100218 in the heights was so great, and i told my students it was, and one of them said she’s going, and i was like yay, you’re going to have a great time. and i’m glad i have in the heights in my wicker basket of working memory, because it gives me something to latch onto when i need it. You have to have examples of things to latch onto when you need them. Why? Because there are assholes in this world. Let’s say it’s one of your daughter’s friend’s parents. Let’s say this meek conflicted girl who lost her mom has a dad that’s a FUCKING ASSHOLE. And he drops little comments to your daughter like, “Are you still living in the same place? Oh, that’s too bad.” And the daughter says to your daughter, “My dad hates your whole family.” I’m like, on one level it’s just bizarre and funny. I never did shit to that shitbag except give his daughter a bunch of rides back when they were in soccer together. And show up at his wife’s funeral and not talk to him. What would I have said? I was just there to support Megan, who felt a (genuine, as far as I can tell) need to be there to support the daughter, who (as far as I can tell) really fucking appreciated it. But none of that matters to the asshole. He’s got his enormous house, his brand new wife, and his innate superiority, and so he can and will pass judgement on anyone he deems to be inferior: that’s me! OK, yeah, so what, nothing new to see here folks, move along. There will always be inequalities in every domain, right? I was born probably just as privileged as his daughter is now, but that doesn’t matter. I could spend all night and day going over every step I’ve taken in my life leading up to living in this “shameful” domicile; I could quiz myself on whether the decisions I made were irresponsible, my fault, someone else’s fault, just random, or based on my own authentic priorities. Truth is, it doesn’t matter. It’s a combination of all of the above. It just is. Where I am is just where I am. Some asshole’s callous comment to a defenseless girl who made the unfortunate compromise of getting into his car is enough to set me to wondering about all that, to questioning my very manhood. Should I say something to him? Should I go on the attack, just to prove that I’m not a weak liberal who won’t defend himself, like that random youtube comment suggested is the nature of all liberal men? They “leave you feeling empty because they’re incapable cowards who won’t defend what’s theirs” and “women can sense that”—that comment got me thinking and wondering about my self worth, too. That comment was basically gym class. You can take the boy out of gym class, but you can’t ever fully take gym class out of the boy. Whether that’s a slice of perfectly-high-resolution reality that everyone needs to learn how to deal with, or an indication of absurdly rapacious failure of our “educational” institutions I guess depends on whether you’re more of a liberal or a conservative, ha ha. I can kinda see it from both sides. Or am I flattering myself? That *is* something a damned liberal would say to try to rationalize his weaknesses, isn’t it? Just like in English class, 10th grade was it? In Mrs. Sharp’s class, when she brought out this list of ways that adolescents are all mentally ill. One of the things was that we—haha, I typed “we” not “they”—is that because I was so in the moment, having projected myself into the scene of the past that I’m recalling? Or is it because (because I’m a liberal) I’m *secretly still an adolescent!!! ZOMG*?—did was rationalize things—truths that were uncomfortable or dissonant, we would habitually and almost subconsciously come up with rationalizations for, in order to bend unpleasant realities into a narrative that fit with our ideal of what we wanted our selves and our characters to be in the world. Well I mean, doesn’t everyone do that, adolescent or not? I’m not saying that makes it *OK,* but... well, maybe I am saying that. I don’t know. The point is, I feel humiliated by comments like that one by the rando on YouTube and by Megan’s friend’s stupid aggressive red-faced hyper-conservative, fucked-up-religious, domineering shitbag of a dad, and if I could just accept that and let it go it would be fine, but it nags at me because I don’t *want* it to affect me that way. I want to be more enlightened and above all that. But I’m not. I’m just a guy, and I don’t perceive myself as being very high up in the pecking order that males are supposed to care about, and I don’t think I should care about it and so I create rationalizations to convince myself that I don’t care about it, but I do, and so it rankles, and—see how it spins around? Basically it spins around until I get tired and go to sleep and more or less forget about it until next time. Plus I eroticize it. Cf. all the cuckold and forced-gay stuff in my erotic imagination and history. But I refuse to conclude that that’s the only reason I want to be gay. It is one of the things I want to play with while *being* gay, but it’s not the only reason I want to be gay. Is it really possible for someone to want to be gay? The ethereal media voices are always screaming “it’s not a choice” but--what if it kind of is? At least for some of us? That’s kind of a world-view-bending concept to consider, in a way. I guess everybody’s got their own version of who they’re a slave to, and how they sit with that in their quieter moments. I guess you can’t always wrap everything up in a pithy generalization either, though. Sometimes you have to leave things a little unfinished. Sometimes there is no concluding paragraph, kids. Sorry. Your teachers lied. Don’t be mad at them; they felt like they had no choice but to lie about that, and a bunch of other stuff too.