The weather has been chilly and damp, and people have been calling the month "Junuary." While the grey has made seeing the morning alignment of Five Planets, or the Full Moon's conjunction with Antares difficult, I appreciate the cooler temperatures. The flowers, I think, would like it to be warmer, as most blooms up and down the valley appear to be about two weeks behind their normal blooming times: our irises were delayed in May, and the poppies are about a week into their openings.
COVID has put a kibosh on various social gatherings. First The Child caught it, probably while he was hanging out with friends; then he gave it to Mark. Luckily they had very mild cases. We all worked or went to school remotely. I slept on the couch, usually with Cicero.
Mark and I were going to go to a Pride Event at the Cascade Raptor Center, but since he was still sick and I had a close exposure by dint of sharing the house, we cancelled. Once everyone was better, we were going to go to a family event later, and then I had a potential close exposure from a co-worker; we cancelled that because my folks are in a high-risk category. I'm thanking my younger self for the second booster I got five weeks ago.
I'd like to go to Portland Pride—it's been about twenty years since I marched with Corvallis's After 8 group—but it's probably not the best idea from a COVID standpoint. Mark's never been into it, and there's always a Father's Day Family Obligation that conflicts with it.
I suppose there's Eugene Pride in August; maybe COVID levels will be lower. I wish... we had gay friends in this town we could go to Pride events with (one way or another we've dropped out of each others' lives). I also wish I felt less like an outsider at somebody else's party when I go. Well... if there couldn't be an outdoor (socially distanced) dance with actual dance music (instead of rhythmic noise), it might be fun if there was a tent with a carpet, black tea (or lemonade), books, and scones. I suppose what I want is a Pride Salon Booth. But one must consider that August in the southern Willamette Valley can be oppressively hot and arid, especially if we get a heat wave, which makes outdoor afternoon events unappealing. Maybe it should be an ice cream salon.
On the reading front, I'm currently (and slowly) reading "Bad Gays: A Homosexual History." When I skimmed it, it seemed like it would focus on particular queer folks. I was hoping that there would be more contrasting and comparing of homosexual heroes, villains, and anti-heroes, like Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, or Hadrian and Antinous. And the title suggested that sensational acts of wicked gays would be featured; sort of like the "Uppity Women" series, only more scandalous and over-the-top.
Actually working through it, though, it's more about class theory; the book's not focused on same-sex desire so much as it is a meditation on the concept of gay identity's essentialist, binary roots in colonialism and capitalism. The complicated men (and women) named in each chapter aren't the book's subjects so much as they're indices for particular moments of cultural classification in mostly European and American eras. Despite a sprinkling of catty remarks, I found myself thinking, "I must paint a factory next!" and "It might be in some dreary Socialistic periodical," as I read it. (At least "The Raspberry Reich" was funny and had more sex scenes in it.) I might skip to the concluding chapter, because I think the authors might have something interesting to say about existing as erotic beings outside of a system of either/or.
[2022-06-20 edit: They didn't; the book concluded by restating its thesis that queer / gay liberation has failed because it has not addressed the underpinning colonial and capitalist binary constructs—normal and abnormal, masculinity and femininity, Occident and "other," white and non-white, empire and colony, and moral and immoral—used by the ruling and bourgeois classes to control the worker classes. If they suggested an alternative modality for queer people to live their queer lives, I missed it.]
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