A Racist VERSUS I Hate Gay

A funny thing happened Friday morning.

Friday followed Wednesday by some hours. It usually does. On Wednesday night I was exercising and watching M*A*S*H, and something in Radar’s unacceptance of Colonel Potter’s possible mistress triggered thoughts about how people come accept alternative lifestyles. I started rattling off items on a list a comical bigot might experience, then repeated them in various orders until I had the idea for a narrative. Ever since I left the novel to simmer I’ve been experimenting with any ideas that wander along.

After soaking and letting the tremors subside, I played around with my bigot’s timeline on the page. I soon feared the whole thing was hideously offensive, but it kept me laughing so I finished it. As soon as it was done, I e-mailed several friends in the hopes one would say, “Yes John, this is awful and you shouldn’t post it.” Just one person’s distaste would have convinced me to never publish it.

The height of inconsideration: they all thought it was fine. Three thought it was hilarious. The bastards. Still struck by doubt, I saved the document and decided to sleep on it.

Thursday morning followed Wednesday night (they’re fast companions). I woke to find hundreds of visitors had hit my site overnight for one particular story: “I Hate Gay.” It’s one of only three stories about gay issues I’d ever published in my years of daily writing, this one from back in December. People liked it back then, but it had been dormant for months. There was no reason so many people should suddenly have read it. Having just slept on my fourth-ever story about gay issues, I felt uncanny.

People say I don’t believe in coincidences. This is untrue. I believe too much in them. This is God dressed as the universe dressed as a wolf dressed as my sick Grandma beckoning me to come a little closer. Even after the Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook group took credit for the traffic, I felt uneasy.

Not only were these two stories similar. They were also insultingly different. “I Hate Gay” is raw introspection following a hate crime. “A Racist’s Acceptance” is the goofy tale of un-PC tolerance. The latter might well piss off any well-meaning folks who liked the former. I became petrified that the story was now less opportune than it might ever be.

So I did the capricious and logical thing, and posted it. I do capricious things really early on Thursday mornings. No Grandma Wolves devoured me, but it did strike me strongly enough to blog about it. You’ve got to cut me that much slack; tomorrow’s my birthday. But I am almost interested on any feedback between the two stories.

Bathroom Monologue: A Racist's Acceptance of Gayness Over Time

1. I don’t see them ever. I don’t know if they’re around me. I imagine if they do exist, they don't really make out with each other.
   
   
2. I know some of them are around me, but they don’t make out on top of my desk. When I go home, I imagine they still aren’t making out on top of desks anywhere.
   
   
3. I know some of them are around me, but they don’t make out on top of my desk. However when I go home, I imagine the hot girl ones are making out on top of my desk.
   
   
4. I use the internet to find free videos of the hot girl ones making out, sometimes on desks.
   
   
5. I break down and pay the monthly membership fee to a website with really hot girl ones. I do not tell anybody. However, when a guy in the office is a dick to one of the guy ones, I tell him to shut up because I’m trying to get work done. Guy thanks me. He is Sal. I have to hide the monitor from Sal because I am actually checking the website. I imagine they don’t know that. I still imagine that the guy ones don’t make out on desks anywhere.
   
   
6. Tropical storms are just lame hurricanes. My car skids into a ditch. I spend forever trying to get service on fucking T-Mobile. A guy actually stops and helps. He has really nice hair and his clothes match. Is he one of the guy ones? I don’t know. His most activist bumper sticker is about meat being murder. I like beef. I imagine some of the guy ones like beef.
   
   
7. My car slides into another fucking ditch because these hurricanes don’t know when to stop. I throw my piece of crap T-Mobile into the storm drain that the front tire is lodged in. A truck stops; inside are a guy and girl. They offer to help. The guy has really nice hair and gives off no sexy-vibes at the girl. Is he one of the guy ones, or am I racist? As they winch my car, I ask him. He looks at me like I’m the weird one. It gets awkward from there.
   
   
8. After several months on the paid website, I realize the girl ones and I are on the same team. We have the same enemy: other girls. I go out to a bar with some people, including two people I suspect of being girl ones. They give me pointers. I feel less racist.
   
   
9. I press my luck too hard. I go out to a bar with some people, including two people I suspect of being guy ones. I think I’m being amazingly cool telling them that I understand that I am their prey and feel unthreatened. I think they are amazingly uncool telling me I’m not “their type.” A fistfight may break out. I am informed “racist” does not mean what I think it means.
   
   
10. Somebody is pissed at me. He/she/they makes a drawing of two guy ones making out on my desk, and the picture itself is left on my desk. I figure it’s Sal, because he’s a bitch. I leave a dildo on Sal’s chair. The entire office has to go for “sensitivity training.” It is bullshit. The two who are totally girl ones and I sneak out early to smoke. They mock me ceaselessly over the picture from my desk.
    
    
11. So now some asshole keeps leaving the same picture on my desk every morning. The worst part: it becomes really funny. It winds up on everyone in the office’s desk. Then it winds up on the C.O.O.’s desk. She does not think it is funny. Even though I totally saw Sal sneaking out of her office that morning, I don’t rat on him. He’s just a guy.
    
    
12. Office goes out drinking to celebrate two months without a natural disaster. Some guys are total dicks to our girls. I step in and promptly lose a fistfight. Because that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I also get arrested. Spend night in cell with Sal. He throws up on my jacket and I realize I don’t see him as a guy one anymore. Same for our girls. I just see them all as people now. Well, except for the hot ones. Hot ones automatically default back to “hot girl ones.” I use my new phone to look up if that makes me racist.

Bathroom Monologue: Chess Scares Me

“Chess has always terrified me. It’s not the patriarchic implications. It's not the potential Marxist critique, or all the Pawns rushing to certain death. It's that they aren't really Pawns. They're all tentacles of the player, each with as little against as the Queen. One person dispatches them all, seeking to kill the pieces of the only other person in the chess world. The Bishops. The Rooks. The Knights, so brave and so dumb they only know one letter in the alphabet. They’re dispensable in pursuit of getting to the other person’s King. If the King’s in play, the other person you say down with is alive. The King is the vital spot of the chess organism, and the whole point is to rip the other person apart so you can put his one vital spot in peril. Stopping at Checkmate doesn’t mean anything other than, “You know if I felt like it, the only part of you that matters would be dead.” And it’s as good as dead, because whether or not you knock it over, the game ends. That other person is vanquished. I’d much rather play Halo or Gears of War. They feel much less personal.”

Bathroom Monologue: "How can you be militant non-stamp collector?" -A.C. Grayling

It takes some effort, much as it takes some effort to turn anything you don't do into an annoying hobby. Just imagine.

The first step can be as simple as looking where people get stamps. Whenever you see someone purchasing, applying or even mentioning a stamp, engage in vitriol over what a loathsome thing it is. If you tire of berating hobbyists, you can also harass your local mailman or protest federal funding for the post-office (it's not the primary form of communication and doesn't deserve privilege). There's such an easy thrill from being against something, especially from the safety of not being for anything else, that soon you'll wonder why all the other non-stamp collectors aren't militant.

With the help of bestselling literature you'll find ways to believe that stamp collecting poisons everything. And once you learn to look at the world selectively, you’ll be able to take offense anything stamp-related. Before long you'll establish a dogma against arguments those stamp apologists always use, and you'll be able to bring up counter-arguments before they even finish voicing an opinion. They become less like conversations and more like exhibits of your superiority.

Being right is hard, though. Find a supportive community in the world around you or on the internet. You might think that seeking social solace for non-stamp collecting is psychotic, but you’ll find that after pornography, the internet was invented for hating things (including hating pornography). You'll enjoy countless hours of blogging about how dumb some stamp apologist was in the news today. Seem far-fetched that any group could dig up something every day to take umbrage over? Then you have underestimated the willpower of angry people in groups.

Once you get into it, you'll realize non-stamp collecting is a vast hobby. You can research the neursoscience behind why anybody is dumb enough to like stamps. You can become a stamp historian and cherry-pick resources to prove how stamps have always been a bane to human society. You can embrace futurism and promote e-mail as the righteous and pure way humans will ascend above postage. If you’re feeling uninspired, just go to the comments section of anything on the Huffington Post and go nuts. All this and much more asinine hatred of other people's passions will be available to you through whatever modes of expression you desire: books, blogs, billboards, music, Youtube channels, Twitter feeds, podcasts, documentaries and conventions. Take it far enough and you can start your own non-stamp collecting university. Do it right and you'll make quite a living.

Thankfully, there aren't many militant non-stamp collectors. Anyone like that would be insufferable.

Bathroom Monologue: Full Body-Waxed Stubbornness

“Would it make you feel any better if I shaved my head? Because I'll do it. I mean, not right here. I'll go to the bathroom and do it now if you want, though. Or Hell, sure, I'll do it here on the sofa. Just let me go get my razor. I wish I’d bought an electric – do I have time to buy an electric? I’ll do it just with the Mach-3 if that’s what you want. If it will make you laugh or make you feel more comfortable. I don't mind. Of course it's more suitable for men to go hairless, so maybe that doesn't seem like such a big gesture. What if I go around pantsless? I can shave my crotch, too. That’s less normal for guys. I could do a full-body wax, though then I’ll definitely have to leave the sofa to go buy appropriate materials. I’m just saying, you won’t go bald alone if you don’t want to. Chemo hasn’t got shit on my stubbornness. My pantsless, full body-waxed stubbornness.”

My Big R.A.Q.

Do you have any questions you never ask anybody? Something too impolite? Too esoteric or downright weird?

Ask them to me.

We're a week away from my birthday. On September 4th I'm going to celebrate with my big R.A.Q., the antithesis of a Frequently Asked Questions page. The day will be devoted to Rarely Asked Questions. The R.A.Q. is your questions and my best efforts to answer them.

It starts here. Ask every darned thing you want in the Comments of this post. Ask what Caesar thought Brutus was up to right before the stabbing and why gravity is such a weak force. Ask what I watched on TV last night and how many blows with a pillow it would take to slay a moose. Ask me whatever you never get the gall to ask anyone else.

Bathroom Monologue: Fruit of the Infinitely Tiny Tea Pot

You can only brew it in an infinitely tiny tea pot. The only known pot currently orbits our sun; only the omniscient know for certain who put it there, but rumor says 'Apollo.' You boil it on a stove of solar winds and pour it into the evanescent tea cup. Quantum steam wisps up, bifurcating realities into those where it does billow and those where it doesn't. This strange brew can only be poured in universes where it doesn't exist. If you can ponder that nonsense, then you can bend over the cup, mind the scalding pot, and inhale the divine aroma of God's own private stock. It's not ambrosia or dark matter or the meaning of life; it's the stuff you drink to get up and invent all those things.