the blonde punk I really wanted. He came into my room later, and I did very nasty things him which I won’t go into here.  But I will say, he was very good at moaning like a porn star -- as if every bit of pain I inflicted on him brought him nothing but the deepest pleasure. I’m sure it was all an act but he was so pretty! And I got to kiss him on the mouth! And he was a very good at whatever that performance was he was doing. Finally, there was last night's offering. A tall willowy brunette was lurking outside ay room --  and he was so slender, and so extremely tall, that one would have expected him to have a gigantic you-know-what, but he didn’t, but who cares, as he had a classically kind of beauty --a straight-jawed handsome face - and I was aching to kiss him, and when he ejaculated, his balls were nestled in my hand. (How’s that for explicit?) And he was grateful to me -- which is a strange turn of events -- as I am usually the grateful one, or expected to be, or whatever. So I must remember this; that a kiss is much more than a kiss. And that beauty will come my way again. I believe in that 'Oprah Mantra'— if you imagine it, it will come, that is -- in your face, or on your chest, or between your thighs, or inside your 'nether regions.' So I appeal to you! Imagine it! You can create your own reality. I do it regularly here.

It’s natural we

might feel a yearning for the lockdowns of the past; that indeed we might long for their return. There was something in that certainty, What did it bring us? Paradoxically -- for the vast majority of us --  it brought an escape from death. Before COVID-19 there was old age, and then we expired. Then suddenly, it was not right for old people to die. Old people are people too you know. And you can save them. You can save your parents, If only you get the vaccine, wear the mask. Never before in the history of mankind did we have an official, foolproof, universally endorsed antidote to death. Wear a mask, follow the rules, don’t touch, don’t whisper 'sweet nothings', don’t love — unless you love from afar. Then you will be safe. Perfectly safe. You will not die. How could you? You have been so good. Then there was the moral certainty too, Christianity promised us heaven, but COVID-19 — for the ones who followed the rules — brought a kind of paradise in life. It was so, so reassuring to know that not only were we safe — that we would not expire — but we were such perfectly good perople! There were so many —  of course —so many — the evil ones — who didn’t execute the rites perfectly (remember: you must sing the entire Happy Birthday song when you wash, if you want to live!), those who didn’t wear the mask — or God forbid, didn’t get vaccinated. And one couldn’t help wishing a little bit for their passing, because -- when the microphones were shoved into their deathbeds -- they were so stubbornly obstinate in their denial, so much so, that, we, well, dared to imagine that they deserved it. Not like us. We cared for our fellow men and women, and all others -- of all diverse genders — we were not only good but so much better than the rest, the careless uncaring ones. And finally there was the COVID-19 lifestyle -- itself a reassuring confirmation of the lives we had always longed for. It was always so much more comfortable being cocooned at home, clicking on social media and demonizing others. We were right, and safe, and there were so many bad people who  pranced around in the so-called real world, screwing each other and being politically incorrect — it was so reassuring to denounce them. For surely the only true friends are online friends? Not like people who we meet in cafes or bars or in the schoolroom or office -- people who might betray you — with a glance or a touch.  Surely our real friends (and enemies!) live in other continents, other worlds — you caress and revile them with a tweet, and Facebook them, people who are anywhere but near, who cannot invade your space, who you never see, really, except virtually. It’s so much better to  cuddle up with our pillows and stuffed animals and the Facebook pages of our very best best friends. And we can eat and drink and smoke, and even take our favourite mind expanding drugs, i.e. indulge in whatever vices are at hand —- what, after all, does it matter, when we are being such good people, and are so safe? There is nothing to match that matchless ecstasy. Even now so many cannot stop wearing masks, they know the air must still be infected (we saw those droplets on television; the horrid live animations — the spreading of the disease — and we saw the molecule itself,so ugly and hairy and spiked, poised to kill). So nowadays you often find yourself getting sick again — It’s called ‘rebound’ now -- and it is with a twinge of nostalgia that we nowadays succumb yet again to the mild illnesses that characterize the heavily vaccinated. And yes, we still work from home and are suspicious of those who venture into the public square with abandon —  but most of we are suspicious of their touch. Is it no wonder COVID-19 returns again and again! For some just won't stop touching each other, shaking hands, and God knows what else! That fear will be with us forever. And is that a bad thing, really? Monkeypox is not quite so satisfying; it does not kill -- in fact rarely does so -- and we so loved the fear of Covid, just so that we might be delivered from it. Sure. Monkeypox does have the horrific sores and the social stigma — they are in fact like 'stigmata' those horrible wounds — called lesions — that mark the 'men who have sex with men' (we don’t call them homosexuals anymore), those who live for pleasure. It is a kind of 'Mark of Cain,' for we know that it is the bad ones who get it, the ones who touch too much, the ones who are libertines, careless and unloving. The WHO has warned us that  Monkeypox may terrorize the whole world the way AIDS did. This all comes from AIDS actually; it was from AIDs we first learned of this special, paralyzing fear, and of hiding, and how to separate the good from the bad, and what it felt like not to be a pariah when the pariahs are cursed with death. Of course they have commercials on television for AIDS drugs these days that claim to keep the victims alive and keep them 'uninfectious' (!). But we know this cannot be true, we know what is right and who is good, and the dreaded speckled monkeypox hand will strike them down, those who dare to touch each other anonymously, deep into the night. It’s safe here. And we will  live forever -- in our imaginations — because it is only the real world that lies.  Our imaginations tell the truth. They always have and always will. Because it is from the imagination that we first learned the possibility that we might live forever.