I Am Michael is now streaming on Netflix, and I watched it last night. Like many, I found the film perplexing and frustrating. There wasn’t much insight provided as to why Michael Glatze would be drawn into Religious Right anti-LGBT beliefs. To me, Michael came off as disturbing and unhinged.
We learn that Michael’s father died suddenly of a heart condition when Michael was 13, and then his mother died a few years later when Michael was in college. Just before he abandons his friends and boyfriend and denounces LGBT recognition, identity and rights, he has a string of panic attacks, which he fears are symptoms of the same heart condition that killed his father. When he’s given a clean bill of health, he takes it as a sign.
So he had an existential crisis? That isn’t rare. Many have trouble facing their own mortality. Many wonder about meaning and purpose. Many find comfort in religion and spirituality. But why would Michael choose Christian fundamentalism? It doesn’t make much sense. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of other points of view. And his parents didn’t foist fundamentalist beliefs on him. His father was an agnostic, and although his mother identified as Christian, she wasn’t Religious Right Christian, and she hardly ever talked about her beliefs. She didn’t take Michael to church.
One thing I noticed was how Michael always wanted to be out front. He wanted to lead. He wanted followers. He wanted to be the preacher. He was always going to the extreme. When he went to San Francisco with his boyfriend, he immersed himself in fast lane urban LGBT life. He joined a magazine and became an activist. Then he wrote a guide for LGBT youth. Then he started his own LGBT magazine. After becoming a fundamentalist, he started writing inflammatory blog posts that drew a lot of media attention. When he went to Bible school, he started telling his fellow students they needed to listen to God and not the instructors. Many seemed to be listening to Michael. Finally, he became the pastor of his own church. I got the impression he was an attention whore who was basically empty inside. He was absorbed by a particular subculture. He studied it. He learned to mimic. Then he wanted to take over. I suspect he has some kind of personality disorder, maybe borderline. There doesn’t seem to be a center. No one is really home. And the attention seeking and the adopted zealotry might be his way of compensating.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Monday, July 31, 2017
We Americans
by Gary Cottle
We are quiet and gentle
As much as we are brash.
We are communal
As much as we are individuals, rugged and refined.
We work in the morning for ourselves.
We work in the afternoon for our compatriots.
We dream, hope and pray at night.
There is no conflict.
Our country is large.
We spread out, body and mind.
We claim this country, body and mind.
We will not be dispossessed.
We give thanks for our bounty
As we acknowledge our wrongs.
There is no conflict.
We can be proud, grateful, humble, sad and sorrowful
As we laugh and dance with joy.
We know how to do all of these things,
We Americans.
We honor the cowboys and the cashiers,
The astronauts and the accountants,
The teachers and the custodians,
Star gazers, bird watchers, dancers and athletes,
There is no conflict.
Our country is large.
We are boys who go down on our knees
In basement rooms for men we do not know.
We give pleasure.
We walk with Jesus.
We are angels.
We are girls who speak out,
Sing, build and lead.
Taoists who have found the way.
We are male and female, both and neither.
We love male and female, both and neither.
There is no conflict.
We speak English, Spanish, Hebrew and Hindi.
We are brown, black and beige,
Writhing together in pleasure.
We hyphenate and assimilate.
Our country is large.
We march to the beat of our private drummers,
We pursue our ambitions
As we care for the sick, dying, afflicted and young.
We teach the children.
We take in the homeless and feed the hungry.
We do not ask who is worthy.
We are all worthy,
We Americans.
We believe in the Big Bang,
The Big Crunch, the Great Spirit,
And the Great Pumpkin.
We believe in love, hugs, smiles and handshakes,
We believe in open minds and open hearts.
We do not build walls.
We do not exclude.
We are not fearful of our neighbors.
We will not cringe by the threat of hell.
We claim this country.
We will not be dispossessed,
We Americans.
We are quiet and gentle
As much as we are brash.
We are communal
As much as we are individuals, rugged and refined.
We work in the morning for ourselves.
We work in the afternoon for our compatriots.
We dream, hope and pray at night.
There is no conflict.
Our country is large.
We spread out, body and mind.
We claim this country, body and mind.
We will not be dispossessed.
We give thanks for our bounty
As we acknowledge our wrongs.
There is no conflict.
We can be proud, grateful, humble, sad and sorrowful
As we laugh and dance with joy.
We know how to do all of these things,
We Americans.
We honor the cowboys and the cashiers,
The astronauts and the accountants,
The teachers and the custodians,
Star gazers, bird watchers, dancers and athletes,
There is no conflict.
Our country is large.
We are boys who go down on our knees
In basement rooms for men we do not know.
We give pleasure.
We walk with Jesus.
We are angels.
We are girls who speak out,
Sing, build and lead.
Taoists who have found the way.
We are male and female, both and neither.
We love male and female, both and neither.
There is no conflict.
We speak English, Spanish, Hebrew and Hindi.
We are brown, black and beige,
Writhing together in pleasure.
We hyphenate and assimilate.
Our country is large.
We march to the beat of our private drummers,
We pursue our ambitions
As we care for the sick, dying, afflicted and young.
We teach the children.
We take in the homeless and feed the hungry.
We do not ask who is worthy.
We are all worthy,
We Americans.
We believe in the Big Bang,
The Big Crunch, the Great Spirit,
And the Great Pumpkin.
We believe in love, hugs, smiles and handshakes,
We believe in open minds and open hearts.
We do not build walls.
We do not exclude.
We are not fearful of our neighbors.
We will not cringe by the threat of hell.
We claim this country.
We will not be dispossessed,
We Americans.
Saturday, July 8, 2017
So much more than a mere depressive
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I finally got around to The Bell Jar. I had been interested in the novel for decades. It’s about a young woman’s battle with severe suicidal depression. Because of my own battles with the disease, I was a bit afraid of the novel, and it is often suggested that Plath was unrelentingly gloomy. I bought into this negative image of Plath, but I now know that portrait of her is unfair.
***SPOILERS***
It is widely known the novel is, more or less, a roman à clef. The protagonist Esther Greenwood is really Sylvia Plath herself. In the beginning, Esther is not unlike many young people just about to leave school. She’s insecure. She feels alienated. She has doubts about the future.
Esther is a smart girl with a passion for literature, poetry in particular. She is used to doing well and winning prizes and accolades for her academic and artistic accomplishments. She won a scholarship to go to college, and the summer after her junior year, she was allowed to work at a women’s magazine in New York for a month. This was the summer the Rosenbergs were executed, an event that troubles Esther. Esther is put up at a women’s hotel, given expensive clothes and sent to parties and fashion shows.
The trouble is, Esther is rather put off by her experiences in New York. She finds the young women around her to be vapid and conformist, and she isn’t interested in fashion. The only thing she seems to enjoy is the chance to eat expensive food in a nice restaurant. Esther pigs out, and the scene is rather comical. Yes, I found myself laughing while reading Sylvia Plath. Imagine that. Unfortunately, the rich dinner gives Esther and the other girls food poisoning.
Esther’s supervisor at the magazine has a frank talk about her prospects. Esther imagines herself becoming a poet and a professor. But she knows that she can’t support herself by writing poetry, and advanced degrees and a teaching position seems a long way off and not at all guaranteed. So she tells the woman that maybe she could work in the publishing industry, but the editor informs her that the business is quite competitive, and she needs to be sophisticated, worldly, and she needs to speak several foreign languages. Esther doesn’t know any foreign languages, and even though she’s intelligent and a good student, she’s naïve and inexperienced. While in New York, she orders random drinks because she has no idea what she might like.
Esther can’t rely on her family to support her while she figures everything out. Her father died when she was 9 and didn’t leave any insurance. Her mother has had to support Esther and her brother by teaching typing and shorthand. Esther’s mother is supportive, but she wants Esther to be practical. She’d like Esther to learn shorthand so she’ll have a marketable skill after college. Esther can’t think of any job she would want that would involve shorthand.
Nearly everyone, including Esther’s mother, expects Esther to get married and have children. But Esther can’t imagine being a mother and a poet. Esther does have a boyfriend, and by the standards of the 1950s, he is a great catch. Buddy is handsome and athletic, and he’s in medical school. Buddy is going to be a doctor.
Buddy, however, doesn’t take Esther’s enthusiasm for literature seriously. Like many literal science-minded types, he doesn’t relate to artistic expression. He tells Esther that her poetry is dust, and she’ll lose interest once she becomes a mother.
Esther decides to break up with Buddy after he tells her he had a sexual relationship with a waitress the previous summer. She isn’t jealous. In fact, she understands Buddy’s desire to engage in sexual experimentation. But she resents the fact that he has been presenting himself as pure and a great believer in traditional values. Esther wants to have sex, too. Not because of lust. She wants the experience, and she wants to be Buddy’s equal. However, in 1950s America, it was permissible for a “nice” boy to have sex, but a girl who had sex before marriage was a slut.
Before his confession, Buddy gives Esther a tour of medical school. Esther is exposed to death and disease, and she is also allowed to watch a baby being born. The mother is in terrible agony, but Buddy tells Esther she has been given a drug which will make her forget the pain. Esther doesn’t like that. She thinks women should be allowed to remember the pain so that they’ll know what they’re in for the next time they’re pregnant.
Esther goes out with a couple of men with the intention of gaining sexual experience. The first man is nice, but he is uninterested in sex with Esther. The second man hates women and attempts to rape Esther.
Esther wants to take part in a summer writing workshop after her job in New York is over, but she’s turned down. Esther is forced to move back home with her mother for the rest of the summer.
This is when Esther’s depression really kicks in. She stops eating and sleeping. She stops taking care of herself, and she loses interest in everything. She can’t even read because she can’t concentrate.
Esther is sent to a psychiatrist, an attractive young man who isn’t really interested in Esther. He tells her how all the girls at her school are “pretty.” He prescribes electroshock, but the treatment is poorly administered, and Esther is wide awake during the procedure. Esther wonders what she could have done to deserve such a punishment. (And remember, Esther has been worrying about the Rosenbergs.) After the procedure, the psychiatrist once again patronizes Esther by telling her all the girls at her school are pretty.
Esther thinks psychiatry and the shock treatments are like the drug given to pregnant women. They cover up the pain rather than address the underlying problem.
After the treatment, Esther becomes suicidal and eventually nearly succeeds in killing herself, but her mother finds her in time, and she’s sent to a private hospital where she’s treated by an understanding doctor. This woman supports Esther’s literary ambitions, and she understands Esther’s desire to engage in sex with men she doesn’t necessarily love or want to marry. She assists Esther in attaining a diaphragm. Esther is given insulin and more shock treatments, but this time the treatments are properly administered, and Esther recovers from her illness and returns to school.
Esther has a lot of stress in her life. Few people understand her, and she is pressured to be someone she isn’t. She’s young and inexperienced, and her family doesn’t have any money, so Esther will soon have to support herself. But Plath wants us to understand that it is the disease that pushes Esther over the edge, not Esther’s mother, or Buddy, or sexism, or 1950s conformity, or economics, or traumatic events.
Seventy years before Plath wrote her novel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in which a woman is driven insane by the expectations and constraints placed on her as a woman at the time. Plath directly addresses the expectations and constraints placed on Esther in 1950s America, but Esther’s illness isn’t a literary device. It’s a real disease that comes on top of everything else, and not all professionals can be trusted to help. In fact, some might do more harm than good.
So what is the bell jar in this context? That is Plath’s remarkably accurate way to describe clinical depression. It comes down over you, blocking you off from the rest of the world and distorting your impressions of it. Even after the depression lifts, the bell jar continues to hover overhead, and it might descend on you again.
Plath finished college and won a Fulbright Scholarship. She married a fellow poet, taught for a while, got some of her poetry published and had two children. Sadly, she found herself trapped in the bell jar again on February 11, 1963. She suffered from depression, but she was so much more than a mere depressive.
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I finally got around to The Bell Jar. I had been interested in the novel for decades. It’s about a young woman’s battle with severe suicidal depression. Because of my own battles with the disease, I was a bit afraid of the novel, and it is often suggested that Plath was unrelentingly gloomy. I bought into this negative image of Plath, but I now know that portrait of her is unfair.
***SPOILERS***
It is widely known the novel is, more or less, a roman à clef. The protagonist Esther Greenwood is really Sylvia Plath herself. In the beginning, Esther is not unlike many young people just about to leave school. She’s insecure. She feels alienated. She has doubts about the future.
Esther is a smart girl with a passion for literature, poetry in particular. She is used to doing well and winning prizes and accolades for her academic and artistic accomplishments. She won a scholarship to go to college, and the summer after her junior year, she was allowed to work at a women’s magazine in New York for a month. This was the summer the Rosenbergs were executed, an event that troubles Esther. Esther is put up at a women’s hotel, given expensive clothes and sent to parties and fashion shows.
The trouble is, Esther is rather put off by her experiences in New York. She finds the young women around her to be vapid and conformist, and she isn’t interested in fashion. The only thing she seems to enjoy is the chance to eat expensive food in a nice restaurant. Esther pigs out, and the scene is rather comical. Yes, I found myself laughing while reading Sylvia Plath. Imagine that. Unfortunately, the rich dinner gives Esther and the other girls food poisoning.
Esther’s supervisor at the magazine has a frank talk about her prospects. Esther imagines herself becoming a poet and a professor. But she knows that she can’t support herself by writing poetry, and advanced degrees and a teaching position seems a long way off and not at all guaranteed. So she tells the woman that maybe she could work in the publishing industry, but the editor informs her that the business is quite competitive, and she needs to be sophisticated, worldly, and she needs to speak several foreign languages. Esther doesn’t know any foreign languages, and even though she’s intelligent and a good student, she’s naïve and inexperienced. While in New York, she orders random drinks because she has no idea what she might like.
Esther can’t rely on her family to support her while she figures everything out. Her father died when she was 9 and didn’t leave any insurance. Her mother has had to support Esther and her brother by teaching typing and shorthand. Esther’s mother is supportive, but she wants Esther to be practical. She’d like Esther to learn shorthand so she’ll have a marketable skill after college. Esther can’t think of any job she would want that would involve shorthand.
Nearly everyone, including Esther’s mother, expects Esther to get married and have children. But Esther can’t imagine being a mother and a poet. Esther does have a boyfriend, and by the standards of the 1950s, he is a great catch. Buddy is handsome and athletic, and he’s in medical school. Buddy is going to be a doctor.
Buddy, however, doesn’t take Esther’s enthusiasm for literature seriously. Like many literal science-minded types, he doesn’t relate to artistic expression. He tells Esther that her poetry is dust, and she’ll lose interest once she becomes a mother.
Esther decides to break up with Buddy after he tells her he had a sexual relationship with a waitress the previous summer. She isn’t jealous. In fact, she understands Buddy’s desire to engage in sexual experimentation. But she resents the fact that he has been presenting himself as pure and a great believer in traditional values. Esther wants to have sex, too. Not because of lust. She wants the experience, and she wants to be Buddy’s equal. However, in 1950s America, it was permissible for a “nice” boy to have sex, but a girl who had sex before marriage was a slut.
Before his confession, Buddy gives Esther a tour of medical school. Esther is exposed to death and disease, and she is also allowed to watch a baby being born. The mother is in terrible agony, but Buddy tells Esther she has been given a drug which will make her forget the pain. Esther doesn’t like that. She thinks women should be allowed to remember the pain so that they’ll know what they’re in for the next time they’re pregnant.
Esther goes out with a couple of men with the intention of gaining sexual experience. The first man is nice, but he is uninterested in sex with Esther. The second man hates women and attempts to rape Esther.
Esther wants to take part in a summer writing workshop after her job in New York is over, but she’s turned down. Esther is forced to move back home with her mother for the rest of the summer.
This is when Esther’s depression really kicks in. She stops eating and sleeping. She stops taking care of herself, and she loses interest in everything. She can’t even read because she can’t concentrate.
Esther is sent to a psychiatrist, an attractive young man who isn’t really interested in Esther. He tells her how all the girls at her school are “pretty.” He prescribes electroshock, but the treatment is poorly administered, and Esther is wide awake during the procedure. Esther wonders what she could have done to deserve such a punishment. (And remember, Esther has been worrying about the Rosenbergs.) After the procedure, the psychiatrist once again patronizes Esther by telling her all the girls at her school are pretty.
Esther thinks psychiatry and the shock treatments are like the drug given to pregnant women. They cover up the pain rather than address the underlying problem.
After the treatment, Esther becomes suicidal and eventually nearly succeeds in killing herself, but her mother finds her in time, and she’s sent to a private hospital where she’s treated by an understanding doctor. This woman supports Esther’s literary ambitions, and she understands Esther’s desire to engage in sex with men she doesn’t necessarily love or want to marry. She assists Esther in attaining a diaphragm. Esther is given insulin and more shock treatments, but this time the treatments are properly administered, and Esther recovers from her illness and returns to school.
Esther has a lot of stress in her life. Few people understand her, and she is pressured to be someone she isn’t. She’s young and inexperienced, and her family doesn’t have any money, so Esther will soon have to support herself. But Plath wants us to understand that it is the disease that pushes Esther over the edge, not Esther’s mother, or Buddy, or sexism, or 1950s conformity, or economics, or traumatic events.
Seventy years before Plath wrote her novel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in which a woman is driven insane by the expectations and constraints placed on her as a woman at the time. Plath directly addresses the expectations and constraints placed on Esther in 1950s America, but Esther’s illness isn’t a literary device. It’s a real disease that comes on top of everything else, and not all professionals can be trusted to help. In fact, some might do more harm than good.
So what is the bell jar in this context? That is Plath’s remarkably accurate way to describe clinical depression. It comes down over you, blocking you off from the rest of the world and distorting your impressions of it. Even after the depression lifts, the bell jar continues to hover overhead, and it might descend on you again.
Plath finished college and won a Fulbright Scholarship. She married a fellow poet, taught for a while, got some of her poetry published and had two children. Sadly, she found herself trapped in the bell jar again on February 11, 1963. She suffered from depression, but she was so much more than a mere depressive.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Tree House Kiss
I wouldn’t say Closet Monster is a coming out story because high school senior Oscar, played by Connor Jessup, doesn’t really come out. It’s more of a coming of age story.
***SPOILERS***
Oscar’s parents split up when he was about 8, and he continues to have issues with both of them. His mother left, married another man and formed a new family. Even though Oscar spends time with his mother and has his own room at her new home, he still feels abandoned by her. On the other hand, his father can be a bit nuts. For instance, Oscar isn’t allowed to have a key to his own house because his father is afraid someone will steal from him, so if Oscar comes home from school or work when his father is out, he has to retreat to his tree house in the back yard.
Oscar witnessed an especially brutal gay bashing when he was a kid, so now when he starts thinking about having sex with guys, he experiences flashbacks and associates intimacy with violence.
He wants to be a makeup artist for the movie industry, and he’s especially interested in the horror and fantasy genres. He has pinned all of his hopes on attending a specific school in New York City, and he plans to share an apartment with his best friend, a girl whom his father assumes is his girlfriend.
Oscar gets a job at a home supply store, and there he meets Wilder, a lanky pretty boy brimming with self-confidence and social ease. One day, Wilder surprises Oscar in the employee locker room when he asks Oscar if he can borrow his work shirt. Oscar is coming off of his shift and informs Wilder that the shirt is sweaty. Wilder doesn’t care and puts it on anyway. Oscar is instantly smitten.
Oscar and Wilder become friends. They hang out together, go to a party together, and one night, they share Oscar’s bed in the tree house. It becomes awkward for Oscar when he accidentally reveals he’s attracted to Wilder. Wilder, ever the cool dude, kisses Oscar and gives his crotch a squeeze. But Oscar doesn’t feel anything because Wilder doesn’t really mean it. He’s merely indulging Oscar. Wilder leaves town the next day.
I thought a tree house would be a wonderful place to lose your virginity, and for it to happen with the boy you’ve been longing for… Wow! That’s a story you could happily tell for the rest of your life. But things don’t work out the way Oscar wants them to. He isn’t accepted at the school in New York, so he has to quickly make alternative plans.
Even though the story ends on a down note, we get the sense that Oscar is going to be okay. He’ll find another way to get the training he wants, and he’ll be better prepared the next time a special boy comes along.
***SPOILERS***
Oscar’s parents split up when he was about 8, and he continues to have issues with both of them. His mother left, married another man and formed a new family. Even though Oscar spends time with his mother and has his own room at her new home, he still feels abandoned by her. On the other hand, his father can be a bit nuts. For instance, Oscar isn’t allowed to have a key to his own house because his father is afraid someone will steal from him, so if Oscar comes home from school or work when his father is out, he has to retreat to his tree house in the back yard.
Oscar witnessed an especially brutal gay bashing when he was a kid, so now when he starts thinking about having sex with guys, he experiences flashbacks and associates intimacy with violence.
He wants to be a makeup artist for the movie industry, and he’s especially interested in the horror and fantasy genres. He has pinned all of his hopes on attending a specific school in New York City, and he plans to share an apartment with his best friend, a girl whom his father assumes is his girlfriend.
Oscar gets a job at a home supply store, and there he meets Wilder, a lanky pretty boy brimming with self-confidence and social ease. One day, Wilder surprises Oscar in the employee locker room when he asks Oscar if he can borrow his work shirt. Oscar is coming off of his shift and informs Wilder that the shirt is sweaty. Wilder doesn’t care and puts it on anyway. Oscar is instantly smitten.
Oscar and Wilder become friends. They hang out together, go to a party together, and one night, they share Oscar’s bed in the tree house. It becomes awkward for Oscar when he accidentally reveals he’s attracted to Wilder. Wilder, ever the cool dude, kisses Oscar and gives his crotch a squeeze. But Oscar doesn’t feel anything because Wilder doesn’t really mean it. He’s merely indulging Oscar. Wilder leaves town the next day.
I thought a tree house would be a wonderful place to lose your virginity, and for it to happen with the boy you’ve been longing for… Wow! That’s a story you could happily tell for the rest of your life. But things don’t work out the way Oscar wants them to. He isn’t accepted at the school in New York, so he has to quickly make alternative plans.
Even though the story ends on a down note, we get the sense that Oscar is going to be okay. He’ll find another way to get the training he wants, and he’ll be better prepared the next time a special boy comes along.
Friday, May 12, 2017
Regarding American Crime: Season 2
I found the second season of American Crime streaming on Netflix last weekend, and I just finished it. I was interested because the sweet and beautiful Connor Jessup played a gay boy. I first saw Connor in Falling Skies, and for a while, I didn’t think he could act. He seemed wooden, and he had a pronounced Canadian accent. Nothing wrong with having a Canadian accent, of course, but it wasn’t right for the part, and doing accents goes along with acting. Well, he apparently worked on his accent and acting skills because by the end of the series, I thought he was pretty good…not to mention adorable. However, he really showed he can act in American Crime.
***SPOILERS***
I was right there with Taylor, played by Connor, when he admitted to his mother he had gone to a party and had a beer, but he swore he had not indulge enough to explain the pictures of him that appeared online. The photos showed him passed out by a pool of vomit with his pants down. He tells his mother that he believes he was drugged and that someone did something to him.
What follows is a terrifying, complicated examination of the worst of human instincts. This series is like a film noir because no one comes out smelling like a rose. A lot of people get their comeuppance. As Terri, a fiercely protective mother who is forced to look at herself in the mirror, says, no one is coming after us; things are catching up. However, at the end of the story, Taylor is the one sent to prison, and Eric, his rapist, is riding off into the sunset with some guy in a muscle car.
My first reaction to those last scenes was anger. Taylor had made some horrible decisions, but the whole mess had been set into motion by the angry, self-hating Eric. However, once I began to think about it, I saw that Taylor was setting himself free by taking responsibility for what he did. And he didn’t allow his rapist to play the hero and save him from prison. Eric, on the other hand, is still running from the truth. And that man in the muscle car offering him a ticket out of town, he’s probably an abusive asshole who wants to use Eric for sex.
***SPOILERS***
I was right there with Taylor, played by Connor, when he admitted to his mother he had gone to a party and had a beer, but he swore he had not indulge enough to explain the pictures of him that appeared online. The photos showed him passed out by a pool of vomit with his pants down. He tells his mother that he believes he was drugged and that someone did something to him.
What follows is a terrifying, complicated examination of the worst of human instincts. This series is like a film noir because no one comes out smelling like a rose. A lot of people get their comeuppance. As Terri, a fiercely protective mother who is forced to look at herself in the mirror, says, no one is coming after us; things are catching up. However, at the end of the story, Taylor is the one sent to prison, and Eric, his rapist, is riding off into the sunset with some guy in a muscle car.
My first reaction to those last scenes was anger. Taylor had made some horrible decisions, but the whole mess had been set into motion by the angry, self-hating Eric. However, once I began to think about it, I saw that Taylor was setting himself free by taking responsibility for what he did. And he didn’t allow his rapist to play the hero and save him from prison. Eric, on the other hand, is still running from the truth. And that man in the muscle car offering him a ticket out of town, he’s probably an abusive asshole who wants to use Eric for sex.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Offer them hope. Make it real.
I think extremism is likely to take hold during times of economic crisis, and I think there has been an economic crisis taking place in this country since the ‘70s. Massive amounts of wealth are being transferred to the 1%. The middle class is shrinking. The belief that your children will be better off than you is fading. The American dream is dying. Yet too many in power continue to gauge our economic wellbeing by looking at the profits of corporations, the stock market and the unemployment rate. Never mind that corporations can make money hands over fists, stocks can be sky high, and official unemployment rates can be relatively low, and still, ordinary Americans can be struggling. Many have stopped looking for work, so they’re not counted in those stats, and many who are employed have low wage jobs.
The Republicans have done a wonderful job of convincing poor and lower middle-class whites that the reason they’re not getting ahead is because the government is overtaxing the rich, placing too many restrictions on business, and spending too much on minorities and allowing illegal immigrants to steal their jobs.
The only answer to bigotry is to say no to it and to challenge it. But I think the Democrats can do a much better job at offering economic hope. Rather than being a coastal status quo party, or an incremental change party, I think the Dems need to acknowledge the serious assault on the middle class, and they need to offer solutions.
Those who work for a living should not have to work more than 40 hours a week so they can have a life outside of work, and working people should have a decent income even if they work at Wal-Mart or deliver pizza. Education and training should be accessible and affordable. Medical care should be a right, not a privilege, and you shouldn’t fear poverty if you become too old or too sick to work, or if you can’t find work. That last bit is more important than many realize because it’s not really other people who are taking away those storied factory jobs of the 1950s, it’s automation. We have to convince working Americans that lower taxes on the rich and fewer regulations will not bring back those factory jobs. We can’t return to the past. Most of us wouldn’t want to even if we could. We also can’t count on perpetual economic growth. There comes a point when there is already enough goods and services available. Then the problem becomes a matter of distribution, not scarcity.
Our ancestors would likely be amazed at our abundance, but they would also likely be disheartened that so many are not allowed to share in that abundance or live in fear of going without. We’ve allowed Republicans and the Religious Right to exploit that fear long enough. We have to be the ones who offer a shining city on a hill. We have to find political candidates who can speak to the people, listen to their concerns, and offer soaring, inspirational goals for the future. We need to take emotion into account and use it. But we have to make sure our rhetoric isn’t empty or manipulative. Our shining city will be real.
The Republicans have done a wonderful job of convincing poor and lower middle-class whites that the reason they’re not getting ahead is because the government is overtaxing the rich, placing too many restrictions on business, and spending too much on minorities and allowing illegal immigrants to steal their jobs.
The only answer to bigotry is to say no to it and to challenge it. But I think the Democrats can do a much better job at offering economic hope. Rather than being a coastal status quo party, or an incremental change party, I think the Dems need to acknowledge the serious assault on the middle class, and they need to offer solutions.
Those who work for a living should not have to work more than 40 hours a week so they can have a life outside of work, and working people should have a decent income even if they work at Wal-Mart or deliver pizza. Education and training should be accessible and affordable. Medical care should be a right, not a privilege, and you shouldn’t fear poverty if you become too old or too sick to work, or if you can’t find work. That last bit is more important than many realize because it’s not really other people who are taking away those storied factory jobs of the 1950s, it’s automation. We have to convince working Americans that lower taxes on the rich and fewer regulations will not bring back those factory jobs. We can’t return to the past. Most of us wouldn’t want to even if we could. We also can’t count on perpetual economic growth. There comes a point when there is already enough goods and services available. Then the problem becomes a matter of distribution, not scarcity.
Our ancestors would likely be amazed at our abundance, but they would also likely be disheartened that so many are not allowed to share in that abundance or live in fear of going without. We’ve allowed Republicans and the Religious Right to exploit that fear long enough. We have to be the ones who offer a shining city on a hill. We have to find political candidates who can speak to the people, listen to their concerns, and offer soaring, inspirational goals for the future. We need to take emotion into account and use it. But we have to make sure our rhetoric isn’t empty or manipulative. Our shining city will be real.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
The Haunting of Randall Loveless
by Gary Cottle
A branch scraped the side of the car as I made my way down the long wooded drive, but I didn’t care. It startled me, but once I realized what it was, I didn’t give it another thought. The Honda was bought used, and it was already beat up. I was excited about the weekend, and it was going to take more than another scratch on my old car to bring me down. I giggled at how jumpy I was and felt a rush of adrenaline as I anticipated the thrills to come like a kid waiting in line for a carnival ride.
When the abandoned Straub house came into view, I gasped in awe. It was a large, stately red brick place built about 1910, after the Victorian era, and sort of a cross between Prairie School and Craftsman. There were two floors capped by a hip roof covered in terracotta tiles with a dormer window in the center. Eric claimed it had nearly five thousand square feet of living space, plus an attic which could be used as a “bonus room” and a full basement that could be finished if the new owners wanted a family room without altering the footprint. It was going on the market the next week, but that weekend it belonged to me.
My friend Eric was a realtor, and he had left the back door open. All he asked was that I not mention his name if I got caught. Eric knew I liked architecture and old houses, but that’s not the reason he offered to let me stay in the Straub house. It had a history, and I was a big fan of horror movies and ghost stories. Minnie Straub shot her husband Clarence in one of the bedrooms and then killed herself in 1945. No one knows why. Some say Minnie caught Clarence cheating with the maid. A few claim she caught him with the yardman. Their daughter Edith was sixteen at the time, and she continued to live in the house after her parents died. A maiden aunt stayed with her for the first few years, but then she died. Edith was a quiet woman who kept to herself. She never married, and she only went into town twice a week. On Saturday afternoons, she went grocery shopping, and she attended church on Sunday mornings. She stayed on at the old place until she died the year before. Distant relatives inherited, but they had no use for it.
When I walked across the threshold, I suddenly felt like a trespasser. I stood there a second half expecting someone to pop out and challenge my presence. “Hello,” I said, trying to sound as innocent as possible, but, of course, no one answered.
I couldn’t come until I finished my shift at Kroger, so it were late in the day, but there was a couple of hours of light left. There were no draperies on the windows because the house had been stripped bare. Everything had either been sold at auction or thrown away. So I could see well enough. I took the opportunity to explore. Spooky scenarios gave way to appreciation of the simple elegance. Edith had not changed a thing. The house was a perfectly preserved specimen of its time. There was a large living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room, a good sized study with another fireplace, a big kitchen and a maid’s room. The master bedroom upstairs had its own bathroom and dressing room. Two other bedrooms shared a bath. Wood paneling was everywhere. I could see myself moving in permanently. I’d feel right at home.
Before it got dark, I sat up camp in the living room. I brought in a cot with a thick foam mattress, a couple of blankets and pillows, a camp chair, a folding table, a camp stove, a box of food, a cooler and a couple of five-gallon containers filled with water. I also had my expensive backpacking sleeping bag in case it got too cold. It was mid-October, so there was a chance the temperature could drop into the thirties.
I invested in a bunch of overpriced backpacking equipment when Ryan came into my life. He was twenty-five, athletic and outdoorsy, and I wanted to keep up. I tried backpacking a couple of times. Then I decided to let Ryan do that with his younger friends. I bought more car camping equipment, but Ryan said that kind of camping was suburban and lame. This was right after I got the promotion, so I could afford to buy a five hundred dollar sleeping bag, along with cars for Ryan and myself, and a brand new house. At fifty, I finally had the life I wanted.
I slipped off my shoes and pulled on my National Geographic fleece vest. I could no longer zip the vest because I had regained all the weight I had lost before meeting Ryan plus an extra twenty pounds. Thankfully, the pizza I had brought with me for dinner was still warm. After I had my fill, I put on my headlamp and began reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It was a great distraction, but I kept thinking of how it would be nice if someone were there to talk to. I decided to go to bed early. It’s surprising how sleepy you get when there aren’t any electric lights or bright screens around. As I was drifting into slumber, I wished I had the money to buy the Straub house. Just five years before, I could have. Even after I lost my job, I might have been able to keep the place by renting out the spare bedrooms. I pictured a couple of fit young college students running downstairs for breakfast in their underpants.
I slept soundly that night, but I woke with a start. I heard a car pull up in front of the house, and I thought I had been busted. I jumped up and dressed, but when I looked out the window, I saw it was only Eric. He brought coffee and bagels. When I went out to greet him, he hugged me. It felt good to be hugged. It had been the first time anyone had touched me in months. We sat on the stoop and ate.
“Sleep well?”
“I slept great.”
Eric lowered his head and looked at me with a conspiratorial glint in his eye. “Anything unusual happen?”
The question embarrassed me a little because I was a man in my mid-fifties, and I was ghost hunting. “No. If the Straubs are around, they don’t seem to want to have anything to do with me. I got a little lonely last night,” I admitted.
“Ah. Well, I would have asked Chad if he was interested in doing this with you, but you know what his answer would have been. You know how he is.”
Chad was Eric’s husband, and yes, I did know how he was. He claimed to be a stone cold rationalist, but horror movies and ghost stories, anything like that, made him piss in his pants.
I shook my head and said, “I wish Ryan were here.”
Eric sighed and said, “You’ve got to let that go.” Then he added, “Chad saw him the other day. He just got back from London. Apparently, Jeffrey Belmont is his new Daddy Warbucks.”
Eric could not have stunned me more if he had thrown his coffee in my face, but I tried to hold it together. Jeffrey Belmont was even older than me, but he was a dentist, and dentists aren’t downsized. His parents had left him some money, too.
“I tried to warn you.”
“I know,” I said with an undercurrent of hostility.
Eric sized Ryan up the first time he met him, and he freely expressed his opinion the next time we were alone together. We had a falling out over that. I didn’t talk to Eric for two years.
“I’m sorry, Rand. This isn’t the time for I told you sos. It’s just that I think you deserve better.”
We were silent a moment. Then Eric said, “When an older man has a relationship with a younger man, people often worry about the younger one, but it’s been my experience that the older one is more likely to get hurt. I mean, if it doesn’t work out. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but I’m always skeptical of a young guy’s motivation when I see him with someone old enough to be his father. When you’re young, you have time to bounce back. Guys our age are running out of time, and if our financial resources have been drained, too…”
When Eric left, I took my camp chair out into the yard and continued reading The Haunting of Hill House. When I was finished, I moved on to We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In a way, I enjoyed myself, but I kept thinking of Ryan. I had foolishly entertained the idea that Ryan would come back to me, but Eric had ruined that little fantasy. I wouldn’t have that to fall back on anymore. I was fifty-five and alone. Five years before, I had felt age creeping up on me, so I decided to join a gym. Within months, everything seemed to turn around. I felt trim and fit for the first time in years. Then I got the promotion and met Ryan. Now what did I have?
Later in the day, I decided I should give myself a sponge bath before it got dark. I sat on the edge of the cot and bent over to wipe off my feet. That’s when I saw it. The sun was low enough to shine directly through the living room windows, and a beam highlighted the back of my left calf. There was a mole back there that had expanded and turned purplish. For a moment, I couldn’t move as my heart flopped in my chest. I knew it wasn’t anything to get excited about. I’d make an appointment on Monday, and the doctor would cut it off. That would probably be all there was to it. However, I knew someday, something like that might be the beginning of the end.
I didn’t sleep as well that night. After rolling around in a stupor for a few hours, I decided I needed to sit up for a while. I wrapped myself up in my expensive sleeping bag and went outside to sit on the front steps. Immediately, I had a flashback. Six months before, I got up in the middle of the night. This was a couple of weeks after we had moved into the trailer. I found Ryan sitting at the kitchen table.
“Anything wrong?”
“There’s something I need to tell you. My therapist and I decided I needed to be honest with you.”
I had a vague notion of what was coming, and it pissed me off that Ryan was going to use the therapist as a crutch. I was still paying for those sessions even though I could no longer afford it. But I sat down across from Ryan and let him have his say.
“I’ve loved you, and I don’t want to do any harm, but you have to understand that I need a man who is…financially solid.”
“We all want to live well, Ryan.”
“Don’t belittle me. Don’t make me sound shallow. It’s more important than that. I need to be with a man who has some money to feel safe and loved. And I need to find a man like that before it’s too late for me.” With undisputed anger, he added, “I’m almost thirty. I gave you my youth, and now I’m living in a trailer.”
Remembering those words made me cry.
As I was driving out the next morning, that same branch scraped my car. I jumped again, but this time I didn’t giggle. Nothing happened that weekend. It was the scariest weekend of my life.
A branch scraped the side of the car as I made my way down the long wooded drive, but I didn’t care. It startled me, but once I realized what it was, I didn’t give it another thought. The Honda was bought used, and it was already beat up. I was excited about the weekend, and it was going to take more than another scratch on my old car to bring me down. I giggled at how jumpy I was and felt a rush of adrenaline as I anticipated the thrills to come like a kid waiting in line for a carnival ride.
When the abandoned Straub house came into view, I gasped in awe. It was a large, stately red brick place built about 1910, after the Victorian era, and sort of a cross between Prairie School and Craftsman. There were two floors capped by a hip roof covered in terracotta tiles with a dormer window in the center. Eric claimed it had nearly five thousand square feet of living space, plus an attic which could be used as a “bonus room” and a full basement that could be finished if the new owners wanted a family room without altering the footprint. It was going on the market the next week, but that weekend it belonged to me.
My friend Eric was a realtor, and he had left the back door open. All he asked was that I not mention his name if I got caught. Eric knew I liked architecture and old houses, but that’s not the reason he offered to let me stay in the Straub house. It had a history, and I was a big fan of horror movies and ghost stories. Minnie Straub shot her husband Clarence in one of the bedrooms and then killed herself in 1945. No one knows why. Some say Minnie caught Clarence cheating with the maid. A few claim she caught him with the yardman. Their daughter Edith was sixteen at the time, and she continued to live in the house after her parents died. A maiden aunt stayed with her for the first few years, but then she died. Edith was a quiet woman who kept to herself. She never married, and she only went into town twice a week. On Saturday afternoons, she went grocery shopping, and she attended church on Sunday mornings. She stayed on at the old place until she died the year before. Distant relatives inherited, but they had no use for it.
When I walked across the threshold, I suddenly felt like a trespasser. I stood there a second half expecting someone to pop out and challenge my presence. “Hello,” I said, trying to sound as innocent as possible, but, of course, no one answered.
I couldn’t come until I finished my shift at Kroger, so it were late in the day, but there was a couple of hours of light left. There were no draperies on the windows because the house had been stripped bare. Everything had either been sold at auction or thrown away. So I could see well enough. I took the opportunity to explore. Spooky scenarios gave way to appreciation of the simple elegance. Edith had not changed a thing. The house was a perfectly preserved specimen of its time. There was a large living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room, a good sized study with another fireplace, a big kitchen and a maid’s room. The master bedroom upstairs had its own bathroom and dressing room. Two other bedrooms shared a bath. Wood paneling was everywhere. I could see myself moving in permanently. I’d feel right at home.
Before it got dark, I sat up camp in the living room. I brought in a cot with a thick foam mattress, a couple of blankets and pillows, a camp chair, a folding table, a camp stove, a box of food, a cooler and a couple of five-gallon containers filled with water. I also had my expensive backpacking sleeping bag in case it got too cold. It was mid-October, so there was a chance the temperature could drop into the thirties.
I invested in a bunch of overpriced backpacking equipment when Ryan came into my life. He was twenty-five, athletic and outdoorsy, and I wanted to keep up. I tried backpacking a couple of times. Then I decided to let Ryan do that with his younger friends. I bought more car camping equipment, but Ryan said that kind of camping was suburban and lame. This was right after I got the promotion, so I could afford to buy a five hundred dollar sleeping bag, along with cars for Ryan and myself, and a brand new house. At fifty, I finally had the life I wanted.
I slipped off my shoes and pulled on my National Geographic fleece vest. I could no longer zip the vest because I had regained all the weight I had lost before meeting Ryan plus an extra twenty pounds. Thankfully, the pizza I had brought with me for dinner was still warm. After I had my fill, I put on my headlamp and began reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It was a great distraction, but I kept thinking of how it would be nice if someone were there to talk to. I decided to go to bed early. It’s surprising how sleepy you get when there aren’t any electric lights or bright screens around. As I was drifting into slumber, I wished I had the money to buy the Straub house. Just five years before, I could have. Even after I lost my job, I might have been able to keep the place by renting out the spare bedrooms. I pictured a couple of fit young college students running downstairs for breakfast in their underpants.
I slept soundly that night, but I woke with a start. I heard a car pull up in front of the house, and I thought I had been busted. I jumped up and dressed, but when I looked out the window, I saw it was only Eric. He brought coffee and bagels. When I went out to greet him, he hugged me. It felt good to be hugged. It had been the first time anyone had touched me in months. We sat on the stoop and ate.
“Sleep well?”
“I slept great.”
Eric lowered his head and looked at me with a conspiratorial glint in his eye. “Anything unusual happen?”
The question embarrassed me a little because I was a man in my mid-fifties, and I was ghost hunting. “No. If the Straubs are around, they don’t seem to want to have anything to do with me. I got a little lonely last night,” I admitted.
“Ah. Well, I would have asked Chad if he was interested in doing this with you, but you know what his answer would have been. You know how he is.”
Chad was Eric’s husband, and yes, I did know how he was. He claimed to be a stone cold rationalist, but horror movies and ghost stories, anything like that, made him piss in his pants.
I shook my head and said, “I wish Ryan were here.”
Eric sighed and said, “You’ve got to let that go.” Then he added, “Chad saw him the other day. He just got back from London. Apparently, Jeffrey Belmont is his new Daddy Warbucks.”
Eric could not have stunned me more if he had thrown his coffee in my face, but I tried to hold it together. Jeffrey Belmont was even older than me, but he was a dentist, and dentists aren’t downsized. His parents had left him some money, too.
“I tried to warn you.”
“I know,” I said with an undercurrent of hostility.
Eric sized Ryan up the first time he met him, and he freely expressed his opinion the next time we were alone together. We had a falling out over that. I didn’t talk to Eric for two years.
“I’m sorry, Rand. This isn’t the time for I told you sos. It’s just that I think you deserve better.”
We were silent a moment. Then Eric said, “When an older man has a relationship with a younger man, people often worry about the younger one, but it’s been my experience that the older one is more likely to get hurt. I mean, if it doesn’t work out. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but I’m always skeptical of a young guy’s motivation when I see him with someone old enough to be his father. When you’re young, you have time to bounce back. Guys our age are running out of time, and if our financial resources have been drained, too…”
When Eric left, I took my camp chair out into the yard and continued reading The Haunting of Hill House. When I was finished, I moved on to We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In a way, I enjoyed myself, but I kept thinking of Ryan. I had foolishly entertained the idea that Ryan would come back to me, but Eric had ruined that little fantasy. I wouldn’t have that to fall back on anymore. I was fifty-five and alone. Five years before, I had felt age creeping up on me, so I decided to join a gym. Within months, everything seemed to turn around. I felt trim and fit for the first time in years. Then I got the promotion and met Ryan. Now what did I have?
Later in the day, I decided I should give myself a sponge bath before it got dark. I sat on the edge of the cot and bent over to wipe off my feet. That’s when I saw it. The sun was low enough to shine directly through the living room windows, and a beam highlighted the back of my left calf. There was a mole back there that had expanded and turned purplish. For a moment, I couldn’t move as my heart flopped in my chest. I knew it wasn’t anything to get excited about. I’d make an appointment on Monday, and the doctor would cut it off. That would probably be all there was to it. However, I knew someday, something like that might be the beginning of the end.
I didn’t sleep as well that night. After rolling around in a stupor for a few hours, I decided I needed to sit up for a while. I wrapped myself up in my expensive sleeping bag and went outside to sit on the front steps. Immediately, I had a flashback. Six months before, I got up in the middle of the night. This was a couple of weeks after we had moved into the trailer. I found Ryan sitting at the kitchen table.
“Anything wrong?”
“There’s something I need to tell you. My therapist and I decided I needed to be honest with you.”
I had a vague notion of what was coming, and it pissed me off that Ryan was going to use the therapist as a crutch. I was still paying for those sessions even though I could no longer afford it. But I sat down across from Ryan and let him have his say.
“I’ve loved you, and I don’t want to do any harm, but you have to understand that I need a man who is…financially solid.”
“We all want to live well, Ryan.”
“Don’t belittle me. Don’t make me sound shallow. It’s more important than that. I need to be with a man who has some money to feel safe and loved. And I need to find a man like that before it’s too late for me.” With undisputed anger, he added, “I’m almost thirty. I gave you my youth, and now I’m living in a trailer.”
Remembering those words made me cry.
As I was driving out the next morning, that same branch scraped my car. I jumped again, but this time I didn’t giggle. Nothing happened that weekend. It was the scariest weekend of my life.
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