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.

Some winter mornings, we wake up and consider the rooftops of Washington Heights, where — thanks to the sumptuous pre-war architecture, the expansive breadth of the Hudson and the gentle rise of the Palisades — we are charmed by the wisps of steam that trail from the chimneys; there’s something surprisingly bucolic about the scene, as if we were watching a village in the Bavarian Alps and not the most densely populated neighborhood in the country.

And then we see this (from 38 Fort Washington Avenue, not that they’re the only offender) and remember that we live in a city that cares nothing about its poor.

There is, however, some solace to be found in the idea that nothing we can do will ever change this, and our only hope is to escape.

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and politicians? Not even footnotes in this story, which is about the aggregation of capital and the relentless rise of the metropolis.

The Wahi Lung Cancer & Asthma Roundup!

September 29, 2007

March 20, 2008

March 21, 2008

April 3, 2008

April 11, 2008 (Special Investigative Report)

May 11, 2008

May 18, 2008

June 19, 2008

July 8, 2008

November 16, 2008

Dear readers, we are off to “the Europe” through New Year’s, and so will not be posting here until 2009. During this time, we encourage you to read (gay) novels, watch Visconti, take long walks in Washington Heights and send us as many smokin’ hot statues as you can find (we’re obv expecting great riches where we’re headed!). Oh and but for those seeking a more sustained connection, feel free to follow us on Twitter. (<3 u!)

In the meantime, we invite you to enjoy this short holiday-greeting v-card from the staff here. Although it’s just over a minute long, it collectively took us like 46 hours to figure out how to even begin to use Final Cut Express 4.0.1, so we’re very proud of everyone involved, and particularly those on the technical side!

Happy New Year!  xoxo TGR

So today we were reading about the new Thomas Pynchon novel, which is going to be released next year.

Like so many adolescent boys we’ve known, we went through a serious Pynchon phase.

His maddeningly complex yet (somehow) crystalline prose managed to resonate with the best of 1960s counterculture while nevertheless steering completely clear of the empty ideals of the hippies (or better yet, mocking them!).

He wrote about sex and drugs and punkish rock (although music was never a strength, because his prose was too frigid and aloof to describe anything with true emotion, as good music-writing must), and his obvious mastery of high-minded science (omg physics!) seemed to predict our cultural obsession with the titans of Silicon Valley. He made paranoia and conspiracy — particularly as these forces manifest in corporate America — seem fun! Also: his characters had “hilarious” names (our favorite was always Helga Blamm). We drifted through many classes in college making up Pynchonesque character names for all the Pynchonesque novels we planned to write at some point.

Yet as much as we once loved him, we’re almost never inclined to revisit the works we read (V, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland). Perhaps our memory is cloudy, but we’re struck by a certain disdain Pynchon seems to hold for his characters, and by extension, his readers. His unrelenting emotional distance seems emblematic of a society we’ve come to think of as srsly fucked up; true, he’s deconstructing this same society, but not in (the psychological) ways that ultimately interest us.

There’s also the fact that nothing/nobody he ever described resonated with anything we would describe as gay in any good sense of the word. In a way, we think this explains in part his popularity among boys of all ages in our obsessively homophobic culture: he’s a relentlessly straight literary writer who it’s quite “safe” to admit to liking — much like (huge asshole) David Mamet in the theatrical context — without calling into question your own sexual orientation. Which is very important for guys who want to express some creativity or emotion without seeming gay!

In short, Thomas Pynchon might be a recluse.

But he’ll never be a gay recluse, which places him — like so many others from his generation — firmly inside the fortress walls we are still dreaming to tear down.

Yesterday we went for a walk in the rain, in part because we wanted to check out what was happening uptown, and in part because none of the grocery stores around us carry the curly parsley that we needed for the lentil soup we planned to make.

We’ve been making this recipe for at least twenty years, ever since our mother taught it to us before we went to college.

She got it from Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappé, which according to the site was first published in 1971 and has sold over 3 million copies. We lost our copy a long time ago in one of our many moves, but fortunately we’ve memorized the recipe (or some version of it that works for us!).

Even before we were born (and before Diet for a Small Planet was written) our mother was into “health food,” as it used to be called.

She had a crazy uncle “Jimmy” from California who visited our family in Pittsburgh — this was in the mid-60s, when California used to be liberal and “cutting-edge,” (unlike now, ha). The story goes that he showed up in an RV filled with his own provisions for the entire cross-country trip. He was a missionary for a new way of eating: he taught our mother about whole wheat and the evils of processed sugar. Believe it or not, back then most people (i.e., idiot doctors, especially!) didn’t make the connection between what you eat and your health — which is why everyone thought “Jimmy” was crazy — but all of this resonated with our mother, who was always looking to expand the confines of her suburban existence. When he left, she threw out everything in her kitchen that contained white flour or sugar, which was pretty much everything (much to the dismay of our older siblings, who would not see a cookie for the next four or five years).

This was the start of our mother’s Cultural Revolution. In many ways, we were the beneficiary: when our mother was pregnant with us a few years after Jimmy’s visit, she forced herself to drink “Tiger’s Milk” (the homemade kind, with blackstrap molasses) throughout the entire pregnancy, which she thinks is why we were the tallest of her children, even though we were the last of five. (But hmmm, did it make us gay? Hey science, get on that!)

Predictably, our mother had softened somewhat by the time we were growing up, so that we were given liberties that would have been unthinkable to our older siblings. (Hello, Ho-Ho’s!) But we were still raised on “brown bread,” and all “sugar cereals” — e.g., Frosted Flakes — were verboten. She used to say that all forms of white bread were “enbalmed.”

There’s no question that revolution can be epic and sweeping, but it can also be as simple as a pot of soup. We often look with dismay at the rows and rows of shit — sodas and potato chips, etc. etc. — they sell in the stores around here and we know that the world would be a better place if everyone made more lentil soup. (But it’s worth noting that we often think this as we reach for a bag of potato chips.)

But our own imperfections aside, the soup represents our highest ideals: the ingredients are cheap, but still represent generations of striving for something greater — i.e., more just — than what we are originally given.

Lentil Soup, The Gay Recluse Style:

In a large soup pot, sauté one large white onion and a bag of carrots (chop them up, obvs) in olive oil with a lot of thyme and marjoram. Add two large cans of crushed tomatoes, a bag of lentils, an entire bunch of curley parsely (i.e., the kind used for decoration, also chopped up) and four cans of water (the same size as the crushed tomatoes). Bring to a boil and then simmer for a few hours until done. Add salt and pepper to taste. Prior to serving, splash some sherry into it and sprinkle with grated swiss cheese. Eat, feel healthy and ecologically in tune. (At least until dessert — some storebought chocolate cake and ice-cream — lolz.)

So today we attended a panel discussion on the issue of trademarks and pharmaceuticals.

Naming a new drug is sort of like naming a band except it’s even harder!

Because you can’t promise more than you can deliver — e.g., Cancercure — or minimize the side effects, e.g., Safeforall.

Plus you want the letters to look different than anything else when they’re written out, because guess what: sometimes pharmacists can’t tell the difference between “Americo” and “Omerica” when your doctor scrawls out a prescription on a piece of paper. (Those drug names might not be exactly right, but you get the idea.)

So anyway, we were sitting there listening when we realized that we had forgotten to turn off our cell phone.

And we didn’t want to do it then, because it makes this annoying series of beeps when you turn it off. (As for this great “feature,” srsly, wtf?)

So we decided to put the phone under our leg, so that if someone called us, the ring would be greatly reduced, if not altogether muted. (Kind of like farting into a cushion?) Still — even though we don’t get many calls on our cell phone — we were nervous!

Then a phone rang! For a second we thought it was ours, but it actually came from across the room. It pretty much sounded like a bullhorn. Then it rang again. And one more time.

Guess what? Even though everyone was like wtf, the guy answered it. “Hello?” he said, and not in a whisper, either, but as if he was in his office. Or in any case, certainly not with 100 or so other people listening to a lecture on trademarks and pharmaceuticals.

But then he finally seemed to remember where he was: “Hey, I’m going to have to call you back, ok?” he said, “I’m in a session…great, bye.”

Although we were kind of shocked, in a way, we kind of admired him. (Though not enough to feel any remorse when our own cell phone didn’t ring.)

Sometimes the best solution to a problem is just to pray that it goes away quickly, and then pretend that it never happened at all.

This is where the line between imagination and memory becomes very thin.

I. Summary
June marked our third best month on record, and — in light of limited time investment into the site — represents a promising long-term trend. If we’re ever in a position to start posting with renewed frequency, we feel confident that the market will respond positively. Until that time, sustainable traffic whoring is the objective.

II. Traffic Whoring Metrix
WordPress
Total Views June: 10,540
Grand Total Number of Views: 68,328
Monthly Breakdown

• September: 68
• October: 1959
• November: 3528
• December: 3112
• January: 4591
• February: 6545
• March: 15,033
• April: 13,957
• May: 8995
• June: 10,540

SiteMeter
June Visitors: 7363
June Page Views: 10,300

Monthly Traffic Whoring Charts

Daily Traffic Whoring Charts

Technorati (As of June 30, 2008)
Whoring Rank: 104,744 (up from 136,439)*
Whoring Authority: 63 (down from 67)

*go figure.

III. Feed Stats
Feedburner
54 subscribers (down from 56)

Bloglines
10 subscribers (unchanged)

IV. Major Links

• City Room BlogTalk (June 12) The New York Times
• Early Addition (June 16) Gothamist
• Central Park Hits Up This Washington Heights Place for Case (June 17) Curbed
• City Room BlogTalk (June 18) The New York Times

V. Forecast

Because of some ongoing subsidiary projects, traffic whoring will most likely be maintained at low to declining levels through July and August, with renewed investment expected in September, around the one-year anniversary of the site.

From our subway station at 163rd Street:

We’re all for organ donation, but we find this advertisement rather too exuberant.

Is this woman giving or receiving?

Oh and another weird thing: someone graffiti numbered all the people in this poster. Seriously: creepy.

“Awesome! I’m 24!”

We’ve never seen a group of such happy people.

But is Ms. 17 going a bit too far? We kind of think so.

We think Ms. 7 is more reasonable.

Or Mr. 33. “I’m very determined!”

Many years ago we had a friend named Miranda. She was the coolest! She wore the smallest backpack ever! It was gold and she used it to carry her cigarettes in it and nothing else, and even that was a tight fit. She was a photographer and a filmmaker and we always loved seeing her at art openings — and she seemed to be at every single one — because she was very enthusiastic about everything we did! Some of our other enemies friends hated her, which we never understood. “She just wants to be famous!” they said. “That’s what’s so great about her!” we always insisted.

We have no idea where Miranda is now. Maybe she went back to her notoriously dysfunctional family in Connecticut. Or maybe she’s a huge filmmaker in Hollywood! But we think of her often because of a vine we bought last year, which for some reason is also called Miranda. It’s a variegated form of the climbing hydrangea. (Coincidentally, we bought it at a nursery in Connecticut.)

Here’s a picture of Miranda in our garden:

Hello, climbing hydrangea ‘Miranda’: You are indeed a beautiful plant whose variegated splendor does much to improve our garden! We always wonder exactly who you are named after. Could it be our East Village friend Miranda, who we haven’t seen in so many years?

Time and date of photographs: April 2, 2008, 7pm (ish)

Although the worst offender seems to have abated after we called 311 a few weeks ago, there are regular emissions of nasty-looking black smoke from almost all of the rooftops.

At least when it gets dark it’s harder to see.

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and politicians? Not even footnotes in this story, which is about the aggregation of capital and the relentless rise of the metropolis.

–The Gay Recluse, 9/29/07