doubting thom

It’s been interesting to observe my attitudes and behavior about my birthday this year. In the past, I’ve generally not paid much attention to holidays or other recurring special occasions, even sometimes lightly disparaging anniversaries of births, deaths or other events as “artificial” or as “cosmological circumstances of planetary revolution with no intrinsic meaning.” OK, so sometimes I could be a bit pompous in my beliefs, at least internally. However, while I’ve largely ignored my own birthdays and other anniversaries, I’ve tried to respect other people’s sense of the relevance or importance of such occasions, and to note them in the way that they prefer, making very sure to send my mother a card and/or flowers on her birthday and on Mother’s Day, for example.

After I turned 39 two years ago, though, I began to look forward to marking my 40th birthday more publicly and with more fanfare, and began to envision a large blow-out party to welcome it. But two months later I became unemployed, and on the occasion of my 40th birthday I was still not working (though I was just about to begin a new job two weeks later) and was with my mother at my father’s hospital bedside. The other night, Craig said that he thought I actually was openly negative about my 40th birthday last year by the time it rolled around rather than simply neutral, as I had remembered.

Toward this year’s, though, I’ve been public and positive, telling many people about the occasion and welcoming their well wishes, and I’ve been in an elevated and even slightly giddy mood off and on throughout the week. Rather than celebrating my birthday home alone, as has been my wont, I let Craig take me out on Wednesday, Tatiana yesterday, and am celebrating it with Jeff this weekend. I feel great about turning 41. I’ve felt oddly at peace with myself this week, even in the midst of more stressful work days and a busier social schedule–with its own stress on this Meyers-Briggs “I”–than usual. To be honest, it didn’t hurt that everyone at work thought I was still in my mid-30s, and that I’ve also been spending time with an intelligent, attractive younger man who thinks I’m cute and “playful.”

Yoiks… typing that latter just threw a monkey wrench into my thoughts: rather than real acceptance or peace of mind, is this just a middle-age crisis in disguise? I’ve even been planning to buy a new car, though not, at least, a flashy sports car. On the other hand, that bit of critical self-reflection and insecurity might show that I’m still pretty much the same old me. And, after all, yesterday was not a personal big crunch and big bang cycle of rebirth or re-creation, but just another day, that same old cosmological accident of our planet and sun’s mutual attraction. Wisdom, if it comes, will be gradual, not doled out as yearly interest each July 31st, unlike self-indulgence, however, which apparently is compounded annually.

Celebrating birthdays today:

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling turns 38. Additionally, Rowling made Harry’s birthday July 31st; Harry would be turning 23 this year. And Richard Griffiths, who plays Uncle Vernon Dursley in the filmed versions of the Potter books, is 56.

Dean Cain, former Superman in Lois and Clark, turns 37. Actor Michael Biehn is 47, and Barry Van Dyke–Dick Van Dyke’s son–is 52.

My brother-in-law turns 40, as does singer Fatboy Slim.

And Wesley Snipes and I both will be 41 today.

Also born on this day, but now deceased: actor Ted Cassidy, best known as Lurch from The Addams Family, born in 1932; and author Primo Levi, born in 1919.

On a purely selfish, perhaps even slightly prurient basis, I was willing enough to watch Bravo’s Boy Meets Boy last night, with its sixteen attractive young allegedly queer men cavorting in shorts and tank tops around a Palm Beach swimming pool. From an intellectual and (dare I say it? dare I believe it?) moralistic standpoint, though, I’m disgusted by the concept of the show–not the gay dating component, obviously, but the cruel twist unknown by the protagonist, in which some unknown number of his suitors are straight and out to win against him rather than with him. He probably should have expected some kind of dirty tricks, given this is the age of Joe Millionaire, but I still feel–at least a little–for the seemingly almost-too-innocent-to-be-believed James.

Interestingly, while I originally expected the show might make me feel bad about myself in comparison to the gym-toned, dazzling-smiled, stylishly coiffed and nattily dressed young twinks on the show, in reality I didn’t find myself even wanting to be among them–much less be like them–or coming up short in comparison. OK, I know I wasn’t nearly as pretty as these guys when I was in my 20s and early 30s. But I’m also certain I wasn’t nearly as vapid or bubble-headed, either.

It was nice to be able to watch the show with that level of personal detachment, for a change.

Earlier today at a wide-ranging press conference at the White House–only his eighth since being handed the presidency–George W. “Fabulous” Bush said that government lawyers are looking at ways to prevent gay marriage, according to an AP report carried in The New York Times.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that.

The scariest part of this, to me, is that he thinks that his beliefs are worth enshrining in law. Of course, it doesn’t surprise me; this is the same man who said to assembled world leaders during a 2001 trip to Italy, when asked to explain himself, “I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right.” His is an administration built on faith, not on fact.

In related and similarly disheartening news, a recent Gallup Poll suggests that the public apparently has taken a more conservative shift on gay rights just in the past two months, with the drop in support attributed to a “backlash” against the June Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy.

For all but one segment of the population–those with post-graduate eduation, among which support for legalized homosexual relations rose a mere 2 percentage points from May to July, itself inside the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error–support dropped during this period; the overall drop was 10 percentage points from 59 percent in May to 49 percent in July, its lowest point since 1996, while for some segments of the population, the downward trend was even more dramatic. Among Blacks, for example, support for legalized homosexual relations dropped from 58 percent in May to just 35 percent in July, a decline of 23 percentage points.

Americans’ acceptance of the concept that “homosexual relations between consenting adults” should be legal had–up until this month–slowly increased, from a low point of 32% recorded in 1986 to the high point of 60% this May. But two separate Gallup polls conducted this month show a dramatic reversal of this trend. A July 18-20 poll found 50% of Americans saying that homosexual relations should be legal, and a just completed July 25-27 poll confirms the substantial drop in support, with just 48% of those interviewed saying such relations should be legal. Thus, the level of support for legal homosexual relations has dropped 10-12 points in a period of just two months.

Declining support for acceptance of homosexuality appears in the responses to several other questions asked in May and again in the most recent July poll. While 54% of Americans said that “homosexuality should be considered an acceptable lifestyle” in May, only 46% say so now.

Support for allowing homosexual couples to “legally form civil unions, giving them some of the legal rights of married couples” has fallen from 49% in May to 40% now. The current reading on this measure is the lowest out of the seven times Gallup has asked the question since October 2000.

Not only do two out of three people in this country, then, believe that I should not have the same civil privileges granted by marriage if entering into a relationship with someone I love, but one out of every two believe that it should actually be illegal for me even to be in a relationship with another man, that there should be laws against my having a consensual emotional and physical relationship with another adult male.

It is so sobering to look around today and realize that perhaps half of the people walking by me on the street, or working beside me in my office, believe that my private relationships should be criminalized.

Toronto, already a favorite city, looks better and better every day.

Last night, Jeff and I were talking on the phone and he noted that he felt like he’d OD’ed on queer reality television that evening; I agreed, saying that after watching last week’s episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy repeated at 8:00, the premier of Boy Meets Boy at 9:00, and the new episode of Queer Eye at 10:00, I felt “like I need[ed] a cultural colonic.” I was so pleased with my own cleverness with that remark (granted, I was in a bizarrely manic, well-pleased-with-myself mood last night anyway, though for no particular reason that I could determine) that I wrote it down in order to remember it for blogging later. And googling the phrase “cultural colonic” returns zero results, so it’s mine, all mine.

Ok, so I can be a bit irrigating at times.

I have a shameful secret… I am a big crybaby. I get inexplicably teary in situations ranging from watching television commercials to reading children’s books to listening to music, even when the medium isn’t particularly sad or objectively affecting.

So tonight, during Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I had tears streaming down my cheek. Yes. Really.

Truly, though, this was a genuinely touching episode of a series that I fully expected to hate but find that I quite enjoy, and that shows some real bonds being forged between the gay men and their straight prot

Due primarily to Jeff’s influence, I’ve seen more movies in the past couple of weeks than in the entire first half of the year. And the most recent choices, especially, really have been worthwhile.

Chicago, of course, the most well-known, speaks for itself. We saw it Sunday afternoon at the Cinema and Drafthouse just up the street, which offers a really cool–and inexpensive, at about $4 for the movie–way to see fairly recent films–on padded benches and swivel chairs at little cafe tables, over appetizers, sandwiches or pizza, along with a glass of wine, beer or cider. OK, it’s a little grungier than that description makes it sound, and the food is, well, pub food quality, but the movie admission is cheap and the place can be fun.

The previous night we went to the theater at Shirlington, one of my favorites because it tends to feature foreign, arty and more esoteric films. It was there we saw Bend It Like Beckham, which included the Will Rogers Institute PSA I had discussed earlier.

Last night’s film, Más Que Amor, Frenesí (from a song lyric in the film, “el sexo, más que amor, frenesí”: “sex isn’t love, just frenzy”) certainly lived up to the last word in the title. As part of the Out@Visions! weekly exploration of gay cinema at Visions in Dupont Circle, this film was a roller coaster ride of a black comedy (a favorite genre) reminiscent of Almodovar at his craziest. And all with some terrific Latin eye-candy and a great soundtrack.

Soon, very soon, I will have the power to mold the television-watching possibilities for a nation! Mwaha-ha-ha! Straight America, fear me!

I’ve been randomly selected as a Nielsen household for a week starting this Thursday. I am so going to program the TiVo to load up with queer programming for the week.

But don’t be surprised if in the future every network also starts carrying cartoons and an overdose of home improvement programming.

Last night, Jeff and I went to see Bend It Like Beckham (a wonderful film, by the way). The pre-film features included a PSA on behalf of the Will Rogers Institute, “a national health organization dedicated to the support of lung research and developing new treatments and cures for pulmonary diseases and disorders.”

How to support the organization? Spokesperson Tommy Lee Jones, sounding like Brenda Vacarro after he dismounted from his polo pony, wheezed: “Purchase any large combo box here at the theater tonight, including a large popcorn, large soda and candy, and a percentage of the purchase price will result in a donation to the Will Rogers Institute.”

In the mid-1990s, it was purported that “a large [movie] popcorn contained 80 grams of fat even without any topping. Add a few squirts of melted butter, and the fat content went up to 130 grams. That’s equivalent to eight Big Macs, or your four-day saturated fat limit.” [source: eye weekly; July 17, 2002]. (Note: To be fair, since the publication of that report many if not all or most theaters have switched from coconut oil to canola oil for popping popcorn, dramatically reducing the amount of saturated fat.)

Mmmm… the popcorn’s not half as delicious as the irony.

Last weekend, I was talking to my sister about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and she asked me to tape it for her, since she was eager to see it but her local cable system doesn’t include Bravo (or Food TV… even more reason to pity any poor gay boys growing up there, not that there aren’t lots of reasons). When I got back to Arlington, I saw that NBC was planning to air it this week after Will & Grace, so I sent email to let her know, and she replied that she’d seen a promo for it as well and was planning to watch it; apparently, she’s now more of a Will & Grace regular viewer than I.

Last night I got an email from her letting me know that she and my brother-in-law both had really enjoyed the program. She also wanted to know which of the Fab Five I found attractive. If the email had ended there, no problem. But she went on to tell me about her latest idea for someone she thinks I should “hook up with”: Steven Cojocaru– “Cojo” –regular contributor to NBC’s Today.

This is much worse than her last suggestion for a boyfriend for me, QVC (yes, the shopping channel) host, David Venable. Now, I have to give my sister points for her burgeoning gaydar, as she clued in on Venable’s passion for gourmet food, beauty pageants and musical theatre, and his dog “Ruby” (named, I had assumed, for Dorothy’s ruby slippers), and big points for her understanding and comfort level with my being gay (not always the case, she was at one point probably the most homophobic member of my family)–she had seriously considered writing Mr. Venable a letter to let him know about her single gay brother and offer to make the introduction. And he is cute. But my sister seems to have a mindset that any gay man recognizable to her is, de facto, my soulmate and future husband, no matter his interests, intelligence, personal style, personality or appearance.

And it’s not like she doesn’t have any data points on which to make a determination: she’s met all of my longish term boyfriends and even several of the hommes du jour.

Really, though. Cojo? At least with David Venable, I think my sister was working the angle that with a QVC host in the family, she’d rack up big Diamonique discounts; but what’s her payoff here?