The White Peril 白禍

Just saw Atsushi off at the station. I have to go in to the office today, and things are easier for him at work on Monday if he doesn't take the last flight and get back to Kyushu late. That meant I had about twenty-six hours to help him recharge.

Yesterday he was tired as usual--insufficient sleep is really common among office workers here--so after we had tea in our new Froot Loops-inspired cups, he napped while I finally got around to writing a few letters. (You'll have no trouble believing I'm the fountain-pen-and-linen-paper type, yeah?)

One envelope for my best friend from high school. She lives in Toronto now, and up until a year or so ago, we were really good about calling and writing once every two months or so. But you know, you get busy, and you figure you can always e-mail, and then you just sort of don't. Meaning that I'm just now answering her Christmas card.

Inside another envelope, a letter to my first American gay friend in Japan, a former colleague now in his late forties who's been with his Japanese boyfriend for...jeez, it must be going on fifteen years?...anyway, they're two of the buddies who helped me through my twenties by listening to my bitching and doing their you're-not-seriously-going-to-date-that-organism-are-you-sweetie? duty when necessary. No, I'm not going to tell you how often it was necessary. I will say that, naturally, they love Atsushi.

They moved back to the States a few years ago, and they're going to kill me if I don't take them up on their invitation to visit them in Oregon one of these days; but for now, all I can manage is to answer not only their Christmas card but this random package they sent me a few months ago. It had a bag of truly frightening cheap-o candy in it--garishly-colored fake hamburgers and french fries and stuff--with a bunch of jokey post-it notes attached and a thinking-of-you message scrawled in magic marker. It came on a day that really needed some brightening up (some friends seem to have a sixth sense about that), and I wrote a thank-you e-mail right away and swore I'd produce a real, proper, witticism-filled, intimate letter that weekend. I think that was...November?

Look, at least I e-mailed right away.

And no, those are not the only people I owe letters. Everyone else gets tackled tomorrow.

Speaking of tackling--hell, speaking of e-mails--while I was making brunch this morning, we had one of the Sunday political yak shows on, and the whole deliciously inane debate over that supposedly incriminating e-mail from Takafumi Horie instructing that money be paid to Chief Cabinet Secretary Tsutomu Takebe's younger son (Nikkei Japanese report, Yomiuri English report--love the headline!) was the story of the day.

Those who haven't lived here seem to assume, because of the Japanese cultural reputation for inscrutable politeness, that government proceedings are executed with a "With all due respect to my esteemed colleague from Aomori Prefecture, I believe that he is under something of a misapprehension" tone.

Ha-ha.

They showed Takebe getting windily indignant in front of a press conference, which was only marginally entertaining. Then they showed Prime Minister Koizumi and DPJ leader Seiji Maehara (is it my imagination, or does he look more like Nefertiti every time he appears in front of a camera?) blustering at each other in the Diet. I couldn't pay close attention from the kitchen, but it was the expected "You've proved nothing!" and "We need time to see whether we can prove something--it's a freakin' Swiss bank account!" stuff. As always, there was angry burbling in the background that you figured might erupt, which would have been all kinds of cool. We LOVE uproar in the Diet. Unfortunately, things didn't explode. Papers didn't fly through the air, water pitchers remained un-upended, and things just sort of stayed at the percolating-animosity level. But hey--there's plenty of time for things to get more complicated and vicious, and this is already more fun than Rathergate!

Off to work.

Added over slovenly-bachelor busy-day lunch of Big Mac, fries, and Coke: Atsushi reads this blog and asks me questions about cultural references and slang he doesn't get, so I know that tonight, I'll pick up my cell phone when it rings and hear, "Hi, dearest. What are Froot Loops?" Froot Loops are a super-sugary breakfast cereal. When I was little, I only ate at friends' houses or my grandmother's. My parents bought only unsweetened cereal most of the time. But of course, you couldn't miss the ads unless you didn't have a TV, and it's a pretty universally-known consumer-culture artifact.

This is also a good opportunity to point out that the pro-Denmark gathering in DC took place as planned over the weekend. Instapundit naturally has pictures.

I should be in bed, but I couldn't raise Atsushi on the phone earlier. It turned out (by no means unusually) that his company had had a drinking party after work.

Fortunately, he called me back at 00:45-ish to say that he was going to make his flight here tomorrow as planned. Unfortunately, he also said that he can't stay until Tuesday as we'd hoped. (He has vacation days stored up, and we were figuring that this would be a good time to burn through some of them.) At least he'll have 36 hours or so of being tended to, since tomorrow I don't have to go in to the office, so when he arrives, we can go buy whatever he'd like me to make for lunch. Then he can veg on the sofa for a while as usual. No, of course, I'm not using that as an excuse to get him to help with the weekly household shopping.

Okay, maybe just a little bit.

But the POINT is that I at least have two days to work out the stress he's accumulated from living in his designated hovel and working in Kyushu, so we'll make the most of it as always. If there's big news here, I may post about it; otherwise, hope everyone has a good weekend.

I find the long-distance relationship thing easier if I keep the apartment as if Atsushi might return for good tomorrow. You know, no slovenly-bachelor stuff, and no putting his stuff out of sight so it's not "in the way"--I try to keep the sense of a shared life. And no junk all over the place. Sure, I'm normally pretty persnickety anyway, but when things are busy--and they have been lately--even I can get to letting things go.

Today was catch-up. Since I like to eat a lot of vegetables and they tend to go bad if not used quickly, I made my week's worth of vegetable scramble. Kind of like ratatouille, but kind of not--spring onions, broccoli, mushrooms, red and yellow peppers, eggplant, a can of tomatoes, whatever herbs strike my fancy. Darkened apartment, task lighting over the cutting board, glass of whiskey, humming along with 10000 Maniacs. It makes me smile a little that I still like Our Time in Eden so much. It came out my sophomore year, my most uncomplicatedly happy time at college--my best grades, starting a few upper-level classes, fun with friends all the time. Not much later, the shakeup that ended with my coming out and leaving the church I'd been reared in would start for real, after which being my friend was not much fun for a while. And Our Time in Eden, populated as it is with characters who feel weak-willed and are faced with sticky moral decisions--well, it was so much of that time for me that I thought I might end up sealing it off there and not wanting to return to it. But it's okay. (What's not okay is what happened to Natalie Merchant when she went solo. Gawd, what a grim little finger-wagging schoolmarm she turned into. She used to have such empathy for people who were having trouble doing the right thing without talking down to them--you could hear it, even if you didn't agree with the "right thing" according to her lefty politics. Tigerlily just killed that dead.)

Oh, speaking of plants, I was making vegetables a few minutes ago, wasn't I? Yeah. That way I can nuke a frozen portion and dump it over pasta or alongside a poached egg on toast or what have you. Not as fresh as the things just picked from the garden like we had when I was little, but a lot better than Birdseye. As I said, no slovenly-bachelor stuff.

BTW, I think my favorite passage about vegetables ever is Miss Manners's on artichokes:

Dear Miss Manners:
What is the most efficient way of eating artichokes?

Gentle Reader:
For those who want to eat efficiently, God made the banana, complete with its own color-coordinated carrying case. The artichoke is a miracle of sensuality, and one should try to prolong such treats, rather than dispatch them speedily. An important part of sensuality is contrast. First pull off a leaf with a cruel, quick flick of the wrist, dip it in the sauce, and then slowly and lovingly pull the leaf through the teeth, with the chin tilted heavenward and the eyes half-closed in ecstasy. If the sauch drips, a long tongue, if you have one, may be sent down to get it. When the leaves are gone, the true subtlety of the artichoke reveals itself: a tender heart, covered with nasty bristles. To contrast with the fingering, there should be a sudden switch to cool formality. The fuzzy choke should be removed with dignified precision and a knife and fork, so that the heart may be consumed in ceremonial pleasure.

The most wonderful of many wonderful things about Judith Martin is the way she makes life seem Alice in Wonderland-ish. You know, inanimate objects have personalities, people are strange, and unexpected things happen all the time, and you just have to roll with it.

Of course, people do what you do expect sometimes. I actually did go out and pick up some Royal Copenhagen the other week; the whole "Buy Danish!" thing seemed kind of hokey, but I've felt better and better about it as the reaction has unfolded since. Anyway, Atsushi already had some Royal Copenhagen stuff that he didn't take with him to Kyushu. You know how I've mentioned that he doesn't wear any colors except navy blue and the occasional so-dark-it's-almost-black forest green? Well, he's the same with furniture and housewares. This is what you get when Atsushi goes shopping for dishes:





No, don't adjust the color on your monitor. See? The placemat's green. It's just the dishes that have no color. All Atsushi's are like that. Well, he has a donburi or two with a pattern, but I think they were presents or something. The insides of the kitchen cabinets looked like a Walker Evans photograph until I arrived on the scene.

They don't anymore, because this is what you get when Sean goes shopping for dishes:





Unlike, presumably, the Queen of Denmark, I'm not really into the chalky pastels. But given that my tea and coffee things are already a million colors and patterns, having a few restrained, solid things kicking around is probably a good thing.

He comes home this coming weekend.

I lost sight of this a few weeks ago without posting about it, but the Casey senatorial campaign is getting into gear in my home state (via Gay News):

In a Senate race that is looking to be the most closely watched and most expensive showdown in the nation, Pennsylvania State Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr. is looking to win the gay vote.

Casey, who said he is gearing for nine more months of hard campaigning, will introduce himself to the region’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community Feb. 18 at the Human Rights Campaign Philadelphia Region Steering Committee’s annual gala.

If he gets on the Democratic ticket, Casey is running, of course, against Rick Santorum, one of the least gay-friendly major politicians in America. (And yes, I know he has a gay communications director. I'm speaking in terms of ideas and policies.)

Already he has the backing of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization; HRC’s political action committee endorsed Casey in October.

Ken Oakes, chair of the HRC Philadelphia Region Steering Committee, said an early endorsement like this is quite rare, but warranted.

“They [HRC] believe, and we agree, this is the race of the nation,” Oakes said. “Whatever happens here with Rick Santorum and Bob Casey is really a bellwether for the nation.”

...

Casey supports civil unions and domestic partner benefits, but stops short of supporting marriage equality.

But, compared to Santorum — who has equated gay sex with bestiality, and said there is nothing wrong with intolerance — Oakes said Casey is a fair-minded candidate with a proven record of respecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and working on their behalf.

Many members of the sexual and gender minority communities probably cannot understand HRC's endorsement of Casey, Oakes said.

The HRC's early commitment in this case is a much more sensible unusual move than its idiotic endorsement of Joseph Whowasthatagain against gay-friendly (and very powerful) senior Senator Arlen Specter two years ago. Of course, the fact that Casey is a Democrat means everything falls cleanly along pre-conceived party lines this time, thus sparing most people involved from asking uncomfortable questions about, you know, principles and stuff.

Of course, as the PGN notes, this year's race is, for a lot of gay voters, as much about giving Santorum the heave as it is about getting a friendly candidate elected. Suppose you're a gay Pennsylvanian who occasionally thinks about the economy, or education, or the WOT? The Casey campaign's website is still on the thin side, but here's its issues page:

Bob Casey is running for the U.S. Senate because he wants to help bring change to Washington.

ZZZZZZZZ...wha? Oh, sorry.

As your Senator, Bob Casey will fight to put the needs and concerns of Pennsylvania's middle-class families first.

Bob Casey has stood up for our seniors as Auditor General and successfully fought to improve the Health Department's response to complaints about life-threatening abuse and neglect in nursing homes. He will continue to fight for our seniors in Washington.

Bob Casey has led the fight to improve the quality of child care in Pennsylvania and make it more affordable for low-income working mothers. And his performance audits helped save money for our schools. He will continue to fight for our children and for public education as a U.S. Senator.

Bob Casey also successfully fought to protect children from sex offenders. His investigation into compliance with Pennsylvania's Megan's Law led to passage of tough new legislation in 2004 that requires information about all convicted sex offenders to be posted on the Internet. In Washington, Bob Casey will continue to protect our children and to give law enforcement the tools they need to fight crime.

So he likes the usual array of entitlements--not surprising, if you're worried about such trivialities as whether you can get elected. Casting himself as an opponent of excessive spending--using his work as auditor general and state treasurer to give the image dimension--while supporting all the spending programs that are dear to the middle class is a good strategy. (He also wants you to sign a petition to save--of all things--Amtrak. Some fiscal watchdogging there, eh?)

So I'm not sure, at this early date, what change Casey will be bringing to Washington, besides the fact that there would be one senator fewer from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who doesn't go to gay advocacy fundraisers.

Casey's Democratic rivals, perhaps because they recognize that they have a lot less name recognition than the son of a former governor, have much more fleshed-out policy pages. Assuming gay issues are your first priority, Chuck Pennacchio clearly supports civil unions and appears--though the relevant paragraph understandably kind of hedges--to support gay marriage. He also likes the assault weapons ban, calls the Iraq invasion "reckless and deceptive" in origin, wants all campaigns for federal office to be publicly funded, and (as if you couldn't guess) thinks we're not dumping enough tax money into the public school system and Medicare. Alan Sandals has his soundbites in handy chart form. He supports gay marriage and thinks we should begin withdrawing from Iraq. Otherwise, the same: more money for senior citizens, end the K Street Project as one in the eye for Santorum and the GOP.

The new Madonna video is out.

Enh.

The Kylie hair is pretty flattering, actually. But it's Kylie hair. That's not a slam on Kylie (who didn't really invent it herself, anyway). We love Kylie. But Madonna is not Kylie. Sure, she's done revivals and rip-offs before, but she always seemed to be enjoying herself, and they served some kind of expressive point. Remaking the "Fever" video minus the metallic body paint? No point to that that I can see. And kind of grim actually.

Oh, and speaking of which--one more thing.

Mads? Listening? Here it is:

UNCLENCH.

YOUR.

JAW.

Seriously, it can't be just whatever your aesthetic-body-maintenance people are doing, unless they've gone and wired your mouth shut. Part of it's age, probably, but most of it is clearly posture and attitude. Your lips no longer look pliant and inviting, so your trademark brazen stare has no tease to it. It just looks scary. I mean, scary-scary, not thrilling-scary.

Seriously, have you relaxed a single muscle--at all, ever--since the obstetrician dilated you so you could pass that last kid? Girlfriend, you have enough money to finance ten Methuselah-length lifetimes. You've been the most famous woman on the planet for the better part of two decades. Rock critics capitulated to you as far back as Like a Prayer. Contemporary music videos, for both better and worse, would be inconceivable without you. You used to be an overachiever because you had a million ideas; now you work hard to make videos for disco songs that show people, you know, dancing around. A real flight of imagination, that.

Let's just hope you come up with something better for "Jump," which is supposed to be the third single, yeah? It's the best song on the album and doesn't deserve the see-me-do-Dance-Dance-Revolution-with-a-bunch-of-teenagers treatment.

This is the kind of malarkey that always yanks my chain (via Ex-Gay Watch). People have religious convictions against homosexuality--fine, they have a right to air them. There's self-destructive behavior in sectors of gay life--it's only honest to point that out, too. It's when people's post-Enlightenment guilt consciences start getting the better of them--and they start making inane, pseudo-rigorous statements that mime the use of reliable scientific backing--that they become insufferable:

Can a society create more homosexuals? The answer quite clearly is yes. That is how current homosexuals, in fact, came to be.

People, especially the young, can be seduced into homosexual behavior and have their identities molded around the homosexual lifestyle through a combination of persuasion and circumstances that may include the following:

• being convinced homosexuality is acceptable;
  
• reading or viewing explicit homosexual pornography;
  
• having a close relationship with a peer who is practicing homosexuality;
  
• admiring an older teacher or mentor who is homosexual;
  
• attending homosexual social venues (a "gay" club, bar, church youth group);
  
• being homosexually molested;
  
• having parents who espouse homosexuality or engage in homosexual activism;
  
• lacking strong ties to a church that remains faithful to the historic Christian faith, and hostility toward traditional views.

...

Strong religious faith, especially traditional Christian morality, often acts as a protective barrier to the development of homosexual desire. When children grow up trusting God as the Designer of masculinity and femininity, and if they are not sexually molested or have their innocence assaulted by other traumatic events, their feelings will be channeled normally toward heterosexual sex within marriage as an obvious and desirable goal.

Madam, not to put too fine a point on it, but you are an idiot.

My own upbringing, point by point against Ms. Harvey's imaginings:

• Not a week went by at church when the threat homosexuality posed to society was not held up as a reason America was in deep trouble. From the moment AIDS was first identified in the early '80's, my parents reacted to news stories about it by saying that it was God's punishment for sinful behavior;
  
• Yeah, right;
  
• My parents wouldn't have stood for that for a second;
  
• The only teacher known to be gay at my high school was the kind of shriveled-up, mean, trollish guy who made Charles Nelson Reilly look benevolent. I did not, I can assure you, look up to him. Otherwise, I grew up around churchgoing manual laborers and their wives;
  
• The idea of a gay social venue for teenagers in Emmaus, PA, in the 1980s is the funniest thing I've heard all day. My parents believed in fun, but they monitored our access to artifacts of popular culture very closely;
  
• No--I realize that a lot of virulently anti-gay types cling to this explanation like a security blanket, but no;
  
• By telling fag and dyke jokes when activists were featured on television, maybe?
  
• I was brought up in the Worldwide Church of God, a church so utterly off-the-deep-end fundie we weren't invited to the rest of the Christian right's play dates. My father was the teacher for our highest level of youth Bible lessons (like Sunday school). He read to my brother and me from the Bible nightly before tucking us in until I was sixteen or so. After that, I was expected to study the Bible, also nightly, myself. We had two-hour services every week. You took notes.

So "That is how current homosexuals, in fact, came to be"? Sorry. Try again.

I don't mind opposition. Two or three of the earliest friends I made through commenting on blogs frequently commented on what they believed was the sinfulness of homosexuality.

I do very much mind having my biography rewritten by ignoramuses--or rather, people can think whatever insulting things they like about me, but I mind the implications for the people I grew up around. You can't say that irresponsible parenting leads to homosexuality in the abstract without, necessarily, saying that the individual parents of individual homosexuals fell down on the job. Well, my parents did not. They pushed me firmly toward traditionally working-class boyish activities. They set an example of a great marriage. I think some of what they did was misguided--specifically, the anti-gay stuff and the constant playing of Ringo Starr solo albums on the stereo--but nobody's perfect. They managed to turn out resilient kids with fully-functioning bullshit detectors and a can-do approach to tackling life's problems.

None of this is to say that sex ed bureaucrats with intrusive condom-on-banana programs can't confuse and screw up children, or that some people who are unhappily homosexual can't learn to function in a straight relationship, or that child-rearing is currently in the greatest shape in America, or that pop culture isn't increasingly hard for parents to play gatekeeper with. It's just that single-issue explanations that--how convenient!--just happen to support people's preconceived ideas about how the universe works are of little help to people who believe in individuality and the disinterested pursuit of truth. (And yes, it's just as annoying when gay activists do their "we were OBVIOUSLY BORN GAY" routine.) They do, however, cause harm to parents who are thus haunted by the thought that there must have been something they Could Have Done.

This weekend I wrote to another blogger that I was going to try to put a lid on the fifteen-paragraph posts slamming friends who needed to complain sometimes--you know, as if it were an earth-shaking deal.

I'd just like to note here that I made it at least a good forty-eight hours. Maybe it would have been longer had I stayed home all weekend.

There seems to be a certain type of person who arrives at the coming out phase and thinks, Hmmm....Lots of affectionate pity from friends...extra lenience for bad behavior [overdrinking, overspending, screwing over friends, screwing over boyfriends, screwing over friends with their boyfriends]...a ready excuse for not dealing well with my parents...I could learn to like this, and decides to camp there indefinitely.

I doubt that that's a conscious decision for the most part, you understand; it's just this whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing. Nearly everyone starts out in gay life wondering whether he'll make any friends and whether any guys will go for him at all, let alone whether he'll ever find love. It's kind of scary at first. No shame in that. Reasonable people figure that, hey, a little open rejection every now and then is way better than a lot of being closed off and closeted and borderline-suicidal all the time...and besides, if a few million other guys and girls can do it, so can they. And they're right.

By contrast, the determined whiners are the boys who in five years go from a tentative Will anyone ever be interested in me for real? to the confidently crabby I hate the bar scene--everyone's so shallow! without ever stopping at Maybe it's MY behavior that's flawed and I should GET OVER MYSELF and try modifying it in between.

When one of these characters starts getting wound up--here as at home, you generally know you've got trouble when the words "bar scene" are uttered--it is, I have learned, a mistake to try to head him off at the pass by suggesting that he might want to try other possible ways to circulate. Guys have a bizarre way of objecting to Internet classifieds as "kinda pathetic" immediately after complaining that they're dateless and friendless at bars. And recommending that someone join a sports or activities group is useless when his whole problem is that he thinks happiness should bestir itself to come and find him.

Well, all right, you don't like bars, but you don't like the other options any more, so you're stuck here unless you decide to go into a monastery. How about doing what everybody else does? You talk to people. Some of them won't be interested, and some of them won't be very nice about the fact that they're not interested. That stings, but it won't kill you. And talking to guys who don't seem likely to become boyfriends or best buddies reminds you that you're not the center of the universe and everyone has problems. You'll eventually have a relationship that doesn't really go anywhere, or that lasts a year or so before you realize it isn't good for you. You call it a learning experience and move on. That's one of the things that happen when you choose for yourself rather than letting family elders and other matchmakers filter out possible partners. If liberty's not working out for you, maybe you'd prefer to go back to the older system and get your parents to pick. You probably won't be any happier, but at least with you and your wife sharing the same loveless marriage, she might have some empathy to draw on while listening to you mewl.

Despite the best efforts of his dumb-ass of a boyfriend, Atsushi managed to receive an early box of cookies for Valentine's Day today. They were, to hear him tell, very good. Glad to hear it. Still not sure why he keeps that idiot guy around, though.

Madonna, darling, you really need to listen to Heather at Go Fug Yourself. She's only looking after your best interests.

I mean, I gotta hand it to you--photo comparisons show you've had work done, but you clearly haven't had your eyebrows jerked up two inches or gotten your doctor to immobilize your entire face with botox or collagened your lips to dirigible proportions. Good on you for that.

But from the looks of things, that bod of yours has the same fat content as a Snackwells cookie. It's just about as appetizing, too. Middle-aged beauty just isn't the same as 20s beauty, and you (and quite a few of your gay fans around your age) really could stand to remember that every now and then. Guys in their late 40s who want to maintain the granite six-pack they've had for the last two decades can often do it with martial discipline and a little lipo; but the grain of their skin is different, and it no longer hugs their muscles the same way. When they relax into being a little fleshier and more substantive, middle-aged guys stay yummy and touchable-looking. When they avoid adipose cells like the Plague, they look as if they'd starved themselves to vanishing point and been reupholstered in easy-care vinyl. It's depressing to see.

Oops, imagine that. I got derailed into talking about male sexiness. Anyway, back to the issue at hand: Madge, that last video proved to us that you can still fold yourself up like a contortionist and dance around frantically without losing your breath. The point is made. You've impressed your fans once again. Now, if you actually want to make us happy, you might consider going back to making videos that are actually beautiful to look at. Maybe you could come up with a few ideas if you took a day off from the gym and kicked back a little.

What I learned from The Independent today:

Apparently, Tracey Emin's fifteen minutes aren't blessedly over as I'd thought. Sheesh.

There's also this (via Gay News and leading to an interview that's summarized in the original publication here) a piece on a former minister under the conservative UK administrations in the '80s:

Francis Maude, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has said that the homophobic attitude of the Thatcher government contributed to the death of his brother from Aids.

Mr Maude, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said he regretted voting for the now-repealed Section 28, which banned councils from promoting homosexuality. [He explains a little further later on: "Some local authorities were actively promoting homosexuality to school children at a time when gay sex under the age of 21 was illegal."--SRK] "In hindsight a mistake, I voted for it, I was a minister," he said.

...

"The gay scene in London in the 1980s was quite aggressively promiscuous and I think if society generally and the government I served in had been more willing to recognise gay people then there would have been less of that problem."

He added: "A lot of people like my brother would not have succumbed to HIV and lost their lives."

I'm always of two minds when people say stuff like this. On the one hand, yes, people whose moral code says that gays should be outcasts have to behave as they believe, but then they're not exactly in a position to point to statistics about self-destructive behavior and trumpet that they show something inherently screwed-up about homosexuality. Cutting people off from civilizing institutions and social structures is hardly a way to find out whether they're capable of civilized behavior.

On the other...Maude is a powerful politician, not just a prominent private citizen who misses his brother, and I wish politicians were able to display more of a sense of context about these things. We're talking about the aftermath of the Sexual Revolution, the promiscuity of which caused plenty of problems for straight people, too, despite their being accepted by society. Besides which, immoderate behavior is hardly an inevitable response to being reviled--whatever happened to "living well is the best revenge"? I want more acceptance of gays, obviously, and I find Maude's change of heart on the topic very moving. It's just that using AIDS to argue for it always seems to have, hovering in there somwhere, an implication that straight people need to be especially nurturing and gentle toward us because, you know, look what we went and did when they weren't the last time. That's not the way you talk about people you regard as adults and equals.

Another Gay Republican is back to blogging interestingly about politics and, more importantly, has a clean-lined new site design. (Why are the boys in the back snickering about my priorities? Think about it: Two hundred years from now, will people still care whether some stadium was built in DC? Will they still care which shades of red and blue make the most pleasing combination against a dead-white background? Exactly. See how easy rational thought is when you just give it a little effort? Now stop with the sassing; you're distracting me.)

Not every gay guy who's returning to modified versions of old behaviors is getting on my good side by doing it, unfortunately. I ran into a casual friend for the first time in months a few nights ago. As I always do when I meet guys who were single the last time I saw them and have had time to do something about it, I gave him the smirk and the question: "So, anything good to report?"

When will I ever learn? Kaz is not, after all, an unknown hazard. He's still getting over a man he was dating who ultimately decided that he was serious about someone else. The relationship lasted three-ish months and was broken off a year and a half ago.

No, I didn't accidentally reverse those numbers. Dude is now, with a shameless get-down-in-it moroseness that would embarrass Eeyore, into his eighteenth month of self-pity over a dating relationship that barely survived a financial quarter. So there I was last night, once again looking on in sympathy as eyes teared up and lines of the "I just still...you know?" variety were huskily uttered. What made it especially trying was that this week, a dear friend suffered the rather brutal break-up of a live-in relationship of several years. While he's carrying it like a gentleman, he's still in the very early raw stage when you lean on your buddies. Therefore, the weapons in my Gay Big Bro arsenal are kind of in use right now and not really available for people whose major problem is that they failed to notice that they flew over the International Get a Grip Line several months ago.

But even without that unfortunate contrast, I mean, hello? You can't help how hard and fast you fall. We all get the chance to be humiliated by unrequited desire. You give yourself time to regain your self-discipline. Then you exercise it, by faking sociability and an interest in flirting until the real thing comes back. It never works perfectly, at least at first, but it has to be better than spending 600% longer mourning a relationship than you did enjoying it. Better for yourself and, for the love of Cole Porter, those around you.

Added on 12 February: Now that I think about it, I believe Deborah Harry sings that second line in the conditional mood.

If you tend to approach the tasks of daily life with a normal degree of competence, the steps below may not make any sense unless you get a trusted friend to whack you in the head real good with a 2X4. If they still don't make sense, you may need another whack. If you try a third whack and end up brain dead, be sure to contact me, because we will then clearly be able to communicate as equals.

1. Decide under the influence of no-mercy Japanese commercialism that, even though you don't give a fig about Valentine's Day, it would be nice to surprise your Darling Longsuffering Boyfriend with a treat.
   
2. Order early enough not to rouse suspicions of possibly nosy concierge at DLB's apartment building that package is connected with Valentine's Day.
   
3. Go to Dean and Deluca website and locate suitable cookies.
   
4. Carefully type in your address for billing.
   
5. Carefully type in DLB's address for shipping.
   
6. Submit information.
   
7. Get error message telling you that you ignored (clearly visible) instructions to make all characters in addresses full-width and not half-width characters.
   
8. Correct numbers.
   
9. Resubmit information, having failed to notice that radio button for recipient and shipping address is still set to default of "Same as billing."
   
10. Receive notice that order has been shipped.
    
11. Reward self for thinking ahead, for once, with slice of lemon poppyseed cake.
    
12. Receive notice from delivery service that package is waiting in parcel locker of your own apartment complex.
    
13. Retrieve package to find cookies intended for DLB.
    
14. Idly wish there were a way to punish oneself for stupidity by uneating cake.
    
15. Put cookies on counter and figure you can express mail them to DLB yourself next day.
    
16. Look thoughtfully at cookies each time you pass counter on way to bathroom or kitchen.
    
17. No, make that covetously. Look covetously at cookies each time you pass counter.
    
18. Figure the hell with it and open cookies. Eat four with Murder, She Wrote.
    
19. Vaguely think about repackaging rest of cookies in order to disguise half-goneness before sending to DLB. Rationalize that he wouldn't have liked all the girly-girl packaging stuff anyway and might not have been able to finish cookies by expiration date.
    
20. Figure the double-hell with it and eat rest of cookies with blogreading, resolving to order another package next day.
    
21. Congratulate self for having chosen cookies that turned out to be seriously yummy.
    
22. Order another package of cookies next day, this time taking precaution of reading all directions as you go.
    
23. Well, except for the part about making all characters full width before submitting information.
    
24. Punch self in chest as punishment for not being able to remember, after nine years in Japan, that you need to read whether full-width or half-width characters are called for on an on-line form.
    
25. Strip off T-shirt and look in panic at chest to make sure self-punishment has not produced unattractive bruise.
    
26. Submit information by jamming finger into Enter key, which has served you faithfully while you told it to do dumb things.
    
27. Apologize to Enter key.
    
28. Be grateful you have blog that's read faithfully by DLB so that you can tell him you've done something idiotic again without actually having to, you know, tell him.
    
29. Look forlornly at tea and wish you'd saved one or two cookies.

Rondi Adamson has seen Guess Which Movie and offers this:

But...what struck me--and admittedly, I'm seeing this from the narrow and exasperated point of view of a single woman in the midst of dating horrors--was that this movie showed how men are big, fat f*&^wits even in gay relationships!

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for even smart straight people to be hoodwinked into believing that gay male relationships must be easier to navigate because two men are somehow on the same wavelength in ways that men and women are not. One hates to disabuse people of fantasies in which they're clearly deeply invested, but...well, no. Sorry. How representative I am I cannot tell, but face-offs over the course of my own relationship history have frequently centered around the following lines (and no, I'm not going to tell you in which cases I was the deliverer vs. the deliveree):

• "Dammit, GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! Every time we start having a discussion about something that I think MATTERS, you think you can avoid the subject by coming on to me."
  
  
• "Why are you so afraid to express your feelings?"
  
  
• "I just vacuumed the floor on Friday, and it's clean enough for me. If YOU want it kept in a constant state of perfect dustlessness, why don't you vacuum it yourself?"
  
  
• "Are you going out of your way to humiliate me in public? ... Oh, don't give me that! You were flirting with that waiter and the whole table knew it!"
  
  
• "I don't think you're the kind of guy who's ready for commitment yet."
  
  
• "Do you think I'm getting fat?"
  
  
• "Okay, look--here is a pen, and here is a piece of paper, and here is what you are going to do for me: You are going to write down all these little rules--I have to kiss you goodbye every time you leave the house, I have to call you if I'm going to be more than 13.5 minutes later than usual getting home, and I have to say "I love you" in three different major ancient and modern world languages at breakfast every freaking third Thursday. Write them all down. I will memorize them. I will follow them. But stop getting all pissy at me for not doing what you want when I can't figure it out and you won't TELL ME what the hell it is!"

Now, does that mean the dynamic is the same as in straight relationships? Certainly not. We don't have to factor in the possibility of pregnancy or, in most places, marriage. And while in straight relationships I gather that the person who wants everything clean is also statistically more likely to be the one who wants to talk about feelings, things don't cluster that way for gay guys. (The biggest crybaby I ever dated was a dockworker who appeared to be wholly innocent of the knowledge that it was possible to put things on any horizontal surface other than the floor.)

Anyway, my point is that in just about any relationship, one partner is more demonstrative than the other, or wants to have sex more often than the other, or is less inclined to talk through problems than to think through them silently, or what have you. Who's being the big, fat f*&^wit usually varies by situation; it's not always the one who's acting more stereotypically male.

Added on 9 February: Okay, there seems to be some unwritten rule that commenters named John have to make remarks about the vacuuming thing. It's slightly OT, I guess, but let me just note two things.

One is--and I know no one's going to be inclined to believe this, but I hope everyone here trusts my honesty--that my partner at the time was the one who was spazzing about the floors. Yes, I'm serious. I clean scrupulously, but not even in particulate-matter-rich Tokyo does the floor of a childless, petless household need to be vacuumed once every three days. I mean sure, do some spot-cleaning with the dustpan or one of those sticky roller things--I do that myself. But mewl at me that it's my turn to do the full-on move-the-furniture-and-get-out-the-big-vacu-suck-machine maneuver when one of the two or three television shows I actually like to watch is on? No.

The other is, John M. poignantly says, "I try and I try but I just can't see the dirt...." Much as I appreciate the fact that this soul cry represents the sincere desire to reform, I feel obliged to point out that it gets things exactly backwards. You don't notice the dirt. You notice the absence of clean. Once you can actually see dirt, you've reached the point at which getting everything ship-shape is going to be a major project. What you need to look for is the slightly peaked look that the tabletops and upholstery get when they have an invisible layer of dust dulling them up. When things are at that point, you can get them back in order--lovely sparkling, candid order--by going over every surface once and relatively lightly.

I'm afraid my best friend has ruined Brokeback Mountain for me. I'll try to watch it when I get the chance, but I'm pretty sure I'll end up disgracing myself and have to leave (or turn off the DVD player).

He's just seen it himself, and he was describing it to me the other night. To get the full picture, you need context: We were at GB, sitting right under the framed photograph of Bette Davis. Backs to the wall. Surveying the gay drama in action (as it very much was on Saturday). So A. is trying to explain what he thought of the movie without giving too much away, but we've both read the short story, so eventually he decided to give me his entire take: "Heath Ledger--the Australian? He was pretty clearly going overboard on the Wild Wild West of America thing. But...I guess something gets lost in the translation from the Outback, though. If Heath Ledger knows anything about the Outback. And Jake Gyllenhaal was trying for the rugged thing, too, but he came off like a total f**k-me Mary! You know, he batted his eyes in every scene. They were trying to set him up as all gruff and crap, but the whole time you were sitting there thinking, 'He's gonna be the one to take it.'" Now, at this point, I was guffawing so hard I had the dry heaves. I managed to get my drink in both hands and set it down on the counter before I really made a scene, but not before dumping a few mouthfuls of it down the leg of my jeans.

So it's going to be hard for me to appreciate the layers of love and intimacy and pain on-screen with A.'s clipped, educated British voice, slightly but perceptibly aghast, calling Jake Gyllenhaal "Mary" in my head. And while imagining I can see Heath Ledger's Method Acting cogs turning: Kinda like the Outback, just, like, no kangaroos...yeah.

Hope it gets some Oscars, though.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, That psycho who attacked the gay bar in Massachusetts must have been egged on by the Religious Right, because...well, the Religious Right is responsible for all gay problems right down to that hangnail you got before your last blind date. And right correct you are (via IGF):

The hatred and loathing fueling this morning's vicious attack on gay men in New Bedford is not innate, it is learned. And who is teaching it? Leaders of the so-called Christian right, that's who. Individuals like James Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, the Rev. Pat Robertson and their ilk are obsessed with homosexuality. They use their vast resources, media networks and affiliated pulpits to blame lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for all the ills of society. They disguise their hatred as 'deeply held religious beliefs.' We have witnessed seven years of vicious anti-LGBT organizing in Massachusetts — and endured the hate-filled rantings of Brian Camenker of the Article 8 Alliance and Parents Rights Coalition and Ed Pawlick of MassNews. The blood spilled this morning is on their hands.

I wasn't aware that the NGLTF PR office was staffed by research psychologists--there appears to be no evidence presented for the claim that the teenaged suspect in this case was socialized into his psychopathic behavior, rather than being just a plain wrong-'un. I was also under the impression that genuine Nazi-sympathizing nut cases--as the suspect appears to be--thought Dobson and Robertson and their fellow-travelers were a bunch of pussies, in part precisely because they stop well short of recommending that faggots be shot.

Steve Miller also deadpans an appropriate response to the predictable call for more hate crimes legislation:

From HRC: Anti-gay hate crime in Massachusetts is enraging reminder of need to pass law. I agree; walking into a bar and shooting people really ought to be against the law. Glad to hear that HRC is on the case.

The suspect has been apprehended, having now added the murder of another woman and a traffic cop to his record of impishly charming little escapades. CNN also has, BTW, an interview with one of the original victims at the gay bar. (I don't know whether the link will work, but here it is.) The guy reacts with such equanimity and such sweetly self-effacing humor it breaks your heart. Some lunatic almost murdered him with a freaking hatchet and gun a few nights ago, for crying out loud. I'm glad he says he has friends and family to help him through, and I hope the other two victims are as lucky.

Great news: Kylie is in remission. (Via Ghost of a Flea, as if you had to ask)

One of the best things about having the blog has been knowing that Atsushi will read every post. I don't put in secret little messages to him or anything--if I were reading someone else's blog where that was going on, I think it would creep me out--but I know that it's one of the ways he finds out which news stories I'm paying attention to and what kinds of ups and downs friends are having, so when I press "Submit" on this or that entry, I always wonder whether it will turn out to be one that he has a sly comment on.

We talk every night, almost always between 11:15 and 11:45, but sometimes a little later if one of us is working overtime or out with friends or colleagues. I know people in long-distance relationships who only talk every few days, and I figure it must work for them, but I don't really sleep well if we haven't talked a little about our days and said our I-love-yous.

Circumstances do interfere sometimes, though. Atsushi's office is having its company trip this weekend. Those who've been forced to go on corporate retreats will be thinking, Oh, no, not one of those..., and they'll be half-right. There are no weird games where you try to identify whether your leadership style is better represented by a fig or an artichoke or any of that crap. But there's a great deal of enforced togetherness and drinking and singing karaoke. Employee awards and things are often given--things like that. Atsushi was one of the people in charge of planning this year's shindig, so tonight he probably won't be able to call me even though today is exactly the kind of stressful day each of us relies on the other to talk him down from. I'll e-mail his cell phone; he'll at least be able to sneak a few minutes away from his room (shared with coworkers) to read that. But I figure I can post this, too, so that when he gets back home Sunday he can see I was thinking about him.