Yes I am lying.

Maybe it’s time I came clean, perhaps you are tired of me telling you that I am lying, and that everything is lies. I’ll start out by telling you something (it’s a lie, by the way). I have discovered during this lock down that I am a 'bottom.' It’s necessary to have a revelation about one’s sexuality during a lock down, to come to a conclusion to bring back to the post lock down sexual world -- when people are actively able to be slutty once again. Something to look forward to. If you don’t know what a 'bottom' is, then look it up -- it's the opposite of ‘bottomless’ (see: Shakespeare) which is what I was before, posing as an airy, profound dominant, an authoritarian who did not reveal his secrets because he was in power. Now I am (by revealing my dirty bedroom secrets) without any power at all (except the power to refuse to be penetrated). Why am I telling you all this? Because it’s necessary for me as a rhetor (which just means truth-teller/poet) that you know that I am unworthy. It is necessary in fact that I denigrate myself, so that you know that the source of whatever information you are getting is possibly flawed, because I am flawed. In other words you have have every right to be suspicious of my point of view. And I might stop here (but I won’t) because that is the point of this whole ‘lies’ business — to say 'all facts are lies' is necessary, because nothing is worse than to think the opposite, that is, to think that there is a truth -- anywhere -- that can be found, promulgated, emblazoned on a Trump Hat or Antifa Mask. There is no truth, period. I discovered this last night, when I discovered I had a bottom. A friend of mine is a conspiracy theorist. Everyone should have a conspiracy theorist as friend; the world is rife with them now, and they are good people — at least as good as anyone else, shall we say? Just as flawed? I realized my friend was a conspiracy theorist when he began defending QAnon, which to me is a bridge too far, i.e. it's indefensible. But he, nevertheless, disagreed with me. Then he told me that the WHO — The World Health Organisation -- had recently revealed their COVID-19 tests are inaccurate because ‘the cycle threshold is so high that it detects any miniscule viral load.’ (What this means -- and I have definitely heard this from scientists before -- is that the PCR test use to detect ‘cases’ of COVID-19 is so sensitive that it only tells you if you have even the tiniest bit of the virus in your system, which ultimately means nothing because if you have that little COVID-19 in your system, you won’t get sick, or make anyone else sick.) Anyway, the revelation came not with that news but with trying to confirm this on google. No such luck. This information is not available on the search engine that I have been using for so many thousands of years. My conspiracy-theorist friend said — ‘Just go to duckduckgo.’ I went to duckduckgo (ironically you can reach duckduckgo by putting it into the google search engine) and sure enough said ‘information’ about PCR tests just stares you in the face. And I immediately understood that this is what is wrong with the world. It’s no good cnsoring Facebook (Facebook is an evil thing, I know) or Trump’s Tweets. That’s small bananas in the big bad world of the internet. The problem is that, essentially, (are you ready) there are no newspapers anymore. And if that sounds like too small a way to solve a big problem, well 'perhaps you're right' (which is a euphemism for: ‘you are wrong’). Look at it this way; alternative facts are available everywhere on the internet and they are enabled by capitalism. In other words, the digital world is no longer a vast, bottomless source of information. It too, has a bottom. That bottom is money. In order to make money, you offer the public any lies you can sell, because that’s all any ’fact’ is, a lie. But inevitably, you must frame it as the truth. And therein lies the rub. There is no context for anything you read on the web, there is no self-denigrating rhetor like me, telling you he is submissive in bed and that he might be lying. You are getting the foundationalist creed, the cold hard facts. Thus you feel enabled to go out and kill people in the name of those facts; and God help anyone who challenges you. Now The New York Times made money on the basis of the fact that the 'information' it disseminated was trustworthy -- not on the basis that that 'information' got a lot of 'likes.' They were not perfect by any means, but The New York Times motto was ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ a humble admission of fallibility -- but more than that, you could sue them, you could take them to court for libel or lies. (I'm speaking of The New York Times in the past sense because I'm worried that at any moment it may perish, i.e. I'm doing it to make a point!) You could also read another newspapers, of various editorial quality (like The National Enquirer) but the point is that though a newspaper frames its news as ‘fact,’ newspapers are not infallible, they definitely have a bottom. And you could screw that bottom, or screw with it. And this is the essence of a democracy; and the essence of the world (okay, you’re getting it here and now, but remember, it’s a lie) we all have something to say, something to offer, flawed as we are, but it is up to each of us to listen and decide -- is it a good lie or a bad lie? In other words, does it make sense? Or, does it seem in some way to match with what we consider to be reality? Is it kind? Is it gentle? Is it nevertheless ruthless in its consistency and it’s power? In other words you, dear reader, listener, audience -- you decide what is truth and what is not, but it is therefore necessary that you think (I know, a tough one) and analyze, and vote, and that you educate yourself. And once you have decided on a truth, knowing full well that it is a lie, be ready for another truth to replace it. I love Wittgenstein, not only because he was a tortured faggot who nevertheless continued to love men in the face of a rich and oppressive family who would not have him do so, but because he admitted he was wrong. My ‘facts’ are fudgy on this but let’s just say that Wittgenstein wrote one book in the 20s (I think) and then he wrote a book in the 1930s (I think) retracting it all--  saying "Sorry, I got it wrong before.' This is the way knowledge works, and this is the only way the world may continue, i.e. the key that will ensure that it will not end. And oh, by the way, Wittgenstein did also not believe there are foundationalist truths, and he believed that art was a beautiful lie. I rest my case, as I rest my body, right now, on my bottom, which as you can see, in recent days, has become invaluable to me.

I don’t want to

burst your dream bubble but here are some facts. The Spanish Flu killed a 3rd of the worlds population, and COVID-19 has not yet killed 1%. As you might already know I really don’t like facts as they could change (#1), and (#2) I really enjoy living in a dream world. I believe all writing is fiction, and all speech is fiction; everything is fiction, and life is a dream. Nevertheless as I keep saying over and over until you are tired of hearing it — if you’re going to dream then why not have the best dream possible? Another fact, which of course may not be a fact, or may just, well, change, is that COVID-19 has not caused the world economy to collapse. It's just made it better for the rich, and worse for the poor. (So what else is new?) Then there are the riots. I can’t say I love them, because people are killed, and I don’t love riots, I love a riot, having a riot. Okay I’m lying I love riots. I can’t say I’m glad they are happening. Okay I’m glad. No, really I don’t want to see people killed. But then again, I see a riot and then I think --  'well there’s a few more people saved from suicide.' Because we just can’t live like this. Nobody’s telling you this fact and it is a fact (even though facts don’t exist) but they are rioting like crazy in The Netherlands right now. Yes, Dutch riots. The land of tulips and windmills and those funny little wooden shoes. Those' Dutchies' have had enough. There are countless reasons of course for the riots -- gee, it’s almost as easy as trying to figure out what the yellow jackets stood for. Yellow jackets kind of stood for working class discontent, then again they  kind of stood for all discontent. And try figuring out what that ‘insurrection’ at The Whitehouse was actually about! Ask one person, and you’ll get: 'To make Donald Trump King!' Ask another and you'll get: 'So Nancy Pelosi will stop tying up kids and raping them!' (I told you some people’s dreams are a lot better than others!) Ask somebody else and they’ll say 'So they won't take away our guns!' Ask some 90 year old Woman For Trump and she’s liable to tell you it’s about the fact that 'men are men and women are women' (as I say, facts change, but that can be a nice dream sometimes). And, finally someone else will say ‘They've taken away our freedom!' Well, that could be the actual reason. But I want to stick to the facts here -- facts only, (I mean, if you had to be four feet tall, wouldn't you want to be Dr. Fauci?).  We can’t live the way we are living now. If you tell people to stay home and never have fun they will riot. Period. There will be violence. Make no doubt about it; and I am not predicting the ‘rioters’ will win. For we have changed forever, once we were sexually liberated, and guiltless, and free - it was called the 60s -- but now we — as F. Scott Fitzgerald said— are ‘born back ceaselessly into the past." Okay, this is how it works. If God didn’t exist, then people would have invented him.  And Nietzche said 'God is Dead!' in 1882. So by now God is gone, really gone. But we don't really need him. No, we don’t need spirituality, stupid — people seem to get along very well without that, thank you (except of course for middle class bores who insist on baking bread and doing yoga) — no no no! We can do without God. He took  too much time and was boring. What we can’t do without is hypocrisy and righteousness, that is -- judging people and imagining we are better than them (it's a  dream again, and this one’s a real good one!). So unfortunately when God died nobody really noticed, but they really missed not going to church, and not getting dressed in their Sunday best, and not whispering -- 'Did you see the red fringe on Cindy Lou's black dress? Does she think that's mourning? Someone please tell her it’s not.’ (I’m not sure why this dream sounds like something from Gone With the Wind; maybe it’s because that movie has been effectively banned by the Woke Young and I’m not afraid to say that I miss it). Yeah, we miss that. Religion gave us permission to imagine that we were better than other people and judge them mercilessly. After all, there is nothing quite like the wrath of God. I must tell you something. (This is a story I've told before in a novel, but you won’t have heard it since no one reads my novels. The only person who might have heard this is my boyfriend but he never reads these blogs, even though he encourages me to write them — 'Write that damn blog!' -- he says -- 'Stop moping around!') So when I was little we used to visit The Crones. Yes, they were descended from Burrill Crone, The Crone who discovered Crone’s Disease. My best friend Thaddeus Alloysius Popcorn Crone (yes, he was christened that) was also my lover when I was eight. And he wouldn’t play tennis with me, although he showed me his penis (this happens often, among homosexuals). Anyway, when I went to The Crones' house one morning they were all eating English muffins smothered in butter. And I came home and told my grandmother (who was staying with us) that we should have English muffins smothered in butter too. She shook her said and said ‘No.’ And I asked why. And she said ‘They won’t live long, Those Crones.’ Now it’s true that most of The Crones are dead, and a few more of The Gilberts (my clan) are actually still alive. Well the moral of this story is that fun means misery and death especially when someone else is having the fun. I’m sorry — I’m sorry to tell you that old story, again that’s all I do these days is repeat myself, I thought it would only happen when I was old and senile. But the truth is (you know this is actually not the truth) there are no stories to tell anymore -- other than old stories. Because nothing new is happening. There. Is. Nothing. New. (pause) The other day I thought I was getting tired of my friends and my lover and writing this blog and well everything, and then I realised that I was just in a panic because I’m a storyteller (I make up lies for a living) and I have no new stories to tell. So I just repeat the old ones.And I'm not worried because I am boring my fiends, I'm worried because I am boring myself. But that’s the way it goes you know? When you’re a storyteller and you have nothing to tell. It used to be called dementia. Now it’s called COVID-19.

I am now staying

in Toronto. (Gee, he does get around doesn’t he? What’s that about? Well I have to get out.) And the apartment I’m staying in reminds me of my grandparents house. My friend has an X chair, which he calls an 'emperors chair,' but apparently 'X-chair' is its official name. It’s medieval style, composed of curved wooden slats. My paternal grandmother had one. I presume this lovely thing was actually my grandmother's, because my grandfather was such a horrible man. Also, there are velvet curtains hanging in the hallways where I am staying. And my grandparents had those hanging on every room; they could be pulled for warmth, as there was a fireplace in every room. They also had a parlor  (yes a parlor) with a baby grand piano — the room was pink, the shelves were overflowing with family photographs. The parlor definitely would have been my grandmother’s room. (I don’t think anyone in my father's family actually played the piano.) I remember sitting in my grandparents' living room after I told them that I wasn’t going to fight in the Vietnam War. I remember them not talking to me; pretending I was not there, pretending that I was air. I remember my grandfather carving the turkey in the dining room, under a huge painting of what looked like a 19th century young girl. We would always ask 'Who is that?'--  even though we knew -- and my grandmother would always say: ‘That’s Uncle Arthur!’ And we would ask -- ‘But why is he wearing a dress?’ And my grandmother would say: ‘They used to dress little boys in dresses in those days.' (Perhaps that painting has something to do with my, well — what should we call it? — my personal sexual history?) And after the meal was done, my grandfather would see there was still some turkey left, and he would sigh and say: ‘It doesn’t pay to cook a meal, Helen.’ So the meal always ended -- if not in completely disaster -- then with the usual grumpiness on my grandfather’s part. And I remember the time I came to visit my grandmother when I was quite young, and I leaned up to kiss her -- she used to wear furs — real dead animals -- yes a real dead fox peeping at me! -- and she smelled of Tabu -- a scent which I cannot get a whiff of without thinking of her. And when I had finished kissing her, she pulled her arm from around my waist and exclaimed loudly -- “Well we’re going to have to start buying you fat boy's belts, now, won't we!’ I was mortally wounded -- I was a very sensitive child, which she must have known. So she I guess she was a suitable wife for my horrible grandfather. And my grandfather always used to tickle us until we became quite helpless. My mother never liked it, I didn’t know why, and when I grew up my mother indicated that she thought —   he was, in a subtle way, molesting us. I wouldn’t put it past him. He would take us driving in his car,  and when we got to a hill, he would ask us (sitting in the car) to push on the seats in front of us, claiming that if we didn’t, the car wouldn’t go up the hill. And he would always say: ‘I’m going to go visit Lizzie Katish’ and we would ask him: 'Who's that?' And he would explain it was his secret paramour, that my grandmother knew nothing about. I have no doubt there was a real Lizzie Katish, that is -- someone without that name, but with that 'function.' After all, I never remember my grandmother being beautiful. And you might say why would one’s grandmother be beautiful? Well my mother’s mother was, inappropriately attractive, while my father’s mother looked a little bit like Eleanor Roosevelt. (And yes, once she pinned a poppy on President Truman, so she kind of was Eleanor Roosevelt.) But that’s another story. Which brings me to the anal douche. I’m in a rage today because I went to buy an anal douche. I’m not going to tell you why -- it was for the usual reason -- let’s just say it was for ‘a friend.’ Anyway, I went to the Rexall’s and felt embarrassed and confused. Where would the damn thing be? I walked up and down the aisles, terrified to ask. I had lots of company because -- in case you haven’t noticed -- your local drugstore, grocery store and big box store are now just places to hang out, if you’re like me you go there just to get some human contact. Finally I asked the least threatening clerk I could find. She directed me to the ‘women's section.' I could only find  tampons and ‘Summer’s Eve.' Finally I went to the pharmacy counter and asked a gaggle of pharmacists where I might find an anal douche. They looked at me as if I’d just shit on the floor. Then they told me they didn’t have any. I said ‘This is a drugstore at Church and Wellesley, and you don’t have an anal douche?’ And then they giggled. Yes they giggled. (I finally had to go to a sex store to get the damn thing.) And I’m mad. I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore. You call yourself a pharmacist and you have a giggle fit over an anal douche? What is the world coming to? These are called normal bodily functions,  and if you can’t get your puritan little mind around that, then you have no right to call yourself a pharmacist. This is, as far as I’m concerned, a sign of The Decline of The West. I don’t know how to tell you this, but if you’re a pharmacist you should be aware that people have bodies. (Or were you hoping to forget?) But of course no one else cares if pharmacists giggle at anal douches. Only I care. Because this is related to why we are all locked up in our houses right now. Yes, we have bodies. Yes, they get sick and die and have sex -- usually not in that order. If you weren’t all so horrified by all that, then maybe we might all be allowed to live normal lives. And in this way, we have come full circle. For I am as angry as my paternal grandfather. Yes, I will die angry. He, quite famously, stormed out of the local Episcopalian Church in a rage because they refused to hang an American flag. My grandfather was an Angry American Patriot. He drove each of his two sons to the draft board on their 18th birthday. Sure, my cause is somewhat different; I'm angry about a certain pharmacological skittishness regarding gay hygiene. But I am my grandfather’s grandson; it's frightening -- but useful -- sometimes, to remember that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Birds don’t have

 imaginations. I have nothing against birds, but can you imagine one -- sitting on bough-- and wondering what it would be like not to be a bird? As I say, I have nothing against them, because I wouldn’t want some animal rights activist getting mad at me. So let me just say I’m sure birds have feelings. But there is thinking and there is feeling -- and then there is imagining. And it’s certainly no reason to be nasty to birds, really, I like them, and think of them often, because Lear says -- when he and Cordelia are on their way to prison -- that they are like two birds in a cage, and that’s his imagination, which is really only denial, and that’s the difference between him and a bird. But all that aside — I’m not really concerned about birds here, but about the imagination. I’m in Montreal now because I have to be.  And it’s a curfew and I haven’t talked to many people about anything, as there really is no one to talk to. I managed to engage the cab driver in conversation and he told me ‘a lot of people are very distressed by all this’ or something to that effect ('distress' may be my word, not his). And when I went to order a pizza I asked if they were open until 7:30 and the guy let loose: ' NO! We’re open after 7:30! Everyone thinks we’re closed at 7:30 -- because of this curfew!  But we’re open late for delivery, okay?’ I tired to sympathise. And then he said, with some  exasperation: “Will you please tell your friends?’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t any friends in Montreal, except the men I have sex with, but I’m not having sex with anybody these days (though a guy on Grindr just responded to my ‘hey’ with another ‘hey’ — but that may be about as sexy as it gets).  So when I was walking in Montreal yesterday I looked at the Jacques Cartier Bridge — which was all lit up—  and, really, I thought,  would anyone in Toronto ever think to light up a bridge? And then I was left with only my imagination, which is all I have really. So it’s snowing in Montreal and I’m sitting looking out at a parking lot where occasionally people trudge by carrying sad little bags, wearing sad expressions — or they would be, if their faces weren’t covered by masks. And all I can do is dream of the way the city was last summer, when the bars and bathhouses and streets were open, and I was running around showing my ass to people with my pants down, literally, and following people out of parks into alleys and almost having sex, and then really having sex late at night with really hot guys beside fences in abandoned car parks that were later locked up (was it because of us?). And then bathhouses which I can’t even begin to describe — but I do remember the boy who balanced a pretty large chocolate chip cookie on top of his erect penis and dared me to eat it, and I did, even though I ‘m on a diet.  And the other boy, who when he found out my real age pounced on me, calling me ‘Grandaddy!’ And the beautiful queen who made me hold his dog (sounds like a metaphor, doesn’t it?) because crack addicts were always trying to steal it. And he was gorgeous in a kind of renegade, dangerous ‘don’t touch me’ sort of way. And he called me sir. I haven’t been called sir — in a sexual context — in quite a while. So I can imagine all that, and that’s what separates us from animals — not, as Aristotle imagined, reason. It’s our capacity to wonder why we are here, and to ask that big question, the very biggest question of all  — which is how can I get outside myself and look at myself, or will I always be inside who I am,  and will I have to wait until I die to get another perspective? And will death be a "rather gloomy merging into everything’’as Amanda says in Private Lives (and then Eyot says — “I hope not, Im a bad merger’). I think of these characters because they are as real to me as day, and Fran Liebowitz said in her TV program (by the way I think it’s so great that she’s on Netflix because some people I would imagine have never seen a creature such as her) — that the real aristocracy is not made up of rich people but of people who agree with Fran Liebowitz. For me it is an aristocracy of those with tremendous imaginations. And you don’t have to be smart or an actor or a writer to have one. David Pond, who I was in love with — and who I haven’t sufficiently eulogised here — was a doe eyed, pale skinned punk who died of AIDS, and who we all loved, and who I finally got to go to bed with (and who I probably could have gotten AIDS from because he wanted to use spit: ‘oh come on, the old spit and push why not?’). He told me the most wonderful stories about Ottawa where he grew up. He used to pick up gay men on ‘the hill’ where all the gay bureaucrats — and I suppose  elected officials — cruise at night. But this was about David Pond’s imagination. He told me that just before his cat died she hid in a corner for awhile and when he finally found her she gave him a look that said "I just can’t take it any longer, it’s time for me to go.” I always remember that, because David spoke exactly the way his cat would have spoken, and he fervently believed that cat had spoken to him. I am reading all the novels of Elizabeth Von Armin now, and she is here, beside me, and she is definitely part of the aristocracy of imagination, and when I read her in the tub, I am having a charming visit with my other self, only unlike myself, she surprises me, which is why we like other people, or love them. And now I’m feeling guilty for what I said about birds. And it’s not simply because the people who have the best imaginations of all are animal rights activists. It’s just — alright — perhaps birds are like us and do have imaginations. But they need not dream of flying, and they would not. So I imagine they dream of another form of transporting themselves, one which is not present in our imaginations but only in their’s. And where do they transport themselves to? To a place where Elyot and Amanda from Private Lives, and David Pond, and Elizabeth von Armin are having tea together, and the boy who balanced that cookie will be providing ‘refreshment.’ Would you like to join us?

I woke up

 last night in a hot sweat, one of those nightmare moments 4:45 a.m. — at the darkest hour of one of our darkest days, in this, our darkest time. A friend of mine has recently been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness (that is a euphemism) and I was thinking about that person, and my own mortality, which is what happens at 4:45 a.m., in times like these. We know what it’s like now in the hospitals — we are reminded over and over, every day— staffs are overworked and underpaid, and they, understandably, fear getting COVID-19 themselves. They treat patients — any patients — as people who may infect them — understandably, like all of us, they are very afraid.  It is after all, time to be very afraid. If you are dying, you will most likely be left to die alone. If you have a serious illness that is not COVID-19, you must understand that your illness is not a priority right now. This is more than terrifying. And there is no end in sight; the vaccines are being released slowly (you know: bureaucracy: nobody's fault!) and it’s important to remember that they may not be effective against the newest viral mutations. This lock down may go on for years, epidemic may follow epidemic. Who knows? Maybe it will go on forever. We know nothing for sure. This stunning daily fear -- and this life-that-is-not-a life -- has become the new normal, just as they said it would. Little did we know how prophetic the predictions of Public Health would be. If I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, it might be time to take my own life; certainly that seems like the logical, reasonable perhaps even scientific choice. After all,  I would be nothing more than a burden on an already overburdened health care system, and I would be adding stress to the lives of the many people working so hard at saving people from COVID-19. Another friend of mine thinks he might have syphilis (yes, that’s the kind of crowd I hang out with, people who think they might have syphilis, judge me, and I know you will!). And the doctor told the nurse that if it turns out my friend does have syphilis he will likely not be treated. The doctor’s attitude was this: ‘This guy shouldn’t be out having sex with people during the COVID-19 lock down -- so let him try dealing with syphilis for awhile!’ (Keep in mind this person who possibly has a case of syphilis is HIV positive.) I would respectfully ask all of you how we have arrived at the point where human beings are punished for being sick. There is so much talk of science; and yet why does the way we are treating each other seem to be more consistent with superstition? Instant news about the epidemic and its tragic course, its killer path, the pain of others, the fear we are required to have, nay that we must have — attacks us every day. But most of all it is so hard for us to understand that human contact is not important anymore; that being close to those we love -- and not only hugging them -- but getting encouragement and emotional sustenance, laughter, tears — is something we most certainly must give up. Can't you see that we are not only being punished for being sick, but for being human?  And it will not work. Most people  would rather be dead than live like this. But the worst part is that every day we are inculcated over and over with the fresh news that it is all our fault. It is not the government's fault that seniors’ homes are desperately underfunded, or that there are not enough vaccines to go around. The government need not feel guilty, or be punished. But we, the people, must lose our jobs, stay home and not speak to anyone. And finally there is the relentless, mind-numbing propaganda — because that’s what it is. I am not denying the information is factual, I mean who knows? But no one ever said that propaganda was necessarily lies; it could be truths that are hurled at you by the government day after day, the same truths but you are forced to hear over and over again; its like being bludgeoned with a club. We are told -- in Orwellian fashion -- to stop loving people, out of love for them (stay apart: stay together). Any idiot knows this is nonsense. Or perhaps we must simply give in, perhaps it’s simply a matter of understanding that we deserve to be punished —we’ve always  endangered our own lives -- smoking, drinking, doing drugs, driving cars, having fun and getting laid -- but much much more importantly, we have been endangering the lives of others, and it is finally time to stop. I had a friend years ago who was trying to get off heroin (yes she was my friend, and yes, she was on heroin, judge me -- I know you will!) and we stayed  up with her night after night for weeks to help her. I am not telling you this in order to valorise myself, but to explain (to doctors, and public health) what it means to take the Hippocratic Oath. It means that you help people; but you do not judge them. It means that you do not punish the sick. It means that you have compassion for suffering, whether it be the suffering of a drug addict, a smoker, or an anti-masker. It means that there are no television interviews with dying people who were ‘mask deniers’ and who have now have realised the error of their ways. It means that you will abandon schadenfreude. You are not supposed to be ignoring or (could it be?) enjoying the pain of others (that was Dachau) -- you are not supposed to enjoy taking away their need to love each other, out of misapropriated righteousness. You are supposed to be making people feel better. And it is not that we cannot handle the bitter scientific truth. It is that we cannot handle our humanity being trampled daily by an army of sycophantic, preaching, pontificating, condescending politicians, who are not as concerned about public health as they are being elected again to public office, so much so that they have to put on an empty display of concern for the dying. Can I tell you what concern for the dying means? It means you hug them. We learned this during AIDS. I thought everyone learned this. But obviously not. But we shall go on dying alone, without love — because love is no longer allowed.  And if people kill themselves out of desperation — as many are choosing to do  — we must not blame them. But I know the urge will be there. Because everything is our fault. When in fact, our only fault is being human.

I am awash

 with tears. I just finished listening to a young woman go on about her first experience of going to a play — the musical Hairspray. It’s all megamusicals now -- that’s all they know -- and certainly that’s a problem, but we won’t go there. Where we will go is to what I think is so horrible about this soul killing lockdown. I’ve noticed more commercials on CNN (my drug of choice during COVID-19) for mental health issues. Apparently even Bell has a mental health app (well that should help!). And Michael Phelps is  advertising online mental health services. Unfortunately I can’t stop looking at his humungous hands, so I am somewhat distracted. Well if you’re anything like me and an extrovert you find you dream now about parties, and that’s what theatre is, it’s a party. The defining characteristic of a party is that there will be people there you don’t like. I tried to explain this to my boyf, who has never liked parties. I remember years ago we almost had one (we hardly ever do, for this reason) and I had put a particularly awful person on the invite list — only because he was somewhat famous. My boyf burst into flame (as he is often known to do, especially during COVID-19 times — someday he will explode!) saying that this person was a disgusting piece of manflesh, a rotting corpse of incipient ineluctable indolence -- in other words -- a sycophant slut. And all this was true. I can’t deny it. This potential invitee was (and is) what we fags call a 'glory hole voyeur' (which -- for all you straights -- is something like a poll-watcher, but not exactly the same) anyway, my boyf was right that this person was barely alive — in the sense of deserving the moniker of ‘human.’ “I won’t have him in our house!” He yelled (something he has often said about various people, since).  I told him I was fully aware that this poor excuse for a breathing sentient animal was detestable. “And why would you want to have him at our party?” -- my boyfriend screeched. I wanted to turn his volume down, but my boyf is not a TV or digital device -- which is of course one of the reasons why I love him. Instead I tried to explain that parties were indeed places where you meet people that you do not like, and that is one of the reasons for parties. He didn’t understand, and I tried to explain -- as one might to a small child -- that the point of parties is that you go home afterwards and gossip about all the horrible people you have met (which he and I have actually done). But most of all, you have the opportunity of confronting ‘the other' at close quarters. In other words unlike on the internet, where you hang out only with other  'Proud Boys' or 'others who believe that those who don't use the proper pronouns should be burned at the stake,' you will meet people who think and look differently than you (hopefully). That’s life, --or that’s living breathing socialising life, which is something we have none of now. (Hence why I am dream of what was once called parties but what we now call dangerous social gatherings of more than 10 people!)  And the theatre is like a party. I always like to tell the story of Susan Cole, prominent NOW columnist (if NOW still exists, does it?) and lesbian playwright, who was sitting in my seat when Elaine Stritch came to Toronto (was she at The Wintergarden?). Anyway there was Susan -- and she hates me and I hate her -- we’ve both gone on about it quite publicly for years (just to be perfectly clear, I'm Bette Davis and she is Joan Crawford!) and she smiled in that way she has and said with just the right dose of charitable condescension: “I’ve always wanted to ask — what is it that gay men find so fascinating about Elaine Stritch?” This reaked of the essentialism that so characterized her column and her aesthetic. I just said “Because she’s f-ing talented!” (I will not bother to fill in the blanks.) But I’ll always remember that encounter (and it was my seat by the way, and she did vacate it at my polite request)-- because I cherish it -- just as I cherish our mutual acrimony. I’m sure Susan Cole is a nice person, or I hope she is (I used to know her sister too, who was the salt of the earth, so maybe you know the acorn doesn’t far fall from the tree -- or whatever the saying is -- though I think it only applies to parents and children). Because Susan Cole and I would never voluntarily share the same air, but here we were forced to. And being forced to share the same air is de rigeur nowadays (in Quebec I think you can go to jail for it). But probably the most eloquent (I hope) symbol of my love of theatre is embodied by that faggot I always used to see at the opera. He used to get all dolled up -- spangles and tight gold pants -- and he must have been ninety years old (well these days, because of Grindr, 50 is the new 80). Here was a man who I would be frightened to meet in person (only because it would be far too much like looking in a mirror) as I am a sad old faggot who would in his heart wear sequinned pants if he could. (I wore a sequinned mask and beautiful red dress when I went in drag to RM Vaughan’s funeral, and people treated me like I had leprosy. But I have had so much sex in my lifetime that I probably do. And I mustn’t hold it against them -- they were COVID CRAZY ARTISTS and scared, many of them, of being caught loitering in a park  -- in daylight -- as the actress said to the bishop! -- and afraid to admit they were even there…). But I am, like everyone, of course, afraid to confront my own self when I meet myself in person. So I would never want to actually wish to meet this sad old faggot I always see at the opera -- but to be able to have a glimpse of him before settling into my seat was routinely transcendental. You will notice when I talk about theatre I only talk about the audience, never the play; well that’s what it’s been about, since Shakespeare’s time, when the theatres were right next to the whorehouses, and people were screwing in the wings -- and the balcony -- never mind the floor. Yes I cried when this young woman talked about the plush seats and bright lights of her very first Hairspray experience. I miss it all so dreadfully, and it’s all coming back to me now, and I am prostrate with grief. Really. Who cares? No one… Shakespeare, somewhere, is wiping away a tear, and perhaps Joe Orton, who probably also got blown in a men’s washroom at one of his openings (and yes, in case you were wondering. that is a double entendre --which is something you are liable to find in the theatre, and in the audience, too….)

I think it was

seeing that beautiful man wearing the animal skin in the US Capitol -- practically naked -- that did it. I am now officially a libertarian. We can drop all this talk about right and left, it’s toxic and will kill us, did kill us that day. It seems to me, libertarians (I know, I should at least google them before I say I am one) are basically anti-government people who are in favor of abortion and aren’t racists. In other words they are ‘populists’ without the worst aspects of populism. The semi-naked-animal-skin-wearing-guy in the US Capitol was and is a sexual fantasy for me as I’m sure he is a sexual fantasy for many. And I’m sure he will get laid like crazy, wherever he ends up, even if that’s jail. Apparently his story is that he protests everything — right left up down anything — and doesn’t really have any sympathies, he doesn’t think. Well that’s fine with me, sexual fantasies that change your life don’t have to think, that’s not their job. And speaking of thinking I can’t think of anything positive about government right now. I didn’t used to understand the danger of government, but now as we are moving into curfew, and government lets Facebook and Twitter operate without proper regulation, and then Facebook and Twitter are allowed to ban anyone they want — government is -- well -- just too toxic these days. I think it’s because government is so fiercely allied with business and that is called fascism. So we need less government because business will never go away. And I know that sounds like a contradiction but the whole Facebook thing is very complicated. Let me try and explain. It’s a government monopoly, enabled by the government, that’s the problem. If people were allowed to sue Facebook and Twitter — as they should be able to — then they wouldn’t be so powerful. That’s the end of preaching, here, and it’s just my point of view. The first libertarian I knew of was Ayn Rand, and she kind of invented it. And honestly Ayn Rand wasn’t so bad if you like pulp fiction. She was the queen of pulp fiction; The Fountainhead is the best bad novel I’ve ever read, especially potent when you are 13, which was how old I was when I discovered her. On the positive side she was a funny-looking, short, fat, Russian-Jewish woman who foisted her s/m sexual fantasies — fantasies in which a woman was quite willingly raped (this is all before Madonna) -- on an unsuspecting public, who just adored for it (at one point more people read her than the Bible). Nothing is more alluring than a strong woman who runs her own life, and possibly yours (she could be your boss) but when it’s time for sex she says ‘Rape me!” And pornography is a potent persuader.  Look at Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s poem about a cougar who rapes a teenage boy. Nobody talks about that poem because Venus’ actions are  considered ‘repellent’ by most Venerated Shakespeare Critics, but in fact Early Modern Readers couldn’t get enough of Shakespeare’s expertly written pornography ( “I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer: Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale; Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.”) At the time I discovered Ayn Rand I was kind of in love with my mother, but had to separate from her somewhat (we were Siamese twins at the time) so Ayn Rand helped. My mother and I wore matching ‘dollar sign’ bracelets though, because we were both Ayn Rand fanatics. Oh dear. I can’t believe I’m telling you this; I’ve told you so many things (are you there?). But this is probably the most obscene. So, when Dominique Francon breaks her own marble fireplace and rides a horse (yes, a horse, you have to see it, in The Fountainhead movie) to the quarry where Gary Cooper is working, and says something to the effect of ‘Send someone to fix it for me will you?’ And then, or this is what I remember, she turns back briefly and says ‘Who is that man there?’ eyeing Gary Cooper, shading her eyes from the sun. Now Gary Cooper couldn’t act (I know some would fight me on this one) but he had one of the biggest penises in Hollywood (Marlene said so) and there was a sweetness about him that made him the perfect consensual rapist. No I will never forget that scene, and that’s the good part of Ayn Rand. The bad part is that she demonised emotion. This kept me in the closet for about 15 years, and that was no fun. She said ‘emotions are not tools of cognition’ which caused me to scribble relentless denials of my own sexuality in dull journals for years— ‘Just because I have homosexual feelings I don’t have to act on them. They are just feelings. Emotions are not tools of cognition. Ayn Rand said so.’ Etc.) This is perhaps why I am attempting to write a book about Shakespeare now in which the central thesis is that ‘metaphors are cognition’ presenting the very contestable thesis that art is a way of knowing the world that works somewhat better than a microscope. But since no one will read this book just as no one reads this blog, so I will not go on about it here. It was not easy to abandon Ayn Rand, but I had to, when I ‘came out,’ because she would not have approved; just as my mother did not approve. We went out to lunch when I told her (my mother, not Ayn Rand); our waiter was Micah Barnes (yes I’m going to name drop again) who I barely knew, but who was a  very handsome young man. And I suppose I looked at him in a desiring way (the way I am looking at those photos of the semi-naked guy in the animal skin at the US Capitol) and my mother was livid. After lunch — in which she indicated that it was fine that I was gay, she turned to me in the cab and spit out ‘Do me a favour don’t ever do that again in my presence! Don’t ever make eyes at a waiter in that disgusting manner! I would thank you to never do that again please!’ So because my mother and Ayn Rand didn’t care for my homosexuality -- well, they were formidable duo -- and that probably that has to do with why I’m such a rebel. As a libertarian I will be able to be a true rebel, and who knows I may turn up in an animal skin somewhere I shouldn’t be, semi-naked, quite soon. We can only hope. The difference is that unlike this delectable young man in the animal skin, I won’t be protesting at random  I will be thinking about something. And that something will be liberty.

We will survive or

we will carry on, or something, yes, we will get lost along the way. We are lost now. It seems that everything that is important is suddenly not important anymore, that there is no rhyme or reason, that living doesn’t make any sense. We are sleepwalking through a nightmare, only hoping at some point to bump into the furniture. But there will be touching, and laughing, and yes there will be parties, and there will be unwarranted uncalled for promiscuous sex. And there will be showing off (how long has it been since I’ve been able to show off for no reason?). In other words there will be a reason to live -- because people do need people (yes Barbra), and there is really no other reason for anything. I mean can you think of one? This is a mad theory -- that someone is trying out -- that people do not need people — but let me assure you, no matter how many doors they lock on us, we will blow smoke through the holes (Genet), we will tap on the wall, we will cry -- and someone will hear us, and say ‘yes they are crying too.’ This is what I imagine. That we will someday be sealed off in our little pods, through life, through school, transporting our sperm and eggs to each other in highly antiseptic test tubes, because we must begat, there must be progeny but not in the old way of course, and we will die in our little pods, but we will have lived so much longer than we would have lived if we had not been alone. No, you needn’t ask — is this isolation worth it? Because it is not, and we all know that, even those of us who have welcomed this and who wished to hide all along, and now have every excuse. Because we all know that life is better than death really, even if we are afraid of life. When separating ourselves is the only way, then there is something wrong with that religion. I will say that I would rather die myself -- or kill someone -- than be so alone. That is now considered heretical and evil, whereas at one time it seems to me it might have just been seen as human. I dreamed of Camille last night — she was a best friend so many years ago (I’ve written about her before). I will name drop now. Her father was Cameron Mitchell (have I already told you this? I think? in another blog? I keep coming back to Camille..) and he was a big movie star, as well as being in the first Broadway production of Death of a Salesman where he played 'Happy,' and I loved Camille so much. She was an actress (she’s been on Smallville for years) and I don’t expect to ever be her friend again, and it probably wouldn’t work anyway, but for that brief golden time, she used to pick me up where I was staying in Niagara-on-the-Lake and drive me around in her sports-car. I remember at one point she was staying in a hotel room with a phone in the bathroom, at a time when there were no cellphones, and that was a big deal. What I loved most about Camille was an attitude she had that said ‘Be happy, why not, Sky? I mean why not?’ It sounds rather simplistic but it wasn’t, it wasn’t even hedomism, it was just an attitude that says we are here for a short while, and there is so much fun and so much beauty, why not take advantage? It helped of course that her mother was a millionaire (A Hungarian Millionaire — described to me by another friend as being ‘like one of the Gabor sisters'). Yes of course it helped that Camille was rich and beautiful and being with her was being a part of that world. I know you are not supposed to enjoy people who are rich and beautiful and talented (she was talented too) anymore, but why not? So I dreamed about Camille having a party a couple of nights ago, because I dream of parties — now, I can’t go to them in real life so I have them in my dreams. I remember she had some sort strange outfit on at one point — it was tights? In odd colours? She was very voluptuous? And she had some sort of fantastic apartment high up. I was going to rush to my desk and write the dream down but I didn’t, so that is all I remember. There is something so terrifically joyless about all of this 'lockdown,' and I know it comes from being reminded every day that people are dying. But yes they are, and yes you and I will die, and sometimes it will be preventable and sometimes not, and that’s part of the beauty of it all. I think of my mother in the hospital bed looking up at a cupboard, very bothered, and she asked -- ‘What is that?' And I said: ‘It’s a cupboard, mother,' and opened and closed it, just to show her.’ She wasn’t long for this world, after that. She just sort of disappeared -- they starved her to death (stopped the nourishing liquids) because that’s what she wanted, and my sister and I dutifully sat by the bed and watched her die. And then there was my stepmother’s death, and when we entered the hospital room — my boyfriend and I — my stepmother’s niece was grabbing her, and hugging her, saying -- ‘It’s okay Carolyn! It’s okay! If it’s time to go then that’s okay! Just go!” (We wanted to get out of there very fast.) And then shortly before my father died, he called me on the phone. I was in a hotel room in Buffalo, and was going to visit him the next day, but the phone kept ringing. I finally picked it up and it was him, and he said something to the effect of ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ and indeed he had, so I went to the seniors apartment he lived in and found him lying on the floor and helped him up. The next week the nurses from the building were in the living room, ignoring him, picking out the pills he wouldn’t be needing in the next couple of weeks as he lay dying. “Oh he won’t be needing those,” they said quite mercilessly (he was in earshot). So I guess I can say I know dying. I won’t talk about the AIDS stuff because it’s expected of me. Or maybe I will. They were phone calls. The men I loved were in other cities when they died, and with other men, whatever, it didn’t matter, I still loved them. They both were perfectly beautiful and sweet and just wanted to tell me they were dying. I didn’t know what to say. So I know dying as well as anyone, but I quite simply do not see that as a reason not to live. I don’t know how to tell you this but if you don’t get this very essence of it all— that if you lived forever life would not be worth living — then — well really there is nothing else to ‘get.’ And in that way life is like ‘the theatre’ and like ‘the theatre,’ it will come back, if not for us, then for someone else. Because the world we are living in now won’t last, it can’t last, because frankly when people are alive they need to live.

It’s the sad death

 of kings. But hey, it’s something to watch during lockdown. I’m not quite sure -- all conspiracy theories aside --if that isn’t why God created him. Yes he has caused the deaths of so many (or has he? Will Biden do better?) but he has kept so many of us alive. Could you trying being honest for one moment (I know it’s kind of impossible nowadays, but just give it a try). Are you honestly yearning for the Biden Boredom? If we get curfewed? To see that tedious, meandering, octogenarian jawing his politically correct mundanities, how can it compare on any level with the living breathing sweating lying swearing obscene profane Greek tragedy that is Donald Trump? I know what you’ll say. These days none of us are in it for the yuks, we’re in it for the redemption. Speaking of jawing I heard some expert on CNN  -- and please google all the pundits, you will discover that most are people with blogs who just want to be famous. At least I don’t want fame. I had it once, and I wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. You haven’t lived until you’ve had someone stop in the middle of blowing you and say “I’m sorry I can’t go on, I can’t blow Sky Gilbert!” (That gets real quotation marks because it's an actual quote.) I understand, I really do, I didn’t have sex with Rudolph Nureyev for exactly the same reason. (He was at the The Romans bathhouse in like 1985 — you would not know of that place unless you were are a very old fag like me. Well I was lying in my room minding my own business when who should walk by but Rudolf Nureyev. At least it looked like him; he was short kinda stocky — with a great body though. And he was in town. I got up and walked past his room a couple of times and he definitely seemed interested. But I just…I couldn’t do it. I knew that all the time I would be thinking, ‘I’m blowing Rudolph Nureyev’ which would have enflaccidated me [I just invented that word]. So I didn’t have sex with Rudolph Nureyev. I know it was him, because when I left I asked the guy at the door: 'Was Rudolf Nureyev here tonight?’, he said yes.) So I understand what it’s like to fear servicing the member of a famous person — but I don’t want to be famous ever again. If I did I would not be writing this. I’ve sent my new Shakespeare book to approximately one thousand (well at least six) people and none of them have gotten back to me. One of them -- who is  A Big Canadian Queer Academic -- ignored it. It may very well be because I’m stupid — but then I found out he doesn’t approve of Meghan Murphy; which means well basically he wouldn’t approve of me. A friend mentioned ‘Dad’s Renaissance’ — what Noel Coward called it when they finally re-discovered Private Lives in the 60s — but this will never happen to my Drag Queens On Trial. I can only hope for a quiet ignominious end. I may get COVID-19 and they will shove the camera in my face ‘Are you sorry now, that you made fun of the pain of so many?’ But I will die just before crying and apologizing about not realizing how lethal the virus can really be (the ultimate humiliation for any COVID-19 patient). Speaking of COVID-19, I heard some pretentious nobody, duffus, Ph.D., blogger, pundit going on about how after all these lockdowns we may see a resurgence in ‘licentious behaviour.’ Yes. That was the phrase he used. Well that phrase itself certainly says something about the amount of sex he has had, and what he knows about sex (i.e. nothing). Jesus Christ I had to explain to someone the other day for the thousandth time that we live in an anti-sexual culture. Everyone thinks that because we have porn galore (that’s not sex!) and Miley Cyrus twerking (I repeat, that’s not sex!) we live in a sexual culture. But we do not know what actual sex is. And we will never know, not after this COVID-19 business. Actual sex does yes involve hugging and kissing, and the insertions of various objects (human or not) into lubricated and expectant orifices. But here is the most startling truth of all — it also involves coming to terms what what you actually want to do in bed — not what your mother told you to do, or what is approved of by your local priest, or what makes babies, or something you saw in a porn movie, or in Everything, Everything (starring the luscious Nick Robinson). It means figuring out what you want, which is the hardest damn thing in the world. But no one cares about that anymore; we care about the prurient performance of sex, the detached online version of commodified repression -- and we will burn the hanky after -- when we need to understand instead that it was the symbol of all that might make us sane. Be afraid, be very afraid. But back to the pundit. He predicted that after endless epidemics and lockdowns we might, in the year 2025, find that some people are engaging in ‘licentiousness.’ It was kinda a warning, I guess. Gee whiz, I don’t know how to tell him this, but I will be getting naked with someone who is not my husband, tomorrow night — and not in my own f-in house. And the next night I will be searching desperately for some stranger to get naked with, even if he turns out to be some loser living in Forest Hill with a black dildo (again, I’m sorry to mention it, but that other guy had one). No I won’t be waiting until 2025 to be 'licentious.' Yes, even after curfew, I will (after burning my mask, in pure defiance of Theresa F-ing Tam) be having sex, as much as humanly possible, somehow, some way, even in the freezing cold, after curfew. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in the alleyways, we shall fight in the dark and in the light, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in shared and borrowed air air, we shall defend sex, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the bathhouses, we shall fight on the backrooms of Eagle bars everywhere, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall fight in secret so that no one ever knows --  but we will never surrender!  And even if — which I do not for a moment believe — this thing we call sex -- or a large part of it -- were subjugated -- our brave boys and girls would carry on the struggle, and carry on the liberation of the young and the very, very, old, like me. (Thank you Winston Churchill.)

I hate God.

This is what I remember saying to my mother when I was 11. At approximately the same time I went to her with the worry that maybe I was gay — so perhaps the two were connected in my mind. But what I have come to understand only recently is that my greatest urge of all has always been to blaspheme. I was terrified; my mother was my confidant, my only ally — the only person who I imagined understood me. I confided in her that I couldn’t get that repellent phrase out of my brain. She didn’t understand — but as usual she was very sympathetic and rescued me from terror. What was particularly strange was that I wasn’t sure that I actually hated God, that is, there was no reason for the phrase to be in my head other than the fact that I knew it should not have been there. Am I attracted to heresy? Addicted to the moral obscenity? It seems that as a writer, I am not so much addicted to thinking something as to saying it; after all the thought ‘I hate God’ wasn’t enough for me, my guilt compelled me to say to my mother those terrifying words, and then be blessed, cleansed. (We won’t go into how the whole process of her cleansing me morally was a kind of emotional incest, not now). Well if this is an illness — it does reminds me of the obsessive compulsive disorder I have observed in some of my friends — maybe I become obsessed with various shocking ideas -- even if I don’t believe them -- just because they are so shocking (or perhaps I am being unkind to myself here)? So much of what I have written has offended so many people, and it strikes me that it would be convenient if this was simply an illness. My outspokenness has certainly been connected — by those who hate me — as an affliction; when I stood up to Christina Blizzard so many years ago (a woman who attacked Buddies in Bad Times Theatre) she told people I needed psychiatric help — which indeed I do -- I have been in therapy for years (I don’t deny it). But none of my therapists has ever treated my compulsion to speak what I consider to be shocking truths as an infirmity. But is it? Because, as we suffer week after numbing week of this 'death in life' -- called 'lockdown' -- I feel compelled to tell it like it is. I am drawn to conspiracy theories, I wish I could rest there, could just rant in my head. But for me the truth is so much simpler and more complex than that. I wish I could blame ‘them’ -- whoever they are (George Soros? Bill Gates?) -- but isn’t it rather puffing ourselves up to imagine that we (the little people) are of any importance to ‘them'? Okay. So I am as compelled to speak these words as I was once compelled to say 'I hate God.' Here goes: ‘this epidemic is not real.’  But people will point to the deaths, to the long term survivors on television all the time; 'Believe me,' they say, 'my pain is real, I am truly, truly suffering.’ How many times do I have to tell you that when I challenge the origins of your disease I am not accusing you of ‘not suffering?’ I have no doubt that many have suffered and died, but the question I ask is this. Most of the people who have died are over 80 and/or in nursing homes. Why has nothing been done to protect them? Why were no measures taken to improve their living conditions? Why are they debating whenever or not old people should be the first ones to be vaccinated? If this epidemic was real we would have have spent the last 10 months doing just that. But let’s face it; we don’t care about old people -- we live in a capitalist society and when it comes down to it we are all as transactional as Trump. COVID-19 just gives us a chance to imagine we care, that’s what this whole exercise is about — it's a fantasy feast of a fantabulous altruism that we do not, and will never, possess. And here is my point: there is no truth. This is perhaps the most heretical thing I will ever say; but if you understood it then, honestly, I think things would be so much better for all of us. What does it mean to say 'there is no truth'? It means that we are all living our own fictions, and the sooner we understand that, the easier it will be to live together and love each other. It’s easy enough — isn’t it — when you see the drug addicts on the street (and there are so many of them now -- it’s a kind of party out there -- them and the ones rushing to buy toilet paper, and those scurrying with their heads down, masked, in fear) and we think ‘that guy’s crazy --he’s living in his own world.’ And we kind of respect that. Or we should. And rightly so; because that person is having a hard time. Similarly, I respect those who believe that their 90 year old parents somehow died tragically of COVID-19 even though they were sick for years and were going to die soon anyway. I respect the long term survivors who have been racked with COVID-19 pain for the last year; I respect those who would not sit in a room with me if they knew I slept with 50 men last summer (give or take a few). I love all of you -- for living in the crazy little worlds you have created for yourselves, just as you must love me for living in  mine. And our only hope is that out of this mutual respect can come a dialogue, in which we respectfully try and persuade each other of what might become for a moment or two a ‘shared’ reality. But there is no truth. Science will come up with another COVID-19 mutation before you finish your breakfast; it’s best not to worry about it. Just realise that public health officials are fulfilling some need inside themselves by day after day setting out to perpetually scare you (Theresa Tam is certainly fulfilling something inside her; please respect that!). This is not a doctrine of universal love, as much as a doctrine of universal acceptance of the world’s fantasy and lies. How then are we to live our lives? We find our own truths, and 'do unto others' -- and well Amanda in Noel Coward's Private Lives (when pressed)  put it succinctly: “Oh yes, I believe in being kind to everyone, and giving money to old beggar women, and being as gay as possible.” It is the third part of this modest proposal that may prove the most difficult to realize at the present time. So all I can recommend is that you try -- to the best of your ability -- to live your own lies, but remember this corollary; you must respect the lies of others.

'Life is a cabaret old

chum,' or maybe it is a bathhouse. I prefer to think of it as the latter. I will never forgive Liza for revising the lyrics from"When I go, I'm going like Elsie" to “When I go, I'm not going like Elsie" — Liza please! How dare you moralize about a play that made so much money on Nazi-ism? (Well it did -- as did The Sound of Music.)  But I digress. I think of the bathhouses because they have temporarily disappeared. When I'm in Toronto I reside opposite what used to be The Cellar — a bathhouse; and all my friends say ‘I had such good times there...’ So did I. I can hardly remember any of those times; that’s what makes them so delicious. I do remember meeting my old music teacher there. When I was in my teens I played the cello in a string quartet at the Royal Conservatory of Music; my teacher was a mean, irascible old fart named Robert Spergel -- who I was terrified of. Of course I wasn’t a very good cellist and he was an excellent one. Perhaps he hated me for that reason -- bu I was never sure. At the time I was in the closet, but quite beautiful (well, at 15 anyone can be beautiful!). Years later I saw him at The Cellar, lurching around a corner when he was nearly dead, and it all became clear — had he been in love with me? (It is my experience that teachers who are in love with their students tend to torture them). Anyway when he died there was an article about him in the newspaper, and I discovered that he had been a child prodigy, a cellist — and he composed a symphony — and met Leonard Bernstein. But when I saw the picture — well he had been a gorgeous curly-headed blonde teenager -- whereas I was never anywhere near as beautiful as he. But I could fully understand why he would hate me as I was so much less beautiful and so much less talented. Then there was the TV chef who looked like a clown who I met at the bathhouse and who threatened to kill me. (For the record, whatever your name is Mr. TV Chef Clown, I’m sorry I disrespected you, and I hope you don’t come and kill me now because I’m writing this). He was a large (shall we just say fat?) fellow with frizzy hair, and as I was quite the body fascist at the time (it was my fault I take all the blame on myself, please don’t kill me, sir!)  he wasn’t my type. He kept lurking around my door so I finally slammed it in his face; it was cruel and completely uncalled (I can see that now, and am fully repentant sir Mr. Clown, honestly). I waited for quite awhile and finally opened the door. And lo and behold there he was. He said: “I’ll kill you someday. You won’t be able to hide. You’ll be standing in a bar having a drink and laughing with your friends, minding your own business and I will hunt you down and I will kill you.” And then he walked away. Yes is it perhaps a wonder that the world of the bathhouse is one that  I long for, one that I miss? But one could go on forever extolling its heavenly features — a gay bathhouse is the most honest and democratic institution in the world. That doesn’t mean that young body fascists (like my ex-self) don’t lurk there, in the steam. But the fact is that anyone can get laid there if they are just willing to acknowledge the truth. Sex is honest; that’s what I love about it, especially for men. Perhaps that is the appeal of sex for men, women can fake orgasms and do, regularly (sorry guys) but men cannot (is, or is not, the bed wet?)  and most of all they cannot fake an erection. (I should know, I haven’t had a hard or vaguely firm one in years; but it’s the thought that counts!) Anyway, a bathhouse isn’t like a ‘date’ or a ‘bar’ or any other artificial, social convention where people can pretend to be 'into you,' they either are, or they are not. I need that certainty, as one of the only things that really turns me on is being desired. A straight friend of mine told me a story that exemplifies the bathhouse. He lives in a rather seedy apartment building in a very long apartment and his bedroom is at the end of the living room, far from the front door. Well one day he was working in his bedroom and there was a gentle knock on the bedroom door and he opened it only to discover a man standing there wearing only a pair of overalls pulled down to just below his pubic hairline, leaning against the wall. My friend was, of course, startled, and the black man (he was black, okay, I’m not going to not tell you just because it will be considered an irrelevant/racist detail by some, it's just the facts, and that’s all I am offering here, as you well know, is just the facts). “Do you have a cigar?” he asked, in a languid sort of way. My friend did not, and did not quite know what to say. The semi-naked stranger went on  --“Do you want to have sex? “My friend said no. “Can I have a drink?” My friend said no. “Well I was just at the bathhouse and someone let me in the building, and your door was open, and the way I see it, if the door is unlocked then God meant for me to go in.” This is my favourite detail, a kind of sophisticated sophistical wisdom that surpasses Buddha or Confucius, partially because it is both so fundamentally wrong and right at the same time. My friend figured a way to get him out of his apartment without a confrontation. But what strikes me is that probably the semi-naked stranger was at the bathhouse, stoned -- and they kicked him out (we’ve all been there, haven’t we?) and he just couldn’t imagine that the world itself was not a bathhouse. I mean why shouldn't it be? Why can’t it be? I have met so many women who when I tell them about my experiences at the bathhouse (and they are  the kind of woman who wants to know) whine “Why aren’t their bathhouses for women?” And they are right to whine. But men are men, and women are women, and never the twain shall meet, except at the end of some guys dick, or in a divorce or sexual harassment court settlement. Sorry. I just don’t understand heterosexuality; never have, never will. It’s just a trick to populate the world, isn't it? And we queer perverts are onto it. The jig is up, and if we had our way we would all be wandering through popper-infused hallways, stoned, stumbling into people’s rooms, and onto people’s penises. 'Oh I’m sorry, I don’t know how I got there, I guess I just tripped!' When sex is a felicitous accident that's divine, when you force it to mean something (love, procreation) you kill it. Please don’t try and kill sex. For the revenge it takes is that it will try and kill you.