Homophobia

On Feeling Red: a failed essay about eczema, riots, Mesut Özil and Zinedine Zidane, the Belarus Free Theatre, neoliberalism, austerity and the Eurozone, KLM Airlines, Derek Jarman, Mary Magdalene, clingy women, feminist killjoys, melancholic migrants, contamination, sickness, health, racism, capitalism, totalitarian patriarchy, “the barbaric,” suicide economies, refusing to leave your shit at the door, showing your wound, not getting over it, feeling it, still feeling it.

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(Note: Having not written at the [PANK] blog for nearly a year, I apparently thought the best way to make up for that absence would be to stuff an entire year’s worth of posts in one. I am definitely doing the Internet wrong. Also, this is failed essay is something of a throwback to the two failed essays posted here at [PANK]. I did say “failed.”)

Trinh T. Minh-ha, “All-Owning Spectatorship”:

To say red, to show red, is already to open up vistas of disagreement. Not only because red conveys different meanings in different contexts, but also because red comes in many hues, saturations, and brightnesses, and no two reds are alike. In addition to the varying symbols implied, there is the unavoidable plurality of language. And since no history can exhaust the meaning of red, such plurality is not a mere matter of relativist approach to the evershifting mores of the individual moment and of cultural diversification; it is inherent to the process of producing meaning; it is a way of life. The symbol of red lies not simply in the image, but in the radical plurality of meanings. Taking literalness for naturalness seems, indeed, to be as normal as claiming the sun is white and not red. Thus, should the need for banal concrete examples arise, it could be said that society cannot be experienced as objective and fully constituted in its order; rather, only as incessantly recomposed of diverging forces wherein the war of interpretations reigns.

Seeing red is a matter of reading. And reading is properly symbolic.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the color red. It started, in a way, by reading Derek Jarman’s essay “On Seeing Red,” from his book on color, Chroma. But what held me, reading Jarman’s essay, was his mention of eczema. I’ve written about sickness and eczema here at PANK in the past, but Jarman’s essay, in connection with various current political events, made me feel that I needed to write about it again. Feel it again.

Jarman:

I’m coming back from the blast furnace of St. Anthony’s fire, an eczema which turned me red. Violent red soreness. I turned almost purple. My skin no longer welcomed the world, but shut it out. I was in the solitary confinement of the senses. For two months I could not read or write. Work stopped on this book. The red eczema spreads across my face. ‘Where have you been on holiday?’ passers-by asked. A short stay in hell.

Skin that no longer welcomes the world; yes, that’s right. But it’s more than that. As an eczematic person you no longer welcome the world, but at the same time, in spite of yourself, you become hyper-porous to the world, excessively open, flayed, (hyper-hospitable? eczematic ethics? who or what is the eczematic other? what about the self-othering that happens in illness; how many times did I weep to my husband F., “I’m trapped in this skin, my body isn’t mine, why is it like this, why still, why always, don’t understand, it’s beyond me, what is it reacting to, what does it want, why, can’t, can’t?”).

For Jarman says the skin shuts the world out, but is that so? Or do you shut the world out because of your skin; does your skin shut you out of the world; does the world shut you up into the world of your skin? Is the eczematic a shutting out of the world at all, or is it in fact a radical irrupting into the world, and a radical irrupting of the world into the body? A visceral mutuality and exchange between the social and the biological, the political and the personal, between two sicknesses that are one sickness. The biopower of sickness. Twenty-first century immunology: the place where the world becomes ever more intolerable, while forcing our bodies to tolerate it–and the place where we stop being able to tolerate it.

No, what am I saying? It’s not just the twenty-first century. Immunology has always been about this. About the red no of the red blood. About saying, often without being able to say it: I can’t take this.

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Dear Tracy Morgan

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Dear Tracy Morgan,

By now, everyone probably knows you stated during a recent stand-up routine in Nashville Tennesse you’d stab your son to death if he was gay.

That was probably the worst of your homophobic tirade. I guess.

You also said gays are pussies for whining so much about being bullied and that if gays can take it up the ass they should be able to take a joke.

Okay. Haha! Ha.

Wait. I guess I can’t take a joke, Mr. Morgan. Or a cock up my ass either. Only because that maneuver didn’t work for me, logistically speaking. But to make it clear, I loathe the implication (and prejudice inherent) that only gay men derive pleasure from anal sex. That’s not true. I knew a woman once, Cindy. Never mind. She was probably a whore. Anyway, a straight  guy who enjoys anal play is probably a closeted faggot, right?

Imagine men secure in thier masculinity. Yeah. Just saying.  Sexuality is more fluid that most people would admit. Because people like to draw lines in the sand and consider everything from a black-and-white perspective. Also, this country is plagued by sexual hang ups. Stereotypes. Assumptions. Stupidity. Banality. Anal is just another way some people achieve sexual pleasure. So what? What do you like? I’m not going to judge, Mr. Morgan. Play safe. Play fair. That’s all.

Hint. Rape isn’t fair, and neither is child molestation. That’s right. A man molested me when I was five, which means I wasn’t old enough to consent. Or even understand what the fuck was going on. Absolute power play, that one. The first of several in my lifetime.

NO. FAIR.

Am I whining?

Let’s move on. 

Consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they like. What’s wrong with it? Anal gets a bad rap. Because it’s sodomy performed by sodomites who God turned to salt or some shit in the Bible. Only gays enjoy sodomy! Gays are Sodomites! They’re Sodomitistic Salt. Nonsensical crap. I never look to the Bible for my moral compass.

For example, God hates fags. 

BULLSHIT. Yes, all caps. I’m yelling. One more time. BULLSHIT.

God doesn’t hate fags. Your parents do.

Imagine all the empathy and tolerance these children will go forth into the world and spread.

Heartening, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, you tell a audience in Nashville Tennessee (who cheered you on, no less) you’d stab your own child to death if he was gay. You understand, Mr. Morgan, that parents every day disown their children because of their sexual preferences? See For the Bible Tells Me So as a reference if you don’t have a clue. 

Or talk to gay and lesbian children. Have you ever? Talk to the gay and lesbian teens living on the street because they can’t live at home. Too bad you can’t talk to the thousands upon thousands of gay and lesbian teenagers who commit suicide every year because their families disown them. But that’s impossible now. They’re dead.

I keep trying to figure it out, Mr. Morgan. Your act in Nashville. What’s so funny about it? Shock value? Irony? I told my son what you said and he was bummed. You should have seen his face drop. “Man,” he said. “That sucks.” We watch 30 Rock together and he thinks it’s a great show. 

“I don’t understand why everyone hates gay people so much.”  That’s what he said. My son turned fourteen yesterday. He’s more intuitive than a lot of kids his age. And I think he’s tons more empathetic. I’ve worked hard at that. Hard. A life long pursuit, my contract with the universe. You start by teaching your child self acceptance.

Then accepting others is easier. I believe. Imagine it. You’re a parent, Mr. Morgan. You know how tough it is out here raising children. Slippery slope. How much do you let them do? When? Where? How? Who to trust? Jesus. All I want is to protect my son. I’m sure you feel the same way. I hope so. Which is why this tirade of yours got under my skin then stayed there like a tick holing up. Sure, I have an obsessive personality. I’m a writer. It’s required. But also, like you, I’m an artist and am forever interested in what other artists do and why and how it works. See, I appreciate the power of art to incite a reaction in other people. We’re supposed to do that.

Our audience is so apathetic sometimes.

And sometimes they’re ignorant. And sometimes they’re scared.

Once upon a time, I tolerated a great deal of misogyny and homophobia as a college writing teacher. I never once told a male student he couldn’t write his story. What I said was, “Write this in a way I understand where the misogyny (or homophobia) comes from.” You always hope the artist will experience an epiphany. To the betterment of themselves and humankind. But you have to get real naked to do that. No holds barred, self implication. Which is difficult. Gulp. What’s your demon, Mr. Morgan? 

Lots of comedians are angry. Obvious. That’s why they’re funny. Comedy becomes a platform where a comedian presses real life, hot-button topics. Oscar Wilde once said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you.”

I also believe lots of comedians are sad. Chris Farley, for instance. He almost always made himself the punchline. He was brilliant. Gosh, he made me laugh. Sort of breaks my heart when I think about it. Probably all Chris ever wanted was love. And he sort of left himself at the mercy of others to get it, took a lot of shots. Self inflicted.

I want to tell you a story.

One night, two boys picked up a third in a bar under the pretense they’d give him a ride home, or perhaps under the pretense they liked him,  or maybe there was more to it, another underlying current, the sort that would have given the third boy hope, all the while these other two boys played him along. Cruel-like, sneaky. I don’t know. Matt was the kind of guy to chat anyone up. He was kind, extroverted, and generous with his money. He’d buy you a drink, no problem. One thing I know for sure, Matt wanted to trust these boys. He believed, however short lived, they accepted him, despite his orientation, which was, you know: gay. 

While one boy drove the car and egged his friend on, the other boy held a gun on Matt. Then he beat Matt in the head with it. Matt started to cry. He begged the boy to stop. Eventually, he was disoriented. Finally, bleeding in his brain, Matt fell unconscious. The two boys removed his shoes then tied him to a fence and left him. Later, one of these boys got in a fight at another bar then ended up in the ER. Later still, in the same ER and tended by the same doctor, Matthew Shepard lie in a coma dying from all those blows to his head. His attacker walked out of the hospital, just fine. And I think about him. You know? What turns a boy into a homophobe into a killer?

And I think about Matthew. All the time. I mean it. Perhaps he’s my moral compass.

I walk out to the fence and lie with him, on the ground, right there; I lie next to him and meditate and listen. If he speaks . . . usually, he has a question. “You think people are actually Jesus and I’m going to die for their sins?”

Can you fathom it, Mr. Morgan? His blond head bleeds onto the dirt and pasture. Left like this. So we come here, lots of us, and lie with him. If you’ll lie with us next to Matthew, Mr. Morgan, I think you might feel it. His aura. Collective energy. Please. He won’t bite. Homosexuality isn’t contagious. Ignorance and prejudice though is. 

Perhaps now you’ll sob at the idea anyone could do this to your own child. And for what? His sexual preference? His skin color? What?

Now have this thought too. If I could just do this one thing right then my own child won’t grow up to do this to another human being.

Please. We welcome you, Mr. Morgan.