Queercents

I think the privilege of being gay means not having to get married or join the army. – John Waters

I proposed marriage to a girl not long ago. In fact, I did more than propose; I begged for marriage. I was naked and full of cocktails, and, in retrospect, I think in that moment I finally came to an understanding of and full embodiment of the current and troubled state of the blessed union. I should really be more selective with my words in those vulnerable moments. Any state of being that includes the word “lock” in it is definitely not for me.

Now that I live in California again, my own personal right to engage in the ancient institution with someone of my same birth sex is on the line for continued legalization and acknowledgment by the state and (some, not all) church. I know that many gays and queers think legally binding and historically religious and ritualistic marriage is a beautiful thing and want it now. And that’s interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike wrote a wonderful and informative series on tipping etiquette earlier this year, but I’ve been thinking about those on the other end of tipping quite a bit lately. I’ve had several heated discussions on the topic with a salon colorist I’ve been dating and have dozens of other close acquaintances in various service industries who rely on client tipping for the bulk of their income. Having personally always worked either for salary or by the hour, it seems to me like relying on tips would be extra challenging when considering a budget or planning a savings.

There’s the irregularity factor. You never actually know how much you are going to bring home in a night. You can guess and expect, but those are kind of dangerous words when it comes to personal finance. Then there’s the vacillation. A bartender friend of mine in Seattle would make up to $400 a shift on the weekends, but then he might only see $30 or $40 on his mid-week shifts. Then there’s that pocket-full-of-cash syndrome. Some people handle this quite well, go straight home or to the bank and stash that shit where it belongs. Others see cash and think spend. I don’t need to make dinner at home; I’ve got $80 dollars in my pocket. I’ll go out. Or, Wow. Look at those boots. Hey, it’s Sunday morning and I just happen to have that $280 in cash.

I’ve spoken with quite a few service industry employees this week and found that everyone, as to be expected when it comes to managing dollars, has a unique approach to handling their tip income. Read the rest of this entry »

About a year ago, a friend of mine told me that she was freelance writing for work. I was as well, but my friend was working full-time at it; I was not. We started discussing project sources and ran through many of the Internet options available for the hunt: craigslist.com, various message boards, gumtree.com for the UK, and several like this essay writing one. She said, however, that the majority of her projects came from guru.com.

Since then, I’ve come to agree that it might be the best place to get freelance jobs, and that’s not just for writers. Guru has job forums for most forms of legalized freelance work available. From marketing to web design, accounting to photography, and computer programming to architecture, if you’ve got a marketable skill set, chances are guru has a job for you. The first time I punched in my writing credentials, almost 800 jobs popped up for perusal. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. It’s my birthday this month, and I was wondering if you could send me a gift. I’d like your collection of essays titled Can Poetry Matter? The entire thing looks really great, but I’m mostly interested in the essay “Business and Poetry.” I asked your secretary at the National Endowment for the Arts about it, but she suggested that I have a virtual conversation with Amazon.com. I will undoubtedly have that conversation, but I thought I’d try you first.

Some months ago (on Nina’s suggestion) I downloaded your Knowledge@Wharton interview, “The Close Connection between Business and Poetry,” from iTunes U, and I’ve read the corresponding essay excerpts on your website. These were fascinating and helpful, but there’s one question that remains unanswered for me. How does a poet keep from becoming incredibly miserable in the world of business management? You say it can be done. You draw some convincing links between management and creativity as well as between the poet and the linguistic experience of business. You’ve obviously done it yourself. Some of my other favorite poets, like Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, made it happen. When I worked in management, however, my poetry suffered and even slipped temporarily into non-existence, my creativity was squashed into tiny blocks the size and shape of the corporate logo; and by the end of my eight years there, despite my decent 401k and class A stock bundle, I wanted to die. Read the rest of this entry »

Since returning from travel in Central Europe and reminiscing on my David Černý sculpture hunt, I’ve been thinking a lot about the complexity of looking at (broadly categorized) anti-communist (and I’m not talking about propaganda here) art through the eyes of a remorseful (but definitely not repentant) capitalist.

Money is a good thing. Free markets are a wonderful thing. David Černý and others sharing his ethos remind us of this with their work as mouthpiece for a region engaging the capitalist’s life relatively recently.

For the train from Prague to Krakow, I got a hold of the most recent Umelec, an international art and culture publication, and found that the editorial by Ivan Mecl was addressing something in the neighborhood of this aforementioned complexity. He begins, Read the rest of this entry »

Today in Prague, I went on a David Černý sculpture hunt. My first sighting of the Czech sculptor’s work and probably the most visible of all of his publicly displayed and acknowledged works was the arrangement of giant babies with coin slots for faces affixed to the city’s TV tower. My Lonely Planet guide describes the piece as ”Creepy, giant, slot-faced babies crawling all over a TV transmitter tower; something to do with consumerism and the media, methinks.”

So, with admiration for his brain if not all of his work in hand, I circled the tower and its Babies, considering two of my most cherished topics: consumerism and the media. Equally as interesting as the Babies is the work in its geographical context (which gives it more points). The tower sits on the site of an old cemetary, the headstones cramped and arranged in an almost ampitheater-style seating arrangement to the tower. It’s a violent, organic contrast to the tower and its synthetic parasites. Er, the Babies and theirs? Read the rest of this entry »

I recently got back in the boxing ring after almost three years of casual to no working out. My first few painful weeks back into the routine of training for a fight have reminded me that this sport works a body like none other. And I’m not talking about getting beaten up. Of course, there is that element if desired, but boxing training is primarily other than that. I’ve been a runner, a college basketball player, done weights and all of the other gimmicky machines that come along with a gym membership (and found many useful); but nothing does what boxing does.

What sets the particular fitness routine apart from other workouts is that it actually doesn’t require a gym membership or a trainer. It doesn’t really even require any equipment at all. It is, of course, really helpful to go to an official boxing gym and work with a trainer if one really wants to learn how to punch, but the fitness (and body) itself can be completely free. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sleeping with a straight. Well, okay, like my former lover in San Francisco wrote to me in an email recently: “Newsflash, if she’s sleeping with you, she’s not so straight.” And, to everyone’s surprise, it turns out that she’s not. My point, however, is not to graph an unhelpful hierarchy of straightness for this post. It’s to talk about my recent bout with homophobia. My own homophobia.

I’ve never really been into public displays of affection. Some might argue that this is a tactic often used to keep options open, but I’m genuinely not into it. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s annoying and dramatic. I didn’t enjoy it when I lived in what I call the “vacuum” queer communities like Seattle’s Capital Hill, or various San Francisco neighborhoods, or West Hollywood, places where one can almost forget that straights still rule most of the world. So, the fact that I still don’t like PDA can’t be entirely attributed to the fact that my present home is a small city with a nearly invisible and geographically scattered queer community in which I’m generally the only visibly queer person around. I simply just haven’t changed.

My new lover, however, is obsessed with her newfound identity. She wants to make-out in inconvenient places, to hold hands and other parts everywhere, to embrace in the grocery store. It’s not my thing, but I have to admit that my discomfort has alerted me to something else that’s going on. Read the rest of this entry »

Having a travel partner can be challenging. You want to tour the house where John and Paul wrote over a hundred songs together; he’d rather see the Beatles museum. You want a salad; he wants a hot dog from a vendor. There isn’t time for everything, and there certainly isn’t enough money for everything. The emotional and physical challenges are, however, in most cases, far outweighed by the financial benefits of traveling with another person.

I have a new traveling partner. Circumstance brings us together really. We both have similar destinations on our agenda; we both want to see as much of Europe on the smallest possible budget while we’re in school here. He’s an undergraduate, in his early twenties, and a Christian from Wisconsin. It might seem that we have very little in common, and at times, we do indeed seem to speak different languages. But, when we met and began talking at the university’s international orientation, we quickly connected; so we decided to give traveling together a whirl.

Our first day trip to Cambridge went exceptionally well, so this weekend we decided to go to Manchester and then on to Liverpool, both on the opposite coast from where our campus is located. We checked out bus and train tickets, and both were quite expensive as the cheap-booking dates had passed (we didn’t plan too far in advance for this one). He brought up the idea of renting a car. I might not have considered this on my own. I haven’t owned a car in three years and try to make mass transit use my first option, but, honestly, I’ve been craving some time behind the wheel. And I wanted to try the “wrong-side” driving thing. His inventiveness here has been one of several circumstances prompting me to accept the fact that two minds are often truly better than one. He did the detail checking, and the car was cheaper, by half, of a single round-trip bus ticket; also, a valid U.S. driver’s license is all one needs to rent a car in the U.K. I’m not exactly sure why, but no preemptive foreign driving lessons are required. Read the rest of this entry »

I was hesitant to join in on the Sleeping With Money series. The first things that came to mind when I considered it were not exactly pleasant, so, to the old adage, I thought it best (for once) to say nothing at all. But now I’m reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera. I’m about half way through, and it’s brought a lot to the table in regards to my nasty thoughts.

A brief synopsis for anyone who hasn’t read it (and I firmly believe that every literate person should read at least one of his books; he’s a master): it’s a love story, or more of a love triangle actually (at least I think; it’s kind of hard to tell who’s actually in love, who’s under the spell of habit, and who’s just psychotic at this point. I guess those could all be considered love at its finest.). Early in the novel, Marquez depicts the marriage between a wealthy, highly esteemed doctor, renowned for his work in suppressing the cholera epidemic, and his wife, Fermina Daza, a woman who married “up” socially and improved her stature as well as her quality of life. They seem wonderfully happy after several decades of cohabitation and the raising of children, although also strangely and severely codependent. (Is there any way not to be after half a century with someone?) For example, she helps him dress every day even though he is fully capable.

Then, the doctor suddenly dies, and this third point on the triangle enters the picture. He was Fermina’s first childish love, and she his unrequited. He’s never married, has made a pledge of faithfulness and undying love to her, and really isn’t good at much other than playing the violin. At this point, he’s trying to woo her directly following the funeral of her husband, which seems entirely disrespectful but is also, understandably, the marker of his breaking point: 52 years after she married the doctor and crushed his innocent and delusional hopes of having her. Read the rest of this entry »