One inspired by Aaron Broadwell, one by Steven Levine; I get a little help from my friends.
Broadwell. First, a shameless exploitation of a friend’s life story to make a point. On Facebook yesterday (8/2), Aaron Broadwell to me, about my 8/1 posting “Aaron Broadwell: the sequel”:
— AB>AZ: Wow — thank you, Arnold.
— AZ>AB (lightly edited): You know, of course, that you’re part of my project to provide encomia to deserving people while they still live, especially for gay men and for women, who are both likely to be discounted — in the case of gay men, in the common belief that we lead morally purposeless lives of sexual indulgence. (Here I give three wild cheers for sexual indulgence but note that that still leaves us plenty of time to work on repairing the world, and some of us care a lot about that too.) It is a sorrow that I didn’t get to celebrate Ron Butters (who was, among other things, the editor of the journal American Speech during the 1990s) — and I still have a funny-sweet tale of Arnold and Ron cruising for sex to tell — or, on the female side, Anne Cutler, while they still lived. (I have consequently gone out of my way to celebrate Sally Thomason — and embarrass her some, as I probably have you.)
Levine. Also on FB yesterday, a photo:
— SL: Sunscreen dispenser at Amsterdam Pride closing street party. We take care of our own.
Now go back and read the psychology textbooks that defined the public perception of “homosexuals” when I was growing up (we are selfish, immature, with unresolved development issues, inherently mentally ill, incapable of mature relationships, you name it) and try to reconcile this.
Then go back in time and kill every damn fricken’ expert.
Here, SL breaks out in a combination of, on the one hand, genuine pride in occasions of humane concern and (to put it grandly) moral purpose in the gay world and, on the other, righteous anger at a long-standing tradition in psychology, sociology, and medicine of blanketly treating homosexuality as dysfunction and disease. With, as sideshow, celebration of the raw sexuality in homosexuality — recognizing the physical and emotional pleasures of the associated sexual practices — in the wonderful BIG FAG t-shirts created by Steven (which he’d been distributing with abandon at Amsterdam Pride).
Here I am modeling my own copy of this shirt, in neon pink:
(#1) Since I’m old, fat, funny-looking, disabled, and disfigured, I tend to avoid being photographed (though I do seem to radiate niceness, which generally carries the day), but occasionally I submit to it
In my current living place, this shirt is too offensive to wear in view of other residents, so I can wear it only in the locked privacy of my own apartment (as I did yesterday for posting to the monthly motss-zoom gathering). I had been accustomed to wearing it in my condominium development downtown in Palo Alto and on the streets there — where it garnered occasional compliments (from people who get its good humor) and generally served to protect me from verbal assaults (I believe the reasoning is that anyone willing to wear this shirt in public is probably not someone you want to mess with).
I haven’t attempted to wear this more intransigent t-shirt anywhere here, though I’m definitely fond of it:
(#2) The bald declaration; I’m even willing to admit this isn’t a bad photo of me (thanks to my smiling eyes)
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