I wanna be a Casalinga…
31 Days of Brannan – Day 3
Today’s Playlist – ‘Casalinga’
(“Housewife” in Italia)
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So why the Italian version? Well, being a classically trained opera singer I sing quite a bit in Italian. I just loved that he sang it to an Italian audience in their own language. Such a lovely gesture.
To be honest, I wasn’t so sure what to pick this time around. Not because I ran out of steam about all things Brannan. No where near that – I swear. I can wax on about Jay’s body of work for quite some time and not tire of the subject matter (and I say that will every ounce of ‘non-stalker’ voice I can put to it). Just a very sincere fanboy.
No, I chose this because there is literally so many ways I can take this whole endeavor – my 31 Days of Brannan. You see, Brannan’s work touches on so many elements of a shared journey that as gay men we sort of have to work on making our own way. Not that everyone on the planet doesn’t have to do that to some degree, but for gay men, we have the whole pervasive perception by the straight world that we are swimming upstream – we push against the norm, we are outside the mainstream. Reminders at every turn of how much we are not like everyone else. Yet, we often have to use their terms, their metaphors to explain our world. It can be both challenging as it can be uplifting when we can draw parallels between our commonality with the mainstream world.
My hubby railed about this just today – two beefy looking guys getting married in one of those states that just got the ‘go-ahead’ to git ‘er done. That wasn’t what rattled the hubby’s cage. No, what did was that they were there in their flannel shirts (they looked like lumberjacks – big bear kinda men, but one of them had a typical wedding bouquet of flowers in his hand with long flowing ribbons). This irked my husband in more ways than one. Not because he wouldn’t deny anyone who wanted to do that, but because he felt that it was probably driven by gays having to pick up the definition of what was supposed to take place from their straight counterparts. Why were we defining ourselves by those standards? Aren’t we supposed to be defining it for ourselves? What our marriage equality will truly look like and how we’ll take those elements and make them our own. That’s what he was speaking to, and I got it. I did. But to each his own, I say.
This is a recurring motif throughout Housewife. The duality of wanting those ‘straight’ married bliss concepts but constantly challenging the listener to grapple with why a man would want to be a housewife and that there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it.
Simply put, there isn’t.
Even if the commonplace events Jay speaks of within the piece, mirror the experiences of our straight married counterparts. I just LOVE that Jay does this within his work. The double entendres, the witty bon mots, the dry sense of humor at times. I’ve always thought of him as a modern day bard. I don’t bandy that word around loosely either.
Brannan is a bard. Plain and simple. And I count myself lucky to live at a time when someone like him can come along and do what he does so brilliantly. To revel in the moment – as he creates.
I had the same giddiness back in the late seventies when I heard Donna Summer was gonna release another big selling album. As a gay teen boy I was all about Donna back in the day (withhold judgement as I met her and those horrible rumors about what was attributed to her were completely false – she was a very decent human being). Anyway, the giddy feeling I used to get whenever Donna was gonna drop some new project is EXACTLY what I feel when Jay announces he’s got something on the horizon. Total gay boy freak session for at least an hour – heady, and simply happy that something wonderful is about to come my way.
What I think is bang over the top in Housewife is that it works on so many levels. It holds up the banality of a relationship in a new romantic light (I mean, who really has that romantic gushy feeling about washing dishes – yet in Jay’s vision it is simply rendered and you can’t think of a more beautiful expression of devotion to the man you love. Unless of course, it’s doing his laundry which Jay is more than happy to acknowledge as an option on the table) — that even the most mundane of things have a beauty all on their own. It speaks of hopes and dreams, of sharing meals and a future. Things that I know I pondered myself from the time I could acknowledge my attraction to boys. I wanted those things in my life. Housewife’s greatest accomplishment is the simplicity in it’s threaded revelations of what it means to be in a loving and supportive relationship. One which when he reaches, you’re there. When you falter, he’s there.
The beauty of Brannan’s prose in this is that each element is simplistic and comforting all at the same time. It speaks (to my way of thinking at any rate)
Sure there was the whole sense of adventure in the relationship. That’s always the sexy part – or so you think if you’ve never been in one. What I love about Jay’s take on it is that its the longevity that the song speaks to – how valued those dreams are. Yeah, I definitely had those thoughts. Mostly it was the being close, of breathing him in. The simplest things were held far more magical qualities to them than any of the wildly erotic times. Okay, maybe that was not wholly true. I mean sex was definitely an important part of a new relationship – especially as a young man who sought the affections of another boy.
I wanted so many things in a man that I didn’t feel I had. Things that I admired in other boys (usually of the straight variety). Of course in my day if you were gay it was automatically assumed you were about as fey as they come. I never did fit into that mold, but I wasn’t a football playing hetero-acting stud either. Then again, I never really liked the whole ‘straight-acting’ moniker. Why is it that we have to appear to be anything other than what we are.
I think that this is what is at the emotive core of Housewife. Love that simply is. Love that endures, love to strive and hope for, to dream about and to push toward achieving.
Though I think it is in the simple repeated question of “what’s so wrong with that?” that is one of the most powerful tools within the song. Gently intoning and asking the audience to wrap your head around why making such a simple admission that you would want to take on the role of a Housewife holds no negativity, indeed it is probably one of the greatest gestures of love to find the exuberance in doing laundry, making guacamole or hell, even the desire to have his baby (which in this day and age may not be too far off a prospect).
This is one of the songs that truly gets me misty eyed when I hear it. It has every element of what I feel about my life with my own husband. There is no one else I’d rather wash dishes with or for, no one who I wouldn’t want to wash his clothes. His needs always come before my own. As mine do with him. He’s proven that to me time and again. So yeah, Housewife is a brilliant song, encapsulating and distilling for me all of the things I hold dear in my own relationship with my husband of 20 years. He is my best friend, the love of my life and the life of my love.
Yet it is Jay’s last words of Housewife that haunt me terribly, that never fail to make me a bit teary eyed. Knowing how Jay has commented in various live video performances and youtube postings about how lonely he feels at times, it tears me up that someone who brings such an emotive and creative light to my life via his work hasn’t found some of this for himself. I don’t know Jay. Being a performer of the stage since I was 8 and now coming up on my half-centennial mark, that is a number of years to put on a face and sell yourself to the masses. So I have to concede that I don’t know how much of his life is show and how much is an actual representation. My takeaway is that Jay is incredibly honest (insofar as he is willing to share – which seems to be quite a bit) about some of the intimate details (without being salacious) of his life. If that is the case, then I do hold out the day when he might alter the lines to let his audience know he has someone special and worthy of his love. Maybe even changing those last moments to reflect a change in status.
For someone who gives so much of himself, of sharing what he does with his social media accounts, I would be over the moon if there came a time when he would have what he speaks of in Housewife (if that’s what he truly wants). His work brings such an emotive and rich core into my world – substantiating and giving a creative voice to things I concern myself with, if only to know I’m not crazy, what I want is what Jay seems to echo – what everyone else seems to want.
Love, friendship, devotion – getting as much as you put into it and if you’re lucky, you just might get more than you bargained for. And life is sweet when you do.
The Always, Then & Now Tour…
Sidebar: I bought my Deluxe Package from Jay Brannan’s store for the tour he’s embarking on now. The cost of the deluxe package is $40 and you get quite a bit for it. There are other packages as well. But that isn’t why I did it. I did it because I truly feel indebted to this man of words and music. I am enriched by his musical musings and experiences. I am emboldened to discover that I am not alone in my dreams and fears. And for that I will always support him and do what I can to spread the word.
The deluxe tour package from Jay Brannan’s merchandise store – get this or many other offerings from his site.
Please check out his site with links for his upcoming shows. I am definitely a late comer to the Brannan bandwagon whenever he pulls through my city. But now that I am going this year, I am making it a goal never to miss when he swings through town. I hope you take advantage of the opportunity as well. Also be sure to check out his web store at the following link.
Jay’s Website – jaybrannan.com
The Half-Boyfriend… we’ve all been there…
31 Days of Brannan… Day 2
Today’s Playlist: Half-Boyfriend
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So here’s the song that crystallized it for me. It made me a bonafide Brannan-ite (?), Jay-Fan (??), I’m gonna need help with that one. There’s gotta be a marketing moniker for Jay’s fans out there – The Jay Babes? I’ll keep thinking on it.
Anywho- Half-Boyfriend.
Yeah, man or woman, we’ve all been there. The guy you can’t possibly believe you’ve hooked up with but he’s hella hot in his own bad boy way, treats you like a second class citizen at times, but damned if he isn’t either great in the sack or will bust your balls with some romantic (and completely unforeseen) gesture that just makes you have one of those ‘well fuck me running’ moments. So you give in yet again, even if your brain keeps screaming behind that thick pane of glass that separates your head from your heart telling you to give him the boot but you just can’t cause he’s one hell of a number and the other guys and gals are all thinking how you so scored with that one.
Am I right?
Now, I can’t say with any certainty that that is what Jay experienced (I mean, I don’t know the man, personally) but the song had enough common truth in it that that’s what I took away from it.
For me his name was Ron. And lord did he fuck up my life for a while. He was the son of a friend that my mom knew back when she was a kid in her old neighborhood. Small world right? I mean the guy’s family moved away when my mom was still young. But somehow fate had a hand in it and Ron turned out to be gay and so did I – what were the chances of that? Say nothing of his finding his way to me?
Stupidly, I took it as a sign. The universe was saying we should be together… (yeah, not so much).
We did a lot of shit that was technically illegal (how we got away with it I’ll never know). I was in my late teens (just outta high school) and just yearning for some man on man love. Ron was energetic, he was built, he was – okay, he was a little quirky when it came to the bedroom (at least at that stage in my life). Ron was far more sexually adventurous than I was at that stage but I went along for the ride (save the dumb-ass remarks ’cause you ain’t thinkin’ anything I haven’t thought or said to myself). So I got into shit I probably shoulda saved until I was a bit more mature. But it didn’t go that way. I wanted the bad boy adventure he promised – it was wild, it was certainly dangerous, and it was flat out stupid.
Ron and I were really rarely on the same page – probably why Jay’s lines from Half-Boyfriend hit me over the emotive head rather hard:
I could give a million reasons
Why we should not be friends
Our moods change like the seasons
My mood ends your mood begins and
You’re a tease, you’re a cockblocker
You’re a loud mouth bitch, and a big talker,
But that’s okay.
You’ll grow up someday.
They are certainly what I latched onto and took away as ‘preach it, brotha…’ because in those few lines he took me right back to those heady and wild and completely stupid days of young love.
Oh, and a sidebar here – I should come clean about my fangirl stalker write up of the day before. I tend to write with tongue firmly planted in cheek. So while I have nothing but complete admiration and am often awestruck by Brannan’s prose, I am hardly the wild and nut-ball cray-cray I prattled on about in yesterday’s post. I was just having a bit of fun. I can be off that way sometimes. Partially why I get it when Jay riffs esoterically on his YouTube channel. When I am in the doldrums and can’t figure out how to get the creative juices flowing I just listen to a few of his mental musings and it’s like splashing cool water all over my tired brain. If brains could gain any benefits from such an exercise. But, well, hopefully you get my meanin’…
So back to Ron the bad-boy Half-Boyfriend in my life:
So I finally got smart, or should I say my friends and family got smarter than me at that point and made me see the light. This after a bad drug induced moment where Ron went completely off the rails and I had to, with the assistance of his parents who were then living in Seattle (we were in San Diego) have him committed to County Mental Health so he could recuperate and get some much needed help. Turns out there were a whole lot of issues I didn’t want to even look at then that came out in the wash from that little drug induced scene.
Looking back on it now, I just shake my head and thank the universe that I smartened up. In a way, I kind of thank Ron for being the whack job that he was. I got my bad boy phase through early on in life. Which led me to the man who I would spend the next ten years of my life with (and no, that’s not the hubby of 20 years that I am married to now). But more on boyfriend number 2 when we get to the post about the song that reminds me of him. I’ll let you all know when that is.
Now for a completely esoteric moment from Jay – I love it when he just does something fearless… never fails to make me smile.
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JAY’S TOUR DATES – Please check them out and catch his show in your area…
31 Days of Jay – Robbing Me Blind…
Kicking off 31 Days of Brannan…
Robbing Me Blind
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Disclaimer – Okay, first off – I can be a bit of a fanboy when it comes to Jay Brannan. No, strike that – I’m more of a teen gay boy with a darkly amorous affection for my pop hero. No wait, it’s worse than that. I am a gushing teenaged Japanese Hentai fangirl when it comes to Jay Brannan. But it’s compartmentalized. I swear. I am a happily (ahem, older) married gay man (it’s even legal) whose hubby just shakes his head but allows me my teen-girl giddiness over all things Brannan.
And there’s good reason too.
You see, I am a musician (classically trained so my genre of choice is not the same as Jay’s but I’m cool with that. In fact, I am better than cool with it.) Jay is my creative escape. He’s been my go-to when I want to become inspired. And aside from his music (or maybe because of it) I have come to appreciate him in the best possible light – I mean, he’s one sexy guy (why hasn’t someone snatched that up has got to be one of the biggest damned mysteries in life). But aside from the way the camera obviously loves him, Mr. Brannan has a brilliant mind and is an incredible wordsmith. As an author known to do a bit of word smithing of my own, Jay is bang on brilliant with the prose. Nothing short of it.
So why the 31 days of all things Brannan?
Well. I suppose I should fess up here and explain how Jay’s world of all things darkly amorous (“the constant stream of longing” as E. M. Forester put it so brilliantly in Maurice) entered my world.
I found Jay as a reference on some blog back in 2008 for up and coming out gay artists. I was in a particularly bored mood with the musical offerings out there. I mean as gay artists went I had Levi Kraus (who I still love immensely). and Ivri Lieder (another fave), but then I happened upon Jay’s first offerings and a small write up on some blog that I can’t even find any more extolling the amazing gifts and talents that Mr. Brannan had at his disposal. The write-up so intrigued me that I immediately went out and bought whatever I could find online from him (which if I remember at the time was precious little – I think one album (the fiery and brilliant goddamned) and maybe a single or two. So I paid (yes, paid – because as a fellow artist and musician I just can’t see my way to NOT support them monetarily for their endeavors) for whatever I could get my digital hands on.
And then, horror of horrors – they languished for three years unplayed. {Insert mental and emotive flogging here – I still do it to this day over this incredibly stupid period in my life). I liken it to being a parched man working his way out of the desert and being offered the tallest glass of cool crystal clear water and then setting it on the counter and not taking so much as a sip. Yeah, dip-shit moron over here: party of one.
Anyway – so there was that ostensibly bleak artistic period where I immersed myself in my classical world of operas and the like and Jay languished (paid for, mind you) on my iPod, iPhone, and iTunes.
I was living in San Diego at the time and that part of California can suck any artistry right out of a person. So flash forward three years (can it be a flash anything if it takes 3 years?). I relocated with the hubby, daughter and granddaughter to San Francisco (where I truly belong). I’m in the gym and I had put together a song list of out gay artists to keep me motivated as I did my workout because we’re gay and it’s the law.
So of course I had Jay lumped in with the techno and dance stuff (I think by now I had a plethora of gay men crooning in my ear one way or another). If you were gay, a male then you got on the playlist – it was just that simple.
And then ‘Housewife‘ played and I simply stopped… (I wasn’t on the treadmill or that could’ve been disastrous).
But the music just caught me and I was riveted to a world that I had grown up in. Here was a song that spoke of dreams and desires that I had worked my whole life to achieve and it was as if he’d plucked them right out of my existence. I know, a common truth when done right can do this in a song. Musician myself, remember? So I get it but it was that I was completely in my groove of I think Colton Ford or Johnny McGovern or hell, it might’ve been Jason Walker wailing like the righteous black woman he so wants to be (you go Jason… I am still a fan). The point was that I was in dance land groove from hell when Jay’s Housewife kicked me square in the emotive rubber parts. I remember sitting down on a weight bench and just listened to the song.
It was a transformative moment in that, within those words I suddenly found the passion to write some of my own.
Now I have always been the type of artist that doesn’t feel lessened by the greatness of someone else’s talent. Indeed, instead I am inspired to achieve other things that I may have only mused about inwardly, never giving them any hope of solidity in my life. But Housewife changed that. I found I wanted to add my own voice to the gay man’s journey for love and acceptance.
So I started to practice my craft, started honing in on what I wanted to accomplish – how I wanted to develop my characters and watch them take root and grow. While Jay had music as his venue I was turning to writing novels as my path. And words matter, they have weight, they have purpose. I read voraciously any and all things I could get my hands on (so thankful that all of the books can live on one e-reader device).
Jay’s music became the soundtrack for that. His YouTube channel gave me emotive inspiration to try other things. And for that I am truly grateful. And at my age, turning the train around ain’t such an easy thing to do. Old dog’s and all that…
Anyway, I get a big ol’ shit eating grin whenever one artist inspires another. That’s such a cool thing when it happens and everyone can admit it and accept it for the great gift it is and grow and (hopefully) prosper. Well, it is in my book anyway.
So… Rob Me Blind.
Here is the crux of why I am focusing on this song as my first of 31 days of Brannan. Rob Me Blind is a brilliant album in it’s own right. It’s thought provoking, it’s definitely emotive, and profound in how Jay imbues with such clarity and precision the darker qualities and aspects of love and loss. It would be simplistic to say that Jay’s work borders on maudlin. I don’t see it that way at all. Sure there are some dark things permeating every aspect of it. But in that I see such hope and striving for acceptance – and in this age of marriage equality where so many of us are literally fighting to establish legal protections and hopefully acceptance of our relationships, Brannan’s recent works are completely evocative of the time.
Rob Me Blind is also special to me in that it gave me the gift of my main character in my current story that I’ve been slaving away on for the past six months.
Rob Me Blind was playing in the car as I drove back from picking up lunch for the family as I sat at the intersection to get onto Hwy 101 – I suddenly had a vision of a young teenaged boy, out, gay and terrified to be noticed. Keeping to the shadows in high school because that was how he figured he survived – if no one noticed him at all. Only he never thought in a million years that the star quarterback of his high school football team had been eyeing him for the past two years in school – too afraid to come close, to seek him out. And when he does, Elliot (my shy out gay kid) is not the same ever again.
His boyfriend is magical to him, and he doesn’t know why he says that he is Elliot’s and Elliot is his. He thinks he’ll get through it and enjoy it while it lasts – always an eye to when it will fall apart (never really accepting that when Marco (the QB) says it’s real he means just that). I wanted the jock in the story for once to be the solid one – the one who never wavers, and the out gay kid to be the doubter. Rob Me Blind had a couple of lines in the song that completely distilled that for me. That song gave my first novel it’s emotive core.
From there out the story developed quite quickly. It took me a number of months to hone and whittle down to what it is today. Rob Me Blind gave me something more than entertainment. It gave me these two boy’s voices. Voices I had to put down on digital paper. Voices that sprang from those words of another brilliant writer. Voices I couldn’t deny. So in many respects, my Marco and Elliot owe their literary lives to another artist altogether. And for that I am deeply grateful. Whenever I needed a emotive recharge – this song provided it and got me through.
Writing can be a very painful, cathartic process (even when it’s fiction) – probably because we write what we know (if we’re smart about it) and that can be a very intimidating prospect. You’re putting your shit out there for others to read and comment on – and that can feel very daunting to the point were you can become discouraged to go on. It’s frightening, it’s dangerous in that as you write you discover things long buried and tucked away. But somehow, Jay’s rich tapestry of words (particularly on this album) got me through. I even have Elliot as a fanboy of Jay’s in the book. It just seemed fitting when you have so many teenaged kids (okay mostly girls, but the gay boys, if they were anything like I was back then, are in there I am sure would’ve been just as enamored with someone like Jay who spoke to them and of their dreams and nightmares). So I get to live out my teenaged dreams vicariously through Elliot. And I get to say ‘thank you’ to Jay for being the incredible and brilliant artist he is.
As an older gay man I am comforted in seeing such brilliance and poise come in one amazing package. It gives me hope that our collective gay history is in such capable hands to keep the story going.
I’ve never had the opportunity to see Jay perform live – due to schedule conflicts and the like (my daughter bought me tickets this summer for my birthday present which follows two days after he rolls through SF this time around) so I am looking forward to the prospect of seeing him for the first time. I have the Live at Eddie’s Attic album and I’ve seen the numerous video postings of his live performances on his YouTube channel so I know I am in for one helluva treat. I couldn’t think of any better way to ring in another year of slogging through this thing we call life.
I have a line in my book that is my meager attempt to capture the emotive quality that Jay expresses in his work – at a particularly poignant moment where Marco reveals to Elliot the way his love has history when he thinks of Elliot and how it has weight in his life for everything that is his greatest love – Elliot is overwhelmed with absolute wonder that someone so confident and successful in who he is could even take notice of a boy like him that they end up in a ‘tangle of limbs and leaves, of kisses and unspoken dreams…‘ on the forest floor behind Elliot’s home.
Jay’s world to me is all of that – especially the kisses and unspoken dreams we all carry in life. I can’t wait until we see what future melilifulous dreams Jay has in store for us. Hey the new album drops in 13 days so it won’t be long…
Hit up his store over at HelloMerch. There’s some great items on offer and it will support this guy in getting his message out there to the masses.
So begins my 31 days of all things Brannan.
Please check out his site (jaybrannan.com) and be sure to check out his touring dates (posted to his site and on Facebook). He does all of his own promotions and gets the fans to help out wherever and whenever we can. I just want to do my part to support such an amazing musical talent and a gift to us all.
GAME OVER… Game of Thrones and the Evolution of DeathPorn
The Rise of DeathPorn on Cable TV
So I let myself stew a bit over the last episode [The Mountain and the Viper] of Game of Thrones (GoT). And before anyone starts prepping their retort to this little missive, let me just state the obvious: after 4 seasons I am fully aware that this show is about the rise to power and how many people it corrupts and kills along the way. I get it. You DON’T have to remind me.
But here’s the rub for me: I need a story where I can invest myself in the characters. As a writer I want the drama they bring to the story. Martin’s cavalcade of death and power amongst the most despicable kingdoms in his imaginary world is gritty, it’s horrid, it’s sensual, it’s grueling, it’s beguiling, and it’s nothing short of porn.
Oberyn’s (Pedro Pascall) Viper wailing upon the Mountain.
Exhibitionist DEATHPORN. On a scale that might even leave the ancient Roman’s gob smacked.
Case in point: FULL DISCLOSURE TIME: Admittedly I haven’t read one of the books. So I’ll cop to that right from the get-go. To be honest I’ve been too busy writing my own stories to have the time to invest in his world.
BUT having watched the four seasons of the TV show I have come to the realization that I have very little interest in the lives of the people who inhabit Martin’s visually compelling literary universe. From the adverts at the time it had two of my favorite character actors in the show: Mark Addy and Sean Bean. They had me hooked with just these two actors being attached to the project. Well, there was Jason Momoa too.
I was a Jason fan from his stint on Stargate: Atlantis a few years back. I also saw picts of this Kit Harrington guy and he sorta filled the bill as a sexy lead so yeah, I was all in. I was really into the season and contemplated reading the books. I read quite fast so it wasn’t a far cry for me to just jump into the fray and compare with the series what was happening on screen. But I yielded from getting into the books because I wanted to give the TV series a chance. TV and film can be so far off the mark from the original source work (see my previous rant about that whole myth that Hollywood perpetuates all under the guise of the ‘creative process’). I wanted to let GoT the TV series stand on its own. So I watched. I was intrigued. I was stymied – yeah I said stymied (more people should use this word more often – they walk around in that mode – completely stymied over how this modern world truly operates and yet, they seem to use the wrong word to describe it). So yeah, stymied at the small regard Martin seemed to have for his characters.
And believe me, I get pathos. As a writer, I got pathos coming out my ass. But here in is the rub of Martin’s work. While imaginative, bombastic and challenging as it may seem – ultimately what does it serve? Certainly not a character study – as you don’t have any of them around long enough to warrant a true evaluation of them. You get, at best, smatterings of their truer personae. And this ultimately is the singular gift Martin offers for his readers/viewers. Smatterings. Snippets of the fuller beings they could become. Now, again, I concede that I haven’t actually read the work (and I don’t think I will after last week episode – but I’ll come to that anon).
So Ned Stark and the King were my main focus for season one. Joffrey was a right shit so I lost complete interest in his being the villain. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the actor’s portrayal – I had nothing against him. It was the vehemence of the character that got to me. It was one dimensional – cardboard – all that was missing was the handlebar mustache (admittedly that would’ve been hard for Jack Gleeson to pull that costume effect off – but it was there in spirit). I grew bored with him as the season one baddie.
Joffrey the Bad
Say nothing of writing Mark Addy (a brilliant character actor, btw) off so quickly. So I’d lost one of my beloved actors even before the first season had grown cold. A few eps later and Ned got the whack job of his life. So now I was out both of the reasons that I even started to watch the show. I contemplated leaving it at this point – except something altogether surprising happened: I sort of fell in love (as a writer/actor) with Arya and Bran Stark, and Jon Snow. So I hung in there for season 2.
Then we had some interesting gay characters spring up here and there – but already I noticed a trend: Gay characters were nothing more than a trifling to show Martin had any depth as a craftsman, but he quickly disposed of them. It seemed (to this gay writer at any rate) that they were nothing more than a marketing ploy. No real staying power. This is a HUGE negative in my book. Martin doesn’t get props for inclusiveness if he can’t bother to keep them around – cause here’s the nitty gritty about being gay Mr. Martin – we learn very quickly how to survive in a very hostile world. Far craftier than most straights would ever grant us credit for. But of course, they have nothing to compare it to. They don’t have to live their lives in denial until they have some relative ease with which to feel they can be themselves with friends and loved ones. So yeah, a life undercover tends to make one far more careful with their actions. So some of those deaths were nothing to advance the plot. They were porn.
And herein lies the crux of Martin’s world. I liken it to a weekly gladiatorial viewing by the TV viewing masses to see who else gets offed in a given episode.
And just to be clear – here is the complete run down of deaths of the major (and some minor) characters: I Googled it and found one site that had the body count of characters from the series at 208!
So, let’s review that little nugget: 208 character deaths in a series that has only had 4 seasons thus far. Perhaps only Walking Dead could boast a higher body count.
And let’s not toss in that tired line that: it’s a story about how power corrupts man. Yeah, got the memo on that one. But this takes it to the nth degree, doesn’t it? And ultimately to what end? To just see who makes it out alive? That’s what we’ve devolved into? Not about what makes the character’s tick? Not about the interpersonal nuances between them all? A writer writes stories hoping against the odds that their characters will be embraced by their intended audience. Well, Martin has effectively (for this reader/writer/actor) done an ample job of doing the opposite. I have lost all care for any of his characters (though I still have a small degree of it left for Arya, Bran and Jon).
But the rest? Nada.
You know what did it? What broke the proverbial camels back for me? Oberyn’s death.
Oberyn and his man-whore. Sexual tensions ensue. Pedro NAILS it!
I thought – “Wow, now we have a VERY interesting character to deal with. He was crafty, ballsy (in ALL the right ways) and didn’t give a shit about what the Lannisters thought about him. I was TOTALLY in his camp. I was loving this guy from top to bottom – and what a nice bottom he had too! He was all over the map in ways that none of the other trapped characters were. He was sensual, he was certainly pan-sexual, but more importantly he was unpredictable. A HUGE smattering of gray in a very grey world. But his grey was fucking neon gray – gray you couldn’t look away from.
And now it too is gone.
More Oberyn man love… hella hawt!
And I am not lamenting it because Pascall is one fuckalicious hottie of an actor (though it’d be a close second), no, ultimately it is the interesting things that Oberyn could’ve brought to the table in the long run. But not in Martin’s world. In that world the great takeaway is don’t invest yourself in any of them. It’s just not worth your efforts. You’ll reap no reward for the telling.
There’s nothing on display in GoT other than great art direction, some decent (if at times, over the top) acting, and brilliant costumes. The plot and delivery of the story – very one dimensional. A shock and awe that has long since worn off. So he can kill off characters – what this says to me is that he can’t make them last. He doesn’t know what to do with them all. So like a rotund Rumpelstiltskin he churns out character after character. If you lose one – well don’t worry, I’ve got eight more that I’ll throw your way only to hack them to bits too.
So that’s my takeaway. Martin can create but ultimately he doesn’t know what to do with them other than full on deathporn. Which is really the worst kind.
I am reminded of a question my cinematic idol, Alfred Hitchcock, once posed with Psycho – What happened if the audience was fooled into thinking Marion is the main character only to kill her off early in the film and reveal the true main character as her killer? An interesting perspective on things. With Martin he’s taken it to pornographic levels of death, blood and mayhem – but not to great end. Really it’s quite sad. I mean, sure he’s laughing all the way to the bank, but I just can’t go there any more.
At least with Spartacus, I knew what I was in for. I got that it was about gladiatorial death sequences and that any moment could be your last. But with GoT, the rollercoaster ride only has one bump, one twist and you see them coming a mile down the road. Even when it’s a surprise (as it was with Oberyn) it really isn’t. Martin’s done it all before. Only this time – I’m out.
SPARTACUS – Some hot man on man lovin’ goin’ on. AND THEY LIVED to have an HEA!
I am not a deathporn fanatic. I want characters who we have to struggle with and against. None of Martin’s are worth it (with the exception of my trio). Even Daenyris has become a cardboard cut-out. A caricature of her once noble self. It’s a good thing Kahl Drogo got bumped off when he did. His wife has proven utterly boring at this point. A one-hit wonder – with dragons no less. The shock and awe and the carnage to come won’t keep me hanging on.
I wish there was more to hang my hat onto here. But ultimately on which hook do I hang it on? Which one can I trust? Some may say that that is the reason for watching the show. Yeah, not so for me.
Unlike Spartacus, which was admittedly just as gory, just as harsh, just as convoluted, at least you got some redemption for the investments you made into the characters. And the GAY COUPLE fucking lived to have their HEA (Happily Ever After)!! Fucking aces in my book! You NEVER see that in a action/adventure setting…
But with GoT? I just lost interest.
Game over… I’m out.
Why do gay men obstruct other gay men?
So here’s my rant for today. And while it’s not a new one as I am sure there is some other gay writer out there blogging that while gay men are constantly striving for acceptance and tolerance from a generally homophobic world, we often are our own worst enemy.
I got to re-thinking about it from this HuffPo interview (from outgoing Ahmed Shihab-Eldin – who’s reports I’ll miss greatly): You can read it here.
I am not limiting this to just the social circle either. I’ll post my thoughts on that topic in another stream of consciousness later cause I got LOTS to say on that topic alone.
Let me make a case for how it even happens in the media:
I was at Comic Con in San Diego (the only one that counts BTW (Sorry NYC – you’ve got B’way – leave So Cal a crumb, will ya?)) once where there was a discussion panel (the room was packed to the hilt – standing room only) for this particular show that was all the rage a couple of years ago (flash forward – it was cancelled shortly there after).
I won’t necessarily name the show because it would be pointless at this juncture since it has long been relegated to the netflix/pirate download universe, but suffice to say that it was a hot show at the time. Anyway, the panel of production crew for this show was asked about the inclusion of a gay character as a secondary lead if not main character of the show. The screenwriters jumped right into the fray and said that they were just in the midst of planning such an arc and they couldn’t wait to get started on it. It would come with the following season – they were sorry that the show had to go three seasons in before they could get to it but they were really excited about it. The audience (even for a few years ago) seemed rather pleased about this little announcement (okay, I’ll confess that it was an LGBT panel that is held every year at Comic Con). The two screenwriters of the show were, in fact, gay and were really happy that they got the green light with this particular arc. All seemed good, right?
Yeah, well, at the time I remember grousing to myself (I tend to grouse alot with unspoken angst over what comes out of these Hollywood types at these events), that why did we wait 3 seasons to get to the damned arc? Why are we left in the closet and have our stories sidelined by our own people? Yeah, i know, they gotta get work too and they’ve got the twat head producers to please who are only in it for the buck (despite all the flowery words about creative process and their vision and all the other hooey they throw our way – it’s all UTTER BULLSHIT).
The following March (on the eve of when this hot show was to start shooting) the show was cancelled. So guess what? No gay character arc, no gay storylines – once again our story is left on the cutting room floor – only worse, this one never got shot to begin with (HUGE STEP BACKWARD, if you ask me).
But it’s not the only instance of this happening – Greg Berlanti (who is gay) of ‘The Tomorrow People” (TTP) said the same damned thing about TTP. When HuffPo asked him about his not having a gay character in TTP he said that one was coming in season two and it was gonna be great (are ya starting to see a trend here?). SO that show got cancelled this past April. So here we are yet again – another fucking blown opportunity. Though to be fair he gives a much more lengthy explanation here. Yet, I can’t help but feel that he could’ve done better. How about this Mr. Berlanti – let’s not ‘wait for a creative moment to put in a gay character that will stick around –
…how about we have one from the VERY BEGINNING THAT’S INTEGRAL TO THE SHOW? Yeah, let’s start with that… whaddaya say? Huh?
Producer Greg Berlanti
The general straight populace isn’t ever going to get used to us if our shit ain’t out there, folks! Are ya listening, Hollyweird?
Next up, The Vampire Diaries –
Now, aside from the fact that Ian Somerhalder’s Damon walks that same homo-erotic line with his other male leads in that Mick Jagger sort of metro-sexual swagger, TVD has had NO GAY CHARACTERS for years now! I was a fan of the show but was growing increasingly bored with the fucking boozing and rampant straight sexual situations that we were being inundated with. Why hasn’t MADD gone after this show? This show has more drinking (even when they were in fucking high school (and DON’T get me started on how 30 something looking actors were just soooo wrong for a HIGH SCHOOL show). I never once bought the vixen trio of Elena, Bonnie and Caroline were EVER actually of a high school age. The casting director shoulda been hauled out and beaten with a wet noodle over that faux pas alone!
Luke from The Vampire Diaries
Anyway, so in this past season we FINALLY get A GAY CHARACTER (count ’em, ONE – in the whole fucking town of Mystic Falls or where ever they were now going to college – and we have to wait MANY seasons to find ONE?) What the muthafucking ever. And I am just counting the seconds til this new gay guy is bumped off. Cause you know it’s gonna happen. (And no, Glee doesn’t count because the entire premise of that show is gay from word go (and sadly sometimes in the worst way imaginable) – too much sometimes even for me to stomach on a weekly basis – and I have a background in musical theatre).
In fact, I can only think of TWO drama shows where the gay men actually make it to the end and they were secondary or main characters – Torchwood and Spartacus. In the pantheon of TV shows through out the years and we have these two shows to show for it? Okay, then there’s Felix from Orphan Black (BTW, I don’t know if you’re keeping score on this too but it seems that two out of the three shows I’ve named are British imports – only Spartacus is American produced).
Our gay heroes on Spartacus – THEY MADE IT TO THE END!
Okay, and there’s True Blood – but even with Lafayette (on of my absolute favorites and not just because he’s slightly sterotypical but because Nelsan plays him with such pathos and depth that I am utterly fascinated by his portrayal). The same can be said of Jordan’s portrayal of Felix in Orphan Black. There are subtleties and layers that both actors bring to the table that are truly amazing to watch. THOSE are the types of characters our little gay village need.
And Sidebar: What the fuck is up with Lafayette losing Jesus? That was some messed up shit when their arc so wasn’t over – total missed opportunity. But that season’s writing was the almost the worst of the bunch. That is until the season of Billith. Now that season of TB was just plain out tragic.
Jordan Gavaris as the irrepressible Felix
Okay, I thought of another show that has a gay character prominent enough to warrant it’s own plot line – that one in Scandal (my daughter watches it religiously and keeps telling me I need to do so too). I was going to watch a marathon and catch up when i got wind of them killing off one of the two gay characters (for dramatic purposes). Yeah, you can bite me with your dramatic elements involving gay characters being ‘sacrificed’ for the dramatic cause. That’s SOOOOO 1980’s Dallas/Dynasty era (and I should know cause I was alive when those shows were running in their original time slots (NOT re-runs)).
In Torchwood we FINALLY have a gay character that can’t die (because he can’t die – it’s in the character write up). So yay for #TEAMGAY, yeah, hold up a minute. Turns out he can die – when the show doesn’t get renewed or languishes between seasons. Pasadena…
John Barrowman and Gareth David Lloyd from Torchwood
So guess what gay producers, writers and actors – be the muthafuckin’ change you want to have happen.
Y’all need to grow a pair and put our shit out there. Sorry if that sounds a bit forced, but I got a little Larry Kramer angst going on here from watching ‘The Normal Heart’ – a bloody brilliant movie – thanks Ryan Murphy for getting it out there. Try to remember what it was like when you were growing up starved for some recognition and figure out how to get it out there. And don’t shoot me that old line – gay characters don’t sell. Yeah, well maybe we have to shove a few down their throats until we get to a point where they become inured to it all. THEN we’ll have achieved something. If gay people can bore the crap out of straights like they do to themselves – then game over – mission accomplished.
But we ain’t there yet – not by a muthafuckin’ long shot.
So there was the first show I talked about, then TTP, then Vampire Diaries. That’s three shows, two of which utterly failed in producing a single strong gay character. While the actor playing Luke on VD seems to be a good one, I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to fall and he’ll get bumped off. That’s the modern message we get from these shows: if we finally do get around to putting one out there – yeah, well, it won’t last. It’s fleeting – just like we want the world to think we are in their lives – fleeting, passing through, an oddity to behold and then eschew like yesterdays bright wrapping paper after a successful party.
So over that way of thinking.
So I am constantly polling around – looking for gay men to satiate my thirst for something that reflects my life or at the very least, a form of my reality. But sadly, we’re still all too absent.
And here’s another little nugget of information – the M/M genre of novel writing is actually quite large and thriving and it’s reader base is primarily made up of women. So why aren’t we looking to satisfy the gay market for these ladies? Why aren’t we killing the both birds with the same literary stone? If we’re studying demographics and how to pitch and sell to them, then why aren’t we looking at these numbers then?
I get that it’s show BUSINESS and not show ART. I get it. But if we aren’t taking the necessary steps to have the same opportunity to bore the crap out of the straight audience because we are now just one of the crew, then how the hell are we ever going to make progress on a storytelling and visual level?
As a gay author, I wonder for long periods about that. Not that it pulls focus from my day or anything, but I do ponder it on the back burner. I only wish the screenwriters and producers who are gay and have dealt with the same struggles we all seem to have in common in this world, that they would do more, fight – hell, if we do have a gay mafia out there in Hollywood – then fucking act like some gay muthafuckin’ blinged out homo-thugs and DO SOMETHIN’ ‘BOUT IT!