I will employ

here Empson’s fifth type of ambiguity which is 'fortunate confusion;’ just let the words take me -- allow the words to do the thinking. I want to apologise for my last blog, I seem to have been held hostage by my own thoughts, I am certainly being held hostage, we all are. Can’t remember what I was watching the other day, where someone was talking about prison oh, I know The Lady and the Dale, —which I’ve already talked about here — but yes, prison yes, our life now. And now all I can think of is that you think I’m spoiled. Well I am. I’m not going to apologise for it though. When you’re spoiled you don’t apologise. But the prevailing myth these days is that if you are privileged (which I am) you don’t feel pain, or at the very least you don’t get to talk about it. Well I am going to. Really the news item that got my goat (it's an old expression -- whenever I think about goats I think of Greek tragedy, don't you?) Anyway that’s how boring my life is by the way — I'm going to tell you about an item on the news. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would call that a plot, but I’ll just call it an unfortunate accident -- that my life is so uninteresting that I might as well be dead. So it was a news item about a small lovely looking child who had special needs and recently died. Yes -- you saw it coming-- from COVID-19. Now clearly hardly any children die of COVID-19. But that doesn’t matter, her parents were given prime time to cry, and then to talk about the rash. They pointed to her sad now-dead little arm -- “Yes that’s the rash she had, so you should watch out if your child has a rash.” And then the reporter turned to the audience and said: “Yes folks, if you’re child has a rash you should be very concerned.” I’m not kidding. This was a special needs child, and I’m not saying her life doesn’t matter, what I’m saying is that she died of this rash because she was especially susceptible -- and need I go on? I’m so tired of going on and on, of putting one foot in front of the other, of pulling the curtains when it’s dusk, of sniffling and dripping through my mask, of brown people asking me if I have symptoms. (Jesus Christ! I’m trying to make an anti-racist observation that only brown people are being hired for these menial jobs so leave me alone will you?) Anyway… I’m just. Tired. I’m tired of crying at my computer while listening to Bellini -- and thinking: 'yes, once that tune used to make me happy, but now...' — I’m tired of trying to see boys’ faces through their masks, I’m tired of pretending I’m falling in love with their eyes because there is nothing else to fall in love with. I’m tired of being tortured — yes tortured! Today the Canadian government said ‘We see no need to tell you when the national lock down will be completely over.' Because why? Because we're lucky enough to have a leader who is not a floppy-haired right-wing sock puppet but the very model of youth and political correctness? Whatever the reason, not telling you 'when' is torture. I’m tired of waiting for people to return my phone calls and emails, and actually caring. No, more than that: worrying that they will never call back or email again. I’ve lost several friends recently. No, not to COVID-19 (Jesus!) -- to the fear of it. The idea of mutations or variations or whatever it is gets ahold of them, and wrings the life right out of them: “I’d better stay home.” I’m so angry at this one friend who didn’t return my emails all through the lock down -- and I used to love her so much -- and one of our mutual friends is dying right now. But I guess well — she’s too worried about COVID-19. And then there’s a guy who I used to get naked with -- that’s all we did, was get naked -- who has decided all of a sudden that I”m too ‘risky’ to hang out with. There used to be an experimental theatre series called ‘The Risk' at The Shaw Festival, and you’re going to have to hear about it, because I’ve got nothing to do but talk about old times, and since I’m getting prematurely old, well, why not? Anyway Christopher Newton asked me to direct Oscar Wilde’s Salome which I did, and it was a horrible production I’m sure. I tried to be ‘experimental,’ and it was nice that he asked me but — well it was very hard to be ‘experimental’ when some of the actors just thought of me as Christopher’s untalented fag boyfriend. For instance there was Barry — I can’t remember his last name, but anyway I think he’s dead now (no not of COVID-19, or AIDS - Damn! but you are a suspicious one, aren’t you?) And there was a party scene, and I made one of the straight actors kiss Duncan MacIntosh (who as I’ve mentioned before is now The  Queen Of PEI — look it up, her husband is the king). Anyway, I directed the play very ‘gayly,’ and Barry played Herod, and my friend Camille played Salome. And after opening night (the audience was quite underwhelmed, I think) Camille said: “Did you hear what Barry said?” And I said — no, what are you talking about — because I had no idea, and she said: “Didn’t you hear -- when he’s supposed to say 'Welcome to my party’ he didn’t say that.” Well what did he say then? “He said -- 'Welcome to my GAY party' -- I couldn’t believe it." “Was it an accident?," I asked. “No,” said Camille, “he totally did it on purpose.” I’ll never forget when Gina Mallet (yes that was a Toronto critic's name, once) gave Camille a bad review (in Of Mice and Men at Toronto Free Theatre) saying she was "a cement Lana Turner.” Camille was so crushed: “Am I a cement Lana Turner, Sky?" she wailed, “Am I?” I assured her that she most certainly was not. But right now I would welcome even a bad review. Even from the moronic, mean Martin Morrow (he said I was 'plodding and pointless'!). Yes, you guessed it, frankly I would relish a little attention from anybody. I guess that goes to show what a narcissist I am. But technically speaking, I am not a narcissist, that is, I am not as bad as Donald Trump. Wow, is that really something to be proud of? But what do I have to be proud of anyway? Well….I haven’t gained any weight during this friggin’ pandemic. But not gaining weight means that I have done lots of other things which are very bad -- but which I won’t list here because if my partner of 21 years finds out he’s liable to excommunicate me from his life. I haven’t stopped loving him. That’s one thing. And I haven’t stopped loving this. Writing this gives me a sort of perverse pleasure -- always will, I hope. Thanks for not reading it.

This is a sad

song. I was interviewed for a 1985 movie about AIDS called No Sad Songs. My big quote: “We are told to watch out for mucous membranes. What the hell is a mucous membrane?” As a gay man my situation is not unlike the those black men who were tortured in the USA Tuskegee Experiment from 1932-1972. They were secretly infected with syphilis and left to die in order to facilitate research on the effects of untreated venereal disease. Similarly, when AIDS appeared, gay men were demonized and told that God had punished them. And for years the medical establishment — even when they finally figured out how the virus was transmitted -- were so incredibly nonplussed by any sort of sexual detail, and particularly by the details of our repellent sex lives, that they neglected to give us the practical information that might have saved us. Thus it’s difficult for me to trust the medical establishment. So here’s a fact. The CDC itself does not report the number of deaths from COVID-19 -- only from COVID-19 and 'co-morbidities,' ergo, it’s impossible to tell what anyone is actually dying of. Another fact — the number of deaths in Sweden from COVID-19 — where they never locked down — are approximately equivalent to the number of deaths in England and France — where they did.  To be sure, death is a constant; what has changed is our attitude to sickness. If you don’t trust the facts (and I wouldn’t, if I were you) the anecdotal evidence is much more persuasive. (Nothing could be more convincing than a daughter speaking on CNN -- of her 90 year old mother dying ‘of COVID-19,’ while holding the trembling hand of her 91 year old husband.)  So here’s this overhead on the GO train: “I don’t mind if they lock us down like this forever. I mean I do all my shopping at Walmart anyway.” Or this, from one of my friends: ‘You won’t find me going back to a bar when this is over — I’m going to drink at home.” It is evident that after nearly a year of lock down a sizeable portion of the population could care less about leaving the house. They are addicted to their diet of digital drugs — porn, fake news, celebrity gossip, video games, tic-toc, social media and endless Disney family fun; ergo, therefore, ultimately it's the end of art.  Gee, I’m sorry for mentioning it—how quaint, antiquated, and irredeemably irrelevant the term ‘art’ seems now.  But I’m not talking about the friggin’ Art Gallery of Ontario here.  I’m talking about the God Dionysus, I’m talking about the all consuming drunken orgy that is, or should be, art, which lies at the origin of human consciousness — the darkness, as well as the blinding light, the mandatory exploration of the hidden recesses of the soul that beckons us — through tears, through the gut, through our dicks and cunts, though laughter, through an intoxicating attraction to violence. I am talking about accessing our anger — plunging our fists deep into the irrational, and yanking out all the hurt, the hate, all our dissatisfaction with this world in which we are born astride a grave. (The only answer for many of us, is  to perch on the edge of that grave and have cocktail.) This is the world I lived in; this is the world of art. No it had nothing to do with polite fundraising activities or arts council debates over funding (I was never much good at fundraising and hardly ever asked to be on a jury) —  nor  the world of ‘issue’ plays about the environment or trans rights. When there were artists, we followed our suicidal urges to plunge deep into our own mutilated psyches and pull out what is not acceptable, or nice, or reasonable. People are not clocks, or test tubes, or are they meant to always do what they are told. They stay up late and drink, and shoot up, and screw — enjoy illicit drugs, joyous orgies, obscene poetry, scandalous plays, bloodthirsty movies, the stuff that shocks your grandmother (yes art itself might turn out to be a ‘co-morbidity' of  COVID-19) — the random eloquence, hands groping, probing seeking — and finding — you guessed it satisfaction, which we ‘can’t get no’ — as the poet says — but still we yearn for it, because it is this yearning for the il-lit corners (I won’t tell you what I left once in the il-lit corner of a bar in Key West) that keeps us alive. Where do you think conspiracy theories come from? From our fundamental need to connect with something that makes sense only in our hearts and in our assholes. If you take that away, if you demand that we live in a spanking clean, sexless, non-violent, rational, happy, family-oriented, yoga-inspired, cookie-baking, child-obsessed nightmare of domestic tranquility — well don’t worry, people will still find the dark. They will find what is alien to you — and they will shove it back in your face. On the street yesterday two boys accosted me. One was quite attractive, I assume that he had been sent on a mission to query the sad old fag in hopes of being financed. 'I’m not going to ask you for money’ he said and then: 'But we’ve been kicked out of our house and I wonder if you could give us any advice.' Wow, was it written that clearly on my forehead: 'I am an old fag with a big house — if you are young and needy and beautiful you might come and stay with me?' — if so, maybe that’s what caught his eye. I asked him why he had been kicked out of his house and he said ‘because our parents accused us of stealing.’ So because the plot was now as thick as pea soup; I suggested he try the youth hostel up the street. A man was walking behind me talking to himself. I tried to ignore him, but soon he was beside me, and at precisely the moment when he passed by, he mumbled 'get some bullets and shoot everybody.’I kid you not. He was an older man wearing fatigues and a cap that said MAFIA on it. Of course these are the kind of encounters that set my mind reeling; but don’t worry, I will not  turn them in a novel or a play —  because you will not want to read a book, or enter a theatre. You are happy safe at home on your digital morphine. That’s fine. But do please remember when you cozy up under the coverlet that the rats are scratching in the ventilation system. No worries— for you need not let them in. Someday, somehow, they will find a way.

I was looking at

photos of Prince Harry and Megan Markle on CNN, enjoying the latest celebrity news. The have been rejected -- finally, and according to the press, somewhat fatally --  by The Royal Family. And we are supposed to be unhappy for them. It’s important to note though, that all this  has little to do with celebrity. It's simply about race and sex (isn’t everything these days?).  I have always thought Prince Harry was good enough to eat, and been astounded by his ability to somehow escape the inherited, time-released ugliness which plagues the other men in his family (is he a bastard?). But what I propose is simple. Could our fascination with this couple have less to do with royal politics than miscegenation, our racist obsession with the pesky, pornographic image of his ginger penis being enveloped by her dark vagina? I see this partially to shock of course. But also partially because it is only through shock that one can reveal a deeper truth, which in this case is that we are all hypocrites. It is this hypocrisy that is putting me to sleep right now, and attempts to steal my life away. I was born in a  deeply hypocritical time— the 50s -- an era to which we have returned, no doubt. There was another image on CNN this morning -- this one of a family whose house burned to the ground during the Texas freeze-up, and the patriarch of the family had only just recently died of COVID-19. Such an image of course predicates prayers to a merciful God. But we all know that COVID-19 is not just a natural accident. And this, of course, comforts us immensely. It is a matter of bad people; of separating the wheat from the chaff,  the maskers, from the faces of evil. It doesn’t matter that images of the now dead father suggest he was morbidly obese -- something that  would have had an enormous affect on his health. This doesn’t matter because we prefer a moralistic universe where -- as Oscar Wilde said -- 'the good are rewarded and the bad are punished,  that is what fiction means.' How much more comforting it is to cry for this poor innocent Texas man, felled by, well possibly -- your next door neighbour (because you saw him the other day, making another unnecessary trip to the grocery store not wearing a mask) -- instead of by a deadly and irrational disease! We would rather live in a world where we are punished for our sins than one in which God has meant us to die needlessly; as this might cause us to either hate God or imagine he doesn't exist. The origins of my sheer exhaustion with moralism -- and its corollary, my obsession with shock — go deep. I was in the closet for 28 years. No one can really figure out why, as my family was not particularly religious. But I was a sensitive child. And when I say sensitive, you must not imagine that I am extolling my virtues, though I am perhaps the most sensitive person that ever lived. No, I do not care about others excessively nor am I concerned over their  feelings, but I will be overly and somewhat neurotically anxious about whatever 'vibes' others project, and instead of trying to understand that reality, I will spin off into my own world, projecting onto them fantasies of what they might be thinking and feeling -- which probably have no relation to reality (hence; I am a writer). So don't doubt that I, as a sensitive child -- picked up on the moralism that lurked around my American 50s household; it was like a disease back then, in America. One was responsible for everything, there were no excuses. I have a friend who is dying right now of a particularly virulent form of cancer, and I watch every day as another bodily function deserts him. There is no justice in this -- though he is somewhat of an alcoholic, an angry Communist, whose sympathies always lay with Cuba. I do not think he is beginning punished for his sins, but rather --like the tide or the wind -- something is happening. I honestly wish I could be different; that instead of being traumatized by moralism, I was hypnotised by it, instead of being repelled by it, I might be granted the glorious erection it bestows on the rest of the world. If so, I would be in heaven right now, for all arts and entertainment has been, these days, co-opted by preaching. We dutifully turn on our digital spies -- or little errand boys of capitalism -- every day, only to be reminded once again that the world is simple, there are good people and there are bad. We are, of course, happy to confirm that we are among the good ones, that we are not like those noxious celebrities who party all night and will most certainly come to a bad end, that we are not like those horrible people who challenge COVID-19 and don’t wear masks. And we know that if we do die of COVID-19, we will be die -- suffering and alone -- but still nobly -- and all our friends and relatives will speak glowingly of our martyrdom. Thus we make peerless deaths of mundane lives. I spent most of yesterday pondering a trip I took to Provincetown with my girlfriend when I was 28 years old. The irony of this trip is not lost on me; I was a closet homosexual (that’s what we used to call them back in 1970) and endured perhaps two weeks -- which seemed like an eternity -- having joyless sex over and over again with a lovely girl who I didn’t want to have sex with, in a town filled with rampaging, sinning, ass-obsssed, penis-adoring sodomites. It’s no wonder that years later, I'm slightly embarrassed to say, I cried when I took the ferry on my vacations to Provincetown,  and spent weeks there in various damned guest houses being serviced by -- and also servicing -- various beautiful young men. This is my tragic life, and from its detritus I try and bring to you these observations, which today swirl around the fact that this COVID-19 thing has left me so bored that I could slash my wrists. But it is the Manichean Binary of it all which has me clawing the walls more than anything else. I watched a documentary on HBO called The Lady and the Dale, about Elizabeth Carmichael. Her life was certainly fascinating, but what was much more fascinating was the way this politically correct piece of trans propaganda managed to turn her into a God. She was merely a person -- and like all of us, particularly flawed ; being a crook (there’s no other way to put it), the worst kind of  liar (there are good ones; they are called artists), and a cheat, and a proponent of the fascist ideology of Ayn Rand. I am not trying to demonize her; I think I would have quite enjoyed Ms. Carmichael as a person. She reminded me a lot of my mother --  and of myself -- but to deify her is to put her on a pedestal, to bow before that idol called ‘morallity’ which if it doesn’t kill the whole world first, is liable to kill me.

I don’t want to

see any more annoying films about happy gay couples. I’m sick of them. Last night I tried to watch Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar but it was too boring. So I turned it off. Why does every movie these days have to have a sci-fi component? Yes Jamie Dornan gets partially naked -- but not often enough. I found the movie slightly offensive, as the type of women it's making fun of are the type of women I love — i.e. middle-aged, unmarried women who talk too much and live in a fantasy world of their own devising. These women  are my best friends; I love and respect them (mainly because they are so much like me). So I don’t enjoy seeing them lamely lambasted. The movie is only funny when Barb and Star are on -- and then hardly at all. So I downloaded this horrible thing called Falling with Viggo Mortensen and Lance Henriksen. OMG. It was so awful. I only watched ten minutes of it. I think Rotten Tomatoes said ‘it’s a little slow but its heart is in the right place.’ Jesus I should have known, never watch a movie whose ‘heart is in the right place.’ I also must admit I wanted to see what had become of Lance Henriksen. I was in a movie with him once (notice how casually I  throw that off— as if it’s nothing?) It was a horrible movie — the only Hollywood movie I was ever in-- called Face the Evil. Because that title didn’t sell too well it was later renamed No Contest II. Which gives you some idea. It was a sequel to the fabulous No Contest  — which was a rip off of the Bruce Willis Die Hard franchise, only instead of a macho male defending a building under siege —  what about a kickboxing, kickass blonde? Yes, it starred ex-Playboy foldout and ex-Hugh Hefner girlfriend Shannon Tweed. She was very nice to me. One day we were having lunch and she showed me the ring Gene Simmons gave her. It was a very nice ring. Lance Henriksen was very funny though, he took me under his wing. I must have been —I don’t know — nearly forty, but as I have a baby face he thought I was younger. I was playing an ugly skinhead killer (a part I was born to play) and he was the lead villain. Well somehow Lance got it into his head that I was an aspiring young actor looking to make it in Hollywood (honestly, I don't know how he got that idea) so he just had to say: — 'Listen,  kid' (I think he actually called me kid) 'I’ll get you some extra lines.’ And he did. But that was his m.o.; Lance was always trying to get himself more lines, usually by subtly suggesting changes to the lines he had.  Lance would say “Do you really think this guy would say 'I think we should bump him off?' Wouldn’t he say 'I think we've got to bump him off’ instead?" I suppose that -- technically speaking -- Lance was  very nice to me, so I don't want to trash him. But he was a) treating me as if I was straight —which bugs me — and b) he was being avuncular, which drives me nuts. Face the Evil is one of the stupidest movies ever made. The director Paul Lynch was some sort of pervert. I think his claim to fame was directing Prom Night with Jamie Lee Curtis (who he always talked about like she was his best friend). Obviously he hired me for this tiny role because he knew I was the artistic director of a very gay theatre and so he was looking forward to the opportunity to chat me up: “So what do you think…I think your character is into -- some sort of strange kinky stuff -- you know, in bed. Do you agree?” I told him that yes of course, that -- due to the fact that I was somewhat of an expert on 'kinky sexuality' -- it was my considered opinion that all killer thugs are into kinky sex. And then I wiggled out from under the arm he had wrapped around me as quickly as possible. Anyway, I wanted to see Falling partially to see how Lance Henriksen was doing -- and he was doing fine — playing a very, very aged man with Alzeheimers, with gusto. His character was very ‘Lance Heriksen’ — very pushy and unable to take no for an answer. Then there was the gay couple in the film. It took me about 10 seconds to hate them, because they were nauseatingly perfect. First of all they were a mixed race couple — which is fine — but it was patently obvious to me that the only character that mattered was the white fag (Mortensen), the Asian lover was a token added for political correctness, as — at least in the part I saw — he didn’t have any lines, but just dutifully kissed Viggo Mortensen —who had died blonde hair, which of course, means he’s gay. They had an adopted child and—  well, need I go on? These fags don’t resemble any fags I know. I mean I know there are boring fags out there, fags who don’t drink, do drugs, or have promiscuous sex, but instead adopt children, go to church, respect the law, and are model citizens, but I certainly don’t ever wish to see a friggin’ movie about them. And there is another new movie with Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth called Supernova -- which I’m sure is also another boring piece of hypocritical middle-class propaganda. I wouldn't watch that film -- on the basis of the publicity alone. There were endless stories in the press about how Stanley and Colin are great friends, love each other like brothers, and even lived together -- for a time -- but are definitively not gay. I mean why are we still advertising gay movies like this? And why do disabled people inevitably picket movie theatres if a non-disabled person plays a disabled role, but straight men are not only allowed to play gay roles with absolutely no protest from the gay community, but routinely receive Oscars for them?  The realest gayest thing I’ve seen on The Megadigitalnightmare (that's what I call my computer) is Pretend It’s A City — 7  interviews with Fran Lebowitz conducted by Martin Scorcese. Wow. Can you imagine the average Netflix viewer coming across Fran Lebowitz for the first time? “Honey, honey! what is that? Is that a woman - or a man? Or is it some sort of trans thing? Jesus.” No you lunkhead — it’s a bull dyke. They are an extinct species, but much tougher -- and certainly crankier -- than any man you’ll ever meet. I love Fran Lebowtiz so much I could kiss her bossy little face. I love her permanent  scowl, her frizzy hair, her incredibly stylish man's coats and shoes, and her opinions on everything. At one point, she said -- with some derision -- ‘anyone who says they are a woman these days can be a woman!’ Good for you Friggin' Fran. You’re tougher than nails and still undeniably a woman — and I am certainly not.

On family day

 I was drawn back to The Heartbreak Kid —  I’m talking about the original movie, directed by Elaine May -- with Charles Grodin, Eddie Albert, and starring the amazing Jeannie Berlin. I recently saw Jeannie Berlin in Woody Allen’s film Cafe Society on Prime. Cafe Society is a lovely movie, it brought tears to my eyes, if only because it was so beautifully crafted. No one watches Woody Allen movies anymore, except they do. Whatever his personal transgressions he will continue to make great movies. Jeannie Berlin, old now, plays a mother in Cafe Society. This made me think of the original 'Heartbreak Kid 'which is a kind of masterpiece. (I am not referring not to the 2007 film with Malina Akerman and Ben Stiller, which is entertaining enough.) I had been watching the new 'Heartbreak Kid' for years, but I hadn’t recently viewed the old one; and the difference between the two says a lot about where we are now. The Heartbreak Kid is based on a story by playwright Bruce Jay Friedman; the screenplay is by Neil Simon. Interestingly, the original film was created by a flock of Jews, but paradoxically, I have no doubt it would  nowadays be considered anti-Semitic. Charles Grodin -- who is too cute and too fabulous for words (what happened to him?) plays a young handsome Jew who marries Jeannie Berlin — who at first seems an attractive enough Jewish princess. Much is made of the Jewish wedding ceremony, and Jeannie Berlin’s Lyla is a largish, dark-haired and loud -- a somewhat silly, vulgar girl. However, she is nice enough. But Grodin becomes disenchanted with her; on their honeymoon he falls in love with Cybil Shepherd, a beautiful blonde from Minnesota vacationing with her family. Viewed through a politically correct lens the film seems somewhat offensive. The Jewish girl is ridiculed and summarily supplanted by the whitest most Christian girl ever imagined. In the 2007 remake this element is unceremoniously jettisoned — because of course these days nothing can be too political or controversial in mass culture. So Malina Akerman — who is whiter than white — plays Ben Stiller’s first wife, and thus now he is not choosing Christian over Jew. We loose, of course, the gentle and observant satire of Jewish culture -- which was at the heart of Elaine May's vision. But this is not all that’s lost. First of all, the film is just about love and infatuation -- and the thin line that separates the two. Also it is a critique of  60s sexual mores. When Grodin and Berlin are necking before they are married, she pushes his hand away, and says something to the effect of -- ‘let’s save that for marriage.’ They do, with the result that all bets are placed on their wedding night, which is inevitably disappointing for Charles Grodin -- especially when Berlin constantly asks him ‘is it wonderful?’ — until he finally bursts out with “Yes it’s wonderful I’ve said it’s wonderful 10 times!” (Or something to that effect.) Thus the original 1972 film is a subtle endorsement of ‘free love.’ (If the two had had sex before marriage, all this might not have happened.) There are two scenes of comic genius — one when Jeannie Berlin is doing nothing more amazing than eating an egg salad sandwich. I have always found egg salad sandwiches disgusting — I remember my father always made them for me when I visited him towards the end of his life -- not sure why -- no matter how much I told him I hated them -- and it is the one food that can actually, for me, instigate nausea, at the mere mention of it. At any rate Jeannie is eating her sandwich and gets a mouthful of egg in closeup, and Grodin gently says something like ‘Honey, you’ve got some egg there….a little egg on your mouth’ which Belin does not succeed in wiping off, and which he ignores because, well, he’s trying to be nice. Berlin literally has egg on her face, and all you can think of is -- is Grodin married to that? To make matters worse, Berlin keeps saying things like ‘Do you realize we’re going to be married for 50 years’ over and over, which obviously strikes terror in the heart of Grodin, and why wouldn’t it? The reason this movie was so initially traumatic for me (I can barely watch the beginning of it -- it upsets me that much -- and that’s the way good comedy should be) is because I was a closeted homosexual with a girlfriend -- who I was set to marry -- when I first watched it. There is no film quite as claustrophobic and earth shatteringly honest about marriage as this one. In The Heartbreak Kid, it is Cybil Sheppard, a smooth blonde gentile girl -- who sends Grodin into paroxysms of ecstasy and compels him to leave his egg-faced wife, whereas I left a lovely young lady for a smooth, curly-haired young man. The second moment of classic comedy comes when Eddie Albert— terrifying as Cybil Sheppard’s pontificating father -- catches on to Grodin’s unctuous hypocrisy. Trying to flatter Sheppard’s parents about their wholesome Minnesota meal,  Grodin says, hilariously: “There is no deceit in that cauliflower.” (I don't know if it was Simon or Friedman who wrote that brilliant line!) Grodin, by the end of the film,  has married the love of his life, but lost his soul.  For he is now wedded not only corruption, but genocide. One of the men at the Cybil Shepherd  wedding party says to him ‘There’s a lot of money in tear gas.' Behind this is playing the famous Coca-Cola theme song (‘I’d like to give the world a coke’). Of course all of this is gone from the 1972 version. That’s because we live in a corrupt world, in which genocide is accepted — we’re quite happy to talk about the genocide that happened in the past, but when it comes to thinking a little bit about the oppressed people who make our apple computers, iphones, and stitch together our ten dollar jeans in foreign lands, well -- modern films are largely silent. Nowadays Woody Allen is banished from our thoughts, because of something horrible that he may have done in his personal life; that he may have done this horrible thing I am not disputing (I can’t wait for the new HIBO documentary about the scandal — it’s coming up!). But I am a great believer in the depravity of artists. I am sure Elaine May was quite depraved, as was Mike Nichols (you can see May still, very old, but still funny, in Woody Allen’s series on Prime Crisis in Six Scenes). Artists once wrote from the position of ‘we are all depraved so let's take a good look at that depravity’ now they write from 'I am a good person I will teach you how to stop being bad.' It’s all less redeeming, ultimately, and much more yawnable, I’m afraid.

I can’t remember

 the first time I used poppers. It was a long time ago. They will probably kill me. It’s an ugly filthy habit, akin to huffing cleaning products under the sink. But is my duty here to strip myself bare, or at least to do the rhetorical equivalent. I am doing what no one else ever does, every other goddamn person you read — they hold themselves up as some sort of ‘good.’ The same 'good' people who recently went online to eulogise an old friend of mine who wasn’t dead. Yes, she wasn’t even dead yet, and all those ‘good people’ were ready to eulogise her. God help them if they actually had to see her or help her in real life. Well I am defnintely not a good person. And when I die — probably with a popper bottle up my nose — no one will eulogise me. But somewhere, sometime, someone will find a copy of Drag Queens On Trial, in some dead faggot’s bookcase (you can't get it online), and say ‘God that’s funny. Politically incorrect, but funny.’ I’m very glad to be demonized, always have been. It should help you put everything I say in context; so when I sit and rant and rail here about how horrible faggots are,  possibly you will remember that I am a faggot too (perhaps the most ‘faggoty’ of them all!). I must have started using poppers about 1981, when I was ‘getting over ‘ Glenn Cassie — the first boy I was  in love with. And that was the excuse for everything -- for the baths -- everything: ‘If only Glenn had loved me!” It’s a great idea — blaming all your problems on someone who didn’t love you. You should try it sometime. (Oh, sorry, you have!) Anyway then I became a popper freak for years, even when everyone thought they caused AIDS  I stuck with those buggers, and only stopped really when it finally occurred to me that I was having sex -- not with men  anymore — but with the drug. And that’s what I’m doing these days, alone in my room (and occasionally with some poor hapless usually methed-up fag).  This will go on until lock down ends, which is — when? Oh, as always, some day soon. I looked at the statistics from British Columbia and some 1700 people died of drug overdoses in 2020. Of course most of these people were homeless drug addicts, people who are not like us, and thus, people who we don’t care about, who we don’t think deserve to live. (That’s one consolation.) But the statistics are interesting. Let’s just start by saying that in principle  I think statistics are always bogus, anything can be done with them, and usually is (statistics courses are prerequisite for social workers — remember that). Anyway, all skepticism aside -- or better yet, keep that skepticism alive — that’s 1700 human beings who died (even though you don’t care about them and mostly you think it’s their fault). But stick with me. That number is apparently a 75% increase over the number of people who died of drug overdoses in Vancouver in 2019. And the number of people in B.C. who  died of COVID-19 during 2020 was something like 1300. So that means that the number of people who died of COVID-19 during COVID-19 in B.C. is roughly equal to the number of people who died  of drug overdoses. And the latter are people who died  because of this charming lock down. I just thought you should know. But you don’t need to take my statistics, or any, seriously. Take my anecdotal experience and the anecdotal experience of others. All my friends are telling me that everyone on Grindr is a meth-head. They are all meth-heads. All they want to so is ‘party and play.’ The last guy I tried to pick up spelled so badly in the pickup app I thought he was asking me to do something quite impossible sexually until I realised he was too stoned to put his fat finger on the proper keys of his cellphone. But it’s always been like this. My gay therapist in the 90s told me that most gay men he counseled required some sort of drug (that includes alcohol) in order to have sex with another men. It’s because we hate ourselves for being gay. I know, you’ll ask me to remember all the happily married gay couples. Why in heaven’s name aren’t I talking about them, and their dogs named ‘Fonzie’ (I don’t know, it was the stupidest dog name I could think of)? Well because that would make people think ill of us, but the fact of the matter is we’ve been ill ever since AIDS, but we do ourselves ill by pretending we are not ill, by denying illness ,when we are all in the grip of an illness called self-hatred, no matter how much we try and deny it with our marriages and our dogs. And don’t worry -- the married fags will get divorced, just like the straight people (because monogamous matrimony is an inhuman, unrealistic institution). Dear me, I am filled with bile today! But it isn’t just bile, it’s concern, nay, love, for all those lonely meth-head fags sitting alone in their giant/tiny condos getting stoned and then turning on the porn — and for what? To remind themselves they were gay, once? But we must speak of how beautiful getting high is. Because what used to drive me crazy about condom advertisements was when they would try and tell you that condoms are fun, which is  as bad as telling you that drugs aren’t fun, because they are. I’m not recommending drugs, I’m just saying that if you don’t know they are the reincarnation of heaven, then you won’t be prepared for what happens when you take them. I think I should speak a little about Glenn’s unspeakable beauty. I met him at a party at Peter and Caroline’s house in 1980. He was 17 and I was 28. He seemed to me the arrogant essence of masculinity; looking back on it now he may have been a somewhat shy over-intellectual lad who was a little bit girly. (In other words, me.) O, how I loved him! We wrote poems to each other, and watched Pasolini movies together, and once I took him down to Niagara-on-the-Lake and lay out on the golf course next to an old ruin, and my finger was up Glenn bum for about an hour, while he took in the sun. (I don't think he liked it much.) Those were the days. He was the dream of gay when I met him; and believe it or not, I still haven’t given up that dream.

My therapist told me

now is not the time to ‘deal’ with my promiscuity. You see, I offered her this idea: I’m not going to get laid anyway, so I could look at ‘these trying times’ as an opportunity to finally come to terms with my age, and just, well, stop. Makes sense doesn’t it? Well, we decided against it; that is I know from experience that I can’t stop doing anything, if I think an outside force (or voice) is telling me to; the impetus has to come from within. So I have been continuing to get laid, occasionally, and I thought you should know about it. No, not the details — well yes, the emotional details, not the sexual ones. (For the sexual ones you’ll have to try my next novel; it’s only fiction after all that tells the whole truth and nothing butt.) So I thought you should know what’s going on; you — wrapped up tight in your comforter, kitty in your lap, meditating on — what? Whether to call them ‘mutations’ or ‘variations’? Whether or not to 'double mask' (the CDC now recommends it)? Whether 6 or 8 feet (or more?) constitutes effective social distancing? Us horny ‘plebes,’ on the other hand, are doing things we would never have done before, getting ourselves into situations that are sometimes more than just awkward and absurd — all yearning for something that vaguely resembles what we used to call ‘sex.’ My roommate in Toronto is straight, and I woke up one night to a tremendous hullaballoo. It sounded like some woman was accusing him of rape. There was lots of yelling — and much talk of the police. I decided to remain in my room. The next morning I asked my friend what all the ruckus was about, and he said: "Oh she’s this artist I know, and she was in trouble with some guy, so I helped her out.” Apparently this young woman was horny and she made a Grindr date with a guy - who seemed nice on the app — and so she drove to all the way to Toronto from London to meet him. He started pressuring her to have sex right away, and she was saying things like “Let’s get to know each other first,” and he was saying “I want sex now!" and when she refused he threw her into the snow and locked the door. Then he got some friends to steal her car (I can’t quite remember the timeline here…) and when she banged on the door he texted her, saying he was going to kill her. As you can imagine, it wasn’t very pleasant. So she ran to my friend for help, and apparently while I was sleeping they talked it all out and the police came, and she told them what happened. And you can of course say that this is nothing more than an isolated incident; but I really don’t think so. I bet there are loads and loads of people trying to hook up in these ‘trying times,’ making dates with people they might normally not make dates with -- getting into situations they would never have gotten into before. All because of this lovely thing called COVID-19. I for instance, just got a message on one of the gay apps from some dude who’s into s/m and wants me to turn up at his apartment tomorrow night in full leather gear, and (oh Lord!) put on a ‘show.' (And I'd better be clear about the list of things I’m 'into,’ apparently!) I really don’t know if I can do this. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never been too fond of s/m. As a natural actor, and somewhat of a professional, or at least a dedicatee (I’m not saying I’m good, I’m saying I do act onstage occasionally) it just seems wrong to put on a ‘show’ for someone if we're not in a theatre. And basically he’s just a bottom who is angry at me because I’m not a top, and so he’s ordering me around just to punish me, I just know it. I can deal with that, but all I really want is a  little bit of kiss and nuzzle, a little bit of 'the game,' and yes, some you-know-what-sucking would be nice, just as a bonus. But I’m not sure if I’m ready to prepare the Oscar winning performance he seems to be expecting from me. So I’ll probably say no. But the crazy thing is that I’m actually considering saying yes. I  packed this rubber harness to take to Toronto just in case — in case what? In case I”m so friggin’ bored I decide to consent and put on a floor show for this crazy bugger. This is what COVID-19 has driven us to — me and —unfortunately -- that young woman who came down from London to get laid. By the way, I met her the next morning (she stayed overnight with us, to recover) and she just seemed so fragile. I tried to imagine her resisting this dumb asshole’s advances and —. Okay, what I’m trying to get across is this.  I’m so happy you like staying at home, but there are some of us who definitely don’t like it, and we can’t change that; it’s just the way we are. And the reason I’m telling you this is because I think there are lots of people who are soon to put themselves in danger -- if they have not already --  or at least put themselves through some tremendously embarrassing inconvenience, just because they’re horny as hell and can’t take it anymore. Because (newsflash!) not everyone has a monogamous partner they have sex with, or even wants one — but still, we like to get laid. I know that is depressing and horrifying to many, but it happens to be true. We are the sad detritus of COVID-19 — and even though we were considered trash before, at least back then we had systems for getting our sexual needs fulfilled without getting into endless trouble. The truth is I just don’t like going to other gay men’s apartments. I haven’t done that — or wanted to — for more than twenty years. And here I am wandering all over gaytown thinking that it's very much a myth really -- I mean the idea that all fags are actual or wannabe interior decorators. If you’d seen some of their apartments, you’d know what I mean. One of them, I swear — his furniture was wrapped in plastic, like a grandma. It was like he’d decided to put a condom on the couch. I wanted to say to him -- sure buddy, I get it, you can never can be too careful. But on the other hand, you only have one life, so why not live it as a blonde? I’ve been living life 'as a blonde' for years and I highly recommend it — sure we blondes laugh too hard and too long, and our mouths are  open way too wide, and filled with far too many gleaming teeth. But Jesus Christ we have some fun.

It is a wound

and it is festering. And if we ignore it -- I don’t know what will happen. Or perhaps it’s already happening, and they aren’t telling us. Who is ‘they?’ Why THE GOVERNMENT, of course. A friend of mine just had a brain operation, and today his best friend is taking out the stitches in his head — in my friend’s kitchen. Well, you know — COVID-19? They have more important things to think about; and after all, health care workers are grossly overworked and underpaid. Okay. But I just challenge where all this has left us. The wounds are very very deep and it makes no sense to just pretend — like good warriors, that we have not been wounded.  But our scars, you see, are not from the actual illness of COVID-19 — no. Very few have actually gotten sick from it (I don’t know a soul who has) and even fewer have died. But we have all been deeply affected by the lock down. I venture to say that we are, all of us, suffering from  PTSD. The life we are living is not a natural one, on the contrary it is profoundly unnatural, I would even say perverted, and we have been left with no work, no friends, but a digital world rich with pornography and Disney Distraction. The pornography is supposedly for the adults (I mean the kids don’t have access to that, do they?). And the kids have Disney (that’s all they need, or at the very least it'll shut them up!). What does a year (it will be at least a year, but with the variations, it may be -- the gloom and doomers say -- much, much longer) of being forbidden to hug, visit our friends, sing, drink, dance, meet strangers, hug strangers, have sex with strangers — what has this done to us? I don’t think we even know yet. Q-Anon survivors offer a tiny hint. They are lonely, bored, they have lost their businesses, and they have no hope, so they turn to their cellphones (that’s where all the answers are, apparently) only to find a spate of absolutely delectable lies that give them hope, because that’s what lies do. It is considered hyperbolic to compare anyone or anything to The Nazis, but could we at least mention the Weimar Republic in this context? Those people not only endured  a catastrophic depression, but were blamed for World War I. Don’t forget the blame part. It’s very important.  For we too, are blamed, every day, for impulses which were once lauded as admirable. Remember when reason was a good thing? (No more -- for now we can be more together because we are further apart) Remember when human intimacy was valued? (No more, you might give them COVID-19.) Remember when we were told not to covet, envy, or be jealous of, or spiteful to -- others?  (Now we are encouraged to report our friends to the police if they appear to be having more fun than we are.) But it’s not that, really. It’s the lies. I’m not talking about Trump’s lies, that’s another matter -- I’m talking about government lies about COVID-19. We’ve all heard of gaslighting, and that is what is happening around this illness. It’s much worse than what Trump did. Trump just made things up — he is certainly not blameless, but he is a master of manipulative rhetoric, not a master manipulator.What I mean is he merely tells you manipulative untruths -- they come at you, it’s a barrage, an assault, and it’s easy enough --or difficult enough -- as the case may be, to simply barricade yourself against it all, go back to Disney and/or pornography, hunker down, and remember how much you love your family and/or yoga and baking cookies, and ignore him. But when your adversary insists you be afraid all the time it’s another matter. Trump wanted us to be afraid, but not all the time. And by that I mean when he sensed we were not afraid he was not smart enough to immediately come up with another lie that would place us back in the clutches of fear again. Remember 'children'? The dreaded 'inflammatory disease'? Remember the danger that COVID-19 might have for children? There was a mysterious inflammatory illness that was thought to be linked with COVID-19, which is why we weren’t sending children back to school, because it might have been dangerous (well you can never be too careful). I have news for you: no such inflammatory illness ever existed. But the powers-that-be obviously thought that we shouldn’t be sending children back to school, so they made this illness up, and scared the living hell out of parents everywhere, for nothing. This kind of manipulation leaves scars; it does not go away. And now we are being told that even  these new vaccines, variants, mutations -- or whatever the trendy word is -- may make all vaccines obsolete. But, paradoxically, this just means you must get vaccinated the day before yesterday. It’s all about whether or not we are afraid enough, and if we weren’t afraid enough, then we migh just not put on masks, or social distance, or get the vaccine on the day before yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-masker or an anti-vaxer, and I believe there is such a thing as COVID-19. I do, however, believe, that you when you have been treated like shit it is quite necessary to acknowledge it (any abused woman knows this) because that’s the only way of not feeling that you are, actually a piece of shit. Being locked up in our houses, having our lives destroyed, and most of all, being lied to for a year -- well I don't know how to tell you this -- but this has consequences. People go crazy, get addicted, get very very angry, very anti-social, commit suicide  and, yeah, well -- I’d rather not go on. Of course we won’t be told about a lot of this, until it’s over; because it might take our minds off doing what we are told. I think of my friend having the stitches yanked out of his head. I said "isn't that a little dangerous?" My friend said that his friend has lots of experience taking the stitches out of the heads of other ‘criminals.’ My friend, however, is not a criminal. Or is he? I mean, aren't we all criminals? I mean, isn’t that why they lock people up? Well if you weren't a criminal before, then you might just be one now.

My position on conspiracy

theories is this; I am certainly very interested in them. I have been accused of being a conspiracy theorist because of my association with HEAL in the 90s and because of my present association with the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (we think that Edward de very was the ‘real’ Shakespeare). I do not regret my association with HEAL. We were called ‘AIDS deniers’ but we never denied that people were dying of something -- especially gay men -- nor did we deny that it was tragic. The origin of HEAL is homeopathy, a general skepticism towards the medical establishment and Big Pharma. Well pharmaceutical drugs are now on the stock market, and commercials urge us to take all sorts of drugs every day; the side effects are broadcast in a tiny voice while people frolic in carefree and sometimes sexual ways. There is the eminent Dr. Fauci. (He is eminent but very short, barely five foot seven; no doubt he has a Napoleonic complex, and one doesn’t want to mess with a short man who resents his shortness, I've had sex with many such men — and they are often good in bed because they are perpetually angry — but that doesn’t make them good people.) Dr. Fauci poses as a modest and unassuming fellow, but he killed thousands of gay men by recommending the lethal drug AZT, and, also, after that, insisting that everyone ‘hit hard’ with the equally lethal early AIDS cocktails. Finally, he promised a vaccine that never materialized. On top of that I still don’t believe that AIDs is just ‘a virus’ as there are lots of unpromiscuous people who got it (and no they are not hemophiliacs, or Haitian) and more than that, why do I know so many gay men who survived it, without drugs, basically asymptomatic? I’m not denying that the AIDS cocktails eventually became miracle drugs that did cause many of my friends to walk off their deathbeds like Lazarus -- but nobody really knows why they work, and all this happened after a nightmarish mass agony that makes COVI-19 look like a cakewalk. So I am still skeptical of what the ‘good doctor’ says, and you should be too.  Just because doctors are arrogant and wear white coats doesn’t mean they are not sometimes bad people. (Like cops.) When it comes to Shakespeare, well I won’t go into all that now, but it’s evident to any idiot whose whole livelihood is not attached to the lie of ‘The Stratford Man,’ that: Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. Why does it matter? Because we like to think that the greatest writer in the western world was just a good little businessman — like the rest of us — who might have cheated on his wife (also like most of us) and who never wrote a play about himself or his own feelings. But in fact Shakespeare was a man -- like any other, yes -- but very well educated -- who did reveal himself in his work. He was not a nice little family man with a few flaws like most normal people, but perhaps a murderer, a bisexual — and well, a lot of other much-disapproved-of-things. I won’t go into it all here. The authorship question speaks to the notion that artists are not necessarily good people, and if you only want to read or view art by ‘good people’ you will not have much to read or watch or look at, because most people are very flawed, and yes, very flawed people do often make great art. Now when it comes to COVID-19 I am somewhat of a conspiracy theorist. It doesn’t help that I’ve been hanging out lately with someone who is a Q-Anon believer and uses duckduckgo as his search engine, and who last time I saw him was going on about The Tavistock Institute. He is also an anti-masker. And yes, I do like this guy, believe it or not — and he is very smart, but I certainly don’t agree with him about everything. I would say that generally speaking there is some truth to conspiracy theories -- even if their only truth  is that they are skeptical of foundationalist assumptions. All that means in plain English is that they speak against ‘common sense’ and push us all to think outside the box. In terms of COVID-19 don’t get me started, I think we have destroyed our economy and our mental health because — why? Because very old people are dying. But I don’t put it down to a conspiracy theory; I think rather it is a perfect storm of three elements: victim politics, digital technology, and the ‘health craze’ — all not conspiring together, but somewhat accidentally crashing into each other, the result being the present nightmare. It’s nobody's fault, it’s just that now we are obsessed with ‘hurt’ and  ‘being hurt’ and with recognising the ‘hurt of others;'  virtue signalling with fake altruism has become the order of the day (don’t think about yourself, think about others, yes good luck with that, Christ tried it and it frankly didn’t work too well….). And when it comes to the digital world, it’s a drug, in fact precisely the drug described in Brave New World — Soma — it makes us feel good with no physical side effects -- only mental ones -- i.e. we become solipsistic, lonely, and intolerant of the opinions of others. And finally the ‘health craze’ which says that it’s the quantity of life that matters — i.e. how long you live — not how much fun you have. You put all this into a bowl and mix it up and you’ve got: ‘Oh no! Grandma’s dying and I feel for her so much — even though I put her in that home years ago and longed to forget her — now I want  everyone to know of my intense concern and love for her — and yes, I am willing to give up my social life --which was stressful anyway -- and just sit in front of my computer all day, masturbate, and watch TikTok (it’s interactive!) just to save her life.’ So in protest, last night I went out and had sex with a very sweet sad man who lives in St. James Town. He was paying God knows how much rent for a tiny room,  living with someone he described as ‘an alcoholic computer Geek.’ Our sex was almost actual, real sex — though it involved quite a lot of drugs on his part. However, it was the best we could do. The sexiest part was that I wasn’t allowed to make noise because it might wake up his crazy roommate. The depressing part was that he attributed his lifelong affection for s/m to being molested as a child. (It used to be called ‘kink,’ now it of course, is related — like everything — to trauma.) Let’s not blame anyone for s/m, or for anything; we are only victims of our collective stupidity — always will be — because people are, basically (I don’t know how to tell you this!)  stupid. All I can really recommend is that we all try and be smarter; whatever that means.

I’m in the past

 I’m afraid — but why not? As there is no future. There may be one, of course, but its best not to hope — or imagine — forwards; so one must imagine back. I often wake up on Thursday mornings in the middle of a dream; it’s because I’ve been fasting and I know I’m going to eat on Thursday so my stomach wakes me up in anticipation. I'm trying to keep my weight down. It’s the fantasies I have, of course, of all the sex I will have if life ever resumes. But then there’s, you know, mutations.That’s all anyone can talk about, f-ing mutations. Sorry. Shall I continue in my hopeless voice? Does it appeal to you? Does my helpless wistfulness make you feel comfortable in your own passive acceptance of COVID-19? Okay. I look at myself naked in the mirror and think — what is the purpose of this nakedness? I like Church Street because even in the darkest cold the men are wearing tight pants, and I can imagine what is in them. So anyway, the dream was this: auditions. I was sitting on the floor with my friends Ed Roy, Ken McDougall and Daniel MacIvor, and we were waiting for people to audition. Daniel looked around noticing it was a short audition list, and said something to the effect of “I expected more.” Yes it seemed that way at the time Daniel, didn’t it? Is that why you decided to be a gay playwright who writes straight plays? Honestly, I have nothing against Daniel, he’s always been kind to me. But a couple of years after I met him I could see him yearning after Tarragon Theatre and Tarragon yearning after him. Daniel was the perfect Sky replacement; I was too gay for Urjo, but Daniel was a perfect match (why have such a 'gay gay' when you could have an 'un-gay' one?) I didn’t want Daniel to leave Buddies in Bad Times Theatre so I wrote him a letter trying to explain why I thought it was important for him to continue writing gay plays. I know he always cherished that letter. The four of us were kind of the four musketeers. The bond between me, Ed, Ken and Daniel was very homosexual, but not terribly sexual. Ken and I had sex once. I don’t think he really wanted to, but I persuaded him. He was very promiscuous (as was I) and  I just thought: “Why is it you are willing to sleep with the whole world and not me?” So Ken just gave in. I remember how small he was — I mean his whole body — I felt as if I could hold all of him in the palm of my hand. And the story Ken always used to tell was about the day we had a big fight (we often had them). We lived in twin rooms in a gorgeous crazy fun apartment at Spadina and College, across from the El Mocambo (also occupied by the gay a cappella singing group called The Nylons). Anyway Ken slammed his door, and I was banging on it, and he yelled: “You’re never going to open that door!”  I was so furious -- and tugged and pulled and screamed. Afterwards Ken claimed that when he said ‘You[re never going to open that door!’ he was simply telling me that the door was stuck. He characterized me as melodramatic (could it be true?) — and he was the calm reasonable one. I wrote Suzy Goo: Private Secretary for him because he was so sublime as Judy Goose in Drag Queens in Outer Space (How could that happen? I thought no one could ever follow the perfect Leonard Chow in that role.)  But I was never romantically involved with Ken; it was just a sort of torturous yet fruitful working partnership. However Ken was in love with Daniel. And for him that was torture, as Daniel wasn’t in love with him. And then all of us were obsessed with Ed; everyone wanted to screw him, just because he resembled — and was, kind of — a beautiful outlaw, I got over it, so did Ken, but I think the ‘Ed thing’ drove Daniel a little crazy. That’s what I’m waiting for. I think it’s why I’ve been kind of enjoying the riots and Marjorie Taylor Greene; after all, she is fully, alive -- angry and crazy as a bedbug sandwich. Can’t you people see what’s going on? Do you think this has anything to do with politics? Do you think any of these conspiracy theory numskulls are actually interested in politics? This has to do with people being crazy cooped up at home for a frigging year. And it’s all very nice that for some of you COVID is a good excuse to become a vegetable or get in touch with your friggin’ calm (Try 'Calm' — it’s a new app!) but for the rest of us it’s a good excuse to lose our nut. I’m not saying I like Marjorie better than Joe Biden, but I sure like her a lot better than Theresa friggin’ Tam. Do you honestly, does anybody honestly think that most people are good inside, that they want to be virtuous and that they love their fellow man? That’s a bigger lie than 'Stop the Steal.’ It’s why The Shakers just had to dance. I’ve been watching this movie The Guv’nor by Guy Ritchie about a working class English boxer named Lenny McLean who liked to hit guys — why? Because his stepfather hit him. And then there’s James Joyce’s story about the working class guy who gets beat up by somebody, and then gets home and beats his son, and then the son kicks the dog. This kind of frustration doesn’t go away, it’s like trying to push the lump of air out of waterbed, it’s just going to go somewhere else. The amount of sheer hypocrisy that people are being asked to swallow is going to drive them to violence; Hitler knew very well what he was doing -- I'm certain all that fake patriotic, do-it-for-the-state virtue he demanded from people not only excused their atrocities but drove people to commit them. Nazis were just good people who didn’t want to be good anymore. It’s why Adorno was against art that has a noble purpose; because so many atrocities are committed in the name of the good. BEWARE OF VIRTUE! We’re all standing apart and caring for each other yeah, sure, until we start attacking each other out of mind-sucking soulless boredom. And I’m not trying to incite violence here, I’m just telling it like it is. We made Marjorie Taylor Greene, and we made that crazy cute guy with the perfect hairy abs who wore horns and a bathroom rug (apparently that fur he wore around his neck was actually his bathroom rug — but that doesn’t make me love him any less!). Yes they are insurrectionists, and yes they killed people, but they were also (to quote the movie Network) ‘mad as hell and they couldn’t take it anymore!’ And Jesus Christ if any part of you is still alive, somewhere -- then so are you.

I hate that commercial

 where the old codger is discussing insurance polices with his wife— and they suddenly discover that (wow!) they can sell their insurance polices now that  they are pretty much older than death. ‘Who knew?’ says the old codger, with a rueful smile. Well I’ll tell you who knew! Faggots dying of AIDS knew. I remember back in the 80s hearing of greedy insurance companies who were buying back the policies of gay men — some who didn’t even have AIDS. The rationale? ‘Well you’re probably going to die of AIDS some day soon, so why not make a little money for the….well I know you won’t have grandkids — but maybe, to go to Acapulco, or Key West, or wherever else you fags go on vacation.’ (That is not an exact quotation of course, but I’m sure that’s what went through their minds.) Yes, the fact that you can sell your insurance policy when you are practically dead is a little known fact. And yes, again, this fact is one which gay men  — for a tragically long time — have been fully conscious of. And there’s a lot of other things we fags know. Although we are not dying anymore — that is not more often than anyone else — our culture is disappearing. All because of victim politics. I went to a very traumatic queer performance theatre conference (Q2Q) in 2016.  I have never quite recovered. A cranky trans person told me that camp was somehow unacceptable — I’m not sure whether they wanted to abolish drag queens, or ban them, or just somehow wipe them off the face of the earth, but they came up with this idea: ‘camp humour is cruel.’ Damn right it is. Any ‘humour’ in its right mind is cruel as hell, because comedy comes from anger, and if you don’t have anger then you don’t have real wit, you have what was labeled 'gentle wit' in the 19th century, which means warm, loving comedy, which isn’t funny at all, but heartwarming, like the kind of 'jokes' you find in Hallmark movies on the Life Channel. Not that camp is mean, or drag queens are mean. Cruelty is something quite different than meanness. Meanness is personal, it’s the way one person treats another, and most drag queens, believe it or not, are sweet as pie once you get to know them. Cruelty on the other hand is a necessary evil. My favourite lesbian professor (who is into s/m) talks about how she is ‘cruel but fair’ with her students. And, indeed, cruelty -- when allied with fairness -- can be a virtue. (In other words, if someone stinks and you tell them, they might go out and buy some deodorant.) At any rate, camp humour is high on the list of primary elements of gay culture that are quickly becoming extinct. And if you mention Ru Paul,  I will say this. Yes, I do love her, particularly the performer Ru Paul — that brilliant, statuesque crusader for gender rights and gay rights  — but I don’t like her stupid show. I had to inform a young man the other day of my detestation for Ru Paul Drag; I tried not to hurt his feelings. (He sent me a link to something called ‘UNHhhhh’ on youtube.) I’m sorry, I really tried — I always try with Ru Paul, but it just wasn’t funny. It took me awhile to figure out why. First of all, well — those girls look like clowns. And frankly no real girl wants to look like a clown. And you might say — ‘But isn’t that the point of drag — that you’re not  a real girl?’ Let me correct this misconception. The purpose of drag is to look as much like a girl as you can, but the point is you will nearly always miss, because you are not a woman, you are a man — even if you have to pull out your penis to prove it. (Which most drag queens are quite pleased to do.) But why is Ru Paul Drag not funny, outside of the fact that those poor girls are dressed like clowns? The problem is that it’s not obscene enough. Sorry; I’m oversimplifying. It’s not bar drag. What is bar drag? It’s real drag, it’s where drag originated, and it is gradually disappearing. Bar drag is not for you and your girlfriend (i.e your actual heterosexual girlfriend who you have sex with) — or your grandma. It separates the men from the boys. Like porn does. When I talk about drag I mean Pepsi, who was my favourite drag queen in the 80s. She was a gorgeous southeast Asian gal, with a very foul mouth. She was also enormously politically incorrect. She would often point to some poor southeast Asian fag in the audience and say ‘Have you found a rich white sugar daddy yet?’ This was truly offensive. Almost as offfensive as George Girl —my favourite drag queen — who — when she’s trying to get some poor boy to show is ass in the ‘Best Ass Contest,’ promotes the $100 prize by saying: ‘Well, it’s easier than sucking off an old guy!’. This is the kind of wisdom you can’t get in school. Because, indeed, showing your ass in the best ass contest at Woody’s is better than sucking off an old guy, unless of course you are into sucking off an old guy (and some people are — thank God!). The point is, you can’t say that kind of stuff on TV. Also, real drag queens don’t just lip-synch pop hits, they desecrate them, I mean, take a shit on them. (Donnaramma used to do the most gorgeous coked up version of Britney Spears!) Well, now that political correctness and victim politics is killing gay culture, you won’t have us campy queens to kick around anymore. Do you know about the Fire Island Widows? Every year the drag queens from NYC descend on Fire Island. They get all dressed up and take the ferry over, and all the not-drag-queen-gay—guys are there -- to greet them with love, and hopefully, also, to screw them. (I did it one year, and it was a blast; a friend and I dressed up as twin Scarlet O’Hara’s - but he did too much coke or — well, it’s a long story) Anyway, one year during the AIDS crisis, a bunch of Fire Island drag queens dressed up as Old Italian Widows, in mourning, all in black. My understanding of Italian culture is that an Old Italian Widow is obligated to remain in mourning for her husband for the rest of her life. In other words this is no amateur performance of pain this is the whole friggin’ drama played out in real life. So the Fire Island Widows were very funny and truly tragic at the same time. And the message was: ‘We mourn our men, just as much as you do, even if we go out tonight and have sex with some stranger on a Fire Island Beach. So there!’  And that is the lesson I must leave you with . And if it’s befuddling,  then so be it. The best lessons usually are.

I woke up again

and wanted to write down my dream. There was a young man, he resembled my physiotherapist. Recently I have been blessed with a sexy physiotherapist —whereas so often I've been assigned to a towering, heavy-busted ‘Nurse Ratched’ sort of lady who tugs mercilessly at my recalcitrant limbs. I cannot work hard — not at my body; or I am loathe too. I can lose weight because that is precisely doing nothing, but doing something is a different matter altogether. It’s nice to have him touch me. He’s a golfer, apparently (I googled him) and today I discovered he has a ‘partner’ (though he didn’t use that awful word). He spoke about getting sushi with her — I assume it’s a ‘her,’ but I was afraid to ask, I mean, how would you ask? He touches me so terribly sweetly. I find it very hard to control myself when he digs his thumbs lovingly into the small of my back,  adjacent to my coccyx. I had to sign a permission form saying he could massage my ‘glutes’ — as he so politely calls them. Well, I was more than overjoyed to find they would be the locus of his concentration. He is slow, deliberate, gentle, and very very kind. I think he would be a perfect lover — and so I can’t imagine why he would find it necessary to tell me that he had sushi with someone on the weekend! You  know what that’s like, don’t you? Being jealous of someone who isn’t even a random sexual partner? Someone who just touches your body for a living, and is not even a prostitute? Yes, that's what it’s come to. Occasionally I look down at my penis and wonder if it is still there; it reminds me of Shrodinger’s Cat, the fact that I lack the ability to see it in action means its very existence is in question. To be or not to be’ applies here, in an ontological sense. Of course one doesn’t forget how to do it, does one? It’s like riding a bicycle, isn’t it? Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida says “no man is the lord of anything,…. ‘til he communicate his parts to others." Well, you got that right, Ulysses! (Though he might not have meant it in precisely that way.) All this brings me to the other boy in my dream. He wandered in, uninvited, interrupting my sexual fantasy. And when I woke up —  I was puzzling — who was he? I couldn’t put a name or face to him. Then I realised that though I didn’t know who he was I definitely had a feeling about him, and the feeling was that he was jealous of me. Let’s start off by saying jealousy is the most awful emotion in the world; it’s a sin for a good reason (not like some others). It can destroy you as nothing else can. I used to constantly compare myself to everyone, and now, Thank God, I have dropped that, like a pebble into a smooth, calm lake. Leaving jealousy behind has made it possible for me to endure becoming an ex-celebrity, and to navigate an open relationship, and to stop wishing I was Daniel MacIvor. Yes, once, I envied Daniel MacIvor. Once. It was all about Marion Bridge. I guess I had my father in the back of my mind (don’t we always?). My father once said that he would only consider me successful, as an artist if I ended up on The Johnny Carson Show. (I know that dates me — for those of you too young to have heard of Johnny Carson, he was the Trevor Noah of his day!) Needless to say, I never made it onto that particular television show. The closest I came was being one of the Two Genies on the Canadian TV show Dudley the Dragon — and The Other Genie was far cuter than I was (he was The French Genie, and I wanted so much to sleep with him, but he wouldn’t even look at me!). So yes, back to Marion Bridge, I was jealous of Daniel MacIvor because he managed to write that movie —  a perfect piece of entertainment, one that even a grandmother could love. I was never capable of doing that, never will be. Why just in the space of this blog I’ve probably committed thousands of sins that would make it unpublishable, unreadable, or at the very least unappealing to most grandmas. But then there is the other side of the coin; those who are jealous of me. I know I sound like Marlene Dietrich when I talk like that — and let me tell you, we are very similar in many ways (just kidding!). But there is at least one person I know who, if I ever end up murdered, well, it might make sense to give him a call. There are others whose names I won’t mention, who seemed to covet my life, at a time when I was very unhappy and it made no sense to have done so --  when I was sort-of-famous. I didn’t know they were jealous of me; they were both good friends of mine, and  I only figured it out when they both started being very mean to me — yelling at me for what I thought was no reason. I finally turned to another friend and said -- ‘Why is so-and-so so angry at me?’ And she smiled condescendingly and said ‘Don’t you see, he wants to be you?' I couldn't imagine ever wanting to be me. I was never very attractive, or good at sex, I have a lower IQ than my sister, and I will probably only be remembered — if at all — for being a ‘militant homosexual.’  But no need to worry; no one wants to 'be me' anymore. It’s very funny because the Playwrights Guild of Canada wants me to do an online conversation with a young playwright. So they told me they would be calling me back when they found someone who has been influenced by my work. I haven’t gotten that phone call. I am waiting for them to say ‘Sorry, we couldn’t find anyone who was willing to say they are influenced by your work.' But people definitely have been. Remember, if you hate someone then you have been influenced by them. So as you can see, I have had a lot of influence. But to summarize, to pull this all together in a neat package without a bow, I have banished jealousy from my skill set, if not from my dreams. I am what I am, as several very famous people have said (including, unfortunately, I think, Madonna). Or better yet,  perhaps I should say  --‘Pass Me By” something Peggy Lee sang, when she wasn’t falling asleep and bumping her head on the microphone. That’s all I have to say about jealousy, for now. Except, once again; don’t be jealous. It’s a big waste of time. And ultimately you don’t have very much of that; I speak from experience.