& I thought the notecard questions were insolent...

Here is another awesome email from one of my lil brainiacs. This person actually sent this to me twice, 1st as a reply to a mass email I sent a week ago & the second time as a stand-alone message. Neither time did /she actually sign it. In case you are wondering why s/he calls me "Don," it is because I often sign my emails "Don Samuel"--i.e. it is a title & not my 1st name. I'm not sure this person knows this or not. Please understand that this is a student who didn't come to the midterm (nor send an email or call ahead) and just popped back into class the following Wednesday. I offered to let him/her take a make-up on Friday, s/he agreed. When I arrived Friday, guess what s/he was sitting around doing at this desk in the Foreign Languages Office? If you guessed "studying," You're Dead Wrong. S/he was Texting. TEXTING!! Needless to say, s/he was CLEARLY not ready to take the midterm, so I allowed him/her until Monday to prepare. This is also someone who hasn't passed ANYTHING besides one quiz (and I think I was probably drunk when i graded it, so it's most likely a mistake on my part than studying on his/hers). S/he scraped by on the midterm & decided NOT to drop the class (against my advice). So now, without any further ado, comes this (file it under: give an inch & they try to take a mile)

Hey Don

  Check it out. I just got word that I have a doctors (doctor's, you mean) appointment for Monday at 2:30pm. (Our class is at 2:00pm) Its (It's or it is) really difficult for me to get these appoinments so I have to go when they fit me in. I know we have a test on Monday and I am trying to do better then the stunt I pulled during the exam and let you know as soon as I know. (Have YOU ever heard of a doctor's office that gave out appointments on Sunday??) I will be able to provide a doctors excuse from their office. If your (you're or you are) not cool with letting me make up the test I respect that as you have already done it once (actually twice, if you think about it) but I want you to let me know the verdict. (No, you really don't) I resent (re-sent, you mean?) it cause (because, you mean) I did not change the subject in the reply email and I did not want you to think I was that lazy. (TOO LATE)

This is me again. Le Sigh. I haven't answered this yet. I would appreciate some suggestions here. I am completely at a loss. Every time I try, I just end up typing "PLEASE DROP THIS CLASS & STOP MAKING ME GRADE THIS NONSENSE YOU ARE NOT EVEN TRYING TO STUDY" or some variant thereof.....

"In My Skin"--A Movie Review. (Spoilers)

"Dans ma peau" ("In My Skin") is a French film from the mind of Marina de Van, who wrote, directed and starred in this horrific tale of self-annihilation. Before I go any further let me state this clearly: PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM. I cannot in good conscience advise any friend/foe/stranger who stumbles across this blog to see this. I watched it several days ago & quite frankly have been trying to forget it ever since. I watched it at home on an average size TV, I don't believe I would have made it through watching it in a cinema.

De Van is the French 21st-century cinema Sylvia Plath, and even goes so far as to name her protagonist "Esther" (If you haven't read  "The Bell Jar," Please do) a 20something who goes to a house party with a friend/co-worker where she wanders off into the woods & cuts her leg quite severely on a piece of scrap metal. She doesn't notice it until much later, after she gets back to the party & even then she goes out for coffee afterwards before seeking medical attention. The doctor (played by de Van's brother, Adrien) is shocked that she didn't notice it--as are her bourgeois, older boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas) and the aforementioned Sandrine (Léa Drucker). Esther is fascinated by the cut and one day at her market research job she has a report to revise on a strict deadline and a terrible case of writer's block. What does our heroine do? Surely not pop a Vyvance & power through. Instead, she heads for the building's boiler room where she takes something sharp out of a tool box & proceeds to cut up on her stitches. Somehow she manages to not bleed to death & the next time we see her, she is at her desk, typing a lot faster than I am now.  She later goes to Sandrine at her desk (who is busy & bitchy--how French!) and asks her to go out for a coffee. When Sandrine rejects her offer & says she's busy Esher tells her about her self-mutliation in a puzzled yet elated tone. By the time Sandrine has caught on to how serious it is, Esther clearly feels rejected and rescinds the coffee invite & heads back to her desk.
As the film progresses we watch as Esther becomes increasingly disconnected from her body, turning it into an erotic object which she is compelled to cut. The film is shot mostly in a very naturalistic style, but there is one scene so starkly surrealistic as to be Cronenburg-esque. She is being groomed for a big position (in favor of Sandrine) and attends a business dinner with her boss and some clients. As they exchange comments on various European capitals where they have lived, Miss Crazy decides to gulp down several glasses of wine and proceeds to perceive her forearm as a disconnected prosthetic that she can't control. So she screws it back in & under the table, stabs this thing. Yes, at dinner. With people sitting around, not even noticing what she is up to. She is quite pointedly rude to them, only giving simple, brief answers to questions and when the dinner is over Susy Slicer is off to a hotel where we are treated to her continued mutilation as an erotic act. There is a shot where she is laying back, holding her leg over her face, cutting  into it & letting the blood just flow all over her face that positively made me nauseous.
Afterwards, she stages a car accident and Vincent, somehow allows himself to hope in vain that she isn't lying about the whole thing.
By the end of the film, she is on her way to work, but instead goes to another hotel room, with a Polaroid camera and a knife & we just know what is coming next. Interestingly, the camera angles change to show us just how disconnected she is--we are seeing things from her POV but through a split-screen that would have done Brian de Palma proud--as she cuts & photographs herself. Around this point, the DVD I had stopped working & I have never been so relieved in my whole life!! I tried to watch it on my computer, but Praise Be, I will never have to see the end! Of course I know by the end this ho dies--there is no room for any hope here.  I was pleased that the commentary was also subtitled & my French is strong enough not to need them for the dialogue, so I was able to read what the director said without having to watch this nightmare twice.

Reading over this, I am struck again by the parallels with Plath. "Lady Lazarus" springs to mind:
"The peanut-crunching crowd/Shoves in to see/Them unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease." Although I can't imagine anyone wanting any popcorn while watching this horror show, I think you get my drift here.
Just in case you missed what I was saying earlier, PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS. This is far worse than Human Centipede. This woman is scarier than Freddy, Jason, or anyone else & has given me nightmares you would not believe. I am only hoping that now that I have written about this, I will not have this awful thing on my mind any longer. I truly hope no one else has to go through this ordeal.

No Fats, No Fems??? Bitch, Please!

So I understand I am not the first heavyset sissy to complain about the so-called "Adonis Factor." For the 2 straight ppl who will read this blog & not be familiar with this term, in gay personals (whether print or online) you will often see ads that contain the phrase "No fats, No fems" or something equivalent. Usually these profiles read something along the lines of "VGL athletic, masc seeking same" with varying degrees of fervency about the respect for the masculine paradigm. "No Nellies" "Don't be a fag" "your a man--act like it."

Faggots like this kill me. (& PS Yes I get to use this word. When you have had to clean this word in white spraypaint off your mailbox & the blacktop street in front of your house, so can you) Are we all so far into this case of institutionalized Stockholm Syndrome that we fetishize our oppressor & utterly reject ANY behavior that deviates from the ironclad rules of masculinity? Is it masochism on the part of the bottoms & revenge on the part of the tops?

Needless to say, these are not the guys I hook up with. I might be able to pull off some butch fraud via chat but honestly if one of these dudes came over here the jig would be up b4 I said a word. After all , when you reach the top of my steps the 1st thing you see is a picture of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. And as you look around there is a window dedicated to WW in my kitchen as well as several altars to Hello Kitty, not to mention the set of Smiley Face knicknacks on my computer desk in front of my bed. So the kitsch factor alone of my house would completely give away the game so to speak.

But let's get down to brass tacks: It really doesn't take all that much work to pass for straight: most of the time it just means you have to speak as if you had a lobotomy in words of 2 or less syllables. "Sup bro?" "aight man," sometimes while wearing a baseball cap at a jaunty angle. I often feel like sending these faggots a message like: "I don't know if you know this, but no matter how thug/butch/masc you may think you are, there is nothing butch about suckin dick, Stupid. If it wasn't for visible sissies & drag/trans ppl opening the door for ALL OF US, this website would be ILLEGAL." But then again, I'm on these cruisy websites too. I guess you have to expect & accept a certain amount of this sort of shallowness in the online gay community--which is really the only facet of the gay community I see lately. Well, that & the Logo Channel.

It's strange, when I was 18 or so & just coming out, I think the only thing I really knew about myself was that I was gay--mainly because it seemed like no one in school ever let me forget it--so I completely threw myself into the shark pit that is the so-called gay community (read: Bar Scene) here in NOLA. I was out at the corner of Bourbon & St Ann practically every night of the week for YEARS. & when I wasn't out there, I was planning my next trip. I found it wasn't what I expected: no gay fairy godmothers, no one special guy who caught my eye & won my heart, really just a lot of other kids and a few older people (AIDS killed so much of the generation before me, all of the people who could have--should have been our role models were taken away from us) and all of us were on something or things. From booze to cocaine to X to LSD to Special K to the pharm cabinet & any & every combination thereof. All of us looking for something & usually afraid to say what it really was, so we'd substitute "I wanna bump" for "I want someone who will love & respect me & empower me to live my own truth."

But I stayed there. I found that the "no fats, no fems" rule doesn't apply if you stay out late enough or get high enough. I won't say I didn't have fun (I certainly had more sorts of fun than the law allows) or make a few good friends along the way. But for a long time now, gay bars and debauched excess don't have the appeal they used to. So I guess I'll stick to the cruisy websites & the dwindling hope that one day the body fascists will understand that we are all more than just labels. Not just masc or fem or top or bottom or dom or sub or whatever. As long as we adhere to this artificial standard of what makes a man a man we are all dimished.

Fetishizing so-called "real men" (who, by definition want women & not men) is based on the misogynistic idea that whatever is male is good & whatever is female is bad. It is a symptom of an ingrained self-hatred. When we find a "real man" who will deign to have some sexual contact with us, it generally ends one of 2 ways: 1. After a while he gets tired of it & goes back to his girlfriend/wife or 2 we sabotage it in some way because we find ourselves disgusted by him on some level for not being "manly" enough. Sometimes there is option 3--where we become the revolving door out of the closet & then Mr. Straight Man starts sucking every dick in the Zip Code, but there you have it. The story always ends up the same, with you sittin up late in front of your computer, drinkin Bluberi Stoli & cranberry, feeling sorry for yourself & blogging....

Introducing: The Jesus Junkies.

I guess you could call this pt 1 of "Crazy Hoes I Used To Know"

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I met Danny & Mikey, the original Jesus Junkies, way back around December  1996, when they rode with me on the first of a series of legendary Mexican twirls (all of which ended w no one makin money because of our mutual addictions, but that's another set of tragic stories).  They were from similar middle-class white backgrounds, although Danny was from South Louisiana & Mikey was from Pennsylvania someplace. Danny was the "pretty" one: naturally tan skin & deep brown eyes with sort of chestnut hair in a wedge cut, straight white teeth & a set of dimples to die for. Mikey was skinny with dark brown hair & sort of close set eyes with a fairer complexion, as well as a rather, shall we say, unfortunate nose (he later got this fixed). Mikey was definitely the sassy one, while Danny tended to be sweet & cute most of the time. My friend Matty later identified this paradigm in gay couples (whether lovers or not) as "The Bitch & The Bait."

At any rate, one night after we got back from Mexico, Mikey asked me for a ride to a hotel. He told me he'd met this guy named Ron at a bar who had some X pills he wanted Mikey to try out. Mikey told me he wanted me to come in with him just in case this guy turned out to be crazy. Well the guy did turn out to be crazy, but little did I know the depth of the madness until later. So we get up into Ron's hotel room & try out these tabs. We stayed up in the room, with Ron making like an Amway style drug dealing recruitment speech directed towards Mikey. The pills made us feel good & definitely got us both on board with him. As we got to know Ron, we found out that he was originally from a very religious background. I noticed he had a tendancy to sort of preach about people he formed opinions about. Before long, Danny & Mikey were living with Ron in a big house Uptown some place as the money started rolling in. I remember visiting them at that house a few times & Ron & the boys liked to take psychoactive drugs like Special K, LSD & X & read the Bible. I couldn't see the sense in all of this. I enjoyed all the drug bit but I really didn't think it was time for a prayer meeting. My reluctance to take part in this sacrilege led Ron to decide that I was possessed by demons. On more than one occasion he and/or the boys tried to get all serious with me & give me some sort of  "exorcism." According to them on one of these occasions (I think we were in the House of Luv, actually) my eyes turned red & a light bulb exploded. Let me stress to you that such a thing never actually happened.  What actually did happen was one night I was out upstairs at the Bourbon Pub, dancing on one of the boxes waving around this riding crop we'd bought in Mexico. I'm sure we were all on a bunch of drugs, & I'm not exactly sure what Danny & Mikey saw but they were staring at me as I was dancing & then they dragged me out on to the balcony & tried to tell me that I was directing the crowd's energy in a malicious way with the riding crop & I had to give it to them at once. I said, you gals are insane & tried to get up off the bench where we were sitting to go back inside but no. They had been standing in front of me & each one of them grabbed an arm & a leg of mine & pinned me down to this bench, saying things like "Come out of Him. I cast you out in the name of Jesus." Please understand this is like Saturday Night on Bourbon Street at Prime Time. There are like at least 20-30 ppl around us on this balcony, not to mention security guards & the whole time I remember thinking "This cannot possibly be happening. If all these people were really seeing this some1 would surely intercede."

Evidently Not.

I remember these deranged hookers pulling & tugging at me & berating me & somehow I managed to stand up & not let them throw me off the balcony. I don't really remember how this particular night ended (they really didn't seem to ever end, they blur together so quickly) but I know that we had a series of encounters after this, both business & personal. It all came to a head one day when I told Ron to take his bunk pills & phony religion out of my house or I was gonna call a cop & he pounced on me & the boys held me down while he punched me a few times. They all took off right afterwards & I filed a complaint with the police. They didn't know about all of that when they called me up the next day, all apologetic & wanting to give me some free drugs to make up for how mean they were. I told them to come over & called 911 when I saw their car pull up. I let them in but kept my distance with a pair of scissors hidden up my jacket sleeve until the cops got there & I had them all arrested for assault. They told the cops that the tabs in their pockets were ginseng pills & the cops just dropped them in the grass next to my place & put them in the patrol car. I never went to court over it, so I suppose the charges got dropped.

I remember picking up all those pills & having to go to the Zoolu rave that year, feeling like a battered housewife, wearing my big sunglasses to cover up the black eyes w the busted blood vessels in my eye. I'm pretty sure I made big money at that party, but Who Can Say?  Eventually they all got out of jail and before long the 3 of them had a falling out and Ron tried to recruit me. I was all in & then dodged paying him. I think it is only in New Orleans you can get away with some of this stuff. I'm pretty sure in NYC or something you would get shot over this. I guess I counted on him believing in "Thou Shalt Not Kill" or something.

Anyway, Ron eventually left town to go back to Lake Charles or something & the Jesus Junkies remained. They eventually found another pastor, Dick Crayford, but that's another story for another time....

I really couldn't make this up....

Here is another in the continuing saga of improbable emails I receive from students:

Hey Prof. Ray!

I totally understand your policy when it comes to guessing on quizzes, I can't blame you for not feeling one is worthy of your time to write out the correct answers if one did not attempt to even bother learning the material... but,... i had missed that class when we were reviewing the correct answers for the quiz. I had called a couple of other students but they are unable to give them to me. However, I was just wondering if i could be an acceptation for this one time.

I just need the correct answers for section 3 of the last quiz (the ones on nationalities) AND I PROMISE TO DO AWESOME ON THE TEST!  

-hit me back :P

 

An acceptation? Really? I don't even know what this means. Oh well, at least she didn't ask what notecards are.

More Incredible Emails...

Here is what I sent my students:

Attached you will find the Review for our mid-term, which will be held this Friday. As much as I really don't think I should have to do this, I will offer 5 bonus points to those of you who turn in your notecards to me right before the test. That way I can verify you have not just handed me blanks or some cards for another class while you take the exam. I will hand them back to you when you turn in your exam.

Here is what I got back:

Hello

Do we have to turn in blank notecard with our name or what?

This student did not even sign the email, It's not that I have omitted it.

Then I got this:

What are notecards ? What do I write in these notecards?

Thank you.

???????????????? I seriously do not even know how to answer these.

Thank God For Geese!!!

OK I promise this is my last re-post. This was right at the beginning of my medical trauma: The Dreaded Mangina. Originally posted on March 29, 2006....

Around Sunday, March 5th I started experiencing flu-like symptoms, marked by an especially high fever. I made it to school the next day to take a test, & went home still sweating. Sometime Monday night I started to notice a hard, painful lump on my backside. I went to school a bit early the next day to work on some homework, but found it was profoundly difficult to sit properly. I went to my 1st class, turned in my homework, explained my situation to my prof, & went home, still feeling feverish. Tuesday night, I felt as if my fever broke, but the mass in my ass was only getting bigger & more painful. I got dropped off at the ER the next day. It took the triage nurse approximately 10 mins to admit me, once she had a look at my vital signs (temp-104.3, BP 170/120, pulse 155) & the now much larger, red, painful mass in my right cheek.
I've had a pilonidal cyst for about 10 years now, & evidently the infection was tunnelling into my ass like crazy, leading to a staph infection. The doctors were very concerned & admitted me to a room upstairs almost at once. They operated on me the next night, slicing into my cheek & putting in a drain to try to get rid of the infection, but I guess that wasn't enough, bc Saturday they operated again, this time slicing a bit longer & deeper. My vital signs normalized & I was released on Tuesday.
However, they couldn't sew me back up without risking an ancillary infection so they gave me instructions to keep gauze packed in the wound until it heals, changing it twice a day. I can't do this on my own, so I've had to move back to Hahnville, & will be staying out here with my grandma for at least another 6-8 weeks. It doesn't hurt like it used to, but it's still not comfortable to sit down without my donut cushion.
The best part about being sick like this is that my baby sis, Diana, came from Virginia for a surprise visit, which did a lot to lift my flagging spirits.
The worst part about being sick like this is having to have this 18 cm long by 6cm deep by 6cm across wound packed with gauze & wearing Depends undergarments to keep it all in place. Well, that & having my grandmother pack the gauze into my butt cheek at least 3 times a day.

Oh, the Glamour!


This is current me again. I really do thank God every day for Geese. I have no idea what would have happened to me if she hadn't been there. It really doesn't bear thinking about.