The Evolution of Desire

When Nelson Wong saw the tall, hot athletic boy across the dance floor, his reaction was straight-up primal.

“When I first encountered Cole,” recalls Wong, “I was swept up with this amazingly sexy boy I saw, struck by his eyes, his lips and his build. I was so attracted to him.”

That description of boy-on-boy desire has been written and rewritten millions of times, but this particular chemistry defied the traditional fag-traction model.

As Cole Dodsley remembers it, after seeing Wong at repeated club nights, their desire turned physical.

“We would make out upstairs,” remembers Dodsley, “and when you make out with a person your hands roam, right? I hadn’t had [breast removal] surgery yet and I knew that he could feel the binder on my back and knew that he was noticing something, so this is where I’m saying, ‘He needs to know,’ and ‘Oh shit if I tell him, will he hate me, will he not wanna make out with me, is he totally going to be grossed out and freaked out?’”

In fact, Dodsley (a transgendered man who identified as a lesbian before transitioning) and Wong (a gay man) discovered their desires were growing and made the decision to evolve along with them.

Wong wrote about the experience for Gayze magazine: “I pulled down his black jockeys to reveal a neatly trimmed mound of dark hair and warm tissue. At 28, this was my first time with a female-bodied person and I was nervous. I worried that I would be repulsed or stifled by the sight of it. Seeing him naked, however, was a total turn-on.

“Seeing his soft sensitive tissue exposed made me incredibly horny. I leaned him back on a log and licked and sucked him. It was warm, wet and heaven.”

Since that experience four years ago, Wong says his own attraction options have widened.

“My experience with Cole was fantastic and I am so happy it happened. It definitely broadened the spectrum of people that I can engage with to find intimacy. It sounds cheesy, but it has opened up my world. I don’t have to look solely to 10 percent of the population -that is gay and bio-male -to explore what turns me on.”

While Wong’s journey was a positive one, he admits he was shocked and disheartened by some of the judgments coming from his community.

“I definitely knew that some of my gay friends felt revulsion. Lots of comments dealing with female genitalia, that sort of thing.

“I have friends who don’t believe in transsexualism; they don’t accept it,” he continues. “Some of them don’t believe that trans issues should be lumped together with queer issues. They believe that it is social- and self-hatred issues rather than their gender identity. It is difficult to respond to that. ”

In a lot of ways, the simple existence of transgendered people in the gay community throws many gay comfort zones right out the figurative window.

After years of fighting for the right to exist, of coming out to family and friends and in many cases being ostracized for being attracted to people of the same sex, many gays and lesbians feel deeply attached to their hard-won labels.

Wong reveals that beyond the external pressures and chastisements from his gay male friends, his newly identified desire caused him some stress internally as well, specifically regarding his identity as an out and proud gay man.

“There was definitely a voice inside my head that alerted me to the fact that I had fought so hard to be a gay male, to create this identity and this strength of character despite this mainstream, heterosexual world and the expectations of my parents. There was a voice inside of me that worried that I was betraying some of that.”

Transgendered porn star Buck Angel -who bills himself as “the man with a pussy” -makes a lucrative living selling and starring in adult DVDs (Buckback Mountain, Buck Off) and streaming videos.

The demographics of his audience offer some surprising insight regarding gay and lesbian desires.

“Eighty percent of my customer base is gay men. Twenty percent is female -bisexual, straight and gay,” explains Angel.

“I get a lot of gay men writing me letters about how they are so turned on by me and they can’t believe it and what does that make them, are they now straight? My vagina freaks people out, especially gay men,” he says.

“They are attracted to me as a person but because I have a vagina, it just totally throws them for a loop, they can’t wrap their head around it.”

Angel says he has seen and heard many horror stories about the treatment of trans folks by gays and lesbians. “Twenty years ago, I identified as a dyke. When I started transitioning, the dyke community ostracized me; every single one of my friends wanted nothing to do with me. There was no knowledge about what was going on then.

“Funnily enough, a lot of people have called me since then, asking me how they go about transitioning now.”

If trans people are challenging many gays’ and lesbians’ notions of desire, so too are they often broadening their own scope of attraction.

For many trans people who identified as gay or lesbian before transitioning, it wasn’t just their bodies that evolved upon transition; they discovered their desires were shifting as well.

Dr. Christopher Shelley is a professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing.

He thinks the evolution in desire experienced by many trans people is the result of feeling freer in other aspects of their lives.

“When people start to become -to grow and let themselves be -they can let down all kinds of defenses and open themselves up to new experiences and attractions,” he says.

“Once you are, for the first time in your life, comfortable in the body that you should be in, new doors can open for you. There’s a lot of trans people who never had orgasms, who never let themselves go or be sexually. They couldn’t even touch themselves because they were wrongly bodied. Once they are rightly bodied, they are simply more honest and more comfortable with themselves and with others,” he explains.

“Trans people teach us about the complexities of life and that it isn’t just the easy categories of straight, gay, lesbian, heterosexual, homosexual,” Shelley says. “In many ways, I think that trans folks challenge all of our categorical assumptions. That makes them a very potent group of teachers.”

Dodsley is no stranger to Shelley’s theory of shifting desires.

“Almost all the trans men in my life are more attracted to men than they were before they transitioned. That’s not to say they aren’t attracted to women anymore, they totally are, but almost all of them are attracted to men,” he says.

“I now realize that I’ve always been attracted to men but previously thought, ‘Oh I am attracted to men because I wanna be one. Then I realized that it wasn’t that -it was that I was attracted to them!

Before transitioning, Dodsley identified as a lesbian. Now, he says, his relationship is “anything but heterosexual.”

“I don’t think that many people on the street would see us as heterosexual because my partner has her own masculine features as well,” he explains. “We still don’t look like a heterosexual couple and I think that keeps me pretty queer too. She’s queer and I’m queer.

“If everybody likes everybody, I’m happy. We should all feel free to love whoever we want to in terms of gender,” he adds.

Roz Shakespeare was the first openly transsexual police office in the Vancouver Police Department. She sees the evolution of trans desire this way: “In the beginning, we’re presenting a body that we don’t feel comfortable in. It’s not that we don’t belong there, it’s that we were pushed there. You’re not free to be engaged fully; you’re always holding a part of a veil there so nobody can see beyond that.

“As we come out and can be who we are fully, that canvas is blank, usually at an age where we’re now a little more comfortable exploring who that is and feeling safe,” she explains.

Most of the people interviewed for this story believe there is a significant difference in terms of how the gay community responds to trans men and women.

While trans men by no means have it easy when it comes to flirting, dating and even friendship within the gay community, they seem to have it easier than most trans women.

“I think it hearkens back to feminist theory -what is strong and what is weak,” says videographer and trans man Erek Tymchak.

“If you look in the gay men’s community, there is a hierarchy, isn’t there? Butch men are top of the pile; then, the young good-looking guys that can pass as possibly straight and then it goes down from there,” he says. “The effeminate men are always near the bottom. Drag queens are somewhere down there, and god forbid you want to be a woman.”

“The queer community as a whole has phobias against femininity, especially when it is expressed by male-bodied individuals, regardless of their gender identity,” agrees Gwen Haworth, producer and star of the award-winning documentary She’s a Boy I Knew (a film about her own transition and her family’s response to it).

“Whether it is an effeminate gay man or a trans women, femininity is undervalued in society,” Haworth continues.

“When trans women begin that journey, I think that their sexual power in society gets diminished. It is like watching Jack on Will and Grace, or the cast of Priscilla Queen of the Desert; they become these farcical characters. There’s a lot of other reasons behind it I think, but society’s devaluing the feminine is a major part of that.”

Shannon Summers finds it disheartening that “trans women are invisible to gay men.”

“We can go to gay bars and we are accepted there,” she says, “but it is not just that gay men don’t hit on trans women, gay men don’t pay any attention to trans women.

“They don’t talk to us, we don’t interact at all. Gay men want men who look like men and when they see a trans woman, they see a female and if we’re not a drag queen -if we’re not making fun of the gender and the genre -then we’re not on their radar.”

Tymchak says his transitioning wasn’t very well received, either, within the gay community. “I can tell you about numerous comments that people made before I transitioned, which halted my own transition,” he says.

“It is ironic that they have fought so hard and yet are being so ruthless towards another,” he adds, referring to the gay community.

That said, Tymchak believes that evolution is inevitable. Trans people have a lot in common with gays and lesbians, he says. “This is just another way for traditional gay and lesbian people to be challenged.

“It is funny to think that gay and lesbian people amongst us are conservative, but they are!” he continues. “They need to open their hearts and minds to us, just as they’ve asked the rest of the world to do for themselves. Realize the activism is not over.”

Haworth is optimistic about the future of the queer community and its openness to gender and sexual fluidity when she looks to the generations younger than her.

“Queer folks in their 20s are a lot more comfortable with gender fluidity,” she says. “As someone in my mid-30s, I’m learning from that.”

But, she says, queer desire won’t truly evolve until gays and lesbians address the transphobia that still shapes many of their responses to trans people.

“The LGBT community has to really bring this to the table and re-think where their hearts are,” she says.

“We as trans folks have to re-approach how we are going to connect with the queer community because there is this divide that is happening right now,” she continues. “Sometimes I think it has to do with the difference between proactive or preemptive politics and reactive politics. That is detrimental to us all. Let’s take down our guard and talk to each other, learn about each other, see where our similarities are and grow together. I think that is the next glass ceiling.”

As for Shelley, he hopes the future of queer love will be more focused on desire and chemistry than on conventional understandings of gender and same-sex attraction.

“If we have any impact at all, in the future it will be that queer people will be more queer, that people could be able to appreciate the complexities of human sexuality and gender,” he says.

“Rather than being fixed in the body of one thing only, and strive to be one thing only for the whole of one’s life, maybe we’ll be -to quote Bette Davis -much more ‘this and that.’”

Denise Sheppard (scribe at shaw dot ca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S. and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.

The Once and Future Lego Queen - Coretta Scott King

Anyone who has ever tried to play “Montgomery Bus Boycott” at home probably realizes how hard it is to make Martin Luther King out of Legos. First of all, it’s difficult to find black minifigures unless you buy the NBA 3-packs which feels, if you think about it, either deeply insulting to black people or to white basketball players. Secondly, the hair. Put a black minifigure in a suit with accompanying hair and it will look like a second string Eddie Murphy character from “Coming to America”. In fact, Legos are so poorly representative of ethnic diversity right now that the posted versions of Martin Luther King Jr. on Flickr look identical to the posted versions of Will Smith as Agent J in “Men in Black”; right down to the suit. It’s hard to tell, from a distance, if he has a dream or a neutralizer.

As hard as it is to get good Martin out of little plastic blocks, it’s even more complicated to get a good Coretta Scott King. Legos are notoriously bad at replicating women in minifigures as well. For most of her husband’s non-plastic life, you would find her right behind him, supporting him. In reality, Mrs. King had the singular distinction of being witness to every single “Lego Block” that went into building the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. Each piece of this fight for justice went through her hands at one point or another. If anyone were looking for deeper insights into what King believed and how he followed the arrow of justice, looking through her eyes is our greatest opportunity.

Mrs. King was reluctant to take up the role as leader of the civil rights movement after her husband’s death. In fact, she went to Josephine Baker, asking her to act as leader of this community. When she declined, Coretta Scott King became the soul and heart of American Civil liberties. She fought to ensure that even though Martin Luther King was gone, his dream would be visible, relevant, alive. She made sure that he had a voice even when surrounded by people without her unique insights into his mind. She made it clear to the world that the battle for civil liberties and freedom did not end at the color of people’s skin. Just as Frederick Douglass found that he couldn’t be free as long as anybody remained in chains, fighting for Irish Home Rule and the women’s suffrage, Coretta Scott King explained that the Civil Rights movement was there for the poor, for women, for LGBT people, for everyone.

In 1968, during a Solidarity Day Speech, she called for women to “unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war.” She opposed Apartheid when the word was unknown to most people. In her fight for equality for gay people everywhere she spoke out to say “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”

She indelibly linked the fight for gay rights to the Civil Rights battle in one of her most famous speeches of all, calling out that, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people…But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.” She was completely unequivocal and absolutely clear. In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to be a part of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington. She crossed bridges to support a group she wasn’t a part of - to honor the dream. She fought for the equality guaranteed to all of us when she fought for equal marriage, calling an amendment preventing marriage equality “a form of gay bashing that would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriage.” She took the hardest road she could and she handled it without falling.

On Martin Luther King Day, this year, I want to honor the woman that he honored when he said “without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment…” There is still a long way to go, but to the woman who got every single building block right, the woman who understood every word he said better than most of us, the woman too beautiful to be constructed out of Legos - to you I want to say thank you.

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s latest release, Vinyl88. Not the Best of DW, will melt your face and is available wherever you buy or steal your music.

Taxonomy of an Apology

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that given a long enough time line, the arrow of human history points towards justice. I would think that was true even if he didn’t say it in that booming, august, alliterative voice he had. He probably could have ordered Chinese food in that voice and it would have sounded epic: “Give me the Potstick-er-er-ers. And the Frie-e-e-ed Ric- ah. And no Em Esssss Geeeeeeeeeee.”

I want to ask people who are reading (people who aren’t? I am asking you nothing, in fact, I’m making fun of your blog indifference even as I type) to try something for me. Today, and only today, the thing I am asking you to do is not sexual in nature and won’t require that you apologize to your parents for embarrassing them in public. Although, would it hurt you to apologize to your parents for embarrassing them in public? Probably not. Imagine that this arrow is an actual giant object. Let’s say it’s made out of wood - a nice polished teak or something. Now, what happens if we get up on top of it? It balances pretty well. It’s pointing that way. Let’s try this. Let’s take 5 steps forward.

I remember a lot of people I knew saying on September 11th, that we, the US should commit ourselves to a non-violent response. That we should take 5 steps this way. That we should shore up our security inside the US, work to build toward a non-external energy-reliant economy and commit ourselves to the ideal that no Muslim-reared child would die because of what happened at the Twin Towers. I was one of those people. We said that we should use the power of the goodwill coming our way to forgive and challenge the rest of the world to do it, too. We could lead by example. If people never learned how to say, “I’m sorry” then we should learn to forgive anyway. We could have made the names of those 3,000 plus people who died that day stand for something real. I still believe this. As strongly as I think anything, I think that we need to be better as a country - we needed to learn how not to act in anger, but to pursue peace with our best tools. At the very least we should have noticed that we were not attacked by a nation, but, in fact, by a small group of people who were likely trying to create the exact result we gave them.

In hindsight it may seem obvious that what happened on September 11th was a large scale case of “suicide by cop”. You’ve all probably seen suicide by cop before. It’s what happens when you get up in a clock tower somewhere and start pumping hollow shells into people until the police bring in the sharpshooter to remove you. You know it’s suicide but you don’t care. It’s what you’re there to do. When a tiny group of people attacks a giant sovereign nation, they have at least some suspicion that the nation will start blowing people up in retaliation. You know it’s going to mean thousands more of your supporters die, but you don’t care. It’s what you’re there to do. And we played along. If Osama Bin Laden had tried to find a way to get the US to destroy any of its remaining credibility in the Muslim world, pitch wildly to the right, remove the civil liberties of its own population and waste billions of dollars he couldn’t have succeeded more. The country has become more religious, more paranoid, more violent, poorer, less concerned with civil liberties and more xenophobic. In essence, we have become more like them. The fact that thousands of their own supporters have died to get there is inconsequential to them. It worked. We did it.

The group of people who believe that internally directed action was the right course of action has grown. The arrow of human history points forward. You are rarely wrong about this sort of thing if you stand on the arrow and take 5 steps forward. When the US attacked Iraq, some people stood up and said it was wrong, unequivocally wrong. The number of people who now admit that seems to be growing every day. Equal rights for women. Breaking down segregation. Defending human liberty. The guarantee that Martin Luther King, Jr. made, beneath the surface, was this: Get up on the arrow and take 5 steps forward - you will be hated today but vindicated tomorrow.

So, eventually, you’ll be right, but not this minute. This minute, people will call you an idealistic idiot. They’ll call you self-congratulatory for noticing that there is an arrow and writing about it. They’ll call you simplistic and stupid and claim that you don’t understand people. They’ll make fun of your hair (Ok, this is me projecting, but kids can be really cruel). But Martin Luther King, Jr. gave us something amazing when he gave us that arrow. He gave us the right - the challenge - to speak into the future. To live in the future. He gave us a tool that lets us take that 5 steps.

I want to tell you what I see if I step up on that arrow and look at Iraq. I hope you’ll take a look and talk about what you see, too.

Ok. Looking.

Let’s face it. Iraq is fucked and so are we. While I’m happy that people are finally starting to notice this, I’m disappointed that they don’t follow the thinking to its conclusion.

It’s time for the United States to apologize for Iraq.

This should not be revolutionary thinking. When you do something wrong, you apologize. Ending this war is a priority and doing it correctly is an even bigger priority. We’ve past the point in history where good intentions are enough. It’s time to end this war in a way that ensures something like it won’t happen again. Really good apologies usually come in three steps:

1. Express your apology for what you did.

You’ve got to say “Hey, I notice this was wrong. My bad.” The “my bad” part is important. You tell Jill that you understand getting drunk and touching all of her cats in an inappropriate way is wrong. Every one of them. Let’s say you didn’t miss one.

2. Commit yourself to fixing your mistake, to whatever degree it is possible.

You’ve got to try to undo whatever damage you can from your mistake. You get the damn cats all the therapy they need.

3. Put machinery in place to make sure you don’t do it again.

This is how people know you really meant it. You make sure it doesn’t happen again. You go to AA. You throw out all your kitty porn. You start dating a human. You do what it takes.

And maybe, just maybe, Jill will believe it. Maybe it will start to make it right. This will make sure that your relationship with Jill isn’t completely destroyed. Cats, however, never forgive. You’re on your own there.

And maybe you saved Jill from a life of cat-entrenched serial despondency, quiet, undercover, solo masturbation and a final will and testament bequeathing everything to “Mr. Mistypaws”, but it wasn’t your choice to make. You fucked up. It doesn’t matter what you meant to do, what you did was wrong.

What we did in Iraq was wrong. We took a sovereign nation surrounded completely by unfriendly borders and forced them to tell us if they had substantial weapons. If they said “no” this left them open to attack by every bordering nation. If they said “yes” this left them open to attack by us. We gave them no credible way to prove anything, failed to exhaust diplomatic options and unprovoked, invaded and destroyed their infrastructure. We killed children, destroyed homes and separated families. We detained people in violation of all known international laws, we tortured people and, regardless of how you view these actions you will likely agree, we engaged in policies that we would decry if any other nation on the planet followed them. We placed them on the brink of genocide and civil war and now have no reasonable plan to do anything about it. To jump in this conversation, I want to suggest how to end it. But I want to suggest a way that is specifically concentrated on justice. How do we get more justice and move the arrow of human history by ending this ridiculous and untenable war. My suggestion:

1. Apologize.

Make it clear that the United States, along with its allies in this war, were wrong to initiate this conflict. Develop a long-term restitution plan that can help fund infrastructure development, personal property replacement and medical care. Explain exactly what we did wrong and commit ourselves to not doing it again. Make it clear that the US does NOT support preemptive warfare and will not any longer engage in it. Completely and unequivocally state that we were wrong. Make it clear exactly at every step. What we did wrong and begin the conversation of how to avoid it. Make all documents regarding this conflict available to the UN. Be more forthcoming than we think we have to be. This is a transparent and clear apology.

2. Place all troops in the area under the authority of the UN.

Shift as many US troops as possible to other UN controlled locations and swap them out for Arab-speaking ones wherever possible. When possible, put Arab speakers in positions of authority on the troop line and create comprehensive oversight through a commitment to the most stringent application of the Geneva conference protocols. Commit ourselves to funding a 10 year plan through the UN that will use the strategies generated in Rwanda and Burundi by Amnesty international to respond to human rights abuses quickly, internally, and stave off the coming civil war. Hire a “Peace Czar” whose job it is to research and determine ways to develop and support the peace in the area. Fund this. Begin humane education and engagement training with all remaining troops, including weekly education in ethics and first response humanitarian aid. Support non-governmental aid organizations in ensuring that people in the area are fed and invite them to provide addition input on oversight.

3. Vote in and attach the following to our constitution as the 28th amendment.

This is in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident as well as to the current war. We have to make it clear that the US will not engage in this sort of warfare in the future:

Section 1. The right of the people to live peaceably is necessary to their ongoing liberty and happiness, and shall not be abridged unjustly or without cause. Given that the United States is a nation that actively seeks out peace and rejects the idea that any nation should wage war frivolously, no war or policing action may be initiated or engaged against any sovereign agency unless the agency attacks first or two independent unaffiliated organizations find that human rights abuses warrant our engagement. No war or policing action shall last longer than is necessary to ensure our safety or mitigate those abuses.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

4. Work with the world community to create a consensus on what happened for inclusion into history books.

For this to be an ongoing lesson, it has to be remembered. We need to stand as an example of what an effective apology really is.

The old adage “Everything happens for a reason” is one of the most evil, stupid ones to make the meme circuit. Little girls aren’t raped for a reason, hurricanes don’t kill children for a reason, Jill’s cats are not sexually abused for a reason (they are cute). The reality is a little more subtle and complex. If we are very smart, work very hard and are exceedingly lucky, we can MAKE a reason out of what happens. It’s time to make a reason for this war. It’s time to put a headstone on the thousands of people murdered. That reason may well be the pursuit of the perfect apology and a new era in world politics: the era of personal national accountability.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s fifth album, “Supergangbang” is slated for release in October of 2006. Mr. Marcus is also currently at work on his first solo release, entitled “Wonderland”.

Why I Will Not Be the Next President

I am the first one with my hand up explaining why I, Jim Marcus, would make a terrible president of the United States of America. Let’s face it, there’s an army duffel bag full of good solid reasons why you should not vote for me in 2008. First of all, I have difficulty balancing my own checkbook, so I would have to really “hire up” as they say to find an effective money guy. I’ve identified the problem as rampant over tipping, which I can defend thusly:

1. I err on the side of believing everything a waitserver says when serving me food. This is because I have a faulty trust/feed me mechanism, much like those chicks you see on the Discovery Channel who willingly open their little beaks so mom can vomit worm mucus into them. After a week of this, you’d think the little fuckers would be on the phone to Domino’s but, no. Tonight they will open wide again. This translates from bird language into, “I am not dead of starvation yet, so I trust you.” Humans need to set the bar higher.

2. I believe Fight Club, the movie, and suspect that any wrong move on my part will cause the general corruption of my lunch with some sort of human bodily sediment. I tip to fend off Hepatitis B.

3. I have a crush on the waitress.

Further reasons have to do with my inability to remain organized at all times, and my total lack of ability with names. You’ll never hear me call George Bush an idiot for forgetting the name of the prime minister of the Transitional Federal Assembly of Somalia (and it’s totally Ali Mohamed GEDI ) because I can’t remember my mail woman’s name and I’ve had lunch with her. Have I had lunch with Ali Mohamed GEDI? No. And neither has George Bush. The point is:

Names are hard.

Yes, that’s the point. But, there are at least 10 truly sucky reasons why I won’t be your next president (people here who live in America) and each one annoys me a little. They annoy me because I think that each one represents a failure on the part of the people of America to set standards that would allow themselves to be governed sensibly. If we want to call for a better class of leadership, it may be time to call for a better class of followership.

Reason 1. I have not yet declared my intention to run.

It’s still fairly early in 2007. To run a successful bid for the presidency, you have to abandon all hope of performing your day job to any degree of efficacy and start campaigning for people to vote for you 15 months from now. I don’t even know what gender I’ll be 15 months from now. Who needs 15 months to decide how to vote? More importantly, how do these people pull a paycheck for the 15 months they are doing nothing but kissing babies and lying to people strategically? This leads us to Reason number 2.

Reason 2. I did not inherit 100 million dollars.

How do you ride the campaign trail for so long without doing your job? Don’t some of you work in the Senate and stuff? I know none of you are in IT. How about you, president guy? Are we paying for the 1.5 years out of your presidency that you will spend convincing us that you deserve the job again? Have you filed your TPS reports? Is the “My Pet Goat” book report finished yet? You can’t do this unless you were born with a silver spoon running almost all the way to your colon. Or, of course, unless you engage Reason number 3.

Reason 3. I do not have wealthy white Protestant landowning corporate friends who need favors.

My friends come to me with favors like, “Can you get the kink out of my butt” or “I need to talk about my boyfriend” or “Can you help me design my record cover”. It’s rare that any of them come to me and say, “Jim. I need to obliterate an endangered species to build an entry level production machinery plant. Can I get a hand here?” This is bigger than a butt rub and it may be a sign that I’m not truly presidential that I don’t have these kinds of friends. I do like giving butt rubs, though. No money in it.

Reason 4. I am one of those Atheists

In a Newsweek Poll, a whole bunch of Americans willing to actually answer the phone and talk when Newsweek called said they believed in God by a ratio of 92 to 6 with only 2 percent answering “I don’t know.” All well and good. Unfortunately, only 37 percent said they’d be willing to vote for an atheist for president. This is significantly down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll - which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist. September 11th did something remarkable. It convinced people that, because a bunch of monotheists flew a plane into a building, it made more sense to vote for one. I know that’s probably a pretty incendiary thing to say. See reason 10.

Reason 5. Additionally, I am one of those Bisexuals

I suspect that we will have an openly gay president, a black president, and a president whose last name rhymes suggestively with an intimate body part before we have a bisexual one. And when president Flagina comes out as bisexual, they will find a reason to impeach him. I think this is because of the confusion around bisexuality. As many people think it’s a lie as think it’s a sin as think it’s a transition to being gay. Of course it has nothing to do with my politics and I ask you, the voters, to ignore it. It’s immediately relevant only when looking for a date. Which I am, by the way. Saturday.

Reason 6. I had a life. Part 1. Sex

I have had sex in public, on video tape, in front of people, with multiple people and in other situations that, while fantastic and a lot of fun, would suggest to the electorate that I am unelectable for some reason. I would have to deny and defend myself and, since some of it’s on tape, it would be an unconvincing and problematic denial process. Having a life is a huge drawback on the campaign trail. Even though there are tons of neat places to have sex on the campaign trail and I would personally consider it a sign of character if a president took the opportunity to get biblical with an S.O. on the Camp David coffee table.

Reason 7. I had a life. Part 2. Writing/Music

I have written a lot of lyrics in my life. Some were awful. Some were actually not bad. About 98% of them would come back and haunt me. Asking people to defend things they said out of context decades ago is the ongoing pastime of journalists who can’t seem to focus on the issues. It’s our fault. We buy the magazines. This is another reason not to focus on silly misstatements made by a president unwittingly while very real civil liberties are being abused by him wittingly. Microsoft Word claims that “wittingly” is a word, even though I have never personally used it before.

Reason 8. I had a life. Part 3. I tried X once

I don’t really do drugs. But I did try ecstasy once. It made me want to have sex with random people. I confess that this wasn’t a new feeling for me. Yes, I was worried about my spinal fluid, but that wasn’t the reason I never did it again. (the spinal fluid thing is a myth.) The real reason is that bottled water is expensive. The idea that unrepentant drug use will preclude you from taking the presidency is interesting. You have to repent. Be sorry. And then fail to inhale.

Reason 9. I am part Jewish

My father was Jewish. I know that this doesn’t make me actually Jewish, but as you get older, you get closer to some traditions and the Jewish tradition is a powerful one. I was sitting Shiva once. This is what you do when you are Jewish and someone in your immediate family dies. Everyone gets together and stays in one house for a week. It’s like a very somber reality TV show in Yiddish. My cousin Irwin came up to me while I was eating, making sure I didn’t put meat and cheese on the same plate. I was a vegetarian and so I was a little confused. I assured him I wouldn’t, but what I wanted to say was, “Dude. I am just exactly Jewish enough to know that. I know who Elie Weisel is, where a yarmulke goes and not to put a piece of cheese on the same plate as a roast beef sandwich. And that’s it. That exhausts my Jewishicity and I go goy past that point, but, up ’til there, I am totally engaged.” I didn’t say that. I think I just nodded knowingly. Le esprit d’ escalier. The point here is that we are likely a few years away from a Jewish - or even partly Jewish - president. The Antisemitism in our country may have gone underground for the most part, but let Lieberman win a presidential primary and we’ll see what happens.

Reason 10. I sometimes swear like Sarah Silverman’s older sailor brother.

And, I have to say, I have no clue what she sees in Jimmy Kimmel. But that is so besides the point. We, as Americans, can’t stand it when presidential candidates get impassioned. We seem to be looking for stoic sociopaths. Howard Dean screams a little and all of a sudden he’s Ted Bundy. Why can’t we jump up and down a little in this process? People’s lives and happiness are at stake. I say it’s time for a few new swear words. And if we can’t invent them while watching this torturous meandering process that our electoral system has turned itself into, then we’re not truly the degenerates I sort of hope we are.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s fifth album, “Supergangbang” is slated for release in October of 2006. Mr. Marcus is also currently at work on his first solo release, entitled “Wonderland”.

A Season in Hell

Just about everybody had that friend in high school who got busted smoking. Maybe his dad walked in on him and some friends smoking in the basement. Or maybe his mom found a pack in his coat (this was the scariest Brady Bunch episode, ever, by the way - we all knew that the ciggies weren’t Greg’s, though). Maybe he burned down the block with a cigarette, killing hundreds including the entire population of the geriatric home down on the corner, whose inhabitants died scraping their gray, grizzled fingers raw on the bars outside their windows, screaming to be shot in the head by passing policemen so as to avoid the charring, searing agony of having the very flesh melted from their aged, brittle bones. This, as an aside, WOULD have been the scariest Brady bunch episode ever if it hadn’t been for those damn censors.

Actually, I didn’t have one of those friends. But I did have a story from a friend about what happened to his cousin when his dad caught him smoking. Some parents live on the edge a little and I guess my friend’s cousin’s parents lived there, too. His dad made him smoke 2 entire packs of cigarettes at one sitting, while he watched. The idea was “Hey, many smokers smoke 2 packs a day once they’re addicted. Let’s show you what that feels like.” Supposedly, it worked, as my friend said his cousin got so sick he never smoked again. Happy ending, right? Beautiful. Everyone went out for ice cream and all was right with the world. We called this the immersion method.

I think I had my doubts about the methodology, but I couldn’t think of a better alternative. I’d never found a way to talk anyone out of smoking and I’d never seen anyone who had. No one believes they will actually get sick or get hurt in any way. Maybe this immersion works. I lived, later, with a friend named Doug who kept falling asleep in his chair holding a cigarette and lighting various clothing on fire. I soaked his chair in non-flammable plastic at his request. We spent hours out at various clubs talking about how to forestall the inevitable fiery death he faced one day when he fell into a slightly deeper sleep. I was ready to start missing charred little Doug. Sometimes it’s important to get emotionally prepared. We had a little eulogy and funeral at the Metro in Chicago. Great guy. Not much left. Smelled bad on the way out.

So he suggested a radical version of this immersion method. Maybe a group of people should show up at your house and kidnap you, drag you off to a dungeon somewhere where you’ll spend weeks tied to a wall, covered in ashes with ashtray filth and tar-filled water filling the room up to your neck. It would be a very expensive but effective program. A big moneymaker if we could get funding. We called it “A Season in Hell” after a book of poems by Rimbaud. This was not to be the final marketing name, although it did have a catchy logotype.

By the way, this was our second big moneymaking self-help program idea. The first was the Coma Diet Plan. Our ultimate easy weight loss plan. People of heft (politically correct term for the chubby) would sign up for 50,000 dollars a piece and be put into an artificially induced coma for 3 months. During that time orderlies would exercise them by moving their limbs to prevent atrophy and build muscle mass. They would be fed intravenously a minimum number of calories and the weight would just drop off. They would wake up 3 months later, having gone through no extensive trouble, lean, fit and ready to dive right into their new skinny lives. Sweet. And after 3 months away, their families could be expected to be so happy to see them. We even had cards made, for fun. The coma diet plan. My old friend, the photographer Steve Diet Goedde was in a pretty interesting punk band named Coma Diet as well. It’s where the “Diet” in his name came from (There was a time when people in Chicago used to call people by their first names and band names. Eric Spicer was Eric Raygun. I heard myself called Jim Warzau. The first person who ever introduced me to Paul Barker called him “Paul Blackouts” which, disturbingly, made him sound both plural and like a drunk. Chicago.)

So we never did it. The millions of dollars we might have made from our revolutionary self-help plans never materialized. My big idea dreams are smaller now, like entering the Pillsbury bake off (it’s a million dollars if you win, people). But maybe the ideas are sound. Does immersion work? Give people exactly what they want and they realize that it sort of sucks? Can you cure an addiction by letting the person wallow in the results of their addiction?

Whether this works or not has become more relevant to me lately. We have a unique addiction happening in this country. It’s an addiction to magic. This isn’t magic like on Bewitched where we, as a nation, were expected to believe that Nicole Kidman would want anything to do with Will Ferrell. Not like Harry Potter Magic or Buffy the Vampire kind (too bad, really, because I could totally get with a little more Buffy). The kind of magic we’re addicted to is magical thinking.

We’ve seen a growing support for pharmacists refusing to service women because it went against their religion. We’ve seen popes and trains of their followers fight against reasoned, scientifically proven sexual education and contraception because it went against their religion. We’ve seen churches do battle with laws that would protect children from sexual predators because they would potentially force their religion to behave in a reasoned way. We’ve seen attacks on science from all angles because the traditions of various religions are impacted - Muslim speakers advocating beating their wives, Christian speakers fanning the flames of anti-gay violence, Seventh Day Adventist speakers feeding into sectarian genocide, Jewish speakers treating a whole group of genetically near-identical people as de facto inferiors because their religion, again, pits magic against science, revelation against reason, superstition against introspection.

And the addiction to magical thinking seems to be growing. Well over half of Americans now believe that, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, God created modern man as he exists now through the process of creationism. Over 2/3rds of Americans want Creationism to be taught in schools - hundreds of millions of people.

A comparison of peoples’ views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower. The widespread popularity of American fundamentalists, aided by politicians who want to curry favor with that influential voting block, has created an environment more averse to science than we find in other countries, even those far less developed than we are. The primary advocates of Creationism are not accredited scientists. They are pundits and laymen, politicians and theologians. Our addiction to magical thinking in this country has created a set of conditions that put non-scientists in charge of the scientific education of the population.

At the same time, a movement has begun to replace the findings of doctors and professional people of compassion with more magical thinking. Recently, in Danbury Connecticut, the school observed a day of silence. This was meant to honor and remember people, gay, straight, black, white, etc. who were victims of violence just because of who they are. Local religious institutions fought for, and won, the right to stage their rebuttal to this idea with a “day of truth” where they advocated for homosexuality to be considered sinful, unnatural and wrong. By positioning their event as a rebuttal, they made it clear how they felt about the Initial event, whose sole focus was to remind people that violence in the service of intolerance is wrong. Valerie Pinnex, the pastor who instigated the Day of Truth refuted the intent of the Day of Silence by asserting, in opposition to the findings of medical professionals, psychiatrists, etc. that homosexuality was a clinical condition and unnatural. An ex-police officer and security guard, Valerie has exactly zero years of medical experience or training. And yet, hers was the medical advice heard by the population of the school. A message of distrust, division and alienation, specifically intended to counter a message of nonviolence. And paid for by tax money.

We have in front of us a strange addiction. But I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a cure. It’s brutal and painful, like the rabies cure, a long string of painful shots. It’s expensive, like the most elaborate cold remedies that involve ground up animals, endangered and rare. And it’s ugly. Sort of like a proctology exam.

Let’s just let them win.

I suppose we need to let the hatemongers into schools to counter the conversations on tolerance. For every Martin Luther King Day or Harvey Milk Discussion, let in the The Ku Klux Klan and a Valerie Pinnex. For every scientifically verified and exhaustively researched finding on the origins of human life, let in the magicians, preachers, pundits, and grade school graduates with dissenting opinions. For every responsibly compiled history text, let in a work of collaborative fiction detailing what might have happened, how we didn’t walk on the moon, the Holocaust didn’t happen, etc.

And when a generation of American politicians have been raised to hate and fear what’s different, the religious right can bask in its triumph. When a generation of American doctors have been raised to elevate wishful thinking above science, the American Religious Right can visit those doctors with joy, prescriptions in hand for antibiotics, taken without respect to the evolution of the various diseases countered. And when a generation of American historians have been raised to think that whatever revisions they want to introduce into history are as valid as what is documented, the Religious right can enjoy the results of their work. As we descend into sickness, intolerance and ignorance, we can light candles along the way, mutter newly learned magic words and forget what tools we sent thousands of years developing, all to make political communication a little more vital - a little more understandable.

What would a country like that look like, just one generation from now? I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty. But maybe it’s time to stop fighting and let the addiction win. Many of the pro-theocratic members of the religious right in this country have never lived under a theocracy - never lived in a place where religion and magic determined the entirety of public policy. If they don’t have the vision to understand what the most vocal and outspoken theological voices in our community would do with even more power than they enjoy right now, maybe we should supplement that vision with empirical experience. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll only sacrifice one generation before the nation wakes up and rises to the countrywide challenge to pass through dark ages swiftly and without regret. Maybe only one group of men and women will have to be sacrificed to absurdity before we wake up as a nation and resume our movement towards the future.

It’s probably time to give the fundamentalist what they’ve been wanting. A true American season of hate and ignorance. A return to superstition and the intellectual jungle. A Season in Hell. Let’s see how they like it.

Written by Jim Marcus

im Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s fifth album, “Supergangbang” is slated for release in October of 2006. Mr. Marcus is also currently at work on his first solo release, entitled “Wonderland”.