Your word for the day from the Manley-Webster dictionary:
dickopath, n. (from OE dick, a penis + Gr. pathos, suffering, feeling, emotion, sickness, calamity): a massively self-centered hypocrite with an offensive, grandiose ego who lacks any semblance of a conscience and who displays a pervasive disrespect for the rights and dignity of others; usually a chronic, self-serving liar, seeking to mislead, manipulate, or overpower friends and enemies alike for his own sadistic amusement or enrichment.
It's June 26, a very gay day indeed: the anniversary of the Lawrence, Windsor, and Obergefell decisions.
Steve Hayes reviews the groundbreaking film version of the 1968 play, which portrays gay life as it was fifty years ago (OMG has it really been that long?): before Stonewall happened, when the closet doors were still shut tight, "gay pride" hadn't been thought of, AIDS was nonexistent, and gay marriage was an entirely whimsical thought, as unreal and implausible as time travel.
As it happens, a summer revival of the play, with an all-gay cast, is running on Broadway now. I have no desire to go to New York, but I hope somebody films that production - it would be fascinating to see what the current generation does with it.
I was in high school and had only recently put the words homosexual and me together when I first heard of this film. I think it played a single week in the city where I lived, but I would have sooner jumped off a cliff than go see it back then: both for the fear of being seen and identified as "one of them" as well as the fear of actually meeting "a homosexual" - homo, homo, homo - I actually used to pray that God would never, ever let me meet one of those awful, horrible, depraved people, who would surely tempt me to sin, and ruin my salvation (already in tatters due to my constant, ever-failing battles with - oh woe is me! - the deep, dark, godless sin of masturbation).
Sounds so silly now, of course: but at the time, it was a deadly serious thing for a young, isolated gay boy who knew what he was and hated it with every breath. That kind of fear and self-hatred is something straight people never go through - and I have yet to meet one who really "got it." It does bad things to you inside. Really bad. Some guys didn't make it. That could have been me, too. Or you, perhaps. But as my truckbuddy Frank remarked to me the other day, we managed to live thought all that, we are survivors - and that is surely something to be glad of.
I finally came out a decade later in college, and yes of course I had already shed all that fundamentalist crap - but between all that and the bullying in school, and the constant fear of being "found out" I was badly injured - as I know so many of my truckbuddies were too. A stupid, awful, inhuman thing to put people though - for no good reason whatsoever. I was about to rejoice that all that is history - but is it really? We only had to deal with bullies in person back then - now there are cyberbullies and all sorts of public invective on the airwaves that wasn't possible in those days.
And the scars still hurt. They will always hurt. Like the pain of losing a loved one. But life goes on, regardless of all your hurts, and in time you just learn to make the best of things. Nobody gets through life unscathed, though some work really hard at hiding the fact.
One more note: when I finally got to see the video, say around 1985, and also found a copy of the play in a used book store, I was struck with how true to life it was, and still is - kudos to playwright Mart Crowley, a fellow Southerner, now 82 - a microcosm of the gay world that still rings true to me. I don't mean the clothes and the music and the slang, which are ever-changing, but the way gay people talk and act among themselves, when there's no need to "butch it up" or mind your manners or pretend to be straight - which for the men of my generation and before was, and still is down here in the provinces, our automatic default mode in public.
I saw the video again a few years ago, and while this time I didn't see the ending as being quite so bleak and depressing as I had the first time, I still thought the dialogue, the essential gayness of the characters was spot on. Because human nature in general does not change, and by corollary, the sub-category of gay nature does not change, either - that's my view of things. (If human nature were not a constant, we would have changed into some other kind of critters long ago. But human nature is the same from age to age - just as is dog nature, cat nature, monkey nature, etc. - all capable of infinite outward variations, yet inwardly still the same.) But another thing that straight people don't get, unless they are very wise indeed, is that gayness is not only about who you sleep with - there's a nature, a character, a spirit, a whatever-you-call-it that comes with being gay, that is part of the package.
No, I don't mean effeminacy, necessarily - oh stop it, Mary - I have known (in both senses of the word) bricklayers, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, football players, and Marines, none of whom had a touch of nelly queen about them, though they probably thought I had more than a touch, sometime or other. But there's a certain beingness, for want of a better word, that I recognize in other gay men, butch or femme, or somewhere in between. I mean a certain ambiance, if you will, a certain way of encountering the world and looking at it. A certain attitude and rhythm of being that is neither straight-guy nor straight-girl but something else again - a third mode of being that partakes of both the others, but is itself, by itself, complete, and not merely an imitation of the other two: something else again. Something that is neither good nor bad but just IS - and is no strange thing, but simply belongs here in this world, like any other part of nature, human or otherwise. We just are. No explanation or justification needed.
At least that's how it seems to me, but I'm afraid I have neither the vocabulary nor the patience to write out a full exegesis of gaiety at this time. Instead, why don't you fellas just go watch the video again, and I dare you to come back and tell me you don't see yourself in at least one of the characters, or several, or maybe all! At least, you'll be reminded of one important thing - it's so so so important in this preachy, self-righteous, broomstick-up-the-ass modern world to be able to laugh at ourselves. That too is an essential part of the human condition, and one we disown at our peril.
PS - I don't presume to speak for all the other letters of LGBTQIXYZ and whatever - they can certainly speak for themselves if they please. I can only speak of what pertains to my existence and experience on this planet. And of course my existence, my beingness, does not in any way preclude theirs. I really, really don't want to run anybody else's life; I simply want everybody else to leave me the hell alone and let me get on with mine, on my own terms, and not those of some puritans of the left or the right.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.) told a crowd of supporters in Los Angeles on Saturday to mob and harass members of the Trump administration:
Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.
Now Waters may have done some good things along the road, but this is stupidity in action. It is childish demagoguery, inciting hatred and possibly riot, and inviting a terrible backlash. It is completely un-American, uncivilized, and dumb beyond words. It is just what you might expect out of Donald Trump, only this time it comes from a voice on the left.
The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer's editorial board has this to say:
It might seem satisfying to liberals to see members of Donald Trump's administration fleeing from restaurants after being shamed by patrons or booted by the owner. That happened to three of Trump's people last week, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was asked to leave the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., by its owner Friday night. Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Trump adviser Stephen Miller were shouted out of Washington restaurants. . . .
But such behavior shouldn't feel satisfying, and it's not necessary. It's liberals trying to beat Donald Trump by becoming Donald Trump.
It wasn't long ago that these same Democrats fretted about Trump's crassness and willingness to demean anyone who dared disagree with him. They and we worried that his bullying would do more harm to political discourse, and that's exactly what's happening, as nastiness has bled from the political fringe into the political mainstream.
Certainly, that's been encouraged by members and supporters of the Trump administration, who regularly ridicule the press and political opponents. All the more reason to punch back, say progressives, who contend that the only way to defeat Trump is to fight bile with bile. But that's not true, as liberals themselves showed last week by getting Trump to back down from his policy of separating immigrant children from parents at the border. How'd they do it? By shining a light on injustice, by flooding social media, by swaying public opinion and eventually Republicans in Washington with the force and volume of their voices.
The same approach, by the way, helped save Obamacare last year from Republicans in Congress.
Adding a dollop of shame at some restaurants last week didn't add to the progressive victory. It was self-indulgence, and it gives license to similar behavior. It's not a great leap from disrupting the meal of White House officials or members of Congress to doing the same to any Republican who wears a MAGA hat or Democrat who wears a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Are we ready for restaurant owners and other businesses to decline service for all manners of firmly held convictions? Are we ready for all the shouting that's ahead?
This is the path we're careening down, in Washington and across our country. Instead of extending grace to those with whom we disagree, we're increasingly deciding they are unworthy of it. We're following the lead of our president, whether we agree or disagree with him. We're losing.
Your Head Trucker agrees. What everybody needs to keep in mind is that just because you've been oppressed or victimized, that does NOT mean you can do no wrong. Every human being on the face of this planet--and yes I mean women, blacks, gays, "liberals," "progressives," "conservatives," and all the other subdivisions of the species, real or imaginary--is capable of wrongdoing at every point in life--it takes constant attention and self-scrutiny to stay on the path of goodness and human decency. We step off the upward path, the path of peace and civility, at our great peril.
Even if you are the sort of person who just doesn't give a flip about decency and fair play and the Golden Rule--do you really want to start this kind of stupid shit? Because it will surely become in a very short time a game of tit for tat. How about the first time a howling mob gathers around a member of your particular subcommunity or affiliation, and drives them out of a public venue--or worse yet, starts beating on them, as mobs are wont to do? How will you feel then, bucko? Hah?
What goes around, comes around. Count on it.
Don't go there. Just don't fucking go there. We are Americans, we may disagree loud and long in the political arena--but we leave it there. We don't harass the other side in the ordinary streets and shops of private life. We don't check party IDs at the door of any business. We don't persecute people for their politics. That's a filthy thing to do, and so was booting Sarah Sanders from a restaurant on political grounds. That's not the America I love and believe in. Waters spoke like an ignorant, self-centered, short-sighted rabble-rouser.
Just like Donald Trump, in fact. How ugly, ugly, ugly.
We are all standing at the brink of a deep, fiery pit. Do we really have to jump into it?
Do dreams ever really come true? The other day, my truckbuddy Frank posted a video of gay people of a certain age--ahem--reading aloud the letters they would write to their 18-year-old selves, if they could. Which is all very nice, full of uplifting, inspiring Reader's-Digest-happy-ending thoughts. Lovely.
But I can't write that kind of letter. What I would have to tell my 18-year-old self would only scare the hell out of him. And nobody else wants to hear that kind of truth. It's practically un-American.
It's true that some things for gay people have gotten much better. Others, not so much. Plus ca change, you know? And then there's just the implacable force of circumstance here and there in the course of my particular life, which no advice would change: boulders in the stream. Too many boulders make a dam and block the flow of things: an insuperable obstacle.
In many cases, it's just best that you don't know what's coming to pass. The only advice I could possibly give anyone is to hope for the best, plan for the worst, ride out the storms when they come as best you can - for they will come, and they will be fierce. Nevertheless, be kind, very kind, always, though it's often easier said than done. Play the hand you're dealt. Don't whine. Could always be worse. Bloom where you are planted. Better to fail at something than to never even try.
So what if other people have lives in glorious technicolor, and you have only one not-so-brilliant hue? All those colors come at a high price: from those to whom much is given, much is expected. Be content with what you do have and enjoy it. Nobody has a perfect life, though many pretend otherwise, and nobody has The Answer to anything, so trust your own experience and common sense. You are your own best moral compass, so stick to your guns.
And then there are those I've loved and lost--as someone, sometime has said, "Grief is the price you pay for love." Well, that's exactly right, isn't it? The hibiscus blossoms in the bright sunshine outside my window last only a day - one must treasure their blazing beauty, glory in them, while they last, and be content with that. If they wither and fade, is that failure--or simply what is meant to be? What has to be. Quien sabe?
The cycles of day and night, the passing seasons of the year, the flowers, the leaves, the rippling brook, the fleeting clouds in the sky, sun and moon and scintillating stars all proclaim with one accord a certain sad but lovely truth to the eye of wisdom. What that message is, I leave to my truckbuddies to decide.
But here I am, somehow in the autumn of my years, but blessed to live another shining summer of life. In place of a letter, here is my salute to the always hopeful, ever-festive, gaily flourishing, fearless midsummer month of June--exquisitely sung by the late Eva Cassidy, whose life was much too short:
Presidents have many jobs, and one is telling us who we are.
For the first 240 years of U.S. history, at least, our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. The Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson etched onto the Declaration of Independence were given voice by Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama.
Donald Trump doesn’t talk like that. In the 18 months since his Inauguration, Trump has mentioned “democracy” fewer than 100 times, “equality” only 12 times and “human rights” just 10 times. . . .
A week after his return from the June 12 summit with North Korea’s dictator, family separation dominated the national conversation like no other political story since former FBI chief James Comey was shown the door. A steadily building wave of revulsion washed over the political spectrum, from MSNBC to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to Franklin Graham and into the White House living quarters, when a spokeswoman for the First Lady said she called for “a country that governs with heart.”
Which leaves us facing a question: What kind of country are we? The world has been nervously asking that since November 2016. And while Trump ultimately capitulated on the forced separation of children, his new order suggested that families would be detained not only together, but perhaps indefinitely. For many Americans, the forced separation of immigrant families left them looking into the void from which the brutal policy emerged: the dark space left by the words Trump does say. . . .
What values does America’s billionaire President embrace in place of the Founders’? A kind of gimlet-eyed competition. Trump purports to run the country as a business, the most meaningful metric being exports vs. imports: if you have more than your counterpart, you’re a winner, and the other guy a loser. But even in the bloodless world of accounting, “goodwill” has a place on the ledger (the left side; it’s an asset) and the U.S. may be writing down a loss. Its economy is strong. The people pitching up at its borders surely count as proof of that.
It was Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer of the early American character, who recognized the danger of placing too much value on business, law and order at the expense of the higher values. Warning of the country’s obsession with material gain and the enforcement of order necessary to pursue it, he wrote, “A nation that asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart.”
Which is why the test posed with Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy is as much about our future as it is about the tragedy of the families separated by its implementation. Trump may have backed down on the specific practice of family separation, but the larger question remains. In the balance between the integrity of the U.S. border with Mexico and a parent’s love for a child, where will we come down?
“Without a Border, you don’t have a Country,” the President wrote on June 19. Everyone knows that. The question is, what kind of country?
The photographer who took the photograph of the child explains the background of her story:
What I say: If this misled, misguided country does not repent and shed the cruel, uncaring, unjust evil twining about its heart, and quickly, it may be in store for a terrible retribution at the hands of Fate. For as everyone knows: What goes around, comes around.
Those who yearn for a truly "Christian nation" had best examine their own hearts and heed these words of warning:
Matthew 25:31-46 King James Version (KJV):
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Former First Lady Laura Bush, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, emphasis mine:
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.
Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
