Heartlessly Helping Himself to Her Bad Dreams

I have been out of work for two weeks.  I got the first of my unemployment and realised that, even after taxes, I will be earning more on unemployment than if I were working.  Considerably more.  The same day this revelation hit, I got a text from my boss, to the tune of, "Working this way really sucks and I can't wait until things go back to normal." 

I disagree.  I didn't *tell* her this, but no.  Seriously.  I don't want to go back.  If they'd furloughed me the minute this happened, I would have an extra $1800 in my bank account right now, and be on track to pick up another $1600.  AFTER taxes.  So, I'll have $1600, which is actually going to save me the difference between what I make and what it costs me to live, but do you KNOW what I could have done with $3400?  This is also, save a week in New Orleans last year, the first vacation I've had in three years. Sure, I can't go anywhere, but I also don't *have* to go anywhere.  Can I just do this?  Forever? 

I don't know why I work in the theatre right now.  Nobody knows when we can re-open.  When we do re-open, it's going to be a shitty, shitty situation that will be barely worth being open for, and as theatres close, where am I ever going to get another job? 

I thought today maybe I should just shove it all and go work for some shitty corporate job.  Every other aspect of my life sucks right now, I tried to do something about it, I failed, and I lack the motivation or conviction to start over again, because I'm carrying around the proven conviction that I am a waste of space, time, effort and value.  How can I not?  I'm currently earning more NOT working, I got dumped eight months ago because I'm not fun and don't eat and am not worth compromising for.  The only friends I have are on computer screens hundreds of miles away and half the time I'm not convinced I'm not more trouble than I'm worth. 

At the moment, I am also depressed as fuck and currently suffering from PMS, which is a bad combination. 

This is, incidentally, why I want immortality.  I'm increasingly convinced that time is running out, and so why bother?  Why not just be dead NOW, for all the difference it will make?  I've been to a lot of funerals.  Mostly for relatives, never for anybody I cared all that much about, nobody I really miss, and it's actually not that big a deal.  The universe doesn't care if you life or die.  Heck, people who KNEW YOU rarely seem to care if you live or die.  So what's the point?  But with immortality, the work never stops.  You can take time off to regroup, for years.  It will be there when you get back. 

By roughly Wednesday, I will be OK again, for another three weeks.  Unless something else happens first. 

Not Like That.

I've been talking to a guy from OKC.  Sort of- emails to get off the site.  I think I'm probably going to stop using OKC.  I find I automatically skip anybody who mentions food, alcohol, family or music, because that is not a person who is going to want anything to do with me.  That's a lot of people. 

It's probably unhealthy to go ahead and assume that none of these people could put up with me for long, but, well, better to skip it now than find out the truth in three fucking years.  All I want is someone willing to put up with my bullshit.  I'm willing to put up with a lot, but being with me is apparently worse than the things I've put up with:  lying, drinking, smoking tobacco, unhinged depressive breaks, cheating and contracting STDs.  And I have to live with that.  Yeah, I eventually dumped the cheating, lying, STD contractor, because that was never going to change, but I spent three years trying to reconcile myself to being with someone like that.  I came out of that relationship saying, "Nope, no more unchecked mental illness," and went RIGHT BACK to it.  And I decided that I was willing to stick around through that. 

The other day, I sort of lost my shit, and was texted my ex to ask if there was anything of mine he needed/wanted, because, whatever, he might as well have it.  Let me know what he needed, I'd give it to him.  He, correctly, ignored the depression, but said that the same was true for me.  "No.  That's not true.  It only goes to a certain point, with you," I said.  He said nothing. 

My friend tells me this particular brand of loyalty is worthwhile for people who deserve it.  I doubt this, because it doesn't seem to make me many friends.  Heck, it's even seen as suspicious, "If we let you help, and we don't like it, will you be mad?"  What the hell?  No.  What the fuck is wrong with you people?  I just want to be involved and the only way I can do that, because I'm not personable or talented, is to be useful. 

I dunno where these conversations are going to go.  Probably nowhere.  I started talking to him, and he at least responded, but I don't think I'm going to be convinced to now ask to meet this guy.  He's probably just a person and so far, I'm not that interested. 

I keep saying no more humans, and clearly this keeps happening.  Might as well give it up entirely rather than keep trying. 

And Some Things That Should Not Have Been Forgotten Were Lost

There used to be a statue of King George the III in Bowling Green in NYC. The statue was torn down July 9th, 1776 after the Declaration of Independence was read in City Hall Park. Troops from Washington's army ripped it off the plinth, as well as the crowns on the fence surrounding the park. The unadorned fence is still there but the plinth was left until the 1880s when it fell apart. (There's actually more to the story about the plinth, too, but I'm going to skip it.)

This story of the statue and the fence is one of the best known stories of the Revolutionary War in the city. I'm gonna have to argue that it might have had a TINY bit to do with the fact that the fence and the empty plinth stood there for eighty years and then people started to make romantic paintings of the event.

There's an argument that people will OF COURSE remember their history and bad monuments should be pulled down. But the statue to King George isn't interesting because it was pulled down. It's fascinating because it was erected in the first place. It was put up in 1770, and the fence was put up in 1773 when the city passed a law prohibiting defacing the thing. Three years, and they were already pissed off about George? Well. Not exactly. They were pissed off when they put UP the statue in the first place. It was NEVER a beloved tribute to George.

There was a man called William Pitt, a big wig in English government and military. There's a lot to say about him, but I'll skip ahead to the point where he resigned from the British government in the 1760s because they basically wouldn't listen to him. Even though he left, and promised the King he wouldn't outright oppose the government (a worry because he was super popular with not quite the right party as far as the crown was concerned), it didn't mean he kept his mouth shut. He opposed anything that looked like absolute monarchy, and he considered the taxation of the colonies exactly that. Here we come 'round to the bit of the story Americans recognise. He vocally opposed the Stamp Act and is sometimes considered instrumental in its repeal.

What more do you need to do to get the roaring support of dudes in the colonies in 1766? They LOVED him. He also stood for freedom of the press, against wrongful imprisonment and believed in the importance of a *Constitutional* monarchy. He was already a super popular dude, but all this set the colonies on fire for him. Charleston was like, "Dude, we need a statue to this dude. Marble. Roman. Badass." It was the first statue erected to a person in the US. It's still in Charleston somewhere, their judicial building, I think. Virginia was like, "Wait a second, we're putting up statues now?" and asked for King George and a newly deceased governor. The King George statue never made it through negotiations, but the governor's statue is in the basement of the library at William and Mary College. (A full sized reproduction stands in its original location on the campus.) And New York commissioned two statues. They thought it would be weird to just order William Pitt when they didn't even have a statue to the king, so asked for King George, too. Unlike with Pitt's marble, this was gold-gilded lead. I don't have the knowledge to speculate whether this was going the cheap route or not, because while I know the Charleston statue cost one thousand pounds, I can't find figures for the others beyond, "at great cost." I sort of feel like they went, "Eh, it's gold, it's huge, he's on a horse, he can't complain TOO much he's not solid marble, and if we don't publish what it cost, no one has any proof."

We know where George ended up. Well. Sort of. They melted him down for bullets but, like Christian relics, bits of him keep turning up. They know how many bullets were made out of him (48-thousand or so; the exact number is known, but I'm not going to look it up right now), but that accounts for only about two thousand pounds of him. This means that half of him is unaccounted for. The head was stolen back by the British and it was sent to England and has since disappeared. Other bits are in museums or private collections. George Washington allegedly refused to condone the actions of the military in pulling it down, wishing that the job had been left to more appropriate authorities.

William Pitt was erected at the intersection of Wall and William Streets (not named for him, named for Willem Beekman for whom Beekman street is also named- he was a Dutch governor of the city). Today, Donald has a building there if you'd like to visit and flip it off. When the British occupied the city, they beheaded Pitt and knocked some other bits off, but today what's left of him he stands in... either the New York Historical Society Museum or the Museum of the City of New York. I can't remember which. Poor Pitt is largely forgotten in the US, even though the city of Pittsburgh literally bears his name. It was named twenty years before the statues went up, so he was well thought of. He wasn't wholly a good guy, but he said the right things to the Colonists when it mattered. Who do we remember? The dude we pulled down, not the dude we let the enemy deface.

So, there you have the history of New York City's first two statues dedicated to public figures. One is still on display as a reminder of the British occupation of the city and the other one no longer exists because it was pulled down. Except.

In 2016, a Brooklyn sculptor re-imagined King George. Nobody's entirely sure exactly what the statue looked like, because nobody bothered to draw him. Consensus can't really be drawn from his remaining bits, but they know, like the statues of Pitt, he was in Roman garb, additionally, he was on a horse, and made of gilded lead. There's speculation he was based on a Roman statue for Marcus Aurelius. Neo Classicism was kind of a big deal. But somebody thought, "You know, we're forgetting our Revolutionary war history, we're not painting it as rough and tumble patriots vs. a freaking Empire, how do we drive that home?" And somebody was like, "Re-create the statue of King George." So they did. It stands today in a re-creation of Bowling Green in the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, where they invite you to think about why it was torn down and how you might feel about it as a Colonist living in New York. Apparently, it helps to see the thing that isn't there anymore to better understand.

"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."

The Museum of Natural History in New York has a massive statue to Theodore Roosevelt outside.  He's on horseback flanked by an African and a Native American, so for obvious reasons it's problematic.  (For the record, personally, I think it looks cool, and I can see it in its original context, where in the 30s when they made it, they thought they were doing a diverse and sensitive thing including the other two guys, but they were basically still wrong, and I get why it bothers people.) The museum was having an exhibit to contextualise the thing, but it's shut down right now, so it's an online exhibit.

They talk about the statue in context, they talk about how divided people are about this specific statue, how some people don't care if it stays there, how some want it moved, and others want it hidden from view entirely.

New York City tears itself down and rebuilds itself so often that everything gets lost, and lost things are hard to talk about- even more so when you don't *want* to address them. The Seaport ignores its role in the enslavement of black bodies. Wall Street ignores not only that there was a wall, but who built the wall. Black Gotham is a group actively invovled in trying to re-build, awaken and inform of some of that broken, hidden past and they're basically still a handful of people working in isolation. Roosevelt's home, Sagamore Hill, a Park Ranger told me, is the best bang for your buck in the entire park system because it's the most expensive to maintain and admission is either free or extremely low (can't recall which).  Every school kid in the city knows the word Lenape.  Do they see the proof of that past anywhere in their neighbourhood, or it is just a vocabulary word?  All of those in combination are indicators that the city and state aren't successfully educating their people or visitors.

In that context, it would be inappropriate to hide the statue and pretend it doesn't exist.  Is it possible to speak to the piece's visual impact when you can't stand beneath it and see both how beautifully crafted and huge it is?  I don't know.  I doubt it.  Is it possible to stand in Penn Station and truly reflect on what it used to be in any useful way? 

So for the Natural History Museum to be in a position to talk about social history, to stand up loud and proud as a flagship and say, "Hey, this is what happened, this is what is STILL happening, and this is what we are doing because we take seriously our responsibility to address the issue," is valid for that statue AND every single other piece in the museum.  If the museum has the courage to make clear their relationship with ALL of their artifacts, then this is just a commitment to starting with the front door.  If the conversation ends at the statue, that's not saying much.

The four quotes of Roosevelt's in the museum's atrium are a little cringey, too. They are part of the same legacy. But are they excluded from the conversation because they're inside, and the reality is that the museum receives more complaints about what people can see from the street because they've never been inside?  If that's true, how can the museum comment on the statue inside if the only way to receive that commentary is to pay admission to hear that position? What barriers has the museum created to an open conversation?  How can they bridge those? Would there have been this virtual element at all if not for Covid? Would they have chosen to link it on their Twitter page if not for the current Black Lives Matter protests, and the specific choices in many communities to remove problematic statues and monuments?

That said, I would just as much love to see a modern sculpture that does speak to Roosevelt's positive impact as a Naturalist and Conservationist.  Put it up in the park as a contrast. Make a massive piece to balance the entire facade of the museum around the existing statue. Something.

The museum's exhibit is a start. I understand the museum understands that, and I further understand they're massively constrained by funding, donors, sponsors, staff and time. So while this is a start, it has to become a priority. For this museum and every other.  We can't get to 2022 and see nothing else.  And that means I, in Colorado, should hear something more. I should hear they partnered with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (and museums across the country) to address these challenges and how the entire field is moving forward.

It's not one statue, it's just a symbol.  And that's the problem.

It's been a weird day.

Sometimes, because the buses have become a hazard to an immunocompromised ex-boyfriend who fell off his bike and therefore can't get himself to his job 30 miles away, you agree to let him use your car, because you are a nice person and it saves taking him off the insurance.  And sometimes, you actually need your car for a random hour in the middle of the day so you wake up at 5:30 to drive him to work and pick him back up. 

On the drive home, he explains that the drug test for the job he's finally getting actually in the city he lives in feels as though it does not test for the substance he doesn't want it to test for, but how can he confirm that?  And you spend two hours Googling and determine with 90% certainty this is the case. 

Then you listen to the absolutely fucked up list of Mean Girls shit that his exit interview is going to consist of because he works in a field that mostly needs human beings no matter how useless they are.  He's got sufficient proof, too, which makes you wonder why stuff like this keeps happening to him, but the evidence it totally does is undeniable. 

Through all of this, you realise that his current girlfriend must not be at his place, because he's at your place, and he's still at your place after ten minutes.  You also know that he's not usually given to this level of communication about himself until it all has to come out in a big chunk.  And you realise that this means you're hearing the chunk.  Not his girlfriend.  Who won't break up with him even though she's still mad at you because he didn't bother to tell her he was sleeping with you and her at the same time. 

You file this information away, because he is your friend, and you want to be his friend.  And if you need to get it out again to say, "Hey, you're being a shitty partner to your girlfriend, again," you will. 

This song is called 'I Am So Sad. I Am So Very Very Sad.' It goes like this.

Sometimes, your friends have a theatre company, and they ask you for advice and input and you remember all you actually want to do is this.  Maybe not even for them, but you want to do creative theatrical work that matters, and for people who maybe sort of at least pretend occasionally to care about your opinion and point of view.  And you discover yourself hand-drawing art work and researching visual art styles and fonts and wonder where the fuck this person came from, because as sure as hell you haven't had this kind of drive to do anything in... well, probably years, but for *sure* months. 

Did they want any of that?  No.  But it doesn't really matter because apparently it was something I needed to do.  I'm not sure why I now sort of feel like shit about it.  Probably because I lack the ability to do any of that on my own, but also because people mostly dislike me anyway so it's not like I'm ever going to find any other people to do that stuff with. 

Yay, self-pity. 

A Request

Men, could you do me a favour and embrace dress wearing? Not just the kilt, but if more of you dudes were secure in your masculinity and just wore dresses for... I dunno, whatever the reasons people who enjoy wearing dresses wear them, my non-dress-wearing ass would appreciate it.

Let's be clear, I wear dresses the same way I wear masks right now, to subscribe to whatever social code dictates they be worn. But lately the dresses have been feeling like a required symbol of being female. I am absolutely a straight chick, I'm very, very both of those things, but I have no interest in feminine presentation, and I'm tired of feeling like, "Oh, if you like dresses, make-up, flowers, princesses, that makes you a GIRL." Because, fuck, what the hell am I, then? A deeply closeted gay guy with extremely problematic genitalia? I was reading about this mother whose 5 year old grew up with cars and princesses and suddenly announced one day a desire to be a girl. Mom's next sentence after this was, "We immediately drove to the store to shop for dresses." So, OK, maybe they had a conversation about, "How would you like to express that you want to be a girl?" But she doesn't say that. She equivocates being a girl with time to go dress shopping. I wore a LOT of dresses and skirts as a kid. A lot. And eventually I managed to get away with not wearing them except for formal occasions. I wore a dress for my wedding because it felt like a requirement. Hell, the entire wedding felt like a requirement, so, OK, fine, I will play but on my terms as much as possible. My most recent ex really needed me to have a dress. I own two as a result of this. I've worn one of them once. The other one, actually bought for a work event where it was going to be required until it was cancelled, still hasn't been worn. I almost want to take them and drop them off and tell him to give them to his current girlfriend, but I have a feeling they'd be too big for her. So, yes, is this a factor in my current discomfort? Yep, just add it on the pile with everything else I hate about myself, about every other instance where I don't measure up and can't measure up to expectations I don't even really feel the need to meet except that clearly who I am is a problem for a lot of people. If that 5 year old needs to wear dresses to feel OK, cool, great, I don't care. But I do wonder if, hey, maybe that 5 year old can just be a boy who wears dresses.

So, dudes who wanna feel pretty, please embrace those dresses for me, OK?