Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day 9

Thirteen pounds. A bit terrified, called the Nutritionist, is that too much weight to lose? She says, — everybody says — don’t worry, it’s all water. Okay. She lets me replace my melba toast with bread though, just to be sure. 

I should be happy. I know I should, and I am, I’m weighing myself now (haven’t done that in years), I’m not so ashamed of what I weigh and I even looked at myself naked in the mirror and I can totally see it, I look like a regular size person tending to fat — not a fat person. That’s all very good and I should feel happy — but when I visit my therapist we decide that I want to be one with everybody. Are you ready for that? In other words I don’t know how to be separate from people; I either have to fuse with them, which means we have being the same person, or I have to be rejected. As you can imagine this has caused some problems in my personal life. Could it be also why I am so obsessed with beauty? You know someone once said about me ‘You always seem to be surrounded by beautiful young men’ and I thought sure yeah why not? Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? But now I’m wondering if my obsession with beauty is an obsession with being one with another beautiful person so that he is beautiful and I am beautiful and — mirrors. Narcissus. 

Or can we just leave beauty out of this please? That is, out of this analysis. Beauty is a given. Meaning it’s precious. You can’t touch it. 

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day Seven

Late last night I met someone who caught my fancy earlier; he was short and slim and handsome and wearing ripped white pants. After stuff happened, he was adamant ‘I’m twenty-seven. How old are you how old are you how old are you?’ I kept saying ‘very old.’ He guessed — ‘thirty” and ‘thirty two?’ I said ‘I am your grandfather —you just had sex with your grandfather.’ But he wouldn’t give up so I finally told him the truth: ‘sixty-six.' It didn’t phase him; he asked me to put my number in his phone. His name is Donny and he is from Tel Aviv, and  we talked about my visit there two years ago.

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day Six

A beautiful young waiter was nice to me. This sounds so pitiful. What is beauty? In medieval times one would prostrate oneself before the beloved like a dog. (‘Spaniel.’) Beauty is over, is it not? I am antique to talk about it; immediately you say — what kind of body fascist is he? And what particular type of person is beautiful? But I am adamant, it is about the shape of the neck the curl of the eyelash, the shy look, the man planting his two legs firmly on the ground. But why physical? Oh why so physical? I wish I could answer that; I wish I could answer why I think that if I lose weight I will be more ‘attractive.’ What is attractive? Why not just seek to be a better person? But, nevertheless, I have a body, it has ‘needs’ — as the pejorative cliche goes, and it does things, and wants to do things, and demands attention: to be taken care of (or not). We all have bodies, don’t we? We all may harbour different fantasies of what is beautiful; but must we relinquish the term? I speak in defence of beauty; a beauty that I attest will never go away. Try and deny it; it will assail your eyes and your desires. And go on, admit it, you will always believe somewhere, deep inside you, that what is beautiful on the outside must be beautiful on the inside too.

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day Five

Cramps. Not stomach cramps, muscle cramps. Not clear on what that is? Skin…tightening? Surely it’s too early for that. Anyway there was one incident — a guy on his bike almost ran me over, and usually the guys on bikes who almost run me over just continue on their way, but this one — totally out of the blue — terribly chatty! “Oh I don’t have a notch in my belt,” he said and I had no idea what he was talking about and he says “You know I don’t have notch in my belt for all the people I run over with my bike,” and I laughed and said no of course not. And then I realised that he was kind of cute and giving me very positive energy. Again…could it be — the weight loss? It’s only been five days but a delivery guy on a bike, chatting? And then he asked me where MacDonalds was because he was delivering something there (to — MacDonalds?), and I told him and he seemed happy. That’s all basically. Except — some random guy at the bus station told me a joke: “Why did the prune ask out the banana? Because he didn’t have a date.” Haha, he wasn’t cute so it doesn’t count. I know that sounds awful, but with this weight loss thing I’m really obsessed with — am I getting more attractive or not? And by that of course I mean — attractive to guys that I am attracted to (isn’t that what being more attractive means? Getting the guys you want?)

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day Four

Another incident — quite cheering — not to make a mountain out of a molehill but I was standing outside Starbucks in the rain and right out of the blue this guy asked me directions. No biggie except that he was tall dark and handsome and extremely masculine and he treated me like just another dude, which obviously, I’m not. I was wearing a touk and t-shirt which I suppose might make look kind of cool, but I just had to assume that already I was giving out skinny vibes that made me much, much more attractive.

When Political Correctness Replaces Informed Criticism

These days discussing the sex life (or twitter chat) of an artist, or discussing the morality of immorality of the work itself — is what passes for informed aesthetics.

I am not the first to notice this.

But now it’s getting personal. I can’t figure out if a movie is good or bad anymore— at least not from reading all the dumb, ham-handed reviews.

Here are three recent movies that have been badly — and misleadingly — reviewed.

I'm setting the record straight.

1. LATE NIGHT I haven’t seen anything Mindy Kaling’s done (my bad) since The Office which I loved her in. Well she’s great in this. And she’s written a witty, touching comedy; no small feat. But everyone keeps taking about how great the politics of this film are, when truth be told —  they’re lousy. Emma Thompson plays a female late night talk show host, ala Jimmy Kimmel. Right. Lightbulb? I mean, um, look around? There is no such creature. Mindy Kaling, why are you criticising white women for a privilege they haven’t attained yet? Not even Joan Rivers could get white male execs to grace her with a late night talk show. So my review is the reverse of all the other ones — ‘Kaling is a great writer with bad politics.’

2. ROLLING THUNDER REVUE This documentary is being criticised because some of the talking heads are actors not real people. The dumb critics seem to think this is bad, or immoral, or unethical — or some such rot. How stupid can you be? This film lies because a) Scorsese wants us to remember that documentaries don’t always tell the truth, and  b) Scorsese is demanding we be skeptical of media these days. Get it? So how dumb are you, critics? And how smart is Martin Scorsese?

3. ANNA In case you’ve missed it (and I’m sure you have) this is a film by Luc Besson. The reviews were all snide, calling it sexist (it isn’t). Then I realized that Luc Besson is ‘Fifth Element’ Luc Besson and a very skilled filmmaker. I go. It’s great -- and I hate movie violence and complicated plots and I’m certainly not turned on by kickboxing women (although I did act in a movie once called FACE THE EVIL starring a kickboxing Shannon Tweed — and she did turn me on by showing me the ring that Gene Simmons gave her). Turns out that Besson has been accused of rape (the charges were dropped) — and the unwanted touching of five women. Oh —  I get it, so now his movies are suddenly all bad? But they’re not. However there’s no arguing with people who think that assholes make only lousy art. Hey - how do I tell you that most great artists are assholes?

These are all great movies. But the critics were wrong about them; go see for yourself.

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel)

Day Three

I went to the mall and bought some earphones. A man with a slender physique and long fingers who worked at The Source was unusually nice to me. I couldn’t help but think it was because I had already lost a little weight and was feeling lean, streamlined and very attractive. He was a very nice man — laughed quite a bit — and was very friendly to me, and he seemed to understand my preference for Skull Candy (the earphones that is). He really cheered my day, and, I thought, gee, I’m on the right track with this diet business.

Diet Diary

(I have to lose weight for an upcoming — minor — operation, and this is the diary of how it makes me feel. I know I promised I would never do this on a blog but hey, times change. And apparently if you tell people about your diet it helps to keep you on it. So here goes! Anyway this isn’t really a blog, it’s a prose poem. I know that poems on my blog have gotten me into trouble before but I’m going to try not to think about that.)

Day One and Two 

Nothing to report: I didn’t leave the house.

WHY DRAG KIDS ARE A BAD THING

Yes, it’s contrary to all your instincts, and your instincts are right, and I’ll tell you why. No, no there are no drag kids. The utter selfishness of this concept is beyond my comprehension. 

Okay, this is what happened. Every since AIDS especially (and before that too) gay men and lesbians have been trying desperately to get straight people to like them — especially the straights who will always hate them, i.e. the religious right. This is all instead of realising themselves as queer people, growing, changing, loving, sexing. This means that these new conservative gays and lesbians have to present themselves as non-sexual (or so they think) as they know that straight culture is hypocritical, and claims not to be sexual. So — it follows — the quickest route to being loved by straights is to say ‘I’m not sexual. Being gay or lesbian is not about sex, sex is not important to me, I’m just the same as you.’

So, are you still with me?

This new gay and lesbian alliance with the new non-sexual trans theory is part of this. Gays and lesbians are now happy to ally themselves with theories that say ‘it’s not about sex, it’s about gender’ and after years of having conflicted feelings about drag queens, conservative gays and lesbians are now willing to accept drag queens if they too — like the academic, theoretical wing of trans theory -- are non-sexual.

Well what could be more non-sexual than reading stories to kids? And let’s not stop there. Why not dress up little boys in drag — because drag isn’t sexual at all, is it? Just like being gay isn’t sexual.

We’re all very innocent, right, all us gay people — we wouldn’t know sex if it slapped us in the face.

Let me tell you something. Little boys should not be encouraged to do drag. Sure, they can dress up and play around in any way they want to — let them do what they want — but only with each other in private — please don’t get involved and supervise them, that’s just sick, and always has been.

Drag is all about getting laid, telling dirty jokes, camp, threatening the patriarchy, and rocking the sexual desires of straight men; it is about the sexual fetishisation of femininity and fashion and makeup. It’s about, to quote Lou Reed —Taking a Walk on the Wildside! Drag is essentially sexual and queer and it will never stop being that way, no matter how many times drag queens read stories to children or lead drag workshops.

So, I think it’s time to stop.

This desexualising of our gay and lesbian culture, is selfish, misguided pathetic attempt for approval that has finally reached the point where it is hurting the helpless. 

Please, stop.

Pride: Adults Only Please!

I’ll tell you what Pride used to be like.

I remember getting ready for the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Pride float — this would be approximately 30 years ago.

We always decided on the concept first.

Of course I can’t remember the concept we chose — all I remember was my job was to suck off a dyke sporting a big, fat, black dildo. 

Conundrum. What to wear? Well, I had a sailor shirt, and I knew I could get a sailor hat at the army surplus on Yonge street, both of which would go well with the tight, white sexy shorts I would jam myself into (the ones where you could see everything).

I also decided that I would have to go on a diet so that I would look super sexy and fabulous on the float. I went on the banana diet, which was basically just bananas (I think you were allowed some oranges for variety). At the time I was also drinking pretty heavily which I didn’t intend on stopping, so by the time it got to Pride I had a pretty severe stomach ailment, but: I was skinny!

The day of the parade our float was waiting in line and a very officious Pride Official (aren’t they always very officious?) marched up to our float and said “Sorry, you can’t do that, there’s no more s/m on the floats.” You see, the woman I was sucking off was a very tall Asian woman dressed entirely in leather, and of course, she was bare breasted. We got angry at the official and then decided to ignore the orders from officialdom. (I know that because there are pictures of me, —in some book somewhere — sucking off — Joy — that was her very apt name — Joy!)

Anyway, that was the beginning of the end.

The reason explicit sex was banned from the floats was because children would be there.

Huh.

If only we could get rid of the kids!

No, I don’t mean shoot them, I’m not that insane, I mean why can’t we NOT TAKE THEM TO PRIDE? Pride is a celebration of sexuality. Do children have sexualities? Nope, they don’t. Despite what some nutty trans theorist may tell you. Children are often polymorphously perverse (look it up) but of course they become adult sexual beings and make choices about behaviour and labels after they reach puberty (times have changed so much that some may disagree with me even on this). There are family oriented pride events for children, can the children be there, not at the parade?

Or better yet, why not celebrate Pride at night — like the Mardi Gras in New Orleans — and everyone get down and sexy and grungy and very very dirty? Celebrating sex? Remember sex?

Oh dear…..I fear…I’m very old fashioned.

But Joy….can you hear me? Joy…are you still there? 

Joy…I’m thinking of you!