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July 28, 2004
Tripping
Different faiths deal with crisis in different ways. Protestants renew via baptism. Muslims perform the haj. Fakirs firewalk.
I roadtrip.
For me, driving is catharsis. The intractables just dwindle off into the horizon when I'm connected to the road. Set a goal, direct the wheels, maintain the car. The road transmits itself in direct ways, the signs tell you clearly right from wrong, and choices are clear. It is simple, and it reminds me that life isn't that complex. The last month has been one of the most emotionally tumultuous times in my life, and I needed a way of dealing with everything. I'm not exactly the most adept at dealing with my own emotions, and I learned at an early age that my dad's methods for me.
When angry, dig a ditch or do construction. When confused or worried, work on a car engine. When you just can't deal with it, drive or walk long distances. When all else fails, repress, repress, repress.
I don't repress all that much any more. I've cried gallons, and now it is time to go back to enjoying life. My road is just getting interesting.
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July 25, 2004
Mascot
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Last leg of the trip
We're in Radford, Virginia. I just want to send everyone over to Kieran's blog
, as he's been typing away in the back seat the entire trip. I'll summarize some moments, but a blow-by-blow collection of stories will be on his blog. I'll just keep it short with fun pics.
NY tomorrow. My dog is sick.
Posted by G at 01:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 21, 2004
Some Kind of Wonderful
The last two days have been less than wonderful beginning with a short bout of insomnia on Monday evening. Realizing the amount of work I have to complete before the end of August sent me into a depressive tailspin: a chapter to write, a proposal for a publication to be submitted, a couple of conference paper proposals due, a re-read of the Iliad necessary and so on. After watching lots of late night television and listening to different radio stations (really productive, I know), I began Tuesday with the sunrise. As usual, I booted up the computer with the intent to check e-mail, read newspapers, etc before I headed to the gym. However, this morning, upon connecting with the Internet, Adware, a virus, overwhelmed my computer, which quickly became inoperable. Okay, so no morning ritual. After marking more student assignments than I wanted to, Erica arrived so that we could spend a last afternoon together before she caught her flight. While we were walking under the 125th Street Station, a bird flew overhead only to shit on my head, which, having turned to speak to Erica at that very moment, was at a particular angle: the shit hit me in the eye! Immediately, I returned home convinced that this was a sinister omen for the future and felt the paranoid fear of contracting a real virus.
After work today, with the worst of yesterday out of mind, I talked myself into going for a short walk instead of stewing over my worries in my apartment. When I reached the corner of my block, I noticed traffic circling Grant’s tomb, along with people and the sounds of music and clapping. Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I went up to discover the “Jazzmobile” parked before the tomb and a sizeable crowd of folks enjoying the sounds of David ‘Fathead’ Newman and his band. While I am not a fan of the music, I lingered, watching the crowd continue to gather and enjoying the old African-American men gather together near me, shuffling to the music and talking up the jazz. I especially liked watching the drummer of the band because I longed to learn how to play the drums as a teen, especially after seeing the opening credit sequence to the John Hughes film, “Some Kind of Wonderful” (for those with a teen-movie memory). With my 33rd birthday coming up in August, I convinced myself I should buy drumming lessons to celebrate: what better way to get out of my head and build my biceps? As I watched the jazz band, though, I found the piece they were playing infectious—the patterned music building up to an intermediate refrain that let the pattern drop back to its simplest notes, only expanding as the crowd began getting into the groove—and for the first time in days I smiled.
Posted by G at 08:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Road Trip, Day 2
Missed the blueberry muffins, dangit. We arrived just in time to be trapped in the hotel breakfast room with a gaggle of children watching Barney on the television. An annoyingly sweet little girl bragged to her father that she had grabbed the last blueberry muffin. I sweetly considered killing her (pre-coffee) but decided that convincing Barney to eat his herbivore sidekick in front of weeping children would be more fun.
After leaving the hotel, we go to Clyde Peeling's REPTILAND. Not Reptile Land. Not ReptileLand. Oh no. Clyde Peeling's REPTILAND. Clyde is mighty proud of what he has done, and he should be. I think the zoo would be quite boring in the winter when every animal is torpid or estivating, but it was very nice in July. They had some really great snakes, frogs, some Galapogos tortoises, and a truly disgustingly malodorous Subway restaurant. Clyde's place also strangely included peacocks and emus, and the peacock was very amorous towards Kieran. Seeing this puffed up NBC representative buffeted by the breeze reminded me of playing chicken in the pool. Girls with enormous breasts should never be balanced atop boys with skinny legs.
A good road trip needs a good mascot. I'm not sure who made up this rule, although I'm pretty sure someone in Hollywood is responsible. Personally, I've always wanted to take a gnome on trips, but they're large, cumbersome, and tend to come alive to kill you at the most inopportune time. We debated kidnapping an idiot-savant for the Rainman theme, but we weren't going to Las Vegas. The Thelma and Louise theme was fun except for the suicide, and we haven't really had a Priscilla-esque series of events. Kieran does have the Wonder Woman theme on his iPod, so we've had a really gay moment, but nothing to the point of being in drag on top of a bus. We'll save that for next summer.
Our mascot presented herself in the REPTILAND's gift shop. Meet Sheila, our frilled lizard mascot. Considering that we are very poor boys driving a really sweet Mercedes, a lizard that puffs up to scare attackers seems appropriate. There's more to this day, but it will have to wait.
Posted by G at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
High Art, Low Life
This weekend, an old friend, Erica, visited me on a short hiatus from her life in Chicago. We’ve known each other for nine years (we figure in the tenth year we need to throw a party, celebrating the long-term kinship) and I forgot how great it can be to chat with someone who knows some of my past lives. When she arrived on Saturday, we wandered around the West Village only to decide on a one-stop shopping experience: Century 21. She found the integration of services more than pleasurable as we scrambled up and down the escalators, hitting different divisions of the store. When we finally sated out desire to shop, we went to Florent for an early evening dinner and more than one drink. Light-headed with martinis, I took Erica to Nasty Pig in Chelsea where I acquired accoutrement to tantalize Glenn upon his return to the Big Apple. Expecting the store to be a bit scandalous, I instead was entertained by the proprietor: a muscled bear with pretty, ice blue eyes, who greeted us merrily upon our entry. During our visit, he proved to be gracious and helpful, carefully informing me about how to wash my purchases (!); while he communicated about the care of my goods, his two little dogs skittered around the store and I eyed his screen saver, a picture of him and his boyfriend. Nasty pig, indeed! From there, Erica and I ended up Nowhere (in a good way), enjoying a few end-of-the-evening drinks.
The next day, we walked Museum mile, spending most of our time in the Met. I took her to a show I had already seen a few weeks earlier with Kieran and Glenn: an exhibit of August Sander’s photographs. I enjoyed it the first time I walked through the exhibit, but now another part of the show caught my attention. My eye lingered on the ways in which each group of pictures sorted by general categories (“Workers” or “Women”) always contained one or two photos that didn’t fit the scheme, skewering the logic of ‘types’ that Sander used as inspiration for the project. I liked that he eschewed clean categories of identity, since the little supplementary show to “contextualize” Sander demonstrated how photographs of social types were used by turn of the twentieth century eugenics to classify and condemn the mentally ill and to create criminal profiles. It was eerie, at times, to see these photographic types drained of Sander’s playfulness and filled with this zeal to contain or capture others. Most moving, though, were the final phase of Sander’s photos in which his son, Erich, was photographed in the ‘political prisoner’ category, detained for his resistance to the Nazi regime. Two portraits of Jews followed this sequence; most likely, Sander was hired by the subjects in these photos to take these pictures after the German government required Jews to register with the state. The most compelling feature of these portraits is how inscrutable their faces are: it is poignant that their feelings at this precipice of history are finally evanescent. Outside the show, a newly published collection of Diane Arbus’ work was on display, which mesmerized me. I’m a huge fan of her work and it was exciting to leaf through this book filled with pictures of hers I had never seen before, her contact sheets for certain pieces, and even the autopsy report filed after her suicide, an odd document to publish and then to read. Erica finally tore me away from the Arbus book and we wandered through the two displays of art deco furniture on display on the first floor. At first, I thought it dull to look at furniture, but the pieces quickly won me over: I now want the caramel-colored Elephant chair for reading, and beside it should sit the long diorite statue called “Javanese Panther.”
The remainder of the day saw us wandering through downtown, talking about our professional and personal lives, rounded off by a short bar tour, fueling me up for the final train ride home.
Posted by G at 08:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 16, 2004
Road trip, Day 1
Kieran shouldn’t have mentioned this movie called After Hours just as we were departing NYC. I’ve never seen it, but apparently this poor sap is unable to leave lower Manhattan.
“Umm, shouldn’t we turn onto 1/9 North? Didn’t you say 280?”
“No, just stay on 1/9 and we’ll find it.”
Suddenly we're characters in that blasted movie. The exit for 1/9 North passed as easily as Metamucil, and we made our merry flawed and mapless way to downtown Elizabeth, N.J. It was very good that we left early, as it took us over an hour to find our way back to the correct route. Eventually I programmed the car’s navigation to get us back to the route, and her wonderfully mellow voice politely guided us back to the correct route. Since we were in a sketchy section of Elizabeth, we were waiting for the guiding lady to tell us to lock the doors, but she never did. She’s just so nice! Please this, please that, and always happy. I think she lives in the trunk, as we are having a hard time with the automated trunk thing.
Everything on this car is automatic, even system memory for a driver that automatically adjusts the seats, the mirrors, the temperature, and the radio stations for their preferences. However, the automatic trunk is refusing to budge. I used the button on the remote. Nothing. I used the release on the door. Nothing. I verified that there wasn’t a code on the keychain for disabling the trunk lock. Still nothing. Finally learned how to use the manual key to open the trunk, but it is a heavy metal object. It still closes automatically, by the way.
Finally got to New Columbia, PA for the night. Night desk lady recommended the blueberry muffins in the morning.
Posted by G at 09:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
An Ambiguous Virgin Performing Services for the Master
Since I am new to this gig as a guest blogger, I want to fully exploit my virgin status to plead for patience in the face of my clumsiness, although I know most of the audience to be friendly. Here it goes …
After the death of my new air conditioner a little over a week ago, today was the big day: my compatriot, Kate, generously served as my chauffeur this morning to return the air conditioner and exchange it for a better one. It was a simple operation, leading to a long lunch afterwards at an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood where we ruefully reflected on a legal case that will impact us next fall. A ruling had finally been handed down by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on the case of Brown University and the question of whether its graduate students had the right to organize a union as employees since they teach while doing their grad schooling (see current NY Times for full story, under “Education”). A little background: for several years, I have been involved in the unionization movement at Columbia University, my home turf, which culminated in a three week strike at the end of this spring’s semester. While the strike went into hiatus for the summer, we eagerly awaited a possible ruling on our own case before the NLRB in the hope that it would affirm that we are employees.
The whole argument, more or less, hinges on whether what graduate student teachers do is “work” or a “service”. Many moons ago, NYU grad students won the case that set the precedent determining grad students at private universities as employees (public universities, such the state ones, can unionize; they are covered by state law, not federal law—it’s a confusing place, this country, with all of these overlapping jurisdictions, but I digress even more …). Yesterday, the NLRB overturned that ruling; they overturned the NYU precedent, ruled against Brown and, ipso facto, ruled against our case. In effect, we lost—big time. We don’t fit the traditional model of master-servant relations that governs all paid jobs (yes, all of you with jobs are technically servants: who’s your master?). Instead, we’re students, and the “work” that we do is akin to reading a book: just a little bit more learning. I can only assume that part of the initiation into a professorship is a lobotomy so that I stop learning as soon as I begin to work, like, for real.
Okay, so my little success with the air conditioner was tempered, but did I let that rule my day: no way! As I ambled down Broadway leisurely completing errands, though, I heard an approaching voice behind me, incanting “Sir … Sir, do you believe in the rights of gays and lesbians to marry?” I turn—only slightly—to state flatly that I don’t believe in the institution of marriage at all, figuring such a revelation shut the book on that one. My dismissal, though, didn’t stop this voice from asking whether I—at least—supported the rights of gays and lesbians. At that, I took pause, looked at this earnest representative from HRC, and didn’t have a good answer. Of course, the answer to the second question is: “Yes, I do” (an ironic choice of words at this moment, if ever there were any). However, that answer was not the HRC representative’s point; she wanted to bully me into admitting that, certainly, in the end, after a moment’s thought, yes, I do support gay marriage. Still, I don’t, … or “kind of” don’t. In the great rush to city hall, I wonder: since when did we clamor for the state and institutionalized religion to bestow upon us an imprimatur of authenticity? Admittedly, the benefits accrued through marriage do make the project worthwhile for couples, such as expedited immigration processes, hospital visitation privileges, tax breaks of different sorts, and so on. I understand the “bennies” argument; it has tangible appeal.
Nevertheless, what I find troubling is marriage seems like the only future vision of queer relationships. It’s the exclusion set up by marriage that irritates me. I’m not sure that it produces equality insomuch as it sets up new norms, suggesting that those who don’t marry, for whatever reason, should not partake of the benefits banquet (there are the deserving queers and then there are the undeserving queers). Besides, I want to know why marriage was chosen as the way to achieve these benefits. Many of them could be won through various legal cases and different precedents, although no way likely could be the blockbuster of marriage making. Why not advocate for a project similar to the Pacte Civil de Solidarite in France in which a variety of households with different cohabitation arrangements gain tax breaks equivalent to those realized through marriage? In this program, primary relationships are recognized whether straight, gay, lesbian and beyond. If someone’s chief relationship is with friends or a distant family member (given that they live together, have intertwined their living expenses, and fulfilled other criteria), then they gain the perks, like hospital visitation and so on. Intuitively, I feel that HRC and such folks don’t offer such proposals because it liquidates the very identity they seek as ground, an ambiguity I would gladly live with so long as it produces more “freedoms to” in a world in which the trend is toward “freedoms from”.
Needless to say, the HRC rep didn’t have to hear my speech making (you all did, if you made it this far) because I did concede that gays and lesbians do deserve rights. At which point, she promptly pushed a clipboard at me and asked if I would like to bankroll my beliefs by having a monthly donation removed my account …
Posted by G at 08:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 14, 2004
Miles and miles
Tons of miles, really. My super-cool relatives here in NYC are paying me to drive their Mercedes S-class back to Texas to have it inspected and registered. Because of my spectacular planning abilities, we're leaving today. I say 'we' because Kieran, Simon, and I are all going together.
Road trips are fun. I love driving, as I've mentioned, plus having friends along makes it even better. Both gentlemen are very good friends of mine, and we plan on going insane on rollercoasters, factories that look like baskets, and Graceland. Yes, we'll be making a big gay pilgrimage.
In the interim, it is possible that I will be having a guest holding down the blogging fort. Derrick's a much better writer than I am, and I think everyone should get to know him anyway.
I will try to post (I have a huge backlog of writing ideas), and once I've recovered my camera cable from Dallas, I'll post a bunch o' photos.
Posted by G at 02:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 12, 2004
1345 Miles
Nothing like traveling almost 200 miles every day. I love cars, and they are one of the things I miss most about living in NYC. I love rental cars even more, as you can basically abuse the beejeezus out of them.
The trip to Texas was basically stressful therapy. On the bad side, my house in Lubbock had been thrashed, which cost me a lot of money. On the great side, I had the opportunity to do construction/repair work. Nothing is more fun than working with electricity while drinking good Texas Shiner beer. I am a bit glad that the house was empty when I discovered the exposed hot wires in the ceiling, yowling like a cat before dropping from the chair. Mistakes like that should never have witnesses. I also learned how to sweat pipe, which is the process of using a torch to melt lead/zinc as a pipe sealant. Very fun, and I could see how it could be a speedy way of doing plumbing.
Posted by G at 05:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 05, 2004
I party too much.
Before I even get around to Texas blogs, I really needed to post these.
Click here to see more pics, click on each pic to enlarge.
Posted by G at 12:37 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Phantom iPod
I can still feel it, gently keeping people away, wrapping me in a protective blanket of comfortable solitude. Nothing beats white headphones hanging down towards that lovely little rectangular repository of music. People don’t stop you on the street, beggars on the subway are simply silent movies, and every action has a musical accompaniment. Subway rides have a trippy trance mix, walking to school has a upbeat motivational mix, and there is even a ‘relax and don’t kill the kids’ mix.
Now I must buy a new iPod, but I want to wait until Apple comes out with something spiffy and new. I know that they will come out with some upgrade, and it will make me feel better to get an improvement rather than a replacement. In the meantime, Patch Patrick loaned me his first generation iPod for this Texas trip. This is even more voyeuristic than his blog, because who knew that Patrick LOVES Garth Brooks? His workout mix includes the typical Abba, Falco, Kylie, and Janet Jackson, but also has Marilyn Manson, Green Day, Rammstein and Nirvana. Who knew he was a country AND goth rock boy?
I know that some pot dealer is gaining insight into my life, wondering about the former owner who listened to Johnny McGovern and Johnny Cash. I wonder what I’ll find on Bob’s iPod, since he is loaning me his extra iPod when I return?
Much thanks to both of them, as I don’t know what I’d do without them.
Posted by G at 12:27 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 01, 2004
Fatty river carcass
Having a blog opens up a conversational forum about my life. When it is one of my down times, people encourage me. When it is one of my good times, people encourage me. When I’m just writing about anything, people encourage me. Most people generally don’t discourage me, as I guess they just think I won’t listen. I always listen to friends, especially when it comes to fashion advice. Amusingly, the drinking table of the other night universally discouraged me from moving to China to teach, but that’s a different story.
Derrick and I were talking the other night, and he had desired to comment on my blog about education. Being another teacher, he wanted to point out a few things that I agree with. Being an excellent writer, I was hoping he would actually write them down, but he is prepping for his summer classes.
Although I am torn about leaving my school, I am not torn about teaching. Teaching, as Derrick pointed out, is very hard for a non-teacher to understand. I’ve heard the same thing about parenting. Teachers never get to see the end product, and it can be very frustrating. Each of the lives we deal with is a river, but all we see is one small bend. I am an optimist because I hope that the river gets deeper and stronger further down the line. Maybe it dwindles out, maybe it becomes fouler than the East River, maybe it cleans itself up. Maybe one really really fat and stupid river sells iPods for a bag of weed, and that river gets attacked by a rabid rat horde that feeds on its fatty river carcass. Just maybe.
Yes, I’m exhausted from teaching. I’ve really gone through a lot these last two years, but that is why they give teachers such excellent vacation time. It is an opportunity for me to reflect, decide new paths, and drink enormous amounts of beer across the country. Za zdoroviya.
Posted by G at 08:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack