Posts Tagged ‘Sebastian Gray
More anecdotal evidence political correctness gets you mugged
Dear HillBuzz,
I was never going to share this story because I felt it was way too personal, even for me, but sometimes the universe brings you the wrong French toast and you realize what happened to you is part of a larger pattern out there that most people probably never realize exists, so no matter how stupid I feel in sharing this, maybe it will help someone else avoid what happened to me, and now to someone else I know too.
This past Christmas Eve, I was in New York on a trip that just kept getting extended by terrible weather in the Midwest. I had originally flown in for the “Conversation with Hillary Clinton” event hosted by America Ferara on December 15th, and planned on leaving the next day or so to head back to Chicago for the holidays, where I have my own little traditions in a city I love, especially at Christmas (take that, Elazar Bogomilsky in Seattle!).
Well, my friend Robby’s sister Ann-Louise lives in New York, and I’ve known her for 15 years or so, and she offered her couch to me instead of staying in a hotel (for the ulterior motive that Ann-Louise was having an epideral on her back December 16th and needed someone to take her to the doctor and back, and also to wait on her for the next few days while she recovered). Ann-Louise alienates most people she knows eventually and has always been the sort of “friend” I’ve had in life who I know I can’t really count on for anything – because at best I’d only be a special guest star in whatever drama she was having that day. Some people decide to be more recurring than others in Ann-Louise’s dramas (audience of one). Others get new agents and never look back.
Well, I ended up staying with Ann-Louise through almost Christmas because of her back, and then the fact that so much snow kept whalluping the Midwest that I couldn’t catch a flight back to Chicago, as every flight I booked myself on was repeatedly canceled. Finally, Ann-Louise had a hedgefund manager coming to town to take the next shift in her drama, so I got booted from her couch and was going to stay in a hotel by a good friend from college named Damy (who was headed to Puerto Rico for Christmas), offered me her place instead of a hotel, which was awesome of her. I’ve let her stay with me every time she’s had to come to Chicago on business, so Damy was happy to return the favor…but she warned me that her neighborhood was a little sketchy, north up near Harlem, and that it definitely was a part of New York I had never spent any amount of time in (since I’d only been to Harlem twice, for a meal at Sylvia’s and a visit to President Clinton’s offices a few years ago).
I finally decided to fly back to Chicago on Christmas Day, so in the meantime I worked with various people I met at the Hillary event to do what we could to stop HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy from being named Clinton’s replacement in the Senate. I had several days of driving around New York state with some of these people, trying to find Princess Caroline at an appearance somewhere, to get the chance to ask her questions I knew she couldn’t answer and prove to all New Yorkers she had no business insisting on that Senate seat (unfortunately, we never encountered her, despite our best efforts, and at least one whole afternoon camped out in Bergdorf’s waiting for her in her usual jewelry department territory).
On Christmas Eve, I was invited to different parties these Clinton supporters were having, but begged off all of them intending instead to have a politics-free, lovely evening in New York of my own design, with a nice dinner somewhere and either the musical production of White Christmas (RAAAAAAACIST!) or a movie in the evening, followed by, I’m sure, various holiday-spiced shenannigans at Posh or one of the other LGBTQ bars I like in Manhattan (because, if you haven’t realized this yet, there is no place more fun on any holiday than a gay bar where guys who’ve spent too much time in awkward holiday-related “celebrations” with family go to laugh at the absurdity of it all and have an awesome time judgmental Aunt Stella and fundamentalist Grandma Millie-free…complete, on Christmas, with de regeur “worst snowman, Santa, or reindeer sweater ever” contests).
Ann-Louise texted me, however, upset the hedgefund manager broke things off with her for the 100th time, leaving her alone on Christmas Eve, except for the large party she was throwing in her apartment with people from her building and friends of hers from NYU that I’ve never liked. I felt bad for her, and was also appreciative of her letting me stay with her for those few days, so I agreed to come and asked her, very early in the day Christmas Eve, if I could pick up anything for her party. She told me she had everything she needed, including a whole case of wine, but I asked again if I could bring anything. Once again, she said she had everything she needed, and I let it drop and went about my day intending to go to her party at 7pm that night on Christmas Eve.
Well, this was the first instance that day where I knew I should have trusted my instincts and just bought a few bottles of wine anyway to bring, but I didn’t want to scout for an open liquor store on Christmas Eve if I didn’t have to, and instead spent the day having a great time walking around Central Park and checking out all the Christmas window displays around town (including, monstrously, the Christmas werewolves at Bergdorf’s, which I’m sure were, in some way or another, #1 Customer Princess Caroline’s doing).
At 630pm, Ann-Louise texts to tell me she’s out of wine and needs me to bring more (which is unsurprising, if you know Robby’s sister, and remember whole cases of wine have disappeared before with no one but her in the apartment). I’m literally in the cab on the way to her apartment, looking out the window at store after store closed at 6pm for Christmas Eve. Absolutely everything I could see was closed. Not knowing this part of New York at all, I asked the cabbie to find a liquor store or someplace else that would sell wine. He, as cabbies do, spun the wheel sharply and shot us through a gap in traffic down an endless street carved between massive hulks of abandoned warehouses or tenements. In places like this, for some reason, the first thought in my head is Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost, where they just HAD to go to a play in a terrible part of town and then walk inexplicably down the dark, forboding alley, just asking for it (and then, later, in a similar alley, shadow demons rise up from the street to take a criminal who just died straight down to Hell, which would actually be sort of an improvement to the neighborhood at hand).
We zigged, then zagged, and my stomach turned upside down a few times as the cab bounced through giant potholes on streets road crews long ago gave up on, eventually zeroing in on the lone illiminated shopwindows in a five block radius, like a speeding yellow moth drawn irresistably towards a neon LIQUOR bug zapper.
I told the cabbie to keep the meter running and I would be right out after grabbing the first few bottles of wine that I could. I had no intention of loitering around in that place and wanted to get out of this part of town as fast as possible. That was somewhat unusual for me, as I’m from a part of Cleveland that’s lovingly referred to as “Thunderdome”, and generally don’t spook easily. But, there was just something about that part of town, that particular night, that just had every instinct in my body tingling that something bad was going to happen if I spent too much time there, wherever “there” was, as I had absolutely no idea how to get back to midtown from there.
I rushed in and bought four bottles of Australian reds and whites from a little Turkish man watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas special on a little flickering TV, who never looked away from the tiny screen as he took my ID and the $50 I had for the wine. So absorbed by the Peanuts gang, he accurately counted out my change without looking once at what he was doing, which amazed me enough that I never noticed the cab speed away with the only other customer who was in that liquor store with me.
As I walked out the door with a big plastic white bag in each hand, I realized the guy in the suit who left seconds before me stole my cab — clearly telling the cabbie he’d pay the meter already running but make it worth his while to JUST GO and get the Hell out of there.
The surface of the moon has more cabs than I could see anywhere in the warren of little streets in whatever largely abandoned part of town I was in. Shadow demons would have been welcome company at this point, because the feeling of being utterly alone and so vulnerable in an unfamiliar place on Christmas Eve was as real and impossible to ignore as the whispy white billows of my breathe on that very cold December night.
I just started walking, even though I had no clue where I was walking to, looking for a street I recognized that could take me back to either Damy’s apartment or to Ann-Louise’s party. Walking, in the dark, honestly scared for the first time that I could remember…more afraid for my own personal safety than I was even in Gary, Indiana during the campaign where I felt my chances of being murdered were at least 50:50.
And then, as I was headed to what I thought might possibly be a numbered avenue, I saw coming towards me a group of guys, all black, dressed in what I call hippity-hop street-style. Not businessmen. Not college kids. But, dressed like street toughs. And there I was, all 160 pounds of me, wearing a long black London Fog trench, carrying impossible to miss bright white bags, clearly drawing the only other living things on the street right towards me.
But, remember, I’m a gay Democrat who went through, easily, 20 years of liberal education in 100% Democrat surroundings that, until last year, truthfully never included a single Republican friend. The primal regions of my brain were lost in space, shouting DANGER!, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!, but my Democratic default was set to Will Truman, progressive gay man in the big bad city, refusing to racial profile the clear and present danger headed my way.
I could have crossed the street away from these guys.
I could have booked it back to the liquor store, whose bright neon light I could still see out of the corner of my eye, where I imagined Lucy was still giving Charlie Brown a hard time (and Peppermint Patty still didn’t know she’s a big old lesbian).
I could have listened to my instincts, but I didn’t want to be the guy who ran away from the three black guys headed towards me, because in my liberal education, you can’t judge books by their covers, even if those books scream RUN!, RUN YOU FOOL, AND NEVER LOOK BACK!
So, the guys walk towards me. I keep walking towards them. There’s the briefest moment where I believe nothing’s going to happen as we almost, just ALMOST, pass each other without incident, but then the biggest one of them turned around behind me and hit me square on the back of the neck with some sort of MacGyvered cudgel. Another one of them pushed me up against the wall, and the whole thing literally happened so fast that I still don’t know how they took as much as they did, but they got not only those bags of wine but also my wallet, the cash in my pockets, my camera, my cellphone, and the Christmas present I had for Ann-Louise. With a good solid punch to the face for a goodbye, they left me there on some random street before I even realized the encounter was over.
And I knew this was going to happen. But, I didn’t let myself address that truth because I was always taught that believing there was anything wrong with a group of black men walking towards me, looking like trouble, was RAAAAAACIST!, no matter how unfavorable the odds were for me to escape that predicament with minimal harm.
Even though there was no one else around, I didn’t want to be called a RAAAAACIST! for judging these big, dangerous-looking books by their hippity-hop covers, even if it was my own liberal guilt doing the name-calling.
After the mugging, I don’t even know how long I sat there on the ground before I came to my senses and kept walking down the street, now without enough money to catch a cab if I could even found one. No phone. No credit cards. Nothing. I just walked and walked and walked until I found Fifth Avenue and then, after a few more blocks north, I recognized some of the streets near Damy’s apartment and made it back there. Retreating to my own personal quiet place, I just sat in the shower with the water running over me for what was probably hours and hours. With few others in the building that night showering forever, the hot water lasted so long that I was puffy and pruned on hands and feet before I finally dried off and sunk into bed, still shocked by what happened.
Damy had no internet in her apartment, so I couldn’t send Ann Louise an email about what happened. My phone was stolen, so I couldn’t call her, obviously, to tell her I was mugged on the way to her party. All of my phone numbers are in the phone and I have not remembered anyone’s actual digits since high school (I barely know my own number, to be honest, as I never need to call myself, and if I did, that would be in my phone too). So exhausted from the experience, I could barely move, with my head and neck still throbbing from being cudgeled. Even if I could get up and wander the streets looking for an Internet cafe or Kinko’s still open where I could send an email to Ann-Louise, my credit cards were gone, so I couldn’t use their machines. I had enough cash back in Damy’s apartment to pay for the train to the airport in the morning, but that was about it.
And I tell you this because when I did get back to Chicago the next day (saved ONLY by the fact that, after buying that wine, I absent-mindedly slipped my ID into my shirt pocket, instead of my coat or pants pockets, and that’s the sole reason I still had the ID and was able to get on the plane back home the next day. If I had put that in my wallet, I don’t know how I would have gotten home without any ID. So, the universe served up some lucky French toast with that), Ann-Louise sent me the nastiest email I have ever received, because I didn’t make it to her party.
She didn’t bother to ask if I was okay, or wonder why I hadn’t come when I told her I was on the way after she asked for more wine. She just called me names, implied I met some guy on the way to the party and was instead “getting up to whatever it is (I) get up to with random guys”, and then used the opportunity to smack me upside my bruised and battered head with every insult and attack she’d been saving up for use on me (the way she does for everyone, actually, with mental files always set to go for when she gets mad at a particular person).
I wrote her back and told her I was mugged on the way to her party, and called her out for not even bothering to ask how I was before launching into one of her trademarked tirades. She never wrote back, and frankly I hope I never have to speak to her again.
Robby said, after I told him this, “Well, that sure sounds like my sister. Now you know why I didn’t stay in New York for Christmas, because she’s always like this, especially on holidays when she drinks so much.”
There are a lot of emotions conjured by this experience, and the reason I never shared it was because I still have this strong sense of humiliation for being mugged. As a guy, it’s embarrassing that I didn’t fight back, but that strike to the back of my head/neck stunned me so much that I didn’t know what was going on until it was pretty much over. More than that, I feel stupid for not crossing the street to get away from those guys, or running in the other direction. And I just don’t like being a victim. It’s truly humiliating.
But, I’ve shared this because here in Chicago this week THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED to my friend Josh, who was walking in a relatively sketchy part of Andersonville just north of Boystown and three black guys headed his way. He could have crossed the street, but didn’t because he thought that would be seen as RAAAACIST!. Seriously, Josh did just what I did, and decided that being politically correct was more important than his own personal safety.
So, not wanting to offend his future muggers by fleeing from them, Josh walked right passed them, the same way I did, and got jumped the second his back was to them. They pounded his head into the street and jammed their hands into his pockets, taking his wallet, keys, phone, and money, but Josh clung to his bag with everything he had and stopped them from taking his laptop and expensive flat iron (as Josh is a colorist, and not a fabulous stereotype walking around with high-end styling tools in the dead of night, like a lost and confused Kyan Douglas separated from the rest of the Fab Five).
In a week where I’ve thought long and hard about the racial indoctrination we are all taught in school, after hearing what happened to Josh I decided I had to share my story today, because danger is danger, people. You should not let your fear of being called a RAAAAAACIST! ever stop you from following your instincts and protecting yourself. Who cares if it is rude to cross the street to avoid people you think could hurt you? How many people get mugged every year in situations like this? I now know two people in the last six months this EXACT SAME SCENARIO happened to, with one of them being my own damn stupid self.
Maybe you even know people this has happened to as well.
And a part of me thinks, Al Sharpton-style, muggers like this COUNT on white, liberal Democrats to freeze up and not defend themselves out of fear not from the actual mugging, but the psychological mugging caused by the last 30 years or so of shameless race-baiting the MSM so gleefully fosters.
Enough is enough. Let someone else be politically correct and cater to Al Sharpton. When I see what I think is trouble coming, I’m going to cross the street or run like Hell away from it. I lost close to $700 in that mugging, between the phone, the camera, the cash I had on me, what was in my wallet, and what I spent in deductible going to the doctor when I got back to Chicago to make sure I didn’t have a concussion (after the soreness and pain from that night just wouldn’t go away two weeks later). Josh lost a couple hundred himself.
A penny is too much to lose allowing liberal indoctrination to supercede your own instincts.
I am living proof of this, so I hope maybe sharing something painful like this might help you avoid similar fates in the future.
Sebastian Gray,
Chicago, IL
The correct answer to intrusive question "What's your nationality?" should be "American"
Dear HillBuzz,
Back in a peach and yellow totally 80s kitchen in Cleveland, my mother helped a much smaller version of me bake hundreds of mini German chocolate cupcakes and slather them with gruesome-looking but entirely delicious roasted coconut and pecan frosting. This was technically my first foray into catering (and I’m sure my football-loving father was just as proud as whenever he’d catch me surreptitiously watching “that girls’ show” Jem or wanting the She-ra doll action figure to complete my Masters of the Universe set), having planned these treats as refreshments for my booth in the school’s 6th grade “Nationality Report” presentation, where students tasked with creating narratives about their “nationality” used poster board and crayolas to inadequately represent the complexities of overseas cultures almost entirely alien to them by reducing centuries of history to badly-drawn castles and truly ugly lederhosen-clad caricatures (and then calling it a day).
Like all things in Catholic school, the nuns meant well when they conceived the inaugural “Nationality Day”, which included not only presentations during the two lunch periods for all students K-8, but a command performance at night for parents to attend (and all were dutifully thrilled, of course, to miss Family Ties, The A-Team, or Magnum PI that evening, in a world where people still didn’t know how to program their VCRs, to come down to the Immaculate Conception School for an amateur trade show on globalism).
Contrary to popular belief, Nuns aren’t any better at predicting disaster than the civilian population (and are probably much worse at prognostication than the average groundhog, horse, or shelter mutt, all of whom can supposedly detect imminent catastrophe using marvelous superpowered sixth senses when anecdote requires). Back when I was in grade school, they still wore the medieval habits and other bride of Christ regalia, and all of them took great pride in not owning TVs, watching movies, reading magazines, listening to the radio, or learning about anything that happened after Vatican II (because, really, what was the point when the school year only had so many days and no one really wanted to talk about Jimmy Carter or his stale peanuts anyway). So, it was no surprise whatsoever, really, that “Nationality Day” bombed so spectacularly with both students and parents – but it remains amazing, to me at least, that what happened on some random day in Cleveland still echoes in my life here in Chicago today.
For whatever reason, my classmate Erika Kuester, who the nuns expected to report on Germany, or possibly Austria, Switzerland, or MAYBE in a real nail-biter, Luxembourg (with a Germanic name like Erika Kuester, after all), set up Old Glory in her Nationality Day booth, tacked a colorful map of all 50 states to her poster board, and sliced up four Baker’s Square apple pies into Dixie-cup portions, prepped for her presentation: “I am an American”.
AMERICAN was her featured nationality, and that’s what she wanted to talk about. America was the nation she wrote her report on. Red, white, and blue were the crayons she used on her poster board. In her heart, she sang My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.
The rest of my sixth grade class was midway through setting up our slipshod displays on Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Ireland, China, Mexico, Germany and Italy, with various foodstuffs and knickknacks assembled (with varying success), none of which gave more than an Epcot Center approximation of any foreign country — but there was Erika, whose parents were actual immigrants from what was then East Germany, declaring herself to be 100% American.
The nuns were apoplectic, of course, in the way normally reserved for music listed on hard-to-read mimeographed sheets that Mrs. Smoley in the school office sent home to parents once a month, informing them of which particular bands the school believed were tools of Satan (that week) and which specific songs could be played backwards with great difficulty to reveal insidious haikus I have never, to this day, been able to ungarble. In Catholic school, as good as our education was (and I remain very grateful for it, and the sacrifices my parents made to send me to private school), critical thinking and old-fashioned moxie were generally lumped in with other tools of the Devil, musical or otherwise. The nuns were sphinxes that asked their questions knowing all the answers, firm in their belief that nothing could or should ever deviate from their well-attended plans. Bells rang like crazy all day keeping everyone on schedule and everything in just the right place. Rulers were used to measure the lengths of girls’ skirts and smack the backs of boys’ hands to maintain ordered consistency.
But, then Erika Kuester unexpectedly became the Norma Ray of the cafeteria set, holding up her I AM AN AMERICAN sign for all to see, unexpectedly rallying many of us to her side.
Because, standing in front of my truly hideous depiction of Schloss Neuschwanstein, cuckoo clocks, and Checkpoint Charlie, I looked at the hundreds of tiny German chocolate cakes spread across my table and realized the one or two times a year I ever ate anything “German”, even if it was “German” only in name like these cakes, it was never as satisfying as a nice plate of piping hot, store-bought, Baker’s Square “American” apple pie.
I’ve been to Europe many times through the years, with many of those vacations to Germany, Austria, Andorra, Liechtenstein, and other random places relatives of mine lived many hundreds and thousands of years ago, back when those places were all called The Holy Roman Empire, Trans-Alpine Gaul, Abracadabracaptovia, or whatever. As a kid, I thought about those places only when nuns told me to, and as a grown man I typically only revisit them when people in Chicago bars come up to me, at random, and ask, “What’s your nationality?”.
This only happens to me in Chicago.
It never happened in Cleveland; it doesn’t happen in New York, Washington, San Francisco, or other cities I like; it never happened on the campaign trail in any of the farflung and obscure places I was sent to canvass for Hillary Clinton or McCain/Palin in 2008. It’s a uniquely Chicago thing, like putting cucumbers and tomatoes on hotdogs and turning “pizza” into a 27-pound angioplasty technician’s job security dream.
“What’s your nationality?”
“What nationality are you?”
“Where are your parents from?”
“Where did your grandparents come from?”
The jarring, out-of-the-blue, yet pointed and laser-focused interrogatory in that unsettled me the first dozen or so times I heard that in Chicago. At first, I didn’t know how to respond, and thought it was a joke. Why on Earth would anyone ask me what my nationality was?
What on Earth did they need that information for?
Were they from the government?
Were they conducting a survey?
If I answered incorrectly, would they not want to speak to me anymore?
Would the next words out of Sargent Schultz’ mouth switch to the imperative with, “PAPERS PLEASE!”.
I have now lived in Chicago for four years, and have probably been asked “What’s your nationality?” by no less than 300 guys, mainly at Sidetrack’s while minding my own business watching videos, nursing Pilsners, and pretending not to evesdrop on the conversations around me for material for columns like these. I went through various stages of response until I found one that’s been universally effective. The experimentation went through stages, just like my door-to-door or telephone spiels during the campaign, where I refined what worked and eliminated responses that failed to get my point across.
At first, I asked these people why they needed to know what my nationality was, but that was mainly an invitation for them to exhibit more of their personal brand of stupidity, of which I certainly wanted no trade shows.
“Why do you need to know what my nationality is?”
“Well, I can’t figure out what you are. You have dark hair and dark eyes, but you are pale, so you aren’t Arab, but you aren’t Italian either, so then I thought you might be Hispanic, but you’re drinking a Czech beer and not a Corona, so you can’t be Hispanic, so I don’t know what you are so I asked.”
There are moments in life where I truly wish I was kidding, and this is one of them. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people I’ve met in Chicago who insist on labeling absolutely everyone and everything they encounter in life. They pass judgment with all the frequency and unpleasantness of Oprah on chili day at Harpo Studios wordlessly, but never silently, passing her own “judgment” on chef’s efforts that day (typically in packed elevators, from what I have heard, with men, women, and children clawing at the wood paneled walls, grasping for breathe, green to the gills and unable to even call for help in the wake of Oprah’s chili-induced “judgment”).
It all stinks.
I don’t have the boy next door, apple pie, all-American, Abercrombie look. Growing up, my three fallback Halloween costumes were always Dracula, James Bond, or Superman (and still have the red speedo and tights hanging in the closet in case of costum-related emergencies). I’ve got dark hair and eyes, a fondness for evening wear and/or capes, and generically foreign features that throw back to somewhere between the Roman conquest of Alpine Europe and the eventual merging of all the little post-Holy post-Roman post-Empire kingdoms into the Kaiser’s Germany that didn’t quite exist by the time my direct ancestors were all long gone…and firmly established in the U-S-of-A.
So, asking me what’s my nationality and demanding a Europe-based specific answer is like demanding to know where my great-great-great-great grandfather was baptized, where he went to grade school, what his favorite color was, and how many frogs he saw in the entirety of his life. A lifetime could be wasted trying to discover the answers to all of those questions, but it would be completely pointless and serve positively no purpose today. Why would anyone care?
But, liberals obsessed with labels do care.
Challenging this inane questioning resulted in only more questions, forcing me to spend time talking to people I already didn’t like (because of said nationality obsessions) without a clearly defined exit strategy for the conversation.
I wondered why these people were coming up and talking to me: were they interested in me and wanted to get to know me or ask me out, or did these guys just object to a generically-foreign looking person in their midst whom they couldn’t label effectively?
RAAAAACISTS!
Was the “nationality question” just the second-worst pickup line ever (after, in Boystown, direct and pointed questions about the length of certain parts of the male anatomy (which start with “p” and end in “enis”) that are more frequently asked at Sidetrack’s than you could ever possibly imagine), meant as a way to start a conversation — or was it RAAAAAAACISM! from liberal gay Democrats who go out of their way to shop at Whole Foods for all things foreign and exotic, so essentially that’s what they try to do at Sidetrack’s too, in the men department?
“What’s your nationality?” has a subtext to it, in my experience of, “I have walked over to speak to you because I am the kind of guy who buys acai berry, pomegranate, and dragon fruit whatever because I want people to know how liberal, progressive, and international-thinking I am. Plus, I love and support the rain forest, wherever that is. I have identified you as a potentially exotic and/or foreign person and would like to be seen talking to you because this proves I do not ONLY speak to blonde twinks from Iowa, which comprise most of my friends and the hastily-scribbled on the backs of napkins phone numbers littered under my bed. So, in talking to you and in confirming that you are, in fact, ethnic in some way, I am increasing my liberal cred while showing all of my friends how cool I am for willingly speaking to that dark-haired, possibly Italian or Hispanic or Arab or Jewish or whatever person my liberal arts education taught me to, so rudely, label capricously”.
I’m not a mind-reader (obviously, since I’m not a nun and thus have no magical powers), so I can’t ever know what really went through guys’ heads in the seconds before the asked me “the nationality question”, but the above is my best guess based on repeated anecdotal evidence.
And, as this kept happening, and I kept getting into arguments with these guys over how rude it is to come up and ask someone this question, I eventually just started f***ing with them instead of letting this nonsense bother me.
“What’s your nationality?”
“Oh, I’m Japanese.”
Didn’t expect that one, did they?
“Oh, uh, you don’t look Japanese.”
“Really, I look like all my family in Kyoto. Have you been to Kyoto and do you know everyone there? If you did, you would know everyone there looks just like me. We’re all Japanese, we really think so. Now, you, however, you are clearly Botswanan. Dumella ma. Yes, I believe your family is from Gaborone, clearly. Northwestern Gaborone, to be precise, by the telephone booth. I know this from watching the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I believe you look like someone I saw in a scene in the market place who was holding a toy truck. That could have been your cousin. WAS that your cousin? It was certainly a very nice toy truck, ma”.
The clearly non-Botswanan in front of me wouldn’t know quite what to do, but would ultimately slink away when I’d just go back to watching the video screens, purposefully closing the conversation, wondering whatever happend to that lovely toy truck.
I’ve been Japanese, Icelandic, Andorran, Zanzibarian, black, Native American, Swiss, Romulan, and Trans-Alpine-Gaullic in various run-ins with what I call “The Nationality Police”. After answering their idiocy with whatever I can think of from the World Almanac off the top of my head, I always then asked these guys if they were *fill in the blank*, picking something ridiculous to assume they were nationality-wise. Tall blonde skinny man? Well, he must be from Samoa! Short black man? A viking! Red-headed muscle pup? Camerooooooooooon! Or Djibuti, because, really, who DOESN’T love working some Djibuti into an increasingly awkward conversation with people you never want to talk to again (and we all know there can never be enough Djibuti at Sidetrack’s).
Then, I just got tired of doing all of this after a few months, and instead wanted to find the easiest way to shut the Nationality Police down and clearly indicate that I wanted no further conversation with this person.
I employed a wonderful trick I learned from Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign: whenever she was asked a question she didn’t want to answer, she would just talk about something else entirely. If someone didn’t ask a question, but instead made an awkward or absurd comment, Clinton would just say, “Well, thank you for your opinon,” before moving on to the next person in the audience or the next hand to shake on the rope line.
“What’s your nationality?”
“Oh, I come here all the time on the weekends. I like Showtunes night, but audience request night is cool too. They have great VJs here. Sometimes the Pilsners are skunky, but what can you do with imports? If I drank American beer, I’d never have that problem, so it serves me right.”
“No, I asked what your nationality was. You look Greek to me. My family is Greek, so I thought you were Greek.”
“Well, thank you for your opinion. Now, if you will excuse me, I see my friend across the room. Have a blessed day.”
As I employed this strategy, something became very clear: people almost always said, “Oh, I thought you were *blank* because my family is *blank*”. So, whatever they were, they wanted me to be too. I never once ran into a case of, “You aren’t Arab, is you? I HATES me some Arabs. Is you one? CAUSE I HATES ‘EM”. There were probably pretty people who thought ugly things like that, but they were smart enough not to become Nationality Police and confront me about whatever it was they thought I was, which I wasn’t, that was upsetting them from across the room. But, people who wanted to put a label on me that they in some way applied to themselves always used this as their opener in the bars.
I remain fascinated by that, because everyone in Sidetrack’s wears several labels by being in there: Abercrombie, of course, and Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, but also LGBTQ, Chicagoan, drunkard, friend of Dorothy, and AMERICAN, all to some extent. Why do some guys need to add more labels to people? And all of this, of course, is in addition to the labels they’ll add by asking what someone does for a living (which is one step removed from asking how much money they make), where they live, or, yes, how big certain things are (welcome to Boystown!).
The “nationality question” became the kiss of death for any prospective date. It rounded out the Fatal Five things I know make a guy absolutely wrong for me, actually instantly establishing itself at the top of that heap:
(1) Asked “What’s your nationality?”
(2) Drinks frilly, complicated, high-maintenance drinks
(3) Doesn’t get my jokes
(4) Asked how big my *fill in the blank* is
(5) Asked what I did for a living in the first half hour of talking to me
Guys whose drinks take longer to say than “Pilsner” or “MGD” are not for me. As the bartending skill required to keep them tanked at Sidetrack’s increases, so does the amount of energy they’ll drain from me in a dating situation. If you need a bartending book to take care of one of these guys, they might make great friends, but they are not having breakfast with me in the morning. No thanks, Mr. Sex-on-the-Beach. I don’t need any of your endless crabbing.
Obviously, I am who I am, so I’m also not going to relate well to someone who needs me to explain whatever I’m talking about constantly either. You get me or you don’t; you think I’m funny or you just stare at me blankly. You appreciate my snark, or you go all crazy in comments. But, it’s not a fun date with all that much staring going on, so I’ll pass on Mr. Doesn’t Think I’m Funny.
And, really, there’s just not a single appropriate instance in which someone can or should ask how large a male body part is, unless it’s Lloyd’s of London calling to insure it, so (4) above is an obvious disqualifier. Because you just have to find that part out on your own, if you play your cards right, mister.
Some of you might object to (5) being on the Fatal Five list, because most people do ask this question, but I’ve found that guys I end up liking don’t get around to this cliche until later in the evening, if at all the first day I know them. That means they have other things to talk about, other interests, and have an unconventional way of thinking that I’ve found matches well with me. Hence, any talk of work, money, or status draws a line in the sand in the first 30 minutes of knowing him, after which he can most certainly still be a friend, but won’t be anything more.
I’ll be 33 in June, and wish I’d discovered the Fatal Five 20 years ago and spared myself a lot of Davids in the process (his nationality: Scotch-Irish-Anglo, his favorite drink: Sea Breeze, he never got my jokes and asked how big it is, but didn’t ask about work or money the first night I met him, now that I think about it).
With the concept of the Fatal Five firm in my mind, I realized the Nationality Police were people I really didn’t even want to be friends with, and really didn’t want to talk to, but I did want to start learning more about WHY they found it so important to ask me about my nationality when there are literally trillions of questions people can ask each other, no matter what nationality they are.
What’s your favorite episode of Punky Brewster?
What animal at the zoo are you upset the most about always hiding under rocks or bushes so you can’t ever see it, no matter how many times you go there or what time of day you visit?
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
So many questions, so many opportunities not to talk about people’s nationality.
One night during a Showtunes Sunday, a guy I actually really liked and was enjoying talking to for about 10 minutes pulled out his Nationality Expert credentials and asked me Fatal Five Question Number One, and that time I thought to answer his question with one of my own:
“What’s your nationality?”
“I have a better question for you. Why do you ask someone that? What’s the pathology behind asking someone what his nationality is? Are you a racist? If I answer that question wrong, with a nationality you don’t like, will you not talk to me anymore, or even worse, try to hurt me in some way? Is your pathology racially motivated, and if so, why?”
THAT was a ridiculously effective comeback for creating a Nationality-Police hole in the wall where this guy fled with great haste after muttering “I’m sorry, sorry to offend you, uh, I’m really a good guy…I’m just…sorry, there’s nothing pathologically wrong with me…I’m not a racist…sorry”. Calling a gay liberal Democrat a RAAAAACIST! or implying there is something pathologically wrong with him is MARVELOUSLY effective at getting him to not only leave you alone for the rest of the night (or forever) but also makes him race home to, presumably, call either his therapist or his Grace (straight female sidekick with low self-esteem waiting by the phone to hear about his latest exploits in Boystown, still hoping on some level this is all just a wedding-of-her-dreams-delaying phase). I thank Dr. Utopia’s supporters and his campaign for the race-baiting trick: calling people RAAAAACISTS! who weren’t worked so well for him, I knew it would work for me too, and I just love it.
But, all snark aside, it actually is pretty racist to come up to someone and demand to know what nationality he is. And it is legitimate to wonder whether or not there is a “wrong” answer to that question. Favorite color? Favorite movie? What books are you reading? Do you know where my pants are? All valid, informative, and sometimes necessary questions in Boystown.
But, what’s your nationality? Inappropriate, pedestrian, and cliche. Especially when my answer these days really is “American”.
Last night, I was out with some friends and a dead-ringer for Anderson Cooper came up to me, a 30-something silver fox with Vanderbilt blue eyes and a photo-shoot ready, skin-tight black polo that could have been painted on by what I presume is Annie Leibovitz’s much-harried makeup artist or assistant. We talked for 27 seconds approximately before the “nationality question hit”:
“What’s your nationality?”
“American”.
“No, what’s your family’s nationality?”
“American”.
“What country is your family from?”
“America”.
“No, what’s their, you know, original nationality”.
“American. The greatest nation on Earth. America. That’s my nationality, American. I am an American”.
And man alive, I let those words hang in the air like Erika Kuester’s handmade sign. I AM AN AMERICAN. MY NATIONALITY IS AMERICAN.
All at once, I thought about Erika’s presentation to our grade school; I thought about volunteering all across the country through the years doing various community projects where I was always welcomed with such kindness by Americans; I was suddenly back in rural Iowa stuck in a snow drift campaigning for Hillary Clinton when a bunch of good Americans came out of their ramshackle farmhouse to dig me out of my mess; through 27 states during the campaign, at dozens of rallies and parades, there I was, surrounded by wonderful Americans all across this great nation; I was shaking hands with John McCain, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele and other great Americans on the Republican side of the aisle for the first time in my life; I remembered being in those public schools I visited in Chicago this past week, seeing how much separation and identity and racial politics were emphasized, and I realized how damaging this particular manifestation of liberalism really is; and, last but not least, I found myself sitting at my computer writing up these thoughts, reaching out to all the good Americans who stop by HillBuzz to yet again celebrate all we share in common, no matter how different we might at first seem.
And that is something I celebrate about myself today, and every day going forward. I AM AN AMERICAN. MY NATIONALITY IS AMERICAN. I will continue to give all of my free time to doing whatever I can to help the America I believe in, and to resist the efforts of those who would destroy it.
I don’t care where people came from. I don’t care how much money they have or how fancy their jobs are. I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans anymore. I don’t give a damn if they are black, white, red, yellow, or green (and I sure as Hell won’t write crazy poems about that to read at Inaugurations).
All I care about is if someone is a good American or not. If you are, we can most definitely be friends. You still have to make it passed the Fatal Five to get a date, but if you’re an American, well, hey, we’ve already got something great in common and I want to celebrate it. Looking like Chris Pine or Jake Gyllenhaal will also help you in more ways than you can immediately know.
As a fellow American, the label I will put on you is FRIEND. Keep asking me that nationality crap and you’ll get the other label in my bag, which is JACKASS. And, more likely than not at this point, you’ll also get a fairly long speech about how many different kinds of awesome this country is, and how much it totally kicks Europe’s saurian, sorry ass five times by Sunday, and how much of this RED, WHITE, AND BLUE verve I picked up at McCain/Palin rallies and Hillary Clinton events all around the country.
So, just like precocious Erika so many years ago back in Cleveland, I know exactly who I am. I AM AN AMERICAN. So, you don’t have to ask me that question ever again, and the nuns have to just DEAL WITH IT. I wrote a whole essay about it that is now on the Internets, floating somewhere in those pipes and tubes, where maybe you can share it with the rest of the Nationality Police and we can all save each other a lot of time.
As AMERICANS.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
Just what the heck are "emergency cupcakes" and why haven't I heard of them before?
Dear HillBuzz,
Yesterday, I sat in the principal’s office under a cartoonishly-executed tempora painting of several klansmen holding candles against a midnight-blue nightscape, sprayed from above by a giant bottle of “Racist-Off” insect repellant, the product pitch “Spray No to Racism” flourescently scrawled in the sky above.
It’s the second most bizarre painting I’ve ever seen displayed with great care and pride in anyone’s office (the first being, collectively, a series of gorilla paintings a 50-something-year-old woman I know named Madison keeps in her office here in Chicago: gorillas dressed up like Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra, Gorilla George Washington, Gorillas visiting Millennium Park, Gorillas eating various sandwiches without irony, all painted so amateurishly I at first thought actual gorillas made them (which would have been remarkable, for actual gorillas, but then I realized Madison, a Human Resources Director, wasn’t outsourcing her art to great apes but was instead poorly aping said apes’ violent, opposable-thumb-challenged, artistic direction; once I realized these paintings were made by a fully-functioning adult human, the only thing remarkable about them was the every-day-is-April-Fools attitude required to exhibit those monstrosities in an office where other fully-functioning adults come to do business)).
“Spray No to Racism” hovered above me while I waited for the school’s principal to give me a tour of the building and show me which health and nutrition classes I would sit in on that day. If I looked away from the painting, I would start to imagine the little klansmen in their ridiculous getups simpering and muttering all manner of vile curses, as the “Racist-off” melted them into tiny puddles of robes, Margaret Hamilton-meets-Evian-style. If I stared at the painting, I became wholly absorbed by the bizarreness of it, in much the same way gorillas dressed as famous people (as painted by someone clearly out of her mind) captivate me, and not in a good way.
For the rest of the day, all I could think about was racism, and tiny klansmen scurrying into the walls to hide from “Racist-Off” spray, and how much the art in that principal’s office and the rest of the school could be, unintentionally or intentionally, impacting the education the students there received.
And, of course, I also thought of cupcakes.
“Emergency cupcakes” (and “emergency champagne”, too) and a conversation I’d had with my good friend Jessie the other night, where she asked me for some good first-date things to do with a guy she liked but didn’t want to scare off by doing things she typically does, like inviting him over to look through her astonishing stacks of old dog-eared, tear-stained issues of Martha Stewart Weddings (or talk about shoes, and how much she loves shoes, because after the wedding planning stuff, you all know that’s the second-best surefire way to send straight men scurrying for cover, “Racist-off” style).
Because a single, gay man whose longest relationship was with a lying, cheating, Asperger-afflicted, prescription-drug addicted, momma’s boy like my ex David is OBVIOUSLY the best person to solicit winning first-date advice from.
Clearly.
Because THAT always worked so well on Will & Grace, too.
But, I do have to say, “emergency cupcakes” have never failed me before, and I was surprised Jessie had no idea what I was talking about, as I have gotten more guys over to my apartment with this bit than with skywriting or voodoo. Combined.
“Just text that guy you like and tell him you’re having an emergency and need his help. That triggers the He-Man, giant-spider-killing, distressed-damsel-rescuing, testosterone-fueled cowboy that lurks somewhere in even the whimpiest guys. He instantly answers the old Bonnie Tyler “where have all the good men gone and where all the gods…where’s my streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds” call and thinks there’s a big dragon for him to slay, so he’ll ask you what sort of emergency and how he can save the day, and you tell him it’s a cupcake emergency. That’s the particular kind of emergency that involves too many cupcakes in your apartment at that particular moment in time, coinciding with your real and exasperated need for someone meeting his EXACT DESCRIPTION to come over IMMEDIATELY to crisis-manage the situation by eating at least half of those delicious, gourmet cupcakes, procured from any one of the dreamy cupcakeries here in Boystown.”
What you’ve done, quite deliberately, is stimulated several different areas of the male brain all at once, going all the way back to his childhood, where all little boys on some level want to play hero (and never grow out of that), and most have wonderful memories of cupcakes baking in kitchens, if not at home then at least at grandma’s house or school or somewhere (and the smell of treats baking is much, much, MUCH more powerful magic than any of those expensive perfumes, lotions, creams and other nonsense women slather themselves with, making them smell like flowers soaked in alcohol and chemicals instead of something that would actually trigger positive sensory memories in men). You also differentiate yourself from other people he’s dated, who call him to fix broken pipes, deal with emotional crises, take care of a sick dog, or whatever other typical emergencies guys are summoned to handle for girlfriends who speed dial them for these sorts of reasons.
A “cupcake emergency” is a welcome emergency, and it’s kooky enough to get that smile on his face as you coax him out of his place and over to yours, all suited up and ready for adventure with someone unlike anyone else he’s dated before.
But, the downside to having cupcakes lying around your house, or champagne sitting in your fridge (awaiting catastrophes of its own), is that you are tempted to have these sorts of emergencies more often than you should. The emergency champagne, for instance, is very easy to abuse, as it’s also very effective in dealing with almost any other sort of real or imagined crisis in your life. Bad day at work? Break out the “emergency champagne”! Hate the finalists on American Idol this season? Thank Hera for “emergency champagne”! Drank too much last night and feel like Hades this morning? ”Emergency champagne” for breakfast, to the rescue!
So, in concept, emergency cupcakes and emergency champagne are good things, meant to serve noble purposes (or, at the very least, be on hand should you ever have a chance to get Chris Pine out of his Star Fleet uniform and over to your place, in that or any other order, because Chris Pine and his baby blues are the new Jake Gyllenhaal rocking my world). But, if you are always looking for emergencies to drink champagne and eat cupcakes, then you’ll ultimately end up the love child Liza Minnelli and Oprah mercifully never had.
You will find emergencies everywhere, because you predispose yourself to look for them around every corner.
The same is true for the anti-racist verve at the school whose principal was so fond of that “Racist-Off” painting, because it really set the tone that racism was absolutely everywhere, likc cockroaches, throughout the whole day. Every student, every teacher, every visitor passing through that principal’s office had to remain forever vigilent and on the lookout for RAAAAAAACISM!
And that “Racist-Off” painting wasn’t the only piece of art encouraing this: the rest of this almost 100% Hispanic school was decorated exclusively with Mexican and Central/South American art, with only photos of famous Hispanic people up on the walls and only prints of artwork by Hispanic artists. The one exception to this was a mural (FABULOUSLY done) of famous Native Americans like Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Pocahontas, and Sacajawea…with a picture of Ghandhi nearby, which still puzzles us (because it could be a weird play on the word “Indian”, or it could just be an inadvertant coincidence because Ghandhi was being recognized for his pacifism and nonviolence completely separate from the Native American place of honor).
When I saw the Ghandhi/Crazy Horse proximity, I immediately realized this is one of those opportunities crazy people use to start PC-trouble (I call these particular trolls bogomilskys, after the most vile PC-policeman in Seattle, the man who waged war on Christmas back in 2005). People who wake up each day determined to find something to complain about will indeed succeed. Someone conditioned to look for RAAAAACISM! around every corner will spend their whole lives convincingly impersonating Al Sharpton, James Clyburne, Eric Holder, and Jesse Jackson. I’m truly surprised one of these bogomilskys hasn’t complained to the principal that, “I find it offensive you have a portrait of Indian peace activist Ghandhi, my personal hero who I know nothing about, really, except that he is not only my idol, but Bono’s as well, too close to a mural depicting Native Americans because I find “Indian” to be a pejorative used to subjugate and malign Native Americans and First Nation members, and so I am scarred and deeply troubled because seeing an actual Indian, from India, too near the Native American mural makes me think everyone in this building needs sensitivity training.”
Though we can imagine bogomilskys going on for days and days in that vein, the reason something like that wouldn’t happen at a 100% (or close to it) Hispanic school is because Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other minority groups can never, in this realm of PC-logic, be racist. Only white people can be racist, so anything hanging up in a Hispanic or black school has to, by nature, be 100% politically correct because white people didn’t put it there (so there is no problem with it).
The portraits of Che Gueverra hanging on the walls are a very interesting choice (where “interesting” can be a synonym for anything you like). I also remind you those same portraits hung in Dr. Utopia’s campaign offices in California, Texas, Nevada, and other largely Hispanic areas. Not being Hispanic, I don’t know why, culturally, Gueverra is hung on the walls but Delores Huerta isn’t featured up there (who would not only be a positive role model, but would also be a WOMAN featured prominently in a school where I saw about 30 rooms, none of which had a single woman honored with a painting, portrait, or bulletin-board feature). These are all questions for another time, that people with much, much more experience in this than I do could maybe shed some light on.
And it was fascinating to get a glimpse into how history was being taught in this school. Speaking purely anecdotally, with no information about what’s in the lesson plans or history books in these classrooms, and just talking about what I personally saw on the bulletin boards and other classroom displays, it seems Victimhood is what these children are exposed to constantly every day. One of the classrooms had a big display on the evils of colonialism and all the damage that did to Afro-Caribbean peoples. That same room had another map asking who were REALLY the first people in North America, and who REALLY discovered “the New World” (interestingly, no mention was made of Vikings and their suspected settlements in present day New York or New England, but there was a big mention of the theory that Chinese voyagers reached North America before Columbus — who, incidentally, was only mentioned in passing with a line like “Columbus didn’t really discover America, so who really did?”).
It’s just fascinating to walk around in alternate reality like these classrooms and see what I learned in school, and what I have continued to learn as an inquisitive adult, twisted and reshaped to fit into the desired victimhood molds prescribed by whomever is in charge of the public school curriculum. It’s definitely people like William Ayers behind this sort of thing: rich, white liberals who took over the education system with an “America’s bad!” mindset some time ago. Not being a teacher, and not having a background in childhood education, I have no idea how any of this impacts people’s lives as they get older. But, I don’t see how mulitculturalism, if it’s indeed as great as liberals always say, doesn’t apply at a 100% Hispanic or 100% black school. Where is the multiculturalism in the art and curriculum of segregation and victimhood?
I have a good friend named Joaquin who is Mexican-American and grew up outside Dallas, Texas. He only spoke Spanish at home, because his mother never felt the need to learn English, as her mother never learned a single word of it. Joaquin’s father is American-born and is some kind of businessman, but Joaquin’s mother has never worked, and doesn’t often leave the house. When she does, she goes to other Spanish-speakers’ homes, or to Spanish-mass at church, or to the Spanish-speaking Mexican grocery store. So, she lives in this Little Mexico world she’s created for herself.
That’s actually VERY similar to Polish immigrant families I know, who pretend they are in Little Warsaw when at home: only going to Polish internet sites, only watching old VHS tapes of Polish shows on TV, paying hundreds of dollars to get Polish movies flown in on DVD so they never watch American movies, eating only Polish food and never going out to restaurants or trying anything new (“Why would we go to restaurants when there is food here? Polish food is best!).
What’s interesting is that the children of people like these Polish families wouldn’t find themselves in a public school that pretended it was Little Poland. Those kids would become part of the larger American culture, and would not be segregated all day in classrooms with giant photos of Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa exclusively. They would be exposed to everything, in mainstreamed schools. Will they do better in school and in life as a result? I’m not an education expert, so you tell me.
But, Joaquin has a lot of trouble socially because he missed out on American culture for all those years he lived at home and went to a Spanish-dominated school. Because he didn’t watch anything but Spanish TV and didn’t have exposure to things his mainstreamed age peers had, Joaquin doesn’t get pop culture, literary, or historical references in common usage. He’s forever saying, “What’s that? I’ve never heard of that.” He sits there, clueless, while other people are laughing and sharing jokes, because he didn’t get the broad education that mainstreamed kids get.
What’s truly tragic about all of this is that people back in Mexico treat Joaquin the same way. He’s not Mexican, because he also doesn’t get Mexican cultural ques either. He’s a smart and very nice guy, but he’s clueless a lot of the time because his parents kept him in a limbo between two worlds, so now at 30 he’s not either, really.
It really feels like the 100% Hispanic and 100% black schools in Chicago are creating generations of people who, like Joaquin, seem like they are also destined to not fit in with age peers who were mainstreamed. If I was a bogomilsky, I would see hidden racism in that: by separating these kids and constantly reinforcing what makes them different, educators are ensuring these kids grow up to be adults who never get any of the jokes, who have a hard time joining their age peers in friendships at work, have difficulty using those friendships to network and get ahead, and are doomed to be socially awkward and separate for their whole lives. I’ve personally set up more opportunities for Joaquin to network than I can count, and he rarely shows up for any of them, but if he does he just stands there alone or sometimes gravitates towards other Spanish-speakers in the room, where they all speak in Spanish together, and miss the point of networking to make new professional contacts. ”I don’t have anything to say to the other people because I don’t know what they are talking about,” is what Joaquin usually says when I tell him he missed the chance to meet the president of this or that group or business, because he was talking to other people he already knew from back in Texas.
Joaquin hates his job working in a medical office that deals exclusively with Hispanic patients in a Hispanic part of town, but doesn’t take any steps towards a different career because he’s uncomfortable anywhere that’s not segregated along the racial and cultural lines that have always been emphasized for him his whole life.
I just imagine this happening to so many more Joaquins in the future, even if the school they are in now is beautiful and the teachers are as wonderful as the ones at the schools I toured this week. I just don’t see any good that comes from constantly emphasizing separateness and not giving these kids the chance to share the same experiences and knowledge as their mainstream peers. If the majority of students learn history one way in school, but black and Hispanic kids are taught a history for victimhood every day, doesn’t anyone else see there’s going to be conflict guaranteed in the future since not only will blacks and Hispanics butt heads with white peers over this learned victimhood, but they will also resent each other too — as blacks taught they were the main victims will have to compete for that martyrdom with the Hispanic kids who were taught THEY were the real victims, and kids who went through 13 years or more of this race-based victimhood indoctrination will not only be unable to relate to the mainstreamed kids at large, but will also resent the other racially segregated subgroups out there.
This is why I was also against the proposed LGBTQ High School here in Chicago as well. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea, because having a school where LGBTQ youth could feel at home, be accepted, and learn about LGBTQ culture SOUNDS fantastic. I wish I had that growing up in Catholic School, being taught in religion class first that being gay was a sin and gay people were bad, to later in the late 80s seeing the switch to “being gay is not a sin, but doing anything gay sexually is a sin”, to whatever it is they are teaching now (long after I stopped listening to this nonsense). A separate LGBTQ school is not the answer anymore than separate black and Hispanic schools are the answer; instead, ALL schools should depict LGBTQ culture positively and not single kids out as different and teach them that throughout their lives they have to hang out exclusively with other different kids, just like them, and never be part of the mainstream culture.
As fabulous as HillBuzz High would be, it would be as counterproductive as the way Joaquin was raised, creating a smart guy who is forever self-limited by the separateness he grew up with.
So, this is what I thought about when I left the principal’s office at the end of the day, turning in my visitor’s pass, and passing under that “Racism-off” painting again before leaving that public school and heading home. I also thought about the emergency cupcakes and the dating advice for Jessie and realize what an outsider’s perspective a gay man always has in this country. I can observe and research various things and issues in the school system, but at the end of the day, my opinion will always be discounted because it’s assumed I will never have kids, so I won’t be a parent, and thus I won’t ever have to weigh in on any of this “for real”. That outsider status is even more obvious in the relationship advice for Jessie and other straight female friends, because not only will I never really understand their situations, but they never listen to me anyway (and, despite being told repeatedly to stop obsessing over and talking about shoes to straight men, they just keep on making that same mistake instead of whipping out the emergency cupcakes).
I can see the outsider stuff is what’s driving the art and curriculum in these public schools, but the way it’s handled would be like me spending all my time never leaving Boystown, watching only LOGO or HERE! on TV, listening to nonstop Madonna, eating only at Stella’s or Nookie’s gay-friendly diners, and hanging out only at Sidetrack while reading Advocate and Genre exclusively. There’s a whole wide world out there apart from Sidetrack’s Showtunes night. If I went to HillBuzz High would I know that? If ALL I saw all day was LGBTQ and the lens I learned history through was also 100% LGBTQ, what kind of person would I be and what sort of a life would I lead?
I really don’t have an answer for that, and it kind of makes my head hurt a little, to be honest.
Time for the emergency champagne, I guess. That always makes everything better.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
Send a Noreen Fraser Foundation e-card for Mother's Day
Thanks to Dana for this tip: here’s a great way to send a Mother’s Day e-card that also raises awareness for women’s cancers.
What makes these e-cards extra great is that Neil Patrick Harris did one, he of Doogie Howser adorableness all growed up into roughly 5’10″ and 160lbs of grade-A, Broadway-tune belting, suited-up, nine shades of wonderful.
We also secretly love NPH because, back in the 90s, he landed the role of Mark Cohen in the national touring company of RENT, which our friend Sebastian’s ex, David (he of the Asperger’s, cheating, prescription drug abusing, and mother Louella (the twice-divorced, publicly shamed adulteress and professional meddler) fame) was also up for (as David was a singer on cruise ships and in Las Vegas casinos who drove to LA on a lark and ended up making it all the way through the casting process, right up to the very end with only two finalists remaining). NPH beat David like a dirty, smelly old rug in the final casting round. Despite not meeting David until long after this happened, the fact David to this day believes NPH is his personal nemesis delights us immensely. Somewhere in Richmond Heights, Ohio, we picture Louella throwing mushy hard-boiled eggs at the TV, bloated-Elvis-style, whenever How I Met Your Mother comes on, or David crumpled into the fetal position mumbling “Could have been me! Could have been me! Could have been me!” if he’d ever wander accidentally into Sidetrack’s while Seasons of Love inopportunely plays.
You laugh, but David really does things like that. And all Louella eats are hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese, vanilla yogurt, Cheerios, and other things that are exclusively white, beige, yellow, or bone colored (since she believes foods that are any other color are carcinogenous, making her a food-racist…and one with horrifically bad breathe at that).
Neil Patrick Harris, however, ROCKS!
What does Colin Powell do all day? We bet it involves crayons.
Dear HillBuzz,
I’ll never forget February 5th, 2003 as long as I live, because it’s the day I watched a grown man embarrass himself in public with such flamboyance and idiocy for a moment I thought it was my ex, David (who, up to that point, had cornered the market on doing incredibly stupid things for no reason that made me wonder whether or not, secretly at night when I was asleep, he ate crayons).
But, it wasn’t David lying to the United Nations (this time).
It wasn’t David holding up cartoon drawings of futuristic weapons from the planet Cybertron that didn’t exist except in his own imagination (or, perhaps printed on his sheets and pillow cases, always ready for his footy-pajama-ed nap times after a visit from the Cookie Monster and a big glass of ice cold Moo Juice).
It wasn’t David making an absolute ass of himself (this time), sitting where John Foster Dulles once sat during the Cuban Missile Crisis with ACTUAL PHOTOS of Soviet missiles in the Caribbean, KNOWING FULL WELL WHAT HE WAS TELLING THE UN WAS A LIE.
Nope, for once this wasn’t David being terrible and embarrassing himself and the nation (this time).
It was Colin Powell, someone I never had much respect for to begin with, but whom I realized was a complete fool and/or tool the day he knowingly, willfully, gleefully, and transparently lied to the UN.
SHAMELESSLY. That’s a good word too. Can’t forget that one.
I was in college at the time, at a small liberal arts school in Ohio so bucolic and cute it was like going to class in a Norman Rockwell postcard that cost $30,000 a year (where big screen plasmas broadcast Powell live in almost every corridor, snack room, and in most classes). I was an International Studies major, and that particular day we had a guest speaker in one of my classes, an alumni who went on to work for the State Department. After Powell’s speech, this guy Brad raved about Powell and what a stunning presentation he gave to the UN.
“Stunning is not the word for Powell’s performance or behavior. Revolting is the word I’d use, Brad,” I said, feeling the icy glare from my very liberal professor before I even looked over to see the daggers she was sending me.
Because Colin Powell was always a weird anomaly in liberal arts circles: he was nominally a Republican, and part of the Bush Administration that Democrats hated with a passion (including me, back then), but because he was a well-spoken affable black man, he was not allowed to be criticized in any way.
In this, the post-racial Golden Age of Hope! and Change!, I think we should all be up front and address this fact: most Democrats have always been racists, but not in the way people like Al Sharpton, John Lewis, Spike Lee, Eric Holder, or James Clyburne like to scream, wail, and roll around on the floor about (see: RAAAAACIST! RAAAAACIST! RAAAAAAAAACIST!, as hued and cried whenever any of the above don’t get their way with something, or feel the MSM has not paid any substantive attention to them in the last day or so).
Democrats are racists when it comes to black men like Powell because all they see is his skin color, and praising him is the proof they use to convince people how enlightened, how benevolent, how liberal, how “with it”, they are.
“Well, I think Colin Powell gave an excellent speech. I think he presented strong evidence and I believe everything he said, even though I incongruously hate the Bush Administration with a passion and rail against this leadup to War, because Colin Powell went to the UN and said all these things, I now believe them all. He is a well-spoken, affable, black man and it is racist not to believe what he says, because not believing what he says means I don’t support having a well-spoken, affable black man in his position as Secretary of State, and I do not want that to reflect poorly on me, because I am not racist, as I have many black friends and once went to a Kwanzaa celebration.”
The Bush Administration knew JUST what it was doing in sending Powell and his crayon drawings to the UN that day: because all over campus, I was the only person who called Powell out on his lies, while the rest of the liberal sheeple went on and on about what a good speaker Powell was, how affable he was, and how pretty all of his drawings of imaginary things were (“Oh, he did such a good job with those. They looked almost real! He has such an excellent eye for composition, and can stay completely within the lines when coloring! Such a good job”).
It always fascinates me that Democrats don’t see what they’re doing when they say things like that.
They lower the bar so much for black men that those that string two or three sentences together and use an occasional adverb or two are praised profusely for being able to stand upright and speak coherently, even if what they are saying is all lies. Saying anything negative about Powell was absolutely VERBOTEN because, they believed, he was one of the first black men to ever represent the United States before the UN like that, so his speech was historic, and should thus be praised the way a kindergarten’s painfully terrible production of The Little Mermaid must be praised (even when the kid playing Ariel forgets all her lines, wets herself, and then cries for her mommy the rest of the 40-minutes-too-long production).
When I was with David, it got to the point where I had such low expectations for him that a day when he didn’t set anything on fire, didn’t break anything terribly expensive, and didn’t let raccoons into the apartment was a day worthy of celebration. David not only has Asperger’s Syndrome, but at the time, unbeknownst to me for several years, he was also a prescription drug addict of the Oxycotin, Xanax, Vicodin, Valium variety (with about a dozen more thrown in for good measure). He did more strange and bizarre things than I could ever relate to you (but, maddeningly, the worst for me involved DVDs, where he would watch an episode of Alias or Deadwood, and then, instead of going on to the next episode in the set, he’d totally forget he just watched episode 9, so he’d play that one again…and again…and again…Groundhog-style, until I could actually sit there, muting the TV, running the dialogue for Sydney Bristow and the other characters aloud myself, much to David’s “how are you doing this?” amazment. ”Why are the walls melting? Is that Santa at the door? How can you know what they are about to say?”).
Without being consciously aware of it, living with someone I ultimately came to have such a low opinion of resulted in me infantilizing David, to the point where one night, out to dinner with friends, I actually praised David for ordering off the menu, the way a grown man of 34 should be able to do, all on his own, without receiving a standing ovation. Normally, at a restaurant, David’s Asperger’s insisted on only (1) chicken fingers, (2) a plain hamburger, or (3) an omelet. That’s all he would eat, anywhere we would go. If it wasn’t on the menu, David would sulk, arms folded across his chest, hands in his lap, his eyes downcast and morose until I got up, walked across the room to speak privately with a manager, and asked them if Chef could, specially, make David a hamburger instead of a steak or fish or whatever else was on a fancier menu (I’d use an excuse that tonight we were celebrating David’s recent return from Botswana or a scientific research station in Antarctica, and the only thing he can think about upon his repatriation to the greatest nation in the world was sinking into a good-old-fashioned American grade-A cheeseburger, prepared the way only the talented Executive Chef of the Ritz-Carlton could prepare).
I got so used to having to do this every day of my life that I didn’t even realize I did it after a while. Praising David for doing simple every day things, overlooking all of David’s many faults and mistakes, excusing his bad behavior, and having one set of rules and standards for 99.999999% of the population and another, kindergarten-grade set for David was just part of my life.
And I seriously didn’t even realize this was who I became until David, inexplicably, ordered steak and asparagus that night out with friends, and even asked for a glass of wine instead of a Coke, and I practically fell out of my chair and said, “Way to go! Good job, David! I knew you could do it!” the way a proud new parent celebrates his child’s latest achievement (which, grossly, is sometimes dished out for a particularly successful bowl movement as often as it is for something like a beautifully colored cartoon drawing of a house, a park, or nonexistent weapons of mass destruction from the future, as the case may be).
Later, my friend Abbey, who was visiting Chicago for the first (hence the big dinner out), and who always hated David (being the first one to pick up on his drug problems), cornered me and insisted I treated David like a baby younger than her own 6 year-old, Lil’ Remy. ”Seriously, dude, you need to get a grip. I know David is all kinds of messed-up, but being able to order off a menu is not an accomplishment. Sitting there, acting normal is not something to celebrate. He does not deserve praise for doing what billions of people all over the world are able to do. Lil’ Remy knows how to act in public, and David’s like 5 times as old, so he should be like 5 times as grown-up. This is RIDUNKULOUS.”
And, as usual, straight-shooter that Abbey is, she was right. Just as she was correct in her belief that I should not have been in a relationship with someone I grew to see with such lowered man-child expectations.
“I know you excuse all of his problems because he has Asperger’s, and I think you like feeling like Saint Sebastian because you live with a guy with Asperger’s, and it’s that Catholic school coming out in you again, where you have to save people so you can show everyone how wonderful you are, but this is just damn SKIPPY. Honestly. Go volunteer at the homeless shelter or something if you want everyone to think you’re a saint, but don’t live with someone so messed up just so you can use his Asperger’s to prove what a good person you are. I know you aren’t doing that on purpose, but on some level, that’s TOTALLY what’s happening here, dude.”
Back at the table, I thought about what Abbey said for the rest of the meal. David, at one point, went to the bathroom, taking his back pack with him (where, later, I’d realize his personal mobile pharmacy was kept), and by the time for dessert, David was back to his usual self, wanting an omelet while the rest of us had carrot cake and cherry pie or whatever. And I didn’t say a word, but, of course, Abbey told David he was nuts. “Omelets are for breakfast on this planet. Pie is for dessert. It’s also a number that has something to do with circles, which pies look like. So, it’s not just me saying this, but it’s SCIENCE, David. So, start being normal.”
Even though I knew she was right, I was still aghast Abbey called David out for his pharmaceutically-enhanced oddness.
That was similar to the reactions I got DARING to call Colin Powell out for lying to the UN. While I truly do believe that George W. Bush will ultimately be vindicated by history for making the VERY bold move of regime change in Iraq when that country becomes one of our strongest allies (besides Israel) in a dangerous part of the world, I do not believe for a moment there were ever weapons of mass destruction in Iraq threatening Americans. What I think was going on is that Saddam Hussein very purposefully engineered a ruse to fool Iran and other neighbors into believing he had vast stores of all sorts of futuristic weapons; more so than even that, I believe Saddam made it seem like he had weapons from the future to scare his own people, so they would not rise up against him.
About a week or so before Powell’s speech, I read a big article about what Saddam actually did all day. He woke up in the morning and had a phlebotomist take blood from his veins so a calligrapher could use it to write a copy of the Koran he intended to install in the world’s largest mosque, built, of course, in the shape of his thumbprint. After that, he’d work for a while on either a new historical romance novel in the series he was writing, or perhaps he’d dash off a few more pages of the screenplay for his dreamed Hollywood adaptation of the same. Apparently, there was even a Broadway-styled stage production in the works, too. Then there were muralists, sculptors, and other assorted artisans to interview and select, all hired to create more egomaniacal art depicting Saddam as a living God, a light-bringer sent from another dimension whose image and simple slogans were fanatically emblazoned everywhere and praised as high-art in the state-supported media (Whoo! Good thing Americans aren’t stupid enough to get sucked up into a cult of personality like THAT).
Saddam Hussein was a paper tiger with no capacity to harm Americans. BUT, he was a paper tiger sitting on prime real estate at a time when the Bush Administration, very wisely, realized the situation in the Middle East was deteriorating and a stronger, permanent, stable American presence was needed in a place like Baghdad to police world oil prices and energy supplies heading into the future — just as the very same stabilizing influences were needed in Europe and Asia post-WWII in the form of a Germany and Japan conquered and remade decidedly in America’s own image.
Bush was a ballsy, risk-taking, bold mammerjammer when America needed one. Back in 2003, I was getting into bar fights and going to protests calling Bush a tyrant and likening him to Emperor Palpatine because all I could see were the lies told by Powell, and all I could focus on was the fact that a paper tiger who fancied himself as the Danielle Steele of the Euphrates had no more ability to inflict damage on America than the actual Steele herself (though, in fairness, some of her televised works HAVE actually been big bombs, in the weapons of mass intelligence destruction genre).
What’s funny, is telling you how I feel about this is guaranteed to alienate just about everyone. Conservatives still insist that weapons of mass destruction really did exist, and that Colin Powell’s crazy, Cybertronian weapons from the future were real, the sort of things Sarah Connor always warned us about (“Saddam Hussein must not have a time machine! Saddam Hussein is SkyNet! Saddam Hussein will be back!”). Liberals still look backwards and roll around on the floor saying what a mistake invading Iraq was, but can’t see that it’s 6 years later and such recriminations don’t take into account the fact that Iraq is well on its way to ultimately becoming the Germany and Japan of Mesopotamia, a former enemy turned American vassel state that we’ll successfully exploit to our advantage for at least the next 50 years.
As a moderate, I have the advantage of being able to call Powell out on his lies, and cartoon-drawings, and to say clearly that the Bush Administration did lie to us about why Iraq needed to be invaded, but at the same time admit in the long run we’re all going to benefit from the uncharacteristically (of late) move America made in kicking ass and taking names in Baghdad.
Even if Powell believes, as I do, that an American-controlled Iraq will be of enormous benefit to our collective futures, if this man had any principles, he would not have gone to the UN and said things he knows not to be true. It’s as simple as that, folks.
Powell deserves no more praise for being well-spoken and affable (and for being able to hold up cartoon drawings and little white pegs that look like they’re from a Parker Brothers game) than David should get for ordering a steak like a grown-up.
Praising a black man for something ANY man or woman should be able to do is racist.
A particularly liberal Democrat form of racism that lumps black people with David in a weird emotional and psychological infantilized place. Because I grew to think so lowly of David, but kept wanting him to get better and function the way I wanted him to, I took every and all opportunities available to praise the behavior I liked in him. Subconsciously, like Abbey rightly noted, I really do believe there was a part of me that also wanted to be Saint Sebastian, defender of the weak and addled, martyr, perpetually bettering someone who I believed was in need of constant help, support, and pity.
And that’s how liberal Democrats see the black community.
So, Powell is their David.
He can do no wrong, because holding him to the same standards as other public figures would mean having to criticize his bad behavior (or shameless, blatant lies), and that would mean calling a well-spoken, affable black man out when he deserves it, which is anathema to liberalism.
As long as Colin Powell doesn’t set himself on fire, he’ll be praised by Democrats.
As long as Colin Powell doesn’t break anything terribly expensive, he’ll be loved by the Left.
As long as Colin Powell doesn’t let any raccoons into whatever room he’s in, doing whatever it is he does all day, he’ll be consistently praised for the rest of his sorry, shameful, disappointing life.
Since Republicans don’t have an Abbey of their own, I spoke up today to tell them that they need to wake up and call Powell out for who and what he is. I’d tell Democrats to wake up too, but I know when I am wasting my breath.
Getting liberal Democrats to hold Powell to any standards at all is a Herculean effort greater than getting David to order off the grown-ups menu or remember what DVD he just watched on TV.
And Saint Sebastian, patron of hopelessly ridiculous causes, just doesn’t have energy left for that.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
Abbey's Bunnies and Chickens Scare Me More Than A Little
Dear HillBuzz,
Last night, I caught up on the phone with my dear friend Abbey back in Cleveland and am still trying to process a lot of what she had to say.
Abbey is one of my very best friends, and one of the best people I have ever known. We met about 11 years ago while working for the same company, and I’ve watched her become a mom, start her own internet business, and, for the first time in her life, become VERY politically active. Maybe even more than me, if you can believe that.
Abbey, like me, was always a dyed in the wool Democrat. When we worked together back in Cleveland, I remember us sitting outside together behind the building, where she’d have a smoke on the loading dock and I’d pound back my vice, cans of ice cold terrible for me in every way Coke.
We’d talk about how evil Republicans were, and how they were just out to get the Clintons; how they didn’t stand for anything and were just about money and looking down on people from their private clubs where they obsess over what sorts of pants people wear and how shiny the pennies are in their loafers. Oh, we would laugh and laugh at Republicans, between bouts of irrational hatred of them, and the snootiness we perceived in them.
And if Abbey’s anything, she is 100% anti-snooty. She’s the Buffy the Vampire Slayer of snootiness, in fact, if instead of vampires Buffy slayed snootiness, or the snooty themselves, which might make Buffy a serial killer now that I think about it, so maybe this wasn’t the best analogy after all.
Abbey’s the Bobby Jindal of snootiness, practiced in the arts of snootiness exorcism.
And she’s also become something of a budding, Cleveland-based Sarah Palin. You betcha.
Read the rest of this entry »
Congratulations, America. You are now dating David.
Dear HillBuzz,
When I read about Obama giving visiting Prime Minister Gordon Brown a bunch of DVDs as his official gift of friendship from the United States to Great Britain, while Brown presented Obama, and by extension the people of the United States, a thoughtful, one-of-a-kind, historic pipe made from the wood of a Victorian sailing ship, it made me wonder if Obama has Asperger’s Syndrome.
Because, if so, Brown should be lucky he got anything at all, as APs (what Asperger Syndrome people are called) don’t see the point in giving gifts to anyone for any reason.
And I should know, because I was in a 4 year relationship with an AP named David that still boggles my mind — and, oddly, makes me appreciate Obama for the man he really is.
Putting their actions side by side, all I can say to you now is, Congratulations America! You are now dating David, too. And I hope the next four years are better for us all than the four years I spent with my David (though, admittedly, things seem to be off to even worse of a start).
“What did your boyfriend David get you for Christmas?” friends would ask, and I’d sheepishly either change the subject, pretend I didn’t hear the question and ask someone else what their boyfriend got them instead, or run inexplicably out of the room, depending on how uncomfortable or embarrassed I felt. Because David didn’t believe in Christmas, birthday, or any other kind of present. And this was a willful, defiant, obnoxious belief with no consideration at all for how his actions came across to me or others.
“Why am I going to give you anything when you make more money than I do, and it would just end up in the garbage someday anyway?,” David always argued. To which I’d rebut, with increasing frustration, that I loved him, and anything he gave me, no matter how big or small, would be cherished forever. Because he gave it to me, I’d love whatever it is, especially if he made it himself and didn’t even spend a cent on it. A picture, a card, a poem, a short story, anything, as long as it came from him, would be cherished.
“Well, someday you’ll be dead, and it will be thrown away then. Everything gets thrown away in the end. It all ends up in the garbage. So what’s the point in giving presents?”
It took me almost a year before I finally found support groups online for people dating APs, where David’s weird hatred of presents finally made sense in the Asperger spectrum. Asperger’s is a form of autism that skews the way APs see the world, and things like presents, which they believe are pointless and meaningless. David never understood how much a present can mean to someone, as both a symbol of the personal relationship between two people, but also as a personal touchstone for the receiver, something to be cherished always, and never, ever thrown away because it captures a moment emotionally for someone who loves the giver.
To illustrate this for him, I’d open up shoe boxes I have where I’ve saved every card anyone’s ever given me. From my very first birthday, up through every graduation, new job, get-well-soon-occasion, to all my Christmases, Halloweens, Easters, and Arbor Days. My grandparents, all gone now, are well-represented in those boxes of cards. They aren’t around to ever write “Happy Birthday Sebastian!” ever again, or misspell my name with an “o” here or there the way one grandma always did, which still makes me smile thinking about the way she always smelled like butterscotch or vanilla, and how her cards always had a bunch of two dollar bills in them (which I also saved, and never spent, because they came from grandma).
The best cards were the most personal, from people who took the time to draw little pictures inside, or write something meaningful to me. The best presents I’ve ever received were ones people made with their own two hands: things people knitted for me, or drew with crayons or markers, or wrote from their hearts.
I’m lucky enough to say I have boxes and boxes of this stuff, with the most personal and valuable to me framed and mounted on the walls of my apartment. If there ever was a fire, the TV, computer, CDs, cell phone, and DVDs would all burn to a crisp, because what I’d most want to save would be stored in these shoeboxes chock full o’ love.
And David never understood any of this. He didn’t appreciate the power he possessed to create memories for me that would last a lifetime. He didn’t have any inclination or urge to add to my little treasure chests, and build a place for himself amongst the other people I loved so much my whole life.
I wanted him to be thoughtful. I wanted him to surprise me with something remarkable and inspired, which didn’t have to cost a single penny, but required a modicum of David’s time and thought, to give me something that I’d cherish forever.
But, he never did.
Every Christmas, every birthday, every anniversary would come and go without any acknowledgement from David. At first, it hurt so bad I can’t even relate the feeling to you. Like a deliberate slap in the face every holiday. And, still, I’d have to put on a brave face and go to whatever event I had that day, where people would always ask what my boyfriend did for me on the occasion, and I didn’t want to admit at first what a jackass my boyfriend truly was.
The only people who really understood what I went through with David were people on those Asperger forums, who also had Davids in their lives, though in time I realized that David was worse than most of the other APs discussed on those boards.
Because, not only was David thoughtless and woefully self-centered, but he also was a talented and spirited liar, whose mother was the third person in our relationship.
When I first met David, his charisma and stage presence knocked me off my feet.
David was a singer, and spent several years headlining shows on cruise ships in the Caribbean. I met him just as he finished his last contract with the cruise line, as he moved to Chicago to go to graduate school. So, David certainly knew how to be a charmer when the occasion called for it. He charmed me, me charmed the admissions people at his college, he charmed club owners to land singing gigs around Chicago, he charmed club patrons for tips when singing. It was a regular and sustained charm offensive.
But, that was not the real David. That was literally a character he played on stage, that he’d also play “in real life” whenever it would benefit him, but only in small doses.
The real David always shone through, and it was the David who pointedly refused to do anything nice for anyone else. When invited to a party, David wouldn’t bring anything for the host. When there’d be a potluck or some other event at work, never count on David to contribute. When a holiday rolled around, don’t expect anything from David. That’s just not how he rolled.
But, at least he was consistent. Because he never gave presents to anyone, or remembered anyone’s birthdays, not even his mother’s, and that woman was a daily, imposing presence in our lives. Her purpose, for the main part, was to sit in judgment of me, how clean I kept our apartment, how well I cooked, and how good I was for her son. Louella had an opinion on everything, and would share those opinions uninvited all the time. She forever had a grievance to work, as well, whether it was the government, her employer, her ex-husbands, birds, the neighbords, you name it.
Louella is now on her third husband, but that doesn’t stop her from giving relationship advice, and it didn’t stop her from meddling in my relationship with David. Her second husband was part of an evangelical big box church whose members caught Louella committing adultery (she was spotted at a Burger King with a man who was not her husband, sharing fries and onion rings in a way inconsistent with mere friendship). Thc church confronted her one day and scheduled a public shaming for her where she was supposed to stand before the congregation and admit to all the bad things she does, so people could stand up and call her out for her adultery, hypocrisy, and other general evils, but Louella didn’t bother to even show up for her own public shaming. One of her daughters had to stand in her proxy.
But, even that never stopped Louella, a twice-divorced-and-publicly-shamed-adulteress from giving unsolicited relationship advice to others, or from rearranging the furniture in their apartments when they visited, or generally being a dark little cloud that not only rained on every parade, but actively sucked the life and energy out of others.
For some reason, Louella reminds me of Michelle Obama.
Another person who isn’t happy, even when she’s gotten everything she ever dreamed of, and who likes to give people advice on fixing their broken souls without ever looking herself in the mirror.
So, these days, America reminds me of myself back in 2005, when I first started dating David, and I first caught an inkling of who he (and his mother) really was.
Because he was so charming (and he caused my leg to tingle, Chris Matthews style), I overlooked the boorishness and thoughtlessness he clearly displayed. I overlooked his mother, who was never proud of anything in her adult life, and who thought everyone’s soul but hers was broken. I didn’t call him out on any of his many lies, because I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But, David’s lies just kept piling up.
Things he did just didn’t add up.
When he was supposed to be studying at the library, he’d come home smelling like cigarette smoke, as if he’d been in a bar instead. When his share of the rent was due, he’d claim he didn’t have the money, but yet there’d be new CDs and DVDs that magically appeared when his checking account was supposedly empty. He swore he wasn’t taking prescription drugs like Xanax, Valium, or Vicadin without a doctor’s care, but mysterious packages from Canada and Mexico would arrive for him, that he’d squirrel away and never let me see inside.
Everything he said he wouldn’t do, he did.
Things he promised to do, he “forgot” about.
Just like he forgot about Christmas and birthdays and everything else that matters.
And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Louella would call every day and visit once a month just to make sure her overbearing and ridiculous presence was always felt.
Much to my chagrin.
Which is what I’m feeling a lot of these days, watching the new administration do to America what David and his twice-divorced-publicly-shamed-adulteress-mother did to me for four years.
And, strangely enough, right after David and I broke up the next guy I dated was a Republican. Almost exactly four years to the day when David and I first got together.
Which, if my trends continue, means in November 2012 America could just find itself dating a rebound Republican of its own. Just as there was only so much of David and Louella I could take, there will be only so much of the Obamas that America can withstand. It took an excrutiatingly long time for me to see the light with David, as all of my friends can attest. I kept making excuses for him, overlooking all of his faults, putting up with Louella, hoping David would get better, setting myself up for perpetual disappointment.
Until, finally, one day, I was mad as Hell and not able to take it anymore.
Who knows if America will prove to be as slow on the uptake as I was, or if Obama will get the benefit of limitless excuses through more than just this one term, but thus far, it’s major deja vu all over again for me.
Someone who would have been thrilled to receive a set of DVDs from David for any occasion, who appreciates the meaning and emotion behind any present, and knows just how embarrassed and disappointed Gordon Brown and the British must feel.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
