dr hobbs and the company of men

andy, cleveland, ohio o'clock —

i threw up the grilled cheese from the bee — no idea why, i rarely vomit — and my throat is now burning.

newly phd'd dr peter hobbs of toronto fame should have received my book in the post today — unless it has been hostaged at the border, which is possible — and perhaps more importantly, he will receive my phd defense gift, which is a kind of sketchpad (he is an mfa as well, and two of the chapters in his diss are comic book chapters, an idea which is both totally cool and really stupid) — the sketchpad is housed in a hollowed out science 101 textbook, and peter's field is 'science studies' (environmental studies, theory), and this gift is strictly perfect; all of the inscriptions — the congrats card, my book, and the gift — are really quite perfect, and should be meaningful to him, and should elaborate our relationship: the gift says that 'i am impressed by you' — which, after i scribbled it on the one copy of the sketchpad, i regretted, thought it dumb, but have since revised, now like it, and hope it heartens him; the congrats card says 'you so smart' which he is and he needs to know, again; and my book is inscribed to 'my best friend, dr. peter hobbs' and then i make reference to our shared 'it's not a competition' which nicely summarizes his end of our relationship.

peter and i are to skype at 7, which is good, because i will have to go to sleep early because it all begins again at berklee tomorrow with these absolutely retarded pedagogy workshops; i sometimes participate in the politics session, every few years, but am not this year, but will likely attend it; basically, the only reason i go is that i get paid and, if i don't go, i don't get paid, and even though money is strictly not important to me, it ends up governing most of my activities (or, to be sure: the ones i am prohibited from participating in) —

peter is easily the best gay man i know. i really don't know that many, never really did, i guess in college i knew a lot of gay guys, but later i met very few, and liked very few; what is remarkable about peter is the total absence of literary passive aggressiveness (which i absolutely loathe); he is perfectly adept at it, he has a master's in literary and semiotic studies, which well trains you for such deplorable behavior, but he just straight-up doesn't operate that way, possibly because he intuits how awful it is to be on the other end of such 'cleverness.' i suppose i don't like passive aggression — or any kind of dispersed referentiality — because i usually miss it, or gather it late, or i'm confused by it, or caught between multiple interpretations that i can't decide and determine, or feel persecuted by the subtext, or feel ill-equipped to return the gift. none of my friends are passive aggressive — leanne and dan, who i once tried to hook up — can perform in such a mode — which i generally cannot, but they do not do it with me, it's unkind; i'm much too direct to be able to submerge my intent that way — but peter, lisa, me, trevor, lucy — none of us do it, i think probably by conscious choice. there is a pt in the book where i refer to myself as 'clever' — and this is one of the spots in the book that i regret, because i generally don't like the clever. i like: the witty, the absurdist, the dry, the wry. and smart and handsome, that's about it. there is nothing quite as capitalistically calculated as 'clever.'

i think that my homosexuality is really about the company of men; it has of course some to do with the male body, and this sort of obsession with the penis that is both unhealthy and spectacular, but i think in the end i'm gay because i like being around guys, not all kinds of guys, but certain kinds of men, because they are men. at the same time, i probably don't like most men, or even most genres of men. most of my friends are women, since forever, and i love them very much (i think i will probably retire with lisa, although i worry that perhaps she will die before i retire because of her various health problems) — i guess, and i know this applies to peter at this moment in his life, he would like to be surrounded by more men, of the proper variant.

during the various trials around patrick — which of course had nothing to do with him, specifically — peter was perhaps the most supportive and helpful; he called me when i was at st elizabeth's the two times related to patrick, though not quite to him; lisa was supportive in her way, which is to entirely purchase and consume — but not veritably believe — my narrative; leanne has not been helpful, but this is because leanne really is vain and selfish, which is ok, and i still love her, but there are real limitations there; i do think leanne and i could have made a baby together if it weren't for her 'double womb' or whatever that has forced her to happily adopt adam's children from the first marriage; god how awful. even though i am good with kids — one might say: excellent — i would never have kids and i don't think i'll have much to do with molly's child, whenever it is to arrive, even if i am speaking to her when she drops.

i watched this bi military porn vid from my favorite gay military porn company and it was like 'the bi brigades' or something and it involved a woman in the scene with the two guys, and she was naked, and i was taken aback — quite a bit — by how much i was not quite disgusted but like repelled and confused by the female body; i'm not sure how reni ('renya') happened, i guess because she just sort of attacked me, and raped me, really, but i somehow was able to perform, twice, under real pressure, and did it; but reni is a good example of the company of men issue; it wasn't so much her vagina/clitoris that ultimately put me off but it was just that she was simply not a man or, to put it perhaps a bit more generously, she was a woman. this is a real problem, and i think this does generally apply to gay men — this kind of unconscious, subtextual misogyny; this subject is raised in the second half of the foreword in 'blowjobs and buggery — and perverse philosophy' which i imagine no visitor to this site has possibly gotten through — but, anyway, the gay male misogyny is a real problem, and it's so human — generalized — to befriend this type, the hag, of the fag, despite this implicit hatred of her, precisely because she is a woman. how could anyone deny this? — if you find men beautiful and women unattractive, wouldn't you mostly favor and privilege men and slight and marginalize women? this can also explain the near epic dysfunction in straight women's relationships with each other — sarah silverman sort of nicely summarizes this internal misogyny, which actually returns to the discussion of passive aggression (cf. above). anyway, what was really satisfying about 'the bi brigades' gay porn flick was that — probably intentionally, in direction, but it presents as spontaneous — the men slowly, but quite decisively choose each other, rather than the woman — and by the end of the flick — which i edged for — the woman is practically off the bed, alone, disposable, forgotten. it's just all so incredibly hot. i guess what i want to say is: as a gay man, i'm not really a very good person, in some real ways, and that i generally favor men in all things. i would add that i'm sort of ashamed by that but also in a way not at all. i suspect that most men favor men — and probably sexually, too — and i often shudder when i imagine what i recall in the 'blowjobs and buggery — and perverse philosophy' foreword: that the next holocaust — which will definitely happen, inevitably — will probably be against women. eventually, when women are no longer necessary to the propogation of the species, when the birth of the child (the boy, the man) can be artificially arranged and technologized, perhaps women will be destroyed on the planet, just the logical consequence of the radical hatred of women over virtually the entire globe. i hope that if i am alive for that holocaust — that if history moves in the direction of the holocaust against women rather than toward the spirit of the system — that i would actively resist it. but i think it is possible that i would not resist it — that i would actively engage in it — just like all the other gay men, and regular men, i know. i think this problem of the future holocaust against women needs to be studied — and actually made explicit in conversation, in discussion — because i think it is a real and unfortunate possibility. to me, the m83 song, 'midnight city,' is like the soundtrack (or: gay porn soundtrake) to this holocaust; and while i very much like that song, it haunts me a bit when it comes on.

it has turned dark, when it turns dark i talk about women, i think — it is lucy's birthday today, and i have done nothing on the journey toward purchasing her book.

out to sea but not with me,

andy pink