The “Potty Problem”

I’m going to assume that anyone reading this knows the general thrust of the “trans bathroom bill” laws showing up around the country, and the issues people in the GLBTQ and allied communities have with them.  (If you don’t, please look up the details.)  There is, unfortunately, a lot of misunderstanding on both sides of this issue.

While the people driving the “trans bathroom bills” are doing so out of malice — rile up the base, shore up support, bring in donations, etc., all in the name of gathering more power — the people on the ground generally aren’t evil.

They just aren’t educated.

I don’t mean that they are stupid.  I mean that they don’t know what the issues and implications are.  Just like with the various gay right issues of the past 20+ years, where we found that the more gay and lesbian people they knew, the more favorable they were to gay rights, these people don’t have any real experience with trans people.

For most of us who are GLBTQ or allied, no matter where we currently fall on the trans acceptance and awareness scale, it has been a progression to get there.  None of us sprang from Zeus’ head with a fully formed knowledge of and process for dealing with trans issues.  We discovered, we learned, we grew… we evolved.  And we still are evolving — I know I am.

For most of these people, their awareness of “trans” is Ru Paul’s Drag Race and Caitlyn Jenner.  They have no mental separation of sex from gender from orientation — to these people, those are pretty much all one and the same.  They can’t (yet) grasp the reasons why someone would not be comfortable in their assigned gender, why someone would want to transition (much less what that means).  They still believe that being gay is a choice, so they certainly can’t grasp gender subtleties.

A lot of people have pushed up the idea of “Do they want Buck Angel in the women’s room?”  No, they don’t, but that’s because he passes.  Completely.  They don’t see him as female at all, and thus it would not be an issue.  In fact, they have almost no concept of FTM because they don’t see such people as anything but “male".

(Let’s be clear on the idea of genital checks: that has come from our side of the fence.  They say it will be enforced, but it’s us that have suggested that mechanism.  They don’t know how to enforce it other than the silent threat imposed by making it a law.)

Their concern — the one that has been pushed at them by those driving the issue — is MTF trans people.  And back to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, their main image of transwomen is over-the-top drag queens.  (Again, when they don’t know any better, drag and trans are the same thing.)  If they look beyond the glammed up big drag, or a “rich enough to afford what it takes to look good” transwoman like Jenner, they see less refined drag.  They see men in women’s clothes who don’t pass well as women, who wouldn’t convince many people that they are female.  (And those drag queens don’t intend to do that, but these people don’t understand that, of course.)  Or they see butch-appearing women who, to their view are about the same — unable to pass with standard gender norms, ans thus suspect.

So now we have image the undereducated masses have for the trans bathroom issue: men badly dressed as women, saying they are female and using the women’s restroom.  And since these people are obviously not actually women, then their reason for using the women’s room would be… what?  Nothing good, to be sure!  And that’s where things go directly into the toilet (so to speak): such men must be wanting to be there to peek at, scare, molest, or even rape innocent real women or girls.  And that’s not acceptable, obviously.

So how do we fight back about this?  Same way as with the gay rights issues — we challenge them in court, forcing them to come up with increasingly stupid sounding rationalizations for their fears, and we come at it from the other side with gradual, continual education and awareness.  And we need to realize that this is going to take time — years, even.  It will be faster than the gay rights fights (that road has at least been traveled before), but it’s still not going to be solved immediately.

Movie Review — Basic Instinct

I finally saw Basic Instinct (1992) this week, thanks to the wonders of Netflix.  This film had been on my “Don’t Watch” list for the last 20 years.  Due to the gay protests over it when it was being filmed and released, it was a big no-no to support this horrible anti-gay film about an ice pick-wielding bisexual murderess.

I’m glad I finally saw it, because that was a load of horse crap.  Or rather, twenty years down the road, it now looks like a load of horse crap.  At the time, maybe making an example of the film was the right thing to do.

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area (to San Jose, an hour south of San Francisco) in August 1990, at age 23.  I had come out over the previous year in Eugene, Oregon.  I think my first trip to San Francisco proper didn’t occur until November or December of that year, for a Silicon Valley gay techies dim sum brunch.

(I still remember walking up the stairs into the cavernous dim sum restaurant, not knowing what anyone who would be there looked like.  I scanned the entire place and figured that the table of white people must be those there for the brunch.  And then saw many other people in the next half hour come up the stairs and do the exact same thing.  This was back in the days where we knew people online pretty much only by their name and e-mail address; there were no social networking or cruise sites where we could see a photo.)

Soon after that, I was regularly coming up to San Francisco at least once per weekend, to country dance at the Rawhide II.  After I joined the San Francisco Saddletramps a year later and eventually moved to San Mateo, halfway up the peninsula, my trips to The City would be three or four per week.  San Mateo was a great place to sleep, but a lousy place to have a gay life.

One of the first pieces of gay political activism that I remember was the stuff surrounding Basic Instinct, although as one of the first, it’s also something that I only have hazy memories of.  The biggest memories I have of the time are the involvement of the activist group Queer Nation, and that the gay country bar Rawhide II was used as one of the sets in the movie, and gay activists did drive-by paint bombing of the front door because of the “sell out” nature of the owner and the business.

Ray Chalker, the owner of the Rawhide II and the Sentinel gay paper, eventually earned himself a worldwide reputation as a jerk — I was once in Florida at a gay country-western dance event and met a couple guys from London who said “You’re from San Francisco?  Do you know the owner of the Rawhide?  We hear he’s a complete asshole” — but now I wonder what portion of this might stem from the Basic Instinct stuff?  That is, while running both a newspaper and a bar already put you at odds with some people in the community, when you get publicly branded as a sort of a traitor to the community and members of the community conduct repeated vandalism against your business, I can see how that changes your view of the community; you start to mistrust motives and you become a degree less pleasant to work with, and that can certainly spiral in intensity over time.  Add in the gay community’s institutionalized memory, where we hold grudges and refuse to take actions for years after the reason to do so has evaporated — like the Coors Boycott [see here] [and here], or dare I say it, avoiding seeing the movie Basic Instinct — and it’s easy to see an unfocused perpetual animosity toward Chalker and the Rawhide II festering in the community for years, continually being reinforced by Chalker himself in the way he reacted to things.

(On the flip side, Chalker’s anger and behavior eventually resulted in the creation of the Sundance Association for Country-Western Dancing, a strong non-profit which “owns” and directs the Bay Area gay country community now long after the Rawhide II ceased to be a gay country bar.  And Sundance has been an inspiration and model for Seattle’s Rain Country Dance Association, which formed after we lost the Timberline as a dance location up here.  Mmm, there’s a lot of stuff thet we can tag as possibly having some roots in this movie!)

Part of the fun with this movie, as with any one taking place in a familiar-to-you city was in identifying where things occur and what has changed since then, such as:

• Nick’s apartment is in North Beach.  Although I don’t know that neighborhood much from driving, that is also where some of Tales of the City takes place (Russian Hill is right next door; the TV mini-series was released the next year), so I recognized some of the street locations used in both.  (Alas, I don’t know that area of the city well enough to tell where they turn down a one-way street, or turn on one street and end up clear across town.)
   
• The construction pit where Roxy’s car crashes?  That is what would become Moscone Center.  You can tell by some of the other buildings seen on the other side.
   
• As noted before, the country bar is the Rawhide II.  The real one’s 7th-near-Harrison location isn’t what is shown in the movie, nor did it have a neon cactus.  It never had room inside for a live band where one is in the movie; the room was only 20–25 feet across, narrow and long.
   
• The looming freeways threw me for a loop at first, since I couldn’t place the locations as near the 101 in SOMA.  But when Nick is walking on the pier with the city behind him, I remembered that there used to be a freeway along the Embarcadero, damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and torn down in 1991, after the movie was filmed.

Also fun was freeze-framing the scene in the country bar (scene 18), which according to the DVD notes featured as many as 100 of the bar’s regulars:

• Right as the scene opens, a guy with a bushy moustache and a white cowboy hat is seen dancing as the camera zooms through the ceiling fan.  That is Jeff Hines (d. 1998), longtime instructor at the Rawhide and prominent member of the San Francisco Saddletramps dance troupe.
   
• As Nick pays Gus’s tab, a curly haired woman is at the bar.  I think that was Jackie, whom I knew from the 931 Cloggers.
   
• As Gus and Nick leave the bar, they pass by the pool table.  Behind the black woman is a blond man in a black shirt, with a pool cue.  That is Tim, another of the San Francisco Saddletramps.  (Tim and I joined at the same time, in late 1991.)

20 years down the line, and with early 90s AIDS in the mix, a few other people looked familiar, but I couldn’t identify any of them by name.
 

Hair Hoppers

This poster for the local “Emperor’s Turnabout” event from the local Imperial Court showed up in the local bars recently.  (“Turnabout” is an event where the male-persona Court members do drag and the female-persona members perform in male gear.  The name may come from the old Hal Roach film of the same name.)  It reminds me of something…

This, maybe?

Well, yes, that’s the obvious connection.  But something else…

Oh, yeah.  This!

The last big evening-long show that the VisQueens did (about 5 years ago now) used the same concept in this poster I did for the show.

The VisQueens are/were Seattle’s camp scag-drag troupe: leathermen and bears donning lingerie, heels, and hair — no make-up — and doing sometimes really good group performance routines.  The group’s original outing was with the “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago in 1998.  Our last big group routine (we practiced this for months) was the “Rich Man’s” Frug from Sweet Charity in 2008, replicating a big chunk of the Fosse choreography.

Hey, look!  Videos!




 

Does Homo Milk Come From Lesbian Cows?

Every time I go to Vancouver, BC and have coffee at the chain Blenz in the gay neighborhood, I get tickled by their milk containers.  Wow: a special dispenser just for the gays!  So I finally took a pic.

(Yes, I know it’s short for “homogenized”, what American chains would tag as “whole milk”.)
 

Stuff I Read: “Bear Nuts” by Alison Acton

Remember the Care Bears?  Cute cuddly (sickly sweet) bears with symbols on their tummies which indicated their temperament and role?  Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Grumpy Bear, and so on?

(C’mon, admit it.  You remember them.  You just wish you didn’t!  You also remember Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony.)

Alison Acton’s comic Bear Nuts asks the question: “What other iconic bears were out there which we never saw on the cartoon?  The ones with less (market-to-)kid-friendly personalities?”

The “About” page for the comic glosses over this origin, saying just “As one of the largest exhibits at the Discount Zoo, (in both size and number of inhabitants) the bears attract a lot of attention… something none of them are happy about.  Between gawking adults, jeering children, and their own rather profound personality clashes, it’s a wonder the bears can get through each day without maiming each other… well, most days.”

With characters like Gay (with a lavender rhino, a barely known gay symbol), Evil (with an inverted pentagram), Prozac (with a pill), Tanked, Death, Nerd, and Vanity all sharing the same exhibit at the zoo, Acton has the makings of a fun, emotional, explosive story.  Currently posting a couple times a week, Bear Nuts is a perfect blend of cute and twisted.

Two collected volumes, plus prints, sketches, original art, and merchandise are available from the website and from Acton’s partner companies.  (I want a Gay Bear t-shirt!  One of those “sports” design shirts with a white chest and light yellow sleeves and collar, and a pic of Gay on the tummy as though I were “Gay Bear” Bear would be way cool.  Bet Evil would sell even better.)
 

See No Gay, Hear No Gay, Kick Out No Gay

A couple years ago, I was listening to talk radio and heard the most bizarre statement from one caller:

Gays should be able to serve in the military.  “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a bad policy because it hurts people and gets rid of people with skills the military needs.  But we shouldn’t repeal it, because the policy is working.

That’s a paraphrase of what she said, but the gist is intact.

This was conservative talk radio, I think, and/or it was at the very end of the show, so the caller’s viewpoint was not challenged.  But you have to wonder what this woman’s definition of “working” is, how she can mesh those contradictory ideas.

(Sure, the rocks in the bottom of my dishwasher break all the glasses and chip the plates, but I’m not going to remove them, because by God, the stuff comes out clean!)
 

Trip Report: Portland for Alder Street Hoedown #2

Before the Trip

August 7–8 marked my second long road trip of the summer on the scooter, this time down to Portland.  I had intended to ride to Portland for Pride in mid-June, but that got stopped by needing scooter repairs (and given the heavy rain on the way down, no big loss).  I was then planning to ride in mid-July for the Alder Street Hoedown, but repairs were still underway, so I again had to drive.  Third time’s the charm, I guess.

Plotting my route, I knew I wanted to avoid the steep hill north of Olympia where I–5 climbs the Nisqually ridge.  After some online research, it appeared that Highway 507 would be my best bet, through Roy, Yelm, Rainier, and Tenino.  Looking further and comparing Google Maps time estimates, it appeared that staying off I–5 altogether until near Centralia was doable, adding only like 15 minutes to the trip.  Indeed, I could take Rainier Avenue through south Seattle and Renton until it turned into Highway 167, get off onto 161 and then 512 at Puyallup, and then off that at Parkland to head to Spanaway and pick up 507 there.

(I don’t think Google Maps does a good job of estimating times through the urban district of Parkland/Spanaway or the backroads of Highway 507, where you slow down every 6 miles for the next town.  The route took longer than I expected.)

This weekend was also Seafair in Seattle, with the Blue Angels roaring overhead and the hydroplane races on Lake Washington.  One of the major viewing locations is about a mile from my house, which means that traffic is horrific on this weekend, and thus I’m pleased to be able to leave town for Seafair.  I’ve only been in Seattle this weekend maybe 3 or 4 times in the past decade.

The Ride Down

This weekend, rain was threatening, with low overcast clouds.  (I’m told that the Blue Angels had to alter their routine to compensate for the clouds.)  I felt a little schadenfreude toward the crowds who were going to get rained up.  But of course, that tends to come back at you: I had to ride in the rain from home down to Southcenter Mall (about 10 miles), although then it mostly cleared up.

I rode down to Yelm, where I stopped for gas and decides to shed the rain pants.  I then continued out to pick up I–5 at Grand Mound, and then headed south to Centralia.  I stopped at the Centerville Western Wear store there and picked up a new western shirt — forest green with “WRANGLER” in gold thread on the pocket and the sleeve.  (I almost bought one in plum with silver threading on the pocket and back instead, but decided I look better in the green.)

After a pretty medicore French dip sandwich at Arby’s, I got back on the road.  From there, I had to deal with rain again until Kelso (most of an hour), where I stopped for gas again.

You Can’t Go Home Again

From 4th to 7th grades (over 30 years ago), my family lived in the Hazel Dell area of Vancouver, Washington.  (“Vancouver A.D.” I like to call it, vs. “Vancouver B.C.”.  Heh.)  Since I had the time, I detoured through north Vancouver, past Columbia High School and down to 95th Street, and tried to find the second place we lived.  The big tree I recall in the back yard wasn’t there anymore, but the juniper-laden planting on the corner was, so I think I found it.  I then rode down to 85th Street, to the first house we lived in, and I think I found it.  I think it’s even the same color as when we lived there.  I took pictures of both houses, plus Dwight David Eisenhower Elementary and Jason Lee Junior High, both of which I attended.  The latter looked basically identical, but the elementary school had been completely rebuilt, I think.

Time blurs all sorts of memories, but one of the biggest as you grow up is the sense of scale.  Things were vastly closer together than my memory has them.  The house on 85th Street was only a block from the Junior High (which I didn’t attend until we had moved 10 blocks away).  And it was only maybe a mile to whatever shopping area had existed back then and to the freeway.  Today I would walk that without thinking, but then it was vastly far away.  Makes me think that as I kid, I never tended to go more than 4 or 5 blocks from home, and often probably not even off my own block.  Weird feeling.

Alder Street Hoedown

This trip, I stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott near the Oregon Convention Center.  This was convenient to the PPAA for the dancing (more so that the Econo Lodge was in July), and the room was good.  I again used Hotwire, getting the room for just $75.

While DJ Crystal has been on vacation for the summer, Rain Country Dance Association in Seattle has been working with Reuben and Pamlin in Portland to put on dance nights to fill the gap — same space, schedule, lesson plan, etc. — dubbed the Alder Street Hoedown.  We want to ensure that Portland has a growing community, and two months with no dancing wouldn’t help.  Rain Country is providing DJs, some teaching, and some monetary support to ensure the events at least break even.

Terry DJed for the Alder Street Hoedown, and taught the line dances — Picnic Polka and Cowboy Cha Cha (partner flow dance).  When I got there at 9:00, they had just started the second one (which really should have been done at 9:00, but they apparently started late), but I didn’t hear griping.

The Alder Street Hoedown nights look to be a success, at least in terms of maintaining the Portland dance community during Crystal’s vacation and not losing money.  In fact, Reuben says they have had as many people as usually seen in the spring, which would be an uptick in attendance over what would normally be expected in the summer (given good weather pulling people away, and summer vacations), so that’s very good.  As a side angle, there has long been some dissatisfaction with Crystal as a DJ from some Portland dancers — if nothing else than because she’s the only one the dancers experience — and by giving them a little variety, perhaps some leverage can be built up to shift Crystal toward music selections which people will like more.

There will be one more Alder Street Hoedown this summer, on August 21 (past by the time I’m writing this), with Keith as the DJ.  Hope it also goes well.

Getting Laid

I loosely planned to go to the Eagle Portland after the dance.  As part of Oregon Leather Pride Week, they were hosting a uniform party, so I had brought a sailor shirt with me.  This meant that I also didn’t have to pack my leathers for the trip, which I was content leaving out of the scooter trunk.

(I am not really into uniform fetish — I’ve never been in the military and I’m not attracted to the look, the attire, or the attitude for roleplay.  The only military backgrounds I know in my family are late 1950s National Guard from my father, early 1940s Army from my mother’s father [who abandoned the family], and an early 19th century Prussian cavalry officer on my father’s side of the family.  I’m anal-retentive enough to know that I would need for any real uniform I wore to be as complete and accurate as I could make it, and I’m not about to try to put together that cavalry outfit!  So this shirt is one of the few concessions to that fetish that I have, enough to be “in gear” at such an event without worrying much about accuracy and completeness.)

But cruising on Grindr at dinner time, I connected with someone who apparently connected the red on the leather harness in my pic to other activities.  (He’s not the first to do so.  I’m actually surprised by this, since so many guys seem to clueless at times, but I’m happy when it happens.)  I had to go to the dance, and he had other early evening plans, but we arranged to get together later at his place.

Suffice to say, I did get laid.  Real good like!  Small hands, great attitude, and a Volcano Vaporizer — I was totally floating for the evening.  Now if we can just arrange a repeat visit, or have him come to visit me.

The Trip Back

After brunch on Sunday at the Village Inn, I rode down to Columbia Scooters to check out what they carry — which turned out to be Kymco (same as my scooter).  I talked to the owner for a while, who was (like many people) surprised that I could ride mine to Portland and Vancouver like I do.  He asked whether I hear engine strain noises, since I’m definitely pushing it beyond expected usage patterns, but no, haven’t heard any whines or the like.  I bought a lock-down cable, since I don’t have one of those.  I also drooled over the Kymco Quannon 150 sport bikes (the second branch-out of Kymco into motorcycles, following the Venox from a few years ago).  He said they haven’t sold well, so he’s going to be dropping the price in August.  (Hmmm.  No, damn, can’t afford one now!)

When I go to Portland, I usually like to go out to the nude beach at Rooster Rock State Park, about 20 miles east of Portland.  Facing a long scooter trip home, though, I didn’t want to go all that way out, and I had been there two weeks before and found much of the trek to the beach area a horrible muddy bog.  Portland does have a second nude beach, at Sauvie Island about 20 miles west of Portland.  I researched where it is and initially hoped to go there on the way down on Saturday, but the weather stopped that.  On Sunday, the weather report was for sunny but cool weather, making it not worth going then, either.

However, in the process, I had investigated an alternate route to Sauvie Island, to avoid going to Portland and then doubling back 20 miles north.  There is a bridge across the Columbia at Longview, and then state Highway 30 goes down the Oregon side of the river, through Rainier, Columbia City, St. Helens, Scappoose, Linnton.  So rather than take I–5 back through Vancouver, I took the road less travelled up the river the Longview.  (Interesting: I would go through Rainier in both Oregon and Washington, and through Columbia City in both states [it’s the neighborhood just south of my house in Seattle].)

The weather might not have been quite warm enough for nude sunbathing, but it was wonderful for riding a state highway.  I strapped my riding coat to the seat behind me (with that new cable) and just wore the new Western shirt atop my t-shirt.  Delightful ride.  Once I got through Longview and to Kelso, before getting on I–5, I put the coat back on.

Got gas in Kelso.  At Centralia, hit the usual grind-to-a-halt that haunts I–5 north from there to Olympia every Sunday afternoon.  (Literally, almost every weekend!  And for no discernable reason like an accident or a narrowing of the highway.)  So I got off at the bypass to Bucoda, which connected me up again with 507 at Tenino.  And then retraced my route from Saturday (with a couple more stops for gas and snacks along the way), but was able to ride through Renton and south Seattle now that Seafair was done.
 

Taking Aim at Target

I don’t really have anything to say about the Target donation debacle.

For those who came in late: after the Supreme Court loosened restrictions on corporate giving to political candidates, Target gave $150,000 to a Minnesota candidate ostensibly because of his pro-business policies, but without paying heed to his anti-union and anti-gay stances.  Target has issued an apology, which gay groups don’t accept as authentic, but has refused to either rescind the donation or make a matching one to gay groups, which tends to reinforce why people don’t accept the apology as more than boilerplate.

Actually, I do have one thing to say about the deal: Best Buy donated $100,000 as well, and no one is paying any attention to them in this.  Shouldn’t 40% of the attention be going there, since 40% of the money came from them?

Nonetheless, I found it ironic that Target ads ended up on the Seattle Times webpage for the story dealing with the donation and its backlash.
 

Surprise Shopping: Gay Priests

“Surprise Shopping” highlights online shopping and catalog results which don’t match what you expect.

This was the item that first inspired this series of posts, which made the rounds back in January 2010.  Now, why someone went looking for communion wafers and noticed this in the first place, I don’t know.  (Could even have been a hoax, a jiggering of Amazon results to make the funny connection — just buy both a couple times and you could probably force it.)

Of course, now we’re seven months later and the “Also Bought” statistics have changed so this no longer shows up.  (They do currently include an iPhone battery and a power strip, though.  Not as funny, though.  You never know what people will buy at the same time.  My last Amazon purchase was latex gloves and a book on PHP coding.  How would that look?)
 

Surprise Shopping: Poppers on Amazon

“Surprise Shopping” highlights online shopping and catalog results which don’t match what you expect.

They say you can buy anything on Amazon.  Sure enough, you can even buy poppers!

(For the puzzled, “poppers” are a mild inhalant drug used primarily by gay men during sex.  They produce a muscle relaxation effect and usually a high or even mild hallucigenic effect; different brands have different intensities and durations of these effects, usually lasting only a few minutes.  Originally amyl nitrate based and intended for treating heart issues like angina, they were sold in tiny glass vials wrapped in a cloth sock; you “popped” the glass to release the drug.  Poppers are technically illegal and their manufacture is unregulated; if you use them, you probably don’t want to think too hard about it.)

Beyond the fact that you can actually buy these from Amazon, though, is what else shows in the list when you search for them.  Check out the screen capture from the Amazon app on the iPhone.
 

Trip Report: VanQueerDanceDay and Vancouver Pride (July 30–August 1)

Before the Weekend

Several years ago, a couple guys from Vancouver, BC who were visiting Seattle asked me and a friend, “Where do guys from Seattle go when they want to get laid?”  We looked at each other and replied, “Vancouver.”  Not that Vancouver is any more a hotbed of sexy men than Seattle, just that “fresh meat syndrome” is true — a new face in town draws attention.

Vancouver is a 3+ hour drive north, and you have to have a passport or enhanced driver’s license to cross the border.  I get up there a few times a year, especially for Rubbout in April, but I’ve also been up for their Pride celebration a couple times in the past, once to march with their Leather contingent and once just to go.  I’ve also been there several times for New Year’s, just to not be at home at the usual local bar.

This year as well, Not So Strictly Ballroom was hosting VanQueerDanceDay, a day of same-sex ballroom, Latin, and country workshops, competitions, and dancing.  They invited me to come up to teach Country Two-Step.  Initially, Rusty was going to come up as well, and we were going to compete, but he ended up not able to go.  Klint was going up, though, so the two of us decided to compete — mostly just for fun, but also to support the event and get some experience under our belts.  (Our only real rule was to not embarrass ourselves.)  We got together a couple days before and practiced the various dances on my concrete parking area and called it ready (or ready enough).

Lining up a hotel was very difficult.  A week out, there was nothing reasonable available, and not even anything lightly unreasonable.  That is: nothing in the downtown core under close to $300 per night!  (You can usually get something around $100 at other times.)  I checked various sites and individual hotels, but nothing.  No availability at all.  But I also knew this was a lie: stuff was locked up with reservations which would cancel and other blocks which would free up if they didn’t fill.  Sure enough, by Wednesday, stuff was starting to show at about $200 a night (lightly unreasonable).  I had hopes that stuff would continue to drop, but by Friday morning, I was forced to go with the Best Western Chateau Granville (2 blocks from the dance studio, which was great) at what ended up being $225 per night including tax and parking.  With Klint sharing with me, doable if not nice.

The Trip Up

I rode my Kymco People S scooter up.  I’ve been looking forward to doing a long road trip on it again for some time.  (I had to pass up two trips on it to Portland this summer because it needed some significant maintenance — air filter, belt and rollers, rear tire, etc., not unexpected at 12,000 miles — that had it in the shop on and off for a few weeks.)  I did the ride to Vancouver for Pride on it two years ago, and last year rode to Bellingham for Pride, about 2/3 as far, so this wasn’t a new trip.  (And of course while I was dating Cliff, I took several trips on it to Stanwood, halfway to Bellingham.)

Two years ago, when I had only been riding 3 months and wanted to avoid the highway as much as possible, I had taken Lake City Way around the top of Lake Washington, then Highway 9 through Lake Stevens to Arlington, then Pioneer Highway through Stanwood (right past Cliff’s house, before I knew him) to Burlington, and Chuckanut Drive to Bellingham, with my only significant highway time being once I got into Canada.  That ride took 5 hours.

(Many people are stunned that I could or even would ride the scooter all the way.  The biggest thing is that they don’t realize that mine will go highway speeds, cruising along between 55 and 65 comfortably, barring hills or wind.  I just stay in the rightmost lane most of the time, since I’m going slower than most traffic but still at legal speeds.)

This trip, I did the highway all the way to Burlington (about 70 miles, stopped for gas in Marysville), then Chuckanut Drive through Bow-Edison and along the coast (I don’t want to do the Chuckanut Mountains pass, since I would slow down to sub-highway speeds there), and then up to the Lynden/Langley crossing (where I only had to wait for 1 or 2 cars).

(Somewhere on Chuckanut Drive, I took off my clip-on sunglasses and in the process, popped out one of the lenses and voomp, it was gone.  Toss those.  I also had a can of energy beverage in my pocket which wasn’t there when I got gas in Marysville; I hope it dropped out when I stopped before getting to the highway back in Seattle, rather than flying out at speed and maybe hitting another vehicle!  I also have a volume booster device that goes between my iPhone and my helmet speakers, to make the sound more audible, but it wasn’t working and was in fact working in reverse, bringing the volume down!  So I couldn’t use it on this trip.)

Once across the border, I made a mistake: rather than go to Highway 1, I decided to take 1A, the Fraser Highway, which eventually turns into Kingsway between Burnaby and Vancouver.  This is like taking Highway 99 through Seattle — fine on the viaduct, but then you end up on Aurora for miles of lights and 30 mph zones.  (Or like driving El Camino Real the whole length of the San Francisco peninsula.)  So what would have been about a 4-hour trip ended up a bit close to 5.5 hours.  I found that after about the 4.5 hour mark, my lower back started bothering me, probably due to the lack of support; at every light, I was standing up while stopped, dancing my feet around, stiff and sore.

But I eventually made it fine.  In the end, I’m not really sorry I took that route.  I had the time available and saw parts of the Vancouver metro area I never have before (although Cliff and I had hit some of the Burnaby thrift stores on a previous trip, so I recognized some parts), but I usually just want to get where I’m going (and repeated stop lights aren’t a lot of fun).  So while I’m likely to do Pioneer Highway and Farm Road near Stanwood again some day, Fraser Highway and Kingsway aren’t apt to get another visit to just ride them.

Friday Night

Friday night was the Vancouver Men in Leather Social at the “Leather Loft” at Numbers.  (That’s the name of the upstairs space on this leather night only.)  Usually, this would be on the 2nd Friday, but they did an extra one for Pride (or rather, moved the August one up a couple weeks).  Good big crowd, but I’ve only been there for the Rubbout ones in April, which is another special event, so I don’t know how it compares to a regular on.

The center of Davie Street was blocked off for a street party — beer and people and stage acts, I guess — which had traffic snarled all over the West End and had Davie way crowded.  After the Social, I went over to the PumpJack Pub, but there was easily 100 people in line at 10:45, so I gave up rather than wait for what could be an hour or more.

Went back to the hotel, and then to M2M to get laid.  I was apparently stiff or tense from the ride up though, so I didn’t have quite as much fun as I would have liked.

VanQueerDanceDay

Not So Strictly Ballroom, one of the GLBTQ dance groups in Vancouver (Vancouver Timberline Dance Society is the country-western one) hosted the VanQueerDanceDay on the day before Pride.  This was a morning of dance workshops, an afternoon of dance competitions, and an evening of awards and dance entertainment and open dancing.

Next year, this same weekend, Vancouver will host the North America OutGames (which happens on the two-year interval between the World OutGames), and DanceSport (which includes ballroom, Latin, and country) will be one of the 20 competitions being done.  So VanQueerDanceDay partly serves as a lead-in to the 2011 competition.

The morning workshops were Argentine Tango (which I skipped; needed the extra 30 minutes of sleep!), Country Two-Step (which I taught, with Klint’s help), and Salsa (which as a group lesson, merged into Casino Rueda, which is a “called” form of Cuban salsa — like square dancing, more or less).  I had probably 15 or 20 couples in the lesson.  Started with absolute beginner, then into beginner, and then into something more intermediate, to hopefully provide value for everyone attending.  We seemed to have some of each set.

During the lunch break, we got hot dogs from a vendor between the dance studio and the hotel, and Klint and I decided on what shirts to use (we had brought several), and I tried to nap.  Maybe got 20 minutes, tops.  (The fancy hot dog I got was wrapped in bacon; we referred to it as “uncut”.)

For the competitions, there was little actual competition.  Only about 6-8 couples total — Kirstin and Carol were also up from Seattle — mostly in either separate divisions (Newcomer [first time] vs. Intermediate) or in different dances.  So we competed to the same song/at the same time as Kirstin and Carol, but in a different division.  We did have another couple to compete against in West Coast Swing, and there was a trio of dances for ballroom which had two couples competing, but all others were one-offs.  Klint and I competed in Night Club, Jive (double-rhythm East Coast Swing), West Coast Swing, Country Two-Step, and Shadow.

After the competitions, we rode my scooter up Davie to go to Little Sisters bookstore, Priape (the leather and underwear store), and I got a beer at the PumpJack.  I cam back to the hotel for another try at a nap, and Klint hung out with some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who were up from Seattle.  For dinner on the way back to the studio, I had a piece of pizza.  (Ooh, excitement.)

After dinner, in and around some open dancing, were three line dance competitions: D.H.S.S., MMMBop, and Chill Factor.  (All three non-country, I notice.)  The four of us from Seattle did the first one, then Klint and I and Todd from Vancouver for the second, and Marek joined the three of us for the last.

The awards were Mardi Gras beads with gold/silver/bronze stars attached to them.  Cheap and blingy, but just fine for this sort of a low-key competition.  Klint and I won all five of our couples dances, including the West Coast Swing.  I took gold in D.H.S.S. and silver in the other two line dances.

Our primary goal for the competition were to get a little experience at competing under our belts — I’ve done line dance comps for many years, but no couples comps in over a decade and even then just a couple Jack & Jill/Pat & Chris competitions (where you get paired with another dancer pretty much at random).  Secondary was to not look bad — that’s why we didn’t do Waltz; we knew that even if it was country, it would be too slow for what we are used to.  We also want to be able to take the experience back to Seattle and encourage people to compete at the OutGames next year, and then when we host the IAGLCWDC competition in 2013 in Seattle.

(Okay, we might have looked bad during the Jive competition, when a table-top move resulted in me head-butting Klint in the stomach and knocking off my glasses.  I left the glasses off for competitions after that.)

Overall, I was very impressed by the event.  It was fairly simply put together and Michel moved things along well (except for the brief power failure when we tripped a breaker in the middle of one of the line dances).  We’re talking about doing a similar one-day event in Seattle after next year’s hoedown, to push competition at the OutGames.  We should be able to do that pretty easy, I think.

Saturday Night

Dinner had been just that single piece of pizza on the way to the dance, so I supplemented with poutine at Megabite Pizza on the way back to the hotel.  The poutine from the Frites place on Davie near Gravnille is better.

The PumpJack has last Saturday leather nights (well, sort of — “we hope you’ll wear leather, but you don’t have to” nights), with line privileges for guys in leather (because there is always a Saturday line, so you get to jump to the front).  Line privileges last until 10:00 usually, 10:30 this weekend, so I tried to get there in time.  Alas, Davie Street was still blocked to traffic (no street party, though), so I had to park several blocks away and didn’t quite make it.  But I was still close to the front of the line and waited only 5-10 minutes.

Curiously, almost as soon as I got my beer, they closed the back patio (at 11:00, I guess).  Not sure why, maybe for noise reasons or maybe it’s harder to police when it’s dark.  Good crowd inside, though, and it turned out my ex Cliff (and his new boyfriend, Rob) were up for the weekend.  I’m sociable with them, but I’m definitely finding that the breakup still hurts when I see them together, so I sort of avoided them (that is, didn't spend much time hanging near them).

After three beers, I headed out, back to the hotel and then to M2M again.  Had a better time tonight, ride-up tension and dance competition stress were gone.

Pride Sunday

As noted above, I’ve attended Vancouver Pride twice before.  About 6 years ago, Rusty and I marched with the leather contingent.  I confess that I don’t really remember much about that year; it must have been okay but not particularly notable.  Two years ago, I just watched the parade from somewhere on Denman, a little past the halfway point.  Watching the parade, of course, gives you a view of only a tiny slice of the attendance; in comparison, of course, being in the parade gives you only a tiny view of the parade, no more than a handful of groups.

This year, there were apparently two leather contignents.  Knights of Mantra (previously known as Knights of Malta; link is for the Seattle chapter, since the Vancouver chapter’s site is dead) was the color guard, carrying the flags immediately after the Dykes on Bikes.  They sent an oddly worded invite to Seattle Men in Leather, inviting us to march with them (and for our President to possibly carry the US flag); oddly worded in that it seemed to have a slap at Vancouver Men in Leather as part of the invite.  The other contingent was a flatbed truck from the pansexual club Metro Vancouver Kink, with Vancouver Men in Leather and others marching along with them (including the current Washington State Mr. Leather and the crew from Rubbout, probably 10-12 leatherguys in total).

The parade started at 12:00 noon, although we didn’t step off until probably 1:00 pm; we we’re somewhere in the middle third of the groups.  Not So Strictly Ballroom also had a contingent, and Klint marched with them; they were in the latter third of the parade.

In the past, many parades have required vehicle wheel monitors for each vehicle in a contingent, something that has always seemed a little odd, given distances from the vehicles to the parade watchers.  No longer odd after this parade.  The first couple blocks on Robson was through a crowd of primarily Asian attendees.  Thousands and thousands of them, with no respect for staying away from the vehicles.  The gay attendees usually cluster on the sidewalk, sometimes crowded there or standing several deep, but these attendees came clear off the sidewalk, past the parking lane, and crammed into the first driving lane on each side of the street, leaving only a single lane for the truck and marchers to come through.  Wheel monitors were very necessary here, to corral the people back so they literally didn’t get run over!

After we were through that gantlet, things largely settled down to a usual placement of people, thankfully.  But I was very impressed by the number of attendees.  The route (Robson/Denman/Beach) felt twice as long as the Seattle parade route (but was really only 10% longer — I mapped on Google; I can’t say how far we traveled to the technical start of the route, though vs. the Seattle parade’s leather contingent’s path).  The number of people on either side, while it did fall off noticeably toward the end, appeared to be 3 to 5 people deep on both sides for most of the route, and was still a solid wall of people all the way to the end.  The official numbers said about 600,000 for Vancouver and 400,000 for Seattle, I think, but Vancouver felt much denser, at least three times the size of Seattle’s parade attendance.

After the parade, I wandered the festival booths and got some food (roasted corn! Carribean meat pies! mini donuts!).  Because I had got a blister on my heel the previous day, I had managed to buy a pair of cheap rubber sandals on Friday afternoon, which I wore the entire route.  I had my boots with me, and carried them over my shoulder with the laces tied together, but finally got a red shopping bag from Air Canada which made toting them a lot easier.

Eventually headed back up to the Davie Village, where I waited in line at the PumpJack for about half an hour and had a beer.  Said some goodbyes and trekked back to the scooter.  The parade route is U-shaped, so while I had walked a couple miles during the route and then back to Davie, my scooter parked at the front of the parade route was only about 6 blocks away.

On the way back to the scooter, I realized that Vancouver meters run on Sundays as well as other days.  When I parked, I was between two other cars, not in a clear meter space.  When I got back, both cars were gone, leaving my scooter by itself in the parking spaces, but for whatever reason, I had escaped any parking tickets.  Whew!

The Trip Back

Riding back was more straightforward.  I picked up my stuff at the hotel and left at about 5:45 pm.  (So that Klint and I could ride to the parade start, and store the helmets in the scooter, I had checked a bag of my stuff at the hotel, and stashed an additional bag in Klint’s car — the stuff I knew I wouldn't need for a few days until I got it back from him.)  I left an hour later than I wanted, so the heat of the day was already starting to fade.

I took Highway 1 out to Langley, where the Greater Vancouver Zoo is.  (I always wonder how much business they get, 45 minutes outside the downtown core, in the midst of wineries and farms.)  Saw a little coyote in the grass near the road on the way from the highway to the border; you never notice things like that in a car.

After crossing the border, I pulled off to get an extra layer on under my coat, since it was still cooling down.  I also had a touch of sunburn which was probably also making my temperature fluctuate.

Stopped in Bellingham for coffee and a snack, taking 20 minutes to sit and relax a bit.  Got gas, then went through Bellingham city streets to the north end of Chuckanut Drive; the highway to Fairhaven would have been a quicker route, but I wasn’t sure of where to go to get there.

I intended to stop for gas in Burlinton/Mt. Vernon, but missed the exit, so I ended up going all the way to Smokey Point, where I also had a hamburger at Five Guys; again, a 20-minute sit-down break.  After dinner, even though it had gotten a little warmer as I got away from the Sound, I added a leather vest under my coat, since the sun was down now.

Stopped again for gas at Northgate.  Stupid pump design would only give me one gallon (my tank holds 1.5+ gallons).  I’m concerned that my gas mileage — it dropped a lot in April/May/June and prompted the maintenance session at the scooter place — had popped back up but now seems to have dropped back down to right at 60 mpg.  I’ll have to monitor this, but there may be more work needing to be done.  Or it may just be an aging scooter thing.

Stopped in at the Cuff for a beer before heading fully home.  Got to the Cuff at about 10:15, so 4.5 hours since I left Vancouver.  If I hadn’t had the length of the two stops and the city streets jaunt in Bellingham, it would have been right around 4 hours, or about 45 minutes longer than the trip would have been in the car.  That’s reasonable for the scooter, I think.

After

Monday at work, I had a massive leg cramp that lasted a good 15 minutes and almost had me crying.  I’ve also had sore feet and calves for several days.  I think the latter are from all the walking on Sunday, in the rubber sandals (with no arch support), but the former may be from the long riding.  I’ll have to watch for that.  (A couple weeks later, no further instances of the cramp.)

This coming weekend, Rain Country is again supporting the Alder Street Hoedown in Portland.  I wanted to ride down for Portland Pride and for the mid-July ASH dance, but the scooter was in the shop.  I’m right now not going to the August 21 dance, so this ride will be it.  Weather looks possibly rainy in Seattle but sunny in Portland for the weekend, so we’ll see.

This will be my first long ride to Portland.  Portland is about 170 miles, a bit longer than Vancouver at 150, but with no border crossing, it should be about the same trip length on the scooter, 4 hours.  I have to study my route and find the right roads to take to bypass the plateau for Olympia, and plot out my gas stops, but it shouldn’t be too hard.  Looking forward to it!— Stay tuned for a trip report.
 

Gay Pride Parades are Intended for Adults

There is an increasing conflict regarding gay pride parades and the sometimes over-the-top, edgy behaviors sometimes exhibited at them.  This conflict has increased in recent years with the rise of the gay family, including young children — some people want the behaviors restricted due to the presence of children (and some want them restricted because of the presence of straights and the media), which of course pushes some people to go more extreme.

The push/pull of this is felt very strongly by the Leather Community.  Already branded as sexual outlaws and oddities by both the straight worlds and the mainstream gay world — a branding embraced by many in the community, and played up accordingly — leatherfolk are heavily in the spotlight regarding this issue.  How do we (legally) present our edgy play and sexuality in a way that doesn’t sideline or minimize it?  In other words, how do we express our pride?

How pleasant, then, to read this article about the Stanley Cup being exhibited during Chicago Gay Pride, and especially this not-quite-a-quote regarding the pro hockey player (and his wife) who is bringing the Cup to the Parade:

When the [Blackhawks professional hockey] club passed along the request to players, Sopel and wife Kelly volunteered.  The couple doesn’t plan to bring along their kids, saying the festive, sometimes-bawdy atmosphere might be a little too chaotic.

Amen.  Here’s a couple who apparently gets it: the Gay Pride Parade is a party for adults.  There’s nothing wrong with a bawdy atmosphere, but it isn’t appropriate for kids.

So let’s stop the discussions about dumbing and damping down the parade and start the discussions about where it’s appropriate to bring your kids, and how we can have age-appropriate other events for them.
 

Overheard at Portland Pride

Crossing the Burnside Bridge, from a guy in a a t-shirt that read "HOMO" with a red circle/slash on it:

“It’s such a devastating lifestyle.  It makes people cry.  It brings shame.”

(That’s what you’re claiming these days that is wrong with being gay?  It makes you cry?  And you’re saying this on Pride day?  What planet do you live on?)
 

Movie Review — Hamlet 2

I recently tripped across the big song from Hamlet 2 recently (working on this post), so I added it to my Netflix queue.

The movie is about a lousy high school drama teacher who is told that the drama department is being cut, so he decides to go out with a bang, producing a whacked-out controversial musical sequel to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, which results in rejection and near rioting.

In the post-Glee world, it is probably impossible to avoid comparisons between the TV show and this film.  So why fight it: Hamlet 2 is at least a thematic predecessor of Glee, if not an outright inspiration.  Recommended viewing for fans of Glee.

What I found most interesting about the film, though, was how my view of it changed slightly after watching the DVD extras.  On first glance, the movie appears to be in the “inspirational teacher” genre (Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dead Poet’s Society, etc.), but the filmmakers say that they hate those films; Hamlet 2 is really an “anti-inspirational teacher" film.

And when you think about it, that’s true.  Foremost, of course, is that the teacher is totally incompetent; although he has a lot of heart and passion, he has no idea what he is doing, and any success comes despite him rather than because of him.  Beyond that, most of the tropes of the “inspirational teacher” genre are all but missing: we never see the kids practice; we never see the kids fail and then improve; we never see the show going up against deadlines or almost failing to come off; they play with the teacher inspiring the low-life ethnic kid, but he turns out to the school’s best student; etc.  As you watch the film, you don’t quite realize that they are doing a drive-by on these tropes, flipping the bird as they go by rather than stopping to pick the trope up.  Kind of cool, in retrospect.

The other note of interest I found in the DVD extras is that the movie was filmed in Albuquerque rather than its setting of Tucson.  (Tucson told them no, based on how much they badmouth the city.  Go figure!)  And thus the “Tucson Gay Men’s Chorus” used in the film is apparently actually a gay men’s chorus from Albuquerque.  But I had that figured out (well, strongly suspected it) ahead of time, because I recognized one of the singers, a square dance caller I know from Albuquerque.  (Nice shirt, Bill.)  (Private joke.)  Alas, the singers are not credited in the film or on IMDB, neither as a group nor individually; Bill confirmed it for me via Facebook.
 

Gay Phone (definition)

An iPhone.  Every gay boy in the bar has one.

(Android phone?  Please.  There might be 1 of them in the bar for every 25 iPhones.  A faux gay phone.  But I’ll accept that five years from now, some other phone will be the trendy everyon-has-one, everyone-cruises-on-one device.  Then that one can be the “gay phone”.  But today, it’s the iPhone.)
 

The Landmark Forum almost destroyed my relationship!

In fairness, maybe that title should perhaps read “Attending the Landmark Forum twisted me up so much that I nearly destroyed my relationship!”  Isn’t nearly as good of a headline, though.

Preface

This is going to be a really long blog entry, so settle down for a bit of a read.  And about 2/3 of the way through, it gets pretty ugly.  But that’s also a couple months in the past as I write this, and I’m largely past this.  So thanks in advance for stunned expressions of sympathy.

How I Heard About the Landmark Forum

Since shortly after meeting my boyfriend in September 2008, he had been nagging me, um, pestering me, um, urging me to take the Landmark Forum.  For whatever reason, he thought it would be “good” for me, that it would help me “open up” when talking to him.  Obviously, he has been through the Forum or similar programs before, and he has also put his kids through the young people versions of it.

I tried to dodge the issue for months.  Why would I want to take this workshop?  What would I get out of it?  What should I expect it to be like?  All I got from him (and a couple other people) were frankly crap answers: it would “open up new possiblities in my life,” it would “help me be present,” it would “enable breakthroughs.”  (What does any of that mean, when you don’t have a context to interpret it from?)  The Landmark website was of about the same amount of use: lots of jargon, nothing concrete, and nothing descriptive.

Research: What is Landmark?

Oddly, the Internet seemed reasonably silent on the matter when I did research a couple times.  (Hmm, I didn’t find this page in prior searches.  Or this one.  Or this one.  Maybe my searches had been too narrow before?  I think I had been searching with terms which may have limited my results.)  There were a handful of sites with pretty negative descriptions of behaviors attached to the Forum workshops — sessions lasting until 1:00 am, participants not being allowed to use the restroom (or being followed if they did), people having crying jag breakdowns, people being encouraged to call their family members at 3:00 am and apologize for decades-old slights, presenters verbally berating workshop participants, and so on — but almost nothing describing the actual workshop.  (Oh, and then there were the cases of nervous breakdowns and attempted suicide after taking the Forum.  Yeah, that make me thrilled!)

After having taken the Forum, my best guess for the perceived lack of researchable content: partly caused by people people scared silent due to the legalese in the paperwork you have to sign before taking the workshop, and partly there being very little to actually describe.  More on that along the way.

Myself: Will It Work For Me?

I’m a Virgo, and beyond all the other stereotypes for the sign, that parlays itself into a need to understand, to know “why”.  If you can’t — or won’t — tell me why something is important or valuable (or in reverse, why something is bad), then I will either dig for the information or I will discard what you told me as unuseful.  (This reaches its height for me with opinions which just “are”: if you can’t/won’t explain your opinion, if you won’t defend it, if you refuse to even try to answer “why”, if you won’t spend the effort to let me understand it, then it is a useless opinion and I will ignore it.)  So that’s the root of the issue I had here: what is the Landmark Forum, what should I expect to get from it, do I need what I should expect to get from it, and thus should I pursue it?  When the answers to the first three of those are “I can’t tell you what it is,” “I can’t tell you what to expect,” and “It doesn’t matter if you need it,” it should be no surprise that I had a difficult time developing any answer other than “No” to the fourth one.

Every time that my boyfriend brought up taking the Forum, I tended to shut down.  This was because I had nothing positive I could say about the idea.  I didn’t want to attend, and I couldn’t see any reason why I should attend, and he couldn’t provide me with any reason my Virgo-self could accept as a reason to attend.  For him, of course, this was just more proof that I needed to attend it; I was “afraid” on some level.  (Is it “fear” when I want to speak from fact and not emotion, when I want to provide a reason for saying “No” other than “I don’t want to”?  I don’t know, maybe when you delve down several levels of “why” you get to something you could pretend is “fear”, for lack of a better term.)  He offered to pay for me to attend.  I eventually agreed to attend one of the Introduction nights, a three-hour preview of the Forum, to learn more of what was up.

Unspoken in all his prodding, but very clearly there to me, was a threat to our relationship.  “This is so important to me that if you don’t do it, I don’t know that our relationship can continue.”  We are warned abundantly about “If you love me, you’ll do XYZ” relationship manipulation; is this any different?  Sure feels similar.

What Does It Cost (Money and Time)

Adding to all this mess was the time commitment required (and the “money” and “mind” equivalents of it): all day Friday, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday, plus an additional Tuesday evening.  And “all day” here means 9:00 am to 10:00 pm — 13 hours!  So attending this would steal a day of vacation from me and completely wipe out every bit of my weekend, including my usual Friday night country-western dancing and all the housework and just relaxation-from-work that comes with the weekend, plus an organization board meeting I would have to skip.  So now you’re talking $400 for the Forum, plus the $250 (post-tax) income loss tied to the vacation day, plus all the stress components tied to the lost weekend, plus the pleasure and health component of losing my primary hobby and weekly exercise and social activity.  That raises the bar that Landmark needs to exceed to be a “success” quite a bit.

Stepford Intro Night

I took the intro night in October.  The woman running it was not the one who would end up as the presenter for the course I eventually took.  The roughly three-hour session mirrored the eventual landmark sessions, where we listened to the presenter talk, and then discussed a topic with the person seated next to us.  (In this case, that was my boyfriend.)  Most of the session was harmless enough, I guess.

Toward the end, of course, they shifted into sales mode.  One of the graduates or volunteers runing the session came over to sit with us and said some inane stuff about “What brings you here?  What session are you going to take?” and so on.  And since I still had no reason to take the Forum other than that my boyfriend wanted me to and would pay the registration fee for me, that’s pretty much what I told her.  And we sat there for a couple minutes, nodding and blinking, me trying to find something of substance to say to her.  (What I really wanted to say was “Go away, you Stepford wife freak.  If this is what the Forum will turn me into, I really don’t want to take it!”  Probably wouldn’t have gone over well, though.)

Finally, Some Usable Info Comes Along

A night or two before starting the Forum, I talked to another friend who had gone through it (several years ago).  He said that, knowing me (since we share some traits), I would either really like it or really hate it.  (Guess which one it ended up being!)  He told me more about what I should expect to experience at the Forum than anyone else had: a series of “listen to the presenter” sessions followed by directed chats with the person sitting next to you, with periodic breaks during which you might have a small “homework” assignment and after which you should sit next to someone different.  (He also said to avoid sitting next to the people with black bars on their badges, since they were graduates retaking the Forum, and were apt to be overly earnest in a way that would undoubtedly annoy me.)  He also said that I would probably not enjoy it much until the end of the second day or start of the third day, when things would start connecting for me.  This was useful advice, encouraging me to push through the presumably boring, tedious parts to come, that the content and mindset should change eventually.

He also said that one of the best things he got out of the Forum was, having taken it with his now-ex-wife, that they at least have common language from which to communicate with each other, which probably helps them have a better relationship (for their kids) than many divorced couples have.  This gave me hope for having some benefit come out of things, regardless.

Cease & Desist?

Now here’s where I have maybe tread lightly.  What can I tell you about the actual Forum and what can’t I?  I think that so long as I don’t (a) badmouth Landmark without concrete examples to contexutalize my statements and (b) so long as I don’t discuss the ideas (“technology”) in detail, I should be within legal, journalistic grounds.  (I won’t be surprised if I get a Cease & Desist letter from them on general principles, though.  Then again, now that I am finding more articles and essays with a negative projection of the Landmark Forum out there than before, maybe not.)

Friday

As directed, I arrived early for the session, in order to register and get situated.

One of the first things the presenter (a Bolivian woman) did was to tell everyone that if they didn’t want to be there, they should get up and leave, that Landmark would give them a full refund.  A half-dozen people left right then and there.  While this was initially surprising — and massively tempting to me — it’s probably also a good idea, since it prevents people who are going to have a bad experience from disliking it even more and thus badmouthing Landmark.

Early on, she basically told people who wanted to figure out what they were going to get from the Forum, how it worked, etc. (like me!), to just stop it.  I don’t recall the exact phrasing she used, but the gist was that that if you don’t “get” it, if you try to analyze it, you’ll hamper your success.  If you’re confused, that’s okay, because it leaves you open to their message.  (Great idea.  Fails utterly for someone like me who can’t, won’t, and doesn’t want to “let go” of analyzing things.)

We took a break around lunch time, another in mid-afternoon, and one around dinner time, leaving at around 10:00 pm.  At each break, we were supposed to do some “homework”, which varied from thinking about an issue to talking with another Forum participant to making a phone call to a friend or family member.  While I did think about the assignments, other than the ones I could do by myself, I didn’t actually do them.  I didn’t particularly want to engage with other attendees (in general, I’m a private person and I neither want to know a strangers issues nor burden the, with mine), and I sure didn’t want to call up someone else and intrude on them with this stuff.  I was much more interested in getting food, getting coffee (so I could stay away for hours of sitting on my butt), and trying to clear the Landmark stuff out of my head.

I think the only major piece of “technology” that they presented on Friday was dubbed “Rackets”, a jargon term for how we limit ourselves.  “I can’t”, “You don’t understand”, and so on.  All very true, and mostly stuff I got in my high school college-prep English class 25-mumble years ago, just by another name.

We were there for for 13 hours on Friday (including breaks).  Out of that, I would say about 90 minutes of it was actual content.  The rest was chit chat from the presenter, one-on-one discussion with other attendees, listening to attendees on the mike talking about their issues (for as long as an hour each), and some talk about Landmark’s kid and teen versions of the Forum.  (By end of day Saturday, I was aware that this last was really a form of advertising for their other programs — an infommercial, if you will.)  Astoundingly, the presenter said that Landmark has cut down the length of their programs in recent years, that they used to go until 1:00 am or even 3:00 am.  (Jesus Christ, I would walk out before that.  Or maybe just fal asleep.)

In the one-on-one discussions, some of the people I chatted with were likewise uncertain that they wanted to be at the Forum at all.  It was good to have the chance to talk over some of my concerns with others who shared them.  (I wonder how many others were actually also uncertain.  I tended to sit in end or back row chairs, mostly so I could get up to go to the toilet when I needed to with minimal disturbance, but I suspect that those more certain of their intent at being at Landmark would also take the front row and center chairs, and thus buffer around them with similar minds.  And thus, those of us who were more margnal would naturally tend to be out on the, um, margins.)

After each of the three breaks, when we came back, there appeared to be fewer chairs than before.  At first, I and some others figured that they had set up more chairs than they needed for the number registered and were just paring that down.  (There’s probably some truth to that.  A certain percentage won’t show at all.)  And some of the removal of chairs was likely just to force people to sit next to one another rather than leaving personal space.  But the cynic in me says that after the first break, those shouldn’t be issues, since you should be able to optimize the seating once.  If chairs keep going away, that means some people aren’t coming back from the breaks.

During one break, I visited the Fremont Vintage Mall, an underground antique mall (the sort where a couple dozen people rent out areas for their stuff to sell).  I found a bunch of tiki stuff and took pics to show my boyfriend.  (As expected, he has most of the stuff, but not all of it.  I bought him a genuine tiki mug — “genuine” here meaning “with a handle” — which I hope he doesn’t have, and a couple weeks later, went back and got him a cool resin ashtray from Hawai’i which had the state name and the tiki in relief; both to be Christmas gifts.

The evening’s homework had a couple parts, including making a phone call to someone you have been “running a racket” on and writing a “practice letter” that would accomplish the same thing.  Needless to say, I had no interest in doing such, and didn’t do them.  (Yes, I’m sure I jeopardized my ability to get the full benefit of the Forum.  So be it.)

Friday Night

When I got home, my boyfriend wasn’t there.  We was still out at the bar, finishing up country dancing and socializing afterward.  (Grr.  I called when I left the site to see where he was, but got no answer.  Would have liked to have had a beer and maybe even a last dance of the evening.)  When I got home, I had to sit down and crank out an event poster for a club I’m in (which I should have done the previous week, probably); this took about 90 minutes to do, so I didn’t get to bed until 12:30 am or so.

Saturday

Saturday didn’t start off on a good note.  The weather was clear and right around freezing, and I was riding my scooter (as I do year round unless I have to use the car).  Going up Columbia Drive, I hit black ice on a curving hill and went down.  Thankfully, I was wearing leather chaps (more for warmth than protection, I thought!), and since you slide on ice, I was physically reasonably okay, and with only a couple small scrapes on the chaps and jacket.  The scooter ended up with a bent right mirror (again), a bent right handlebar tip (again) which I now have to manually counter-turn to release the throttle, and the right front blinker stopped working (again, but has since come back; damaged connection, probably).  I quickly righted the scooter and got on my way again, and even made it to the Forum site on time.  But all day, I had pain in my left wrist (which I had sprained back in August), my neck, and my right shoulder.  (It took over a month for the shoulder to get back to normal.)

The amount of content for Saturday was a little better, maybe as much as double what there was on Friday (ooh, maybe 3 hours out of 13 this time!), two or three more concepts (“technology” — retch) useful for self-analysis and self-realization.  Stuff like the difference between what actually happened with an event and the stories we build around that, until we convince ourselves that the stories are what happened.  Again, nothing I hadn’t been exposed to before (and used for myself to some degree), just presented under a different name and with different intent.  Never hurts to revisit and reinforce good techniques, of course, and I figured I could at least get some value out of an otherwise lost weekend.

Of course, I still didn’t want to be there, so I was resistant and cynical and under-participative.  (This is what happens when you are cornered into attending something rather than wanting to do so, when there’s no “organic” reason for you to do it.)  Some of the other people were feeling similar, via the one-on-one discussions; one guy I was paired with after lunch apologized midway through that session and left the Forum.  (I can’t help but think that my own dismay pushed him over the edge.  And more power to him for leaving then; wish I had, since I might have avoided what was to come that evening.)

The late afternoon and evening portions were about 2/3 occupied with attendees on the mike, working out their problems in front of everyone else.  The format started to take on a “rubberneckers at the car wreck” feeling, as the person would say what they were going through, the presenter would twist it around, the person would refocus on some event from years ago (even childhood) that was holding them back, and then we’d have 20 minutes of stammering and flailing as the person tried to have a “breakthrough” to get past it, desperately wanting the presenter to actually guide and coach them, but she wouldn’t.  (Should wouldn’t explicitly, anyway.  I’m aware that she was coaching via very subtle guidance, but it felt agonizingly drawn out when you had to sit there and watch it happen.)  Sometimes, the “answer” was painfully obvious to us in the audience.

What was most amazing/appalling about these on-mike cases was the issues they brought up.  Marital separation and divorce showed up almost every time, along with references to childhood abuse, sexual abuse on a family member, and so on.  (One woman merely wanted to change careers and open a store, bless her.)  One guy had taken the Forum multiple times, trying to get past his issue; all I could think was “Guy, maybe you should see a therapist instead of taking this thing over and over.  It ain’t working for you.”  This repeated evidence of traumatic situations people were trying to deal with via the Forum served to reinforce the idea that there should be a genuine need to take the program, and thus wormed into me that I was somehow lacking because I didn’t have a personal tragic situation to compare.  Maybe that was why I was so disengaged from the Forum, and thus maybe I need to dig for one, even to potentially blow up a molehill into a mountain if that’s what it would take to feel like I really was supposed to be there.  (Yeah, let that idea sink in a while.  It will come up later.)

The other third of these afternoon and evening sessions was an increasing amount of “infomercial”, advertising Landmark’s other programs under the cover of describing how the presenter came to Landmark and how fantasticly kids and teens respond to the Forum, and so on.  Increasingly obvious advertising, to a cynic like me.

Saturday Night

Here’s where it gets hairy.


After the increased level of annoyance and anxiety I was having with the Forum, I really really needed something to clear my mind.  Some socialization that had nothing to do with (no discussion of) the Forum.  Some alcohol, to numb the brain.  Maybe some hot sex.

So what greets me when I get home at 10:30 that night?  My boyfriend, ready to go out for drinks?  Nope.  My boyfriend, looking sexy in leather gear with a bottle of beer in one hand and lube in the other?  Nope.  My boyfriend, in his PJs, in bed.  So much for anything of what I needed (wanted), I thought.  Could I have asked him to get dressed and go out for a beer with me?  Probably, but he tends to be very directed, so if he is in his PJs and in bed, he’s done for the night.

So I got undressed and went to bed, and lay there awake, unable to sleep, mulling over the Forum and how much I hated it and how much I wanted to just bag the whole thing and how that would let down my boyfriend’s faith in me and how not finishing the Forum would destroy our relationship and how I couldn’t bear to lose him and how I wanted to cry and how slitting my wrists to commit suicide would feel.

That’s right: I was so fucking upset that I considered killing myself.


Only for a couple minutes, but that’s a couple minutes that will stick with me for the rest of my life.  (As did the couple minutes where I considered that during my senior year of college, over 20 years ago.  Burns strong in the memory even now.)

Instead, I got up and went into the living room and read a couple comic books.  Couldn’t sleep.  Grabbed a blanket and curled up in a ball on the futon in the second bedroom.  Couldn’t sleep.  Got back in bed.  Couldn’t sleep.  Finally drifted off somewhere after 2:00 am.

No, I didn’t wake my boyfriend and talk all this through with him.  That’s not how I work (see above); I don’t say something until I’ve worked it out for myself.

Sunday

Despite my issues from Saturday night and ever increasing depression about the whole thing, I nonetheless dutifully went back on Sunday morning.

I’m sure it goes without question that I was inattentive, reluctant to fully participate and communicate, and so on.  And frankly, the Forum did nothing to improve on my attitude, since Sunday was even more content free, roughly a 50/50 split between infommercial advertising for their other programs (including pushes to sign up for the advanced class now, at a savings) and more rounds of people airing their personal disasters and personal breakthroughs at the mike for 30–45 minutes at a shot.

During the couple bits of one-on-one discussion with those next to us — to discuss our “homework” from the night before — I was pretty painfully honest about things that were going on with me, including the previous night’s suicide thoughts.  One of them asked my why I hadn’t just left, and another suggested that I should get up on the mike.  (Not on your fucking life!)

Self-Analysis

So why was I sticking it out?  Why was proceeding with this worth depression and contemplating suicide?

My conclusion is that one of the things that drives me in all facets of my life is “personal honor”.  That is, more than being right or being happy, what is important to me is my word that I will do something, see something through, complete something.  It doesn’t matter if it is something tiny or something grandiose, and it doesn’t really matter if anyone else thinks it is important or thinks I need to finish it.

Mind you, I don’t get fulfillment from finishing tasks and projects.  Nor do I get it from kudos about doing a good job.  What drives me is that I said I would do it.  Tasks can linger for months and years, but so long as I haven’t given up on them, then I haven’t failed.  (Someday, I will finish the next issue of that comics fanzine; the last issue came out in 1995 or so.)

I can see aspects of this in several places in my life, in things that I have tried to accomplish several times over the years, but never succeeded with — but because I am still trying, or still have it in my head to keep trying, I haven’t failed.  I just haven’t succeeded… yet.  (Yeah, I’m sure a therapist could have a field day with me.)

As an result of this, I will claw mightily to hang on to things I have taken on, even long past where anyone else thinks I should.  Letting go of things like this is very hard for me, although I’ve had some success over time in disposing of back-burner projects which I’ve eventually admitted I will never manage to deal with, and have managed to not feel that I’ve lost “honor” as a result of dropping the task.  (And I’ll also admit here, this was a useful bit from the Forum: admitting when “someday” really means “never” is a powerful tool.  Of course, again, I had hit upon the concept myself a while ago; the Forum merely reconfirmed it.)

In the case of something like this disastrous experience with the Landmark Forum, the real task is not finishing the Forum, it is finishing my promise to my boyfriend to do the Forum.  And that’s why I could not walk out: I would lose honor with myself by not fulfilling my promise to him, regardless of what his reaction might be.  (That’s also, perhaps, why I am reluctant to make “promises” to people.  Whether it’s “Promise me you’ll call” or “Promise me you’ll never embarrass me like that again”: I can’t make that promise.  If circumstances arise that cause such to fail, then no matter what the outcome to you or to us, I will have failed me, and that’s the worst thing that could occur.)

Anyway, back to the Forum…

Sunday Night

After the dinner break, previous graduates were invited to attend the evening session.  I guess this is so they can embrace your breakthrough, or so they can be there to support you in it and push you through (or in some cases, maybe just so they can see you haven’t wasted their money).  So my boyfriend met me for dinner, with the intent to attend the evening session with me.

Over Thai food, I let him know just how horrible of a time I had had, and how I had quietly seethed the previous night about him being ready for bed when I got home, and about the suicide contemplation, and a host of others things.  Several times I had to shut him down when he tried to defend his actions or downplay my concerns; this was my time to talk and no matter what he thought about the events, the “truth” I had to deal with was what I had to deal with.  Whether distorted in one way or another, my feelings had validity which had to get out so that they could then be dealt with.

Bless his heart, when we were done with dinner and heading back to the Forum, he told me I didn’t have to go through the rest of it, that he could see how depressed and angry I was, and that my attending the rest of the Forum that night (and on Tuesday) wasn’t going accomplish anything positive.

We then left and headed to the bar (actually, I headed to my office to pick up some work stuff and then met him at the bar), had a couple of beers, and went home.

Aftermath

The next two days (Monday and Tuesday), I called in sick to work.  I was still so wound tight and angry about the weekend that I didn’t trust myself to engage well with other people.  (Is that “playing hooky” or is it a “mental health” day?  I say the latter.)  And since some knew I was going to a weekend “conference”, I didn’t want anyone to ask me questions that I might end up having to answer, with all the emotions that would resurrect.

I have avoided talking further about my experience with the Forum with anyone other than my boyfriend, and not even with him since that Sunday.  I think he knows that it is a subject to avoid, big time.  It took a month for me to start writing this lengthy blog post, and over two weeks for me to write it, a section at a time.  And then another 6 weeks (including two weeks out of the country) to edit and revise it to where it will be able to be posted to the blog.  (I will eventually revise it again and put it up as a regular article on my website, and revise this blog post to be a pointer to that page.)

In late January, my boyfriend made a comment about someone opening up “possibilities” in his life (that’s a jargon term from the Forum), and I instantly bristled.  When I made an edge-tinged comment back about “Just don’t say it as ‘inventing possibilities’,” we almost had a little spat about whether I was “afraid” of the Forum, with him saying that he knew it wouldn’t work for me going in because I had made my mind up ahead of time.  (I stopped short of saying “Then why did you waste your money?”, but I sure thought it.  I wanted to add “And why did you put me through that?”, but that’s not completely fair; he didn’t envision quite the reaction I would have.)  Regardless, all hints of Landmark’s jargon and directions are obviously going to be very raw for me for months and maybe years to come — you don’t get past suicide thoughts just like that.  I think I’m going to have to develop protection modes to deal with it, like just leaving the room when subjects too close to that come up.  So yeah, maybe I am afraid: afraid that I will lash back at even reasonably innocent connections to Landmark that come up.  (In fact, I found myself doing that earlier today.  I read this article on ex-gay conversion therapy in the UK, and found myself getting irritated when I came to the last few paragraphs, as they hit too close to the experience I had with Landmark, with all the feelings of being inadequately fucked up that I got from doing the Forum.)

As noted or alluded to earlier, I will have taken away from this experience three things:

• A refresher on some methods for examining how and why things go wrong, both for myself and for others, including some shorthhand terms for those methods.
• An even deeper distrust for group programming, organized religion, and other programs which try to mold how people see themselves and the world.
• Hopefully the ability to say “No, and fuck no!” when someone tries to badger me into doing something that I really don’t want to do and think may even be bad for me.

Is Landmark a Therapy Fad?

I encountered a fair number of gays and lesbians during the Forum, some solo and some couples.  As a rough measure, and since there were a lot of people I never interacted with at all, I would say that well over 10% of the attendees were queer, higher than random population sampling would lead to.  What would cause this?  Are queers just more fucked up than most people?

As I think back to the early 1990s in the San Francisco Bay Area, I remember that being in therapy was a huge fad at the time.  You just weren’t a full-fledged queer unless you were forking over money to someone once a week who was trained to ask you about your relationship with your parents and such.  At the time, my joking comment was “I already know I’m fucked up, I don’t need to pay someone to tell me,” but my real thought at the time was “I don’t think I have any problems that warrant seeing a therapist.”  My opinion in this matter hasn’t changed in the past nearly 20 years.

While that fad eventually went away, does this weighting of the attendees toward queers indicate that it’s either back or has shifted from solo therapy into group?  And does it imply an inherent searching for something on the part of queers — either searching for something to give meaning or explanation, or searching for something to “fix”?  Does it indicate something about gay culture that makes us into perpetual victims, where the more success the community has, the more individuals look to find something else to blame for holding us down?

(Now take that idea and run it through the sieves of women’s issues, black issues, or Jewish issues.)

Recommendations

As I said earlier, I’ve tried to be as fair as possible in this toward Landmark Education and their Forum workshop.  The bulk of the “blame” for my bad experience has to lie with me, with what I brought (or failed to bring) to the table and how I reacted to it.  I have no question that the Landmark Forum can have great value for some people.

(Then again, I also think that the concept behind ex-gay conversion therapy has value.  There unquestionably are people in the world for whom accepting homosexual urges at all, much less embracing them to partake of the “gay community”, is a mentally and spiritually “painful” concept.  Without judging those people and what causes the difficulties they have with that, counseling of varying degrees can be invaluable, and some of that counseling could and even should be on how to control those urges and move into a place when the mental and spiritual pain is minimized.  In other words, on how to not be gay.  God knows, if you don’t want to be gay, I don’t want you to be gay, either.  [fantasies about hot construction workers aside].  After the concept of such “counseling”, though, you get to the implementation of that counseling and therapy, and that’s where my support for the ex-gay concept goes away.)

(In no way am I saying that I equate Landmark to ex-gay conversion therapy, of course.  I’m only trying to connect the ideas that (a) there are people it is meant to serve and people it is not meant to serve, and (b) even for people it is meant to serve, how it is run may not be right for all people.)

At one point during the weekend, where they were suggesting that we invite friends and family to the Tuesday night final session/sales pitch (which is what it would have been, I’m sure), and my first thought was “There’s no one that I hate enough to wish this on.”  And then I thought of my ex.  (>ba-dump ching<)  More seriously, although that was at a point in the weekend where I was very angry and depressed, I was still able to think of the pieces where I saw value, and which people I knew who would probably thrive on the interactions with other people, the group sessions listening to others working through their problems, possibly the issues that I knew they had, and so on, and I could see the Landmark Forum (or similar series) being perhaps just the thing those people could use.  My ex is one such person.

But it’s 100% not for me.  I definitely won’t go out of my way to recommend it to anyone.  And I would strongly (strongly!) recommend going into it only with the belief that it can help you and with some idea of what it can help you with.

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Updated on May 22, 2010

My boyfriend broke things off with me at the end of March, connecting with someone else, someone whom he said was more “emotionally available” and who could give him what he needs.  It’s hard not to think that my failure to complete the Landmark Forum played into this.

So maybe I need to change that title:

The Landmark Forum DID destroy my relationship!