Another Friday Happy Hour…another drive back home.  This was supposed to keep me sane and it isn’t anymore.  Now I’m not just feeling sad and lonely…I’m feeling trapped.  I need a way out.

Heller.  Yes.  I know this bothers some of my friends but I completely agree with yesterday’s supreme court decision regarding D.C.’s gun ban.  But this kind of rhetoric, from McCain’s campaign, really bothers me…

Today’s decision is a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom in the United States…

Blah…blah…blah…  Here’s the part I mean… 

Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.

Emphasis mine.  Sacred?  Sacred?  Well if it’s sacred, Bob Barr has something to say about McCain’s devotion then…

But…see…this is what bothers me…this elevating of guns to the status of religious objects.  They aren’t.  If there is any fundamental right here at all it’s the right to self preservation, and even that isn’t sacred or else you’d have to condemn soldiers, policemen, firemen, and anyone and everyone who ever sacrificed their own lives for others.  The sacred thing here, if anything, is life itself.  And even that isn’t always a black and white thing. 

I know…I know…  McCain is just pushing buttons.  But it’s this kind of thing that has dragged the conversation about morality in this country down into the gutter.  It cheapens both the concept of the sacred, and the thing you are trying to superficially attach it to.  Guns aren’t sacred objects.  They’re useful tools and the government has no business banning them outright, not even for the simple reason that people have a right to defend themselves, but more specifically because while government may be our protector in many ways, it is not our nanny and we are not its children.

It’s entirely proper and reasonable for government to take a roll in keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of anyone likely to commit crimes of violence.  It’s completely reasonable for government to regulate the kinds of firearms people can own, and how and when they can bear them in public.  That’s different from taking the position that no individual citizen can own a gun period, because then you’re saying that the people have no right to self defense.  That completely changes the relationship between citizens and their government, in just the same way that censorship and morality laws do.  And let’s face it…outright gun bans aren’t public safety laws, they’re morality laws.

Which…let it be said…all the brave second amendment warriors out there in the NRA and other gun groups really don’t give a crap about, unless it involves their Sacred Guns.  On the SLOG Blog the other day in a thread about Heller, a commenter pointedly pointed out that Bush has ripped up habeas corpus and the gun groups kept silent.  He went on a wiretapping rampage and the gun groups kept silent.  And don’t get me started on the fact that so many second amendment warriors are raving homophobic bigots who hated to see the sodomy laws overturned and who are probably campaigning right now to see same sex marriage banned everywhere.  All their fine and noble rhetoric about freedom and liberty and patriotism is just so much bullshit. 

When you get right down to it, the second amendment warriors have been responsible for more erosion of our civil liberties and more damage to our constitution then anything the Brady Campaign could ever have done.  So to all the cheering second amendment warriors out there right now I would just like to say Shut Your Fucking Pie-Hole!  Please.  If Scalia had written instead that gun bans are a legitimate expression of the moral values of the voters in a community, just what the fuck would you have said to that?  That majorities don’t have the right to impose their moral values on everyone else?  Especially when their doing that puts other people’s families at risk?  Please.  Just…shut up.

Peterson Toscano, links to an interesting page on the stages of coming out.  I’m not sure I agree with the implicit premise that everyone goes through the process the same way, but it got me thinking about my own journey, which I’ve been trying in fits and starts to tell in my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story…

Coming out is a process that happens again and again; it is not just a one time deal and it does not follow a linear course. It occurs initially when one acknowledges to oneself (most important and difficult aspect of coming out) and to others that one is gay, lesbian or bisexual. One claims that orientation as his/her own and begins to be more or less public with it.

Coming out to themselves is one of the hardest steps in developing a positive gay/lesbian/bisexual identity for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. It involves much soul searching and introspection and a good healthy sense of self-appreciation and acceptance…

See…that’s not exactly the way it happened with me.  I fell in love, and once I realized it the self acceptance part just immediately happened.  I’d never felt anything so wonderful in my life.  Up until that moment, that instant (which I can still recall vividly to this day…it was on December 15th, 1971, at around 7PM.), I honestly thought I was straight.  I just loathed the idea of dating was all.  I’ll go to my grave angry that I wasn’t told before then that I guys could have boyfriends too and there was nothing wrong with that if that’s how you were.  I’d spent almost my entire adolescence hating the whole dating and mating scene and wishing I could go live somewhere where I didn’t have to deal with it.  But that was because of the pressure I felt to start dating girls. 

I just wanted to hang out with my friends.  My Male friends.  And one guy in particular who I still at that time hadn’t worked up the nerve to actually talk to, even though I was busy filling my sketchbooks and contact sheets with images of him.  Even though I would often take the long way to class in order to catch a glimpse of him walking down the hall.  If someone had told me that guys could fall in love with other guys I would have had an entirely different attitude toward this dating thing.  But what I was taught in my junior high school sex ed class, was that homosexuals were mentally ill, sociopathic monstrosities that raped children, hated themselves and usually killed the people they had sex with.  After mutilating their bodies.  I knew I wasn’t any of that, so I concluded I was not a homosexual. 

The moment I realized I was in love with that certain someone, all of the lies I was taught vanished in a puff of smoke.  I still knew I wasn’t any of the things I was taught that homosexuals were.  But I also knew then that all those racing heartbeats and sweaty palms I got at the sight of good looking guys, and especially at the sight of that certain someone, had been all that time a little more then just "going through a phase."  All the sex dreams I’d had about guys, and never about girls…yeah…that was telling me something all right. 

I was more stubborn then afraid.  Deep down inside I was conflicted over two mutually irreconcilable facts: that the sight of beautiful guys really made my day, and that being a homosexual meant I had to hate both them and myself…and I just couldn’t.  I would stare at them for hours, sketching them or photographing them…and in particular that certain someone.  And it didn’t feel awful when I did that.  It felt wonderful.  And so…ironically…it was on the basis of how good it felt to admire their beauty that I concluded I wasn’t homosexual.  The sex dreams that usually came later that night, I simply wrote off to "going through a phase"…whatever that meant.

So self acceptance came in a very odd and round about way to me, and I never hated myself.  But after that moment, did come the crystal clear understanding that I had to be careful, goddamned careful, who I told and how.  My peers all had the same sordid sex education concerning homosexuality.  I had a feeling I was going to freak out a lot of people if I just suddenly started being open about my sexual orientation.  So That process took a lot of time and a lot of soul searching.  Matter of fact…after the Bush re-selection I was still doing some pretty heavy soul searching over it.  But I guess a lot of other gay folks were then too.

Anyway…the page Peterson links to, got me thinking about that period in my life.  The first stage, so they say, is Identity Confusion…which I guess applied because I sure was confused.  In fact, for quite a long time before I entered high school, and first laid eyes on a certain someone, I was one confused little guy.  In retrospect, my feelings toward my male friends were always intense and full of a yearning that I never could quite understand.  When a friend would occasionally get mad at me I would be crushed.  When my best friend from grade school moved away I cried for weeks over it.  I remember that entire school year as being one of great sadness for me.

Why come out? It is a necessary part of developing a healthy and positive identity as a gay/lesbian/bisexual individual…

I am different from the others.
Why can’t I make friends like
the others can…?
I’m smart…
…so why do my teachers hate me?

Then comes Identity Comparison…Identity Tolerance…

I’m not gay.
I wish everyone would stop wondering
when I’m going to start dating.
I hate the thought of dating.
I need to make prints of the pictures
I took of "TK" this afternoon…he’s
so beautiful…
I wish we could be friends…

Identity Acceptance…
 

I’m gay.  It’s no big deal, really.
Except of course you could get your skull
bashed in if anyone finds out.
But I don’t care…"TK" likes me…!!!
…I think.  Life is wonderful!!!
…I think.

I’m gay.  That’s fine.
There is nothing wrong with
being gay.
It’s no big deal, really.
Why do people have to make a
big political deal out of it?
What the fuck is wrong with
Anita Bryant???
And…Jerry Falwell…???
This is why I don’t go to church anymore…
Stuart isn’t gay…
Is Keith gay…?  Was he
coming onto me the other day?
He’s a really nice guy…
…maybe…
I wish I knew where "TK" was…
God…I miss him so much.
I was such an idiot…

Identity Synthesis…

I’m gay.  I’m alone.
Am I going to be alone for the
rest of my life…?

To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven…

   
Somewhere back there…I got stuck.  I think it was at the part where I was supposed to start dating.  Maybe I shouldn’t have cursed the thought of it so much back then.  Back before I figured out that I could date guys too.  At least the other gay ones.  Now I’m 54, and I feel like I’m still back there…somewhere…still walking down the halls of my old high school…expecting any moment to be able to reach out and take my boyfriend’s hand into mine…except he still isn’t there…

Hoping and praying for someone to care
Always moving and goin to where
What becomes of the broken hearted…

  
 

Shorter Michael Medved:  Heterosexuals don’t need marriage, therefore homosexuals can’t have it.

No…seriously…that’s his argument in response to Jonathan Rauch’s column in the Wall Street Journal the other day…

It’s not “marriage” – some magical status granted by the government – that serves to make people “healthier, happier and wealthier.” It’s the behavior associated with the marital ideal that brings benefits to couples and their children. That behavior doesn’t require official sanction – any more than official sanction guarantees such behavior.

Medved goes on to make the standard anti-gay case that only opposite sex couples have that magic combination of male and female attributes that make a marriage both stable, and beneficial for children.  But then he goes on to take that to its logical conclusion…

Consider some of the high profile heterosexual couples who have refused to get married. I don’t endorse the politics of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, but given their long-standing and apparently stable commitment, I don’t think their kids have suffered because they never legalized their relationship.

By the same token, I don’t believe that the children of Rosie O’Donnell and her partner will be able to make up for the lack of a father’s love through a change of bureaucratic policy in California or any other state.

Medved’s column is pretty much a simple rehashing of hoary anti-gay and more specifically, anti-male stereotypes.  Gay men can’t control their sex drives because they are men.  Well…yes…Lesbian couples are more stable because they’re both female, but children need both a mother and a father, so their unions are bad for children too.  Never mind that there is not one iota of science behind any of this, let alone tradition.  Consider for a moment, how big the straight jacket is that female sexuality is bound inside in male dominated societies.  It isn’t male sexuality that’s being kept under a tight lid in a culture where boys can sew their wild oats, but girls are sluts if they do the same.  Never mind all that.  Just look at where this delivers Medved.  He is now arguing, in all seriousness, that it is heterosexuality, not marriage, that provides for both stability and a better environment for children.  Heterosexuals are actually so good at it, that marriage is completely unnecessary for them.  This is seriously his argument.

We have been told, over and over again, that allowing homosexual couples to marry will make marriage itself worthless.  And now along comes Michael Medved to argue that it is in fact heterosexuality, by its very nature, that renders marriage worthless.  Sweet.  Can we stop blaming gay people for the horrible state of marriage in this country now?  Please?

Spectacular double rainbow in the sky here in Baltimore yesterday!  I’d just come home from work and glanced outside to see a sudden shower coming down on my street.  So I stepped out onto my front porch to watch, and noticed the sun was out and brightly shining to my west.  Down towards the end of my street, you could see the rain coming down in glistening sheets of raindrops through the intense sunlight.  To the east, it was dark as slate. 

I can’t see the sky too clearly from my front porch because of the Japanese oaks in the front lawn.  But given what I could see…sun shining brightly over there though the rain…dark rain clouds in the sky opposite…I reckoned there should be a rainbow over in the dark patch somewhere.  So I stepped out into the rain to take a look.

There was…

Already some of my neighbors had come out to take a look.  First you saw the bright inner rainbow.  Then as it became even brighter, you started seeing an outer one.  Eventually, the two of them formed perfect arches, vaulting across the Baltimore sky…

So beautiful!  The white car roof in the foreground of the last shot is Traveler.  By then the shower had turned into a light sprinkle and I took a stroll through the neighborhood, not minding how wet I was getting at all, just completely enraptured by the intense colors arching overhead.  These photos don’t really do it justice.  It was almost like they were burning up there, like the sky had caught fire and every color hidden within it was now ablaze, so intense were those arches.

It must have lasted for almost an hour.  Then the sun began to set and the rainbow slowly unraveled, as if drawing itself down into the earth.  First the outer loop faded away.  Then the top of the inner loop seemed to break off, separating it into two half arches.  Slowly, slowly, the broken arches shrank from the sky, until only two rainbow pillars at either end of the horizon were left.  But the pillars of color remained for a long time, staying bright and fiery until the last of the sunlight faded in the west.  I walked up and down the blocks of my rowhouse neighborhood until there was almost no light in the sky, and looking down the cross-streets toward the horizon, I could see those fantastically intense pillars of color well into the twilight.  They looked like fountains of color erupting from the earth.  I’ve never seen its like.

Whatever weather pattern had brought us the rain, a blanket of cool, dryer air came along with it and the evening was perfect for getting out of the house and strolling around some more.  I left all my chores undone and just savored it because I know what the summer will be like when it finally settles in.

• Walking around in the hot sun wearing a suit and tie and carrying around heavy bags of camera equipment will make you aware of how out of shape you are.

• On the other hand, if you have the camera bug you don’t notice that, until the day after, when your legs start telling you all about how much work they were doing the day before.

• Taking photos of young couples in love is fun, and never fails to warm the heart.  After a few hours of seeing so much happiness and joy all around you, you almost forget that they and everyone in the party would all vote to take away your own ability to marry without giving it a second thought.

• No trip to visit the Southern Baptist side of your family tree is complete without a lecture on the bible and hellfire.

• While driving south of the Potomac, you can add to your Jack Chick collection by checking the top of the toilet paper dispensers in the men’s room stalls everywhere you stop for a bladder break.  I found two Chick tracts this trip that I didn’t have.

• I am helping out with small tasks before the wedding, and I see arriving family members gathering around my Mercedes.  They are peeking though the windows and pointing to this and that around the grill.  The headlight washers seem to fascinate them.  One person touches the little three pointed star hood ornament lightly.  I’d given Traveler a good washing that morning so it would look its best for the wedding.  Now I’ve been given signs to plant near the entrance to the parking lots, directing folks to the gazebo where the wedding will take place, and to the reception hall, and as I walk past on my way to the entrance they ask me about the car.  Yes, it’s a new model Mercedes.  Yes, it drives really nice.  Yes, I’m a very happy owner.  Yes, I know that kids like to steal the hood ornament.  No, I didn’t know they were wearing them as necklaces nowadays.  They ask me about the odd little doors just below the headlights.  Oh, says I, those are where the headlight washers pop out.  I explain that they work only when the headlights are on, and only with the first, and then each tenth squirt of the wiper washer button.  One of them jokes that since it’s a German car, they’d thought the little doors might have been for machine guns.

• I think it’s a good sign when you see the happy marrieds-to-be being playful with each other during the rehearsal, and the reception and not all dire and serious.  They gather together at the wedding cake to do the cake cutting ceremony, and he looks into her eyes and says ‘I just want you to know I love you’ and she gives him a look back and says she loves him too, and they cut the cake together and then just before they each take a bite they both mash cake into each others faces laughing delightedly.  And then of course they’re all affectionately wiping each other’s faces off and share another kiss. 

• Ever since puberty I’ve always felt somewhat detached from all the life I see going on around me, and I know that’s mostly what prejudice and hate have done to me and I hate it.  But I also know it’s given my photographic eye its distinctive voice, and honed my skill as a photographer.  To get the very best shots you need to concentrate on what you are seeing.  You can’t be a part of the moment and do that.  You have to step back from it, which is easy if you’ve never really felt like you were part of most things to begin with. 

  I took just under six-hundred shots on the digital camera, and roughly another sixty with the Hasselblad.  After I got back home I imported the digital shots into Aperture and gave them a once-over, feeling a strange kind of perfect joy in being able to capture a few really expressive moments of love and happiness that I’ll probably never experience myself.  It’s looking like I’ll be going into that long night never having a wedding of my own.  But as I studied my shoot last night it didn’t feel as though I was living it vicariously through someone else’s.  In the end everything a photographer does, regardless of who they do it for, is a personal statement, and I really believe in love.  I think this is what most of my friends just don’t get.  I really believe in it.  By all rights I shouldn’t, considering that love doesn’t seem to even know I exist.  And yet I do. 

  So the blissful pleasure I took in doing that wedding shoot was genuine.  All the more so as the newlyweds seem to have between them exactly the kind of playful romance I’ve always searched for.  It was a pure pleasure to capture some images of it.  But also genuine was the grief I drove home with, and which I knew would be waiting for me when I got done importing and examining my shoot last night.  This is the other thing my friends just don’t get: how much of my day is spent dealing with grief.  Problem is, at age 54, drink and cigars aren’t making me forget it anymore.  All that did for me last night was remind me how old I’m getting…how far beyond my ‘use by’ date I am…

I’d never have thought that viewing all the photos of the happy couples out in California over the past couple of days would have had this effect on me.  I’m happy for them.  Delighted actually.  It’s good to see love succeeding somewhere in this poor angry world.  And particularly in California, the land of my birth.  I should be happy.  And I am.  For them.

But…  A wave of utter fatigue has washed over me, simultaneously with the arrival of those images on my computer screen.  I’m happy for them…but it’s all passing me by.  Don’t be fooled by career and money and status.  Don’t be lulled into thinking they mean anything.  They don’t.  Nothing else matters if you don’t have that intimate other in your life.  Nothing.

I’ve failed.  I am a senior systems engineer for the Space Telescope Science Institute…I own a nice house within walking distance of work and shopping, own a Mercedes, and can look back on a life that never once cheated anyone for profit nor broke anyone’s heart.  I never lied my way into anyone’s pants, or their company, or their trust.  I never met a bill I couldn’t pay.  My word and my money and my credit are good.  And…I failed.  None of it really matters.  For the past several days I’ve seen what matters in so many happy couple’s faces.  I’m 54 years old and…I failed.

I have, ironically enough, a wedding to go to this weekend.  A relative on mom’s side of the family in southern Virgina invited me to her wedding, and as she and her brother helped give mom some of the best years of her life in retirement, I feel obliged to go.  This is the Southern Baptist side of my family tree.  They would all probably cheerfully vote my right to marry away without a second thought, and tell me they did it with love in their hearts.  But I’m genuinely happy for her, and I hope she and her husband to be have a long and happy life together.  There needs to be more of what they have for each other in this world, not less.

I think, at long last, I’m finally giving up on this.  I just don’t have the energy anymore to keep holding on to it.  I have no idea what that change holds in store for me.  None.  All I know is, I failed.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin…  They guy who cursed that guitar player who was serenading couples waiting to be married in San Francisco, is Kevin Farrer, who fancies himself a street preacher.  He was just helpfully spreading the good news to all the poor sinners standing in line…waiting to exchange vows of eternal love…

Love…

Love…

Loving the sinner…

Jesus would have worn a shirt like that… 

I’m reading just now, via SLOG, that Cyd Charisse has died.  I wish I could post a YouTube of my favorite dance of hers…the one she did in Daddy Longlegs with Fred Astair…the dream sequence between her and Fred.  Fred was some sort of guardian angel and Cyd was learning how to dance under his tutelage, and he danced in his beautiful modern style and she in her classical style, and it was just stunning.  Absolutely stunning.  I wish I could show that one to you now but I can’t…you’ll just have to buy or rent a copy of Daddy Longlegs to see it…

…and I know now how it will be, when the human race finally conquerors Death.  I see the day when Death finally conceedes defeat and troubles us no more.  I see it clearly.  It will be when we are more outraged, finally, by the people Death takes from us, then the life Death takes from us.  It will be when our quest is not for immortality, but the triumph of love…and beauty.  Only then will come the serious war against Death.  And Death will loose…

Via Box Turtle Bulletin…

According to “Storm Bear” at the Bilerico Project, a marriage supporter was playing a guitar when he “suddenly dropped like a tree” of an apparent heart attack or cardiac arrest. Police immediately swooped in and began administering CPR.

And while that was going on, one of the “loving” Christian protesters was chanting, “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear about now?”

“Storm Bear” takes it from there

I yelled at the guy, “If you are such a Christian, why aren’t you praying for the guy dying on the concrete?” The protester replied, “God killed him for loving fags!!” The cops even stepped in and told the guy to shut his mouth.

Go read the whole thing.  This happened in front of San Francisco’s city hall, I think as same sex couples were lined up for marriage licenses. 

Love.  People in love doing what people in love have done for millennia in one form or another; swearing to love honor and cherish until death do them part.  A guitar player…was he married, or single and just in love with love…serenades the happy couples as they wait.  I am desperately single myself, and had I a musical bone in my body, I would have done something like that for the waiting couples.  Love has not been kind to me, and yet I am still in love with love.  But then the guitar player falls to the ground, and an anti-gay protester with as much Christ in him as Himmler steps forward and shouts at him that the devil has him.  Love.

Can we stop now with all that love the sinner hate the sin claptrap?  I would like, very much right now, to be there to whisper, not shout, just whisper, something in this guy’s ear at the moment he finds himself on death’s doorstep.  Not that the devil has him.  Not that the next voice he hears will be the devil whispering in his ear.  But softly, that Jesus is there with him now…and that guitar player he once cursed is standing right beside him.

I am a careful driver, having been scared witless in driver’s ed way back when by Highway Safety Foundation films such as Signal 30.  Plus Traveler, my new Mercedes-Benz C300, cost me 45 thousand dollars.  I’m here to tell you driving a 45 thousand dollar car down the road makes you a more careful driver.  But the other day I was driving home and some lout in a bright red new model Mustang with racing stripes started hogging my tail on the Baltimore beltway…and what happened next got me to thinking again about something this American boy deeply regrets.

I was in the passing lane as I was…well…passing.  But not fast enough for Mr. Mustang.  We were approaching a series of nicely constructed twists and turns as two lanes of I-695 (the Baltimore beltway), peeled off onto I-83 heading into the city.  Normally I would have just accelerated a tad and pulled over to let the jerk pass.  But alas, I had been spending the night before at home watching Top Gear on YouTube, and whatever Mr. Mustang had under that hood, I knew what I had planted on the asphalt.  Yes…I’m driving a little white Mercedes four door sedan and you’re driving a Mustang.  What do you think that means?  And I thought to myself, Okay…you’re on…

And I put my foot down.  Not hard at all, just firmly and deliberately pressed Traveler’s fly-by-wire pedal a tad further into the Go zone.  It wasn’t the first time by any means…I’ve taken Traveler up a few notches when I felt it was safe to explore what was up there.  So I knew what to expect.  Traveler is German and, more generally, European.  Never mind the sports cars they make on that side of the Atlantic, even their four door sedans are built with a different mindset.  Traveler woke up a bit from the stately sensible pace I normally drive at, hunkered down just a tad on the asphalt and simply walked away from Mr. Mustang.  And I mean walked away.  In the curve.

Traffic was very light and I had no trouble pressing it into the second set of curves after that one.  Then I slowed back to normal.  I was almost a half mile down the long straightaway into the city, before Mr. Mustang came into sight again out of the last curve.  So having proved my point I was perfectly willing to let him pass me then, but he kept his distance.

Never mind how well Traveler is made, how tightly fitted together everything is, or how vault solid it feels sitting in it.  I bought it for all that.  Never mind.  I have never, Never, owned a car that performs as well as this one.  The only thing I’ve ever even sat in that’s in the same universe is my friend Stuart’s BMW roadster (which I’m sure could take on Traveler since its smaller and lighter and closer to the ground).  I hadn’t really understood what owning a car made for the Autobahn meant until the first time I pressed down slightly on Traveler’s accelerator, to see what was up there a bit and my jaw nearly dropped on the carpet.  Decades after my uncle blew away everything my little teenage brain thought it knew about luxury four door sedans with his 220D, my head still isn’t completely wrapped around the notion that a luxury four door sedan can do that.  It wasn’t just that it was fast, or even that it was smooth fast.  The car simply felt so taut and securely glued to the pavement at high speed that there was simply no sensation of being hurtled down the road at all, but more like…well…cruising.  Comfortably.  In the triple digits.  This car could get me into serious trouble if I’m not careful.

Why doesn’t America build a car like this..??

My first car was a 1973 Ford Pinto.  I bought it new when I got my first somewhat decent paying job after high school.  It cost me $1997.48.  I had to get mom to co-sign the loan, which took me the full three years to pay off.  It wasn’t a great car by any means.  It’s engine was tiny compared to other cars on the American highway…the 1.6 liter overhead valve Lotus block with a one barrel carburetor.  It had a solid rear axle on leaf springs and the lightest, squirrelliest ass of any car I’ve ever driven.  The slightest bump on the road would make its back end dance around.  The fastest I ever had it to was 85 miles an hour and that was in neutral going down a mountain on the interstate in Nevada.  It was like to rattle itself apart at that speed and so I didn’t keep it there long.  But I took fastidious care of it, drove it to California and back, and got 135 thousand miles out of it before it all began to fall apart.

I felt as though I’d accomplished something stunning.  In those days, nobody drove their cars for a hundred thousand miles, even if it was a nice one.  It just wasn’t done.  The car was supposed to have found its final resting place in the junk yard long before then.  The odometers on American cars back then only had five digits.  When the one on that Pinto turned over once again to all zeros, I pulled off the road and took a picture of it. 

I’ve driven almost every car I’ve ever owned out to California and back.  But that Pinto was the last American designed car I would ever do that with, and it broke down on the way home once.  After the Pinto I was flat broke for many years and could only afford junkers, none of which I took on a road trip largely because I had no money for road trips. But I would have been crazy to trust any of them to get me through the Rockies, or across the Mojave, let alone the stretch of I-8 just south of the Imperial Valley.  I knew the risk I was taking with the Pinto, but at least I’d been its only owner, had spent many long hours under its hood, and I knew it inside and out.   The point is, I felt it was the same risk I would have been taking with any other American designed car of the time.  Mom’s first car, a 1968 Plymouth Valiant with its 225 slant six engine was legendary for its stubborn never say die reliability, and it blew a coolant hose on the one trip out to California it took.  But that kind of reliability was what you reckoned on back in those days.

I became entranced by Mercedes-Benz sedans around 1971, after an uncle brought his new 220D down for a visit. That car just blew everything my little teenage brain thought it knew about luxury cars away. I figured back then that a luxury car was one that had all the options, and maybe even a few you couldn’t get on other cars. Leather upholstery. Air conditioning. Stereo FM radio. Power seats! Then comes my uncle down for a visit in this boxy little German car and it just made my jaw drop.

First of all, it was a diesel. I thought diesels were what you put into trucks, and here was one in a luxury car. And you knew it was a diesel the moment he started it up. That just didn’t compute. But it was sitting down in it that first time, that I realized I was in a different world. It wasn’t flashy, not ostentatiously expensive at all like the Cadillacs. It was rather understated. But it was built like a goddamned vault. Everything fit together exactly right…there wasn’t anything in that interior or on the dash that was the slightest bit off. Everything you touched felt solid. The door handles, the buttons on the dash, the sun visors. And when my uncle drove us somewhere in it, that car was Quiet in a way I’d never experienced before. Not muffled quiet, but solid quiet. When my uncle left, I began digging up information about Mercedes-Benz and talking to anyone I could who owned one. And then I discovered the other jaw dropping thing about them: Their owners typically drove them well over a hundred thousand miles. The joke was, 100k and it’s just broken in. I began falling in love.

Understand, this was at a time when the odometer on American cars only had five digits on them. You just didn’t expect to drive a car that far because you knew it would be coming completely apart by then. We had neighbors and friends who routinely traded in their cars after they hit 50k, because you just expected it would be more trouble then it was worth after that. Here was the Mercedes, proving that this didn’t have to be so. You could make a car last. But they were expensive. People could point to the cost of a Mercedes and say, ‘well, for that money you could buy several American cars though’.

Then came the oil embargo, and Detroit suddenly found its ass was getting kicked by the Japanese. First it was on fuel economy. The little Japanese cars just ran rings around ours on gas mileage, right as the price of gas was starting to go up. But later, and devastatingly, they began pummeling Detroit on quality.

The argument up until then had been that, well sure some European cars are better…but look at how much more expensive they are. Here in America, we build cars for the common man. They’re affordable. Maybe they aren’t as good, but at least the average American can afford one. Well, the Japanese slapped them upside the head on that one. Suddenly cars were coming into the country that were cheaper, And Better.

A friend of mine bought a Toyota hatchback back then, and I remember us popping the hood and just marveling at how tightly laid out that engine compartment was, and at all the simple little things they did to protect the hoses and electrical lines from wear and tear. Many of the parts had little tick marks on them, to show the factory workers how they were supposed to be fitted together. Hoses had little arrows printed on them which matched up to little arrows that were literally cast into the fittings they connected to. What a concept…the parts themselves showed the workers how to put them together. Detroit was struggling then to hold on against the Japanese onslaught…American Motors was headed for bankruptcy and would finally fold in 1987…and I took one look inside the engine compartment of my friend’s new Toyota and knew they were all doomed unless they got their act together. It just couldn’t be business as usual anymore. But they never really got that message. Not completely.

Here’s a passage from Time Magazine article from 1980… 

In these late summer days, Detroit’s automakers are bustling to complete billion-dollar programs that they hope will turn the fortunes of their industry. The Jefferson Avenue plant, for example, is daily turning out 400 new Dodge Aries, Chrysler’s front-wheel-drive K-car that will determine whether the company survives as a major automobile producer.

Twenty-five miles away, at Ford Motor Co.’s Wayne, Mich., plant, workmen are busily assembling the company’s new subcompacts, the Ford Escort and the Mercury Lynx. Developed at a cost of $3 billion, the new cars are the first autos that Ford has built from the ground up since the Model A in 1927.

–Time Magazine, September 8, 1980

If you look closely, you can see the root of the problem in that last paragraph. …the new cars are the first autos that Ford has built from the ground up since the Model A in 1927.  Your typical American car buyer would have scoffed at that.  Why…they come out with a new model every year.  But they didn’t.  They just kept rehashing the old stuff with new skins.  Hell, the legendary Ford Mustang was based on the friggin’ Ford Falcon.

This…

…and this…

…are the same fucking car where it counts, in the chassis suspension and drive train.

There’s your problem right there.  Michael Nesmith mocked it back in 1981, a year after that Time article I quoted above appeared, in his video LP, Elephant Parts… 

Jeremy Clarkson, in his video on the quality of American cars, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (in eight parts on YouTube), puts the blame on our disposable culture.  Well…if you take his insults seriously, he also blames it on our being a bunch of inbred ignorant hicks too.  I can’t seem to find this video for sale here in the U.S…oddly enough…or I’d post a link to where you can buy it. I suppose that might have something to do with the fact that he spends the first five minutes of the video bellyaching about everything he doesn’t like about America. And about a third of the rest of the video as well. You need to get past that. He’s an automobile enthusiast and he knows what a good car is. And if you know what a good car is too then it isn’t all that surprising that Clarkson really trashes most of what he finds on his desert test track in that video. And I don’t think he actually hates us or he wouldn’t be so offended by our halfassed efforts at making cars. I think he does, for all the snark about billy-bob and American ignorance, honestly expect better of us. I would like to wave his video in the faces of everyone on the GM, Ford and Chrysler board of directors. Although I think Chrysler already got an earful of it from Daimler before the divorce.

I would especially like to wave at them this one point Clarkson raises in that video, and which I’d like to restate here because it’s important.

Look at this…

…and then, this…

…and ask yourself what went wrong.  The same country made both of those things.  And I’m not cheating here.  The airplane represents the best of it’s class.  It’s a military spy plane.  It’s not a fighter plane, but it’s fast, damn fast, because it has to be to avoid being shot down.  It flies high and fast so it can do it’s job.  It’s design and execution brilliantly and…beautifully…fulfill its function.  The other photo is of a mini van.  Okay, minivans aren’t supposed to be fast and flashy.  They don’t even have to be beautiful really.  But a mini van has its function too.  And that minivan represented at the time of it’s making, seriously, the best this country could do at manufacturing something that does what a minivan is supposed to do.  And if that’s not depressing enough, the airplane, an SR71, was born in 1964.  The mini van, a Ford Aerostar, is a product of the early 1990s. 

Three decades after producing the SR71, we were making Ford Aerostars.  Which wouldn’t be so bad if we had made something better we could point to…some mini van that just ran and ran and ran and would never say die, was safe to drive, handled well, was put together with care and craftsmanship, and did its job impeccably.  Don’t tell me that the country that can produce the SR71 couldn’t do that.  But we didn’t.  American mini vans were then, and still are, abominations.  And so are most of our sedans, our coupes, and our sports cars.  And the ones that are good, supposedly the best of breed, still don’t even touch the best that come from Europe.  We’re not even on the same planet.  In his video, Clarkson tests out a new Cadillac XLR…one of these…

By all rights it ought to be as good a performer as it looks.  And yet…it’s horrible.  Clarkson notes all the ways it fails on the track to be a good sports roadster, but it was his tour of the mind numbingly stupid low quality of materials and build inside the cockpit and was the biggest letdown.  It was all too familiar territory.  From the cheesy workmanship on the upholstery, to the cheap plastic in the center console, and the cheap toy like sounds the shift lever made when you moved it, I saw the same pathetic lack of pride and care that has kept me out of American big three designed cars ever since I could afford to buy one again. 

In 1991 I was mowing lawns and doing spot work at temp agencies to make ends meet. I was living in a friend’s basement wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life when another friend called with a job offer to write software for Baltimore Gas and Electric. I’d been tinkering around with the new desktop computers since the mid-1980s, and even had the odd job setting other folks up with theirs. The money was fantastic considering I was officially below the poverty line. But there was a catch. I had to drive up to Baltimore and I had no car. So the agency I signed on with rented me one: a 1991 Chevrolet Geo Prism.

It was wonderful…everything I’d ever hoped an American economy car could be. It was well made, not fabulously well made like my uncle’s Mercedes, but well made nonetheless. It drove well, got great gas mileage, and just felt overall like it would drive forever without giving you a lot of headaches. I later learned the Prism was a Toyota Corolla under the skin. (sigh) I had it for a week and then I had to swap it for a different one because the car rental agency had some sort of policy that you couldn’t hold onto a car for more then a week. The next car they gave me was a Chevrolet Cavalier. The difference between them couldn’t have been more stark. The Chevy certainly looked like a nicer car. But then you drove it. Small as it was, it handled like a cow. And it rattled. I hadn’t noticed really, how well made the Prism had been until I drove the Chevy and it started rattling. The dashboard was plastic, as the Prism’s had been. But it felt cheap where the Prism’s didn’t. Point of fact, nice as the car looked, everything about it just felt cheap.

After my first paycheck I arranged to buy a junker from a friend of a friend. I kept it together with chicken wire and duct tape until I felt confident enough in my new career to buy my first new car since the ’73 Pinto. It was 1993, and when I figured I could finally afford it, the first thing I did was drive right to my nearest Chevy dealer and buy…a Prism. I never regretted it. I drove that thing to California twice, and twice more around the four corners area of the American southwest. I drove it across the Mojave Desert and the Imperial Valley. I still vividly remember how well the car behaved in the high altitudes of the Rockies west of Denver. In 1974 I’d taken the Pinto along the same route through the mountains and the poor thing huffed and puffed through it’s little one barrel carburetor like it was dying of asthma. The Prism just hummed along unperturbed. Cheap, basic transportation that just worked. And Americans had built it.

That’s right. It had come off the same factory lines in southern California that the Toyota Corolla did. That car was made in America. But it wasn’t a GM product. That’s the difference. Not American workmanship. American workers can build a great car when they’re given a great car to build. The proof as far as I’m concerned was in the Prism. I got over two-hundred thousand miles out of it. After the Prism I bought a 2005 Honda Accord five speed with all the trimmings. It was just lovely, and as solid as the Cavalier had been a plastic can full of rattles. The Honda was also made in America, on an assembly line in Kentucky.

And I don’t think the problem is American engineering either. Take another look at that SR71. No. The problem isn’t American workmanship nor American Engineering, but American corporate mentality. The boardrooms in Detroit don’t care enough to make the best cars they can. They just have to be good enough to sell.

In his video, Clarkson demonstrates what comes of that by trying to fill a 1989 Lincoln and a 1989 Jaguar sedan both with water.  Yes, yes…it’s over the top…but it makes its point. And he’s not cheating just by using an old American car for the test because he compares it to a perfectly lousy European car of the same model year. The Jaguar Clarkson uses, and as he notes, is regarded as being the worst car ever made in Britain. But if fit and finish were all there were to a car, the Jag would shine.  You can’t fill a 1989 Lincoln with water, it isn’t built tight enough.  In the video the Lincoln leaks like a sieve.  But you can fill the Jag almost to the windows.

Now Cadillac is making the XLR, and it’s supposed to compete with the BMWs and Mercedes roadsters of its class and it is Still junk.  Not in junk in the sense that it has springs popping out from the seats, and pistons falling out of the engine, but junk in the sense that it’s still being made as though good enough was good enough. You don’t put a shift lever that makes plastic toy sounds when you move it into a 75 thousand dollar car.  You don’t give it a cheap plastic fake wood ashtray lid that looks more like a toy part then a 75 thousand dollar car part.  Well…we do.  To the rest of the world, it must seem like we simply can’t make a good car.

Yes we can.  That’s the damnable fact.  We can do better.  Tons better.  We just don’t.  Clarkson lays the blame for that on our disposable culture. I don’t think that’s the root of it though. We have a management problem, not an engineering problem, and not a skilled worker problem.  The boardrooms just aren’t interested in making good cars.

Why? I don’t think they’re enthusiasts. Not for automobiles anyway. They’re into business, not cars. They’re about running corporations, not driving cars. The automobile doesn’t get their blood going. Wringing out the last little bit of road hugging performance out of a suspension doesn’t do it for them the way wringing out the last little bit of efficiency in a just-in-time delivery pipeline does. They’re not into cars, so much as Product. And so Product is what we get.

There’s another difference too I think. Over here, many car enthusiasts work on their own cars and customize them heavily. New engine, new drive train, new suspension. You see people completely re-doing the interior and exterior, sometimes to the point that you can’t even recognize what the base vehicle actually was. The after-market here for car parts and customizing is huge. So a lot of enthusiasts don’t really care so much what Detroit gives them to start with. That takes some pressure off.

But most folks don’t do that. They need a good car they can buy right off the lot and it’s that customer base that has walked away from Detroit over the past few decades, and which Detroit simply won’t win back unless they start paying attention to workmanship. I read a story some years ago, about the frustration some GM engineers had being constantly overruled by management and the design department. We don’t need to make it that good…it’s too costly to do it that way…make it cheaper…make it flashier…good looks sell better then good engineering… One day, so the story went, in protest, the engineers all came into a design meeting with management wearing visitor’s badges. That’s the problem. Ever since Japan kicked their butts they’ve been saying they get the message. And they are certainly not making the same drek they did back in the 1970s and 80s or they’d all be out of business by now. But the mindset is still Good Enough and this country will never produce anything like the Toyotas or Hondas, let alone the BMWs and Mercedes, let alone the Rolls and Bentleys, until good enough isn’t anymore.

This is the perenial problem with my countrymen. We want to win at everything we do. We are a very competitive people. We love a good contest. But we don’t really think about what winning means. Let me give you a specific example. We’re having a little culture war here in America, and at the center of it is religion. More specifically, the brand of protestant Christianity practiced over here. The religious right likes to point to the fact that mainline liberal protestant churches are loosing membership, whilst their own are undergoing vast increases in size. The stellar examples of this, are the American Megachurches. These aren’t so much churches as indoor football stadiums, capable, I am not kidding, of seating thousands of people.

These Megachurches usually have several stadium size TV screens mounted behind the pulpits so the back rows can see what’s going on. The pulpits are on a huge stage now, suitable more for a rock concert then a sermon. They have stores where you can buy videos of previous sermons, books from Christian publishing houses, and everything from Christian greeting cards to keychains. Some Megachurches have in them, I am not kidding, indoor basketball courts, game rooms and sports size swimming pools. There are day care centers, and of course, private Christian schools often located on the grounds, if not right in the Megasanctuary itself. Every Sunday here in America these days, hundreds of thousands of American fundamentalists pile into huge Megachurches beside thousands of other worshipers and enjoy a multimedia extravaganza. Oh…and a sermon too. Which they can buy later on DVD. The religious right points to all this as proof that they are winning the battle for souls over the liberal mainline churches hands down. But what is ‘winning’?

So…I was fiddling around a bit at my drafting table…still trying desperately to get my drawing groove back so I can pick up and continue on with my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story.   It’s been almost a year since I last updated it.  (sigh)  I think finally getting in touch with the object of my affections from way back then has really messed up my head on that one.  It’s probably messed up my head in a lot of other ways too, all coming back to my creative sense.  It just feels too tender right now.

Every now and then I see a beautiful face or a beautiful pose and it sticks with me and I have to at least sketch it out, and maybe improvise on it a tad.  So I’m not completely dried up.  I suppose as long as there are beautiful males on this planet I will never be completely without inspiration.  I sketched this out a little while ago, based loosely on a photo I ran across online.  The pose was lovely, and you very seldom see nice cutoffs anymore.  But I had to change it around a tad to suit me…

This is the sort of thing that causes some of my gay friends to question my homosexuality.  But I am not into hunks, and I really hate the pejorative ‘twink’.  Not that ‘twink’ doesn’t fit some guys, just not the guys I like.  This guy’s entirely a figment of my imagination, like the pirate I drew a while ago, and like the pirate, I felt somehow like I was coming to know him while I drew him.  He’s a bit on the lean side, but fit, and I tried to put a sense of playful energy in the pose, like before he’ll give you a roll in the sack he’d like to run you around the court a few times first to size you up.  He’s no airhead.  I tried to put some intelligence in the direct look he’s giving you.  But he likes to be sexy too.  There was a time when that was okay.  

I’ve worked on the pirate some more too, since you last saw him…most background stuff.  Hopefully I’ll have enough energy this week to charcoal and ink up these two.  But I can’t promise that.  There’s a part of me that’s aching now…really, really badly…and it’s all tied up in with the drawing side of my brain.

Now I’m going for a cigar walk.  Then to bed.  Hopefully to dream. 

So…I’ve told you I went to Mexico a couple weeks ago…right?  Here are some photos…