Ghosts

Barack H. Obama is now President of the United States of America. How cool is that?

It's a good thing, but that's not enough. I want to feel the elation I saw on all those shining young faces. Instead I just feel... subdued. Not so cool.

I wish I was twenty years younger. I wish I was a teenager and Joey was alive and we were both young again and connected to this moment in exactly the way so many younger people are today and seem to have been throughout Obama's campaign. I want to feel as good, as invigorated, as I'm sure they do. Through most of Obama's run, instead of Yes We Can! what I felt was, Well... Maybe. We'll See. I was not a true believer. He seemed to me so young to be reaching for what he was reaching for. I wasn't convinced he was ready yet I knew I wouldn't want to see him lose. At some points I was actually annoyed--couldn't he wait another few years? What was his hurry?

And now I am happy that he is President and I have high hopes for him--who does not? who could not with all that is at stake? I think he will be a great president. Because we need him to be.

But Uncle Larry has died, just Saturday. And his passing, a sadness in and of itself, is another reminder of all those missing places at the family table, all the people I've loved, and admired, who didn't make it to see this moment of history. Mark told me that well over a year ago Larry had predicted Obama's win--and not a pathetic, controversial, squeaker of a win, either, but a decisive sweep. That was a remarkably confident forecast given that more than a year ago no such thing seemed so certain. Who knew? Who was Barack Obama?

Who indeed? Who was George W. Bush except the privileged wastrel son of an accomplished father and a powerful political family? What did he know about running a country, about global statecraft, about leadership?

Not so much, turns out. And many, many of us are the poorer for it.

I wish--I know I said this already--I wish my brother Joe was here. I'd like so much to be talking to him today and have him talking to me, telling me what this day meant to him. If he were alive so many things would be different. We'd have all been at his and Maria's house having brunch, the televisions would be going, broadcasting the Inaugural, and everyone would be wandering all over the place, hugging, eating, and driving Colin and Allegra to distraction with endless grown-up questions about what they thought of all this, what they'd remember best. Family and friends. There would be good food and the dogs would be frantic with happiness, making affectionate nuisances of themselves. We would banter and console, argue and laugh. Conversations would spill out onto the porches. We would remember. We would eat some more. I would eat a lot.

I'm going for a walk. It's cold. But I need some fresh air and solitude. This room is crowded with ghosts.

The New Damned Toy

Oh, woe.

I've finally bought myself a brand spanking new MP3 player (you there in the back, stop snickering!) and I've had the thing for only slightly more than 48 hours and already I'm having problems with it. Problems I created for myself--inadvertently, but still--problems that even the young, friendly and presumably techno-savvy Radio Shack Guy who sold it to me Wednesday afternoon wasn't 100% sure how to help me solve, though he made a suggestion that sounds like it might work (Please, God, if you're there, make it work, especially since the Sansa support@ people have not yet responded to my electronic SOS). I feel so dumb about this, and so ancient, like this boneheaded mistake I made was the kind of thing I'd be tsk-tsk-tsk at my mother for doing--except that it's me this time. I'm my mother. I'm my grandmother for Chrissakes, that's how idiotically inept was this botch-up with my MP3 player.

What happened was this: I eagerly took the thing, a Sansa Fuze 8GB flash drive thing, out of the box and my heart sank at the sight of the included mini installation disc because it's for Rhapsody music service and I hate Rhapsody and don't care who knows it. Apparently Rhapsody and Sansa are good buddies and Sansa promises cool fun features on my new MP3 player if I install Rhapsody on my computer and use that to download my music.

No. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. Not again, not in a million years. I won't bore you with all the headaches I went through with Rhapsody a few years ago when I decided to try it and downloaded it to my XP; suffice to say I learned my lesson and, cool features or no, I won't be using that music program for my player.

Besides, I don't have to. Just plug the included cable into the USB port of my computer, charge the battery and start dragging and dropping my music files into my device. Simple. Except....

It wasn't completely my fault. I mean it was, but honestly, anyone could have made this mistake, I think. See, I'd opened my Windows Media Player to look over my music files, trying to decide which ones I wanted to transfer, when I suddenly remembered I should be charging the battery, the very first thing the little operation manual instructs you to do. So without giving much thought, I plugged it into the port....and continued scanning my audio files....should I include the comedy mixes I created for myself too, or would that take up too much drive space? What about the Spoken Word (American Writers Edition) stuff my mom gave me for Christmas?.....and what about my soundtrack CDs?....how many songs does 8 GBs translate to again? 2000, is it, give or take? At the time I purchased the player that seemed like a lot, like plenty, but now that I look at all these files....maybe I should have gone ahead and popped for that other little thingee, that tiny 8 GB card that goes in the player's slot for even more audio storage (Wonder how long that sale is going to last..?).......

.....When I was snapped out of my reverie by the unexpected sight of my library of music files rapidly "synchronizing" themselves to the player. What the--? Why's it doing that? I didn't tell it do that! Why's it doing that? Hey! (I said to my computer, uselessly) Hey, stop it! Hold it! The battery's just supposed to be charging now, that's all! Drag and drop! I'm supposed to drag and drop the music, like it says in the manual, like the Radio Shack Guy said!! Hey, cut it out!

And I disconnected the cable from the USB port (was going to say I "yanked" it, but that's not strictly true; I didn't want to break anything), looking worriedly from the MP3 player to the computer and back again. I noticed the player's battery was nearly completely charged and I had a bunch of songs already downloaded--there was the album cover art, the name of the artist, and the album and song titles...cool! That was easy! Maybe I don't need to do the tedious dragging and dropping after all. For now I'll just close out Windows Media and plug it back into the pc to finish charging, and then reconnect it to WM and let the two talk to each other for awhile. Simple!

And that's what I did, checking from time to time to monitor the process and keep an eye on the remaining disk space. After, oh, I don't know, approximately 500 songs had sync-ed, I decided to stop the operation for the time being. I plugged the headphone cable into the player, pressed the horribly uncomfortable ear buds into my ears and, after some wincing adjustments settled back to enjoy the songs and get comfortable with the device's functions, adjusting the volume--amazingly good sound--scrolling through the various menus, checking out the FM radio, and so on. Finally I decided to charge the battery some more, turn it off and put it away.

The next day I was out and about running errands in my old neighborhood--no more annoying transportation rerouting since the Obamas have finally moved to D.C., though I notice the barricades and a few strategically placed police cars are still blocking off the house--and I took my new toy with me, of course, vastly enjoying carrying a chunk of my music library around in my pocket as I shopped, posted mail and tried not to fall on my ass on all the slippery new snow and ice. The sound quality of this baby is truly wonderful, and pitched just so, many of the songs weren't playing into my ears so much as reverberating through me. Duffy cooing "Mercy," Al Green wailing "Here I Am (Come And Take Me)," Cat Stevens's lilting, contemplative "Into White," even the Ting Ting's funny, punky "Shut Up And Let Me Go"--it was gorgeous, a religious experience. Sitting on the upper deck of the bus and gazing at the passing neighborhood as the music flowed into and through me I felt fifteen again, when music was as necessary for my well-being as air to breathe.

It was great.

Then I came home, sat down at my pc, and, delighted with my MP3, decided it was time to transfer more music to it.

But first, I would delete the files already sync-ed. I wanted to upload other stuff for sync-ing and after all, I don't really need them on the computer anymore since they've been safely downloaded over to my MP3. Audio files can eat up an awful lot of hard drive.

So I did. I started merrily deleting away, and later in the evening when I decided to play with my new toy again, I began to notice an odd and disquieting occurrence. An awful lot of the songs on my MP3 player were no longer playing. Oh, they were still in there alright, or at least they appeared to be--yeah, there they were. I could scroll around by song title or artist name and see them and the accompanying album/CD cover art, still in there. They just weren't playing anymore, even when I deliberately interrupted other songs to select them.

Hmmmm. That's strange. Why is this happening all of a sudden?

I did a fair amount of head scratching as my anxiety steadily rose. The pocket "quick start" instruction manual didn't address this particular peculiarity and I was adamant I was not going to slide that damned Rhapsody install disc into my computer no matter what. But what was going on??

Then it began to dawn on me. The way I'd downloaded my music to the player--I'd synchronized it. Actually I didn't, Windows Media did, initially, and without my bidding, and then I continued the process once it had started. Anyway I began to realize that the synchronization, the method itself, was the key to the problem. The American Heritage definition of synchronization is "to operate in unison, to cause to occur at the same time as something else." I sync-ed those songs instead of directly dropping them in, and each time I plugged my player into my pc they were communicating with each other about them. When I deleted those music files from my pc, my player felt it had no choice but to dump them as well, though the mystery was that they still appeared at least to be sitting in the player.

Damn. Damn damn damn damn it all to hell. Why me? And now what?

Today I took the player back to the Radio Shack Guy and explained what had happened, sharing my conclusions as to the source of the problem. Ah, he said sympathetically. Wow. Never heard of that happening before. But, yeah, that's probably what it is. You should have dragged-dropped instead of sync-ed, especially if you were going to remove the audio files from your pc. Either that or keep syncing but get a separate hard drive for your music...

Fine, right, right. But in the meantime--? Any thoughts?

His suggestion--and this sounds like a good idea to me; I don't know how many of you other Sansa Fuze owners feel differently--was that I:

1. Plug the player back into the pc without powering up Windows Media (and if it opens up on its own, close it immediately)
2. Double-click on My Computer (what I should have done to begin with) and look to see if the sync-ed music files are there. If they are, try deleting them (again) with the device still plugged in and then see if they are now removed from the player as well. If yes, delete ALL the music you sync-ed to your player, even the ones that have been playing okay until your flash drive is clean.
3. Now unplug your MP3 player from your pc and power up Windows Media. Before you plug your player back in however, go to Preferences and see if you can disable the sync function so it won't create any further headaches for you.
4. Upload all the music you want to transfer again (sigh) and
5. PRAY. PRAY TO JESUS FOR GUIDANCE AND LUCK AND WHATEVER THE HELL ELSE WILL MAKE THIS VEXING PROBLEM GO AWAY PERMANENTLY. (Okay, I added this part.)
6. Repeat step 2, this time dragging and dropping your music files into your MP3 player, checking periodically to make sure the playback is okay.

So that's what I plan to do, as soon as figure out how to fix this other little problem that happened as I was typing this post. I was trying to delete a song while it was playing, something I've done before without incident, and the song didn't delete. I tried again and now the player has frozen, with "Delete Song?" showing on the player's screen. I can't do anything with it now, anything at all. It doesn't respond when I try to shut it off, or charge it, or anything.

And now my cat is looking at me funny.

Route 66 -- A Month of Sundays

I’m watching a grainy broadcast of Route 66, the old sixties tv dramas (with that memorable Nelson Riddle theme), a series about a decade or so ahead of my time, meaning it’s one of those classic tv shows I’d always heard great things about but had never actually seen. It’s an entertaining episode featuring a compelling performance from an actress who has become one of my favorites of the era, Anne Francis (better known as the sexy detective Honey West, another series slightly before my time), who is guest starring here as a young and glamorous Broadway star who has mysteriously fled New York in the midst of the run of a hot new play to return to her Montana hometown, where by chance she meets Our Wayfaring Heroes, Tod (played by Martin Milner, whom I came to know better, more or less, as the older cop on one of my gram’s old favorites, Adam-12) and Buz (George Maharis), both of whom instantly fall for her, especially Buz.

It develops that Arlene—yes, “Arlene,” that’s the very unglamorous name of Francis’s character—has learned she has a degenerative disease (Lupus? Seriously?) and knowing she hasn’t long to live has opted to run away from the bright promise of her life and career and come home to die.

A Month of Sundays was written by the peerless Stirling Silliphant, whose endearingly oddball name is attached as scribe to some of the very best of the classic television shows of the fifties and sixties (M Squad, Perry Mason, Mr. Lucky, Naked City, Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and several fine movies (Charly, The Slender Thread, In the Heat of the Night) as well. His writing is literate and intense, often infused with piercing psychological insight, and this episode is no exception.

Tod: You’re going to Columbia Gardens tonight with Buz, aren’t you.

Arlene: Yes, why?

Tod (heavily): He bought a ring. He’s gonna ask you to marry him—

Arlene (stunned) No--!!

Tod: --and you’re going to accept.

Arlene (agonized): I can’t. You know I can’t, Tod.

Tod: But he doesn’t know you can’t, and that’s why you’re going to!

Arlene: How can I love if I can’t offer a lasting relationship? (Turning away) I don’t even know if I’m gonna see the rain again—I don’t even know if I’m gonna see tomorrow’s sun! How can I hurt Buz by loving him and letting him love me when it can’t go anywhere?

Tod: But it can go somewhere—

Arlene: What, a day? Two days? Maybe a week—?

Tod: A minute if that’s all there is, but a minute that counts!

Arlene: I can’t! I know Buz loves me--I can’t make it worse!

Tod (pleading): Arlene, you’re doing what everybody else does—wasting precious days, just passing the time, going through the motions! Waiting! That’s not really living. Before my father died he taught me something. He knew he was dying. He lived his last days more fully than he lived all the rest of his life. He said ‘Don’t let yourself be hobbled by fatalism and don’t run from death. Recognize it. Accept it for what it is--just as much a miracle as being born, maybe more so. Only when we lose our fear of death can we defeat it. Then we can make every hour of our existence really count.’

Tod (passionately): Arlene, Buz is a guy who’s with things! He feels every minute of every experience in every pore! And if he did know, this is the way he’d want it to be! So take this from him and share it with him and use it!

(She stares at him, wavering, troubled, uncertain, as the scene fades out and a commercial for City Colleges of Chicago begins.)

Strong stuff.

Still, watching this episode--this exchange especially--I'm struck by two things. First, I’m not sure people really talked like this, even in that bygone, presumably better educated, era. I love good television writing and it's fun watching actors eager to strut their actorly stuff sink their perfect teeth into what they know is a well crafted, possibly award-winning, script. Even so, there's dialogue you admire on the page and dialogue you really believe.

More importantly though, I’m a wee bit creeped out--more than a wee bit, actually--by the way Buz’s love, and his plans for them both, is presented by Tod to Arlene as something she’s duty bound to accept regardless of the grim reality of her circumstances (or even because of that) as though his friend’s feelings mattered more than those of a dying woman. Tod’s words seem very heartfelt, but what about Arlene’s words? Would Tod have had more respect for her feelings, would he have taken her objections more seriously, if they were coming from Buz, and it was he confronting the Grim Reaper? I realize this was (and to some extent remains) the culture, rather than a fault of Silliphant's teleplay, the days when, above all, every (normal) girl wanted to be married, supposedly, and most (normal) guys in their swingin' bachelor heart of hearts really didn't, supposedly. You say it was his idea? He went and bought a ring? Well, what on earth is she waiting for? Okay, there was this pesky wrinkle about her not having too much longer to live... but couldn't she, couldn't they, you know, work around that?

Arlene didn't marry Buz, of course; the serie's premise wouldn't have allowed for it. She began to slip away from him while they were foxtrotting on the dance floor, dying as a bewildered Buz watched a priest perform the last rites, asking Arlene if she was sorry for her sins. She said yes, gazed up at the dark night sky, her hand went limp, and Buz burst into wails of grief as a saddened Tod looked on. I felt sad too.

For her.

TCM Remembers... and so do I

I don't really want to be sitting here doing this tonight. It's New Year's Eve after all; I should be out-- No, forget that. It's too damn cold, I'm too damn broke, and as I replied to that e-invite to Obama's Inaugural Ball (actually an e-invite to a Chicago "Inaugural Ball" celebration) I'm not in the mood to party. My mood was brighter earlier when the day was younger and sunnier and I was puttering around the house, cleaning the closets and tweaking the placement of chairs and book shelves and speaker units. There was in the background a cop flick on Turner Classic Movies, a mostly forgettable John Wayne actioner from the seventies, and after it ended, and following clips of coming attractions, TCM's tribute to the notable artists and performers who died in 2008 came on. I stopped distracting myself, turned up the volume, and sat down to watch.

You've seen it by now I'm sure, on YouTube if not on TCM, that poignant black and white video Farewell, silent but for Estelle Reiner's wryly funny throwaway line from When Harry Met Sally ("I'll have what she's having") and that song--Joe Henry's profoundly moving and elegiac lament, "God Only Knows"--that perfectly underscores the montage of famous and not so famous faces, beginning with tough guy actor Richard Widmark (who shocked 1947 audiences as Tommy, the giggling baby-faced psycho who kills an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman by gleefully shoving her down a flight of stairs in Kiss of Death, his film debut);

continues with "sexpot" actress Edie Adams (whom I vaguely recall as the sultry Muriel cigar girl in sixties TV commercials and whom to this day my mother remembers fondly as the drolly moniker-ed "Barbara Seville" in the Steve McQueen-Natalie Wood drama Love With the Proper Stranger);

and along the way includes dancer Cyd Charisse, whom the great Astaire called "beautiful dynamite" and so she was, those skyscraper legs and flashing eyes vamping him in The Band Wagon's "Girl Hunt Ballet," Gene Kelly in Singin' In the Rain's "Broadway Melody", and pretty much everyone else in one of two of my absolute favorite Charisse numbers: the erotic, alluring "Two-Faced Woman" (stupidly cut from Band Wagon and the India Adams-dubbed vocal handed to Joan Crawford for her outlandish, drag-queen turn in Torch Song) and the ethereally beautiful Silk Stockings Ballet in the movie of the same name;

directors Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella;

Carol Burnett's second banana extraordinaire Harvey Korman;

both Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn, leading man and leading lady, respectively, of the haunting world cinema classic, Black Orpheus;

Hot Buttered Soul icon Isaac Hayes, composer of the much imitated "Theme From Shaft;"

director-choreographer Michael Kidd (who must be forever celebrated for his athletic, imaginative staging and/or choreography of Golden Age of Hollywood classics Li'l Abner, Guys and Dolls, The Band Wagon and most memorable of all, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers);

and bawdy, whiskey-voiced beauty Suzanne Pleshette, now and forever Emily Hartley, Bob Newhart's raven-haired spouse on the The Bob Newhart Show, but also immortalized as the earthy, ill-fated schoolteacher Annie in Hitchcock's The Birds.

Charlton Heston is dead, lost to Alzheimer's and decrepit old age, a major star (Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Major Dundee, A Touch of Evil, El Cid, The Agony and The Ecstasy, Richard Lester's splendid Musketeer films and, oh yes, Planet of the Apes) and once a Big Hollywood Liberal who somehow, somewhere along the way morphed into a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

The realization that these luminaries were now a memory (Lois Nettleton? Roy Scheider too? And Brad Renfro--? When did Brad Renfro die? What happened?) startled and saddened me, but I really choked up at the sight of the shining face of actor-comedian Bernie Mac, gazing upward and lost in a moment of thoughtful contentment near the end of Steven Soderbergh's splendid Ocean's Eleven remake, the gifted, way-too-young-to-be-gone Heath Ledger, on horseback as the tortured Ennis Del Marr in Brokeback Mountain, the rascally stand-up comic turned cultural curmudgeon George Carlin (if his Take-Offs and Put-Ons and Occupation Foole are no longer my all-time favorite comedy albums they're still right up there in the top five), and the biggest heartbreak of all, the Big Male Superstar crush of my girlhood, the great Paul Newman, actor, director, activist, race car aficionado, Newman's Own philanthropist, family man, cool dude. (I was only flirting with Redford, you know that, right Paul? A passing fancy, nothing more) I knew he was old now, and heard he was ailing. And my grown-up, logical mind understands full well that no one, even the greatest of the Great Stars, will live forever.

But still. Paul Newman.

And Eartha Kitt has left us--the sleek, sensational siren of stage, screen and the supper clubs of a more glamorous (and, alas, segregated) entertainment era, the actress-singer an infatuated Orson Welles once declared "the most exciting woman in the world," died of cancer on Christmas Day, her passing too recent for her to be included in TCM's 2008 tribute. Like Kidd, who actually died December 2007, Kitt will no doubt be featured in next year's edition. Very possibly Eartha Kitt will be remembered best by a younger generation for her amusing voice work as the evil (and wonderfully sarcastic) Yzma in Disney's superior animated feature The Emperor's New Groove, but I will always love her for the languorous purr of songs like "Just An Old-Fashioned Girl," "Lazy Afternoon," and especially the teasing, sultry "Santa Baby" (ignore the juvenile and truly awful Madonna effort), the version featured on her MCA "Best of Eartha Kitt" album, without the gulping backing vocals.

To Bill

I am watching The Lawrence Welk Show on public television as I read your blog. No idea why. I could be watching the lanky and impossibly young Jimmy Stewart romance Jean Arthur in You Can’t Take It with You on TCM, or the 1973 episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show where Phyllis almost gets Lou Grant to sell his house. Instead I'm sitting here, watching this impossibly white bread song and dance routine.

My grandmother loved this waltzy, schmaltzy, relentlessly MOR variety show—especially when Arthur Duncan, the only African-American cast member, joined in ’64—and watched it every Saturday night. Sometimes, just to be with her, I'd join her in her bedroom with a snack or the evening's dessert, waiting for the appearance of America’s Singing Sweethearts, the Lennon Sisters. I never had the nerve to ‘fess it to Grandma, but I was really crushing on Peggy in those days—no, not Peggy—Kathy. Kathy was the sexiest of the Lennons and, to my 10 year old mind, the most elegant and sophisticated. I’m pretty sure it was Kathy.

Do you ever feel like life is getting too fucking complicated and you just want to go back, Bill? Not necessarily to start all over—just full out retreat to a time when life was simpler, like James Daly in that Twilight Zone episode. Or Gig Young, in that other Twilight Zone episode. A time, in so many ways, even less just than now but simpler, at least on its face.

Nothing is simple now, or at the moment, much fun. When Barack Obama won last month, I was astonished and ecstatic and emotional. Finally, it’s happened, and in my lifetime. At last, at last. My mother began to save the daily papers, savoring all the beautiful pictures of Barack and Michelle and their charming little girls, delighting in the images of America’s first black First Family. Meanwhile I gloried in all the newsmagazine covers coming into the library daily mail bundles—the Times and the U.S. News and World Reports, the Newsweeks and the Nations—the kind of magazines where previously, if there was a black male face on the cover, it probably meant trouble, disgrace. But here was Obama seated, Obama standing, Obama looking purposeful and serious, Obama with kind, crinkly eyes and a breezy smile. Obama on the cover of Ebony, emerging from a car wearing dark sunglasses; the ultimate, the epitome, of class and confident cool. God, how great was this? He was Sidney Poitier and John Shaft and Martin Luther King and Alexander Scott all rolled into one tall dark and handsome package of sexy excellence. Mister President. My president. You should have seen me grinning at my family and coworkers and neighbors and friends and all of them grinning back. Even with the snowballing economic upheavals, even growing more and more scared about losing their retirement savings or their jobs, they couldn’t stop grinning about President-Elect Obama and neither could I.

Then the reality of Prop 8 began to sink in, really take hold, and with it the dawning realization that My President was not going to talk to me about this, not going to address my shock and consternation. I understood perfectly well that while in the midst of trying to put together his new administration he was busy being confronted with one looming crisis after the next; still, his silence began to worry, and then rankle. He did release a statement through his media people, expressing his regrets, or something like that, regarding the passage of the anti-gay initiatives. That was nice… actually, no. That was bullshit. How could Obama profess to “regret” Prop 8? I mean, doesn’t he essentially agree with it? Because of his religious beliefs? Because of the way he was brought up?

And now, rubbing salt into a wound he seems unaware is there, Obama asks the new Falwell—Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who equates homosexuality with bestiality, incest and pedophilia—to give the invocation at his January inaugural. Since the announcement, the beaming, avuncular Warren has been doing the press tour thing, making it ever clearer with his remarks exactly why “the gays” and their supporters are so up in arms about him as the choice to launch the Obama presidency.

Barack Obama is still the big hero, the Miracle Man, to my family and coworkers, for whom the controversies about Prop 8 and Rick Warren (and the lack of LGBT appointees in his cabinet) either don’t register or exist mostly as a lot of damn noise. This is hard, because when I stand up and speak out I am in conflict with them and when I don’t I am in conflict with myself. On election night my mom and I hugged each other because we knew when Obama won, we’d won too. We toasted his ascension and remembered with love and sadness those who were not here with us to share the historic moment: my younger brother Joe, her oldest sister Jean, her mom—my Grandma.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m still sorting all this out. I feel wounded and a little defeated, not at all the way I expected to be feeling now. Barack Obama is still my president. I still have high hopes for him and for my country. But I’m not grinning anymore; I am too disappointed for that. I am angry, and tired, and my heart—my heart is just not in it.

Obama and Warren, Together At Least

It’s disheartening, isn’t it.

Especially after Prop 8. If only Prop 8 had been struck down, and soundly, we could all maybe take a deep breath about Rick Warren—God, he’s smug, isn’t he? Just like Falwell; it’s like he thinks we’re too stupid to see through all that roly-poly affability—and say: Okay, maybe Barack is throwing the fundies an inclusion bone. We could’ve chalked it up to Obama’s wanting to reassure the religious right that his embrace of LGBT Americans does not equal a complete rejection of them, that he considers us all, every one of us, The American Family, even if some of the siblings never get along. The problem of course is that, so far, it’s us to whom he’s tossed the bone. Barack Obama has yet to truly embrace us, and after the searing insult of Prop 8—and his silence about Prop 8—the choice of Rick Me? Homophobic? Me? Warren for his Inaugural invocation really is a tone-deaf kick in the teeth.

You were expecting better? Well, I wasn’t. I wasn’t expecting anything from Obama as regards LGBT issues, exactly, though I allowed myself to hope. I am still hopeful, guardedly.

Here’s the thing. In my experience, straight black men do not handle the “gay thing” well. They really don’t. If they’re not openly, flagrantly hostile, then they’re at least terrifically discomfited, making with all manner of nervous little jokes, and pious observations that it’s not their place to judge, we’re all sinners, and anyway let he who is without sin, etc. etc. Some even feel compelled (particularly in the presence of other black males) to make obnoxious, hurtful moves just to prove their hetero bona fides. For black men in America, many of whom struggle with fatherlessness and issues with women, it’s all about masculinity, especially as it intersects with race, and the fear of being perceived as a “punk.”

In defending his opposition to gay marriage, Obama said something or other to his interviewer about the way he was raised, and I sighed, feeling tired all over. The way he was raised, yada yada yada; plus, he’s a Christian, blah, blah, blah. I thought, yeeeeeaah, ya know, maybe we need to take a step back from this guy and reassess. True, he is brainy and charismatic and attractive, the very first African-American elected to the highest political office in the land—but more than all that he’s new, relatively. Just a few years ago, most Americans had never heard of Barack Obama. Maybe that’s key. Maybe that above all is why expectations of him run so high and why so many, including so many of us queers, are inclined to see so much in him. It’s easy to idealize someone you don’t really know, easy to lose sight of—let’s be nice and say “the probability” rather than “the fact”—that at the end of the day what we have in Barack Hussein Obama is not only just another calculating politician, but also just another straight black guy who is really uncomfortable with the whole gay thing, and is even prepared to do obnoxious, hurtful things to prove his hetero, Christian bona fides.

Blue Monday

The North Wind doth blow; we soon shall have snow—

We do have snow today, Chicago’s first snowfall of the season. All day yesterday the wind howled and raged, banging against our windows. We stayed inside, not eager to be pelted by icy sleet, dead leaves and kicked-up dirt. From my 25th floor view the street below looks like a child’s careful arrangement of Legos and building blocks dusted with confectioner sugar. The sky is so impossibly white, so heavy with the next blow, that the lake, usually a sparkling blue-green, has actually disappeared into it. I am seized with an impulse to walk the lakefront as I used to when I was a moody teenager. A few years ago, when I still lived in Hyde Park, I could do that since Lake Michigan was literally scant minutes away from my front doorstep. Here at my Bronzeville address the view of the lake is better but it is actually farther away, more trouble to reach. It’s fascinating to me that the water always looks so much closer than it really is.

I should have gone out today. I might still, for a walk around the block if nowhere else; it’s just a bit past 3.

Of course, time will not stand still while I type…

I spent most of the day cleaning up the joint and rearranging my furniture. I always do this when I’m restless, a little anxious, and don’t know what else to do with myself; it’s someplace—not the most desirable of places, but someplace—to take the energy. I haven’t wanted to do much of anything lately, not even write, so maybe today’s pre-spring cleaning is a good sign. I hope so. I’ve been feeling very melancholy and dispirited but then the winter holidays don’t often bring out the best in me. Last night my mother asked if we should order ham for Christmas dinner to supplement the turkey breast in the freezer and on the instant I was snappish and short-tempered, irritably reminding her that after all my efforts with last week’s Thanksgiving meal someone else in this family could bloody well do the cooking for the next holiday—don’t even go there. She retreated, meekly, and for the rest of the evening I felt like a shit.

*sigh*

I may have to be locked away for the entire month of December (and possibly January too) to ensure I don’t kill anybody.