I was waiting all movie for a glimpse of Matt Damon’s new ‘Dad Bod’. Well, he shows it off (coming out of the shower near the end); he’s so big and gorgeous and bloody masculine he can hardly speak. Anyway I do hope that this brings lots of converts to the Dad Bod — as I seem to have one. At least a young man complimented me on mine the other night after we had sex. ‘I just love Dad Bods,’ he crooned. I was not the least insulted — just grateful he didn’t call it a ‘Grandad Bod’ which is what it definitely was, in terms of him. But as to the content of Stillwater, it’s all very ‘relevant;’ it aims to heal the divide — well — all divides really — as it’s the story of a redneck’s trip to Cote d’Azur, and sure he enough, he learns to love it, and it learns to love him. You see? It will all be okay. What’s fascinating to me is that Damon’s love interest Camille Cottin — who is meant to represent the opposite of the 'redneck' i.e. French high culture (and high culture in general) is into —you guessed it — theatre. It’s nice to know theatre retains its pride of place representing all things esoteric and pretentious. It’s nice to know that being a playwright still means being tedious, pompous and obscure! That’s what we always were and always will be. At one point Cottin kisses a theatre director— he's skinny with a ponytail -- but we know he is no competition for the slightly-saggy-titted-and-massive-bummed-Dad-Bod that is Matt Damon. And then there is a scene where the same bun-headed wimp is directing an avant-garde play (I direct those too, by the way) and in the play they are intoning: ‘There is no truth.’ The line is meant to personify the height of balderdash — i.e. egg-headed bullshit — and when Damon is asked about the play all he can do is shrug and say is “It was good.” (But you just know he hated it.) Dare I amend the error? Of course theatre must etnerally epitomize the height of coma-inducing boringness, but these days a playwright would ever write ‘there is no truth.' Now every playwright knows what the truth is; I shan't bother to tell you, we all know anyway, and we go to the theatre to have our egos stroked for being really good, tolerant pro-trans people, pro-Indigenous folk, guilty as hell but penitent, who want to save the environment, wear masks and just generally be better than God. It’s nice to know that films are still not only earnest and occasionally thoughtful but also well made and suspenseful (as Stillwater is). The big moment is a critique of ‘Woke Folk.’ When Cottin refuses to talk to a racist man — even though the man might save Matt’s innocent daughter from prison -- Damon confronts her saying something like ‘we have people like that back home -- and we talk to them.’ He becomes the messenger of tolerance from the right. But for all its good intentions, no one is going to buy this. Yes, Damon says he didn’t vote for Trump, but he does own two guns — something he mumbles as a kind of caress when he screws Cottin for the first time. Nothing can come of this kind of well-meaning dramaturgical compromise, because compromise no longer exists in life. Come on, you know who is evil --and it's not you - she’s on Facebook or he’s at the shop, and you nurture your anger against them, aging it — like fine wine. There is nothing quite so satisfying as knowing you are right, and so many ugly numbskulls are wrong. Well I can solve all of this, literally with my butthole. Susan Sontag calls this an ‘erotics of art.’ I’ve figured out what is wrong with the world. None of us gets screwed in the ass enough. The fact that you might think I am cursing you or demanding you suffer just indicates how messed up we all are. Yes, I seriously mean this. We all need to get screwed in the anus— it has to be in the back -- the front just won’t do. In fact I suggest you do it now. I had this startling revelation last night when someone was screwing -- well, back there, I think. With something. His penis was somewhat involved (and yes it was suitably sheathed, so for chrissakes calm down) -- but probably also fingers and god-knows-what. It was fabulous. And I kept thinking — what have I been missing? And why? In Allen Ginsberg’s interview with Playboy in 1969 he said “The anal-sphincter-prostate orgasm… is a great opening of feeling and delight and an extraordinarily beautiful experience, and rare. Possibly everybody should experience it.” Well, no one listened. He also went on about what tolerant people we would all be if we all had rectal ecstasies. This I agree with, too. Then he went on about men understanding what women go through. This is a bit too essentialist for me, as first of all we’ll never understand what they go through, as we don’t go through it, and second of all not all women go through that -- I mean -- are screwed in the front. One of my best friends, who used to go on about how big her husband’s penis was, once told me when she was drunk — “I never let him screw me.” Apparently she just adores his penis, in various other ways, which is fine too. (But everything is fine.) The reason why you need to be screwed in the behind is because it’s a nasty place, a bad place, a place that yucky things come out of, and nothing should go in to. Wrong! Can’t you see that both conceptually and biologically anal sex is the definition of revolution? Which begins at home, so please start sticking things up there right now. I know. You’re going to say that Allen and I believe this because we are homosexuals. No. I mean we are, but — stop me if you’ve heard me say this before. Straight men are much more obsessed with anal sex than gay men are. I’m practically dead — and I’m only coming to terms with my asshole now. What took me so long? Whereas straight men have been obsessing about putting it up women’s bums (and doing so) for centuries. Vive la difference! Except when it comes down to it, there isn’t any, really. Unless of course you want to have sex with it. And then for most people (sad but true, I don't know how to tell you this--all you 'genderqueers') it matters very much what kind of ‘it’ it is.
