His address was

911; this put the fear of God in me. But I am always afraid in such circumstances. Before Covid-19 I had not — for many years -- traveled to someone’s house for sex, and hardly ever ‘hooked up’ online. Suddenly this is not so much my regular routine as the only alternative. I’m not that horny -- as I’m terribly old now — but now and then the need to have a strangers body next to mine, or new lips to kiss, well, hopefully you get it. But there was another reason for my insecurity -- the Bruce McArthur thing -- for I am into ‘kink,’ and a ‘submissive’ and I ‘identify’ (for all you millennials out there) as a ‘sex pig.' Unfortunately we pervy bottoms were shamed by the Bruce McArthur tragedy — for the implication was ‘if you like to be dominated, you will likely be killed.’ This is nonsense, of course, many more women are in danger of dying at the hands of their abusive husbands. Nevertheless, I am irrational (aren’t we all?). So add to this his scary address, and add to that my general niceness. This is something you won’t believe. Let me tell you I am more confrontative in my blog than I am in real life. Here I wear a mask of blithe, brave indifference --  I could care less -- and am fearlessly angry over what i perceive as injustice and hypocrisy. Well, in real life I'm not like that. I have been known (my lover will attest to this) to buy items of clothing in stores because I don’t want to disappoint the clerk. If she seems like a nice girl working her way through school, and she says I look good in those skinny jeans, I will buy them because I don’t want her to miss a sale. I am endlessly guilty about everything, as deep down it must have been inculcated in me that I would be punished for merely being  (I call this a ‘criminal ontology’). This guilt may have come from the air or from the zeitgeist, but also both my parents were horrified by the sexual act, so perhaps they inculcated that fear in me, and then I discovered to my shock and horror that I have been and will always be sex obsessed — even now when the damn thing (my penis) doesn’t work properly. So, anyway, here I was, in a cab, with all this running through my head. My insecurity was of 'Hamlet-ish' proportions, heading to 911. Add to all this the fact that his photo on the hook-up app was pretty cloudy. So why did I…? Well basically I liked what he said about himself. I’m not big on the guys who tell me that they are into long walks and sunsets, or those who hint that they have not yet found the perfect man. Then there are the prissy masculine tops, who say ‘Don’t bother winking at me, just tell me exactly what you are looking for, because I don’t want to waste my time -- or my huge penis -- on some idiot.’ Oh yes, thanks, it sounds like it will be a lovely, relaxing evening. No, from his description this guy sounded like a nice person, but there was no ‘face pic’ and being the wimp that I am, I hadn’t asked for one. When I reached the building it was an old warehouse that had been renovated into apartments, which was somewhat reassuring. I was at the wrong door, and when he appeared on the sidewalk I noticed he was somewhat odd looking, as he was wearing ripped camouflage pants (ripped in a rather daring way) a camouflage cap, and glasses. The glasses weer disconcerting because — well, they just gave him an oddly intense look, with the cap. He was not ugly, but his face was a little scary. We proceeded up two flights of stairs, never easy for a near septuagenarian like me, and I noticed it was very dark and there was a lot of junk. When we got to his apartment I noticed that it was nicely renovated, but a mess. However, who doesn’t occasionally forget to dust? I was pleased we were going into the living room, not the bedroom — and that he had an L shaped leather couch — always an indication of the best kind of worst intentions. I still could not tell about him though, was he a sweet man who wanted a good blow job, or a serial killer? He asked me if I wanted a drink — which was just polite, I thought, and I thoughtlessly said yes, and then surreptitiously inspected his place for tell-tale signs of atrocities. I remember glancing into the fridge when he opened it, noticing that -- Thank God -- there were no preserved body parts in mason jars. But all this means that I neglected to monitor his bar-tendering. So when he offered me a tall vodka tonic I suddenly realised I might, of course be 'roofied.' I thanked him and set the glass down on a table and tried to figure out a way to politely not drink it. My attention was diverted by his question “Do you do edibles — or anything?“ I told him that I only drink, which of course I was not doing. Then he said “Do you mind if I do ‘the pipe’?” I now have had enough experience at these Covid-19 encounters to understand that most all of these hookup homos are on ‘the pipe’ — which needs must be juxtaposed against the public image of happily married gay couples that we so often see on Netflix, and hear of,  from the antisepted mouths of middle class fags. At any rate I said yes, because — well he had suddenly become that forlorn shopgirl in my head, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. As you can imagine, I was fully conscious at that point that some of McArthur’s victims were probably as shy as me about confronting their eventual killer with questions that might have saved their lives. But you know....by that time something else had happened. It wasn’t so much related to my attraction to him (although he was attractive enough to have sex with). I must admit that, as a matter of survival, I have come to trust my instincts. By that I mean if I am going to survive this thing  (i.e. Covid-19) I will need to occasionally have sex, which means I will have to hook up online, and the best way to do that is by abandoning reason (that is arguments for and against) and instead listen with my heart. There’s a sign up in the apartment building where I stay in Toronto about how to tell about letting a stranger in the front door: ‘Does it feel right? Trust your instincts’. That is all we can or should do, really. And, hey, the whole thing worked out fine. My meth-head friend was, I think, as satisfied as I -- afterwards he said -- ‘that was very civilized.’ Like the best of all gay promiscuous sexual encounters, yes, it most definitely was.

Today on CBC

Heather Hiscox kindly informed us of the various  conspiracy theories raging around COVID-19. She quoted Vladislav Sobolev — the founder of Hugs Over Masks. Vladislav is quoting as saying that lock downs are unnecessary, as all you have to do is just ‘eat fruits and vegetables and vitamins.’ Heather pointed out that— needless to say, of course — this is absolutely and undeniably ridiculous! Except……well, CTV News tells us that “researchers found that by the end of 2020, global COVID-19 death rates were more than 10 times higher in countries where more than half the adults are overweight.” So perhaps some fruit and vegetables might actually help? And of course it goes without saying that Nils Anders Tegnell — the state epidemiologist of Sweden — is a murderous monster because he refused to lock down his country. But -- although Sweden has a far higher death rate than it’s immediate neighbours-- it has had “the 23rd lowest annual excess deaths out of 30 European countries -- lower than the U.K. (15.1%), France (10.4%) and Spain (18.9%)." (ABC TV) So who in hell are we supposed to believe? We are told again and  again that the choice is between truth and lies, between science and illusion. But how do we know who is lying? Because are you not aware anyone can make a good argument for anything? (Ask a lawyer!) Antonio Demasio (in Descartes Error) contends that we are not essentially rational beings. If we try to make decisions on the basis of reason alone, we are utterly at sea. Demasio studied stroke victims with right brain damage, and discovered his patients were paralysed by indecision; in response to a choice, they would inevitably get lost in a labyrinthian quagmire of conflicted reasoning. Remember the neighbouring farmer on Green Acres — Hank Kimball (Alvi Moore)--  trapped in an endless cycle of rational equivocation: (‘I could come over and help you with your beet crop today, but then I’d have to leave the cow alone, I mean I could leave the cow alone, but if I do, the cow might get stolen, on the other hand it’s pretty hard to steal a cow, but then — now and again, cows are stolen…etc. etc.)? Demasio asserts that though we may consider ‘the facts,’ decisions are ultimately driven by feelings —because if they were not, decisions might never get made. Consider  Gorgias — the Greek philosopher— particularly his On Nature or The Non-Existent. In this eloquent essay he argues quite convincingly that ‘nothing exists.’ Ever the sophist, Gorgias regarded reason as futile, because one can, after all, literally prove anything. What’s wrecking the world right now is the toxic notion that some of us are in possession of the facts and others are not. Well of course we hate those horrible evil people who are spreading lies and misinformation. How easily we might lift the veil of polarization if we came to understand that no one is right or wrong, that we are all driven by feelings anyway. And when it comes to COVID-19 it’s not a matter of science -- as everybody keeps yelling at us -- because everyone has different set of scientific facts that proves a different thing. Those who don’t wear masks are accused of not caring about their fellow man, but they think that they do care, because they possess entirely different scientific information. The problem is not that Donald Trump invented 'alternative facts' — they've been around for a very long time. Covid-19, like everything else, is not a matter of facts, just a matter of emotional inclination. It’s all about the type of person you are -- not what you 'think.' Either you are the type of person who feels, in their heart — damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, either you are one who enters and leaves this earth unafraid to live, ripe for danger, randy for risk — either you chase after love -- dance, sing and make music, make a fool of yourself at drunken parties (you prefer orgies, actually), yearn for situations that involve danger and surprise —or you are one of those who prefers to remain at home, safe, quiet, disturbed only by the faint hum of the kitchen appliances, loved by your family and your dog, a person who will live a very long life indeed, one that will never (hopefully) be plagued by incident. So let’s just say this.  Everyone has a different set of facts, and no one owns the truth, so why go on about it? Covid-19 is simply about whether you are ‘risk adverse’ or not. And how does this help reconcile our alienation from each other? Well of course, because we can have a vote — based on our feelings. That’s why democracy was invented; to help us survive an irrational world dominated by alternative facts. Look at the recent American election. One side believes the fact that the election was rigged, the other believes that the fact that it was not. But the election of Joe Biden stands (no matter how boring and risk adverse Joe Biden is, and no matter how much he loves those humming appliances) because America is still (perhaps?) a democracy. Can we not accept the fact that we are all a bunch of charming, zany, violent, nutty, scary, whimsical creatures, and the best we can hope for is to participate in a democracy which will sort out this mess that is our feelings, by letting the best feelings win? We can of course, argue and persuade, but ultimately, Aunt Mathilda will never be swayed, she will always ardently believe what she knows to be true, deep in her heart of hearts. And deep down, (come on, admit it!) we are all Aunt Mathilda. And if we could just come to terms with the Aunt Mathilda in each of us, the world would be a  better place.

The sun is

shining, the birds are singing, and the homeless people are out. All is right with the world. Except for the use of the word ‘queer ‘(and the fact that somebody practically ran me over with their motorised wheelchair today). The reason I want to talk about ‘queer’ is because I had a hand in prostituting this word. I realize that Shakespeare says all words are ‘wanton’ (sorry I won’t mention him again) but in this case, it’s just gotta stop. I speak of the new random use of a word that used to be reserved for the lucky demonized and damned few. These days everyone — especially the young — are calling themselves queer. Mostly young women, I will say. Usually it goes like this, if you are under 21 and a woman, you are ‘queer.’ You could be living with a man and having sex with him nightly in the missionary position -- but all that doesn’t matter. You identify as queer, and it doesn’t matter if you live in the suburbs and mummy and daddy are paying not only for your rent, but his also; you have decided you are queer, and dammit to hell, who has the right to tell you that you’re not? With young men under 21 it’s quite a different story; you wouldn’t go near ‘queer’ with a 10 foot pole (although you ardently wish that you had one), unless you are remarkably effeminate -- in other words can’t hold a bat or a ball (i.e. the kind you throw in the air) and you’ve also got a gay voice, and 'Gayface,' in fact the whole gay kit and caboodle (in fact if you're like me, your 'caboodle' is probably the gayest thing about you!). Anyway, if you are unfortunate enough to be under 21, and a young man, and girly too, then what you will do nowadays is paint your nails many different colours (not just red) and — when asked about your sexual orientation at parties — you will say, with a certain air of detached superiority ‘I’m non-binary.’ The subtext is: “Why are you asking me about my sexual identity? Are you some sort of abuser? Don’t you know sexual identity is over, it’s all about gender identity now? Okay. Full stop. (Pause.) How did we get here? As far as I can tell, it’s a trend. And also, because if you are ‘queer,’ it makes you a better person. And who wouldn’t want to be a better person? Especially these days, when cancelling hangs over everyone’s head like the sword of Damocles? Each and every woman alive seems to want to be a better person these days. And the cute cats and cute causes that populate their Facebook pages attest to their social responsibility and their niceness. But with boys, there is another issue — being nice and kind is sometimes suspect — isn’t being kind -- kind of gay? And the last thing anyone wants is -- to be gay. Gay means old white men drooling over sex and pornography, and dressing in leather, and -- no no no no no NO! Nobody wants that. So young men, again, will keep their distance from the 'queer thing,' though, when pressed at parties (and who wouldn’t wish to press a lovely young man at a party?) they are likely to answer ‘I’m an ally.’ An ally — in case you don’t know what it is (and there are rules to being an ally, let me tell you)—  it's something akin to being ‘questioning.’ ‘Questioning’ means you don’t know what the hell you are, but if given time enough you’ll come up with an inscrutable moniker and yell loudly that it must be added to the LGBTQA acronym. This is what queer has become; and yes I contributed to this, back in the day, when I ran Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. In 1994 we moved into our home at 12 Alexander Street in Toronto with several other companies — Native Earth Performing Arts, DNA Theatre, Platform Nine Theatre and The Augusta Company. Back then, Buddies was a gay and lesbian theatre company. We were queer. What made us queer? Well, I’m about to say some words that you may not like. And that is really the essence of what is wrong here -- I mean that I should feel any insecurity about saying these words to you in 2021. When we began fighting for gay liberation so many years ago we figured there would be no more ‘bad language’ when it came to sex, because our project was not just to make you love gays and lesbians -- but to make you love sex -- and yes, to love your own body. Alright, brace yourself. I’m going to say the words. We were queer because we were proud male cocksuckers, and -- proud female carpet munchers (I only use the term ‘carpet munchers’ in lieu of what might be perhaps an even less politically correct epithet, who knows, I'm appropriating, I am not a lesbian). We had to pay a price for our queerness; which was that everyone knew what we liked to do in bed -- it was dirty dirty same-sex stuff,  stuff nobody wanted to talk about, stuff a lot of people disapproved of -- and a lot of people, in fact, hated us for. Nevertheless I, foolishly -- because I loved the founders of Native Earth, DNA, Platform Nine and Augusta, so much -- said to them “You know what, I consider you  queer too, because you’re all kind crazy arty outlaws. So from now on, I’ll say that all of us here at 12 Alexander Street are queer.’ Now I regret that. Not because these people weren’t kind, crazy, arty outlaws — and most of them still are — but well, sorry, most of them weren’t actually queer. Because to be a queer you’ve got to go down on your knees in an alley -- or wherever -- and do the stuff nobody wants to talk about. Period. And you have to be proud of doing that. Period. If not then you don’t any right to call yourself a queer. Queer is a label that we suffered for and therefore now own — and when you try and claim it for yourself because it’s trendy, or it makes you look ‘nice’ you are spitting on those who suffered for gay and sexual liberation -- those who suffered so much -- so that someday you would not be ripped apart from stem to stern when walking down the street wearing your favourite nail polish. Jesus. I think it’s time to call a betrayal a betrayal. Yes, and I will say it, men died of AIDS being cursed as 'queer,' and no one cared. Things were done, things happened, and that’s history — and though the young would like to act is if they appeared magically, like maggots on carrion, in fact the opposite is true. The reason you are here — as much as you may like to forget it, is, alas, because once there was sex. And to top it all off, we were proud of doing it, too.

The film is

directed and co-written by Scott Teems, and it is called The Quarry. It’s one of those movies.  I see the listing and think: Michael Shannon, film noir, 2020 wow, maybe? Could this possibly be a good movie? And then I see it. And it is very good. And then I go to rotten tomatoes and see the rating of 41% and the critics are saying things like: “the danger that David will be exposed doesn’t build suspenseful as much as it ebbs like a weak tide,” "as for the screen play, it to often feels like a collection of contrivances” and, finally -- “nothing much is really taking place." Uh-huh. Okay.  So this film is completely absorbing and quite brilliant. And you can say well that’s just my opinion. Well it is, but why do I care? Because I have gotten reviews like this for my own plays that I know are good, reviews that first of all use hackneyed old Hollywood film school lingo (suspense, contrivance etc) to describe experimental work, and ignore what is there.  But it’s not about me, honestly it’s not. It’s about literacy or lack of it; doesn’t anyone care that we won’t have any good films or plays anymore because we have no more literate critics to watch them (who are these bozos on Rotten Tomatoes)? Or is the lack of attention this film has gotten due just to fear of controversy? Because this film is controversial. Anyway  this is a sparse, poetic, violent, dark drama about a killer who takes on the identity of a minister and starts preaching to a devoted congregation. There’s a huge subplot — it really morphs into the main plot — primarily concerned with racism — but it’s really the story of a man who gets away with murder, something which has been filmed many times by other great filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen (don't say it, if you'll never watch his films again it's your f-in loss). I must say I am guilty all the time --  terribly so,  always have been, always will be (I wrote a novel called Guilty -- Coupable in France, buy it), so I love any movie about people who have done bad things and feel guilty (by the way have you seen Very Bad Things?  -- it’s practically my favourite flic of all time about four guys who go on a vacation in Las Vegas and kill a hooker by mistake and then spend the whole movie trying to cover it up. It’s a masterpiece, and stars Jeremy Piven -- my idea of butch, beefy, hairy-chested heaven). It strikes me that the reason The Quarry is getting such bad reviews might be, well, many things -- a general lack of literacy, or because we fear any movie that is actually honest about racism, or because the film is amoral. I don’t know which of my little conspiracy theories to choose here. So eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a…okay here goes. Let’s start with racism, the movie is very much about how a Latinx man will never find justice in America; the beautiful Bobby Soto is heartbreakingly angry about the sheer hopelessness of what it’s like to be a Latinx person at a time when Trump is telling everyone that some of 'them'  are 'not good people.’ But, problem, this film actually contains racist sentiments, that is, Michael Shannon plays a racist who says racist things (duh!) so I guess some dumb people won’t like the movie. But tell me, how do you portray racism without well…portraying it? As to the lack of literacy -- well I mean this movie is getting bad reviews because basically all the reviewers have been lobotomized by Disney and Marvel. To complain that this movie is too minimalist, or the plot isn't 'suspenseful' enough is being uninformed and uneducated and unaesthetic -- missing entirely the poetry of the piece. Besides it is very suspenseful and actually funny -- if you have half a brain in your head. Finally we come to the amoral part. Well what can I say, The Quarry ain’t no Hallmark Greetng Card of a movie.  It has no sweet redeeming message.  Which reminds me of what I’m writing about right now (sorry to bore you) but it’s the poet Ovid  (no, not COVID, dummy Ovid) sorry to say -- and the notion that Shakespeare invented the amoral play. Before Shakespeare, plays were pretty moral (except I guess for Greek tragedy, and we’re talking western drama here -- I apologise for my ignorance about eastern drama; I have feeling tho, from my limited knowledge of NO Theatre, that what they were doing there was more interesting and perhaps way ahead of Shakespeare). Anyway, the point is Shakespeare discovered Ovid and dared to paganize Christian England, unapologetically. For both Shakespeare and Ovid it’s all about sex and death and change. Shall I say it again? Life is sex and death and change, and there is nothing else. And you can’t moralise about it, you just have to live with it. And you may end up a tree, or a branch, or a deer, but that’s okay, that’s the way it goes (some of my best friends are dears). A friend of mine just died of brain cancer, and he is now, I hope a tree or a branch, or a deer -- or perhaps a purple flower -- which is what Adonis became. I remember a gay friend of mine who is also now dead (I’m getting to that age, sorry) who once looked at a row of pansies in his garden on a summer day and said ‘Aren’t they pretty, they remind me of all my friends” and now I realize I could very well have said "Byron -- " (it was Byron Anagolu, God bless his very gay haute-cusuiney soul) "Indeed those are all your gay friends, in the garden, and they seem to be enjoying the sun!"

It’s all lies;

it always was, for how are we to believe those morsels of undigested breakfast that now exit the mouth of each and every public official and are instantly labeled ‘news’? In Toronto we are in the middle of the dreaded third wave. Young people — we are told —are being carried off into ICUs kicking and screaming, and are apparently expiring in droves. But patios are opening. Oh that’s nice. And what is this third wave? Well it’s just a manipulation tactic, as every time they mention it they also mention that 'we must only be safe for a couple of more months.’ But they’ve been playing that violin for over a year. Just try finding any statistics about the number of young people that are dying of the third wave in Ontario; you will be greeted with impenetrable gobbledegook that speaks of ‘flattening out’ statistics because — why? Because if they gave us the proper numbers we would not be frightened enough. The final non-statistic that has driven me to write this blog: no one got flu this winter. No one. No one had the flu — but we are experiencing a deluge, a catastrophic exponential growth in the death rates from COVID-19. Excuse me. If no one is getting the flu, then won’t the overall death rates be less— COVID-19 or no COVID-19? I know, God help me if I dare  suggest COVID-19 is the flu. Jesus, I can’t navigate my rickety little boat through this mess of misinformation. The important thing to note is that we have stopped verifying facts anymore. And even more importantly, we have decided without a doubt that we have already made up our minds about everything. The mountain of skepticism installed by Nietzche in the 19th century that consequently morphed into Existentialism in the 20th century  -- has now switched to a terriffyingly objective moral and factual certainty.  If you ask anyone what is right or wrong, they'll roll their eyes and say -- ‘Well isn’t it self-evident?” Everyone knows what the truth is; the point is to get it done, to spread that truth using the most effective manipulation possible. At one time this was called persuasion. That was when we cared to analyze data and/or ideas, when it was possible to have a thoughtful unpopular opinion about anything. But the digital world has taught us is that we are either on one side or the other -- on the side of truth or lies -- and our task is to trick the other side into joining our camp. To this end, any chicanery, any immorality, is justifiable. Thus Vivek Shraya — who  holds the great ‘trans truth’ that there are no longer two genders -- was allowed to trash gay men in her book I’m Afraid of Men, going on about how selfish, vain and hypersexual we are. (Well yes we are selfish and vain and hypersexual, but isn't everybody!) Vivek is forgiven because she is on the right side of things — therefore fully justified in shaming her fellow queers, damning and slamming fags to promote a worthy cause. It didn’t always used to be like this. There is an answer; and I’m sorry it can’t be more interesting. We must revisit the time worn principles of ancient Greek rhetoric. Something happened in the mid-1700s — the powers-that-be began policing language (as they are doing today — exiling mean, lacerating wit — the wit of Shakespeare) and then they (The Royal Society) started promoting science. And it was the new ‘scientists’ who banned the imagination, much as the lovely Rebecca Onion of Slate magazine, is doing now with Dr. Seuss -- to protect as yet unformed minds from Theodore Geisel's cruel sense of humour. There was a time, you see, when rhetoric was taught in schools, and there was at least a very vague sense of what sophism is. (Nietzche was a fan of sophism, he was mad as a hatter, but so very very wise) The essence of sophism is skepticism; a distrust of rhetoric. If one understands that everything is a lie, that all speech is figuration, that everything we put into words becomes a fabrication as soon as the words are formed our mouths -- and if we therefore come to the public square (our present day digital platforms) armed with sharply honed critical faculty, ready to do battle with the reality being present by various rhetors, we can then take fundamental issue with what any authoritarian might say, and most importantly, be ready and able to critique the way he or she says it. It is by both respecting rhetoric and fearing it -- but most of all, by critiquing it -- that we will ever have a hope of living in a world that is not mad, a world in which we are constantly being manipulated. This is why I go on about lies all the time, and why I am writing a book about this. It’s called Shakespeare Lied, and I’m half way through. Like my first book on Shakespeare it will be relegated to the dustbin, but may live on in the libraries that are somehow not yet destroyed by the overzealous politically correct woke folk. This is my goal -- before I die, to write so much, and publish so much, that when books become obsolete — as is happening so quickly — and we become less and less able to tolerate transgression (i.e. they finally get around to burning Lolita) -- there will be enough of my books around that people will find them by accident and read them. There is something, after all, about coming across an old book in the corner of an attic. What I love is what I find inside them. And I don’t necessarily mean the text. I stole a book from the shelf of an old house in Stratford once -- The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathaniel West. When I got it home a note fell out. The note said “Clive, meet me in the bar at 10 pm, and don’t tell a soul” (I paraphrase). It was, in my view, a gay note, arranging a secret assignation, it was a plot; nay, a budding romance. Nothing could have more persuasively convinced me that the book was meant to be stolen by me. Goodbye! I must go outdoors! The patios are open! The faggots will be out; putting their live at peril in the third wave. But our lives were always in peril, weren’t they? And some of us still managed to survive.

His name was

Nick, and I met him, probably, 16 years ago. Or at least I saw him. He was a waiter at Toby’s restaurant in Jackson Square in Hamilton Ontario. It was impossible to miss him --  larger than life in every way --tall, fat, loud, very gay, and a screaming queen. When Nick used to wait on tables at Toby’s, he turned the whole place into a gay bar. I was afraid to go there at first because it embarrassed me to be around him. I mean if you’ve spent your whole life not wanting to be made fun of because you’re effeminate, and then you walk into a public space, and there, holding court is a mincing, yelling, flirting, over-the-top creature from hell, prancing around, sashaying up, to patrons: ‘What can I get you Mister Man?” Everything was innuendo; even when there was a distinct lack of sexual subtext to support it. And the older women; oh — they loved him. Tables full of of elderly Marys, Fays and Mays all doted and cooed. “And what can I get for you — you lovely young ladies?” He would ask, and they would giggle. And May would say ‘I’m trying not to put on any weight' and Nick would say “Darling you’re beautiful,” and they would giggle again. There was no stopping Nick. So I would hide in a corner and hope that he didn’t wait on my table. Then one night I went to the bathhouse in Hamilton. (There is only one bathhouse and it’s almost always empty. Apparently it’s busy at lunch hour? Because Hamilton is a working class town?). Anyway, there was Nick taking money at the door; it was my worst nightmare. 'I’m sure you’re going to have a wonderful time, Mr. Handsome. You simply must tell me every naughty detail.” I stayed there for quite awhile that night -- just waiting someone to show up, and by the time I left, Nick was gone. But he still worked at Toby’s (apparently the bathhouse was a part time job).  I avoided eating there until one day I just went, and of course, he was at my table. “Well, Mister Man, I haven’t seen you in quite a long time.” “No,” I said demurely, “I hope you had a wonderful night, and that you didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” “No, I didn’t,” I said. Then something happened. In spite of myself, I began to be less afraid of Nick. Who knows why? Maybe I just got used to him, and gradually I began to look forward to hanging out at Toby’s. I tried a new tactic. When Nick started telling me how good-looking I was, I would say “You’ll have to meet my boyfriend —” at which point he changed the subject. I certainly never knew him really --  hardly talked to him except to exchange banter, and yet Nick — and other gay men like him — have always cleared the path for us. They were the canaries in the coal mine, the ones they sent down to plum the depths of homophobia while the rest of us were dipping our toes in the water. Like Barbra Streisand, or Bette Midler, Nick separated the men from the boys,  you either loved him or hated him. But he made Toby’s safe for us. Any homophobe would be frightened to enter. Well, last year I went to Toby’s a couple of times and he wasn’t there. It finally occurred to me that something might have happened to him -- so I asked my favourite waitress. “Oh — he died,” she said. I was appalled, sad, frightened. ‘How?” “A heart attack. Just like that.” Well it certainly made sense — in the 15 years or so that Nick had been waiting on tables he had gotten fatter and fatter, and sweatier and sweatier — until it got to the point that he was huffing and puffing as he laid down yet another plate of cheesy fries. ‘Oh girlfriend, I’m worn out” he would say. Well, indeed he was. Today I went back to Toby’s and my favourite waitress was there; Toby’s was as empty as the bathhouse due to COVID-19. So I asked her to tell me a little more about Nick's death. “He was fifty-four years old” she said “and he’d been working here for 34 years. I've only been here for 32. We started off together.” No wonder Nick acted like he owned the place. I asked her if there had been a funeral. “Yeah it was last February just before COVID-19.” I asked her if there were a lot of people there. “Oh yeah,” she said. I asked her if his family knew he was gay. “How could you not know Nick was gay?” she said. Indeed. I got a crazy idea. I haven’t actually done it yet; but I’m going to try. You see, Nick makes an appearance in my novel Sad Old Faggot. The book is kind of my fake autobiography,  but at the end Nick appears, and I have a harrowing experience with him (quite fictional) which kind of gives the book its title. It suddenly occurred to me that I might want to make someone in Nick's family aware of the book. “He had three sisters,” my favourite waitress said. Well of course; that makes perfect sense. So now I have Rose’s phone number. We’ll see. I have to reread the end of it. In my book, Nick is part monster, part saviour — in other words, he’s human. But I think his sister might thank me for making her aware of the homage. Don't get me wrong; I’m doing it completely out of selfishness; when I go to Toby’s these days the fact that he’s not there is just too difficult to endure. After so many ears spent fearing him, I’m now longing to see him again. I must bring him back to life, if just for a moment. I ‘m ashamed to say I don’t know my favourite waitress’s name. We've been friends ever since she demanded to see my tattoos years ago, and the word ‘piglet' caught her eye. When I told her it was my boyfriend's nickname she started calling me 'piglet.' When I told her about the book she said -- “That’s funny, I used to call Nick 'faggot.' I was the only one who could call him that. And he used to call me a 'douchebag.'” It sounds like a very gay relationship to me. Where have they gone, all the Nicks of the world? You might think they died of AIDS. No, their spirits died of the hypocrisy that engulfed post-AIDS gay politics. After AIDS we all ran to our cellphones and hid on apps that say ‘no fats or fems.’ These days it’s all about being perfect and fitting in, supporting the police, and pretending you like starchy collars and church; after all the trans folks find our camp jokes ‘toxic’ -- don't you know? Once we loved to flaunt it — we were Proud Pansies and Girly-Boys. And though you might wish to call it something else, I’m afraid I call that courage.

It's all about

power, not sex. So this little nerd goes and shoots up a couple of local sex palaces because he claims he has a sex addiction. This is about heterosexuality, nothing else. Heterosexuality is messed up right now because although straight men were able to ignore feminists somewhat in the past they can’t ignore #Metoo. But there's no point in demonising men; which is why I criticised Vivek Shraya’s book -- ‘I’m Afraid of Men.’ Sorry Vivek, but it's not about ‘men,’ it’s about the patriarchy. Men are, more often than not -- nice, stupid, smart, good, bad, sexy and sometimes they have large penises and know how to use them. That’s great. And like women, they can also be very conniving, mean, moody and very screwed up. We're all just human beings. Then there’s the patriarchy, which is an awful thing-- but men are just as much victims of the patriarchy as women. And this isn’t about letting some murderous funny-looking little incel in Atlanta off the hook. Sure —burn him at the stake, it’s a free country (except I don’t believe in capital punishment). I'm not defending him. But demonizing him won’t get to the root of the problem, which I will repeat for one final time, is the patriarchy. Since I’m a gay male I have a lot to say about that, but of course no one will listen to me because I 'm privileged because I'm male. Except I’m not. I am less privileged than a hell of a lot of other males (even though I hate this intersectional 'one-up-man-ship' game), because on the outside I look like a real big, scary man, if I manage to keep my big mouth shut (wish me luck), and that not only disappoints people, and makes them uncomfortable, but sometimes it makes them very, very angry—  because a big man is not supposed to be a nelly queen. When I was younger and 6 feet, 210 pounds, straight guys would walk up to me regularly and try and get me to fight them. I would just wave them away. Can’t you see I just want to suck what you’ve got between your legs? I'm a lover, not a fighter. Now the solution to this is not male rights or male liberation, or masculinity. I’m not saying it's time to get in touch with your inner or outer manhood and head out to the woods and bond with your bros shooting poor helpless animals. No — contrary to popular opinion — I am not Jordan Peterson. I know that there is a thing called testosterone and some men -- not all -- need to be 'real men.' But Jordan Peterson is just an ordinary man, who recently went through hell apparently. (And if you read his friggin’ books you’d realize he is very stupid about some fundamental things, that he is a capitalist who believes that everyone who has money deserves to have it, because they worked hard to get it  -- um, what planet are you living on, Jordan?) But his theories are popular because of the mess we have made of heterosexuality, and particularly because of the mess men are in because of #Metoo. And you might say — ‘Great! About time men were in a mess!’ But no, it’s not. That’s the toxic foundation of woke politics:'You made me suffer so I’m going to make you suffer more, because I won’t ever forget, so there!’ Such relentless revenge just causes more suffering. Anyway I am not blaming the Atlanta sex palace murders on women, or #Metoo. I blame the patriarchy. I knew I was in trouble when a little boy named Neil Manley (I’m not kidding) who lived down the road strolled up to me and socked me in the jaw for no reason when I was 9. At the time I was kind of screwing (as best I could) my best friend (named Tad) who also lived down the road, and taking the first steps toward being the closeted homosexual I would be for the first 28 years of my life. Getting socked by Neil Manley taught me I was not a man in any traditional sense, after all I used to carry my Raggedy Andy doll in my bicycle basket and wanted to take ballet and talked too much with my hands and loved my mother beyond belief and could not relate to my father — and --  the list goes on. But I still felt the pressure of the patriarchy from an early age. Thank God I became an artist and not an incel killer (but sissies aren’t too good with guns). All men are under the same pressure, not just non-men like me. Masculine heterosexual men are under pressure to be more masculine than they even want to be, to win every battle, to see who’s on top,  who gets the most women -- who is most potent, who earns the most money, who is simply better than all the other men, because that’s what the patriarchy is all about. And we all know rape has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power. The nerd who shot these sex trade workers calls himself a ‘sex addict.’ Well good luck with that buddy. I am -- if not a sex addict -- then a sexual compulsive, at least. So I know a little bit about it. If you are a male you are supposed to have lots of sex, many 'conquests' and be the ‘top of the heap,’ whether or not you're straight or gay (hence the screwed up-edness of gay male culture). It's not that I’m horny all the time -- far from it. I know this because I was in therapy with my lover and the therapist asked me ‘Do you ever find yourself having sex when you’re not horny?’ My lover was waiting patiently for an answer, because he thinks I am a sex addict (then there’s his sex life, but we won’t go into that here). And sure enough I confessed immediately: ‘Yeah, all the time!' Because I do. I do have sex regularly for reasons other than horniness — just because I’m bored and lonely mostly — but also because I want power, and I want to keep my place among the other uber males, and be the sexiest damn fag alive (a hopeless quest, of course). Men rape because of this. Like me they are not horny, they just want power. And there is enormous pressure on them to be powerful from the time they are born. I’m not saying it’s not their fault when they commit atrocities, alright?  I’m saying start taking that pressure off them, and let masculinity be. Don't enforce it, or ban it, just let it be. Which isn’t easy, I know, because there are -- as you know -- not only messed up men but messed up women (i.e .Trump voters) who are afraid that if men stop being power-hungry they will stop getting erections, and stop screwing women. It’s a real mess. All I can say is thank God I’m a fag and like to suck on you-know-whats, because, when I do that it makes me forget all about power. When I’m doing that, I haven’t got much power -- except of course the power to get  him, well, 'off.' I won’t use another word because, hey -- this a family blog, No, really it is. Haven't we learned -- from all this suffering-- what is the most important thing in these' trying times'? Family.

It's a prison.

And the thing about prison is; it’s a reckoning. You are sent there to learn. You must come out redeemed, or else, alas, it was for naught. Oscar Wilde was sent to prison in 1895. He was visited by the 1st Viscount Haldane — a lawyer, eminent statesman and philosopher. One must think of Lady Diana attending to the victims of AIDS. Like them, Wilde was the most disgraced man in the known universe. Like them, he stood convicted of one the most heinous of all human crimes (desire) — and yet Haldane found in it his heart to drop by. He told Wilde that, indeed, he was blessed to be in prison, and that he must make the most of the experience. His lecture was not merely didactic, but specifically helpful: he referred Wilde to his most popular plays — the ones that had held London in thrall for nearly a decade.  He judged them to be without merit; the sad harvest of a superficial life. Haldane hoped very much that Wilde would learn a lesson from prison; that from hardship, profundity would emerge -- like a phoenix -- that he would find himself, at last, capable of authoring a 'great work.' Before prison Wilde wrote the most beautiful comedy of all time (The Importance of Being Earnest). After prison, he published a pile of pretentious pseudo-intellectual bird doo—doo called De Profundis, and died soon after, a broken man. (Perhaps Wilde thought if he named the work ‘Profound,’ that would make it so.) So we must ask ourselves— what is the lesson to be learned from the prison of Covid-19? Public Health is God’s Parole Board — we go to them, every month or so,  our suits pressed, sporting a cheery, pasted-on smile — and we plead. Yes we have learned our lesson! From now we will be good! We will not spread COVID-19! Inevitably the weary, inscrutable warden closes his book with a sigh, and looks down at us dourly, his jowls jangling with dread — for he dislikes being the bearer of bad news: “I’m afraid you have not convinced us you are ‘cured.’ It is not yet your time.” On the way out, of course, we cry a little bit. But what's the use of crying really? Crying was for when there was joy; tears exist to be joy's opposite. Anyway, if we were to cry now we might never stop. I hear a snatch of a tune, and I remember, and I think — was that real? Was it a dream? Did I really gad about like that, having fun? Did I have friends? Were their nights of drinking? Was there a society of people who knew each other, and  — much to their mutual delight — were addicted to whatever melodramas they had concocted, and yet still loved each other, despite all the plotting and planning, the backbiting and jealousy, the gossip and lies? We were connected, it seems; and that connection had to do with the fact that we would actually gather, in person, and sometimes we would screw each other — sometimes just flirt — and then deny it — and we would make fools of ourselves, and end up lost, in a dark corner at the end of the night, staggering with drink, and reveal ‘the truth’—‘he beats me’ or ‘I don’t really love her’ or ‘I did something…..with him…don’t tell anybody!” Isn’t that what we lived for? My lover always used to warn me: ‘I hope you never got to prison; you wouldn’t do well there.' I'd say well no, I’ll do fine, I’ll be the prison bitch, and take it up the — (well,  you know). But there is not even the solace of prison rape; that is abandonment indeed. Remember the very attractive ‘woke’ idea of the ‘death of intention’? Up until now I’ve deemed this a toxic notion. Perhaps you know what I am referring to? If you call a trans person by the wrong pronoun — even by accident — you will be met with stubborn, unrelenting anger — but you will not be asked to apologise. Instead you will be ostracised in whatever way is possible or merely convenient. If you say ‘I didn’t mean to!’ the trans person will say: “So sorry, but ‘intention’ is done.” Did you not know ‘intention’ has died? Oh yes, the woke masses have had it up to here with our endless prevarications, justifications, our fabricated ‘reasons,’ yes — our fallibility even; there is simply no excuse any longer for the atrocities we have committed. And then for us to whine — ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Sacrilege! I have been in prison for a year now. I have learned this. I now believe intention is dead. All of these months when the powers-that-be decreed we remain indoors, and we said ‘Why?’ and they said “Because it will make you better people’ — that was their intention. But since good intentions mean nothing, it matters no more that they wished to end a pandemic; for they destroyed our lives. I won’t go through the litany. I won’t tell you what has died: you know. Look inside yourself.  If you liked to stay at home before, you may never go out again. If you once resisted the toxic polarization of society; well get with the program, you're certainly one of the polarized now. But more importantly, you've caught a glimpse of death. It’s something we weren’t meant to know. Sure, we might see a corpse at a funeral and turn away. But we were were never meant to live inside a dead body. That is the nightmare of certain horrific illnesses (no, not COVID-19) — to be trapped in a body — with limbs that cannot move, but a fully functioning soul. I’m not so sure we will ever recover. Well, they don’t want us to recover really; they are doing everything they can to stop our return to the ‘old’ way of life; that’s what they mean by the 'new normal.' A year ago one of my friends said “I don’t want a ‘new normal,’ I’m not going back to some f-in ‘new normal,’ I was never normal back then and I don’t intend to be normal now."  I won’t say it’s was all a plan; I’m going to be charitable instead and say it was an accident — an accident we can blame on the ‘best of intentions.’ Doesn't that make you feel better? To know that your life was ruined for a noble cause? For many of us, this has been the veritable discovery of melancholy. And for some that sadness will never go away.

Last night was

an adventure for sure -- perhaps what I’ve been missing for so long. Someone responded to a ‘hi’ I put out on a hookup app (that app shall remain nameless here). He was good-looking — lean, with long hair. He seemed nice enough, and when I told him I couldn’t ‘host,’ but could meet him for a walk, he seemed amenable. The one disturbing thing was that in one of his messages he said "I’m Christian.” This put the fear of God in me — quite literally. I asked him why it was necessary for him to mention that he was a Christian, and said: "LOL — Christian is my name." So I skirted that particular catastrophe. Christian said he might have a place we could go. He was coming from Jane and Finch so I wasted some time drinking with my friend the conspiracy theorist. I do enjoy my friend. He’s incredibly smart, an ex-concert pianist, and a bit of sex fiend like me. He’s also an anti-masker (which I don’t disapprove of) but he does go on about his various ‘theories.’ This time it was: Is Biden really president? Apparently he does not ride on Air Force One. The last president to ride on Air Force One was — you guessed it —  Donald Trump. So maybe Donald Trump is actually still president? It’s just a theory, of course. But what I did notice was the way conspiracy theorists always say, quite innocently:  ‘I’m just asking…there are some questions, that’s all. That’s all I’m saying.” Hm. Anyway we had a nice time and Christian phoned me (I had given him my number). We found a place to meet on the street as it was a lovely, unseasonably warm March night; a rarity. By the time he appeared I was very drunk, and not at all prepared for the spectacle. Or should I say the lack of it? My oh my, but Christian didn’t look much like his photo, tho I’m pretty sure it was the same person. He had  gained about 30 pounds (Covid weight?). ‘But shouldn’t you’ —  I thought — ‘update your picture?’ And I have to say there was something shabby about him, but I tried to ignore it. We started on our way to his friend’s place. Right away there was an interesting dilemma at hand — or at least it was a dilemma for me. You must understand that when guys come all the way from Jane and Finch to meet me on a downtown corner without hesitation or complaint, it arouses my suspicions. I mean perhaps they have another reason for coming downtown? One they are not telling me? Anyway, Christian said: “I have to go to a friend’s house — he will give me my stool medicine.” Wow. ‘Stool medicine’ is not phrase I have heard — ever, actually, before, and it certainly had an ominous ring to it. Now Christian’s profile did say he was HIV positive — but ‘undetectable,’ which usually means not actually ill, at least not ill from HIV. But was he talking about diahrrea? That could be an AIDS symptom, and certainly not sexy. However, I was drunk on adventure. It is at this point that you may disagree somewhat with my existential choices at the time—I may seem to resemble a little too much the cute blonde girl who says “Gee — why don’t go explore that creepy old house!” in a horror movie. At any rate Christian started telling me about his friend, and found it important to mention — for some reason — that his friend was only 5 feet tall. I have no problem with people 5 feet tall, in fact, I’ve always been attracted to short men (who are sometimes attracted to me because I’m tall). We got to an apartment building near Gerrard and Mutual and there was a lot of buzzer ringing and phone fiddling until we were finally buzzed in. When we got to the apartment, the door was locked, and his friend was nowhere in sight. Sure enough, he turned up tho. He was, indeed, five feet tall. When we got inside the apartment Christian immediately entered the bathroom. The apartment was exceedingly small; the living room was the size of a hallway, there was a tiny sun room, a tiny bedroom and a tiny kitchen. It was kind of the size of a postage stamp, apartment wise. There were plants everywhere, it was sort of a jungle. While Christian was in the bathroom his friend (I can’t for the life of me remember his name) started talking about dying cats. It really was quite the monologue—  Shakespearean in it’s scope, length, and in the range of its metaphysical speculation. There was one story after another about dying cats — with a plethora of hand gestures and acting out. There were almost tears, as the gist of it was that cats were dying at an alarming rate in his apartment building — and he had become the designated veterinary health care worker, and evidently — practicing eulogist. He went on and on about the dying cats until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked him: “Why are so many cats in your building dying?” He said: “Oh, because they’re old.” This didn’t quite invoke the tragic mode he had tried to conjured up, in fact the whole speech kind of reminded me of Covid-19. Then Christian came out of the bathroom (after quite a while I might add) and his 5 foot tall friend held forth on another subject. This time he was on about the drug addict who had died in his apartment recently, and how it had been an unfortunate incident, one he definitely did not wish to see repeated again. For some reason he seemed to direct his remarks at Christian. Christian sat down on the couch beside me. Then Christian asked: ‘Would you like some ice cream?” I wasn’t sure. He said “it’s the three flavoured ice-cream — chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.” I said yes. But I really don’t know at that point what I wanted. When Christian showed me the bowl, a wave of nausea and fear overtook me. I said. “I have to go.” Christian said “So soon?” But I did need to go, really. Was Christian’s ‘stool medicine’ perhaps another kind of medicine? Now I’ll never know. But life is certainly an adventure with many twists and turns. Or it can be. That is, unless you are staying home watching your life being eaten away by the Covid-19 lock down. And that is all I have to say. Besides — wow! It takes a whole lot of very different people to make up a world. I think John Steinbeck said that. But he was perhaps not the only one to say it.

By now we should know

what’s going on; it’s primarily a racist fascination with miscegenation; the persistent image of that ginger penis plunging into that dark vagina; we just can’t get it out of our minds. Meghan is right, we are, all of us, racists, and for this reason it’s all just so alluring — but most of all, erotic. An added distraction is that Megan’s exemplary behaviour makes it clear who is wearing the pants in this particular royal bedroom. If someone is being punished it is definitely Prince Harry — how delicious it is imagining him wincing with pain/pleasure when bent over Meghan Markle’s knee. May I speak of the sheer hypocrisy of being so suddenly struck (to coin a word) by the heretofore invisible issue of mental health, but only when the words issue from the mouth of a Princess? I don’t think Meghan is lying about how her experience of racism tested her mental health, but why are we acting as if we’ve never heard of the issue before? Could it be because she is enormously rich, a TV star — and royalty —and that she gets pummeled sexually within an inch of her life, knightly, by a possible future king? I wish I could feel sorrier for Meghan, really, I do.  I tell you honestly — I’m trying hard to press out a tear. But it’s not Meghan I take issue with, no —  it’s the multitudes who have suddenly wakened from their deep sleep  and become socially conscious. I, too, am concerned about mental health. The mental health of gay men. I have been for a long time. During the last year, two of my gay theatre colleagues have committed suicide, and two have committed themselves to mental institutions. I do apologise for not being a princess (although I am a queen) but try and pay attention anyway. Gay men have never recovered from The Holocaust that was AIDS. This means that not only were we dying like flies for approximately ten years while everyone ignored us and blamed our ‘lifestyle’ for our illness, but after they finally found drugs that allowed some to rise from the dead, Public Health (the same Public Health that is protecting us from COVID-19) started putting us in jail for murder if we had sex with someone without a condom. But what continues to torture us (gay marriage, and all) is this never ending shaming of our sexual activities that stems entirely from heterosexual male gender insecurity -- and is not helped one jot by trans persons coming out as gender variant but ‘not sexual.’ Homophobia will be over when Dads everywhere routinely embrace their sons for not overpopulating the world. But it’s not only gay men that concern me; I also worry about the mental health of drug addicts. Recently I have become drug addict — or resumed my previous drug addiction. My therapist became concerned when I told her that I thought maybe I might end up dead one day soon. Yes, it’s poppers. I’ve mentioned them before. If you are not gay then you have no idea what I’m talking about. They're basically like sniffing what’s under the sink — and yes I do it far too much. Why? Because I miss darkrooms, and naked men. It’s not so much sex as what I like to call ‘the game’ — the chase, the grab and kiss, the catch and sniff, the dab and parry of it all: ‘You’re not masculine enough…but I like your beard…Where day you live?’  Missing all that drives me to inhale a carcinogen while looking at dirty pictures of men. There, now you know. I tell you this partially because I am addicted to confession, and partially to again affirm the extreme unreliability of my moral authority; in other words I’m as much of an asshole as you are, and if you don’t think you’re an asshole well, you have a problem with self-esteem. (Also the present rubric for politically correct discussion says that if I am an admitted drug addict I have the right to speak of them.) I don’t think anyone cares about the mental health of drug addicts, but people have been overdosing on opiates like crazy during COVID-19. Then there is the mental health of the working classes. I can’t claim authenticity there; I have never been remotely a working class person, but like Prince Harry -- who is not himself black but has sex with black people -- I am not working class but have sex with working class men. And during COVID-19 the working classes have been forced to continue toiling in adverse conditions, only to come home to children who are climbing the walls because they're not in school. And the wives! Why is no one talking about the wives?  Incidents of domestic violence in Canada have almost doubled during COVID-19. But of course, no one cares. We would rather fantasize about what Meghan and Harry do in bed.  Okay. Let’s go! Don’t you just LOVE them? I have noticed that Harry habitually wears open-necked shirts that generously reveal just that tiny bit of fur; this must drive Meghan crazy, it certainly has me imagining where that redolent fuzz is placed on his muscular body. I imagine it it is buttock and leg prevalent, which is a particularly fantasy of mine (as I am hairless there). I also love to imagine the disciplinary actions she takes when Harry is not up to par with his Requisite Public Service.  I suspect she demands he pull down his pants and walk around their 11 million dollar Montecito home in Santa Barbara  with it all hanging out. No let’s imagine it swinging. I would imagine it swings when he walks — because well — after all he isn’t the son of Prince Charles, but probably the son of the -- most likely amply-endowed -- James Lifford Hewitt, a hunky cavalry officer who had an affair with Princess Diana in the 90s.  Oh dear, what about Meghan? I forgot to imagine her nakedness! She probably has something hanging out too — at least one breast -- so Harry has something to fantasize about nibbling on later — but only with her permission. So they will go on like this until — I hope I am not boring you! I could go on all knight, because when we speak of Meghan and Harry we are speaking of mental health, are we not? Is that not the subject? Or, pardon me, was it something else?

I’ve always been

somewhat triggered by passive aggression. It’s the theme of COVID-19. I find myself slipping into it as the days get longer and the opportunities for fun disappear. Passive aggression is defined by www.verywellmind.com as behaviours that "involve acting indirectly aggressive rather than directly aggressive.” Procrastination is a common form of passive aggression -- i.e. you’re mad as hell but instead of yelling, you become a kind of impossible roadblock for all further action by simply doing nothing. COVID-19, I would argue, has made us all passive aggressive, because the disease itself is that way. Hardly anyone knows anyone who has died of COVID-19, and if we do they were either inexpressibly old, or inexpressibly ill, before they got it. And yet it is A Frightening Holocaust that has bought our lives to a full stop. By doing nothing, it has halted everything. And the official language of COVID-19 is passive aggression: 'I’m only pretending to be nice as I really I hate you for not wearing a mask.' Public communications about the illness are conducted in hushed religiosity with much false camaraderie and artificial sweetness. I had an afternoon of passive aggression today, at the gym. In my gym these days you have to stay six feet from each other and  disinfect the equipment before and after using. I took a momentary break from the the pec machine  (it was only a moment, I swear) and a woman started to work out on it. Ordinarily I would suggest we share; but that’s impossible under COVID-19. She was wearing gigantic headphones. I said, Excuse me. She did not hear me. I said, louder, Excuse me. She removed her headphones. I asked her if she would mind waiting until I was finished before working out on the machine. She said, I can’t hear you. I spoke louder. She said, again, I can’t hear you. Then I spoke very loudly indeed. She walked away. A couple of minutes later one of the trainers at the gym  asked me very politely -- of course -- if I would be willing to have a ‘chat’ with him before I left. I told him I was free now. Nonplussed, he said ‘I wanted to talk to you about  the incident that just happened. My instinct was to start screaming at him what incident? But I did not do that, thank God -- as I knew perfectly well what he was talking about -- and I also  knew that under the Unwritten Law of COVID-19 you are supposed to pretend you love everyone even though you hate them. So I asked him politely (back) what he was talking about, and he said. “You yelled at someone.” Now I was the nonplussed one. At first I denied yelling, and then inconveniently remembered that I had in fact yelled at this woman, basically because she asked me to. I explained that the woman  was, for whatever reason -- functionally, at least, partially deaf. He understood. We finished up billing and cooing  about how we all need be understanding because  these are difficult times ….blah blah blah. I could have killed him.  He's fat and ugly as hell -- and he’s an friggin' trainer. Why are fat people trainers? Could someone explain that to me? I thought they were supposed to make you feel inadequate. This guy  makes me feel very ‘adequate.’ And  I am sick and tired of pretending to be pleased to give up all the happiness in my life -- for going on a year now -- because I care so much more about other people than I do about myself. People do not care a jot about other people; they simply care about the joy of appearing noble as hell by pretending they do. This nightmare of passive aggression is not simply limited to isolated incidents at the gym; I feel it is taking over my life, creeping into my soul. At first I thought I was just depressed, but I could not possibly be depressed because I never get depressed. You know, for most of my life  — I don’t know what it is — I’ve basically been a happy person. I love what I do. I love my lover. I love my friends. I love sex. And I love life (not necessarily in that order) . But all of those things have been ground into the dust by the paralyzingly dull anti-reality of the nightmare normal— this monumental cloddish heaving pile of sadness that has been dumped over our heads. I have recently become obsessed with hating two of my fiends. They have not communicated with me in any way for weeks and (in one case) months. I don’t know what’s going on. Perhaps they are not my friends anymore.  After a few mysterious mentions of ‘mutations’ and variations’ they simply floated away. So my strategy is to ‘out-passive aggressive’ them. Instead of emailing them and saying -- what’s up? or better yet -- I miss you! or even better yet -- I’m really hurt! -- I have decided to play the old — I’m-just-going-to pretend-that-I don’t-want-to-see-you-more-than -you-don’t-want-to-see-me-game.  I hate myself. I’m being sucked down by the suffocating quicksand -- the foul-smelling hypocrisy that is COVID-19. Goodwill is the dreaded pillow hovering over my face, and I am Desdemona, only fit to flail; so gorgeous, and so persecuted. If anything has taught us how to be impeccable victims it is COVID-19. Of course I learned passive aggression a long time ago, at my mothers knee. Yes, she played the virtuous, virtual violin of her own helpless abjection better than Paganini. I spent my childhood tiptoeing around her vulnerability, which — oddly, for vulnerability — felt like a bomb that was going to explode at any moment. I don’t want to become permanently passive aggressive, but I’m starting to think — as Bette Midler once did, famously— ‘why bother’? COVID-19 has taught us that doing nothing has enormous power; that if we each just sit in our homes until we are rotten with regret, this will pay back the world for having the unmitigated gall to never live up to our expectations before, during, or after COVID-19.  Yes, there will be some demented solace in that. For what is the best revenge? Not living well, but doing nothing. 

So much boring

ink has been spilled about this Dr. Seuss business, so I will try and keep this entertaining. Perhaps just to start off we should get one thing clear; all this has nothing to do with race. Seuss’s drawings may or may not be politically insensitive now, or anytime. That’s not the point.  I say this not because racism doesn’t matter. But the standards that one applies to ideas -- to a rational reasoned discussion -- are not the same standards one applies to art. Art must have a special place, if it doesn’t then you are a book burner, period. What I mean to say is that if — for you — art is not another reality, an illuminative paradise, one you must visit occasionally, or perhaps you fantasise that one day you might leave this world and enter there, forever — if art isn’t that for you, then you don’t understand art, and you are just as bad as Hitler (who —remember — burned a lot of books, don’t forget). I honestly don’t bring up Hitler often (at least I don’t think I do). If you want to read a really interesting biography of Hitler, go to Mein Kampf. No, not Hitler's book, silly -- I’m sure it’s a boring, ill-conceived piece of bird do-do. I mean My Struggle (Min kamp) by Karl Ove Knausgaard — the brilliant Norwegian novelist (whose six volume series regretfully came to an end in 2011). Did you know that Hitler was not a house painter, but an actual painter of paintings? That he wrote operas and symphonies and aspired to be a playwright before he started burning books? Hitler was a failure as a human being and as an artist — and only failures as human beings and artists burn books, so don’t do it. And please don’t start with Dr. Seuss. So in case you’ve been living under a rock, Dr. Seuss Enterprises has stopped publishing six of his titles (because of his politically insensitive drawings) including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street — which I remember my father reading to me, and I don’t have many fond memories of my father so I’d like to keep that one sacred if you don’t friggin' mind. Okay, that is not censorship -- but it’s the principle of the thing, alright? And here is the principle -- which has been stated quite blatantly by the fascistic (oh dear this has set me off, hasn’t it?) numnuts who have dedicated themselves to defending the Seuss cancellation --i.e. Rebecca Onion -- whose name I admire very much —  I wish I could say it was made up, but I fear her name is simply a dull reality (like her). She has written: “Well, of course nonsense and the avant-garde are both ideological…I think people don’t always recognize that a fantastical or surrealist or nonsensical imagination still grows out of the very same culture that everyone else's does.” I get what you’re saying Rebecca Onion of Slate magazine, and it terrifies me, for it misapprehends the difference between art and ideas, in fact it implies they are the same thing. I’m not saying that art doesn’t have ideas in it, and can’t be parsed into ideas. But if it is art, and not a political speech -- or I should say -- even if it aspires to be art, it must not be parsed, analyzed, ripped apart, in order to find out what it means. Art does not mean anything. It is an experience. It is not a notion of any kind. It could be a bunch of notions that all add up to confusion, or nothing, or everything, or a giant paradox. But art cannot be summed up or whittled down into one idea, and if it can be, you have raped it, yes raped it Rebecca Onion -- done something that should never be done. Those who find it necessary to pick art apart and figure out what its ‘ideology’ is, do not understand the nature of it. Art is not a reflection of your life, or anybody else’s life. It is made up. It is fake. It is a product of the imagination -- as such it follows its own rules and exists in its own reality. Scaligero thought the characters in poetry and myth had really lived. I believe they did. I believe that Holden Caulfield lived. I loved him so much that I became him when I went to my Aunt’s house in New Rochelle in 1966 (she was not my real aunt, but my mother’s adopted sister). Her name was June, and I was a little in love with her son, my cousin Stephen, and he got us into a car accident, and we had to lie on the insurance forms and say he wasn’t speeding. And the two of them (Stephen and his sister — the bewitchingly beautiful Melinda) were completely freaky kids. I don’t know what happened to them. If they had any sense at all they would be dead, for they stayed up all night and slept during the day. And it was there that I read The Catcher in the Rye. For the first time I met a character in literature that I wanted to call up and have a chat with, and I was afraid the book would be over and I would have to say goodbye to him. I would never read The Catcher in the Rye now, because it might not live up to the experience I had when I was 14 years old. Because The Catcher in the Rye is a homophobic book. Yes, in the end Holden spends the night at his teacher’s place — Mr. Antolini — and Mr. Antolini caresses Holden's hair, and Mr. Antolini is called a ‘flit.’ I have now raped that book. I have treated it as an ideology -- and if I listened to Rebecca Onion -- then I could never enjoy it again. I blame you (and Rebecca Onion). Don’t you see, that’s not what art is? If you insist on treating poetry as ideology then you might as well burn books, because you hate art, and I hate you. Sorry, I had to say it. (I’m just so upset!)

Not all actors are

gay; but a lot of them are. When I was artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre many years ago this presented a huge dilemma for the theatre community. So many actors are in the closet — or straight and fearful of being thought gay — that the existence of a ‘gay theatre’ put all their lives — and livelihoods — in jeopardy. Everybody knew this but nobody would talk about it. The closest I got to hearing anybody talk about this was when Eric Peterson said to me — at a Canada Council meeting — “You know most people  have to wear a paper bag over their head when thet go to Buddies.” He didn’t mean it in a nasty way — quite the opposite — he was just commenting on the homophobia in the gay community at that time. Things have not significantly changed. It’s still news when a movie actor comes out, and their careers inevitably wither — men like Matt Bomer and Alan Cumming. Buddies will probably not be a gay and lesbian theatre much longer, but the issues around gay men and acting still persist. All gay men are actors; that’s why we are so suited to the profession. Women and gay men have this in common — we must perform, it is incumbent on us, a social pressure which we could bemoan, but we often instead just cheerfully appropriate and have fun with, because our behaviour is always scrutinised. Straight men are not scrutinised (except when it comes to #MeToo). No one cares how they look -- they can be as fat and rude and mean as they like, and society says ‘oh they’re just being guys.’ Women have to worry about the word getting around that they are sluts, and they must monitor their physical appearance in order to get approval from (it seems to me) other women. Have you seen the commercial with the woman who just finished another weight loss plan marching into a hair salon? She removes her mask and another woman releases an astonished — ‘Sarah!’ —  in shock and awe at her friend’s transformation. (Why in these ‘trying times’ is a woman removing her mask upon entering a hairdressing salon? —  the COVID-19 police will have to deal with that.) The point is this woman has lost weight to get a reaction from other women, not men. Gay men are much the same, only different. If they are masculine then they must perform their masculinity in order to get approval from straight men, and if they are evidently feminine and gay, there is a tendency to give in to being 'fay as the day.' I mean why not? Why not be what you are, if the jig is up? Hence the over-the-top ‘Nelly Queen’ who flaunts his femininity. No one ever talks about why so many gay men are actors — it’s clear that we learned it at our mother’s tit — even back then we had to act like that tit was turning us on, not merely facilitating feeding. It’s a heavy burden to bear. (A young gay man said to me a couple of years ago - 'Do you notice how gay men get gayer when they get in a gay bar?’ Why yes, I do.) When did this performance become so important to us? It all started with the 19th century ‘flaneur' — a poetical dandy who paraded  the city streets proclaiming his aestheticism through a rarefied manner and a singular attention to dress. The dandy was allowed to act in this somewhat suspicious manner because his purpose was to attract women with his peacock plumage. The ‘fop' was the gay iteration of the dandy — though  obsessed with his appearance, he was somewhat less successful with women, and thus assumed to be superficial. Enter the 20th century gay man. Like the fop he lacks the ability to successfully procreate.  He is, and always will be, as we all know — useless. For  men were put on earth to begat. And though yes technically speaking the law now allows us to adopt, we can do nothing with our own sperm but spill it, ultimately, on the ground, or into a turkey baster. Oscar Wilde owned this ‘uselessness,’ proclaiming that nothing of any value was ever useful, worrying instead whether or not he had lived up to his blue china. Gay, effeminate men who flounce and mince and sulk are enjoying their womanishness to the utmost. Why? Because they can. Drag is nice, but it's a concrete disguise, and it makes it easier for straights to deal with us, because the reason why we are attracted to penises and male backsides must therefore be because we were probably really just women all along. As much as I adore drag -- being an effeminate man (or a masculine woman) is much more revolutionary, and certainly rocks gender more than any ‘trans’ person could ever imagine. Being trans, like drag, has become socially acceptable, probably because people can imagine it’s all about gender, not sex. But gay men are defined by sex. Speaking of which, the COVID lock down has been particularly hard on us gay men. It's not only that we are much less likely to pick up anyone outside of our homes (or at least it is nearly impossible in winter) — but much much more importantly — we are not able to display our wares -- and ultimately, our strange and alluring identity, as men who like to take it up the bum. Straight people are fine -- they can sit at home, identity be damned. But gay men need to get out of doors  to fully actualize who they are. They are not real to themselves or anyone else without the mirror that is the admiration -- or the scorn -- of others. Whichever we get — well it doesn’t matter really; we just need to endlessly confirm our identity as cocksuckers and bum worshippers,  period. Last night I actually managed to have sex sort of outside — with a stranger, in an apartment stairwell— quite high up, just below the 9th floor. It took me back to the good old days of oppression, which I never actually experienced (as I came out in 1981) but which I have heard many colourful tales of. There is and always will be something terribly attractive about doing it where you are not supposed to. I loved kissing him,  and he was very naive and sweet about the whole thing. I know that for some, sex in a stairwell may seem the opposite of sweet; but that just means, my dear, that you have never lived.

I don’t think

we are really being honest here. I finally figured out what the new normal is; it’s taken me a year of lock down.  And now I know. I think we all know really, I don’t know why anyone isn’t talking about it; and it needs to be talked about. The new normal is: unhappiness. We must be prepared, from now on, to be unhappy, and must learn to live with it. It’s a small price to pay, a small sacrifice, (etc.) for human health. But let me be clear, there is a difference  between happiness and contentment. The two are often confused --especially on those well-intentioned TV commercials and news shows -- the ones that are so earnestly intent on helping us. We hear much talk of the joys of staying at home safe with ‘family.’ But this is a misapprehension, or at least a mis-appellation. What we experience at home with our families is contentment. And contentment is all we will have to look forward to in the future. Happiness is what we experience in large groups. Think for a minute.  You are now content with family, or when working home alone. But when are you truly happy, when do you experience that tingling radiance, that rush of energy, that kickass jolt of drugless ecstasy? Only when you’re in a group. We love someone, sure; but then we get married, it is the public celebration we need. We are sad when someone dies, but we need the funeral, the shared tears. We achieve something — whatever it is — and we want a party to celebrate, to raise a glass and hug the world -- and suddenly it all becomes real. The urge is human, the practice — divine. People do ‘need people’ — Barbra’s song echoes again and again during these trying times. Hockey, games, plays, weddings, funerals, parties, just good old St. Patrick’s Day at the pub — these are group events, public events -- which through the joy of public celebration once made our lives real. No more. We shall have to give up happiness. But it is, as I say — and I think we all can admit it — a small price to pay for feeling more secure about our physical health -- for making sure dear granny lives to be 100, or simply out of, well — basic human charity. I’m telling you all this because I think  we must release our rather antique -- certainly outmoded --  compulsion to be happy.  Some may argue with my basic premise. Is it really true that we need people to be happy? I get it. For I do think there is a small percentage of the population to which this so-called truism does not apply, And I am not, in this age of ‘intersectionalism,’ intending to leave them out! We must not ignore habitual hermits, sociopaths, or the mentally ill. None of them  hanker for public expressions of feeling. For that small group of people (and rest assured it’s less than 10% of the population— but they deserve to be accounted for — we are not cyborgs yet!) there will be absolutely no loss, no lessening of joy. The habitual hermit wishes to perpetually hide from others. That’s fine; that's his or her way. Sociopaths have no human feeling — at least for other human beings — and so don’t worry about sociopaths, they’ll be fine. When it comes to the mentally ill, well, most are afraid of human contact, of love — it simply makes them unhappy. They feel less stressed when not having sex and not dealing with other people, I guarantee they will feel so much better in the safety and security of their cocoon, their solitary bubble. Their perpetual anxiety over  having to function in the ‘public square’ has now been removed. They can always now, every day, as it were — ‘call in sick.’ In the new normal the mentally ill will, in fact, thrive.  This is good news. There is  one other concern that must be addressed — fascism. If we’ve learned anything from history, we’ve learned that  fascism thrives in public gatherings — mobs really. Hitler, after all, had his great successes in the public square where his demonising rhetoric whipped up the citizenry into a frenzy. How is fascism to survive in the new normal? No worries (as the young say!) fascism is alive and well and not going anywhere soon. The heartening thing is that fascism thrives so well on the web. There are thriving web mobs now, and people seem perfectly content -- no they may be the only ones who are truly happy now really — to whip themselves up into a frenzy online — whether it be racists who hate blacks, Jews (whatever) or the Woke Cancellation Mob. All of these shall find their joy in chat rooms and twitter feeds, on facebook and tic-toc. I insist you do not worry about them. They will still be able to hate to their hearts content --  in fact, maybe more so. The new normal may make it a little harder for them to have public gatherings — but as we have seen in the protest marches and the racist attack on the American capitol — such marches and mob violence seem to fall outside the rules of the new normal, so both public protest and public violence are protected. The Woke Mob will be able to continue cancelling people online to their hearts content. So all is well! I hope I have allayed some fears abut the new normal.You may continue with your contented lives now. At least ten percent of the population will likely be more happy than before, and fascism will still thrive. And for the rest of us -- those who are not fascists and find it hard to let go of happiness -- well,  no doubt for us, the ensuing months will be somewhat more difficult. I have lately discovered how to deal with the new normal. One can have drinks with family members or those who are in your ‘bubble,’ and one can well, remember. Remembering, is I think,  highly underrated. It’s lots of fun, really it is, to remember the good times you once had—at weddings, and bars, and public situations of any kind. You can laugh with old friends, and feel like you are ‘there’ again. And then you can release (go ahead release!)  these pesky longings for things past. The past is gone, and we must come to terms with the fact that at any moment there may be another lock down, another pandemic. (And of course there’s always climate change, Dear God!) As for the future, well, you need only say 'goodbye' to happiness. And -- surely you can see -- that’s not really too much to ask, is it?

Let’s talk about

entitlement, specifically mine. I was born in 1952; my mother’s father was a farmer who committed suicide. Both of my grandmothers were teachers. My father’s father, when I knew him, was retired — and used to deliver phone books (why?) — but earlier on, he owned an auto repair shop. I don’t come from ‘wealth,’ but my father — after a long and successful career in the insurance business — left me enough money to buy a house in Hamilton a few years back. So if that’s what you call aristocracy, so be it. My father’s family was admittedly, pretentious; they had a grand house in Connecticut and pretended they were rich. My father’s mother was a  ‘Daughter of the American Revolution’and her photo was in LIFE magazine pinning a poppy on Truman. All this may sound pretty privileged to you. And I don’t deny it is. When I was young my parents owned a house in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and when I was 12 my parents were divorced — and my sister and I moved with my mother to a town house in Don Mills (my mother said it was worth it to suffer plastic toilet seats if my sister and I could go to a school in an affluent suburb). Yes, I’m all that — and white, and male. But if you’re going to estimate my entitlement (I mean, let’s be ‘intersectional) I’m also effeminate, gay, and drag queen. This should necessarily be included in the calculations; but unfortunately that’s not allowed anymore. There are four categories of people whose lack of privilege is considered negligible: working class persons, trans persons, the invisibly disabled, and gays/and/or/lesbians,  Some trans people are completely invisible (they have an 'inner girl' inside that only they know of) but so much fuss is made about trans people, that we really shouldn’t worry about them. However, not much is said about, let’s say, a dyslexic person. But much should be. Certainly they have been generally abandoned by the education system; a large percentage of those in jail are dyslexic. And when it comes to class, you can dress up and speak nicely and no one will know, but the effect of growing up in a family that struggled to keep bread on the table can be toxic indeed. Then there’s me. I’m a born sissy, grew up wanting to take ballet, play the piano, and write poetry. Then, alas, I fell in love with men, and became a drag queen. And now, when I tell people I’m a university professor, they say ‘Well, good for you!” It’s clear I have triumphed over my ‘disability.’ I should be proud —and I am — but the condescension still irks me. However, all this is irrelevant. ‘Entitlement’ is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the eye of the parent. I am not one who wishes to blame my mother for everything — though I often do — especially when I'm drunk (every weekend). However she is responsible not only for my mental instability but also my ‘talent.’ I do not believe I am very talented. But my mother certainly did. You wouldn’t hear her say a word against me until I got much older, and she became an alcoholic. (Then she would come to my theatre openings and say ‘Don’t I exist? Why are they all going on about you?’) But before that, she bought a piano which we managed to wedge into our tiny flat in an old house in East York, a piano that I played until I decided I was not a composer. She encouraged me in everything — to write, to direct plays, to be flamboyant (until she realized my being flamboyant was ‘gay’) and to be stupendous — and she loved me, literally, too death. She listened, laughed at all my jokes, and convinced me I was delightful, and that I could  do anything. And for awhile I certainly did. I owe this all to her, because -- superficially at least -- she herself was the very definition of entitlement. I’m not sure where she dredged up that performance — born out of wedlock, with a father who was a suicide, her ne’er to well school teacher mother having unloaded her on various relatives as a child -- including an uncle who molested her. Strikingly beautiful, she married at 17 to the slightly doltish, boringly nice, very insensitive man who was my father. She fooled waiters into thinking she was a rich woman (which she definitely was not) yet she somehow managed to scrape together enough money together through her business as a corporate 'headhunter' to live in Sutton Place (it used to be a ritzy hotel in Toronto -- now it's, sigh, a condo). She was so gorgeous people thought she was a movie star. She was rude to all the 'help' — which she generally considered to be the rest of the world, and insulted everyone who she considered beneath her, which again, was most everyone. Maybe it was case of overcompensation, I don’t know, but she lived in a fairy tale of her own devising and I was, it turns out, the only other person she also deemed so especially gifted. Nothing was good enough for me. But this entitlement  has caused me much more anguish than perhaps you will imagine, as basically (have you noticed?) life is not a fairy tale, and there have been -- for me -- many rude awakenings. In 2015 I was confronted about my entitlement by Evalyn Parry the most recent artistic director of Buddies, and the woman who ‘cancelled’ me there (it’s a long story, and you’ve probably heard it, she decreed that this blog was politically incorrect and incited The Woke Mob to attack my own personal capitol building — that is myself, and my career). Evelyn herself got taken down by the same Woke Mob, but that doesn’t make my trauma any easier to endure. It all started in her office one day when she, sighingly asked me: “Why do you write so many plays, Sky?’ This habit seemed to irritate her -- I guess because I always wanted to perform them at Buddies. I told her that I loved writing, and I needed to write. Trying to help, I added “I’ve written more than 40 plays, some of them quite successful, if only now and then one of them was produced --somewhere in Canada -- I might feel less compelled to write.” She looked at me, balefully. “You are so entitled.” I was very hurt by this. But I tried to ignore it ('De Nile' is not just a river in Africa). But looking back on it now, yes I am terribly, terribly entitled. That is, if being a writer, and wanting to write, is entitled — well so be it! I once thought my urge to write was a virtue. I suppose I can blame my entitlement for the shock and horror that consumed me when I suddenly discovered that, no -- it's a sin.

From THE REGULATION

 
OF BERLIN PROSTITUTION IN THE 1900S: A STUDY by Dr. Wilhelm Hammer (compiled by Stephen Carruthers).“The conduct of the women was strictly regulated. They had to present to designated clinics until cured and follow orders of the medical authorities.” That sounds like us. And “They had to wear simple and proper clothing.” THE WEARING OF MEN’S CLOTHING IS FORBIDDEN (Regulation 4). At this point, we don’t have any regulations about what kind of clothing we wear. Oh, wait a minute — we do have to wear masks. And: “The conduct of the women was strictly regulated.” Well, that’s true today, our conduct is certainly strictly regulated. ON THE STREETS AND IN THE SQUARES OF THE CITY YOU MAY NOT BY YOUR BEHAVIOR ATTRACT ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. IN PARTICULAR YOU MAY NOT STAND OR SIT ON STREETS, DOORWAYS, BUILDING ENTRANCES, OR PAVEMENTS, NOR ARE YOU ALLOWED TO STROLL UP AND DOWN IN A CERTAIN AREA OR IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER PARADE YOURSELF…OR FROM A DISTANCE GIVE A WINK OR OTHER SIGN TO MEN TO FOLLOW OR SPEAK TO YOU. (Regulation 5) Again I certainly don’t think they authorities have gone that far in the case of COVID-19. Or — yes, maybe they have. I remember a sign a bar (in those days when we could go to bars): “No dancing, no singing, no moving around.” YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TO SHOW YOURSELVES AT YOUR OWN OR ANOTHER’S WINDOWS. DURING A VISIT FROM A MAN THE WINDOWS OF YOUR DWELLING MUST BE SHUT AND COVERED WITH CURTAINS SO AS TO PREVENT ANY VIEW INTO THE DWELLING. IT IS FORBIDDEN TO PLACE A LAMP, A LIGHT, OR ANY OTHE SIGN AT THE WINDOW, OR IN ANY OTHER MANNER, FROM THE WINDOW OR THE HOUSE ENTRANCE, SEEK TO ATTRACT MEN. (Regulation 12) Well we don’t have to worry about that, we can parade about naked in front of windows if we want to. FINALLY, IT IS PROHIBITED FOR YOU TO SHARE YOUR DWELLING WITH ANOTHER PERSON WHILE YOU HAVE A VISIT FROM A MAN.(Regulation 15) Well it is true that during some lock downs the police apparently did have the right to come into your house and tell you that you had too many people in it. “The head doctor could decide without consultation on their treatment and impose harsh punishments.” Dr. Fauci, anyone? And to top it all off — “Despite this strict control regime, each adult male in Berlin had on average 1.2 venereal diseases.” This statistic  blows me away -- although I dislike statistics, as they can be manipulated to prove anything you wish --   all this regulation of women did nothing to stop men from contracting venereal disease. But even more interesting -- why was it only women who were being regulated? Well really, it’s not for us to say is it? The medical authorities are the ones who know — they have the scientific knowledge the ‘science.’ We don’t.  And Public Health are the only ones — besides the government — who are able to regulate how and where you walk, if you can run a business, or the people that you have in your home. Well you may say that the regulation of prostitutes was not absolutely necessary, whereas regulations during COVID-19 definitely are. But there was no penicillin back then, and venereal diseases were often lethal. But what interests me is control -- i.e. power, the access to it, how enjoyable it is to wield it, and also, believe it or not, to submit (this also interested Foucault, he wrote one or two books about this). Rules are rules, and we must follow them, are obligated to follow them, feel guilty if we don’t, must care enough about others to obey, must confess our contriteness if we have done wrong, must change our ways -- as apparently so many COVID-19 ‘deniers' do not do so on their deathbeds, but instead expire in their little dream worlds — 'so sad, so very sad' -- the pretty ladies on TV news tell us. I don’t know if you know a COVID-Nazi, but they turn up in the most surprising places. People quite rebellious -- many of them -- before COVID-19, are now quite very happy to be tell you what to do, or loudly disapprove of you, or not allow you in their own homes. It's not so much about whether or not you like to be in charge, as about the sexiness of power itself; ultimately there is as much joy to be had in rigidly obeying rules as in making them up out of thin air, and even of course -- much joy to be had in flaunting them. There are good homosexuals and bad homosexuals. Believe it or not I am a good homosexual, trying to be a bad one (right now I’m not doing very well at that). This is relevant — why? Because there are those of us who were good octopuses as children and those of us who were bad octopuses. The good octopi were ‘browners,’ and obeyed all the rules. The bad octopi stole eyeliner from Shoppers Drug Mart and got expelled. But these are two sides of the same coin. It’s not so much whether you are good or bad, it’s the unendurable longing to be have rules in place, to feel the effects of power -- and most of all to live in fear; for fear paralyzes, and it is safe there, because we cannot move.

What I’m missing

is strangers; there are so few in my life these days. Almost no one is strange to me. Yes I have ‘hooked up’ with a couple of strange men who I would never want to see again. They were very strange, for sure. But strange means something else; there is an allure; it is the unknown. I am listening to some music right now that seems to me the most beautiful music in the world, at a time when I can do nothing at all but write. God help me if I ever come to hate writing. That’s not possible is it? But what kind of curse is this, when — something that I love so much — I am forced to do all the time, because --  a) there is nothing else to do, and -- b) I will go mad if I don’t. I’ve tried to stop writing this claptrap, but to no avail. For writing, too -- when I leave it and come back --  is strange, frightening. Not now. So there are almost no strangers in my life and I am bereft; I am the opposite of those of you who are so happy to be with your loved ones for these extended periods of time. (We will talk about my ‘loved one’ soon -- but not in the manner you might think.) So I was on the GO train, where all the strangers wear masks — masks that say: ‘do not come near me.' And those who wear them proudly are saying: 'I do not wish to be touched, ever.’ That is a shameful thought — so at least when you wear your mask, wear it with shame. Well in the bathroom on the GO train is a sign —I read it often. With that sign, I experience what Shakespeare calls misprision; a felicitous misunderstanding, a beautiful mistake. I pee often, when I’m on the GO as, again, there is nothing else to do, and it gets me out of my seat. And when I am in a toilet all by myself yes — I do the unthinkable, I take off my mask! (Don’t tell anyone!) So above each toilet on the GO train is a sign. The sign says: ‘Ne jettez pas corps d’etrangers dans le toilette.’ My French is very bad. I read this as 'Don’t throw the dead bodies of strangers in the toilet.’ My failed apprehension is much less interesting than the actual meaning, which is  'do not throw strange objects in the toilet.’ What a disappointment! Before I was beguiled, shocked and amused at the notion that the powers that be might somehow be obligated to remind people not to stash dead bodies in a common commode. I had no idea — I really had never imagined -- that murder was so frequent on trains, Agatha Christie aside. For isn’t that, after all, fiction? To think of all these masked figures, hurrying home, carrying, inside their Walmart bags — not toilet paper — and in their hockey packs — not hockey gear — but dead bodies — and all of them blithely entering the GO toilet quite ready to stuff it all down that serene, mirrored metal basin which constitutes a proper public facility, only to be confronted by a sign, and being so moral, in this way — even as murderers — that they politely obey, and stash the body somewhere else. But alas, the sign is not about strangers, or strange bodies. Is that because we have erased strangers from our lives? After all it is nearly impossible to meet one, even more impossible to have sex with one. And therefore, now -- who will do us kindnesses? Here I refer to Tennessee Williams’: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers." I'm always amazed that people find that line sad or moving, because Blanche is talking quite specifically about blowjobs, without, of course, actually mentioning them. Tennessee Williams once said that his only real joy in life  was to have a beautiful young man ejaculate on  his chest (I wish I could think of a way to put that more poetically, but that would just be silly, wouldn’t it?)  Because it is only from those we love that we should expect cruelty — certainly not from strangers. I mean as soon as one becomes intimate with anyone, one risks being confused with their parents, or some errant sister, or the inevitable uncle who molested them. But with a stranger one is free from all that — for the stranger has nothing to hold against you but his body, which you will cherish, for a time. The music that I have been listening to is ‘O Mon Bel Inconnu’ which means ‘Oh My Beautiful Stranger’ (I can translate that!) and it is an operetta, or actually a French musical, written by Sacha Guitry with music by Reynaldo Hahn. All I’m going to tell you about Reynaldo Hahn was that he was Proust’s lover. But the music! And the story of ‘O Mon Bel Inconnu’ is a simple tale of yet another wondrous misapprehension. A man finds letters in the lonely hearts column of the newspaper from his wife, his daughter and his maid, so he invites them to visit him — without telling them who he is—  to a villa in the south of France  This is (you guessed it) my story --which means I’m going to tell you now about my lover. I haven’t said much about him, but recently he said I could, so here goes. My lover is a stranger. Yes, it’s kind of like marrying a monster from outer space, and certainly he often seems like one. He keeps secrets from me — sometimes momentous ones — and constantly surprises me, and he often is angry with me, and then quite a different being altogether. I don’t think I will ever know everything there is to know about him. And I’m fine with that. There is a very odd bird in our basement. It’s made out of — straw, I think? And it wears sunglasses and a hat. It’s his very odd bird. I asked him about it once. He was in a mood, and he kind of spat at me: ‘I can’t be bothered to tell you, it’s too complicated!’ There are lots of other details like that about him that I will never know or understand; but unlike the lover who wants to know everything I’d really rather be left in the dark. If your lover is not a stranger than I wish you much joy, really; I do hope the relationship goes on for as long as I have been with my lover (21 years). But it’s going to be a challenge, because you are going to have to find things you don’t know about him to keep it interesting. You might — and probably will — say I’m trying to make lemonade out of lemons, or that I have 'intimacy issues.' Maybe. But I would like to think that when I look into my lover's eyes there is an eternal mystery -- and that’s absolutely the way I want it. Well there you go. I was hoping never to turn this blog into a love poem, but that’s what happened. You don’t have to worry. It won’t happen again.