June Dancing

We’re a week into June. The end of May and the end of a sexy full-moon-to-full-moon cycle since May first seems like it happened years ago. We’re about to launch into June proper, the month when everything happens: The Child’s Birthday, New Moon Meditation, Father’s Day, Graduation, Juneteenth, Solstice, and Pride. It’s kind of exhausting.

On the drive home from work the other day I caught a few minutes of a David Sedaris interview. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but what he said was something I learned in a memoir class many years ago: someone who you meet in real life is a person; someone who you write as text on a page is a character.

The other thing I took away is that if you’re a bitter, angry person when you are young, chances are good you’ll be a bitter, angry person when you’re old; and that the folks who are not bitter and angry are generous toward others.

On another, previous drive I listened to a pop-psychology book advertisement disguised as an author interview. The subject was “belonging” and the gist was that one could increase one’s happiness by actively increasing one’s sense of belonging… I think by hosting snack hours and book clubs. The interview didn’t explore strategies for when one is sidelined or ghosted, or at least hadn’t by the time I tuned the radio to the local classical station.

Tonight is a dance night. It’s occurring to me that due to the typical collision of events and familial obligations, tonight’s dance will most likely be this year’s sole Gay Pride Dance Night. Since Mark doesn’t care for dancing, this will be a night out with my hair (who will probably get a few date offers). I will have to take a disco nap.

I expect that there will be guys there snapping large, rainbow-hued fans emblazoned with words like “bitch,” “queen,” and “slay.” I will have to remind myself that I’m there to dance, and that I’m dancing in a Eugene bar with a Gothic Faerieworlds Festival vibe and not the New York City Eagle or even Perry’s on Pearl from a Eugene three decades ago (which, actually, means not having to go out dancing only to discover the venue is a drag show disguised as a dance). I will have to remind myself that it’s the Moon’s last quarter, and that the folks at the bar are less likely to be invoking a circle of blue flame, saluting cardinal directions, and drawing down the moon on the dance floor—especially not the go-go guys twerking on the stage area.

After pondering why I just don’t go to a more polished dance venue, I’ve concluded that I’m there to dance in enclave with other gay men and to take a moment to celebrate being an older, cis, white, gay, Neopagan man. How essentialist of me; and likely binary, too. At least I can dance without being judged.

After the dance, on the drive home, my hair and I will have to listen to Tom Cardy’s Transcendental Cha Cha Cha: “Slide to the left / witness perfection / slide to the right / nothing means anything. / (Or anything means nothing, I get them mixed up).”

Musings During Pride Month

It's hard to believe that we're half-way through June already!

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.]

Gym Report and Stuff

Went to the gym Sunday.  30 minutes and 310 calories on the elliptical.  3x13x60lbs on the pec fly.  3x13x80lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x13 hanging curls on the Roman Chair.  3x12x35lbs barbell curls.  3x12x35lbs reverse barbell pull-ups.  3x12x30lbs triceps pull-downs.

Lots of projects hanging in the air this week.   The Child's birthday is coming up, and I've designed a Nerf Gun target out of cardboard that sorts the bullets into trays depending on where on a target they hit.  There's several writing deadlines looming, too.  I'm also going to Reed for a day to participate in the 30 year celebration going on.  

The most recent distraction is a game I purchased called 4-D Toys.  It draws 4 dimensional objects like tesseracts onto a dimensional space and then you can manipulate them.  It's possible to knock objects out of the dimensional space you're looking at, and then they disappear.  It's also possible for one part of a tesseract that isn't in your 3D space to knock into another hidden tesseract and have that one slide into the 3D space.  It's confusing.  And fun.

It's pollen season.  I don't mind so much, although I could do without the itchy eyes.  Mark is being hit much more severely.  The last few weeks have been cooler and damper, so I'm not sure if that's prolonging the pollen or making it more severe or what.  

The last few mornings have been cloudy, but today (Tuesday) I managed to see Venus.  It's a few days after Venus's greatest elongation, but Venus is still very high in the morning sky.  The following days have been overcast, and Friday is supposed to be cold and rainy.  Which I kind of like.