Let’s Hear It For The [Men]!

There have been several great men in my life.

The first was my junior- and senior-year English teacher, Dr. Poff. He was the one who opened my eyes to the ways in which society should be improved. He challenged me to work constantly and diligently, not only on my writing (a gift that has given me the beloved career I have today), but also my critical thinking skills. He taught me how to question and attempt to see through bullshit, always. He also acted as a parent-alternative. To say my own family was dysfunctional would be an understatement. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse ran rampant, with women and girls serving as the victims of such injustices. My biological father was a narcissist. My stepfather was a manipulative sexual predator with massive debt and a substance abuse problem, and my mom was his willfully blind cheerleader, who chose to blame her children for his abuse. Getting away from them was a goal I sought early on in my life.

I babysat Poff’s kids while he and his wife, Stephanie (whom I also adored) would attend foreign film festivals and visit alternative lifestyle conventions. He invited me into a family that was both eccentric and welcoming, and they made sure that I knew that I was a worthwhile person in their lives. It was exactly the safe haven of weirdos I needed in such a desperate and lonely time in my teenage development. A significant reason I am the educator I am today is attributed to the kindness of the Poff-Taylor clan, and I am very grateful and indebted to them.

The second was my friend Peter. I met him a few years later, when I worked at his hair salon. He immediately became my surrogate big brother—having me over to watch bad movies when I was upset over yet another boy, teasing me and calling me Wiener Dog for my awkwardness, and just being a great friend with whom I could confide whenever I needed. He also saved my life, literally. I attempted suicide at age 21. Had Peter not found my near-lifeless body after a frantic search for my apartment in Huntington Beach, I would be dead today. I am still haunted, and I still feel vestiges of shame, for having put someone I care about so much through such deep horror. Peter, being the wonderful person he is, has forgiven me, and I will spend the rest of my life thanking him.  Luckily, he still laughs at my dumb jokes—which haven’t changed much in almost twenty years—and he still laughs at my awkwardness, which also hasn't changed.

The last one is Marc. Marc has been my friend for the better part of two decades. He and I have a deep kinship. We both share a dark sense of humor that arises from overcoming excessive trauma. We both support each other completely, no matter where we are in terms of our life’s development. Marc is the person I message when I have the dumbest shit in the world to say, or when I need to talk about the stuff I can’t talk to anyone else about. He knows my deepest secrets, and he pushes me to be the best version of myself that I can be. If everyone had a Marc in their lives, this world would be a much better place.

So, what separates these men from the emotionally stunted sad boys, who take quite personally all of my critiques on systemic, ideological gender practices? Why, as a feminist—someone who, supposedly, to people who don’t know any better, “hates men”—would three of the most important people in my life be men? It’s because of who they are as people. All three have worked very hard—not only on their own emotional development, but on being an engaged part of my life. All three actually listen to me, and have made serious efforts to understand me when it could have been so easy to write me off and dehumanize me, as so many others have done. All three, like me, are not perfect. We’ve had tough conversations, big friendship fights, all the usual things that come with caring about another person for a long time. But they have persisted. They do the difficult work, flex their sometimes paper-thin patience, and provide the immense amount of care it takes to sustain a family, which is what they are to me.

There are many other men whom I feel similarly about. I don’t hate men. I hate patriarchy. I hate privilege. I hate toxic masculinity that is taught to so many people, to their ultimate detriment. And, from what I gather, the men I choose to have in my life aren’t fond of those things, either.

Maggots

Killer Mike posted an Instagram story about how he wrote this poem on the back of his mother's (his "hero's") obituary--which is another reason why I like Killer Mike:


When I Die
when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries 
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love

and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out

-Nikki Giovanni

The King of Pop

When I hear people talk about Leaving Neverland as proof that Michael Jackson was some sort of cultural anomaly, I find it a bit naïve. For Michael Jackson truly is the King of Pop—that is, the king of popular culture. I say this because, what is popular culture’s function, if not to: 1) treat women to be inherently evil and disposable, as he repeatedly does in Leaving Neverland 2) forge an indelible obsession with whiteness, as he did throughout his life, and 3) sexualized youthful innocence, as he did repeatedly, in private, and (I argue) with everyone’s consent?

We want to believe that he is aberrant, as if his fame and wealth allowed him to exist in a cultural vacuum. It was precisely his attaining society’s highest capitalistic achievements in his lifetime, however, that eventually afforded him the power to prey on children to the extent that he did. Wealth—the greatest measure of cultural capital in our society, that thing we are all programmed to kill ourselves trying to attain—facilitated his becoming a monster; he did not become a monster in spite of it. 

I’m clearly not justifying his behavior, or giving him sympathy whatsoever. I’m just saying that he took many of our ingrained cultural practices—misogyny, ageism, racism, wealth ambition, etc.—and played them out to their extreme, horrific conclusions. It was our adulation of him (as a black man exalting whiteness, as a symbol for some pervasive Horatio Alger myth-remnant, and yet still as a caricatured other that we could comfort ourselves in mocking) that inspired us to buy his albums and line his pockets. It was our lack of concern for sexual assault survivors, coupled with our tendency to serve as a voyeuristic public jury, that saw his trial—his being brought to accountability—as nothing more than spectacle and farce. It was our fixation and paranoia surrounding the attainment of wealth that led us initially to dismiss his victims as money-grubbing fame whores. We can, likewise, easily write him off as a grotesque oddity—and many of us have; but I think, instead, we should try “starting with the man in the mirror,” so to speak, and question the ways in which we perpetuate such common, toxic cultural practices every day.

Try Smiling

(I know I’m coming in hot with a revelation here: depression blows.)

Try having a mind that constantly seeks to get the rest of your body to destroy itself. 

Try doing everything you can to be happy, only to have every attempt fail—and I mean every attempt: going out and spending time with friends, opting not to go out and instead stay at home alone, dancing, lying on the couch, working, trying to rest, drinking, staying sober, eating so much you gain seventy pounds, eating so little you lose forty pounds, taking medication, upping your therapy sessions, reaching out repeatedly to your support network, giving your support network a break from you, trusting people, trusting no one, talking it out objectively, letting your rage flow unbridled, cleaning, leaving a mess, watching TV, reading a book, listening to music, listening to a podcast, meditating, exercising, staying single, trying to date, writing, not writing for fear of being judged, engaging with social media, deactivating social media, creating boundaries with toxic people, allowing yourself to interact superficially with assholes, forgiving, holding a grudge. It all leads to the same debilitating sense of alienation that you felt, anyway, and it changes nothing. You feel like you could perform any activity on the planet, then its polar opposite, then any other activity within that spectrum—and yet, you still end up at the same place: Hell. It is inescapable. 

You do these things and more because your well-meaning friends (some of whom have experienced depression themselves) have offered you their advice. It seems to have worked so well for them. You want so badly to feel the happiness you can vaguely remember experiencing. So, you try out their advice, and it doesn’t work for you. Ever. How could it? What the fuck does anyone even mean when they say, “You’ve got to learn to love yourself?” It just sounds like utter horse shit. All your brain has ever done is try to hurt you. Now you’ve got to love yourself with that same brain? Okay. Sounds great. You’ll get right on that. Bullshit. You know, truly, that your happiness is broken—possibly beyond repair.

So, you try turning yourself off. That’s what we do when something doesn’t work—turn it off. You no longer perform. You no longer give anyone any part of yourself. You just barely exist. The outspoken you vanishes. The person who vowed to be always, unapologetically, transparently vocal silences herself. Even though you‘ve sworn never to return to that emotional atmosphere you’ve known since you were a child, where silencing and burying your voice only served to protect the most abusive people in your life, you relent. You know it’s too late. You’ve been loud too long. People have already labeled you and shelved you alongside the rest of the crazy, undesirable women. They’ve already stopped listening for a long time. All the meager energy you have left, you invest in robotically performing your base-level, day-to-day functions.

Maybe a few people notice that the white noise existence of you has stopped. Maybe they realize how deafeningly quiet you are, and they reach out. They tell you to stick around because they care; but you know that they really mean: they’ve just gotten used to the white noise. There will be a lack—a noticeably empty, small space—if you cease to exist as you already do, as an almost insignificant part of the background music in their lives. They like things exactly as things are, so you can’t do that to them. You’ve got to keep suffering through your hell for what feels like an eternity, lest they have to live with the inconvenience of hearing a record scratch.

That’s really what depression is: existing in hell forever so that the people you care about won’t be sad for a couple of weeks. Feeling like your soul has been soaked in poison every waking minute of your life, but doing your best to keep it under wraps so that other people aren’t inconvenienced by you. And you do it, because you have a lot of love in your heart for your friends. You do it because you have hope for future happiness. Unfortunately, just like in the myth of Pandora, you’re never sure if that hope is the thing that is saving you, or if it’s the thing that’s been destroying you all along. Either way, you live.

Bohemian Crapsody

I watched the Queen film last night, and I have to say: not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huuuuge fan of Freddie Mercury, and a medium-sized fan of Brian May; I just don’t see the reason for all the hype. It’s almost as if awful, ham-fisted, or half-baked art about beloved legends like Mercury is made on purpose. The director knows full well that no one dares besmirch the name of a rock god. So, attaching said rock god’s story to a shit film is a keen way of garnering undeserved authorial praise.

Rami Malek’s performance is no great feat, either. Based on all of his pin-pupilled acceptance speeches and his jittery aloofness throughout the film itself, it’s clear that the guy is not hiding his Adderall/coke problem very well. Yes, the film implies that Mercury experienced similar issues with addiction—thought, for a movie set mostly in the mid-to-late seventies, there’s nary a white line in diagetic sight; but Malek performs that way even before the rock star-cum-addict stage in Freddie’s life. The actor is obviously gakked out from Scene One, making loading luggage onto an airplane seem more akin to an exercise in eye-bulging. Also, the costume prosthetics make his facial features seem exaggerated and caricatured, and not as traits oozing with sensual imperfection that Mercury so adeptly and coyly manipulated to work as part of his Byronic persona.

Granted, Bohemian Rhapsody is mythos and not documentary, but the film takes quite arrogant liberties with facts and reality. Mercury was not diagnosed with AIDS until two years after Live Aid. He didn’t meet Jim on the morning of the historical music festival; and he didn’t grow up working class. He was posh, as were his bandmates, who had the capital to attend school for careers in physics, electrical engineering, and dentistry. These (and many more exaggerations) provide a misleading portrait of a man who was brilliant, anyway. So, why bullshit?

Perhaps the most egregious reimagining, in my opinion, is the depiction of Mary. I don’t know if this is a thing in Hollywood at the moment, but what is with all these movies about gay men using selfless, long-suffering straight women as a means to find themselves sexually or emotionally (and then, to varying degrees, discard these women after such epiphanies take place)? Call Me By Your Name achieves something similar to this, and it bothers me. It’s a trope that doesn’t need to be nurtured for a variety of reasons—least of all because it’s already the overarching trope in films with heterosexual male leads. Why is the woman-as-emotional-wet-nurse phenomenon accepted as doctrine? Portraying such a relationship with the male lead as gay does not diminish the fact that a woman onscreen—yet again—only exists as a helpmate, a walking wastebasket into which the male protagonist can dump his feelings and saunter away unscathed. And don’t give me that, “At least he bought her a house!” bullshit. Yeah, he also made her stay up all night blinking the goddamn lights for him in said manse, like a prisoner in a fucking lighthouse. WTF?

If you want to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, listen to Queen’s Greatest Hits, and simultaneously play literally any romantic drama from the past fifty years on mute. Oh, and throw in a way-too-long reenactment of Live Aid for the final twenty minutes of it. That’s it. You’re welcome.

Frenchy. Oui Oui.

I ran into a colleague today. I hadn’t felt the kindest toward her in the past—and there is legitimately no good reason for my behavior. Well, I know the reason. She’s younger, prettier, nicer, and has better hair than me—and I think the guy who broke my heart likes her. So, in the past, every time I’d run into her in the hallway, I’d roll me eyes as if she were a colossal waste of my time. I even had a secret, cruel nickname reserved specifically for her. I was really, really threatened—to say the least.

Today, I saw her in a meeting, and I felt the same pang of jealousy I’ve always felt toward her. I could feel my heart start to beat more rapidly when she said hello to me. I performed my most badass self, just to prove (To her? To me? Who knows!) that I was the alpha bitch in the room. I effortlessly rattled off expert knowledge on matters with which she’s had little to no experience. I challenged the ideas of my senior colleagues with my best blasé-blasé tone. I showed the fuck off, and I made that shit fashion. 

Then, something strange happened. I realized that she purposefully would not look at me—and it wasn’t because of apathy or lack of feeling impressed by what I brought to the meeting. I realized: she was intimidated by me. I could feel it; heck, maybe I could even smell the fear pheromones she was giving off (Is that a thing? Let’s just say it is). I have the kind of job she wants, and is working her ass off to get. I get to act smug because I’m safely settled into a tenure-track position. She has to be cloyingly deferential, even to an asshole like me, because her future job security might depend on it. I’m past the point of worrying about getting people to like me. She has to make sure not to piss off the wrong people, or it could mean no rent next semester. Sure, I’m a fucking weirdo, but even that is a byproduct of a freedom and an independence that she doesn’t have as an adjunct.

I began to see her differently in that moment. Before, she was Sandra Dee, and I was Betty Rizzo. She was an annoyingly attractive and novel thing, and I was the beat-to-the-street bit of yesterday’s news—and that pissed me off to no end. In that meeting, I could see that we’re both Frenchy, just chicks trying our best to exist in a world where we’re constantly made to feel uncertain and insecure. I felt a kinship with her that my insecurity had quickly eroded away, originally. 

So, after the meeting, I approached her. I began with a joke to ease the tension. I asked her about how the full-time application process was going, and we commiserated about what a bullshit nightmare the job hunt can be. I made her laugh—something that makes me really happy when I’m successful at it. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Her eyes changed from large and skeptical to calm and welcoming; she even looked in my eyes when we spoke. I no longer felt like I was secretly engaging in an artificial, social competition with her—one that never has winners, anyway. It felt really good, and I want to feel good more often in my life.

There have been countless women recently who have shown me endless goodness with no expectation of payback. I want to be like them. I want to be a better woman than I’ve been. I hope I can keep this up. I know I can. I will.