We grow up and are given a set of words that we use to communicate: ideas, places, things, ppl.

But as all of these things change — as they always do, thanks to the passage of time — words that once seemed perfect become inadequate to describe the new world in which we live.

Thus we have a choice: we can suffer with old words or invent new ones. (In this sentence, words are a metaphor for words.)

It should further be noted that the words we use or invent may or may not be applicable to anyone else.

If I can describe the infinite pieces of my life in the most beautiful and accurate way possible, why should I care if you describe yours — which is infinitely different (or not)– in the same way? Moreover, why should I care if you take bits and pieces of my language to build yours? (Note to the litigious: we are not talking about copyright law here.)

In this way, we may not agree, but we may not be in conflict, either.

As long as guns are not involved, we should be able to live in peace: you will write your book, and I will write mine.

Lately we’ve been thinking about how much we still kinda h8 the words ‘gay’ and ‘queer.’  Though we know that many in ‘the community’ consider this a ‘settled issue’ — and perhaps this is a vestige of our own self-h8red, which is not small by any measure — we still generally feel uncomfortable identifying with either term beyond the most perfunctory shorthand, like when d-bags in the locker room are talking about how they want to ‘bone some broad’ and they look in our direction for validation we’re like ‘stfu — we’re gay.’

We went to dictionary.com and looked up gay:

Gay –adjective

1. having or showing a merry, lively mood: gay spirits; gay music.
2. bright or showy: gay colors; gay ornaments.
3. given to or abounding in social or other pleasures: a gay social season.
4. licentious; dissipated; wanton: The baron is a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies. [Ed. wait -- what?]
5. homosexual.
6. of, indicating, or supporting homosexual interests or issues: a gay organization.

If  you’re like us, none of these definitions remotely captures anything about your life, except maybe numbers five and six, to the extent that it’s synonymous with “non-heterosexual.” But as we all know, “homosexual” is a scientific term invented in the late 1800s and thus cannot be used without sounding like you’re an animal in the zoo, e.g., “Yall, let’s get a grant to study the homosexuals! We heard that they have enlarged brains/thumbs/swirly hairdos/six-packs!”

So what about queer?

–adjective

1. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.
2. of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady: Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.
3. not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish: to feel queer.
4. mentally unbalanced or deranged.
5. Slang/Disparaging and Offensive a. homosexual. b.effeminate; unmanly.
6. Slang bad, worthless, or counterfeit.

We understand the idea of ‘reclaiming your identity’ — kinda like how all the kids on the subway call each other ‘nigga’ — but do you srsly want to be called queer? We don’t! (Might be ‘too old’.)  ‘Columbia University has excellent academic programs in Nigga Studies and Queer Studies?’ What makes one soooo much more ‘acceptable’ than the other?

While many of you may or may not agree, in either case we suspect you’d like to challenge us to come up with something better. After all, these terms have many decades of history/study behind them, and it’s possible to envision a day 100,000 years in the future when they might be entirely divorced from the superficial/derogatory meanings from which they originally arose.

Our solution is vexed.

1. irritated; annoyed: vexed at the slow salesclerks.
2. much discussed or disputed: a vexed question.
3. tossed about, as waves.
4 [Proposed as of 2k9]. non-heterosexual.*

*Although we don’t ever endorse the use of adjectives as nouns except in an ironic context — ‘the gays were upset that Madonna/Cher/Britney canceled her tour’ — we propose the alternate form ‘vext’ to allow for similar uses, e.g., ‘the vexts lobbied hard in Albany/DC yet achieved nothing despite Democratic majorities in both houses.’

Seriously, how much more ‘empowering’ and — especially w/r/t definition number three — poetic is ‘vexed’ than any other alternative? It’s basically like saying: ‘Don’t fuck with me/us,’ while maintaining a certain and appropriate degree of intelligence and impatience (but not anger or violence, which we don’t support) for mainstream convention that frankly needs to be a hallmark going forward in any interaction with those str8s who don’t ‘get it.’

Try it out. ‘Yall, don’t talk bullshit to me about _____! I’m vexed!’ In politics. ‘Yall should be able to ‘get married’ if you’re vexed.’ Or for students of literature: ‘Marcel Proust was the best novelist of all-time; not coincidentally, like most great novelists except during the dark ages from 1945  to 2010 — he was vexed.’ Note also that ladies are equally welcome to be vexed, and won’t be appropriating a tired old term like gay, which inevitably makes them (as usual) second-class citizens on the gender front.

We are not gay or queer.

We are tossed about, as waves.

We are vext.

Do you read The Atlantic? If so, be sure to check out this month’s ish, which has “Gay Sex” on the cover for a pull quote that says “Gay people, too, deserve to be wanted sexually,” as if that could ever be enlightening in any context, and then — coup de grace — includes this lovely exchange from Jeffrey Goldberg on the back page “advice column.”

Is life after college really as monotonous and depressing as it looks?
Ben, Manhattan, Kan.

Dear Ben,

No. It’s worse! Just kidding. It’s actually a joy. Except for the prostate exams.

Ha ha — get it? — prostate exams are where the doctor (often a male) puts his finger up your butt, and what could possibly be “worse than”/funnier having something up your butt if you’re another guy!? Omg, that’s s0000 funny! It’s like — wait for it!!!! — when two men “kiss” or “suck each other’s cocks!!!” OMG LMFAO!

We love The Atlantic so much, because they’ve been on the “cutting-edge” of enlightened cultural analysis and “hard-hitting” investigative journalism for at least 1000 years (i.e., the dark ages). We’ll be s0000 sad if they go under in the downturn.

Ohai! We thought we’d play a lil game in which we pull quotes from three pieces about the exurbs, two written in 2k4 by David Brooks in The Times — “Take a Ride to Exurbia“  on the opinion page and “Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia” in the magazine — and the other — “In Florida, Despair and Foreclosure” — published today (i.e., 2k9) in The Times. Try to guess when the quotes were written, and by whom — click through for answers! (Note: there’s one trick question — guess which one it is.)

I came out with a book on the booming exurbs – places like the I-4 corridor in central Florida and Henderson, Nev. These are the places where George Bush racked up the amazing vote totals that allowed him to retain the presidency.

Early last year, garage sales and estate auctions became more common in Lehigh Acres as families sold what they could to survive.

I’m so impressed by Karl Rove. As a group of Times reporters demonstrated in Sunday’s paper, the Republicans achieved huge turnout gains in exurbs like the ones in central Florida.

Home prices have collapsed, and many houses built during the housing bubble have been foreclosed or abandoned.

[C]riticisms don’t get suburbia right. They don’t get America right. The criticisms tend to come enshrouded in predictions of decline or cultural catastrophe. Yet somehow imperial decline never comes, and the social catastrophe never materializes.

Hunger has become a growing problem.

[P]eople move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality.

[I]t went from housing market boomtown to its current landscape of abandoned developments and struggling businesses. No one seemed interested in buying whole houses, and foreclosures soon gave way to empty homes that became magnets for crime.

[T]here is this spot you can get to where all tensions will melt, all time pressures will be relieved and happiness can be realized.

Signs of trouble were ignored. “Sometimes houses would sell three or four times in a few months, and no one would move in.”

Get out into the sprawl, into that other conversation. Take your time. It’s a new world out there.

Panic is a powerful headwind.

Poets, pundits, philosophers and politicians, take note! This is not the story of nations or other one-hit wonders, nor is it the story of religion, for which so many millions have died in futile anger and delusion. It is certainly not the history of capital, although this too has been a scourge; no, friends, these are distractions from the real story, which is the slow but relentless rise of the city. Incomprehensible beauty and despair! Inexplicable dissonance and distortion! Inalterable repudiation of all political philosophers and religious zealots who would explain our existence without acknowledging the seething allure of the trains and tunnels, the buildings and bridges of this endlessly mutating labyrinth into which we must cast ourselves to find civilized life! How sorry and sad — which is to say, irrelevant — are the candidates — which is to say, all of them — who fail to discuss the implications of this truth; how tiresome the critics and commentators who obscure it with egocentric jargon about freedom and community. Is it not immediately obvious who among them has or has not walked the streets, and not only in the tedious safety of the day but in the more barren and remote hours of the night, when we are possessed by creaking gates, distant gunshots and — most of all — the pounding, subterranean space we learn to call our heart?

[All pix except the GWB by Chip Litherland for The New York Times]

There are times when we cannot believe how long we’ve been alive, and concurrently, how long — assuming a regular life span — we still have to go. Though admittedly it’s a thought that most often arrives during an afternoon meeting at work, it also crosses our mind at random moments in the middle of winter, when everything seems frozen and permanent, or during an unpleasant commute, or waiting in the dentist’s office, or really any number of things we are required to do that offer nothing but the tedious certainty that life is really nothing more than a pit of quicksand in which we are slowly sinking. (Oddly this never happens when watching teevee — no matter how bad the show — which is both its gift and its curse.)

It goes without saying that as we get older and accept more “responsibility,” we worry more than when we were younger. Money, our health, the health of our children the cats, the fear of dying in Washington Heights, the fear of not dying in Washington Heights; all of this and more relentlessly plagues our thoughts with an intensity we could not have imagined even ten years ago, which makes our future seem like a mountain that gets steeper and icier with every step forward, but which offers no possibility of retreat.

During these moments of existential despair, we look back at the course of our life and it seems that every time we reached a fork in the road, we went in the wrong direction. Why did we do x, we wonder, when doing y — an option that would have been simpler — would have spared us so much hardship? Why — instead of using our natural talents — were we so intent on squandering every advantage? Why did we search out those who wished us nothing but harm and misery? (Why do we blog/Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook?) We think of others — lottery winners, acclaimed artists and writers, teevee stars, anyone who owns a 2br/2bth apt south of 96th Street on the west side — with seething jealousy, given what feels like a certainty that their lives are so much more pleasant and joyful than our own. How did it happen that so many people are younger and smarter (and richer) than us, when we used to be so good at math and scored in the 99th percentile on ever standardized test we ever took? Why did we spend 10 years in a band, when 1-2 would have more than sufficed?

But this passes as we acknowledge an (admittedly delicious and decadent) inability to really do anything about anything. It’s like when we were in law school; the first semester we couldn’t believe that our entire grade would be based on one three-hour test (no quizzes, no mid-terms, nada), but by the second semester, we could not imagine ever going back to a system in which we would be tested more than once a semester.

In this way only does life offer a common denominator: all memories (like dreams and perhaps even regrets) are created equal, and all paths lead to the same oblivion.

Today we received a letter from Reader J___ B___:

I agree with the reader who took exception the the multiple image thing.
One pic is fine, write what you want beneath it.
A finger to me, and I’ll never bother with you again.
J____ B____ is a name I use to protect the innocent. I hope you like it. I have others.

When we first read this, we wanted to shred this jerk, as if he represented all of the assholes over the years who have ever tried to tell us how to live our life. We wanted to scream: who the fuck made you god of the internet? We wanted to post 100 repeating images of us giving you the finger, because what right do you have to tell us what or what not to do on our blog? Do you really think we give even the slightest shit what you think, who you want to “protect,” and whether you’ll “bother” with us? Srsly, fuck off and die!

But that passed, and left us with a more ambivalent sense of pity. Imagine the agony of going through life with such a terrible, narcissistic need to correct others (and to anonymously send them such creepy and vaguely threatening words)!

It’s true that we may live with our head in the clouds, but there are clearly worse fates.

Thank you for making that clear to us.

Oh noes! It seems that we’ve upset Reader Arundel with our obsessive-compulsive need to repeat the same or similar photographic images over and over! Here’s what Arundel wrote:

Hi. I forget where I first came across your blog, but I enjoy your posts and insights.
Thank you.

However, this strange thing of repeating the same picture fifteen times in a post is a damned eyesore, an affectation that beats the casual reader over the head with the same repeated image in such a distracting way it’s impossible to concentrate on what you’re saying.

Repeating the same photo over and over implies there’s some importance to the image- believe me, once is enough. We’re not stupid. Repeating it so pointlessly is irksome.

I hope you keep writing insightful things. But readers have to work to find them between the same goddamn picture, breaking up the text for no reason.

Best to you.

Umm, well, ha ha, thank you for reading and sending in that lovely comment, Arundel. We hope you’ll write more, because it’s great for laffs! And srsly, this post is just for you, because it only has one picture (albeit from the archives!). Best to you, too.

Charles Blow/Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority

The Short Version: The gays are not about to win over black women — who statistics show are stupid, bitter, homophobic cows — by appealing to equality. Better to appeal to reproductive health!

In his words: “More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable…So pitch it as a health issue.”

The Score: F (Fuck off!). In this piece, Blow displays a remarkable insensitivity w/r/t the premise of civil rights generally and the gay version specifically. Let’s begin with his premise that gays need “to pitch” the idea of marriage to anyone, and especially the few hundred intolerant, hypocritical black church ladies upon whom Blow obnoxiously ruminates. (And here we cannot resist offering another lol-quote: “Women who can’t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.” Ha ha, that sounds like a SATC episode, Charles!). While it’s undoubtedly true in the most mercenary sense that gays do in fact need to sell the concept of marriage (or as we prefer, civil unions for all) to various constituencies, in a representative democracy, we are not obligated to appeal to those most hostile to our cause (and we certainly don’t need to hear it blithely framed in these terms from some tool making questionable extrapolations from a CNN poll). What Blow — who from his pic appears to be an African-American dude and from his bio appears to be straight (or at least a father of three children) — might like to consider is how he would have felt if in say, 1958, we had suggested that black leaders reframe the fight for desegregation in more palatable terms to a group of KKK members, whom surveys revealed to be omg rather racist. In short, just as the promulgation of civil-rights laws were not dependent on changing the views of asshole racists, enlightened observers will understand that the same should hold true for asshole homophobes; it’s not our job to teach or sell the idea of equality to those who are obviously incapable of grasping it and for Blow to suggest otherwise is insulting.

So guess what? We now have a Twitter and a Tumblr and a Facebook!

Sometimes we feel like the oldest person in the blogosphere.

If we were a bird, we’d probably just fly away.

Since we are gay and in a long-term relationship — almost ten years! — we are constantly besieged by frenz and relatives with questions that more or less could be summed up as this: “Oh it’s so sweet that you’re together! If you could get married, would you?”

In the past, we’ve generally hesitated before offering something along the lines of: “Well, maybe — but since it’s not going to happen anytime soon, let’s not worry about it.” This answer, of course, is disingenuous to the degree that we would get married in a second if it meant we could receive the same tax/legal benefits that ”straight” couples currently receive. We would even like to throw a party — a$$uming we’re not bankrupt — because even though we’re reclusive misanthropic curmudgeons, “weddings” are fun and offer a few hours of unadulterated optimism before sending us back to the hard travails of daily life.  (Note: we do not ever want to call this a “commitment ceremony” – even if that’s essentially what it is – because omg “precious moments” barf!)  

And yet yet yet! The vocabulary of this process — marriage, engagements, bridezillas, groomzillas, fiances, even weddings — strikes us as distasteful and cumbersome to the extreme, and it’s really this — we now realize — that has been the root of our hesitation. In truth, we don’t ever want to get “married”; after fleeing the wasteland of suburban America — where every single house featured two people who were or had been married – we have no desire to return to that sad landscape of desparation and conformity. Along the same lines, we have never liked the words “husband” and “wife” and frankly never want them to pass our lips when describing our relationship partner, because these words are indelibly tainted by association with an outdated, homophobic, misogynistic and bourgeois mode of thinking (and society) that has absolutely no appeal to us (except in campy movies and teevee shows).  

Though we are obviously not the only gays to express frustration with marriage and everything it implies in this regard, we are often surprised by the failure of those doing so to make the following point, which to us is most critical in the current (and quickly evolving) political climate: it’s possible to be against marriage — even, or especially, gay marriage — but in favor of equality for all, and we should frame our political objectives in terms of the latter, while dispensing with the former. This, of course, is what Obama implied in the debates about “gay marriage,” and we should hold him to it!

Practically speaking of course, this would entail the promulgation of legislation that would strip the word and concept of “marriage” from federal laws and regulations (and by implication the states) and replace it with a ”civil union” that would be open to any two people, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation or even family status. (Because really, there’s no reason why say, two sisters living together shouldn’t have the option of filing a joint tax return and receiving whatever other advantages are offered to “married” couples.)

The reason this is important to consider now is that there is a huge opportunity to make this happen at the federal level and we (collectively speaking) should not squander it by squabbling over “gay marriage.” (Which careful observers should note is the term of choice for Republican assholes and fundamentalist nutjobs, i.e., “the gays want gay marriage! Outrage!”)

As any (good) lawyer will tell you – not to mention any political campaign strategist — legal fights are won and lost based on definitions of the terms involved. Let’s be honest with ourselves: ”gay marriage” is needlessly provocative and moreover a losing proposition in our seriously homophobic country, as California just demonstrated, particularly when we can express the same objectives in terms of ”equality,” which is more often a winning argument. 

So if people want to limit “marriage” to a man and woman, we should happily grant this, but at the same time press our allies (starting with Obama) to acknowledge that the state needs to get out of the business of ”marriage” asap in order to ensure equal treatment for all of its citizens. ”Civil union for all” is the most elegant way forward, and we should join the ranks of the enlightened countries that have already recognized this.