CRYSTAL METH AND UNSAFE SEX!

(Don’t worry, I’ll get there.)

Okay, the Globe headline says “Impact of HIV baby case unclear.” In case you haven’t heard, a Mississippi infant has just been cured of HIV. However, we are assured in the Globe article that -- when it comes to AIDS -- “a cure has not been found.” Now how can a baby in Mississippi be cured of AIDS, when there is no cure for AIDS? Isn’t that a contradiction? Sounds somewhat Orwellian, doesn’t it? ‘Freedom is Slavery’ ‘War is Peace’ ‘A Baby is Cured of AIDS but There is No Cure  for AIDS’.

Wuh?

Any discussion of the AIDS is clouded by a gigantic miasma of emotion around sexual and moral issues that completely blocks out the facts.  Doctors would like us to think that AIDS is all about science, and that they are never homophobic, and that all of the pure ‘information’ we receive about the disease is unclouded by prejudice or stigma. But this is simply not the case.

The elephant in the room around the baby who was cured of AIDS -- but who, for some reason, is reported to offer gay men very little hope -- is the alluring notion of the ‘innocent victim.’ In the 1980s, when little HIV positive children in the deep south were hounded out of their classrooms by their hateful peers – the infected children were defended as ‘innocent victims’  -- that is,  unlike gay men, prostitutes, or drug addicts.

The concept of the ‘innocent victim’ arises because AIDS offers an excellent opportunity for social control through fear. In 1981, when AIDS first appeared, we were experiencing a huge backlash (led by The Orange Juice Lady Anita  Bryant) against homosexuality. The 1960s was very dangerous to the patriarchy –  because the pill was available to women, and gay men had access to antibiotics that effectively killed venereal disease -- so there seemed to be little or no consequence from unprotected sex. For the sex-haters of  the religious right this had to be stopped; AIDS fed right into their agenda.

The result: there will never be a cure for AIDS. In terms of the mysterious Mississippi case, doctors assure us that even though one innocent baby is cured, other people (do they mean gay men, prostitutes Africans, and drug addicts perhaps?) will never be able to get all of the HIV out of their system, and thus will likely always be infected. The situation is, I posit, simply this -- if scientists  told us AIDS could be cured, then  people might wish to return to the lovefest some of us remember as the happy carefree 60s.

Well I just got back from a vacation in Palm Springs, and let me tell you it’s still the 60s there. For hot young gay man on the resort scene it’s all about barebacking and drugs! Gay conservatives would have you believe that all gay men want to get married, adopt children and attend church. But there is a terrifyingly sad swell of self-destructive behaviour among young gay men these days. I have no statistics. But I am very promiscuous, and I know what everyone is doing and trying to get me to do.

Why is this happening in our community? Because, the fact of the matter is, we are not all perfectly adjusted, homophobia is not dead, and gay men are friggin’ angry about being told not to have sex, and about AIDS being used as a method of social control in order to stop them  from being sexual. They are tired of being told, over and over again, that unlike babies, they are not ‘innocent.’

What’s with the Treasure Island Media’s unsafe sex porn, and all the  young gay men who want to gobble ejaculate, and are greedy to get sperm up their butts without a condom? I’ll tell you. It’s because AIDS organizations -- instead of dealing with the incredible trauma inflicted upon us by the demonization of gay men and the demonization of gay sex -- have happily jumped on the social control bandwagon. All they can do is wag their fingers at us. Gay men need a lot more help than finger-wagging to compensate for what the trauma of AIDS. Nobody likes to be told that sex is bad, pleasure is bad, and that skin should never touch skin. And if nobody is willing to talk about the fact that using AIDS to stop people from screwing is unnatural and  sick, then yes, young gay men will hate themselves and get angry and  continue with crystal meth and unsafe sex.

Which is where we finally end up.

I told you so.

Uncomfortable with Me Using the F-word? Well, Suck It Up!

            I was on Jian Ghomeshi recently. I was trying to explain what angers me so much about Richard Florida – and started out saying “I’m a big fag!” (which I am) because I hadn’t said anything about gay stuff yet on the show, which is like, so unlike me. Then I went on to use the ‘f-word’ over and over. I said that there a lot of ‘fag plumbers,’ and that ‘there are a lot of ‘non-creative fags’ – cuz I'm tired of Richard Florida saying we’re all a bunch of designer types.

            Well immediately after the show a queer from Hamilton tweeted to all the twits in the twitterverse that I had been politically incorrect, reporting me to a website called http://www.nohomophobes.com/. The tweet says “This site tracks the use of 4 homophobic slurs. Sky Gilbert just used one of them excessively on @CBCRadioQ #shame. ”

            I call myself a fag all the time. I always have and I always will. It’s not unlike when people of colour use the n-word. Now I understand that racism and homophobia are not the same thing. But they are alike in this way: people who have been verbally abused sometimes wish to take back the abusive term by calling themselves that word. It’s empowering. Calling myself a fag says to all the homophobes out there “I know you hate me but I don’t give a fuck. I’m going to use the word you used against me to show how much I love myself.” But people who oppose the appropriation of the f-word think that the ‘fag’ is always homophobic, no matter who says it.

            Well, I have a big problem with that.           

            First, the people who tell me I can’t call myself a fag harbour the completely unrealistic fantasy that if we purge language of all politically incorrect terms homophobia will go away. This is just simply nuts. Political correctness is like a little garden planted by left-wing people so that right-wing Nazis can grown all the racist, sexist, and homophobic flowers they want. This is the way it works: if people don’t say the f-word or the n-word or the b-word (BITCH, you bitch!) anymore, than right-wingers can claim that homophobia, racism and sexism are over, and they can eventually try and retract progressive measures like affirmative action (which they are doing now in The States). You can always get people to stop saying offensive words – people lie all the time about their true feelings – but it’s a much more difficult and worthwhile project to hack into their hearts and hew out the hate.

            I’m not, of course, saying that I want people to abuse us verbally, or that I want children to be encouraged to say awful abusive things in the schoolyard. They should be taught not to, and scolded for saying them (of course after being told why). But those who think that policing all those horrible words from adult speech is going to erase all the hate from the world have got it all wrong.

            Hey -- baby, bitch, girlfriend, fuckbuddy -- when I call myself a fag, it’s for one good reason only -- there is a gay culture out there and I am sooooooo proud to be a part of it! And gay culture is different than straight culture. We have our own lingo. And we have different ideas about morality, sexuality, gender, art – we’re much more honest about sex than straight people -- hell being queer is really different than being straight! We’re not ‘just like you!’ We bear the scars of homophobia, because we had to tell our angry Dads and our crying Mums what we do in bed, while all you straight kids had to tell them was stuff like “I’m not wearing that tie to grandma’s funeral!” or “I’m quitting my MBA to become a welder!”

            Unfortunately, my remarks are not just scandalous in Hamilton; there is fear of the f-word in Toronto too. I’m doing my little play To Myself at 28 (with Spencer Charles Smith) at VIDEOFAG Feb 14, 15 and 16, 2013. VIDEOFAG is a storefront video and performance space (google it!) run by Jordan Tannahill and his partner, William Christopher Ellis. When I tell people in Toronto about the play, I sometimes get into arguments about the space’s name.

            The ‘fear of fags calling themselves fags’ is everywhere. Hell, I remember a great Boston magazine called ‘fagrag’ -- named after the cum towel that you store by your bed. (You do have one, don’t you?). What the fuck happened?

            Well I can bet you anything that most of the opposition to the f-word is from the kind of gay men who want to assimilate, who say that homophobia is dead, and who say ‘there no such thing as gay culture.’

            Well sorry -- but I do have a culture and I love who I am and I’ll call myself anything I fucking want!

            So (to quote Shirley MacLaine): shut up and deal!

A mini-list of mini-early Feb reviews

(I’ll catch up later in the month, watching

movies early in the New Year is like watching

somebody take out the trash….)

Movie 43

Wow. This was truly worth the price of admission. Not since ‘The Groove Tube’

(google it!) have so many talented actors been so publicly embarrassed. ‘The Groove Tube’ just had an upside down talking penis, but this one has…(wait for it!)…testicles on Hugh Jackson’s adams apple! I’ve always been a fan of testicles, and a fan of Hugh Jackman! So I found all of this quite appealing!

Be there or be square!

A Royal Affair

Considering the drek I had to sit through last month, at least, well, I learned something.

Warm Bodies

This movie got 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. Well I watched 77% of it and fell asleep. (The cute boy didn’t even take off his shirt!) Big question: Who’s Paying Off Rotten Tomatoes? Cuz they sure ain’t actually reviewing this shit. They are PROMOTING it!

N.B. Please watch this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4yxsRRnvkE

Six Things Very Wrong With Toronto Theatre

1. The Audience

            This is the real problem. There was a time when the downtown was a cool place, it was comprised of a variety of communities, ethnicities and classes. Nowadays the cultural divide between the core and suburbs in Toronto is huge (it’s almost apartheid and no one is talking about it). Downtown is full of rich white people and the suburbs are filled with working class immigrants (in the old days it used to be the other way around!). Anyway, the people who come to see plays in downtown Toronto are rich -- either old and established, or young and feverishly working their way up. The last time I went to the theatre (yesterday) the woman sitting behind me was talking much too loudly about how she made $90,000 a year but she couldn’t afford her apartment. People like that (oh dear) want to be entertained and have their worldview confirmed -- they want escapist fun. They like to think they are cultured and intellectual (Soulpepper doing a ‘new take on an old classic,' anyone?) but ultimately, they aren’t interested in anything that challenges their ideas, their sexuality, or their way of life (i.e. making money and spending it). How does one create theatre for these people? Why bother?

2. The Big Apple

            Toronto theatre professionals seem obsessed with New York City. Especially the youngsters. Their goal in life is to write a hit that gets produced on Broadway. There was a time when Broadway was considered the enemy of Canadian theatre. We didn’t want our plays on the Great White Way -- we wanted to create our own idea of a good play might be and play it in Canada, for Canadians. Nowadays people are starting new theatre companies and doing plays that have just been hits in New York, or they are writing their own plays (usually with titles like ‘Drek -– The Musical) and hoping they will get picked up by Harold Prince.

3. David Mirvish

            I don’t wanna be hard on the guy. I mean, I think he’s a reasonably nice person, a capitalist with a soft spot for the arts. He means well. But he has bad taste. I mean -- Andrew Lloyd Webber’s re-visioning of The Wizard of Oz? What a surprise, Webber’s songs didn’t turn out to be as good as ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’  -- who wudda thunk it? The biggest problem with Mirvish (I have said it a thousand times and I will say it again) is that he has changed everyone’s idea of what theatre is. It doesn’t have a helicopter?  What, no horses operated by real live humans? Well it wasn’t such a good play then, was it?

4. No Intermissions

            Okay, I’ve really had it with this. It used to be that you were only expected to sit in one place for an hour at the most. But now if you put an intermission in a play, it’s some sort of crime. (I know from whence I speak -- I still put intermissions in my plays and the critics always say: “I somewhat enjoyed the actor’s performances -- despite Gilbert’s writing and directing -- but the play was much too lightweight to deserve an intermission.”) No, please. The program for the last play I saw warned us that it would be one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission. I was frightened. The play was two hours long, no break. TWO HOURS!!!!! It’s gotten to the point now where they don’t dare tell you how long the play actually is, for fear you’ll bolt. Human beings were not made to sit in a theatre for more than an hour and fifteen minutes without an intermission. Period.

I don’t care what kind of genius you are.

5. Richard Ouzounian

            There was a time when I would have been afraid to criticize Richard Ouzounian, the Star theatre critic. I mean what if he started hating me and stopped coming to see my plays? Hey, no problem. Richard Ouzounian will never come to one of my plays again, because as far as I can tell, he’s stopped going to ‘small’ theatre. It used to be that if a show was paid Equity fees, the Star felt obligated to review it. No more. Used to be that the Toronto Star -- in the good old days of Henry Mitkiewicz and Robert Crew (gee, I never thought I’d say that) -- would do puff pieces about independent Canadian theatre, not just about the search for the lead in The Sound of Music, or the fabulous lighting for Lord of the Rings. I’d even love to get a bad review from the guy -- anything.

6. The Seats

            The last time I went to the big Berkeley Street theatre at Canstage it was like being packed into a cheap charter flight. I’m old and I have arthritis and I’m cranky, but Jesus! My arms (which I’ll have to admit are rather burley and well muscled) were bumping people on both sides, and my knees were scrunched up against the seat ahead. I couldn’t move! Hamilton’s civic theatre is a run by a horrible man named Ron Ulrich (he tried to censor one of my plays and eventually pushed it out of his season!) but there is a lesson to be learned from Theatre Aquarius – they give you a yard of foot room in front of every seat. And these things matter, you know.

They do.

And that’s all I have to say for now.

Four Mid-January Quickie Reviews:

Quartet

Any movie in which a character who is on the waiting list for a new hip asks -- “Would you like to go for a walk?" – has no relationship whatsoever to the real world.

On The Road

The critics are saying this moving is ‘missing something,’ that it’s ‘not quite right.’ Let me sort this out. It’s fucking gay man. It’s a fucking gay movie. That’s the only problem anybody could possibly have with it.

Zero Dark Thirty

I could take or leave the Osama rescue stuff but this movie was a bit feminist and sometimes Jessica Chastain reminded me of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect which I so totally adored.

Amour

Don’t go if you are feeling remotely depressed, or if you are in any way near, or approaching, old age (I fit in both categories and I went to see it and I’m still in recovery). But, that said, it’s a pretty fucking good movie.

Texas Chain Saw 3D and Newtown

      There’s been a lot of foolishness talked about violence lately; I would like to sort it out. In my view, most human beings (especially males, but not always) are born with violent tendencies. Most are able to express these violent tendencies in socially acceptable ways – i.e. through sporting events, war, minor scuffles etc. There are, however, instances in which people commit acts of extreme and random violence – murder, or mass murder, for no apparent reason.  At least there seems to be no reason, until the pundits come along and link the violence to some social ill.

      A perfect example is the alleged rape of a girl in Steubenville Ohio in 2012. It recently received extensive media attention because the boys accused of victimizing her apparently joked about the rape in a video that has gone viral. The discussion after the incident was much like the one that followed the 2011 Tucson shooting (involving Congresswoman Gabby Gifford and 18 others). In both of these cases -- as in the case of the Montreal massacre -- extreme, senseless violence was related to social ills. In the case of the alleged Steubenville rape (and the Montreal massacre) a connection was made to societal misogyny -- and in the case of the Tucson shootings, a link was made to right-wing extremism. To some degree, these links are alluring simply because we crave an explanation.

      Unfortunately, most random acts of violence simply have no reason; a sociopathic or psychotic personality has committed them. But the ‘expert’ explanations for such incidents are deeply compelling because they drive us to ponder the nature of modern society. As the boys and men from Steubenville continue to disavow responsibility for abuse, piously mouthing phrases like ‘That’s disgusting,’ and ‘I would never do that to a woman’ the paradoxical power of the boys’ words on the viral video rings all too true. One of the boys says, in effect  -- ‘if it was my sister I would still think it was okay if she was raped.’ In other words, though men in our culture may pretend to respect women, misogyny is here to stay. Hatred of women and right wing extremism are both rampant in North America. However, they are not the cause of violent acts. But when extreme violence occurs we feel guilty about repellant cultural attitudes that may never change.

      Since the tragic murders of the children in Newtown, there have been calls to regulate the sale of automatic assault weapons (which I support) and to censor violence in Hollywood movies (which I would not). Many have pointed out that only a month after Newtown, the biggest grossing movie of post-holiday weekend was Texas Chainsaw 3D.

      What’s the big surprise? The hypocrisy of our modern, decadent culture is quite literally beyond belief.  Texas Chain Saw 3D is endlessly seductive, featuring big boobs (both male and female) and a campy, immoral tone that implies its violence need not be taken seriously. But most important -- and most attractively for  young people terrified of being ‘different’ or having an outrageous thought -- this movie says nothing, means nothing, and does not threaten the vacuous ‘twitterverse’ they live in. The movie is bereft of ideas. We are raising our children in a world where capitalism has taught us only these values: survival (in a recession) or luxury (in a boom). Instead of wondering ‘Why am I here?” “What is right and what is wrong?” “What is real and what is an illusion?” or even “What is love?” young people are trained to unquestioningly consume the banal content that comes to them from itunes, google and eBay. They are told they will find salvation in consumerism, marriage, and God.

      As we continue to mouth impotent platitudes our culture ceases to be about anything, and (as Adorno predicted) the Hollywood films we watch are basically the movies that movie executives want us to see. Decadence is not the decline of religion, or morality, or chastity, it is about a culture that no longer thinks, questions, explores, or creates.

      Modern decadence does not cause random violence.  But the ‘social ills’ so many people find shocking these days -- well I find them to be – if you closely examine our values -- not much of a surprise.

Post-Holiday Movie Reviews

Les Miserables

‘I love you more than the stars and the moon and my own bum! You are a special little blonde boy who gets shot in a revolutionary cause! You are the world. No, sorry, I got that wrong…we are the world!' Not since Rent has there been SUCH a FILM! It’s just so goddamn inspiring I could like, shit in my pants and then eat it.

Anna Karenina

It’s kinda interestingly directed and Raphaël Personnazrprise (Vronsky) looks fucking fabulous naked on a bed.

Django Unchained

Well at least it wasn’t boring like Planet Terror.

Parental Guidance / Guilt Trip

Please. Enough already. If all Hollywood can think of to do with Bette and Barbra is to put them in shit like this now we might as well all just pack up our dildoes and die.

Central Park Five

Best.

Holiday.

Movie.

Ever.

No,

really.