Wasn't I supposed to grow up to be Jean Genet?

I can't even remember his damn name. His book titles, those were easy: The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers. Thank God for Amazon, so I didn't have to look like an asswipe asking, "Wasn't I supposed to grow up to be that French guy who wrote The Thief's Journal?"

The truth is, I didn't even like The Thief's Journal, though I can't say I got more than half a dozen pages. I wanted to. Didn't quite know what to make of it, though. Wait! I know why it stuck with me. I decided that was exactly the book I wanted to write, only good. ("Heaven is exactly like where you are right now. Only much, much better.")

I want to be the good Jean Genet. Or get good enough to understand Jean Genet, realize his brilliance and then transcend it. It took me a few tries to get Naked Lunch, and I did really enjoy it the second time through, but I never wanted to do that myself. Too ugly. Too vile.

(Do I need a quickie recap on Jean Genet? The protagonist really is a thief and he's in prison and having a lot of nasty sex and other crimes too against God and man too numerous to mention in just the first six pages. But . . . Here's a pithy little review from one jacob cohen at amazon:

This book is mesmerising. The distinction between the beautiful and the obscene is folded inside out like a velvet glove. Abjection has never seemed so appealing.

Nice writing jacob.

There was a reason I landed on Genet tonight. I was reading this comment from scott, responding to me whining about struggling for both that big-time writing gig, and a keeper of a boyfriend. After a thoughtful prologue asking whether it's OK to jump in with advice (it is), he says a few nice things about the writing, and then:

 Regarding the other goal of finding a "keeper", you might want to lay off on writing about your three-way sexual experiences. Although they might be fun for us to read, I'm sure any "keeper" for you who is out there reading it might be a little turned off to the idea of a long-term relationship. You've got a lot to offer for people to read, I just don't think you need to offer everything.

Good point, hard to argue as far as the boyfriend is concerned, but I shudder to think what it might do for the rest of me. (If you haven't been following, I did post here about a three-way I had about a month ago, but it wasn't a prurient entry, it was about some significant emotional issues it dredged up, and the presence of the third person was critical to the telling.)

I don't need to offer everything? Oh, but i do. That's the deal, isn't it? I have to spill it all, or it's just a bunch of crap, that's how I see it.

Except that I don't, of course, do I? That's where Jean Genet sprang to mind. (God I love the sound of that name in my mouth. I could say it over and over all night: Jean Genet Jean Genet Jean Genet. Yum.) I've been kinda tame on this blog here, haven't I? Does it come across that way to you?

Weird kinda thing being a professional writer and having a blog. Can't write too much about three-ways and still cover dead children or Air Force sex scandals where you're supposed to be the lillywhite reporter walking in aghast at what's going on?

It needles me every time I squelch the word fuck on here, though it's not so hard to substitute freaking for fucking, because I use them both quite liberally in real life. That's just the needling point. It occured to me I never once wrote about a three-way here before (that I recall), and only one brief mention to getting drunk, much less anything "stronger." See, there's a euphemism right there. The euphemisms I can live with, I just wonder about the content.

No biggie, I guess, I'm not half as distraught as these things must sound sometimes, just wondering. The whole thing just seems a little tamer than I first envisioned it.

(And much more gay. I really never thought it was going to be a big gay blog, but I seem to have chased away most of the straightguys. At least I never seem to hear from many in the comments. Are you out there breeders? Just a little shy?)

I'm not sure where I was headed with this, I'm just wondering when I got to be so damn clean.

And that title is not a rhetorical question, so feel free to chime in.

How culd you resist reading a story with that headline?

Not bad, even for AP.

Following a performance of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde at Rio de Janeiro's municipal theater, Thomas shocked audience members and much of the cast by taking down his pants and displaying his buttocks in response to jeers at the curtain call.

The over-top-production featured sashaying fashion models and an actor playing Sigmund Freud who threw around a white powder meant to be cocaine.

I think I'd like the guy. The AP policy who makes them say buttocks, however . . .

Man, does that guy have photos of everyone naked?

Ever picture yourself becoming famous for something and Larry showing up with shots of you nude. I wonder if he's got any of me. And what I'd have to pay him to publish them. Heeheehee.

Two more officials jumped ship from the Kerry campaign today. Pretty big ones: press secretary and deputy finance director.

They said they were protesting the unfairness of firing his campaign manager, but I've got to wonder if that isn't pretext. Who wouldn't be looking for an excuse to jump that sinking ship?

What do you bet they turn up in the Dean or Clark campaigns in a week or two, probably the former.

I feel kind of torn about taking up space on news about someone who would need a miracle to turn it around and win the nom, but it is encouraging that the day of his departure is probably hastening slightly.

I'm just eager to clear all the dwarves out of the way and let Howard Dean and Wesley Clark fight it out to determine who will be the stronger adversary for Bush.

Update:

Wise thoughts from Josh, in the comments:

i think they'd join the clark side over dean. trippi's running too tight a ship to compete with other washington veterans, imo. clark's got eli, but there are plenty of staff positions to fill for his campaign.

That all makes sense to me. I was kinda thinking similar thoughts, though I have minimal knowledge of how campaigns work on that detail of a level.

(And now that I think of it, I kinda like it that way. I know from my work in business that it's incredibly hard to spend a lot of time sloshing around in the nitty gritty of the details and still keep a sense of the view from 10,000 feet. I think that is the central problem with the beltway boys, both inside the campaigns and especially inside the press. They lose their feel for how they felt on the outside, the feelings they had that drove them there in the first place. So I don't ever want to get to involved in the details, but I'm curious about this at the moment.)

I figured as the newest guy, clark's staff still had a lot of room to grow, plus he's the biggest dean challenger, so he's the most likely recipient.

But i don't know these things, so I could be way off. I hope we hear. If I don't post something, would anyone who hears please email me? Thanks.

Loved the implications of this Times story from this weekend.

All the Dem candidates were asked if they had smoked pot during CNN's "Rock the Vote" debate. 

"Yes," said Senator John Kerry, leading off. "Yes," said Senator John Edwards . "Yes," said Dr. Howard Dean.

None of these three baby-boomer candidates said anything beyond their short, declarative affirmations. None followed with a hurried explanation that it was just a few times, that it was some kind of "youthful indiscretion," or that he didn't inhale. The implication of their answers seemed to be, "Yeah, so what?"

 This time, the people making excuses were the nerds who had not ever smoked.

(And what a surprise that Lieberman was a big unadventerous prude so incurious he never even yearned to learn what all the fuss was about: "I never used marijuana. Sorry!")

I gave up reading all the AIDS stories years ago, but this one in today's Times is really different. Not about AIDS, but how it changed the medical world, and all the worlds medicine relates to.

A sample:

What Did We Learn From AIDS?

Two decades of grappling with AIDS have taught scientists not only arcane lessons about the molecules that cause illness and the molecules that can treat it, but also some basic truths about the politics, economics, and psychology of health and disease.

. . .

"The consensus was that retroviruses did not infect humans, that viruses did not cause cancer and that infectious diseases were a problem for the third world but not for us," said Dr. Robert C. Gallo, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, who now directs the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in Baltimore. "Those biases were shattered in just a few years."

For us homos.

Who knows if it's true, but it's nice to finally learn what the stupid scandal is that the palace is denying without saying what it is.

Apparently the slander laws over there keep the tabloids from spelling it out, but why the hell has AP been "reporting" on it over here without saying what it is either?

Thank God for The Daily Show. Hysterical segment on it just now. ("Yes--[Stephen] Colbert is a genius!" David responded in the comments. Comically speaking, that's no overstatement. I was feeling guilty for not crediting Stephen (Steven?) in the post originally, but the truth was I can never remember which Steven is which on that show. Love them both, but Colbert eventually wins my heart. I love all the correspondents except Ed Helms.)

The rumor isn't that Chuck is gay, just that he gave it a try. Either way, how embarassing. I don't want to be associated with that guy.

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Update: Wow, great comments lately, and you never know what direction they're going to turn. Based on the early comments in the first hour, this one tapped into something, but it had nothing to do with those totally irrellevant royals. Something much more culturally significant, The Daily Show.

I read a long interview CBS chief Les Moonves had with Variety last week (thanks for sending it, Joe), which was nearly all blather, but there was an interesting joint lamentation about the fading state of the sitcoms (with Friends, Raymond, Fraiser and (?) all set to retire in '04 or '05, and no real sitcom hit since Malcom in the Middle). Putting aside the idea of Friends as a comic achievement, the sitcoms have gone stale the past few years, but the brilliance has been abounding in other comic forms: The Daily Show, South Park, Queer Eye . . . Queer Eye may not prove sustainable, but it sure was a bolt of joy this summer. And I'm already tiring of Reno 911! but it sure gave me some great moments.

Anyway, when I posted those lines about Stehpen vs Steven, the question did spring to mind about why Colbert is ultimately so more satisfying than Carrel. I was too busy or too lazy to explore it, so thank you very much to Josh, who seems to have snuck his way into my murky subconscious, crstyalized all the little strands floating around those boys and spit out exactly the words I might have said if I had done all the work myself. Or the words I might have hoped to:

as soon as he came on, colbert's been my favorite. carrel is funny in a goofy way, but colbert's segments are much more cerebral--he's got a great persona of an arrogant, cerebral, priss. plus his last name's french.