Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

Which is worse? The bubble or the bomb? The silly times or the days of war and recession? Wait long enough and you get a taste of it all. I've gotten to the point when it all seems like some sort of semi-dream, semi-nightmare world where the rules of cause and effect have been suspended. One friend suggested the US Government drop the drag queans on the Taliban-- a sort of WigStock East-- and see what happens. I preferred the Disco Torture Plan they used against Noriega in Panama. Blast hip-hop music at the enemy-- which will change weekly-- and, once again, gross-o American popular culture plays its role in national security.

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The same old tired nightmares are put on the screens, reading from the same cue cards. I saw Midge Decter, called by one critic the "Frumious Bandersnatch," on one of the book chat shows-- perhaps the only one that exists these days, books being less important and less profitable than football games, jiggle shows, and "reality"-based adventures. Midge was plugging her new book, a rewrite of the same book she's written for the past 40 years, and Midge said she was proud of her two daughters. She didn't say she was proud of her son. Why not? Is he a faggot? If he is, will Midge "love him as much as if he were normal"? What do the right-wingers do with their faggots? Half the stories you hear in life and in the media are made-up-- badly; many of the "real" ones are released for promotional purposes. One of my friends works in the Government Documents division of our major library; another friend refers to this as "The Fiction Section."

The only constant for me is looking at the men. I undress them with my eyes-- on the subway, the street, at work, on the TV, even at the news conferences, and now, especially, all the men in uniforms. Well, to be honest, I let some of them stay in their uniforms. Sometimes having a war is a great way to get a date. Then there's the fun you can have undressing Donald Rumsfeld as he carries on.

What is the problem here? First up: we have too many people all taking at the same time, many saying exactly the same thing, which, of course, may not be the right thing. War times, if that's what we're going to have, can have plus sides and minus sides. The Gay & Lesbian Movement was a product of the dislocation of folks in the Second World War. The jet brought down in PA apparently crashed when some male passengers, including a gay rugby player, attacked the hijackers. It was noted that this gentleman did a good thing, even though everyone on the plane died. But this gentleman could not legally marry a male partner, could not be a scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts, and could not even donate blood during a national emergency.

It's always important to watch how people behave when something outrageous and tragic happens. What they do usually reveals their natures. People tend to respond to type. It would be remarkable (and interesting) if some responded out of type. Those with the least critical depth of the existing social arrangement tend to flip-out first and most. Those susceptible to derangement are moved even more degrees off center. The downright crazy go off in orbit. It was a revelation to me-- and I don't know why-- to find out that so many are so psychologically fragile.

A surprise too was how fragile the economy is. One massive criminal conspiracy and great industries shut down, workers get laid off in the tens-of-thousands-- a mass corporate rush to bankruptcy. I suppose gay life is a good training-ground for times like these; you get used to being in a situation wherein you feel constantly under some kind of assault. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to die in the process of creating mass mayhem, but the fact of a terrible criminal act is not that much of a shock for me as for others. And the idea that social life should shut down in the wake of a disaster-- well, that's something completely foreign to me. Each of us makes his or her own contribution, some being pretty pathetic.

No one knows what will happen next. One thing for certain, those who write the response script have their own agenda and the same boilerplate they always drag out. What can be learned? About foreign policy? About national security? About modern architecture? About minorities in our society? Will anything be learned at all? Or will the times be exploited to attack civil rights, personal liberties, and marginalize those in struggle? Past practice does not augur well. On the other hand, so many things happen so quickly and even the wicked make mistakes or change, though not often. I try to see the glass half full and the men stripped-down.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com