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.
