E is for Eunuch

It seems my last post elicited an accusation of misogyny. For the record, no one is a bigger crusader for gender-neutrality in absolutely everything than me. I defy, flout, and undermine suffocating social convention all the time. I attend wedding showers constantly, even if not invited, and love to make and wear penis-shaped balloons at bachelorette parties, where I scream with transgressive delight.
I am, you see, a Eunuch. I have been since the first Clinton administration, when I was forced to guard his harem in the White House basement. Bill must have slipped me a roofie. I passed out, and when I woke up I noticed that I sounded like a ten year-old boy. I looked down, and sure enough, I had been permanently modified. (I was told that Hillary, after downing multiple shots, tried to do this herself to Bill.)
After getting over the immediate shock, I embraced my Eunicity. I fought for a third bathroom in public places, marked neither M or W, but E. Same thing with forms that ask you for your gender; an additional "E" circle to fill in (I am also satisfied with a simple "neither"). I demanded admittance to the American Boychoir School, though I was far beyond the age of the so-called "normal" student.
Still, I must continue fighting the stigma attached those like me (we prefer "people of alteration"). It is an outrage that department stores have no Eunuch section, nor Eunuch dressing rooms, nor helpful Eunuch salespeople. And just how women like to shop for underwear that makes them feel sexy; I'd love to find just one pair that makes me feel deliciously sex-less.
So Eunuchs of the World Unite: You have Nothing to Lose.

I can't believe no one got worked up about real misanthropy in "Surf's Up." Even the Onion passed on the Tsunami. At least with this new one you can tell me I might as well be E.

...and stay out!

God help me, I was somehow watching MTV's "The Real World" at a gym, with subtitles, the sound off. It seems one of the girls wanted to go on a guys night out to a strip club. Now I've seen increasing numbers of young women at such clubs recently in DC. They almost ruin the whole thing. There on a great "fun" adventure to expand their sexuality or knowledge thereof. They shouldn't be there. All they do is remind you of what a shmuck you are for being there yourself and not with a "real" woman. Plus, by making it less of a "forbidden" pleasure they take away the whole naughtiness factor. Go see Tom Jones! (is he still performing?)
It's all part of the mainstreaming of porn, dirty talk, and formerly "guy talk." It's everywhere and it's boring the shit out of me.
It's like when I first went to a topless beach in the South of France. After a while, most of the time you didn't even look. You're numb to it. The Onion of course got the phenomenon right in their story "Americans demand another orifice to look at."
The most extreme example I saw of the numbing process gone mild was in Salzburg, Austria, in college. There was a magazine kiosk downtown, exhibiting the various rags' covers in the windows. Right up there with the German Frau Home Journal and Golf in Easily Intimidated Small Countries was a full page cover photo of a "comely" fraulein. With semen all over her face. Nobody seemed to stop and notice except me. Ho Hum, how's the Scnitzel?
So America, let's keep some things dirty and secret, for the love of the verboten.

June (Maybe a Beginning, Maybe an End)

A DC night in NJ. One of those June evenings where the light slips so slowly into darkness that it's almost imperceptible. The temperature at 8:30 p.m. almost the same as sweltering afternoon, but everything so soft. The hottest night of the summer, so soon; but everything so lush, so green, so unlike August's burnt lawns, tired trees and sagging brown-bordered leaves.
I drive out from Princeton, windows down and AC off, up to the forested ridge line to the north. The normally traffic-clogged state highway is strangely almost empty, and almost silent, everything exhaling in the suburban woodland; a Vermont, a Skyline Drive for 40 seconds. The smell is intoxicating, all that life bursting into fullness after a cool and wet spring.
I turn east at the town border, through the usual roadside clutter, but soon there is an open gate, a gravel driveway, and the top of a round wooden shelter; too small to be called a bandstand. No sign at the entrance identifying the land's identity, but obviously a park of some kind, left half-wild.
I pass a man with a dog with its leash off and park where the road ends in a field left mostly wild, but with the grass cut around a paved path. The sky is the color of a half-eaten Creamsicle, faded orange turning pale and dark at the same time. Red lights to the west marking Princeton's tiny air strip, a red light topping a ridge-top TV tower to the east. Wherever I go, those lights still call, always more when in the distance than up close. I'd rather dream than see things as they really are, I guess.
But for once I feel a connection to the world around me. Could it be that the pain is really starting to leave my wretched, cursed body? Dare I even think it, knowing the untold disappointments and false cures of the past 15 years? I breathe in deeply, and without a conscious thought, raise my arms up over my head.
Briefly.

Fear Stalks You at Your Vacation House

Bad news for some very privileged people, as rumors spread that urban gang members are currently on their way to exclusive east coast resorts.There is reportedly a gang truce after some of the summer's priciest get-aways have been partitioned up to keep the peace.
Crips to Nantucket, Bloods to Martha's Vineyard. Biker gangs have already left Provincetown after they could find no more flamboyant drag queens to beat mercilessly.
Other gangs focused on the Hamptons, but left after they could not find a decent table at the hot restaurant of the season, and Michael Musto ridiculed their "passe" fashion sense. The Latin Kings arrived, but were widely mistaken for "the help," and ordered around by society matrons.
There will always be a Maine.

Surf's Up!

The one thing the media has neglected to point out in the 2005 tsunami in South Asia is that it wasn't all negative. In fact, for a few lucky surfers, it was the gnarlyist, bitchinist wave ever.
We're talking about a tasty ride that lasted hundreds of miles. There were a few obstructions, like entire villages and drowned children everywhere, but a decent surfer could easily cut through and around them.
"Everyone else was fleeing in utter terror. I just looked at that killer wall of water and said to it, 'hey, bud, let's party,'" recalled longtime boarder Sam Sunshine.
Sunshine said he sometimes gets teary over the memory, especially its toll on the beach bars so popular with Australians.
"All those Pina Coladas, wiped out in an instant," he said, shaking his head sadly.
Sunshine said that he sometimes builds a beach fire, and younger surfers will gather around to hear tales of "the big one."
"Dudes, you just don't know what you missed," he tells them. "It was totally awesome."