Forbidden Fruit

According to a recent survey, which doesn't even pretend to be scientific, owners of Apple's iPhone admit to loving gadgets, consuming "adult material," and being willing to end a significant relationship using text messaging somewhat more than owners of other cell phones.

I've owned an iPhone for six months now, and I too love gadgets (especially cameras, bicycles, DVDs, bubblewrap, colanders, MacBooks, and iPhones), consume "adult material" (everything from Proust to porn to pilsener to voting rights), and would rather end a relationship via text messaging than, say, to do it on a reality TV show.

What caught my eye is this bit of information:   "Compared with other cell phone users, iPhone owners are more likely to see themselves as media buffs, extroverts, and intellectuals."  Some 40% of iPhone users called themselves "intellectual," compared to 36% of users of Blackberry.

I find it difficult to believe that 40% of Americans in any consumer bracket would call themselves "intellectual."  If this survey is even roundly accurate, I am encouraged.  By all accounts, though, Americans distrust the word "intellectual."  It's apparently tantamount to calling themselves "European."  Or "adult."  Even some of the press this survey received sees the statement above as a damning indictment of iPhone owners.

What is an intellectual, and why is calling oneself "intellectual" worse than calling oneself "athletic" or "spiritual" or "conservative"?  Are my Apple products some sort of forbidden fruit, enticing me to untoward or illicit knowledge?

My understanding of intellectuality is that it involves using analysis and facts in the process of reaching an opinion, as opposed to ... just guessing.  Or flying off on a whim, such as "Obama is a socialist" or "The free market is inherently good and American," easily memorized and befitting a bumper sticker.  Or falling back on de facto special pleading like "Well, that's just the way I was brought up" or "I know this to be true because my heart tells me so."  Or slavishly submitting to authority.

Being an intellectual does not require haughtiness, wealth, or even an auspicious education.  It simply means you respect thoughts at least as much as feelings and instincts.  Despite a long history of disrepute (chronicled in Richard Hofstadter's 1966 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), intellectuality used to be as American as John Adams, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Jonas Salk, Gore Vidal, Woody Allen, and Susan Sontag.

Now many Americans (especially in the media, which value heart, decisiveness, and action over brain-work) pooh-pooh intellectuality.  It's somehow undemocratic, and while it is true that intellect (like beauty, athleticism, and charisma) is not egalitarian in its gifts, intellectuals (like aesthetes, sports enthusiasts, and moviegoers everywhere) can still appreciate and respect gifts they sometimes find somewhat deficient in themselves.

The fact that President Obama is smart is clearly a problem for a sizable number of Americans.  Being smart does not mean he's always right, of course, but it doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong.   Intellectuals are interested in Obama's ideas; non-intellectuals are interested in his choice of a pet and his wife's biceps.

To see oneself as an intellectual (or a media buff or an extrovert) is not at all a bad thing.  To put much stock in a 4 percent difference in self-esteem between owners of iPhone and Blackberry is dumb.  To gain self-esteem because you own a "smart" phone is dumb and assholish.

But, no, nothing wrong in seeing yourself as a lover of ideas and clear reason.  Nothing at all.

Sunday Beefcake: Andre Bolourchi

Mainly Maine

What's my response to the anti-gay-marriage vote in Maine?

Not much.

I suspect that African Americans would still not have equal rights in the United States had the decision been left in the hands of the electorate.  Am I saying that Americans in general are racist and homophobic? Yes, I guess I am, though that situation is changing slowly, thanks in some part to the Supreme Court and certain white Democratic leaders sympathetic to the cause of civil rights back in the 1960s.  A government that recognizes the equality of its citizens contributes significantly to move people's attitudes towards equality and fair play.

Did not Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists do a lot towards that change?  Most definitely, yes, mainly in drawing national attention to the plight of black Americans, especially in the South.  But attention has been drawn to the situation of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals for some time now (in the media, in marches on Washington, in everyday contact with openly gay friends and relatives, on the blogosphere).

But attention is not enough, apparently.  The importance of "image" and protection of that "image" as central to the welfare and tolerance of a diverse society has obviously been exaggerated.  I'm now convinced that however many Dr Kings, Cosbys, and Obamas the gay movement, such as it is, can accrue, will never be enough to make up for the absence of legal, enforced Constitutional equality and liberty for all Americans, regardless of their sexual makeups.

On a positive note, even in the dark years of W, the Supreme Court ruled against state sodomy laws, establishing an important precedent in defending gays and lesbians from unjust criminalizing legislation.

Still, with the current composition of the the US Supreme Court and the trepidation of Democrats who have as much power and public support now as they have ever had in my lifetime, it seems unlikely that a change comparable to what blacks achieved in the 1960s is going to happen for gays and lesbians soon.  Not for a long, long time.

Wonderful Guys

Director Bartlett Sher's revival of South Pacific is in Raleigh this week, and Dave and Tim "kidnapped" me for dinner at the Irregardless and the show last night.

I love those guys.

With front row seats to gratuitous male nudity (a brief shower scene, but plenty of other semi-nude pulchritude), no shit I was pleased ... no, ecstatic from beginning to end.

South Pacific is my favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (tied closely with Carousel).  The revival focuses on atmosphere (a beautiful fluid set evocative of the 1940s, without overdoing the kitsch, and lovely, sometimes eerie lighting) and somewhat more authentic casting choices than the 1958 film production, namely the casting of a Polynesian actor as Bloody Mary and a lead with a real Southern accent (sorry, Mitzi).

This is, of course, not the Broadway cast ... but it's hard for me to imagine anyone better in the role of Nellie Forbush than Texas-born Carmen Cusack.  I'd never heard of her, and she was mesmerizing.  Her voice and delivery, like everyone else's in the cast, were perfect, and close up we were able to see every nuance of emotion on her face.  She was like a younger, more lyric version of Patricia Clarkson.

She plays the blindly optimistic and naively racist military nurse with the right mix of sympathy (she commands the stage like no one I've ever seen!) and inner turmoil.  How much of her subtle performance is lost past the fifth row is (luckily) something I can't comment on, but she was spot on from our seats!

Having never seen the show before, I can compare it only to the Joshua Logan movie version with Mitzi Gaynor.  This version is much better than that ... and I love the film version.  Sher has "de-camped" it, playing the sentiments sweetly but realistically, showing the outsized characters for the living breathing human beings they are, playing up the sexiness of the setting and the situation, and driving home the theme of racism: the song "You Have to Be Carefully Taught" (explaining that hate is learned, not natural--listen up, Maine!) is as applicable today as it was sixty years ago ... bummer.

This is an old-fashioned musical ... with songs you can remember and hum.  And they just keep rolling out:  "Bali Hai," "Some Enchanted Evening," "There Is Nothin Like a Dame," "A Cockeyed Optimist," "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," "Younger Than Springtime," "A Wonderful Guy," "Honey Bun," and "Happy Talk."  Each song is performed without embellishment but with a purity that makes you believe you never really heard that song before.  The dreadful blindness of "Cockeyed Optimist" is unexpected, not at all what I remembered, and "Happy Talk," catchy, sweet, and romantic, seems as coercive and manipulative as indeed it should.

If I could, I'd be at the theater this instant to see the show again.  And again and again every night it's town.

Yes, it's true, I am that gay!

My Type

My friend Luis used to say "YT" (your type) every time we passed a tall, Bruce Weberish all-American and blank-faced guy, especially if he had high, prominent cheekbones, a definite jawline, small tight earlobes, and an aquiline nose.  Nowadays I'm not so sure I ever really had a type, or at least it seems that sexual "types" change over time in response to the series of men I have found myself unaccountably attracted to.


Tallness, for instance.  When I was young, I would get dizzy for men taller than six feet.  Frankly, height still catches my attention.  But now I'm just as drawn to men my height (just six feet) and shorter.  The idea of having a posse of 5'7" stud boys I can easily overtake in oil wrestling matches would drive my fantasy life if I were as avid a daydreaming masturbator as I was thirty years ago, when I was still fixating on some sort of "big brother" who could show me the ropes.  With friends, I joke that I'm now open to guys in economy sizes:  carry-on boyfriends, for easy portability.


I like guys who are athletic or just athletic-looking.  I'm not drawn to zero-percent body fat and ripped muscle as much as to guys with an earthy, sensuous weightiness, not chubby, but with enough adipose to make a tussle or a snuggle interesting.


A man with perfect, symmetrical features, defined muscle, and impeccable behavior might impress me aesthetically, without once making me think about what he'd be like in the sack. I can recognize and appreciate beauty objectively and intellectually, but what turns me on sexually is subjective and individual, springing from instincts and memories of past adventures.


In general, I'm attracted to men with flat chests and slightly convex bellies, wide shoulders, hard biceps, and sinewy forearms.  Smooth or hairy makes no difference.  I like hair cropped close to the skull, but I can just as easily appreciate long hair.  I've learned to appreciate the artful tattoo over the past fifteen years.  A piercing can be all right, but it's never been a selling point.  I like blonds and brunets equally.  I'm rarely attracted to red-haired or African-American men.  I particularly like Irish, Italian, Israeli, Arab, and mixed-race guys.  My roots are German, but I'm not particularly my type.  Circumcised is nice, even desirable, though uncircumcised suggests a wild, uncurbed nature, definitely something I like.  Dick size is unimportant; my sex drive is more holistic, responding to overall impressions men make, not isolated body parts.


Just as I do not fetishize abstracted body parts, a guy's total attractiveness offsets any physical drawbacks he may have:  back hair, birthmarks, scars, acne, pallor, effeminacy, thinness.  In fact, features like these that I once found disagreeable have become turn-ons (or at any rate no impediments to my being turned on) after a special relationship with somebody with one or more of these traits.


I like strong, silent types and cocky narcissists.  Nothing in between will do, say, good-old-boy business types with flashy smiles and false aw-shucks modesty, not really my style at all.  It's important to me that strength (of body and character) underlies a personality that's retiring by nature.  More typically, I'm attracted to arrogance, so long as the man has something (anything: beauty, muscle, brains, talent) to back it up.


I like military guys, rebels, guys who like wrestling and mixed martial arts; maybe being an Aries (after the Greek god of war) cosmically predisposes me towards men with a warrior spirit.  More generally, though, I'm drawn to guys who feel a passion for doing something, almost anything, spelunking to writing sonnets; it doesn't matter what, as long as it involves really doing something.


I am generally not drawn to guys who like to shop or watch a lot of TV.  I don't care for passive, wishy-washy people, not even on a social level, much less a romantic one.  However,  highly ambitious, obsessed, and competitive men are less appealing to me than men exuding an easy, assured virility that doesn't involve trying too hard.


I like guys who laugh without inhibitions, guys who don't wait to see how others respond before reacting.  They don't have to be comedians, but they do need a sense of fun, the more rambunctious and mischievous, the better.  I like guys who are politically idealistic, without being actually political.  I used to say I could never fuck a committed conservative.  That's probably still true, but I realize now that I can take only so much of committed liberals as well.


I'm not usually attracted to eighteen year olds, so I have no problem, as a college teacher, drawing a clear line in my personal relationships with students.  Since the age of thirteen or fourteen I have preferred men in their thirties, perhaps because of early crushes on Sean Connery and Robert Conrad, who were in their thirties in the 1960s, right when my sexual nature was beginning to assert itself.


When I got into my thirties, it was easier for me to bed men in my preferred age group.  Now that I'm in my fifties, though, I'm back in the wistful mode of my teen years, again yearning for the ideal 33 year old, Jesus and Alexander the Great when they died and my father when I was born.  (By contrast, my friend Dave, about my age, has always been attracted to men a few years older than he is and is now happily in love with a man in his mid-sixties.)


As a mature adult, I can now see that my father, particularly the youthful image of him I saw in old photographs (he was exquisitely handsome in his twenties) was probably the first imprint on my sexual nature.  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that my mother had a paralyzed right arm and was unable to hold me as a baby, so when my father (an Air Force man and a classic American man's man) returned home in his oily-smelling fatigues, it was he who held me in two hands upon his knees.


I see myself as a Kinsey 6, 100% homo, but in principle I think Freud was right in thinking that everybody is bisexual and, in early childhood, polymorphously perverse, i.e. able to find erotic pleasure in anything and everything, a sexuality not even limited to genitalia or secondary sexual features like tits and Adam's apples.


Experience conditioned me to like some people and things more than others, and some people and things not at all.  I learned the parts of the body I was supposed to find attractive and the parts I was supposed to be ashamed of or even repulsed by.  The conditioning comes from ideas and standards I was exposed to through family, peers, and the media, as well as my life experiences, erotic and affectionate.  I am drawn to people who resemble past loves in some ways and turned off by those who resemble people who caused me to think less of myself.


Ideally, I would have no "type" at all.  I would prefer to be unlimited sexually, as polymorphously perverse as a baby.  Open for anything, and open to anyone.


It does not seem impossible that I could one day fall in love with a woman.  Unlikely, yes, but as long as I breathe I'm capable of change.  This particular change is not one I'd look forward to, however.  I don't dream of eventually becoming straight.  Once I came to accept my attraction to men, I have never once craved the proverbial "pill" that would turn me straight ... or even bisexual, though I think bisexuals are the most in tune with nature and, as Woody Allen once noted, they have twice the options on a Friday night.

Sunday Beefcake

13 Years of Halloween

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)—for showing us that the monsters we love and fear are our unruly emotions

Irreversible (2002)—for Vincent Cassel and the unbearably realistic “scene”

Sleepy Hollow (1999)—for the exuberance in which it depicts decapitation and the beauty of its evocation of late eighteenth-century America

Shaun of the Dead (2004)—for the laughs, the camerawork, and, ultimately, its heart

Let the Right One In (2008)—for its banal but haunting imagery of violence

Jeepers Creepers (2001)—for Justin Long, its long yet effective setup, and its implicit dispelling of the sexist assumptions of earlier horror films

Sheitan (2006)—for Vincent Cassel (again, but in a totally different vein) and its disturbing recalibration of the iconography of Christmas (so, yes, it’s also a Christmas movie)

Final Destination (2000)—for tackling Fate (and, by insinuation, God) as the ultimate monster

Ringu (1998)—mostly for its ghostly video montage but also for introducing Japanese horror to mainstream Hollywood

Hostel (2005)—for its subversive and indirect critique of predatory sexuality and the slippery slope of the global free market

Planet Terror (2007)—for Rose McGowan and Marley Shelton

Underworld (2003)—for its slick but hardly ever plausible battles between werewolves and vampires

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)—for Ryan Phillippe in the shower