From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: re: redefining masculinity
Followup-To: soc.motss
Summary: getting beyond our own homophobia
Organization: still getting there
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 01:14:17 GMT

in article <4587@news.duke.edu> dblakele@acpub.duke.edu (the m.dean)
concludes his honest inspection of the not entirely savory feet he has
put in his own mouth with:

 >Peace (and hoping that Jacques' arrival home will help Arnold)

help?!?  you think i need *help*?  [say it like "haandba-a-ag?"!]  is
it felt that in these electronic precincts i been inadequate?
deficient?  *helpless*?  so like a fag, dithering and silly?  [ok, i
do dither some - i have an excuse, i'm a professor - and i'm deeply
silly, and i certainly am a fag, but *reaaaallly*, honey...]

jacques's arrival home has not provided me with help.  it has provided
me with intense *pleasure*.  we have had hours of just feeling one
another, kissing, tracing the contours of one another's bodies,
enjoying each other's smells (i once again convinced him *not* to
shower off the sweat of a long day's drive, so that i could *lick his
armpits*, scent-slut that i am), telling each other the events of the
last week, just looking with shy smiles at each other, and, yes,
experiencing several eruptions of come (pleasant side-effects of all
the rest that we do not in fact aim for on these reunions).  we woke
each other several times during the night just to say how we had
missed the pleasure of lying together and how *good* it felt to be
doing so now.

i have just gone over to kiss him, and he cupped my balls lightly
in his right hand while i leaned over him - not advancing on any
further course, just expressing pleasure in our being reconnected.

when he holds me, i believe i can detect my heart beat slowing and my
blood pressure winding down.  if my impressions are right, this would
be some kind of help, but not, i think, what m.dean had in mind.

but what i really wanted to talk about, before all this everyday
domestic physicality got hold of my imagination and my keyboard,
was m.dean's admissions about his internalized homophobia.

we all have some.  you can't grow up in the world that surrounds us
without developing at least a few little grotty pockets of homohatred,
which is to say, self-hatred.  the trick is to check the place
regularly (examine your attitudes and beliefs), scrub the dirt out of
the corners (cast away those hateful ideas - doing what greg hullender
used to call, in this group, "using mental floss"), get some use out
of the garbage by working it into the compost heap (as when i re-work
the humiliation of being a faggot by eroticizing dirty talk,
including, in the right context, the word "faggot" itself), and
exploit the ruined plaster by making it into a work of art or a
political protest (here we have classic drag, in-your-face faggotry,
etc.).  otherwise, you get from day to day as best you can, not taxing
yourself unnecessarily with your imperfections.

arne, bill, and i were telling m.dean that even though he'd been doing
the housecleaning, his efforts - how like a man! - were decidedly
slipshod.  (we have also had postings from guys who live in astounding
mental filth and brag about it, like adolescent boys competing to
out-gross one another: "smell *this* fart, man!") 

now to get on from here...

arnold (going back to nuzzle my man; how nice to have the computer
         right next to our bed...)