Category Archives: the gays

america fuck yeah, family, memoir, memories, mr. ben, the gays

Learning the Meaning of Christmas

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I didn’t have Christmas growing up, so I never got what was funny about leg lamps. I never sang “Jingle Bells” unironically or even saw It’s a Wonderful Life. Over the years, mostly from pop culture parodies, I’ve picked up the salient bits: small-town family, bad bankers, wise angels, rash decision reversed, and voila! Happily ever after. That understanding in no way prepared me for my first real Christmas, which I celebrated with my Russian-Jewish father-in-law, his Italian-American wife, her brother the priest, and the priest’s surprise.

As a child, I was an outsider when the whole country went Christmas crazy. I had only Hannukah, which is like a kid playing a kazoo on the sidelines while a marching band in full regalia, with cheerleaders and baton twirlers and gymnasts and everything, spends a month slowly parading by. Then, I got older, and the meaning of Christmas evolved—it became the time I got laid off. Twice, including once during the Great New York Transit Strike of 2005. Even for someone who doesn’t celebrate the baby Jesus, that’s pretty harsh.

My first real Christmas on the inside made all the difference. Suddenly I understood. We go nuts for four to six weeks in advance of this holiday because it’s terrifying. 24 hours with our families where we’re expected to be kinder, gentler, more charitable versions of our screwed up selves? Where we have to open boxes of things we never wanted in front of everyone and pretend to be excited, while nervously watching everyone else open the presents we got them to see if they’re sufficiently appreciative? Where we have several meals with extended family members and in-laws, who take a long looks at us and comment on whether we’re more or less skinny than before? Those stakes are high.

Mr. Ben, my husband, is also Jewish, but unlike me, he grew up with mistletoe and ornaments. His father brought the tradition over from Russia when he emigrated; there, under Communism, it was a Secular Mandatory Fun Day, with the part of Big Brother played by the ominous-sounding Father Snow. (Particularly ominous if you’ve read Game of Thrones.)

Once we were living together and engaged, Mr. Ben asked me to come to Christmas. For reasons of principle, I was hard to convince, but finally, like anyone who’s ever been in a lasting relationship, I caved. Mr. Ben’s dad’s second wife, Carla, was Italian and an excellent cook; she also had a reputation for giving such good presents that all the Hunger Games-level agony of Christmas shopping became retroactively worth it. Between a bounty of material goods and Martha Stewart-type treats, I figured the holiday would be painless, maybe even kind of fun.

Carla had invited her brother Ned, a 50-year-old Catholic priest, as well as their aged old-world Italian mother. Shortly before he arrived, Ned told Carla that he would be accompanied by his friend, Winston.

Ned went to seminary at 18. He had never so much had dated a girl; from childhood, his vocation was clear. That is partly why Ned’s mother, always so proud of her son the priest, looked confused to be introduced to Winston, a very nice middle-aged Asian-American man. Mr. Ben’s Russian grandmother sat next to her on the couch across from the fireplace, perhaps thinking that the fact that her own son had re-married a shiksa now seemed not so bad. Winston and Ned, oblivious, glowed happily next to each other on the piano bench.

Still: Christmas! A brightly-lit, colorfully-decorated tree presided over an avalanche of boxes and bags. Delicious smells wafted from the kitchen, where Carla, tongue-tied with awkwardness, had escaped to tend to the meal.

“Let’s play a duet!” Ned suggested.

“Great!” replied Winston.

Being that this was my first real Christmas, I had no idea whether any of this was normal. Maybe Catholic priests always used Christmas with their Russian-Jewish extended families to come out to their horrified, blindsided mothers, one piano duet at a time. Or maybe Winston was really just a friend and we were all over-reacting.

As we began to exchange presents en masse, that hope faded. “For you!” said Ned.

“Thank you!” cried Winston, opening a box of two button-down shirts: one bright purple, the other bright pink. “And that one’s for you.”

Ned picked up the flat package and ripped it open. “Oh my gosh!” he said. “You didn’t!”

Ned showed us the present he had just received, and I choked on my Diet Coke. It was a framed, signed poster of “Will and Grace.”

The only gayer present? Probably a butt plug. Probably.

The next morning, Ned’s mother and Carla appeared dressed and ready for church. Ned and Winston came out of the guest room dressed and ready to go antiquing. It was at this point that Ned’s mother’s heart fell to the hardwood floor like a big red shiny ornament and smashed into a million pieces. We could all hear it except for Ned, who, with Winston, went on his merry way. And at last, Christmas was over.

Ned and Winston now live together in a wonderful old house in Amish country with two pianos and lots of knickknacks. Ned is no longer a priest. I don’t know if he ever officially came out to the family or whether he figures that, after the “Will and Grace” poster, it would be redundant, but he has reconciled with his mother, who is very fond of Winston. And I have learned that while Thanksgiving may be a big deal for drama, Christmas totally takes the (fruit)cake.

"science", america fuck yeah, NYT, sexism, the gays, the jews

You Should Be Ashamed

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Several notable people in the media spotlight these days should be ashamed: Muammar “Mad Dog” Qaddafi, for mowing down civilians in the city center; Rush Limbaugh for calling Michelle Obama (THIS Michelle Obama!) fat; Baz Luhrmann for deciding to remake the Great Gatsby.

In 3-D. In Australia.

I mean, I *like* Baz. I own his Red Curtain trilogy — Romeo & Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge — box set. And even I know that is a terrible idea on par with an all-cat ballet production of “Hamlet.”

My award for the person who should most be ashamed of themselves is none of the above. Of Qaddafi, as my old co-worker Adam astutely pointed out, no more could be expected. Limbaugh has been burbling offensive nonsense for too many years for us to suddenly take umbrage now. And Baz? Well, at least he’s taking artistic chances, and at least he’s offering us the fascinating Michelle Williams as Daisy.

NYT graphic

My award goes to Modern Love contributor Andrea Askowitz who succeeded, this weekend, is publishing the most smug, sexist, cringe-inducing piece of narcissism I have seen in a long while. In it, she describes her efforts to snare “a young wife,” one with, she specifies, “big breasts. A pretty face is nice too.”

But she’s not shallow! Far from it. She’s overeducated. Quoth she:

Scientists have discovered that the lower the body’s waist-hip ratio (medically known as the WHR), the more attractive the woman. Marilyn Monroe, for example, had a 0.7 WHR, meaning her waist was 30 percent smaller than her hips. Salma Hayek and the Venus de Milo also have small waists relative to the size of their hips.

I didn’t know any of this at the time, but I would find myself walking along Lincoln Road on South Beach, where I’d notice a woman between the ages of 18 and 35 spilling out of the top of her dress. She’d pass by and I’d turn to leer at her behind. If it was big, I’d have an uncontrollable urge to club her over the head and drag her to my fertility cave.

I wasn’t objectifying women. I was a woman of science.

Anyone out there want to vomit with me? We could make a party of it. I’ll go, then you’ll go, and then we’ll admire the newly splatter-painted carpet. Because this offensive, unselfconscious blathering goes on.

Once she tracks down the nubile-seeming future mommy, *she* wants to do the inseminating.

“Can I do the insemination?” I asked.

Before the nurse answered, Victoria said, “I don’t think you can do that.”

I felt clubbed in the head.

MY moment was now and the woman I loved — my woman with childbearing hips — was thwarting my destiny.

“My woman with childbearing hips.” Her woman! Who is there to serve her needs! Who dares to have opinions of her own about how her own body should be treated!

This is all about power and control, where the woman who has the sperm — who, btw, seems to have the most serious case of penis envy I’ve ever seen in real life — gets to make the decisions. If she actually thought it would be hot to do the turkey-basting, all Andrea had to do was ask her poor girlfriend IN ADVANCE, and not wait until GF was stretched out naked and uncomfortable and cold and with a nurse looking on. I can’t think of anything more awkward than fighting with my partner in that position; of course she gave in rather than continuing to argue.

Andrea gets everything she wants–first, her “top pick” sperm, baseball-playing, college-educated, mother-loving man juice (10 vials at $250 each), which produces one child; then, a wife & mommy with a perfect waist-to-hip ratio willing to be impregnated by that sperm; and finally, getting to do the impregnating herself. And she writes about her triumph in the New York Times!

Comfort comes from one source, anyway: Hubris of this magnitude is exactly the kind of thing that makes the gods snort with laughter.

faux gender theory, NYT, the gays

So Sexual!

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This article about church counselling for women who are addicted to porn goes off the rails so fast you don’t even hear the squeal. All of a sudden, the train is lying on its side, smoking, its wheels spinning pitifully in the air.

The piece begins innocently enough:

Ms. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, said she started the group and the Web site based on her own experiences. She became interested in pornography at age 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom. After that, she said, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it.”

“At school I wanted to go home and look at it more,” she said. “Then I went online. I’d stay late at the library to look at it. Eventually I got into masturbation, phone sex, cybersex.” She also cracked the code on the family’s satellite television service, she said. “That was my life for eight years.” Then, she said, she met a Christian woman who helped her stop.

Porn can be addictive; addictions can disrupt your life. Problem, meet Solution. Great!

Then the article gets wacky:

The programs at Ms. Renaud’s group and at XXX Church diverge from secular sexual theory by treating masturbation and arousal as sins rather than elements of healthy sexuality. Emphasis is on recovering “sexual purity,” in which thoughts of sex outside marriage are illicit.

There you are, Gentle Reader, meandering through the flowering meadows of NYT prose, and out of nowhere, a great white shark bites you on the leg. That is how strange & abrupt this twist is. “Arousal” is a sin? You know that’s biological, right? As for “Thoughts of sex outside marriage,” well, yikes. If you don’t even think about it, how do you know you want it — and what “it” even is in the first place, or what kind of “it” you think you may like when the time comes?

This piece purports to be about porn addiction. What it ends up saying is that there are churches out there — whole faiths, even — that are making biological truths into religious crimes. Maybe not a significant majority of women has a problem with porn, but surely a significant majority thinks about sex. Especially since we are, you know, wired to.

It goes on:

As an adult she needed pornography to be aroused with her husband, she said. “I’m learning the correct way of intimacy and bonds,” she said of the group. “It’s learning what your spouse wants, his needs.” In her first weeks, she recalled, she struggled to avoid masturbation.

I feel awful for that woman. She was using porn with her husband. Consensually! In the context of matrimony! Why does she need to be shamed for that? Why does “the correct way” to have sex have to eliminate the aids to her desire? If she’s already married, why can’t she masturbate? Is it okay if she promises to only think of him?

Presumably porn is titillating because it is forbidden, because it seems “wrong.” It must seem even more so to people whose community norms are so extreme. Vilifying porn, even in the context of marriage — and not just porn but, as the article lists, “Masturbation, Lustful Thinking, Cutting, Feeling Useless, Dad’s Bad Choices, Self-Gratification, Self-Mutilation, Unhealthy Thoughts” — only adds to the cycle and makes those activities more enticing.

Also, part of me wonders whether there is a queer subtext to all of this. Are the women under discussion drawn to porn because they are attracted to women? I mean, of course there are lots of reasons to watch the stuff, but in my experience the men are as gross as the women are fake. Maybe the stigma against admitting an attraction towards the same gender is worse than the stigma of admitting an addiction to smut.

history, the gays, the jews

In gay news

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When you’re a teenager, my god, is there any issue more intense than sexuality? Love, acceptance, rebellion, identity, are you going to be an insider or an outsider, are you going to disappoint your parents …

For me, it wasn’t as simple as, Was I attracted to boys? Of course I was attracted to boys (the attractive ones, anyway, like Jonathan Brandis, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jared Leto).

I was also afraid of most of them, which complicated the matter, and starting about midway through eighth grade they weren’t particularly interested in me, which didn’t help either. At the same time as the boys were ignoring me, I became catnip to lesbians.

Fending off anyone’s advances is difficult for me, and it was even harder when I was so desperate for physical affirmation and affection. But sleepover after sleepover, I laughed off the awkwardness or said things like, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your bed?” In some ways, it would have been so much easier to just be like, Yes, you’re right: I wear glasses and I don’t wear make up, ergo, I am a dyke.

When I fell in love with a boy who loved me back my freshman year of college, I was almost as relieved as my mother. (Oh, she had her suspicions.) The longer we stayed together, the more the issue faded and I found perfect middle ground for myself. Instead of being queer, I surrounded myself with queer people. They tended to have the right politics and not care that I didn’t wear make up, and the gay boys didn’t scare me at all. Plus, gays and Jewish ladies are a natural constituency: we have Sondheim and Streisand in common! Not to mention intellectual snobbery.

Today I had lunch with two old friends: my oldest-and-bestest, who’s now an illustrator living in a “Boston marriage” in Park Slope (or is that redundant?); and the boy who was my first kiss and seven years later my senior prom date, who’s now a gay Williamsburg hipster of the first order. Both of these individuals got way more action with the opposite sex in high school than I did, in case we need a reminder of how little what we do or don’t do in high school means.

I told them excitedly about today’s Midwestern bombshell (“Is this Heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa”). Neither cared nearly as much as I did.

There should be a phrase that applies to this situation — like “the zeal of the convert” but specifically meaning “the zeal of the near-miss.” It’s akin to survivor’s guilt. Straight guilt? I can’t be the only one who feels it.

Anyway, well done, corn-producing, Obama-nominating state! You get two thousand gold stars in my book.

our sarah, politix, quotent quotables, the gays

What Not To Say

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Did you hear about this hilarious Republican congressman who compared to Obama to Hitler? Yeah, he wishes he hadn’t done that:

Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a ‘Marxist’ and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

He also called Obama “liberal.” Since Communists hated liberals, liberals hated Nazis, and Nazis hated Communists, in one breath, Broun has taken history and bent it into an infinity symbol. It would literally make more sense for me to compare Broun to Stalin because they are both from Georgia.

Sarah Palin has me shaking my head in mock-admiration, also:

“But not me personally were those cheers for,” she said to Ms. Van Susteren in an interview shown Monday night on Fox News. “But it was just for the representation of a woman on the ticket, a mom, somebody who loves this country so much, somebody very, very committed to policies that I believe will progress this country in the right direction.”

Dan Savage got a lesson in What Not To Say after he blamed blacks for the passing of Prop 8. Though they did come out en masse for Obama and, while there, pull the lever to ban gay marriage, King Nate Silver has absolved them of any kind of responsibility: there just aren’t enough African-Americans in CA for them to have made a decisive difference. Savage on Colbert last night acknowledged this, shifting his ire to “old people,” who, as he pointed out, “are dying, which is some comfort.” Okay, Dan! You’re getting there!

On the other side of this debate, there are the comments on this topic from The Root that draw from the word of God to give their opinions legitimacy:

just because we accept people for the color of their skin, which is actually something that the Bible teaches us to do, does not mean we should let two people of the same sex get married, which the Bible vividly prohibits. … this country was founded on the principals of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and to confuse loving thy fellow man with telling him it’s o.k. for him to marry another man is not what this country is supposed to be about.

and

Interracial marriage should have never been an issue but was an issue with this country but because of prejudice it was. God never condemned interracial marriage but does condemn same sex marriage. I just hope and pray that this country stands for what is right in the site of God. God defines marriage is between a man and a woman, not between two women or two men. When it comes to immoral issues it is wrong. Again interracial marriage is not a moral issues but gay marriage is. Let us understand that there is a difference between the two. If anyone having problem with that person is having a problem with God.

Again with the wrongness. Opponents of intermarriage absolutely thought — and still think — they had Jesus on their side. I mean, Deuteronomy, dude: Deuteronomy 7:3-4: ‘You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son, for he will cause your child to turn away from after Me and they will worship the gods of others then the L–rd’s wrath will burn against you, and He will destroy you quickly.’

Of course, that’s silly, cuz that Old Testament God is only talking to Jews there and the passage is specifically about religion, not race. He wanted a strictly limited gene pool for His chosen people, possibly because He wasn’t paying attention in high school genetics class, and also because He’s a jealous, overbearing God who likes to make rules. Whatevs.

The judge who ruled in the Loving case in 1958 also said, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no case for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did intend for the races to mix.”

Sure! And the fact that He gave us Barack Obama shows us that He knows the fabulous results mixing can have.

In short, this is all bullshit. Can’t we just admit that the idea of Group X getting it on with Group Y squicks out Group Z, where Group Z is those who aren’t in on the fun? Let’s leave religion out of it.