Outbound

36G. Christmas Eve. Overnight flight. To my left a Spanish youth who is approximately twenty (but who can tell in these days of adolescent pilots?) and beautiful in an almodovaresque way. He has the lips of Banderas and the eyes of Benjamin Biolay. All is well in my world until my neighbour slips an immacualtely manicured index finger into his right nostril and roots around up there until he locates something obviously tasty which he then deposits on his tongue. With my only reprieve being five hours worth of "Everybody Loves Raymond", I stare at the ceiling and fantasize about Ambien.

Inbound

36C. December 30. To my left a family of four in two rows of two seats. Mummy, Daddy and two boys. Jovial, loud, laden with garish backpacks and suffering from a delusion that they are entertaining the entire cabin. With my recently honed aunty skills of guessing a child's age within a minute of its birth, I know that Mummy's boys are too old for the constant reading aLOUD each parent is performing not for its offspring seated to its left, but for all passengers on the flight.

Look everyone! Look at the GOOD PARENTS! Here on this airplane is a nuclear family! Everyone listen to Daddy's cutesome mock falsettos! Check out Mom's momsy Lands End sweater and Merrils! Marvel at how she has BROUGHT HER OWN FOOD because her children only eat ORGANIC!

Fuck off nuclear family, says the entire flight. We can hear you. We know who you are. We'd all maybe try and be happy about your purpose in life, if only your bouncy smug satisfaction was not quite so VILE.

I remember the lessons of the Ashram and delete the nuclear family from my existence. Instead I have an imaginary conversation with the lady from couple seated to my right. I say conversation, it's really a monologue.

"Hey, he's quite fit then your husband, isn't he? Well, I'm assuming he's your husband and not anyone else's. I mean not that I would ever have anything against that or anything but as I don't know you at all from Adam, I don't like to make assumptions. Oooh, and he's quite rich as well then, isn't he? Well, one of you must be by the size of that ring. Is he smart? Does he make you laugh? Do you love him? You seem to. It's hour three of our flight now and neither of you has stopped holding the other's hand. Obviously doesn't have sweaty palms then, does he? Or maybe he does and that's what love is all about then. Is that it? Ot maybe one of you is going through the motions. Is that it? Maybe both of you are. Maybe one of you suffered some horrific trauma recently and the other one is providing nurture and comfort in a self-serving way. Is that it? Or is this that love thing? Is it? Does it feel like forever? Does it feel like a release, an ability to fly? Or is it a closure? A sentence? A restriction? What, then? Is it love? Is it? So, tell me then, how did you pull it off? How did you manage it? Tell me. TELL ME."

“Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would instead be at the back of the bus.”
-ROGER TOUSSAINT

Mr Toussaint, you have no dignity.

Euuuw, I used to fancy you

The Coldplay Relationship.

This is the guy with whom you thought you were totally in love. About whom you raved to your friends constantly. His quiet depths. His secret ambitions. His calming influence. You bought into his repetitive five note routine and convinced yourself that he had skill. And hey, who knows you might have even really loved him.

And then, one day you wake up and he's boring you shitless, to the extent that you can't bear to listen to him any more. "So fucking what!" you want to scream after everything he says. You tell your friends and they shrug, as if they had known this all along. You are mortified. You destroy all traces because you are ashamed of the fact that he was ever part of your collection to begin with.

"Ohmygod," you think, "He's just a twat in a hat."

Sorry hon, you just had a Coldplay relationship.

What's wrong with "lesbian couple"?

"Lesbian lovers Shannon Sickels and Grainne Close became the first gay couple to get "married" in the United Kingdom, sparking protests outside Belfast City Hall on Monday.

To cheers and the strains of Dolly Parton's 1972 hit "Touch Your Woman", the pair took advantage of the brand new civil partnership law, which offers gay couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples in areas such as employment, property, pensions and inheritance.

But outside the hall, their union sparked protests from those vehemently against anything approaching gay "marriage" and decrying the "abomination" of homosexuality.'

Oh right. It has no cadence.

I am flying back to the UK for Christmas. I actually arrive at 9am on the 25th. Hence the ludicrously cheap airfare.

"Just like Father Christmas!" my sister chirped down the phone.

"Only late." I replied. "Like a drunk Santa who lives in New York."

My sister has kids and, I guess, can remember what Father Christmas is.

Is it a factor of age that "special" days lose significance? Or maybe just my ever distending family means that missing the event is always a good idea. It's the first time I will have been "home for the holidays" since 1999 and that was really just for my Grandad's funeral which was on the Christmas Eve of that year. I managed to escape back to the rock in time for some Millennium face in sand planting though, as I remember, which isn't much.

But yeah, so apparently we are having goose. "Goose?" I repeated. "Yes." Sister was indignant. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.....I sang to myself. And then scowled.

You know the Queen has a swan for her Christmas dinner every year? She is the only person allowed to eat swan and as everything on the entire island belongs to her anyway (hence our archaic freehold and leasehold land law) she only permits a few people to actually own them. Weirdly enough, this elite group also includes dyers and vintners. For more details on swans and the quaint practice of swan upping check here and then wish you could claim those two minutes back. Just don't blame me.

We have bloody ridiculous rituals, us English (I don't want to tarnish the Scottish or Welsh as they just spend all their time hating us). Beefeaters, royalty, pickled eggs, dripping, dry humping and the class system. A law degree in the UK is a stunning history of our national prejudices and anxieties. English common law tracked the social development (or not, as the case may be) of the country from the days of William the Conqueror. I tried explaining this to sis who is the midst of a law degree. It's history, I said. Think of it as cute.

And yet it does change. I have no idea where is cool any more. I frequently get asked by work acquaintances the eternal question "Where is a good bar?" I just tell them to hit The Sanderson, which I am assured, will always be exactly what they are looking for. But I remain otherwise, or perhaps indeed, clueless. My old nabe of Islington now looks like Murray Hill. Are gastropubs like last year? I was informed at the beginning of the year that it was fashionable to sit on the circle line and just knit. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Anyway, my point is: I feel that life may be getting away from me. Given a choice between a big brown leather bag and a disco purse, I chose the granny. A friend calls to tell me news of a phone call just received from a weekend hook-up and somehow I can't bring myself to impart the fact that the wheel in my microwave has stopped turning resulting in the tofu in black bean sauce exploding into my hair when I opened the door to check on it. Ah well. It's protein though right? Maybe that will condition some of the grey.

Let's Wrap! By Lionel Tiger December 3, 2005

The complete article is available at the Wall Street Journal



"Gift-giving, once a thoughtful and occasional episode in people's lives, has morphed into a tyranny. In this scheme, little happens on its own: One event begets another. Invited to dinner? You can't just arrive to contribute only your evening! You must bring some thing: the always-welcome palette of flowers, the bottle of wine, the sweetie no one would purchase on his own, the Modern Library edition of Steinbeck. A host chooses to invite you to a party? How about two silver napkin holders? A holiday weekend? Anything smaller than a riding mower will hit the spot. The glad authority of the guest's presence is not enough. The experience requires its own memento.

And the gifts flow in endless stream. Some are mercifully consumed and thus removed from Planet Earth, some poised in the wrapping room and with stubborn frugality "regifted." No matter if this causes consternation in the recipient of a strange board game or an instrument able to perform ministrations to avocados, or a reissued cast recording of "The Pajama Game."

I wondered what it was for a while. And then I realised that he reminds me so much of Philip Larkin. In particular this one, and perhaps my most favourite:

Vers de Societe

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--

Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who's read nothing but Which;
Just think of all the spare time that has flown

Straight into nothingness by being filled
With forks and faces, rather than repaid
Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,
And looking out to see the moon thinned
To an air-sharpened blade.
A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled

All solitude is selfish. No one now
Believes the hermit with his gown and dish
Talking to God (who's gone too); the big wish
Is to have people nice to you, which means
Doing it back somehow.
Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines

Playing at goodness, like going to church?
Something that bores us, something we don't do well
(Asking that ass about his fool research)
But try to feel, because, however crudely,
It shows us what should be?
Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,

Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course--

Tiger also has a piece in today's WSJ about men, and how they are, sort of, fucked.

Dancing A Train Man

Whilst the video of a guy jigging about and singing on the subway is fairly amusing, or not depending on your point of view, the best thing about this post is the comments.

Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas to me.


The mailman brought me something I really wanted today. Yay. And in answer to the inevitable, "Does that mean you are legal now?" - I have ALWAYS been legal. This just means that I don't have to line up with the rest of the grunts at immigration. Travel will be SMOOTH. Like my legs, which I finally got round to waxing today also.

An excerpt from The Decline of Males by Lionel Tiger

"Take the Pill. Don't Call Me in the Morning

And so in 1972 with colleagues from Rutgers University and its medical school, we established a colony of stumptail macaque monkeys to learn about the possible link between chemicals and behavior. The experiment raised some arresting questions about the behavior of human beings to say nothing of what we learned about monkeys.

The monkeys lived on a small island about five minutes of rowing off the coast of Bermuda. The hilly, rocky territory was lent to our research team by the Outerbridges, the family responsible for Bermudian hot sauces. First, we observed the sex lives of macaques and established a base line for natural unmedicated behaviour. We had established the group in an environment compatible with the one in which they customarily lived in West Africa. In their home environment these monkeys are organised around a leader male and a group of females. The male usually monopolizes the sexual access to the fertile females, though both the less dominant males and often the females seek sexual contacts when they are unobserved by the leader. Our group's male leader was named Austin. There were also nine grown females and a number of rambunctious younger males and immature females. After three months Austin had established affectionate links with three favorite females with whom he had regular sexual episodes.

Once the pattern was clear, the experiment began. On a random basis we medicated five of the females with a three month dose of Depo-Provera injected under the skin. Depo-Provera was not then legal for contraceptive use in the United States but it now is. It was, however, widely distributed for use in other countries by, among other groups, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

In the first group of medicated females, two had been among Austin's favorites. He continued to approach them, inspect their genitalia and groom them in the ways they had enjoyed. But none of the once-lively relationships resulted in sexual intercourse. Instead, Austin chose two other adult females as his new consorts.

After about three months the drug was no longer effective. We medicated the remaining four female monkeys, which included the one former favorite of Austin's and two newer ones. He continued to approach, groom and court these females but again something was missing and he stopped short of sexual intercourse. He resumed his sexual link with two of the original favorites who were now off the medication and added a third. (Three sexual companions seemed to be Austin's idea of agreeable domestic life.)

After the second three-month dose lapsed, we medicated all the adult females. Austin began to attempt rape, masturbate and behave in a turbulent and confused manner. He approached females, inserted his fingers in their genitalia, stroked and sniffed them, hovered anxiously. But no matter what he did, there was never the usual episode of intercourse.

After another three months the medication dissipated again and the group was drug-free. It was back to nature and true love. Faithful Austin returned to his original three companions.

Why did all this happen?

The pill works because it contain hormones that cause the body to mimic pregnancy. While a woman is taking the pill, she is chemically pregnant; therefore she cannot become pregnant again. My hunch was that since nature is economical, this would have some consequences for female behavior particularly on their sexuality and beyond their freedom to have sex relatively freely."

Time to Move?

I have been disturbed for some time now by my neighbors. They are younger than me and know what means a "keg party". But recently things have developed distastefully. About four months ago my wireless network radar indicated that someone close to me had decided to call their internet connection "House of Funk". Oh dear God, I thought. No one I have clapped eyes on in this building is even ironic enough to attribute the strip lighted cardboard box monstrosity of our apartments as "House of Funk". "Coffinesque" is, I believe, entirely more appropriate.

Anyway, this evening I noticed, amongst the plethora of options for stealing wireless internet and downloading Luther Vandross from limewire, a new internet connection. This one is named "The Stabbin' Cabin".

I think it is my new neighbor to my right. He of the horror movies which blast through my bedroom wall around 2am. Is this frat boy jocularity, I thought? A quick google revealed that this translates in the Queens to something along the lines of "fuck pit".

Oh how we laughed.

It's not working for him. I can vouch for that.

Updates

1. The leather trousers: they are hot again.














2. The life: it is exhausting.

Ohmygod. Benjamin Biolay. So hott. So french. He is like a singing, younger Benecio del Toro. Ah, but does he dodge soap?

Go and listen to "Jardin d'hiver" which he did with Keren Ann. It's the ultimate in melodrama.

Maine for Thanksgiving 2005. Gorgeous, no?

So perfect. I went to a lecture at MoMA today on Decadence and got frustrated with the poverty of reading ability demonstrated by some of the speakers. So I left and meandered around the museum for a while until the crush forced me to leave and take the subway home.

Really though, Bill T Jones is a beautiful man with a beautiful voice but he massacred the excerpt from Berenice. Such a shame. It reminded me of American theater companies performing Shakespeare. So proud are they that they got the words out that they fail to credit them with any meaning.

Anyway, it's going to snow tonight apparently. I'm staying in.