bi_janus

Well, you got the Lenny. See this week's edition of New Yorker magazine.

恭禧發財

Prayer Bi_janus I hear Leonard’s been talking to himself again. He’s hard to figure, an unthinking genius, all angles and sin, uneasy as hell when he sings the hymn. Not like Johnny G, who’s on his knees in the theater before every use of his knife. JG wants God to keep him from slipping up. Lenny wants to sing like he used to wail in Chelsea. I hear Leonard’s been talking to himself again.

Let me check with Ann. Yes, it is possible.

You have that lean but not hungry for brains look. A couple of theaters where I live have very high res DLP projectors--impressive but almost too perfect. I keep looking for the little blobs that warn the projectionist that a reel change is coming.

For most of my adult life I have tried to destroy heteronormative myths about gay couples: that gay men are promiscuous and incapable of long-lasing monogamous relationships. Notwithstanding the fact that I have known more than a few gay men who were promiscuous with no interest in stable, long-term relationships, most of my gay male friends are living lives that look a lot like those of many heterosexual couples (different plumbing excepted). Ann and I, resisting the common slanders, have been heard by audiences as a nice, normal, married couple—the kind you see in TV spots and just the kind of allies many gay men desire in this cultural battle. Our support of gay marriage would seem to come from the reasonable recognition by a straight couple that gay men are quite capable of having the same kind of relationship as we have. They can make homes and raise children as part of a stable dyad, all of which is, of course, quite true. But, Ann and I have the nagging feeling that we should be battling for others as well. After all, while the battle over marriage is a battle for a certain recognition of normalcy, Ann and I are floating out there near some decidedly abnormal boundary. Here’s the rub. Ann and I have not been a nice, conventional monogamous couple. We created a marriage that would be seen by most as demonstrating a decided tendency to polyamory. Our accommodation of my sexual proclivities has included both triads and my relationships with other men in which Ann has not participated. I am a little troubled by the strategic retreat from discussing the validity of choices other than life as a couple. One paper from a 2008 article in the Journal of Bisexuality (Yes! We have our own academic journal) by the well known authors, Pallotta-Chiarolli and Lubowitz on an ongoing Australian study put it this way when discussing the borderline existence that Ann and I live (avert your eyes; this is why no one reads academic journals): “Their multi-sexual relationships are both “outside” gendernormative and heteronormative constructs of marital and defacto relationships and yet “belonging,” for the partners may “pass” as a “normal” couple. They are also “outside” the dominant constructs of Australian gay identity and community while simultaneously “belonging” due to their partners’, and sometimes their own, same-sex attractions and relationships.” (Maybe we are fully inside the dominant constructs of some other country's gay identity and community. Des, would you speak to your people about this?) I wonder how much the weight audiences give our support for the monogamous gay brethren in our community would decrease if people knew how Ann and I really have lived. To be sure, if people have enough gumption to ask, we are quite honest about our lives. Many of the gay male couples we know, including some who have asked us to speak up, have never asked. Why would they? We look so bourgeois. I just hope that they would be as supportive of our choices as we have been of theirs, the marriage battle aside.

Since that night, I had been consumed with how to tell Eric. Ann had tried to keep our son from seeing the news on TV. At seven, he was reading parts of newspapers, but Ann didn't think he had seen the story. Everyone in my unit was very helpful, especially the cops. None of them dwelled on the incident, but, to a man, they told me that if I needed to talk they'd listen. My head still buzzed and I felt nausea when I thought of that night, my heart rate rising more from the memory than it had during the event. One of the shrinks I worked with on the CISD team had called and listened while, oscillating between giddy relief and guilt, I tried to straighten out what had happened. He told me that the roof would fall in on me later and that the worst thing I could do when it fell was to withdraw. The news coverage had been steady; most of the reporting was about the boy and his family's grief. His parents couldn't fathom why he and I had met that late summer evening. When the television talent mentioned me, they simply regurgitated my record; none of them asked what that night cost me. On the advice of a JAG representative, I made no statements to the press. News cycles are short, and at least I was old news by the time we came home. Everyone I was with seemed to be looking at me with a curiosity normally reserved for celebrities. More than occasionally, I wanted to scream to them that this was no cause for celebration. At the Reserve Center, after the company commander read the demobilization order and we were released from active duty, I was finally alone for the long drive to my home. I was raw and felt exposed in the company of others, but solitude no longer brought comfort. Senses behave differently under stress. Hearing, smell, vision all betray their normal occupations. I was in one of a few Reserve MP Companies that housed a CID detachment, but that night one of the patrol MPs wasn't feeling well and I agreed to stand in. Wearing a uniform once in a while is useful. At that time we still patrolled in Jeeps. Our unit alternated summer active duty between regular army bases and National Guard camps, and this year we were at a Guard camp. Most of the problems we encountered involved drinking and driving or traffic infractions. I was standing in on the night tour. I had told Eric over his whole life that violence solved nothing, that he should avoid fighting because people who solved differences by fighting revealed their own weakness. What would I tell him now that would make sense of this mess? My partner and I were one of two mobile patrols that night. We were checking a couple of warehouses when we saw the flicker of flashlights at the end of one of the buildings. We pulled up to the warehouse front and radioed to the other mobile unit. We quietly walked away from the lights and around the opposite end of the building. We could hear laughter as we approached the lights. My partner swung out wide and I hugged the wall. Two and a half minutes. I had walked into a burglary. I drew my sidearm and was about to put the three men on their knees when my partner screamed, "Gun!" Two of the three ran. We let them go. I don't remember screaming at the kid to drop his weapon, although my partner said later that I had, repeatedly. I was looking him in the eye and saw hesitation on his face as I closed with him in the dim light. Then, I saw him make a decision. He started to raise his weapon. The kid didn't hear the reports as the slide on my M-1911A snapped back twice before he fell, eyes open, along with my brass. I pulled into my driveway and Ann and Eric came out to greet me. Ann looked as if she might cry as Eric jumped into my arms and hugged me. When I put him down. He looked up at me and said, "Daddy, Christopher said you killed someone."

2 for Anniversary 40 Bi Janus distant Winter winds bend twigs expecting storms Oh! the white rose yet blooms chocolate cigar--- sometimes a cigar is just that my happy friends

I think this poem exists because Camy natters internally about much that he experiences and shares some of that nattering. Well done, sir. Poetry, music, painting, fiction are like stones dropped in a pond. Who knows what the ripples may disturb?

Getting off auto-pilot and examining one's life is such a fruitful occupation. Discovering that you live in a different world than that described by religious teachers of any stripe is a hard won triumph of the spirit. I am full of admiration that you managed that feat at seventeen. I was fortunate to fall in with Buddhists at an early age (they never thought of themselves as any kind of -ists). They encouraged me to cultivate silence in which I could look at and listen to the world, and allowed me to discover that people who are constantly yammering cannot manage self-examination, much less encourage it in others. They were powerless and loving in behavior and word. I will say that one old man who was very helpful to me equated the eschatological crap being taught to young kids in Sunday Schools with child abuse (many Buddhist sects are guilty of the same abuse). I admire your seriousness in looking at your place in the world from time to time. The world seems a lovelier place with people like you in it. And alas, sometimes an elephant trunk is just an elephant trunk.

Come on, guys. No one bled in creating that moment. You've never thought of time as blood flow?

When I learned Tai Chi exercises, the old man always began facing the North. When I asked why, he told me that he was able to feel the interaction of the subtle emanations of Earth’s magnetic field and the field of his own Chi. Then he laughed and told me about the dangers of habit. I have never felt this interaction, but since the old man never lied to me, I begin the exercises facing North. Who knows? One day . . .

The Bleeding Moment (1971) Bi_janus I have enough just now, maybe forever. Two into one, we stick together here and there. With no one else, we summoned this perfect moment. If we lie here breathless, will we compel this perfect moment to bleed into the next and the next and the next? If we lie here at ease, will this perfect moment harden and clot? Will a sheath scab around its vital ooze? If we arise, will the husk of this perfect moment suffice? If not, when will the roughness of this perfect moment’s scar no longer attract our unthinking caresses?

Now, that's a lyric!

Ann came out as much as I did. If you imagine that people had trouble with my sexuality, you can guess that a lot of people thought she was naïve at best and nuts at worst to stay with me. She saved my life and discovered that rather than occasioning loathing, my affinities struck an erotic chord in her. In fact, we share the same taste in men. I’m sure strangers would be confounded if they overheard her, out on the trail or on a walk along the river, point out some particularly attractive guy so I wouldn’t miss him. Somehow she saw that what she loved in me was inseparable from my core. How does such a relationship last the decades? Luck in the first choice, forgiveness, and reinvention of the stronger, more conscious self. She has done the majority of the fresh underpinning of our love. I know who got the better part of the bargain of our life together. The sacred whispering of a lifetime with her liberated my soul.

Thirteen-year-olds’ Song (1963) Bi_janus Two pups in twin beds, talking of life and sex, “What’s it like when you kiss her?” Come over, I’ll show you. After the fun, my ear to your chest, I hear the same song her heart sings to me.

We should celebrate your brand of impudence (maybe a national holiday). Educators should weep for joy when they encounter this kind of impudence in students. I hope that you're still impudent in this way until you draw your last breath. The impudence to stand before the mob proudly as different (no matter what the difference) is what startles and shatters the mob, and, as for you, reveals friends among the shards. You had mad skills, and I wish I had been there.

A mating pair of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis pratensis) lived part of the year at the back of our lot, which butted up against an old orange grove. Cranes represented long life and prosperity in old China. I have had long life and know the difference between wealth and prosperity. Each year we looked forward to seeing them move across our back yard, at first alone and then with a pair of youngsters. They were tall birds with grayish feathers and heads that, capped in bright red, came up almost to my shoulder. They treated us warily, never getting too close. Early weekend mornings I practiced Yang’s form of Tai Chi Chuan in the back yard. One Sunday as I slowly moved through the postures, I turned to see them approaching. The exercise takes about forty-five minutes to complete. During that time they moved to within ten feet of me, stood still, and stared. Then their wings spread, and they began some instinctual silent dance of greeting, circling around me. They did not mistake me for another crane, but were drawn to reach out to a strange dancing creature waving hands like clouds.

Cutting (1994) Bi_janus For Jana Nicking a vein takes no real effort, no commitment. No struggle, but skin, puts up stop signs. The arteries demand the patience of a fisherman casting close to the bone, tangling the hook among the mangrove roots.

There are days I yearn for bland, a word that has taken an unfair pejorative cast. Years ago, bland meant soothing or smooth in nature, and I suppose in one way, uniform. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm just not skillful enough to pull off the poetry of happiness. On the poetry of the duvet, I'd have to agree with Camy. And, C, you have it exactly.

The Poetry of Happiness (1980) Bi_janus The poetry of happiness is bland, of happiness threatened, grand, of unstudied joy is sublime, of joy in shadow, a finer clime.

Poem requested by Annabelle Bi_janus Hear it is, Miss Belle! You sleep next to a rabbit with a very interesting habit of singing to Miss Belle until she’s finally all well. Usagi sings when you sleep. When you wake, she makes no peep. Though, rabbits listen well to secrets little girls tell. Whisper any fears into her silky ears, and listen for your special tune, sung by the rabbit in the moon. Tsuki-no-usagi Bi_Janus For Annabelle All fun and laughter, even with the fever, reading to you after the poison, the endeavor, I love your cranky spirit, swinging out in the dark, love that coming near it so often, between fatigue and spark, you bear your parents’ sorrow. Life all struggle at four years, the crab wound round your cord, the nurses who bring you tears and promise of distant reward, you patiently tell politely to go to hell. I met you when I placed the moon’s rabbit at your side. Let’s swing out in the dark, I in mask and you in tiny gown, neck blistering. Let’s dance with Kelly in the rain, and cool that neck with water from Bethesda’s pool. In place of the hug we both need and avoid, let’s play hide and seek with the ray gun and the poison, while you help me to know how the bear finds his hat and what the rabbit meant.

I am surprised that crying is the most difficult matter for me to write about. If you’ve read any of my entries, you know that writing about death, sex, and love are pretty easy for me. When you’re wounded as a kid, you become very careful about crying. When I was fifteen, Tyler cried once when we were together after an afternoon of instructing each other on the finer points of fellatio. His tears, I learned, weren't the result of the lessons. Tyler was fifteen and overwhelmed by confusion about love and sex. I wasn't confused about sex, but had my own issues to cry about. I was stunned and pleased that he trusted me that much. He was embarrassed and worried that he had given me power because he thought that, in crying with me, he appeared weak. When much younger, I had learned a lesson that I have fortunately replaced, that I should avoid tears altogether. I think I was worried that if I started, I could never stop.

Angels Coughing Bi_janus Few white cells in sight, chemo’s and gamma’s blight, here in the cancer spa. You think I won’t live, so solace must give, here in the cancer spa. You show a smile off, but can kill with a cough, here in the cancer spa. Please, catch me in a few, and spare me a stay in the ICU.

I never tried the stuff, although my friend, Jim, was a connoisseur. The blonde in the first stanza refers to the Moroccan Hash that Jim craved; the blonde in the third stanza is a very good friend named Jay. You have it on the middle stanza--the old man is Japanese. I took the old man's example and just let life roll without benefit of chemical enhancement. I may be the only person who lived through the sixties without getting a buzz.