JOIN THE LIAR’S CLUB!

Announcing The Liar’s Club: a monthly reading series -- and occasional mentoring series -- the brainchild of Sky Gilbert!

The first appearance of The Liars Club will be on Valentines Day, Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at Supermarket Bar and Variety, 268 Augusta Avenue, Toronto from 7:30-8:30 pm. All are invited, and each will have 7 minutes to read their work. Admission is free. Hopefully informal classes will grow out of The Liar’s Club — these classes will be for those who want some advice from Sky on ‘how to lie.’ (Sky is an ancient, inveterate liar.)

Why The Liar’s Club?

Picasso said “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” Picasso’s statement does not reflect the present state of cultural affairs. Today we assume that artists utilize their work to express their personal opinions about the state of the world, or life (or death) — decorated with their chosen ‘style.’ The job of the critic has become to discern the artist’s message and affirm its rightness — or challenge its heresy — to, in effect, agree or disagree with a work of art. But we have forgotten what art is; a message from the unconscious, one that — though it may be crafted — ultimately cannot be controlled, or translated into ordinary, denotative language.The only artists who are not welcome at The Liar’s Club are those who believe that creative writers are obligated to transmit specific, literal, definable, immutable truths; writers who wish to be congratulated — not on the quality of their art — but on the ‘rightness’ of their ideas. We celebrate lies and liars here, and the ability to create strange, well crafted, impossible/horrifying/funny/sexy/beautiful worlds with words.

A quote from Shakespeare Lied (Sky’s upcoming book with Guernica Editions):

“When the playwright Bertolt Brecht was accused of being a Communist  on the witness stand of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, his plays were read aloud in court. But Brecht carefully differentiated his own opinions from the ideas expressed by characters in his plays. A writer employs a rhetorical technique (meaning a style, or a character voice) to persuade readers, and manipulate them into considering many sides of an issue. The artist — even when writing a poem — is assuming a fictional voice and hiding behind the rhetoric of the poem. The artist does not hide in order to be found.The artist hides in order to beguile you.”

Sky’s Lie for the Day:

I don’t know who I am, and feel quite like I am wandering in the miasma of my own self. Strange to be so old, and yet so young. “Who am I, what am I, where am I?” — to quote Lucille Ball in the I LOVE LUCY show where she pretended she was having a nervous breakdown to guilt Ricky into letting her appear in his show at the Tropicana. She faked amnesia, then imagined she was Tallulah Bankhead, and then imitated a regression into childhood. Sometimes I think I AM Lucille Ball; dizzy, scheming, and feminine — after all, I AM happiest when I MAKE people laugh. I have a new friend; he has decided he is Rhoda Morgenstern, and I, of course, therefore, am, by default, Mary Richards. It’s not because I’m prettier (I’m not) but because Mary Tyler Moore had the imposter syndrome, and thought she didn’t deserve to be America’s sweetheart. If I am able to struggle through my present miasma of self-doubt I will send you a letter. It will be addressed to ‘Those Who Will Listen” and in it I will implore you to tell me who I am. Does that mean you and I might become co-dependent? I do hope so. Or maybe, we already are?

**********If you are interested in reading at the first Liar’s Club please send an email to Sky Gilbert, at the following address —

sky@uoguelph.ca

N.B.

The Liars Club Agreement: all those who attend— for the hour they attend The Liars Club — must believe that ALL writing is a lie, but that creative writing is more noble, because it is an INTENTIONAL LIE. 

Dr. Sky Gilbert is Professor Emeritus at University of Guelph

Rock N Roll

N-Word is the censored title of a famous song/poem by Patti Smith. The song was released on her 1978 album Easter. I love that song. I was thus completely perplexed and then deeply angered when I tried to download Easter on Apple Music and ‘Rock N Roll N-Word’ would not download. No explanation, no nothing. (There may be a solution but I’m not tech-savvy enough to find it.) Why is this happening? And specifically to members of minority groups? Patti Smith was and still is a woman (and working class). And black actor Jamie Foxx recently saw the cancelling of his 2016 film All Star Weekend. And then of course there’s me. I’m a fag, or more specifically a faggot, which is what I prefer to be called, as I want to own the abuse -- and turn it back on my abusers. When my 2016 novel Sad Old Faggot appeared, I was told by several online websites that they couldn’t advertise my book because the title was offensive. Rumour has it that Jamie Foxx’s cardinal sin was casting a white man as a Latino person. This is — and I am not exaggerating — if it continues — the end of art. It’s no use arguing about whether or not its ‘censorship.’ Any artist who wants to get  their work out these days is censoring themselves. That have to. It’s terrifying. Art has become ideology — which it is not. And this is very dangerous indeed. We have nothing in our lives which is not ideology these days, i.e which is not science or 'fact' or philosophy. Religion is hotly contested — decidedly over for some, and a passionate crusade for many others . But people need the irrational, they need the dark, as Hilary Mantel says (and I’m paraphrasing): we artists are kind of 'in charge' of your psyche, that is of helping you to organize it, and get it into shape. When you come to see a play or read a novel it is not a lecture or a political speech — the ideas in it are not meant to be ripped out of it and held against you, or the artist, or anyone else. Artists are in touch with something deep, and unexplainable, and irrational, and scary, and that’s why most of us are nuts and some of us are not very nice people. We are kind of like the 'Christs' of art, that is, we take all the pain on ourselves and put it in front of you so that you have the opportunity to be redeemed. As Artaud says, we are 'signalling through the flames’ desperately attempting to understand what it means to be mortal, while you go your merry way buying iPhones and software and new houses, all the while loudly proclaiming your ‘ideas’ on Instagram. And if we do it right, we are not just wanking — our art is not just an indulgence, it is a deep confession —— about the agony,, ecstasy and  comedy of being human. But when we expect art to be ideology, we destroy  one of our few connections with the irrational — unless of course we all decide to adopt some sort of religion or other (but a lot of baggage comes along with that). The nice thing about art is you can dip in and out of it. As Oscar Wilde said, there is no such thing as evil art, only bad art. I am and have always been in love with Patti Smith. I wrote approximately three plays about her; after all,  I was a boy/girl and she was a girl/boy —  and I was irresistibly attracted to her dedication to being an outlaw, and her strangeness, her quirkiness, her childishness, her innocent -- yet blatantly shocking -- sexuality. In the song ‘Rock N Roll N-Word,’ Smith uses the N-Word as a metaphor for outsider. She aspires to the holiness that comes from owning one’s oppression and insisting on standing outside the norm. You may never get to hear ‘Rock N Roll N-Word’, So  will tell you that in it, Smith proceeds to list all of the people who were ’N-words’ -- though they were not black —  Jackson Pollock and Jesus Christ for instance (because Christ was, as I understand it, brown, not black). What she is saying, and what is clear enough to anyone with half a brain, is that it is good to be the N-Word, because that means you are outside society and society is corrupt and the powers that be are detestable. Of course yes, it's tough being 'outside' and admittedly Smith is romanticizing anti-racism, and appropriating it.  But she is a working class woman who must as an artist have a right to use any metaphor she wishes without fear of being 'cancelled' on Apple Music.This digital decimation of art and the artist is a danger to our children. What are we protecting them from? If I’m not allowed to call myself a ‘faggot’ then I am not allowed to communicate the full extent of my oppression, in all it’s violence, its horror, and its humiliation. Calling my self a 'gay man,' or much worse yet ,a ‘man who has sex with men’ does not in any way communicate the cultural after-effects of being relegated to the outside. But most of all what Patti Smith does for young people — which is something they really need today — is communicate how beautiful and ennobling it is not to fit in. But not fitting in doesn't mean saying ‘I support the Ukraine’ or wearing a COVID mask while driving your car, or listening to a land acknowledgement -- as these are now nearly mandatory social approved rituals. It means doing and saying things that everyone else is not doing or saying—and not because you want to, but because you must. It’s all about bravery really. I have always aspired to be as brave as Patti Smith  — we should all be so lucky -- so gifted, and so divinely crazy.

We are powerless.

That's the problem That’s why people are sucker punching stewards on planes, and every is angry and crazy all the time. What is power? Well if you have it you think the decisions you make will have some effect on your actual life, you think that your judgement and choices matter, and that you can do things. There are lots of forces that, traditionally, have limited power: poverty, kingship, and dictatorships for instance. Well we thought that we had gotten rid of kingship but people seem to miss Queen Elizabeth a lot, and yes -- we are still trying to get rid of poverty, and dictatorships are unfortunately on the rise. But what makes us powerless these days is digital technology -- something that is often presented as simply convenient or even worse as our salvation -- but, we are assured, certainly -- essentially harmless. (Don’t get mad at me, I don’t hate technology, I just think we need to realize what it has done to us). For me nothing could be a more potent illustration of our virtual castration -- in Ontario, Canada -- than GO Metrolinx. I do a five hour commute to my job (I don’t have to go every day, but still — ) so before I get on the bus I’m in an awfully bad mood. But there is no one working at GO anymore, they stopped hiring staff at GO after COVID-19 — it may be true that they can’t find any -- but the fact is that they don’t have ticket sellers anymore. So just imagine if you come here from Kenya (people do you know) and you land at a GO station, and you had to deal with the dark, scary cement basements hallways with no signage, and announcements on loudspeakers chiding your for your own good -- like in a concentration camp, and  ticket machines that are complicated and don’t always work. And in the  Hamilton bus terminal, for instance, there are no actual stops for the busses -- the drivers just decide where they want to pick you up, and everyone kind of runs over at the last minute and tries to flag them down. And there’s no one to help you except some wandering folk dressed as crossing guards who usually say 'It's not my fault.' It's nightmare. But, generally, everywhere, there's just  no one to talk to anymore. You can say it, really you can. Especially if you are old like me, and you grew up counting on the fact that when you went out the door there were stores to visit, and clerks, and when people walked down the street they were not wearing masks, and they occasionally looked at you (not always of course but sometimes) and you might be able to meet a stranger or exchange a few words, or at least catch someone's eye? Yes, there was that thing, now and then -- you could look into people’s eyes -- it wasn’t a sexual thing or even a loneliness thing — or it didn’t seem that way at the time. Making daily contact with others was just part of life. So yes there is less contact, and when people do finally manage to meet people somewhere I think part of the anger comes from the desperate relief -- which they don’t want to reveal -- at how wonderful it is to actually talk to someone. Now you might think I’m crazy. You might not  like people at all, i.e. you might prefer to be alone, and/or at your computer -- which doesn't feel alone (but it is), and I know it takes all kinds to make a world — and I respect that. But though I have an ‘alone’ part of me (he’s writing this) I also have a part of me that needs urgently to connect all the time and have my amazing personality affirmed (at least I think it's amazing!) — and a lot of people have that need too. But most of all they want to feel that they have free agency, that what they do matters. But with things like globalism and the worldwide web and the deepening chasm between rich and poor we just  (to quote a famous poem) can’t get no satisfaction. All we can do is send an email that probably won’t be answered, or leave a message on a complaint phone line. The modern corporate world runs everything including government, and it does not need us or care about us, and we can’t affect it. I mean we’re lucky if we can get someone in Malaysia to answer the phone and say “I don’t understand what you are talking about sir, and will you please calm down?”  I have this paradoxical issue:  I can’t stand people, but I need to be around them, even though people are generally stupid and insensitive and selfish and narcissistic — like me, but then on the other hand touching them (especially their ‘private parts’ if they are male) is a lot of fun. And even more fun is entertaining people — I love that, making them laugh, and just diverting them from the dull apoplexy which is their daily regimen of avoiding work and confrontation and getting hold of someone at Amazon, or Bell or wherever --- to complain. Then there is love (what is that?) Well it's fleeting of course, meaning that it doesn’t last long, or does it? But love is actually kind of everywhere, if you are kind, and at peace with yourself, and open to it, which I know you’ve heard a thousand times and you think it’s a cliche, but cliches can be true. And if you just look around and see that person next to you, sometimes you can see through all the bullshit and just make a connection. Of course if they have a nice dick or ass it helps -- but there are a few people, who I actually consider myself close to, who I’ve never actually seen naked. And then there’s my partner -- who I won’t speak of -- except to say that it seems like I haven’t seen him for ages, because we’ve both been terribly busy, but that’s the way it goes. Right? Where are you, honey? If you are reading this blog and you know my boyfriend-- please tell him I love him, and miss him. I know he misses me. We’ve just been so (sigh) busy lately….

It’s not the

first time I’ve been to the Shaw Festival since he died. But suddenly it hit me. He’s not there. It’s not that I had seen Christopher Newton so very much in the recent past — the last time was about 2015  (and before that it was approximately in the year 2000). But he was always 'with me.' I don’t know how much I was 'with him'; but whenever we talked he was excessively warm with me, acting as if it was a blessing to have me around -- but he was always like that, beyond charming. I met him in 1981, in the dressing room of The Theatre Centre, at 666 King Street West, after a performance of my play Cavafy or the Veils of Desire. I can’t remember what he said —but he was effusive — something like 'you must call me, we must talk!' I was so excited, not daring to wonder what the artistic director of a giant theatre festival  might want with me. And lo and behold, in a couple of weeks I was invited to the Shaw to be his assistant director on The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs. I was enchanted; it was like a dream. When I arrived there that summer I had a house to myself, and there were all those amazing productions — especially Robert David MacDonald's Camille and my favourite — The Desert Song. Christopher confided that it was his very gay version of the old Sigmund Romberg operetta. 'Notice when she sings a kind of hymn to his sword — I wonder what that's about?' His favourite line was when some turbaned elderly actor -- before an exit --  announced ‘I’m off to the baths!’ Christopher was my friend, I thought. I would go over to his house every night after rehearsal, and get very drunk, and he would play me his favourite music, and we would talk about art, and I was on cloud nine. I know it sounds like a kind of fairy story; it definitely was. I didn’t know he was attracted to me -- as I was only 30 and I had just come out of the closet and my 17 year old first love had just dumped me; I had found a sort of lackadaisical love in Toronto, but suddenly down at the Shaw Festival Christopher made me feel like a young prince. And then one night, he casually said something like — ‘shall we go to bed?’ — and of course I said yes. He was 18 years older than me, but very handsome. Apparently the very short shorts I had been wearing (the colour of my shorts and my head bandanna always matched, I must have been quite the sight!) reminded him of the various Aboriginal outlaws that were usually his lovers. He told me their stories. One was in jail. He used to meet them at his favourite sleazy bar in Vancouver (The Shaggy Horse). He said that though I had the young hairless body of one of his Aboriginal bad boys, I was his ‘lawyer’ —and I didn’t know what that meant — and he said, you know ‘the one you really settle down with.' I was overwhelmed and charmed. I won’t tell you any more about our love affair. (Except for when we first saw a picture of Canadian actor/writer Paul Gross in the entertainment section of the newspaper, and Christopher blithely opined 'I think I'm dropping you for him' and when Tennessee Williams died, and the newspaper reported that the great writer choked on a bottle cap, Christopher said 'It was definitely poppers!') But like so many love affairs, it didn’t work out. We fought so many times, basically because he was trying to persuade me to be his associate artistic director (the job later went to Duncan Macintosh). I didn’t want any of that, and ultimately I didn’t want to be his lover, because that meant to some degree being his personal assistant, and forever his admirer (the amount of admiration Christopher demanded was kind of astounding, but I supplied it for as long as I could).  I needed to do my own work, and I was obsessed with younger men in Toronto. So that was that. Being back at Shaw today, in 2022 when he is dead, is so strange and sad, because even if I didn’t usually visit him -- I always knew his house was there, the house he loved so much. And he was always in it, tending the flowers, drinking some wine, writing in his journal (someone has to find that journal and publish it, he would have wanted that, and there’s good stuff in there, I just know it!). But I feel compelled to make it clear to you -- to anyone who will listen anyway -- what Christopher did for me. He did something for me as a young gay artist that no one had ever done before and will never do again. But it was absolutely necessary. I realize now that I won at least one award (The Pauline McGibbon Award) due to him — he kind of arranged it, he was on the committee and suggested my name. But most importantly — no one in the Toronto theatre scene would produce my work, and even when I founded Buddies no one knew what to do with me, especially the gay community, and everyone was frankly so mean and jealous, and he took me away and supported me and made me feel like I was important, and talented, and that my work mattered. He thus set himself up for ridicule — because I was a drag queen and a slut and (all that other stuff) and my work was always sexual, and his public association with me (even though he never revealed our private association, and wouldn’t hold hands with me in Niagara-on-The-Lake -- ‘the twitch of a curtain means a ruined reputation in this town!’ -- he used to say.) He gave me the courage to be, because I needed an older gay man brave enough to believe in me, when the rest of the world wouldn’t. And now when I go to the Shaw Festival, I prefer to imagine  Christopher is still there, tending his garden, getting stoned, being disappointed because I won’t smoke weed with him (it makes me paranoid), telling me that someone ‘wore’ the actor Leonard Chow to a party as an ‘ornament,’ sniffing poppers with me in bed, playing a new album by Philip Glass, teaching me proper table manners (“You’re going to need them some day at those fancy gay dinner parties!' — parties that of course, never materialized), popping antibiotics ('Well you can’t be too careful!') admiring a young actor from afar ‘That Dan Lett, he’s so slim, so easy on the eyes, isn’t it heaven?’). 

I could go on.

Sex is over.

That is clear. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of paranoia that — remarkably —  rivals the terror over AIDS. The fear of touching, and the naive notion that ‘good’ people (the virtue signallers who continue to avoid contact with strangers) will live longer than the ‘bad’ people (who touch everyone, willy-nilly) will not disappear fast. It’s been labeled the ‘new puritanism.’ Now if you wonder how we can possibly be puritans when ‘the children’ are probably watching porn on YouTube as we speak, welp --  that’s the way hatred of sex and hatred of the body works. When we deny ourselves, our urges and pleasures crop up in the oddest of ways; hence the panopoly of twerking prebuscent female singers along with an alarming number of misogynist TikTok videos. Consider also — the Oakville transgender shop teacher who appears in class sporting gigantic fake breasts, protruding nipples and all. Well you just try criticizing her! Under the new puritanism rules — where sex no longer exists — she is a paragon, her performance consistent with the gender illogic of ‘drag queen story hour. ‘ You see, long ago The Wokies separated gender from sex. It seemed like a good idea at the time (ie. when Judith Butler suggested it in the 90s). But the fact is that gender is sexy, and this is one of the main reasons we cling to it. Men dress as women for three reasons only (sure there are exceptions) — a) because they are transexual and wish to have a sex change, or b) they are drag queens i.e. gay men who dress as a woman to flirt and perform, or c) because female clothing is their sexual fetish. Obsessive male crossdressing nearly always has a sexual component. And that’s good. Because sex is a good thing, right? (Do I need to remind you?) Now when women wish to dress as men— it’s a different matter altogether,  because women are different than men -- due to both hormones, and social programming. Women are often raped and abused by men; and they are generally treated with less respect than men (need I remind you, of this, also?) and so they hold a ‘lower’ place in our culture. So if women dress as men they are likely to be taken more seriously, whereas men who dress as women are likely to be viewed in a more sexualized way. The Oakville stop teacher is obviously a fetishist, and proud of it (more power to her!). But she should not bring her fetish into the classroom, just as drag queens should not bring their big kissy lips and sheer nylons into kindergarten. I thought of all this while viewing the absorbing new Canadian film Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age. Yes its a great documentary, but — it's not so much that there is a ‘rise’ in misogyny, (it’s always been there in western culture) but that the blithe acceptance of the digital world and its toxic algorithms is destroying us. Honestly -- why are we we taking seriously anything some anonymous idiot says online, anyway? The ‘digital world’ is all about money, period. Yes I know. You are now reading my internet bog. But in my defence,  I will remind you that this blog is wildly unpopular, only faithfully read by a handful of nutty people -- and my friends -- as I am no longer taken seriously as artist or thinker by anyone. Thank God I am merely a sad old faggot - whose plays will lie dead, forever unproduced; a pathetic drag queen who insists on nattering on about how great sex is, when, as everyone knows, sex is over. I do not frequent social media for the very reason that I would  be demonized there --  for all this. Social media is — as some are beginning to realize —  a kind of blood sport. Your cellphone is the modern coliseum; we gather daily to gleefully celebrate the suffering of others, as nothing can compare to the joy of a good dressing down or cancelling (‘You're fat and ugly and stupid and nobody likes you! So there!’)  Now it is true that the women in the documentary Backlash — including the president of the Italian parliament Laura Boldini — have experienced not only the imagined slings and arrows of outrageous social media demonization, but the terror of real life home invasions and threats of physical violence. But this imagined ‘increase’ in misogyny is a digital magnification of what has always been there, admittedly exacerbated very much by the well meaning but ill-fated attempts to de-sexualize relationships between men and women that characterized #Me too. Duh! — you can’t remove sex from heterosexuality, try as you might. Attempts to de-eroticize male/female relations just serve to make straight men more misogynistic.  Rape is a crime, but sex, like unwanted touching, is a lot like hate speech; it’s very human, and sometimes very attractive, we all need it now and again just to keep the ball rolling. And if we attempt to erase it, this thing we have so demonized will just appear somewhere else in an even more disruptive way The whole concept of ‘verbal violence’ is a romantic invention of the digital world — we never thought of words as actual physical violence before social media. What ever happened to -- 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me?’ Now that was good advice. If ‘hate speech’ is banned, then I will be, too  because mostly I just want to write about politically incorrect sex (and all sex is politically incorrect anyway). Ergo, therefore, in conclusion, let’s stop pretending that sex does not exist. Instead, let's start having more sex, and starting admitting that we are doing so, and admitting that sex is all about power, and power is sexy (see: Foucault). Sorry, but if we decry rape and misogyny without speaking of the intimate and complex relationship between sex and power, we do women — and well, everyone — a great disservice — to say the very, very, very least.

Abandon the left.

 It’s time, I’ve had it with the left, haven’t you? No, this doesn’t mean I'm now officially a Nazi; but of course the polarized, demonizing state of left vs right-wing politics might of course lead you to think so. 'Abandoning the left' does not mean that you become right-wing. I am, officially — no wing; but I’ve got wings, and I can fly away, thank God, from this madness -- until the time when we  can somehow, somewhere all have a civilized discussion again. Haven’t you had enough? Of the cancelling? The cancelling that left-wingers claim is a figment of a right-wing demented imagination? Hey, I work in the arts and I’m tired of seeing my friends fired from jobs by mean vicious, ambitious, young wokists, most of them distinctly untalented, who take advantage of the fact that those ‘in power’ have misgendered someone or used the wrong word. The left is over; it’s become the Communist Party in Stalinist Russian, it’s become Joe McCarthy in the U.S. senate in the 50s, serving the needs of desperate, stupid, ungifted, mean people who now understand all too well if they name names -- and curse others for any number of imagined sins --  that those who hold the jobs they want will now hand them over, and the wokies can step into those jobs sans credentials, or good will. And this is not about me. I could care less what happens to me; I’m old, and my career is over, and I will most likely be dead soon. But I can’t be complicit in what has become the suicide of the left; its self-immolation, its flagrant, exhibitionistic, theatrical parade of self-destruction. Did you notice that Green Party president Lorraine Rekmans quit  — saying -- ‘The dream is dead?” Apparently, during some ‘virtual event,' a Green Party member misgendendered interim leader Amita Kuttner. So what? This kind of thing is happening all the time (not the misgendering, but when it does your apology should be accepted!). The right is gleefully watching the left eat itself alive by encouraging the lowest common denominator of the human constituency, the cockroaches who would eat their own in order to gain a smidgen of power. But don’t fool yourself. The choices on the left and right are equally appalling. The left believes that there is no gender and only white people can be racist -- while the right believes that Joe Biden and Barbra Streisand are eating babies. It pretty much amounts to the same thing; organized insanity, and finally those who aren’t getting laid regularly (that’s a lotta blue-balled folks of all 1000 genders) — can finally get all that sexual frustration off their chests by burning their ‘friends’ alive. For some reason all this seems related to a film I just saw — Anonymous Club, a documentary about Courtney Barnett — an Australian singer. (I went with trepidation.) As soon as I saw and heard her (she is kinda talented by the way, and also quite sexy in her own closeted way) I spent the the whole movie being irritated by how subtly woke she was, and trying to figure out whether or not she was a bonafide lesbian. You see, you just can't be a woke lesbian singer these days (where is K.D. Lang now?) because that would mean declaring you are attracted to vaginas, and acknowledging that women have them. So cagily, this flic makes us guess whether or not Courtney is a dyke. There are the usual signals — the bad haircut masked by a toque, the men’s clothing (some things never change) and the song lyric “I am not your bitch or your mother.’ It’s all a little like reading a novel by Anne-Marie MacDonald (I asked a friend once if Fall On Your Knees was a gay novel — as I hadn’t read it — and my friend, a woman — and a pretty sophisticated one at that — screwed up her face and intoned: ‘Um I don’t know, I think there might be a lesbian character part way through…?’ ‘Too late’ I said, ‘too late. I’m sure it’s a great novel and a great summer read, but if you can’t figure out of the characters are lesbians or not, it’s not a lesbian one.’ Towards the end of Anonymous Club Courtney stands in the rain carrying a rainbow umbrella, because young wokies know better than to ‘act’ gay — or say they are — as they want to fit in with the new fascism. So Courtney could be a straight girl with a bad haircut who loves toques, and men’s clothing, and sings songs about how horrible men are — until we spot the umbrella which might lead us to conclude she is ‘non-binary.' Don’t get me wrong. Courtney is ‘out’ in the press, but not in this movie, where all she does is talk about how fragile she — and other people — are, and how her music ‘helps’ them. Woke people demand that art ‘help’ people. This is killing art. This, along with all the really talented people who are leaving the arts, cuz it’s just too damn scary to try to make something real that comes from your heart, as you might be accused of being an ‘ist’ of some kind or other. Oh well. There was art once. And once, there was left-wing politics. I hope somebody remembers.

It’s not that UNCOUPLED

is bad. Though it is, kinda, I can’t say it’s not entertaining at times — but it paints such a bleak picture of gay life! And I’m not coming from a ‘GLAAD’ perspective here. I don’t think that gay men must, or should, be presented 'positively' in the media. Gay men are people; which means they are flawed. On that level Uncoupled is realistic; it represents the state of gay life right now -- it demonstrates how desperate all of us sad ol’ fags are for straight approval. I say this because Darren Star and his gang obviously yearn to impress on us how straight gay life is. Like,  if you’re straight, what agony to have your partner/wife (whatever) leave you just before a surprise birthday celebration you so carefully arranged for them! And how lonely life is -- after the breakup! We all feel that -- because gays and straights are so alike, aren’t they? Um…no. Gay men have dicks. And they can go out and have sex anytime they want to, and although there is such a thing as ‘gay rape’ there is no gay rape culture, unlike heterosexuality —  where rape and violence towards women is kind of a tradition. No. Gay life is not the same as straight life. Period. And no, AIDS did not stop us from hooking up. It just put it on line where we could lie about it and pretend we’re not. And besides -- there are still back rooms, bath houses, alleys and bushes —  and yes urinals (unless they disappear with the advent of non-gendered washrooms). In other words guys can pull out their thingy-dingies at any time (as long as no one else is looking) and get off --  pretty quickly -- which they can, and will, do, whether they are straight or gay. (The only problem for straight guys is they have to persuade women to co-operate, which in a rape culture, can be tough). Men are men, which is not always a good thing — and must be challenged constantly — but is nevertheless a fact, because of our plumbing, which frankly leaks if we don’t pay enough attention to it. Where is this reality in Uncoupled? What is this fiction that after a breakup you need to find a lover in order to get laid? Or even to get affection? Gay men have something called fuckbuddies. (Some gay men have them and their partners don’t mind.) Our romantic/sexual lives are simply not like yours.  And it’s not that we’re not romantic. We are exceedingly so, mainly because all the ideas we have about sex and love come from straight movies or gay porn. Uncoupled is fiction of the highest order — meaning it’s a double lie — i.e. it’s not real life but a tv show, and the lie it is telling is that gay relationships operate exactly like straight ones. It’s interesting though to think of Uncoupled in the context of Sex and the City, which I loved. I mean, yes, Uncoupled is a gay version of Sex and the City. But Sex and the City, as many have noted, was really about gay life, not about women. And is that a bad thing? Well, the fact is that Darren Star -- like so many gay creators -- writes better when he is not writing about himself (see: Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, etc -- though Star is obviously not in their league). First of all I enjoyed Sex and the City even more than some straight women, because whatever was inaccurate about it didn’t’ bother me. I could watch it without worrying whether or not it was accurate because I don’t know what it’s like to be a straight woman and never will. (But I can imagine -- and often enjoy doing so.) What I think was good about Sex and the City was that -- because it was gay life pretending to be straight -- it facilitated the depiction of straight women who were openly sexual and horny, something that we had certainly never seen on TV before. The tradition continued with Girls, and Lena Dunham got pilloried; we are still a very puritan, patriarchal culture and straight men just can’t handle women who crave ‘the dick’ —the bigger the better (and there are some women who actually do so). So will we ever get to see shows made by women, about women, that are truthful?  Or shows by gay men, about gay men, that tell it like it is — not like gays wish it could be? Probably not. This is why we have art, i.e. lies. And yes, I am going to go on about how wonderful lying is yet again —  because if you expect art to provide you with a moral prescription — that is to present you with an ethic that will help you to live a righteous life, well forget it. Shakespeare knew this. That’s what Titus Andronicus is about. A bunch of dumb folks who have read Ovid a little bit too much start trying to live their lives according to what happens in Ovid's poems. So, sadly, they end up raping people, cutting off their tongues and baking them into pies. It's kinda funny (kinda not). Shakespeare knew art should, and must, not present us with a lesson. I have no problem with the fact that Uncoupled is a lie, I just wish it was a better one, and not the one we hear all the time. Maybe I’m homophobic (and I am) but it’s embarrassing to watch the gay men in Uncoupled acting like a bunch of adolescent girls at a high school dance (should I return his glance? his caress?). But most of us gay men missed out on their adolescence, and therefore we are either too slutty or too celibate — which is what teenage girls are generally. If only people just had sex! And didn’t ever ever worry about it! (Sorry to paraphrase Marcuse, I know he's out of fashion) Anyway, is  that too much to ask? And sex, of course, is not the answer -- that is, to everything. But Jesus, it sure helps. 

Bullet Train is

fabulous. I had not discovered David Leitch, now I understand that he is responsible for a bunch of action movies, including Atomic Blonde, which I sort of enjoyed, but Bullet Train is a thing-in-itself — kinda what a work of art should be; it creates it’s own world that does not abide by the rules of ours (see, Adorno), and is in it’s own way as mysterious and fantastical than the construct we live in, only different. Part of the charm is Brad Pitt being Brad Pitt which is just sweet, and honest, and of course good-lookin' to boot, and with a wry sense of humour that lies at the heart of the movie. Bullet Train is almost camp (it’s not pathetic enough) but when all this damn woke stuff is over, Bullet Train will be in The Criterion Collection; as it can be appreciated merely from a visual point of view. It all takes place in Japan, and Leitch is obviously in love with the place — and why wouldn’t you be? A friend of mine went there many years ago, and he came back moaning over another universe of sight and colour and sound, of intense confrontation with fanciful images and bright lights and music, a literal bombardment of the senses. Leitch takes full advantage of this, especially when he has an anime character (I think that’s what it is)  that is performing for children on the train — start killing people. ‘Alright!’ I can hear you saying, ‘With all the violence and mass killings what do we need with another ‘shoot-out’ movie?’ But Leitch is making a statement here, about — not so much pro-gun politics — in fact Bullet Train is not about that at all — but about masculinity. Saying this movie is ‘pro-violence’ is like saying The Taming of the Shrew is about the subjection of women (which it is not — see my upcoming book from Guernica  Editions: Shakespeare Lied). Bullet Train will be vilified — and already has been, on Rotten Tomatoes — and for good reason, as it is anti-everything you believe in right now, i.e. an excessively feminine culture that is smothering us. I don’t have anything against femininity; I’m very feminine and a drag queen. But I take things from femininity that soften me and make me (or they once did) — for a few moments, lovely —i.e. vulnerability, generosity of spirit, beauty, flirtatiousness. What woke culture has taken from the ‘feminine’ is victim politics — and all this is coming as close to wrecking civilization as anything since the Goths took down the Roman Empire (see my upcoming production of Titus Andronicus at Red Sandcastle Theatre). For me the penultimate moment —and the moment when Leitch’s not so hidden agenda became gleamingly transparent is when Pitt is killing a woman — a woman, who by the way is no victim and can certainly take care of herself, and who has been doing quite a good job of fighting him off so far— and is chatting with her about something (it doesn’t matter what) and he apologizes — as she is expiring — and says “Oh sorry, I’m ‘mansplaining.’ For those with a sense of irony — and I know there are not many of us left — this moment might be taken in two ways (which is what makes it so witty) Leitch could be very possibly suggesting that mansplaining literally kills women (which I’m sure to some degree it does) or he could be making fun of woke sensitivity politics. The second is more likely though, because Pitt plays a recently psychoanalyzed assassin who is trying to be more ‘sensitive,’ It’s kind of Tony Soprano’s dilemma writ large, as caricature, but Pit makes it totally believable as he mumbles to his operative on a mic buried in his ear that “I’m really trying to work on things, to realize that another window is always opening, oh sorry, is that a door?” his obsession with the accurate semantics used to describe each new step in his quest for mental stability marks him as a student of wokeism. He is a little man, in a funny hat, trying to get in touch with his feelings; (we’ve all met them) but it’s tough because people keep trying to kill him, including some women. One might be tempted to call this, or me (in this blog) misogynist (Christine Blizzard certainly did many years ago, when I hosted s/m sex parties at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre which were in fact for women — i.e. dykes —  but that didn’t stop her) but remember women don't own femininity. However I assure you I am not a misogynist, just as I am not anti-trans. I am however anti ‘victim politics.’ For what woke has done is take this one aspect of trans theory and feminism, and utilize it daily as cudgel to batter us with. The result is, for instance, that you are not allowed to say anyone is beautiful anymore, literally, unless they are ugly.  ‘Beautiful’ as in a 1984-ish nightmare has come to mean ‘deserving of my charitable attention’ and the word ‘ugly’ is simply not allowed, unless of course it is hurled at someone like me who dares to suggest that there is such a thing as beauty (see my last blog). My boyfriend and I saw this ugly boy dancing in the window of a store during Montreal Pride, and my boyfriend said ‘I really don’t want to see that.’ Are we cruel fags? Yes, but life is cruel. God has programmed all of us to be sexually attracted to healthy-looking people -- not unhealthy- looking ones (see: Darwin), it’s not our fault.  Bullet Train is a movie that sneers at sensitivity, and this is the kind of movie we really need right now, when we are drowning in hurt feelings. If you can laugh out loud at it, like I did, then you are still —despite it all — somewhat human.

 

My therapist told

me that I have to remember the good sex I have -- which sounds stupid but in fact it might be an absolutely necessary component of my future mental health. This is, of course, where it gets complicated and embarrassing -- because I have to admit that I am still very attracted to beautiful young men. This fault is characteristic of a gay writer who I admire very much -- but I don’t necessarily admire this fault in him. Anyway, Tennesee Williams is supposed to have once said that he needed to ejaculate on the chest of a beautiful young man regularly in order to be truly happy. It doesn’t really matter where I ejaculate, or even if I ejaculate, but I do need to be naked with a beautiful young man now and then. I know, this is something you fully expected, and it makes me a gay stereotype, and it probably disgusts, or saddens, or disappoints you. Too bad. I couldn’t care less. I don’t judge you do I? I don’t care what you do in bed, really I don’t. The difference of course is that I tell you about what I do. But everything I write here is lies, don’t believe a word I say, because it’s all from my point of view, just like your notion that your sex life is somehow more mature or better or more stable than mine -- is also a fanciful construct of your abundant imagination -- which you have a regrettable habit of referring to as either ‘intelligence’ or even just as ‘the truth,’ Anyway, today's blog is an exercise assigned by my therapist -- and if you are erotically or psychologically inclined, you might find it interesting. Not that I care. I don’t care if you are not interested in what I have to say but I do want you to be interested -- and I suspect you are, even if you feel guilty about it. So, back to beautiful young men. Well I can’t seem to get naked with a lot of beautiful young men in Toronto. There are certain logistical reasons for this, and also some practical ones, i.e. I am rather old and not as desirable as I once was, and also in Toronto, I was — as of four years ago — once again, regrettably terribly infamous (I get infamous every few years for just being ‘me’ — don't ask me why, it just seems to happen). But in Montreal these disadvantages don’t factor in. Why not? I mean I'm just as old and unattractive here. Well perhaps more younger men fancy older ones in Montreal than Toronto, I don’t know. I do hang out at a great bathhouse here: that could be it. (And yes I’ve had the damned monkeypox vaccine -- but I’m not getting another one! Jesus. Are you nuts? How many vaccines are we supposed to get? And why is there no information about all this? I have been vaccinated against both monkeypox and smallpox-- so why do I need another vaccine? And there aren’t enough vaccines to go around anyway, so-). So this last week in Montreal there have been three beautiful  young men, who I will tell you about here, so I can finally stop counting. Yes I count. When I get back to Toronto I will be saying things like ‘I haven’t had sex with a beautiful young man for a month!’ And other stupid shit. I know, (I’m a very sad person.) But if I look back at this blog I will remember that I am desirable and that a beautiful young man will -- and does always -- cum my way at some point. Sometimes they even cum in droves. Anyway, the first one was Arab, at least he looked very Arab, and yet his name was Melvin. I don’t know what to say about him except he had beautiful brown skin and I sent him out of my room at the baths after awhile, because I got tired of choking on 'it' (I presume you know what ‘it’ is) as I occasionally do, but he kept coming back -- and then I would choke some more, and then we got into other things. And he was remarkable versatile, and just very nice to be with, in bed. Sensitive. The next night was crazy. I wasn’t drunk (which is unusual) and there were two boys in the room beside me — one tall and thin and hairy and another -- well he was just a beautiful blonde punk. I got into a bit of a threesome with them -- but of course it was the blonde punk I really wanted. He came into my room later, and I did very nasty things him which I won’t go into here.  But I will say, he was very good at moaning like a porn star -- as if every bit of pain I inflicted on him brought him nothing but the deepest pleasure. I’m sure it was all an act but he was so pretty! And I got to kiss him on the mouth! And he was a very good at whatever that performance was he was doing. Finally, there was last night's offering. A tall willowy brunette was lurking outside ay room --  and he was so slender, and so extremely tall, that one would have expected him to have a gigantic you-know-what, but he didn’t, but who cares, as he had a classically kind of beauty --a straight-jawed handsome face - and I was aching to kiss him, and when he ejaculated, his balls were nestled in my hand. (How’s that for explicit?) And he was grateful to me -- which is a strange turn of events -- as I am usually the grateful one, or expected to be, or whatever. So I must remember this; that a kiss is much more than a kiss. And that beauty will come my way again. I believe in that 'Oprah Mantra'— if you imagine it, it will come, that is -- in your face, or on your chest, or between your thighs, or inside your 'nether regions.' So I appeal to you! Imagine it! You can create your own reality. I do it regularly here.

It’s natural we

might feel a yearning for the lockdowns of the past; that indeed we might long for their return. There was something in that certainty, What did it bring us? Paradoxically -- for the vast majority of us --  it brought an escape from death. Before COVID-19 there was old age, and then we expired. Then suddenly, it was not right for old people to die. Old people are people too you know. And you can save them. You can save your parents, If only you get the vaccine, wear the mask. Never before in the history of mankind did we have an official, foolproof, universally endorsed antidote to death. Wear a mask, follow the rules, don’t touch, don’t whisper 'sweet nothings', don’t love — unless you love from afar. Then you will be safe. Perfectly safe. You will not die. How could you? You have been so good. Then there was the moral certainty too, Christianity promised us heaven, but COVID-19 — for the ones who followed the rules — brought a kind of paradise in life. It was so, so reassuring to know that not only were we safe — that we would not expire — but we were such perfectly good perople! There were so many —  of course —so many — the evil ones — who didn’t execute the rites perfectly (remember: you must sing the entire Happy Birthday song when you wash, if you want to live!), those who didn’t wear the mask — or God forbid, didn’t get vaccinated. And one couldn’t help wishing a little bit for their passing, because -- when the microphones were shoved into their deathbeds -- they were so stubbornly obstinate in their denial, so much so, that, we, well, dared to imagine that they deserved it. Not like us. We cared for our fellow men and women, and all others -- of all diverse genders — we were not only good but so much better than the rest, the careless uncaring ones. And finally there was the COVID-19 lifestyle -- itself a reassuring confirmation of the lives we had always longed for. It was always so much more comfortable being cocooned at home, clicking on social media and demonizing others. We were right, and safe, and there were so many bad people who  pranced around in the so-called real world, screwing each other and being politically incorrect — it was so reassuring to denounce them. For surely the only true friends are online friends? Not like people who we meet in cafes or bars or in the schoolroom or office -- people who might betray you — with a glance or a touch.  Surely our real friends (and enemies!) live in other continents, other worlds — you caress and revile them with a tweet, and Facebook them, people who are anywhere but near, who cannot invade your space, who you never see, really, except virtually. It’s so much better to  cuddle up with our pillows and stuffed animals and the Facebook pages of our very best best friends. And we can eat and drink and smoke, and even take our favourite mind expanding drugs, i.e. indulge in whatever vices are at hand —- what, after all, does it matter, when we are being such good people, and are so safe? There is nothing to match that matchless ecstasy. Even now so many cannot stop wearing masks, they know the air must still be infected (we saw those droplets on television; the horrid live animations — the spreading of the disease — and we saw the molecule itself,so ugly and hairy and spiked, poised to kill). So nowadays you often find yourself getting sick again — It’s called ‘rebound’ now -- and it is with a twinge of nostalgia that we nowadays succumb yet again to the mild illnesses that characterize the heavily vaccinated. And yes, we still work from home and are suspicious of those who venture into the public square with abandon —  but most of we are suspicious of their touch. Is it no wonder COVID-19 returns again and again! For some just won't stop touching each other, shaking hands, and God knows what else! That fear will be with us forever. And is that a bad thing, really? Monkeypox is not quite so satisfying; it does not kill -- in fact rarely does so -- and we so loved the fear of Covid, just so that we might be delivered from it. Sure. Monkeypox does have the horrific sores and the social stigma — they are in fact like 'stigmata' those horrible wounds — called lesions — that mark the 'men who have sex with men' (we don’t call them homosexuals anymore), those who live for pleasure. It is a kind of 'Mark of Cain,' for we know that it is the bad ones who get it, the ones who touch too much, the ones who are libertines, careless and unloving. The WHO has warned us that  Monkeypox may terrorize the whole world the way AIDS did. This all comes from AIDS actually; it was from AIDs we first learned of this special, paralyzing fear, and of hiding, and how to separate the good from the bad, and what it felt like not to be a pariah when the pariahs are cursed with death. Of course they have commercials on television for AIDS drugs these days that claim to keep the victims alive and keep them 'uninfectious' (!). But we know this cannot be true, we know what is right and who is good, and the dreaded speckled monkeypox hand will strike them down, those who dare to touch each other anonymously, deep into the night. It’s safe here. And we will  live forever -- in our imaginations — because it is only the real world that lies.  Our imaginations tell the truth. They always have and always will. Because it is from the imagination that we first learned the possibility that we might live forever.

I never thought

 I would bother to write about some dumb Netflix action movie. But dumb movies need love to, and truly entertaining dumb movies are hard to find. I’m talking about old fashioned values here - i.e. not going nuts from boredom. I noticed The Gray Man the way I notice everything on Rotten Tomatoes — any movie that gets called ‘limp’ by the critics but has a 90% audience rating  deserves to be noticed. Let’s say the silent part out loud; Ryan Gosling is the new James Bond — the movie hints at this when he tells someone his secret agent number is ‘6’ and then adds casually ‘You know — 007 was already taken.’ Right.  What does it take to be a true action hero? It means being a great actor, which Ryan Gosling is, while at the same time oozing accidental sex appeal. Keanu Reeves (John Wicks) has only his personal appeal; whereas Gosling can actually act sex appeal; but paradoxically, whereas Keanu Reeves, is, I would argue, studiedly masculine (He’s gay isn’t he? I mean who is that old lady he calls his girlfriend?) Gosling is ‘effortlessly masculine’ -- meaning you just want to lick whatever he’s got. On top of that, Gosling makes us believe he’s a nice guy — which he may not be. But it’s not just Gosling, it’s the script — which is actually warm and witty and has real characters who you get to know, and you want to see them again and again. The action in a good action movie must make sense, you must care about what’s happening, not just think it’s ‘cool.’ So why, if this movie is the new James Bond movie in disguise, is it getting bad reviews?  Well — right now Hollywood is probably working very hard to create the new, official James Bond hero — probably a woman, non-white, and politically correct. Meanwhile the Russo Brothers (who everyone seems to hate for some reason) snuk The Next James Bond Movie onto Netflix and the critics are mad, but the public is ecstatic. I remember when I used to read the Ayn Rand Newsletter (didn’t you know that about me?) and Rand used to love James Bond. She talked about some poor hapless guy (Rand was always talking about poor hapless guys who approached her with idiotic questions) who said — ‘If James Bond opens a bottle for a girl, he always does it perfectly, but if I do it, I might mess it up. I could never be James Bond, so what’s the point?” Rand aptly pointed out that if James Bond did not pop his cork in precisely the correct manner it wouldn’t matter to him, so it wouldn’t matter to the girl either. In other words a hero is not perfect, he just makes others believe he is. This is fiction, not real life, and definitely not therapy. And no, it’s not about seeing yourself ‘represented’ up there, it’s the opposite of seeing yourself, because you are a bumbling fool and always will be. There’s no hope for you, me, or any of us, so we must see visions that are not in any way like us, i.e. Caliban who is half fish half human, or Miranda who has never seen a man before and is dangerously impressed by Ferdinand. This is fiction folks, and fiction does not teach because there must be no lessons in art. If you are a better person after reading that book or seeing that play, it is not because of ‘the message’ — but because great art has it’s source in the imagination of a person in touch with something very deep, and offers you an alternative reality which you might as well not necessarily strive for  — because you will never achieve it -- because life is dull, tragic, painful and pointless.  But this alternative reality may redeem you nonetheless. The fact that The Gray Man can’t get a completely good review anywhere — although it is an entertainment masterpiece — is a big problem. I mean you know me by now, don’t you? I desperately need to be entertained, and I am trying to do that right now — trying to keep myself from slashing my wrists on the bus on the way back to Hamilton after an uninspiring rehearsal of a play that is going to need a lot fo work. And yes I found the cat on the porch this morning (when we came back from signing that stupid piece of paper for the lawyer). How did she get out of the house? She’s not supposed to ever leave, because she’s not an outdoor cat, she’s a housecat with no front claws. Yes, that’s the brutal truth. Yes, we tortured her in that particular way, we allowed a sadistic vet (one of the only ones left who will still do it) to pull out her claws because we were selfish enough to want to keep her as well as our furniture. But as she has a tiny cat brain she loves us anyway, and after we accidentally let her out of the house this morning, there she was, chewing on a leaf, and soon after docilely submitting to being taken in. This is reality; a cat on the porch and facing your own cruelty for defanging her; it is a tale told with sound and fury signifying nothing. So when we get a chance to see something sublime (and I mean that in the Edmund Burke definition of the word — both beautiful and frightening simultaneously) it is incumbent on us to submit. Submission is highly underestimated — though it is much valued by Muslims, who made it their religion. I advise you to submit yourself to art, to the imagination, to wit, to beauty, to yes —entertainment — to senseless fictional violence, to the unknown — to all that is not real and beyond life. I don’t know how I arrived at that particular idea, but it it was The Gray Man that took me here. Odd as that sounds.

I finally figured

 out what drives me crazy about Starbucks. It’s not just that they’re all 'Woke Folk' (though they are) it’s that they’re having so much damn fun. It always irks me when the waiting staff at a restaurant is having more fun than I am. I mean they may frolic privately — but they should hide it, because their job is to serve you so that you will have fun. They are not the pleasure seekers but the purveyors of pleasure, and as such they should remain polite but silent. Strolling into any Starbucks is like attending a trans birthday bash in somebody's private home, all 'The Young Wokies' are whipping out their politically correct ‘isms, cooing their pet names at each other and sharing private inscrutable 'Woke Jokes.' Sorry guys. but I should be the one partying, not you. This used to drive me crazy years ago when I first 'came out.' It was fashionable then, to eat at Bemelmen's on Bloor. Of course all the waiters were gay, and probably screwing each other in the washrooms or the kitchen, and having a grand old gay time. And here I was, young and unsure of my new gay self, and as yet, unlaid, as I was finding it impossible to navigate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I resented those waiters terribly and even imagined they were laughing at me. (They probably were, as I sported an unruly curly mop top in those days, very unfashionable, which it took me nearly ten years to shave off so that I might morph into a respectable, if not exceedingly attractive, faggot.) If all this may strike you as classist, it is. I inherited it from my mother who was dastardly to all waiterly persons, in fact to any staff anywhere. Especially cab drivers. She considered all working people her private servants, and  treated them with the utmost disdain. One time she was in Port Elgin (she had followed an abusive man there; he wore 'transition lenses' — never trust anyone who wears those) and she was out in a taxi with her friend in some 'hell-and-gone' byway outside Port Elgin. Well, she started yelling at the cab driver and he (good for him) threw her and her friend out into a field in the middle of nowhere, and promptly disappeared (needless to say my mother and her friend survived). In restaurants with her I wanted to hide my head in shame because she was always browbeating some hapless waiter or other. I wanted to whisper  —“I’m sorry, even though she is my mother I know she’s a relentless bitch!’” The reason she was so classist is because she was working class -- her father was a farmer (my grandfather died young, mysteriously, in a barn fire) and my grandmother was a single mother and a teacher with no money. Because my mother (before she met my middle class father) spent most of her life struggling to make ends meet it was absolutely necessary for her to pretend she was rich, and to condescend to the 'little people.' For awhile she lived at The Sutton Place i.e. in a hotel. The moral of this (yet another tale of my mother) is that those who are most classist are often those from humble beginnings, as it is incumbent on them to shroud their origins in mystery. Noel Coward was such a person; he was born in a working class suburb and his father used to demonstrate organs in an organ store (sounds filthy doesn’t it?). Noel changed his accent, dressed up (but not too much, as he didn’t want to appear effeminate) and fooled most of the world into believing he was very upper class indeed -- which explains his affection for Princess Margaret and The Royals. Just a poor boy trying tomake good, and incidentally lying-- like a very fancy Persian rug. Noel Coward was the quintessential homosexual and always will be. Most gay men aspire to be like straights, and to be loved by them. Ever since gay marriage there’s been a kind of epidemic of this (though I’ve heard the the young are rejecting gay marriage, and I do hope so.) All this explains why you hate homosexuals so much. I know, I certainly do. (At last, the cats out of the bag, of course, I’m homophobic!) Most gay men are odious, pretentious, and repellent. But wouldn’t you be too -- if you’d gone through what they have? They resemble what James Joyce used to call ‘the New Irishman.’ These detestable men made a performance of not drinking and not being carefree and imaginative, but instead posed as down-to-earth, respectable citizens. Joyce found these ‘new’ Irishmen alarmingly pompous and wished them all dead. I must say I sometimes feel the same way about my own kind. Gay men are not effeminate because they take it up the ass, but because they are prissy, purse-lipped and uptight. They are the very definition of hypocrisy.“I draw the line there,” they say -- "I will be pissed upon but no one defecates on me!” Well, La-te-da. When Christopher Newton was my lover many years ago (I’m trying to impress you now) he  educated me in table manners -- as he said I would someday be invited to grand gay houses fro dinner.  Needless to say I wasn't. I still chow down in my own way, thank you, and have no illusions about it. And of course, I’m not talking about food. 

It’s not true,

really. That is, nothing is — and that’s the point. I haven’t written a lot of blogs, probably won’t write a lot more, mainly because I was traumatized by COVID — too many blogs — I wrote one every day and my life depended on them. My God, I’m sitting in a Starbucks in the heart of Leslieville and I don’t know if I can stand it here, the neighborhood is so bloody privileged and white and oh dear. Three girls trashed me in this Starbucks last week for walking too slow (i.e. arthritis). I told them to fuck off. They were three pretty, conceited, well-off girls and I just wanted to kill them. I said I was disabled and they had the gall to argue back— JESUS. The atmosphere in this Starbucks is incredibly toxic, everyone is super nice but at the same time totally poised to get into a fight about identity politics. And there are so many white people with babies. And so many nauseatingly perfect homosexuals. I just want to scream; but I’ll write this instead. Anyway, I have a bad taste in my mouth about blogs, after Covid-19. Strange, as I was fine after having my life somewhat destroyed by The Vivek Shraya Blog — or thought I was  fine— but it was writing movie blogs everyday during COVID that really did me in. I felt like a word whore, a literary prostitute; I was writing just to get through the day. But also what’s the point of expressing your opinions anymore? People are so generally hateful and eager to dismiss you as evil. Civil discourse is over as far as I’m concerned, so I try and keep my discourses uncivil. Like this. I wish it were a poem so I’ll try and make it more like one. I haven’t kissed a really pretty boy barely half my age — in at least a month — and it’s driving me crazy. I know I’m old and mouldy and to top it all off I’ve been suffering an arthritis attack (hence the slowness) which means I’m even scarier to the young than I usually am. Oh yes, I quite forgot (not to suddenly go all British on you!) but my therapist recently suggested that I need to not expect too much of myself anymore as I am aging. I know it sounds horrible but she’s right. In other words life just isn’t the way it was before; I’m not the centre of all things, and shouldn’t expect to be, and I should enjoy my anonymity and my work, as there is no need to get anywhere, I should just feel damn lucky that I’m still alive and have enough money to live on. Oh, by the way, can you believe all this hysteria about the two little black girls who were ignored by a mascot at a Sesame Street Theme Park? I mean yes, I would totally sympathize if it was a real human being that had purposefully ignored two black girls. But a mascot? My sister actually makes mascots (I hope she does’t mind me mentioning her) so I feel I have some sort of affinity with them. Sometimes I feel like a mascot, bobbing my way through life trying to make a good impression — but not really connecting — you know? Also a very dear friend of mine was once Polkaroo. He’s very tall and the costume fit.  (Also I was the genie in Dudley the Dragon once, and I had to act with a mascot-like creature, i.e. Dudley, which was weird.) I mean I know mascots are not real people. There are really people in them, but those real people are also trying to navigate a contraption, with fans on, and without really being able to see. And the person hiding in the ‘racist’ mascot claims that the mascot was not being racist, but just couldn’t see the girls because they were so short. That certainly makes sense to me, and I’m actually more worried about the mama of the girls turning them into professional victims by telling them that ‘Rosita’ ignored them because they were black. Let me tell you something, it’s probably better in the long run for children to come to terms with the fact that mascots may never notice you. Feeling depressed because a mascot won’t hug you is a bit like saying  “I saw Robert De Niro’ in The Godfather when I was very depressed. Yet he just refused to sympathize — and went on about The Mafia!” On the other hand what I do approve of, is that these little children obviously believe that 'Rosita,' a fictional character, really exists. I too believe that fictional characters exist. I have been reading novels by Stella Gibbons (of Cold Comfort Farm fame) and I’m telling you every one of Gibbons’ plucky little heroines is me. I live their anxiety with them, and I am obsessed with whether or not the beautiful boys they love will love them back.  If you think it’s odd that a 70 year old Doctor of Philosophy (i.e. me) imagines himself a teenage girl now and then — well get used to it. I never had a proper adolescence. This morning I was reading  Margaret Mead who was talking about the Polynesian Islanders sending their teenagers into little huts to experiment sexually when they reach adolescence --yet there were no unwanted pregnancies, and the kids turned into  happier adults than you or I. I never had my gay adolescence when I was supposed to — so I still want boys to notice me, and I’m still mortally wounded when they don’t. (Sigh!) Maybe that's why I shouldn’t write blogs. They become embarrassingly personal, as it’s useless to try and convince you of an actual idea anymore — as you’re all so set in your ways and resistant to thought. So all I can hope for is to send you a postcard from my reality, which, like any postcard, will be wacky, sad, and a little confusing. “Having a great time. (I think!) Wish you were here! Oh by the way, who are you?"

THE FORGIVEN is

a gorgeous film by John Michael McDonagh — Martin MacDonagh’s brother (Seven Psychopaths). But it will die an ignominious death -- killed by the cowardly, politically correct critics that would have it be something it is not. You see, because The Forgiven a film about decadent colonials in the desert, it, must, necessarily, be about how horrible white people are. But the critics have decided the white people in this particular flick are not bad enough. Generally the film is being damned with faint praise — “it has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege. It’s like attending a weekend bacchanal and forgetting what happened once Monday morning rolls around, or perhaps not wanting to remember.” The Forgiven is ‘decadent,’ which means that people drink, and take drugs, and have sex (in excess) something which we prefer to pretend ceased after Covid-19, or after AIDS — or whenever it was that we all became so bloody self-righteous. The Forgiven has been accused of homophobia because the director is evidently “saying something by making two gay lovers the story’s most conspicuous embodiments of neocolonialist excesses.” Right. Sure, much of the action takes place at a semi-orgy hosted by gay couple Matt Smith (Smith is the new Neil Patrick Harris — see: Mobius) and Caleb Landry Jones (who must be gay, because he has no personal life on Wikiipedia). I for one, am ecstatic to welcome a decadent gay couple once again to the silver screen! Not since Michael York and Helmet Griem in Cabaret have we seen the likes of 'em! I’m so tired of  gay film couples who are mixed-race, married, living in the suburbs, adopting twins -- and who  have to unctuously deal with that homophobic/racist pa -- and one is a teacher and the other is a cop. And they don’t drink or swear, or do anything interesting. So, like — where’s the fisting? I have no problem with movies or plays that represent gay men as drunk, and/or stoned, and sex-crazy, and promiscuous, as that’s so, dare I say it — true to life! But apparently faggots in movies these days must be squeaky clean. And then there is the one moment — I kind of relished it, because I know people will necessarily be scandalized— belonging to  Ralph Fiennes (I forgot to mention he plays the leading character; a very sweet yet detestable man who kills an Arab child by accident, and then spends the rest of the movie paying for it). Well Fiennes goes on about how Morocco is the destination ‘vackay’ for ‘pederasts,’ citing Allen Ginsberg. (Unfortunately the word ‘pederast’ has been made meaningless by Christians who throw it around like an old football. They insist, for instance that Joe Biden is a pederast. Whaaaa?) But I don’t think Allen Ginsberg was a pederast. No, no, he was an epheberast, which is something quite different. In  case you don’t know what ‘epheberast’ means, it’s someone who falls in love with teenagers. You won’t find a definition online because of the prevalent societal hypocrisy. The whole of western culture is ardently epheberastic — it started with James Dean,  and climaxed, for many I’m sure quite literally -- with Miley Cyrus’ saucy twerks. And Fiennes’ character in The Forgiven, after all, is speaking the truth somewhat. Gay men who live in uptight western countries have, historically gone to Morocco to dally with gorgeous and very willing Moroccan boys. (You see sex before marriage is forbidden in Muslim culture, ergo, the ‘love that dares not speak its name’ flourishes. Homosexuality in fact flourishes anywhere the ‘powers that be’ forbid young men to touch young women — so, also in the city of Naples, and in the U.S. prison system.) Yes. I knew two quite celebrated epheberasts who loved Morrocco. They were both also quite prominent figures in the Canadian literary world: Bill Glassco and Scott Symonds. I can talk about them now, because they’re both dead (though occasionally dead hands do rise from the grave to grapple with me). I was told that Glassco had a house in Morocco -- by his fellow epheberast Scott Symonds  —when Scott visited me once. That was a debacle. I was sitting at home minding my own business when Scott knocked on the door and said “I’m Scott Symonds, and you’re Sky Gilbert, and we definitely should meet.” So I let him in. We talked for a bit about how repressed Canadian culture was, and then for some reason he ended up in my bedroom all by himself (I think he asked 'if he could see it') and when I came back with our iced teas (or whatever I was getting for him) I found he had slipped one of my porn videos into the VCR and was masturbating. I had to kick him out. But that’s another story. Anyway, The Forgiven tells it like it is, daring to see both white colonialists and Moroccan muslims as human beings — as flawed but still sympathetic, and the film kind kind of equates the two cultures. This is its fatal flaw, as presently right and left wing enthusiasts would have us see Muslims and Christians as irreconcilably different. Sorry to be the bearer of paradoxical tidings, but we’re all human, and kinda loveable  — that is, when we’re not being hateful — whether we are Muslims, Christians or just decadent fags.

I realize it

now, all I had been missing was excess joy. The epiphany came the other day when I had a little excess joy during the day (you know, an overflow) and I was chatting up the guy in The Subway Shop about having to deal with homeless people when I sit by the window and eat my sub. I have now decided that it’s better to hide a bit at the back of The Subway Shop, because King Street in Hamilton can sometimes be a lively place, and I just want to eat my lunch, not get involved. People will see me in The Subway Shop window looking prosperous and ask me for money, or much worse, one guy once asked me if I was a homosexual which was unnerving — as I am one, but that is an antique term. Anyway I was in possession of a little excess joy, so I chatted up the guy behind the counter (could he be gay?) who is always so nice to me, and who once said ‘you look very different today’ which was encouraging — because it seems to me to be a virtue not to always look the same. And I began to think about the fact that I have absolutely had no excess joy to share with anyone for a very long time. I have a naturally frowny dour face, and apparently am intimidating— with my pierced ear and tattoos (I’m not trying to look intimidating, just sexy — but I guess sometimes it amounts to the same thing). So people don’t normally talk to me;  I have to talk to them. And sometimes when I am in possession of excess joy, I do, and it’s fun. So where did all my excess joy go to? Well, COVID-19 took it. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that eliminating excess joy is what COVID-19 was all about. I mean that’s what the authorities were telling us all the time: ‘You should be able to put up with this, I mean surely you can manage to make do with simple — old-fashioned — joy — what do you need with an excess of it?” To must of us, because we are puritans who are descended from a long line of pleasure-exorcising, self-flagellating crazies (that is our Empire Loyalist Heritage in Ontario) this sounded pretty reasonable. (It’s important to note that I am speaking of nice middle class people when I speak of this excess joy. When it comes to the working classes, or worse yet, the homeless and the very poor, COVID-19 meant much more than just missing a little excess joy, it meant madness, addiction and death. I am still counting the bodies of the friends — they are still slowly piling up, as the isolation of COVID-19 has had slow and chilling after effects). But for us middle class types, it sounded easy -- at first -- to give up a little excess joy. So let me define excess joy right now. Regular joy is -- satisfaction. I think the best way to look at it is in terms of orgasms. Orgasms, are by definition excess joy. The reason God made us this way (or mother nature, or whoever you think is in charge) is because sex is kinda fun -- but orgasms are really fun, and if a man has an orgasm then he will impregnate a woman, which God apparently wants, I guess. There are those of course who think that orgasms are not necessary, who just put up with them in order to make sure that the earth is fully populated (but of course we know that is no longer an issue). Similarly there are those who think that simple old-fashioned joy is quite enough. You know, reading a book and being engaged but not inspired, or watching TV on some device that passes the time, you know, being entertained, having bad sex out of obligation, chatting with a boring person just to be nice and well, you know.... That is what I would call good old fashioned simple joy. But an excess of joy means that you are having an exquisite time, and for me that only happens at parties or with friends, and when I’m writing, or at a great play or movie, or watching HBO, or (yes of course) having orgasms. The fact of the matter is that all ‘art’ could be considered an excess of joy. You see, there is your mundane life, and sure, there are lovely sunsets and petting the dog — these are uncomplicated pleasures that everyone has at their fingertips, and of course if people are Zen enough, they can enjoy them and be satisfied. But what I am making an argument for here (perhaps you can tell I was warming up to this) is that we need the 'excess of pleasure,' well -- a little more than we think we do. In other words it’s not enough just to be satisfied (or worse yet to ‘get what you need’). What life is really about — and what we actually live for — is an excess of pleasure -- what is a special, unworldly, unmatchable, indescribable experience beyond pleasure -- divine, ecstasy -- OMG!— you know what I mean. Because life is basically dreadful (I hope you are still with me here) meaning we are all eventually going to get sick and die — or if we are very lucky, we are simply going to die — and because life routinely refuses to live up to our expectations. And people — well I just don’t know where to start with them — but they constantly disappoint, infuriate and just drive us nuts with their inability to be what we want them to be most, i.e. perfect in the sense that they not only fulfill our needs and make us happy but make us ecstatic in some way (it’s not always about literal orgasms). So we must have something else! This is excess joy…. bubbling over, it is art, it is artifice it is what is beyond -- well, reality -- and we all need it, and it’s really what we live for whether we admit it or not. So what I’m saying is that COVID-19 not only took away something we really need, but something which many of us can’t do with out, and on top of that, COVID-19 made it seem like we shouldn’t really need it at all. So here we are, pretending that we do not need or want excess joy; and I for one am apoplectic. (I had to look that word up, but it  seemed right — and it is — “overcome with anger, extremely indignant”).