The dark side of the rainbow

I’ve spent the last couple of days in a funk.

First, Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation hit me like a kick to the stomach. Intellectually, I appreciate and applaud the “team of rivals” strategy. I’ve been through the NA 12-step program, practiced Zen with HIV positive men, NSA Buddhism with pushy actors, endured my first lover’s fascination with the Course in Miracles, my second lover’s fling with Est/the Forum, and I often list Alan Watts as one of my heroes. I’ve been accused of smiling and laughing too much. I know better than to be upset.

Emotionally, intuitively, however, I feel like a fox has been let loose in the hen house. Like a deranged chicken, my reaction is not an enlightened one; it’s a passionate one. It’s a reaction rooted deep in the darkness of my brain, the part attuned by years of dealing with bigotry and prejudice as a gay, dark-skinned Latino in USA, Inc. It’s rooted in the blood and flesh I inherited from my lesbian mother who lived with her partner for 30 years but still can’t marry her. It’s my reaction, and it is valid, legitimate, cathartic and a vital part of my conversation and how I experience the world and arrive at insight. Do not dismiss me because I haven’t earned my wings or halo yet. I’m trying; but please, in the meantime, do not ask me to “calm down”, repress my gut-feelings, or take a shortcut. Engaging one’s rivals can and should be visceral, messy, heated. In that fiery discourse, ideas break down and are reconstituted.  As long as there are bigots out there, we will need that fire for protection, warmth and light. Otherwise, I could go up to the next straight stranger I see and kiss them on lips without fear. But, I know better. I know there are people out there who look upon me like a punching bag. My brother, the former gang member, and his friends were people like that.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s upset me. As I was kicking myself for being so radical, so reactionary, so “un-progressive”, cynical, paranoid, so “intolerant”, I came across an article about a lesbian that was repeatedly, brutally gang raped and left robbed and naked outside an apartment building. In San Francisco. Because she had a rainbow sticker on her car.

I’m not a flag-waver, and I know an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But if this is what we have to look to forward to, is the view really worth seeing? And if it’s not, is it not our duty to say and do something until a better world comes into focus? Are we to achieve this by biting our tongues as our brothers and sisters are beaten senseless for simply being themselves? I could prize civilized discourse above a human life, but that’s not me. Sometimes, I need a heated argument to let my rage burn off. That’s just how Jesus made me. And Jesus don’t make no mess.

So, I will not boycott, censor, avoid or ignore the inauguration or invocation. I’m not even arguing that Warren shouldn’t deliver the invocation. I’m saying that it is in poor taste, a cheap appeal to the hard right. It’s politics, I get that. Rights and privileges are negotiated, bartered and compromised every day. When push came to shove, Clinton backed “Dont’ ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. When pressed on Prop 8, Obama could have said “Marriage should be between two people who love each other”. But tellingly, he didn’t. Did he not have faith in his base?  I would like to believe that including an avowed exclusionist in a highly didactic moment implies a surplus of faith. But how productive will this super-charged gesture be? Is the hard right going to convert by invocation’s end? Will they be inspired to comfort the queers with bus tire tracks across their faces? Or, will it embolden them to continue committing more brazen hate crimes as statistics indicate?

I do not know. But I will be watching. And listening. And venting. And if that upsets you, let’s talk about it.

HIV Buzz: CCR5

I received a couple of text alerts about breakthroughs on the HIV front this week. First, 273 previously unknown proteins were identified, allowing scientists to focus on denying the virus access to materials it needs to replicate, rather than focusing on trying to deconstruct the virus itself. These proteins are labeled “dependency” factors, and the first drug based on this approach, CCR5, was approved last August. Then came news that as previously thought, an existing medication, “Truvada“, happens to have preventative effects – in mice. The temptation, of course, is for every friend of Dorothy to cry out “Ding dong, the witch is dead.” And in clubs across the country, Truvada is becoming a recreational drug. Not surprisingly, the highest rate of new infections is amongst the younger, urban, mobile set. Armed with text alerts about everyday breakthroughs, they ease on down the yellow brick road, as if the end of the rainbow were right around the corner. Let’s hope they don’t step on any cracks along the way.

Sleazy Listening

Luring disco dollies to a life of vice is not enough. Once there, the budding deviants need a way to find their way around, a guide, a man-on-manifesto, if you will.
Yeah, Bronski Beat published “The Age of Consent” on their inner sleeve as Jimmy Sommerville’s falsetto implored “Why?”; and sure, Boy George cock-teased “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” in his Rasta-Geisha tropicalia. But Soft Cell, in the best Socratic tradition, broke it down for the PYTs (Perverse Young Thangs) in black and blue and white and every other sizzling neon color their s(p)eedy imagination could conjure.
“It’s A Mug’s Game” is not as well-remembered as “Tainted Love” or “Sex Dwarf” but, along with “Down in the Subway” it’s one of my favorite Soft Cell/new wave/pop tunes/torch songs. The throbbing electro epic comes on Big-as-Broadway and builds to a show-stopping, horn-blaring crescendo, exposing all the thrills, pills, and bellyaches of life pranced away among pimps, pushers and prostitutes.
“Oh god its another night/And your head is feeling/Like a lump of lead” – if it wasn’t then, it should be (still) every parent’s worst nightmare. “Mug’s Game” is not the kind of ammo you should hand a hormonal, impatient – and cute – adolescent. KROQ FM served it up “Nonstop” for much of 1982 and 1983; every play on the air and on my turntable and my tape deck drilled the apocalyptic “last-disco” ethos into my impressionable mind.
“It’s a choice between a cab fare home/And a packet of cigarettes/So you choose and the money sticks/In the machine and the manager says/’Tough shit – drink up and leave/Oh god it’s another disease/And you just got rid of the last/You were beginning to feel OK/And the friends you gave it to/Were speaking to you again.”
This, I was certain, was my fate. And it sounded so fabulous, all I could think and sing as I puffed on my clove cigarettes and mirror-danced in my trench coat was, ” I can’t wait until I’m twenty one/And I can tell them all to sod off.” Pa-pa-pa-da-da…
A quarter of a century after the fact, all I can say is, “Je regret rien.” It is a mug’s game, one you can’t win for losing. Even then, winning is a dubious delight, and not for the faint at heart…

Piggy Banking

Wall Street, Porn stars, Pimps, Cocaine, and four brothers battling a suspicious widow over a $25+million estate. This is what I find in my innocent Google search for gay-, minority-, and green-friendly funds and investment groups. I feel for the guy, but really – how’s a pleasure-seeking bon-vivant like me supposed to concentrate on building a cruelty-free nest egg when this story of financier and commentator Seth Tobias’s rise and demise tickles so many of my fancies?
Here we have a dapper, swarthy, media-savvy manager of a $300 million fund in a marriage of convenience to an indulgent socialite, both fond of cruising gay bars and in particular a Go-Go dancer named “Tiger” with the animal-print body tattoo to match. Tobias’s brothers (and sole beneficiaries), along with a pimp called Mr. Madam have accused the wife of enabling a fatal cocaine binge before luring Tobias – with promises of “Tiger” sex – into the swimming pool where he was found floating. Contesting a will and and anything called a “slayer statute” is not endearing the widow to many; draining and resurfacing the pool and sending the pimp champagne just days after the death might make it impossible. But, that’s the wonderful thing about our court system, it makes for scintillating drama.
Now, back to finding a suitable piggy for my pennies.

Sparkle Motion

While we’re in a manic mood swing and camping it up on YouTube, here’s one of my Homo 101 favorites from Donnie Darko. I can’t wait to drop this in the next company meeting. It might go a long way to explaining why my numerically-dyslexic ass can’t put a sound Profit and Loss chart together.

Planet Unicorn – Heyy!

OK, so it’s been a slow few days at work. Now that we’ve moved into our office overlooking Times Square, and it’s summer, we’ve been spending a lot of time staring out the window and doing “pop culture research.”