Tragic Rabbit
-
Posts
918 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Tragic Rabbit
-
-
I actually know a 'Sunshine' for whom this was sort of written, but it was more, as I just told her, of an archetypal female: mother, lover, slayer. The fearsome female of one's dreams.
How did the poem seem to readers? It's so hard to get poetry feedback...
TR
-
Sunshine by Starlight
In your dreams, you see her
Walking ?neath the boughs
Moonlight on her shoulders
Stars amid her clothes
She?s darkness in sunlight
Her beauty is grim
She?ll kiss you or kill you
Select it at whim
In landscapes of wishes
On hilltops of lies
She holds court as fearful
As demons devise
Yet fairies and angels
They flock to her side
For sunshine?s more magnet
Than dark in its pride
Does she live in shadows
Do bluebirds have wings
Yet knowing and fleeing
Are two different things
For she is the sunshine
With sha-dow-y eyes
She?s also the hunter
And you are the prize
In dreams, she is calling
You cannot refuse
You put off the moment
But one day must choose
You run but it?s useless
You hide but she?ll know
No shadow to cling to
Where sunshine can?t go
For sunshine by starlight
Is not kept at bay
When finally she finds you
You?ll vanish away
?Neath treetops by moonbeams
You?ll give up your soul
For sunshine eats shadows
And swallows men whole
By moonlight does sunshine
Break them with stones
She eats souls by starshine
Then picks at men?s bones
Your heart is a dainty
Your flesh is her feast
But even in dying
You won?t be released
When others will glimpse her
In dim moonlit dreams
That strange midnight music
Will be your own screams
Cold sunshine by starlight
Is not what she seems
Her brightness in shadow
How tempting it gleams
In landscapes of wishes
From high silver thrones
She laughs at your heartaches
And plays with your bones
*
-
From the Los Angeles Times
MEGHAN DAUM
A breakthrough called 'Brokeback'
It's more than just a 'gay movie.' Women dig its love story because, for once, men are doing the heavy emotional lifting.
January 7, 2006
FROM THE East Coast to the West Coast (though, admittedly, not yet a lot of places in between) everyone's talking about "Brokeback Mountain." I haven't heard such constant and pervasive chatter about a pop cultural topic since Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch. Lord knows, the two phenomena having nothing in common — "Brokeback Mountain" is a love story about two gay cowboys, and Tom Cruise is, you know, Tom Cruise.
So how has this art-house film, a "gay movie" whose target audience is ostensibly the small percentage of the population that identifies as homosexual, managed to insinuate itself into the hearts and cocktail-party conversations of so many heteros? It's that 51% of the population known as women, stupid!
Despite its vast Western landscapes, drunken cowboy talk and gay sex scenes (actually, straight sex gets far more screen time in this film), "Brokeback Mountain" is a thinking girl's chick flick with roughly the same hormonal balance (not to mention the same screenwriter) as that quintessence of high-quality estro-cinema, "Terms of Endearment."
I'm not talking about the obvious girl-friendly accouterments of the tough guy/tender heart dichotomy — the men's skillful horsemanship, their penchant for carrying injured lambs on their laps, the way they look in jeans. I'm talking about something much more visceral.
For all their monosyllabism, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) are fonts of emotion. Sure, they're prone to the usual male-pattern drinking, fighting and marrying women without knowing quite what they're doing, but when it comes to their love for each other, their hearts aren't just on their sleeves, they're pinned to their foreheads.
And guess what? Chicks dig it.
It's curious to see how the Jack/ Ennis model of ideal manhood has come about just as metrosexuality — that marketing campaign for hair gel disguised as a social trend — is on the wane. A few years ago, men were being encouraged to access their inner woman by wearing turtlenecks and filling their apartments with "Queer Eye"-sanctioned Pier 1 furniture. As profitable as this may have been for cable-TV channels and the grooming-product industry, the result was a bumper crop of disturbingly aromatic men whose idea of expressing their feelings was to buy throw pillows.
"Brokeback" represents a welcome backlash to that faux male sensitivity. Instead of merely acquiring the trappings of kinder, gentler manhood, Jack and Ennis actually walk the walk. The sight of Jake Gyllenhaal crying in his truck as he drives away from Ennis (who retreats to an alley and vomits in tortured despair) is enough to make even the bitterest woman swoon.
THAT MOMENT, like so many in the film, feels like an epiphany not because of the gay context but because for once someone other than the woman is crying. Traditionally, women have done the heavy emotional lifting. We're the ones who scream and probe and force conversations about the relationship while the man stews in confusion as to whether he's feeling vulnerable or just hungry for a steak. With Jack and Ennis, however, there's no woman to pick up the emotional slack, and they're forced to experience their feelings without the benefit of female translation or analysis. In other words, they are (at least for each other) as emotionally available as it gets.
Talk about something being worth the price of admission! For women, "Brokeback Mountain" is kind of like a vacation from our own brains, at least the part of our brains that obsesses over relationships. Instead, we get to watch men express the feelings we always want them to express but often end up doing for them. The sex, whatever the brand, is incidental compared to the unprecedented purity of male emotion on the screen.
Gay men may relate to this film in more complicated ways, but from where I sat, the effect on heterosexuals seemed pretty clear-cut. To my left was my (straight male) date, who I occasionally caught checking his watch and hiding his eyes during the love scenes (though he claimed he was simply rubbing them). To my right was a woman who, when she wasn't talking back at the screen ("Say yes, Ennis! Say yes!") was loudly sobbing through much of the picture. For my part, I was just pretending Heath Ledger was vomiting because of me.
Though what "Brokeback Mountain" amounts to, in effect, is female-targeted emotional pornography, both sexes of all inclinations could learn a thing or two from it. By acting like men but emoting like women, by embodying both sides of the divide, Jack and Ennis cover all the bases of the romantic equation. This makes more conventional movie characters — male or female — seem woefully one-dimensional by comparison.
And all without buying a tube of hair gel.
-
If one is looking for an editor with a sense of humor.
You're sure you're on the right website?
:laughing5:
-
Homosexual Recruitment vs. Heterosexual Recruitment
(Book Notes: Created Equal)
From Austin Cline,
Your Guide to Agnosticism / Atheism.
About.com
January 04, 2006
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/231041.htm?rd=1
Homosexual Recruitment vs. Heterosexual Recruitment (Book Notes:
Created Equal)
The Christian Right regularly accuses gays of trying to 'recruit'
young people into the homosexual lifestyle. For such Christians,
it's inconceivable that people would be gay simply because it's
what's most natural for them - being gay must be something like a
movement which one is converted to by current members. The truth,
however, is that Christian Right are the ones doing the recruiting.
In Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America, Michael Nava &
Robert Dawidoff write:
Why, one must ask, if heterosexuality is "natural," is all this
effort being expended to promote it? Is it because what is being
promoted is not natural sexuality but a form of social organization
that excludes those to whom its promotions are not addressed?
The anti-gay right, oddly enough, understands this as most of
the heterosexual world does not. The theory of "homosexual
recruitment" advanced by them to oppose gay and lesbian rights rests
on the premise that sexual desire is amorphous and can be channeled
into homosexuality as easily as into heterosexuality. Thus, because
anti-gay rightists believe that "the homosexual lifestyle is based
on the recruitment and exploitation of vulnerable young men,"
homosexuality must be suppressed to save all those sad young men.
In fact, however, heterosexuals are not recruited by
homosexuals; rather, homosexuals are recruited by heterosexuals
almost from the moment they are born. The homosexual recruitment
fantasy is simply one more instance of how heterosexuals project
their own behavior onto the victims of that behavior as a
justification for persisting in it.
Part of the explanation for this is that the Christian Right defines
homosexuality improperly. According to them, homosexuality is purely
a matter of behavior, not sexual attraction or orientation. A person
who engages in sexual activity with a member of the same sex is gay,
regardless of whom they are inherently attracted to. A person who
engages in sexual activity with a member of the opposite sex is
straight, regardless of whom they are inherently attracted to.
So long as homosexuality is limited to behavior, it's easier to
understand how a person can imagine that one might be "converted"
either to or away from being gay. It's also easier to understand why
they would refer to the "homosexual lifestyle" - a lifestyle is a
pattern of behaviors and, for the Christian Right, homosexuality is
nothing but a type of behavior.
As Nava and Dawidoff argue, however, the only "recruitment" going on
is being done by the Christian Right. These Christians see the
traditional structures of power, authority, and privilege being worn
away by the winds of modern culture and this disturbs them greatly.
There was a time when white Protestant Christians were at the top of
the social ladder and defined the common culture which all Americans
partook of. Today, not even Christianity itself retains the vigor
and power necessary to serve as the common cultural bedrock of
American society.
The culture has no business promoting heterosexuality at the expense
of homosexuality, and if this sounds radical, then ask yourself if
you agree that the interests of white Americans or male Americans
should not be promoted at the expense of black of female Americans.
The same principle of equality is at work in all three cases.
Promoting heterosexuality and all the current trappings of being
straight is one of the principle goals of the Christian Right today.
They seem to think that reinforced heterosexuality will help
preserve traditional religion and social norms which have been
undermined by the advance of equal rights for groups like gays and
atheists.
The basic rights and equality of American citizens should not be
restricted on account of incidental characteristics like race,
gender, and sexual orientation. Most of America has come to accept
this when it comes to the first two (and some other)
characteristics, but too few Americans are willing to make the same
step when it comes to gays.
C2006 About, Inc., A part of the New York Times Company. All rights
reserved.
-
:evil4:
Is that how one obtains an editor?
:protest:
Kisses...
TR
-
Actually, I was reading up on cases of consentual cannibalism. Made me feel all romantical.
Kisses...
TR
-
The London Guardian
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featur...1675408,00.html
Way out west
What's all the outrage about a new gay cowboy movie? The American western has always throbbed with latent homoeroticism, says John Patterson
Saturday December 31, 2005
It seems that the massed forces of the American right will not, repeat not, be picketing Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, mainly since they don't want to give it any more publicity than it's getting. This is surprising, since the movie - featuring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys who while away one lonely summer by falling in love and indulging in an awful lot of grunty, spit-lubed gay sex - seems, on paper at least, calculated to cause maximum offence against America's most cherished myths and favourite movie genre. Well, they may not be boycotting it, but the fundies are plenty ready to tell us what they hate about the movie. Up in Caspar, Wyoming, home to one Richard Bruce Cheney and not far from the home of Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story the movie's based on, the local paper recently quoted local playwright Sandy Dixon (a woman) as saying, "There's nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain old history without embellishing it to suit everybody."
And Robert Knight (manly name or what?), director of the Culture and Family Institute of Concerned Women of America (a not so manly-sounding workplace, no?), is really steamed up. "I think this shows that Hollywood can pervert anything," he told Salon.com. "Part of the enduring appeal of westerns is the display of brotherhood, unhindered by sexualisation. You often hear the phrase 'to be a straight-shooter'. That means to speak plain truths and walk easily amid the natural bonds of affection, without the distraction of misplaced sexual urges. In other words, the audience can relax. Their hero is not going to get weird on them. The western was a morality tale, so to make immorality the heart of this western is to violate the code of westerns. That's why it's not going to work. I think Ang Lee is off his rocker if h.
e thinks he can have the same commercial success with two cowboys instead of a cowboy and a cowgirl, as other movies do."
The first thought that springs to mind on hearing this drivel - after the phrase "you boring, bigoted asshole" - is who is this guy kidding? First, we might challenge him to name the last heterosexual western that topped the box office. Yup, pardner, it's been a while. Second, the western as a morality tale? Perhaps, if robbing stages, trains and banks, or gunning men down in cold blood, or massacring Indians by the tribeful can be counted as moral, or if murderous, rapacious land, railroad or cattle barons are moral figures, or if a mythic universe that characterises women as virgins (schoolmarms) or prostitutes ("showgirls") is moral, to say nothing of a genre in which male brotherhood under a capacious sky is the very highest state a man can hunger after.
What would Knight say of Stagecoach, in which wanted criminal John Wayne falls for outcast whore Claire Trevor, a union openly idealised by the film? I guess that's OK: bandit, yes; assbandit, nooooooo! What has he to say of the myriad male couples in westerns of the unselfconscious, pre-1960 era, such as James Stewart and Walter Brennan in The Far Country, constantly bickering like an old married couple, yet totally loyal and devoted to one another? And what about all those singin' cowboys, with their fancy-ass boots, rhinestone-encrusted western shirts and outrageous Nudie Cohen suits? Does he detect no shadow of "misplaced sexual urges" inherent in any of these scenarios?
Let's get real, folks. The western, America's trove of foundation myths and "morality" tales, literally throbs with latent homoeroticism. Examine the following list of cowboy-movie titles and tell me which one isn't a gay porno movie: Man Hunt, Rawhide, Little Big Man, Two Rode Together, Seven Men From Now, Heller In Pink Tights, The Lusty Men, All The Pretty Horses, The Naked Spur, Dirty Harry, Rancho Notorious, Heaven's Gate, Saddle Tramps, A Fistful Of Dynamite or Bareback Mounting. OK, the last one isn't a gay porno movie yet, but give 'em a couple of weeks. Why, even supermasculine John Wayne's back catalogue suggests the western is a tad light in the stirrups: Men Without Women, Rough Romance, Two-Fisted Law, Pals Of The Saddle, Blue Steel and, best of all, Ride Him, Cowboy! That closet door is fairly straining to open. Poor ol' Duke, don't fence him in!
Is there any wonder, given all this, that the cowboy and the Indian were two of your more prominent Village People? Despite our more despicable homophobic stereotypes, many, if not most, gay men aren't interested in girly-boys - they want manly men, hence the prominence of gay-fantasy figures such as cops, lumberjacks, drill sergeants and - giddy up, fellas - the wild cowboys of the wide open range, even if they are clad in leather chaps, 10-gallon hats and one-gallon condoms. Neither should one doubt the popularity of phenomena like gay rodeos and western-themed gay bars, even as they exist side-by-side with horrible homophobic atrocities like the brutal murder of gay student Matthew Shepard by two rednecks in, yup, Wyoming in 1998.
It's not like this should surprise us. Ever since literary critic Leslie Fiedler wrote his famous 1948 essay "Git Back in the Raft, Huck Honey", about the loud hum of homoeroticism in manly 19thcentury American literature, the eagle-eyed cultural critic has had no problem identifying subversive currents of sexual dissidence in America's most conservative and masculine genres. In (lesbian) novelist Willa Cather's stories of the Nebraska prairie in the late 19th century, you'll always come across a pair of old cowboys living and managing a farm together, something Cather calls "batching", presumably deriving from "bachelordom" and highly suggestive of naughtiness come the bunk-down hour. The prairie and the wild west were often lonely, womanless places and whether they are in jail, the navy or the armies of ancient Sparta, men without women will surely turn to one another for comfort, and never say a word about it thereafter. "I ain't no queer," says Ledger's character in Brokeback Mountain, after a full summer of happy homoerotic humping. "Me neither," replies Gyllenhaal. OK boys, glad we got that straightened out.
Until censorship began to ebb in the 1960s, however, most of this remained subterranean, unarticulated - dare we say, closeted? There were no gays in westerns because women were there to embody all the things that real cowboys thought were plain, well, faggy: domesticity, gentility, education, hearth and home, wallpaper, bathtubs, haircuts, all that gay stuff. Only occasionally was there a knowing leer in the general direction of homosexuality, such as Howard Hawks' Red River, with that wonderful scene in which gunfighters Monty Clift (in real life a closeted gay man) and John Ireland check out each other's pistol - "My, that's a nice one ..." - in the most lascivious, eye-rolling manner imaginable: you can almost picture them clutching each other's crotches somewhere below the bottom of the frame. Self-consciousness and gathering minority-awareness - along with Andy Warhol's explicitly gay Lonesome Cowboys in 1968 - changed things in the early 1970s, giving us the well-adjusted gay Indian in Little Big Man. Or Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, two bickering, totally loyal, inarguably beautiful men who toted Katherine Ross around with them almost as a sexual alibi. It's as if they're saying: "See this cutie? Don't she prove we ain't doin' each other?" Well, perhaps, fellas.
These days sexual dissidence is part of the great parade of life out west, much of whose iconography was updated and drawn closer to reality by the novels of Brokeback adapter Larry McMurtry and the movies made from them. Paul Newman's Hud, from McMurtry's Horseman, Ride By, is a nearrapist, and the most memorable line from his The Last Picture Show is surely "Liss all git us a heifer to fuck!" There's Iggy Pop's crossdressing prospector in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, the woman-as-man western The Ballad Of Little Jo, and Gus Van Sant's gender-bending Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Brokeback Mountain is merely the first mainstream movie to centre on homosexuality on the open range, and it wouldn't be in the least controversial - it's about the self-defeating nature of love, after all, not sexuality - were America not unimaginably neurotic and puritanical about sex, straight or gay, in the first place.
? Brokeback Mountain is out Fri 6
-
I like it very much, Josiah. You write very delicate, and very lovely, poetry.
Kisses...
TR
-
Eat Me
The taste of you
Tender on the tongue
Saut?ed in garlic
Served up with wine
Adoring eyes follow
My fork to my lips
To sweeten this sauce
You dish up a kiss
Sweetbread beloved
Your meat is my treat
I ache to encase you
Inside my own skin
Take you within me
Forever, you?re mine
Watching me swallow
You offer your heart
*
-
Beautiful poem, Justyn.
TR
-
*
REGRET
I will best remember
The words I never said
A hard job of forgetting
Twenty things I should have done
Maybe I am forever
My uncertain high school self
Measuring the cool before the kiss
And posing for unseen eyes
What had I been thinking
To let you get away
Unclaimed and unconquered
No flag along your shore
Behind my eyes when dreaming
Lying spent inside my arms
You smile at me and whisper
That forever you are mine
*
-
*
One finger salute
Cars honk like geese
Flying in formation
Braking in frustration
Farting busses
Belching shades of black
Filled with unwashed
Glass-eyed mannequins
Below the freeway
Beneath the overpass
Ragged armies cluster
Secret battles lost
Pigeons cross the walk
Suits fill the buildings
Empty at sunset
Flocking home to roost
Under the Ipod ads
Dirty girls ask for coin
To a muttering Nam vet
I hand my last cigarette
*
-
*
Dim carnival lights of downtown
Tranny hookers by the highway
Bumping time in Spanish rhythm
Dark people scurry
But cannot escape
Friday flight has emptied the nest
For another shitty weekend
Heymistercannigettacigarette
On the grassy knoll
The shadows linger
Alongside tawdry storefronts
White cops look for colored men
Gutter clacking gin bottles
Scent of a gunshot
Soft song of despair
You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President
*
-
Pundits can?t stop calling Brokeback Mountain a ?breakthrough.? The question is: Why?
by DAVID EHRENSTEIN
Start the revolution without them: Cowpokes Lee, Ledger and Gyllenhaal.
The last straw broke two weeks ago when my friend (and fellow journalist) Bob Hofler tried to make plans to go to an afternoon showing with someone who informed him, ?Oh, no ? I?m going to be there for the very first one at 10 a.m.? It was, Bob told me, as if his friend were ?going to vote in an election.? And indeed, that?s what it?s come down to. In the wake of three decades of gay-rights activism in which thousands fought and many died, we are solemnly informed by Frank Rich that a Hollywood movie ?is a landmark in the troubled history of America?s relationship to homosexuality.? Oh, yes, Brokeback Mountain is so much more important than Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision ending sodomy laws nationwide!
Unless you?ve been tending a sheep pasture since September, you?ve doubtless heard about Ang Lee?s adaptation of E. Annie Proulx?s New Yorker short story that, according to Newsweek?s puff-adept Sean Smith, ?caused a sensation... Its raw masculinity, spare dialogue and lonely imagery subverted the myth of the American cowboy and obliterated gay stereotypes.? You mean like Montgomery Clift in Red River or James Dean and Rock Hudson in Giant? How about Tosh Carillo in Andy Warhol?s Horse? Across the wide cinematic prairie, there?s nothing but gay stereotypes when it comes to cowboys, and Brokeback Mountain is no exception ? what with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal eyeing each other as they stand outside their boss?s office striking poses redolent of a Sunday ?Beer Bust? at the Faultline in Silver Lake.
But readers of The New York Times aren?t supposed to know about such things. That?s why the ?newspaper of (exceedingly faulty) record? sent fashionista Guy Trebay to talk to ?real life? closeted cowpokes, one of whom proudly declared, ?I?m a man?s man. I?m not feminine at all.? Sure. Just like those personal ads: ?Straight-acting, straight-appearing, no fats or fems.? The record will show that no ?man?s men? were present at Stonewall, where out and proud drag queens ? far tougher than Brokeback?s poseurs ? took on the cops, and jump-started a movement that now seeks to write their politically incorrect effeminacy out of gay history. But why look back? To hear it from Frank Rich, Brokeback ?brings something different to the pop culture marketplace at just the pivotal moment to catch a wave.?
The crest of that wave, however, is something not that new at all ? ?slash? fiction. This genre of homemade homoerotica, confected by and for women, began in the 1970s (and became the subject of many a post-feminist academic paper in the 1980s) by offering gay sexual fantasies involving Star Trek characters. Today ?slash? incorporates everything from The X-Files (David Duchovny being seduced by male aliens) to imaginary same-sex-capades by members of the band Franz Ferdinand. Yes, ?the sisters are doing it for themselves,? and never more so than in Japan with ?Yaoi? ? a female-created (and -consumed) publishing genre encompassing homoerotic novels, short stories and manga animation that emerged in the wake of that country?s recognition of gays as a sociopolitical entity 20 years ago. It?s why Merchant Ivory?s Maurice was a hit there, and why primary financing for Gus Van Sant?s My Own Private Idaho was Japanese.
That Brokeback Mountain is Japan-bound goes without saying. But it?s surely going to sweep the Oscars too, and break the $100 million mark at the box office. For its ?daring? is that of a Stanley Kramer production, while its ?slash? is perfectly in keeping with the sort of slosh found in women?s fiction of yore. Heath Ledger?s faithful Ennis Del Mar waits for Jake Gyllenhaal?s straying Jack Twist and his ?fishing trip? invites just as Irene Dunne pined away for a ?drop-in? from her married lover, John Boles, in 1932?s Back Street. But we?re not supposed to speak of such things, living as we do in what Gore Vidal calls ?The United States of Amnesia.? We?re instead encouraged to ignore the precedents shattered by three decades of truly groundbreaking queer films ? with Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) leading a pack that also includes My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Parting Glances (1986), Todd Haynes? Poison (1991) and Velvet Goldmine (1998), Gus Van Sant?s Mala Noche (1985) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), Savage Nights (1992), The Long Day Closes (1992), Wild Reeds (1994), Urbania (2000), Les Passagers (1999), Patrice Chereau?s L?Homme Blesse (1983) and Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998), Kinsey (2004), and, just this year, Tropical Malady and Mysterious Skin. No, what?s really supposed to be important is the saddle-packing same-sex equivalent of Guess Who?s Coming to Dinner.
Newsweek?s Smith is simply agog at how ?Gyllenhaal and Ledger don?t dodge it. The kissing and the sex scenes are fierce and full-blooded. But if the actors were taking a risk, they sure don?t seem to think so.? Goodness, you?d swear the thing starred Tom Cruise and Kevin Spacey.
And what about gay actors playing gay roles? Is it beyond their ken? Would they be open to accusations of ?simply being themselves? rather than ?really acting?? In a marvelously irreverent article published in The Guardian called ?Gay for Today,? writer Philip Hensher put it best: ?There are no gay actors ? or at least, there weren?t until Nathan Lane, to everyone?s utter incredulity, came out. Of course, there were gay actors in America?s past ? James Dean, Cary Grant, Dirk Bogarde, Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye. Plenty of them, in fact. But, for whatever reason, there?s hardly a single gay actor of recognizable stature working in Hollywood. An incredible fact.?
Needless to say, Hensher is being cheeky. All the actors he mentioned lived and worked in an era when the closet was an unavoidable reality and living a free and open gay life well nigh an idle dream. But that dream is now a reality, and in coming to grips with it, the speculation and whispers of the past are being reconfigured as matters of simple fact. Those guys were gay. Deal with it. More importantly, today?s out gay actors ? Chad Allen, Craig Chester, Mitchell Anderson, Dan Butler, David Drake and Peter Paige ? have to deal with the ?incredible fact? that they?ve been left to fend for themselves in indie and pay-TV climes. But when it comes to parts like Ennis Del Mar, Jack Twist and Truman Capote, they?re not even going to get an audition. Only heterosexuals need apply.
Yes, things have changed, but not all that much, as Craig Lucas shows in his deliciously mean-spirited The Dying Gaul. In a key scene, Campbell Scott?s scheming bisexual producer tells Peter Sarsgaard?s sensitive gay writer, ?No one goes to the movies to have a bad time, or to learn anything,? before going on to declare matter-of-factly: ?Americans hate gay people.?
?What about Philadelphia?? Sarsgaard counters.
?Philadelphia was about a man who hated gay people,? Scott replies.
But Scott?s most telling remark comes as he prepares to seduce Sarsgaard (far more graphically than Ledger does Gyllenhaal): ?You can do anything you want ? just so long as you don?t call it by its name.?
And the name you can?t use around a gay movie called Brokeback Mountain is ?gay.? Critic after critic has enthused that the film is at heart about ?two people in love? who ?just happen to be men.?
Yeah, right. Tell it to Antonin Scalia!
?The magnificent thing, though,? notes novelist Rick Moody (hardly a disinterested party, given that it was Lee who brought his suburban-angst tale The Ice Storm to the screen), also writing in The Guardian, ?that happens . . . during the unraveling marriages of these two men, as the film hastens toward its heart-rending completion, is that you stop thinking of these men as men, or gay men, or whatever, and you start thinking about them only as human beings, people who long for something, for some kind of union they are never likely to have.?
In the immortal words of my favorite drag queen, Bugs Bunny, ?Oh, Prunella!?
-
I love it. It's beautiful and delicately funny and very sweet. Great title, too.
Just lovely. I do envy you your facility with words, mine are only starting to seem less awkward (to me) and that's after over a year of wiggling them around the screen.
Many kisses...
TR
-
Format in which sense? The rhyme scheme? The repeated phrase? The rhythm of the sounds? This one, like a couple of the others I've done in the last few days, sounds like a song in my head. Makes me wish I could write music.
Gabe told me that he'd written a poem after reading a couple of lines of one of mine from this week ('one and one makes two' etc from Do The Math) and I wanted to talk about that.
This one, 16 Shades of Gray, was a line I saw in an electronics ad and for some reason I liked the phrase '16 shades of gray'. It seemed to have potential. I thought of how Eskimos are said to have so many words for 'snow' and I thought, in the same vein, someone sad might see as many as 16 shades of gray and no other colors.
Same with Do The Math, I had heard it in passing, rolled it around on my tongue and suddenly thought of a poem. The three recent Christmas ones were inspired by a day of listening to holiday music on the radio: White Christmas Turning Blue, At The Window and I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus.
I think that happens a lot, you hear a word or phrase and then are inspired to write a poem. That's not how stories work for me but a lot, maybe half, of my poems are like that, inspired from a word or string of words (either heard or just spontaneously thought of) that catches on the edges of my brain. It's got nothing to do with stealing, no one owns individual words or phrases, but might have something to do with how the emotional nature of poetry intersects with wordplay and sound.
Anyway, 16 Shades of Gray is my favorite recent poem of mine and I can't get the refrain out of my head, to be honest. Maybe I should be writing jingles for commercials.
Thanks for commenting Codey, I've noticed that most of my recent poems and a couple of my recent stories have generated zero response here at AD, which is depressing and not conducive to creating more. Mainly, though, I've been less productive because I am not well. Hope to take the reins back up soon.
Kisses...
TR
-
*
16 Shades of Gray
You left me in the morning
Just at the cusp of day
Spring rain was softly falling
In sixteen shades of gray
While looking in the mirror
I smile at my dismay
These tears cloud my reflection
With sixteen shades of gray
I step outside and walk to
A neighborhood caf?
And order sugared sorrow
That?s sixteen shades of gray
I stare at people passing
Blind to my display
Why can?t they see I?m crying
These sixteen shades of gray
I stumble to the office
And gaze at the array
Of flowers on my desktop
All sixteen shades of gray
There?s talk but I don?t answer
I?ve choked on the clich?
Of heartbreak?s common colors
Those sixteen shades of gray
Your picture in my wallet
Last week?s fragrant bouquet
The world within my vision
Just sixteen shades of gray
Some day I?ll find a rainbow
Instead of shades of gray
Bright hues to stop this hurting
But that day is not today
I?m looking at the window
That keeps the rain at bay
Inside my eyes it?s pouring
Out sixteen shades of gray
*
-
http://tragicrabbit.org/poems/Do%20The%20Math.htm
Do The Math
Do the math, you tell me
Then, in addition, you walk away
And that subtraction, baby
Just leaves me so divided.
One and one is two
And two is awful sexy, but
When you take-away-from
You leave me no solution.
I?d like to multiply
I?d love us to signify
But the signals that you give me
Don?t add up to anything.
Honey, did you notice
Your numbers are peculiar
Whole but not quite rational
Your answers don?t match mine.
If I do the long division
Some numbers are repeating
Honey, are you cheating
Because your product ain?t my sum.
One and one is we two
So long as it?s addition
The other permutation
Is one times me and that?s no fun.
Come back and find the square root
Come on and help me to define
Our sexy old equation
Cuz the solution is you?re mine.
*
-
http://tragicrabbit.org/poems/White%20Chri...ning%20Blue.htm
White Christmas turning blue
And all because of you
The snow just makes me cold
Since you and I are through.
No use to hear the songs
Every one else belongs
While I am all alone
And it just feels so wrong.
The lights and Christmas tree
The carols filled with glee
They break my heart anew
But you?re not here to see.
White Christmas turning blue
I?m only missing you
You left me so alone
I thought your love was true.
All the presents and good cheer
Remind me you?re not near
And Santa cannot bring
What you made disappear.
Those sleigh bells in the night
A fireplace burning bright
They chill me to the bone
This Christmas isn?t white.
White Christmas turning blue
I?m crying over you
This season isn?t green
And nothing will renew.
You left me in the cold
No angels made of gold
Can mend my aching heart
For you?re not here to hold.
The snow is falling down
Bright lights all through the town
But nothing stops my tears
I?m just your Christmas clown.
White Christmas turning blue
My wishes are but few
That you?ll come home to me
I can?t stop loving you.
*
-
http://tragicrabbit.org/poems/A_%20The_%20Window.htm
At The Window,
a TR Christmas poem
Shiny paper, satin ribbons
Of red, green and blue;
Out his window, he is looking
At all of you.
Bells are ringing, you are singing
In sweet Christmas tones;
At his window, he is silent
And all alone.
Sounds of music, happy laughter
They fill Christmas Eve;
He stands and watches, while his heart
Can only grieve.
Golden angels, silver tinsel
Make your heart feel gay;
Happy Santas, smiling children
Take cares away.
Can you listen, to the silence
That stands beside you?
Do you wonder, at the darkness
That?s down the lane?
Carols rising, no disguising
A world filled with cheer;
But from his window, he cannot
Do more than hear.
Shiny paper, glistening ribbons
A white Christmas dove;
He is aching, he is lonely
For his true love.
Trees are glowing, now it?s snowing
Joy is in the air;
Last season, his love lay dying
And in his care.
Last year?s Christmas, was so lovely
He piled presents high;
Gave his lover, one last Christmas
Then said goodbye.
Wreaths of holly, crowds so jolly
Fill the streets outside;
First he watches, and remembers
Then finally cried.
Shiny paper, satin ribbons
Of gold, red and green;
He is watching, heart is broken
He is unseen.
Bells are ringing, you are singing
Can you turn and see?
At the window, I am looking
That man is me.
*
-
http://tragicrabbit.org/poems/I%20saw%20Da...nta%20Claus.htm
I saw Daddy kissing Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night
They didn?t catch me looking
While the two of them were cooking
In the Christmas lights so bright.
Daddy couldn?t see me hiding
Where I watched him on Santa?s lap
The two of them were busy
Boy, was Santa looking dizzy
When Daddy called him a sexy chap.
I thought Daddy wasn?t thinking
Of all the places Santa had to go
When he cuddled up to Claus
All wrapped in Santy?s paws
Until their eyes were both aglow.
I know Daddy?s really lucky
That Uncle Jerry didn?t see
All that hugging and that kissing
And whispered reminiscing
That he did last night on Santa?s knee.
Oh, no one will believe me
If I tell the things I seen
So I guess I?ll just keep quiet
No sense starting up a riot
By telling folk about that Christmas scene.
But I am mad at Daddy
For keeping Santa here so late
What about the Chinese kids
Who?d closed their sleepy lids
Waiting for a sleigh stuck in my state?
I guess I?ll never tell
But I just can?t really see
What Santa saw in Dad
That made him seem so glad
To kiss and cuddle up against our tree.
If Daddy isn?t careful
Uncle Jerry will discover
Why he seems so giggly happy
And is smiling just so sappy
And how tinsel got their bedcovers.
I must say I don?t approve
Of Santa?s secret meeting
But I guess I?ll keep silent
Uncle Jerry might get violent
If he only knew my Dad was cheating.
I saw Daddy kissing Santa Claus
Underneath the blinking Christmas lights
Oh, what a laugh it would have been
If Uncle Jerry had only seen
All the mushy things I saw last night!
*
-
The straight dude's guide to 'Brokeback'
Our intrepid gay columnist has sage advice for his straight brethren
By Dave White
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 7:26 p.m. ET Dec. 8, 2005
You are a heterosexual man. And you have no personal beef with gay people.You're educated and fairly socially liberal and occasionally listen to NPRand you don't like to see anyone bashed or discriminated against. You're nohomophobe. You're proud of yourself.
But your girlfriend/wife/common-law /female or whoever loves that adorable Jake Gyllenhaal has already stated her intentions. When it's her turn to pick the Saturday night date-movie, you're seeing "Brokeback Mountain."
"But I am a heterosexual man," you're thinking, "very, very, very, very straight." And you're kind of freaking out as the release date quickly approaches - and even the expression "release date" is making you kind of jittery. You're hoping to remind your female life partner that, while you feel gay people are very wonderful, colorful, witty additions to the human population and that Ellen sure is fun to watch dance in the credit card commercial and that Tom Hanks really deserved that Academy Award for whatever that movie was where he died at the end, that you are very, very, very, very straight and that it should exempt you from seeing Adorable Jake.um. do "it" with Heath Ledger. You really don't even want to know what "it" entails because you've lived this long without finding out. You're thinking the words "red-blooded," as in "I am a red-blooded American male, etc," don't sound so retro anymore.
And yet, you're still going to see it whether you like it or not. This necessarily presents a dilemma: how to make her happy and endure your first gay-themed movie where guys actually make out on a very big screen right in front of your face? And that's where I come in. I'm a red-blooded American male homosexual movie critic who's already seen "Brokeback Mountain." And I could just tell you how great the film is, that it's really powerful and moving and all that, but that isn't what you want to hear. So I have some viewing tips for you, my straight brothers. I promise I'm only here to help.
1. Accept the fact that this is all your fault in the first place.
You were the one who was all excited to take your ladyfriend to "Jarhead" anyway and when you got there and saw that it consisted of lot of AJ (how this article will refer to Adorable Jake from here on) running around all sweaty, muscular and shirtless in the desert, doing a sexy dance wearing nothing but a Santa Claus cap over his "area" and then simulating a big gay orgy with his fellow grunts, you were like, "When does the killing start in this movie?" while your woman thought, "Oh yes, more Santa Dancing please." You brought it on yourself.
2. Realize now that you have to shut up.
You kind of have no idea how important it is for you to shut up. But it's crucial. I was recently at a press screening for another movie and I overheard four guys in the theater lobby talking about "Brokeback." They were resolute in their refusal to go see it and they couldn't stop loudly one-upping each other about how they had no interest, were not "curious," and were, in the words of the loudest guy in the group, "straight as that wall over there." Oh, the wall with poster for the Big Gay Cowboy Movie on it? That straight wall? Well here's something that everyone else now knows but that guy: he's probably gay. Being silent marks you as too cool to care about how other men see you. It means you're comfortable and not freaked by your own naked shadow. Did Steve McQueen go around squawking about how straight-as-a-wall he was? No, he didn't. He was too busy being stoic and manly.
3. The good news - there's less than one minute of making out.
It's about 130 minutes long and 129 of them are about Men Not Having Sex. So yes, maybe it will be the longest almost-60 seconds of your life, but there it is. Less than one minute. In fact, it's 129 minutes of really intense longing and sadness and unabashedly weepy, doomed love story. In a very real way that's a lot more porny than any of the man-on-man canoodling that made it past the editing room. But if you're going to be a big sissy about it then you can go get her that Diet Coke and jumbo popcorn during the first major sex scene. And no plugging your ears and singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb," either. All singing is inherently gay, is why. Plus you'll be in a movie theater and some big bruiser gay guy might kick your butt. Then you'll feel even more emasculated.
4. Remember that it's a western.
And the script was adapted by none other than Total Dude Larry McMurtry. That guy is the coolest western writer in the country. He wrote "Lonesome Dove." You love "Lonesome Dove." In fact, the only problem with remembering that it's a western is having to ignore the fact that most westerns are about 1000 percent gay. If you think I'm making that up, just go watch "Red River" again.
5. They're tortured and you get to feel sorry for them.
Just like in that Tom Hanks movie, these gay guys get kicked around a lot. It's set in the 1960s and the characters played by Heath and AJ don't even know they're gay. They think they're just regular straight guys who suddenly find themselves all turned on by each other and, honestly, don't even really understand why they're awash in yucky, hypnotic love feelings. Actually wait. you know what? Don't think about that too much. Better if you just forget about the "why" of it all and start rooting for these underdogs. Pretend they're like Sean Astin in "Rudy."
6. Anne Hathaway, who plays AJ's wife, gets topless. The End.
I think it's fair to report this and here's why: as a gay man, the only reason I even agreed to sit through the really stupid remake of "The Longest Yard" was because one of my friends told me you get to see the wrestler Goldberg in the shower. In one scene. That's it. I sat through the whole thing for one scene. In that respect, my hetero pals, we are all brothers deep inside -it's just a different brand of naked flesh that ignites our prurience.
7. And finally, it's just your turn.
Really, it is, and you know it. Imagine how many thousands of hetero love stories gay people sit through in their lives. So you kind of owe us. Now get out there and watch those cowboys make out.
-
Thanks, Gabe. You know, I'm not surprised and I was actually thinking of you while I wrote it, haha! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most people don't like it, or anyhow don't mention it. I'm more hurt that no one seems to like Murder On The Oscar Wilde, actually.
I always wanna sit by you Gabe, at the cool table. :3some:
Kisses...
TR
Scan to donate
MEMORY #9 by TR
in Poets' Corner
Posted
memory #9
nothing takes me back to high school
like the scent of Vaseline
petroleum jelly
uncapped
unsnapped
unsupervised evenings
the torn back seat of Dad?s Ford
and your black eyes in the moonlight
*