TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Although the population that identifies as homosexual in this country is a relatively small 10.43 percent, a recent New York Times article, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” argues that, like democracy and the colors red, white, and blue, homosexuality, once a solely Western phenomenon (See: Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s response to a question posed by a likely homosexual during appearance at the notoriously liberal Columbia University, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country…. I don’t know who told you that we have this.”), is spreading. The author, Ethan Watters, whose book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, will be published next month, doesn’t actually mention homosexuality in the article (or, at least, the portion of the article that I read because it was kind of long it seemed more important to throw a tennis ball against my neighbor’s house than finish reading), but this is because Mr. Watters lives in San Francisco, a noted hotbed of sodomy and Mexican food, and doesn’t want you to equate homosexuality with other mental disorders, despite what the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Vol II, 1968), which was written by licensed medical professionals, states.

Watters does, however, analyze the spread of other mental illnesses from West to East. Take, for instance, anorexia, which was an unknown dietary plan in Hong Kong until a fourteen-year-old girl named Charlene Hsu Chi-Ying collapsed on a sidewalk in 1994 after skipping breakfast one too many times. What was rare became an epidemic in the aftermath of Charlene’s death, spread in part by  headlines like Thinner Than a Yellow Flower, Weight-Loss Book Found in School Bag, Schoolgirl Falls Dead on Street. What was less common than koro, or the fear that one’s genitals are retracting into one’s body, became as much a part of the cultural landscape as vending machines that sell used underpants. That is, anorexia didn’t exist until the media made it so.

The same can be said of homosexuality. The proof is in the numbers. In 1975, for instance, Googling “Anderson Cooper + gay” produced approximately zero results. Today, however, the same search produces about 938,000 hits. Every time Anderson Cooper shows his well-toned facial muscles on cable news, a gay is born. And so, even if you are not a homosexual and no one you know is a homosexual, it’s only a matter of time before your son tells you he wants to quit Little League and buy a tutu. What follows in meant to help your transition into the world of homosexuality.

In case you’re unfamiliar with homosexuality, let me explain. Homosexuality is a psychological disorder in which one is attracted to members of the same sex. Symptoms among males (also know as “fags”) include a love of the color lavender, the pop music star Beyonce, and hair products. Symptoms among women (”lesbians” or “dykes”) are more subtle, as there are many varieties of homosexual females (see, for example, a common middle-aged variant recognizable by their Labrador retrievers and Life is Good hats and/or tee-shirts), but they are easy to spot as they tend to move in packs. While homosexual men may seek companionship among heterosexual women (”fag hags”) as well as other homosexual men, lesbians (see also “gayelles,” “scissor sisters,” and “Queen LaQuiffa”) tend to segregate from other parts of society, preferring to maintain friend groups composed solely of other homosexual woman. This does not, however, mean that all it takes to befriend a lesbian is membership in what they refer to as “the family.” On the contrary, lesbians naturally separate into different sects and look upon sects other than their own with derision. You will never, for instance, see a softball lesbian sharing a blanket at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with a hipster dyke with prominent and colorful tattoos, most likely of inanimate objects. While it is true that they may both have bowl cuts, any chance of friendship is negated by the fundamental disparity in the widths of their pant legs.

There are multiple variations of homosexuality. Bisexuals (see also, “dirty bisexuals”) are noted for the intense jealousy they incite in their partners, who become suspicious not just of other homosexual women but also of heterosexual men, and, at times, of anyone with viable genitalia because, hey, she’s obviously undiscriminating, right? Another variation of homosexuality is transgenderism, symptoms of which include the unstoppable urge to change one’s name from something gender specific (e.g. “Sarah”) to something gender neutral (e.g. “Toast”). Transgendered populations are also marked by a decrease in sense of humor, which is the result of the large doses of hormones transgendered people often take in order to alter their physical appearances. This does not effect all transgendered people, just the one who stomped my foot when I expressed confusion about said person’s adopted pro-noun (”y’all”).

While some homosexual people choose to fight the disorder with psychological intervention or commit to a lifetime of celibacy, and some choose to enter into traditional heterosexual relationships with the hope that their gayness will dissipate in a heteronormative environment, someday making it possible for them to make love to their spouses without imagining Tom Brady in a Speedo to feel aroused, an increasing number of homosexuals are choosing to embrace their psychoses. They enter romantic relationships with other homosexuals, form performance art collectives with other homosexuals, and even raise their children to be homosexuals. In light of this movement towards universal acceptance, study the following principles to best communicate with your homosexual….

1. Two bottoms don’t make a top. While this phrase likely means nothing to you, the principle is well-known in homosexual society. Whereas traditional male/female relationships often include a built-in “top” (male) and a built-in “bottom” (female), homosexuals must negotiate these roles. And because it can be uncomfortable to discuss such preferences when you’re not even sure of your new friend’s name, homosexuals often enter into sexual congress unaware of their partner’s preference for “topping” or “bottoming.” When two homosexuals prefer the same role, one homosexual must relinquish their preferred position, or, as in the two bottoms scenario, sex looks a lot like two people laying on their backs waiting for the other person to make the first move. While it is not unequivocally true that two bottoms or two tops cannot have a fulfilling sexual relationship, it can be a complicating force. Note: femme tops are a rare and valuable breed.

2. Also known as butch-on-butch violence, butchinsense is characterized by the unstated conflict between two lesbians of the same ilk, typically, lesbians who display more masculine characteristics. Caused by a generalized anxiety among homosexuals due to the small number of available partners, butchinsense often dissipates when said butches converse for the first time and realize that they actually have a lot in common and might as well be friends. Femminsense exists, but is far less common.

3. Lesbian bed death is a myth. Actually, it’s not a myth, although homosexual women wish it were. Symptoms of lesbian bed death include owning multiple cats and peeing with the door open, both of which exacerbate what is already a common problem in long term lesbian relationships: that is, a tendency to be boring. There is no equivalent in homosexual male relationships.

4. Your homosexual may at some point express a desire to marry his or her homosexual lover. When this happens, you should never express that homosexual marriage is a really fun game and you’d love to play along. You should react the same way you would when the heterosexuals in your life discuss the same subject. Support your homosexual and then, after she realizes that her partner’s new spoken word piece is actually about the shortstop on her softball team, gently remind her that the whole thing was as real as two four-year-olds reciting their vows and exchanging ring pops, and thank god for that.

Because the spread of homosexuality is inevitable and unstoppable, I hope this information will help you be better prepared the next time your brother tells you about the new friend he met while scarf shopping at Banana Republic.

Things have gotten pretty serious between my virtual girlfriend and I. We Gchat roughly forty hours a week and text on the weekends and she sent me an adorable drawing of the two of us with our three future children, Rocket and Panda, who she will gestate, and Sushi, who we will adopt from an undecided East Asian nation. I returned her romantical mailing with my own—a mixed CD and a love letter that went something along the lines of, I want to make out with you and buy you things with other peoples’ money. This is how serious it is: Virtual Girlfriend (VG) came out to her parents. Frank, Betty, she said, I’m gay on the Internet. Frank and Betty may have been a little confused because they are slightly older than average and may not be entirely sure what the Internet is, but I guess they got the point, which is that their daughter likes to put her head in other girls’ laps.

So, in honor of my dear sugar bitch VG, today’s episode is all about tearing down that closet door. I realized I’ve alluded to my own coming out in previous posts, but here’s the story, real talk style….

I had a friend growing up who was obviously a boy. I mean, she was a girl, but she looked like a boy. This didn’t really change as we got older. She always had really short hair and was built like a guy. Very handsome. I realized at some point that she was probably a dyke but we never talked about it. I also remember thinking that I was really glad that I wasn’t like her, that I wasn’t a dyke. Just like parents who think that their son’s life will be difficult because he likes to shop at Banana Republic and bend over for guys who shave their chests, I didn’t want my life to be difficult. My life was already difficult. I was sixteen. Life is difficult for everyone at sixteen, especially for androgynous boy/girls in a school where the mascot is a Confederate army general. I was glad the gay disease wasn’t something else I had to worry about catching. My butch friend didn’t come out until after high school, but no one was surprised. What was surprising was that a lot of my other friends also came out after high school. We never talked about girls. We may rarely have kissed boys, but we talked about them the same way all teenage girls do. Turns out we just had to leave the vast hell of a small town to be who we are.

I made out with boys for a while in college, but anytime I found myself looking at the curve of some woman’s hip, I held my boyfriend’s hand tighter and told myself that I just really appreciated beauty. There was no way I was gay. I mean look, I’m holding hands with a boy! But then I met A—, and, along with making me crazy, she made me gay.

My friends at school were unfazed when I came out to them. My brother and sister were equally flapless. I was the only girl in Little League. Of course I’m gay. I did not, however, want to tell my parents. This wasn’t because I thought they would be upset—my parents would be more upset if I married a Republican or became a youth pastor—but because telling your parents you’re gay means telling your parents that you aren’t just emotionally and mentally gay, you’re also gay with other gay girls. Like, naked gay. I didn’t even tell my parents when I got my period. I definitely didn’t want to tell them that I was a sexually active person. You know how weird and terrible it is to think about your parents having sex? Think about how much worse it is for them to think about you having sex. You’re their little girl. You sat on their laps and giggled when they tickled you and cried when they spanked you for starting a small and completely manageable fire in the neighbor’s yard. And now you’re telling them that you not only have sex, you have the kind of sex that won’t give them grandkids no matter how hard you try. Not a conversation I really wanted to have.

About a month after A— and I got together, we drove from Asheville to the Outer Banks for a romantical weekend. Before we could get there, however, we were rear-ended by a dump truck on I-40 and crashed into a construction barrier. The air bags popped. The windshield shattered. Traffic was stopped for hours. The car was totaled. We went to the hospital and got prescriptions for completely unnecessary painkillers and stayed at a nearby friend’s house that night and borrowed her car the next day so we could get to the beach and back home. While we were at the pharmacy collecting our completely unnecessary painkillers, my sister called. She happened to be visiting our parents that weekend and said that our mom knew I was homo and was really upset. Like tears upset. Like, what-if-you-had-died-before-we-talked-about-this upset. I got that sinking stomach thing right away and started screaming that I was an orphan as of right now, this very second, no longer a member of my very own nuclear family just because I’m a big gay, fated to a Christmas alone with afternoon movies and Chinese takeout.

It was a hard weekend. A— and I were still freaked out about the wreck. We weren’t farther than arms-length away from each other for three days. When she was in bathroom I waited outside the door just in case she got sucked into the toilet. But it wasn’t just the whole near-death thing that freaked us out. It was the conversation I would soon have to have with my mom, a conversation I would rather have with my cellmate than my mother, a conversation A— also hadn’t had with her mother yet, a conversation that would make everything real. Alas, I like my mother and was still on her insurance, so I at was also a conversation that had to happen. I avoided her pleading messages until we got back from the beach and popped a few of the completely unnecessary pain killers and drank a few completely necessary beers and sat on my porch with A—, holding her hand like we were trying not to get torn apart by a tornado. The conversation went exactly like this:

Me: Who told you, my brother or my sister?

Mazog: No one. You’re father has gaydar.

And while I do think that my father’s gaydar is probably better than average because he kind of walks on his tiptoes, I suspect the big giveaway was less my hair cut and more the way A— and I interacted with each other. I had taken A— to my parents’ house one afternoon to borrow their canoe. I hadn’t done this with any of my other friends. All my parents knew about most of my friends was that they littered cigarette butts on my front porch and wiped with coffee filters because we never had any toilet paper at my house. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way we were with each other. Not touchy and not fawning and not overtly together, but still together, like there was a string that connected us and only us. The string, of course, broke. But I’m still gay. That’s not going to break.

And so, welcome to the family, VG. Frank and Betty will get over it when they meet me.

Oh, dang.

I wanted to hate San Francisco.  I wanted my Southern blood to turn to cherry-flavored freeze pops in the summer fog.  I wanted to be stuck at the fat kid table, intimidated by all the cool kids with their tattoos and popular side-swept bangs.  I wanted to eat bad fish tacos.  I wanted to get a swirly in a public bathroom.  Anything to hate the city and return to my sweet and easy life in Historic Downtown Carrboro (population 17, 931), with my balcony and my bucket garden and a roommate who will jazzercise to Jewel with me before breakfast.  Alas, I spent the week trying to lose my driver’s license so I’d have a legitimate reason to stay and send home for my silver vagina and my body pillow.

How could you not love a city that is so packed with gays that the sky over the Castro is rainbow colored?  A city where sitting in a park means watching polite black market entrepreneurs whispering ganja treats, ganja treats as they skateboard past you?  A city where Sean Penn knocks on your door to invite you to sled down the hill and into the Pacific to make underwater sand castles and tell whale jokes to bi-valves?

One of the highlights was Nightlife, a 21 and up event at the California Academy of Sciences.  Imagine this: drinking wine in an aquarium lit by phosphorescent sea things with eyes like lightening bugs and bodies you can’t see in the dark water and fish that look like screen savers and other fish that look like the sweetest high tops ever.  Walking in a spiral around an indoor rain forest with poison dart frogs that may be plastic but look so convincing and seem so polite for keeping still while you take their picture.  Brushing the butterflies off your shoulder before getting in the elevator.  A rooftop garden.  A planetarium that makes you dizzy in the best way.  Djs.  And all without the children who normally ruin culture and learning and self-improvement.  It was too good to joke about.

Of course, it wasn’t all sweet tea and swizzle sticks   One of my bigger issues when I lived in Portland was how lesbian sensitive everyone was.  I inadvertently (mostly) offended both friends and strangers with casual observations like, Look at that twink. I wonder how many herpes he collected on Vaseline Alley last night. What do you think, pitcher or catcher?  I bet he’s a bottom cause he’s walking like his asshole hurts. San Francisco also has a bit of the sensitive lesbian about it.  When a girl at the Lexington—the only actual dyke bar in SF, weirdly—asked me if I was Jewish, I was a little confused.  I have reddish hair and blue eyes and freckles.  Granted, I tell people I’m part Jew all the time, but I’m actually a plain old mix of Mick and Kraut.  Boring, I know.  Anyway, when recounting this incident to a new friend a moment later, I said, “I wonder if she thinks I’m Jewish because of all the 100 dollar bills sticking out of my pocket,” at which point my new friend looked at me like I’m Fred Phelps and revoked my invitation to share her blanket at the Michigan Womyns’ Music Festival.  The same thing happened when I referred to someone’s gay wedding in air quotes and said something about how I got married in kindergarten and the ring pops were delicious.

Another incident: I was talking to my Virtual Girlfriend (more on this later) and she said something about how her parents, who are older, went at a gathering of some sort.  Not exactly a party, she said, but something that old people go to.  And, not giving my brain time to catch up with my mouth, I said, “A funeral?”  Thankfully, VG has a sense of humor and didn’t cancel our avatars’ one-deminsional gay wedding right then.

A woman at a dance party a few days later wasn’t quite so amused when I pretended to be deaf.  It sounds more fucked up than it is.  Here’s the thing: although I have commanding virtual balls on this here series of tubes, I’m actually totes shy and soft-spoken in public, at least until we take shots and you laugh at my story about the teenage mime.  Anyway, I get kind of annoyed when people I don’t know are all, Why aren’t you talking?  Puma got your taste organ? This particular dance party gayelle was also bothering me because she was tall enough to smoosh me and I think she would have done so to pocket “Clare,” the friend I was visiting, so after she commented on what she perceived was my inability to converse, I told her that I was deaf and pretended to read her lips. I may also have done the only signs I know (beautiful, thank you, and cookie) and maybe even vogued for a minute before admitting that I’m a liar.  A hearing liar, at that.  She was not amused.  But, whatev.  Everyone else giggles at us fags and faggettes.  Why not join the party?

Only one mildly bad thing happened, and it was, as usual, my fault. “Clare” and I went to a daytime dance party called Mango on Saturday.  It was wall-to-wall queer women.  Like overwhelmingly gay.  Like the only men these women know are sperm donors.  There were so many women that the line for the bathroom was a year long (which I bypassed by using the urinal, which made my shoes smell like piss but at least my underwear stayed dry.).  After the party, “Clare” split to take her whiskey- and cigarette-smelling self home and I stayed for a bit.  Later, when I was trying to get a cab, a black Town Car stopped across the street and the driver yelled to ask if I was looking for a taxi and I ran over and jumped in.  Unlike most professional car services, however, the back seat was covered in Arby’s bags and there was a woman and a pit bull in the front seat.  I didn’t want to be judgmental of the guy’s taste in food/dogs/women, so I crossed my phalanges and gave him “Clare’s” address.  But when he asked me how to get there, I realized that cabbies should probably know their way around town and that he was going to sell me into white slavery. I waited until the next stop light and jumped out.  Not exactly fun, yes, but a learning experience—one I should probably have remembered from the golden rule of kindergarten: don’t talk to strangers.

Coming next: Stranger From The Internet

My ten-year high school reunion is next summer and I’m preparing a little toast for the occasion.  I wonder if there’s a time limit….

———-

As most of you know, I was a prodigiously well-behaved student.  There were a few exceptions, like the time in Mrs. LaTorre’s fifth grade class when I led you, my classmates, in a spirited chorus of Kill LaWhore! Kill LaWhore! from my post atop the jungle gym.  You followed my command as if I weren’t just your classmate but a sixth grader or even a hall monitor.  I was subsequently forced to get a Behavior Book, wherein Mrs. LaTorre marked my behavior each afternoon with a smiley face on a good day, a middle finger on a bad one.  I then had to take this book to Mazog and Pazog, both of whom agreed that LaWhore was an appropriate term and that the bitch should stop stifling my creative expression. The disgrace of the Behavior Book was exacerbated every afternoon when Mrs. LaTorre announced, Will Katie please come to my desk with her Behavior Book, which burned my eyes like that time Scott Williams jumped me from the slide and threw his jock strap over my head. (Heard about those child pornography charges, Scott.  God damn, that makes me feel like I can predict the future.)

But, still, I was a pretty good kid.  I got kicked off of a few athletic teams (Hey there, Coach Barnes!  I can see that gin blossom from here!) and was suspended for selling hemp necklaces to those of you who  spent your Taco Bell wages on tickets to Phish shows because Principal O’Neal (RIP) didn’t believe me when I said, Look, my brother.  You’d have to smoke a doobie the size of a telephone pole to get babycakes off this shit. You dig? Oh, and there was the ninth grade talent show when my band Broken Hearts, Broken Hymens, a project influenced by Billy Joel and psychotropics, was booed off stage after the opening lines of our single, Ain’t no Moses/ Ain’t no God/ Wasting time on a saintly fraud, to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me.”  Remember that?  Throwing hymnals through my drum set?  I forgive you.  But I never got pregnant by the resource officer (I’m talking to you, Brandy Simon! Hey, girl!) so I consider myself somewhat of a behavioral blue ribbon.  I also learned a lot, like the definition of “frigid.”  But mostly, I learned about myself.

As most of you know, I wasn’t exactly prom king at Smoky Mountain High School, but you generally knew who I was—it was to hard to miss a girl with three dreadlocks tied in knots on the top of her head, wasn’t it?  And even though I frequently ate my sandwich while dodging the tater tots landing atop my head (Hey, Dan Stevens!  How’s the wife?  She left you?  Oops.  My mistake.), I like to think of Smoky Mountain High as a place of backwoods enlightenment.  We didn’t have a gay/straight alliance or a PFLAG chapter, but we did have a show choir, which is basically the same thing.  There were a few less progressive school traditions, like Christian Heritage Week—five days around that big Jesus holiday in April when the student president of Christians for a United National Theocracy (CUNT) read a prayer or fun fact about Christianity (i.e. Jesus said brown people like their chains!) during morning announcements, which, much to the regret of my inner cheerleader, quickly ceased after my parents called the ACLU.  (So sorry, Annie Tops.  I know you loved speaking into that mic.)

But the really incredible thing about Smoky Mountain High was that you, my classmates, knew me before I knew myself.  Whether I was shooting free throws or auditioning for the sophomore musical with an acapella version of the Indigo Girls “Power of Two”, you guys were always trying to break down that closet door for me.  Unlike you, I had no idea that I was lesbanese until college, when I had the light bulb realization that I was junk-struck for Catherine Keener while watching Being John Malkcovich with my first and only boyfriend, who later changed his name to Christy and bought a wonderful set of mammaries.  This first love also indicated that I’m into power suits and somewhat of a bottom, but it took a few more years for that memo to penetrate the gray matter.

There I was, happily living as a high school nobody with my posse of weed-smoking, softball-playing, ani-loving friends, wondering why none of the guys in Students Teaching AIDS Research (STAR) ever asked us out.  It was a total mystery—not just that the Vice President of STAR who waxed his eyebrows never called me back (Congrats on the Asian babies, Donnie Nickels! And those abs!), but all of it….  Why did you call me a dyke, Jamie Taylor, when I held my best friend’s hand on the way to Algebra II?  We were best friends.  It’s not like we played footsie under the cafeteria table that often.

But now—inevitably and undeniably gayelle at twenty-eight physical and nineteen emotional years old—I want to publicly thank Joe Hart, Kyle Ross, Thomas Blakley Jr., and everyone else who saw beneath my boy-loving facade.  You knew that the only thing keeping romantic fulfillment beyond my unmanicured fingertips was a lack of self-awareness.  It was you, Megan Overton, and you, Anne Nelson, and you, Bitsy Matthews—with your homophobic slurs and your poofy bangs and short shorts—who forced me to see the truth.  You made me look into my heart and my erogenous zones to see the truth, the truthiest truth, that I am not like you, Jenny McDonald.  I didn’t actually want to go the prom with you, Dylan Hendrix.  I didn’t want to make-out the in the back your parent’s Corrolla, Alex Knight, and was relieved to find that stick-shift really gets in the way of heaving petting.  No, what I wanted was Catherine Keener.  Catherine Keener and blanket space at Lilith Fair and the knowledge that I, a woman-loving-woman, could return to my alma mater one day.  Return to you, with your dead marriages and the children that you don’t really love, hand-in-hand with my beautiful partner whose name happens to also be Katie, and thank you, Smoky Mountain High Class of 2000, for making all of this possible.

I kind of think that dudes thigh-hugging at 80 m.p.h. is a clear indication of ass-banditry, but Nicole Georges gave me such great advice on the (HYPOTHETICAL!) yeast infection thing that I’ll do whatever she says.  I mean, I would if I actually had a boyfriend who was playing double dutch on his bestie’s Harley.

Katie,
I wrote in a little while ago and asked you for advice, and you said some things which really upset me. I am not gay; I know this because I had a girlfriend when I was 17 and several times I had erections with her. I don’t care whether you knew that I wear cargo shorts or that I want to go travel in Europe, I know who I am and nothing you say can change that. Anyway, I found your blog because I was looking for girls and hot dogs. What kind of gay man looks for hotdogs online?

So I found your name and google searched you the other day and guess what I found:

1. An artist who draws really shitty things in the library.
http://www.circus-gallery.com/artists/herzog.web/bio.html

2. An even weirder weird girl in the redwood forest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zgCxYZ8k-E

3.A Group Customer Service Manager at Victoria’s Secret
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/120/a2b

Guess what I did not find:

A hotdog without buns.

—Boring in CA

———-

Dear Boring in CA,

One thousand apologies for offending your delicate manhood. You’re definitely straight. You’re straight in the same way that kissing Justin Stephens behind the batting cages in 1993 makes me straight. You’re straight in the same way that mistaking my neighbor’s 14-year-old son for the baby dyke from last summer makes me straight. You’re straight like Brody Jenner’s straight.

But let’s take your question out of the rhetorical realm: what kind of gay man looks for “hotdogs” online? Hmm. Let me think about that. All of them?  With the exception of Fag Boss (Heyyy Brad!), I don’t actually know any gay men, but I once watched Queer As Folk while searching YouTube for “gay” + “drugs” + “body paint” and I’m pretty sure all fags are hotdog smugglers.

But, hey, if you say you’re straight, you’re straight. It’s not like I was watching over the fence while you rubbed sunscreen on your housemate Biff’s back or anything.

Now, back to me. I see you discovered my day job as a painter/hippie/filmmaker/customer service manager. I’m not offended by your insensitive comments about my art, BIC, but I want to point out that one of my shitty paintings is entitled “Today the Library was Ripped a New Asshole” (Acrylic on Canvas; 60″ x 40″; 2006 – 2007), which is awesome by anyone’s standards but is especially awesome to people whose hobbies include ripping asshole (i.e. you, post-cargo shorts).

And, my friend, while you were imagining Anderson Cooper’s ass in your girlfriend’s jeans, I wasn’t just painting librarians engaged in tantric sex and making hand puppets. I was also Saving The Fucking Redwoods. You probably don’t remember Julia Butterfly Hill as she disappeared soon after it was revealed that she was a business major in college, but she and I shared a tree house in a 55-meter Redwood named Luna for approximately 738 days. It took a little while to get used to, but eventually it felt totally natural to shit from a tree branch. Good, even. And in the spring of 2007 when Luna was disfigured by some Philistino lumberjacks who just couldn’t get down with hominid/arboreal love, I helped apply the healing balm that saved her life. Also, I chanted.

You may wonder, BIC, why my documentary Redwoods with Katie Herzog doesn’t mention my role in the 738 day Luna Love Fest. Here’s why—because I’m not an attention-whoring Earth First! groupie like my MBA platform-mate Julia “Butterfly” Hill.  Who even names their fucking kid fucking Butterfly? No one, that’s who. Bitch made that shit up. And her fucking patchouli gave me migraines.

And regarding the Victoria Secret thing, I’m not going to defend myself, but I will say that the discount is pretty awesome. Who can afford crotchless teddies in this economy? That’s right. I can.

You need to get over this hotdog thing, BIC, but if you can’t, I suggest investing in a flesh-toned dildo. Stick it in the fridge for a little while, dip it in a KY/water bath, and voila! Raw hotdog dildo! Maybe your girlfriend will be into it….

Love,

Katie

January 12, 2009

Hi Katie,

I found your blog not long ago while searching for girls and hotdogs and was really disappointed. But, then I started reading and I think maybe you really are just the girl I was looking for.

I am writing to you because I have realized my life in 2008 was really fucking boring. I graduated, traveled, got a job, a girlfriend, and applied to PhD programs. What the shit am I doing with my life? Can you give me advice on what to do to make 2009 less terribly miserable?

I always thought of myself as the type of person who would do interesting things like get slapped in the face by ex’s or have threesomes in dodgy bar bathroom stalls or wake up drunk on Hwy 1 with only a banana thong on and the word “Do-able” written on my back.

Where did I go wrong? Are you doomed to live a boring life if you are straight and white and a college graduated male? Please Help! Boring in CA

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I’m glad to report that 2008 was pretty fucking average.  A couple of big things happened: I’m finally living alone (LUVZ IT.  I have an entire room just for shit that creeps me out but I don’t want to get rid for superstitious reasons.  Also, ceiling fans.); I started grad school (Masters in Information Science. I’ll let you know exactly what that is just as soon as I figure it out.); we got a new president (more on this later); I got diagnosed with a mental illness (JUST KIDDING!  Sort of….); I went tubing with nine of my besties; I spent a couple hours in the Chapel Hill E.R.; I climbed a crane; I depleted my savings account several times; I served time as an elf; I quit Whole Foods from the bathroom of a bar (Actually, I can’t remember if that was this year or last year, which means I have an advanced case of wet brain, which is bad, but I’ll soon forget about it, which is good); and I cleanse my blessed temple of impurities. Also, I made some tight pals and learned three really good whale jokes.

All in all, a good year.  And by good, I mean sooo much better than last year.  No one died.  No one punched me (ok, one girl did, but without the same vitriol as last time.)  I didn’t get kicked out of any bars, though I did get cut off on a couple of occasions (Jenny, I still feel bad about July 4th.  Really.).  I peed in some sinks.  And best yet, my sister moved to Colorado, thus granting me the title of Most Popular Herzog Twin in Carrboro.

NOW, let’s talk about our President Elect.  I’ve been mulling over the whole Rick Warren thing for the past few weeks, and I must say, I’m not getting any happier about it.  I mean, seriously?  Rick Fucking Warren?  The dude who compared homosexuality to incest and pedophilia?  Nice going, Barack.  Remember how I marched with an Obama sign and beads at Pride this year?  Remember how I yelled and danced and forgot to pay my bar tab the night you won?  Remember how I saw Arcade Fire and Superchunk for free ALL FOR YOU???  No.  I guess you’ve forgotten these sacrifices that me and my people made for you. Even my Catholic grandmother is upset about this one, Barack. As she said the other day, “If you sign any petitions about this Rick Warren thing, you have permission to sign my name too.”

A choice quote from your friend Rick, Big O:

“By the way, my wife and I had dinner at a gay couple’s home two weeks ago. So I’m not a homophobic guy, okay?”  (AKA SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE GAY.)

So Rick says us queers should deny our natural (biological) impulses, but from the looks of this video, man ain’t got a problem with indulging his impulse to shove Twinkes down his damn throat.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2ZwhdgiBgc&hl=en&fs=1]

Barack, my friend, after brunch and Bloody Marys this Sunday, you should get to your neighborhood theatre and spend some time with Harvey Milk. See if you don’t cry almost as hard as you did when Big stood Carrie up on her wedding day.