TO BE or NOT TO BE or MAYBE TO BE Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 13

TO BE or NOT TO BE or MAYBE TO BE

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

by Mykel Board

We will peer at wiggling things that look like rattlesnakes from one side and look much more like the middle of next week from a different but equally plausible angle of view. Those with tired or rigidly dogmatic minds will find these perceptual relativities distressing... You have had warning. Don't complain later if this seems like a bloody abattoir for you own favorite Sacred Cows and you get a bit uneasy about things that formerly looked simple and honest. --Robert Anton Wilson

Fuck, I'm late. They're gonna be pissed off at work. The Japanese are such sticklers that on-time is late. I'm hung over... I need to pour myself into my clothes and POW! out the door. Elevator downstairs... out the front door. My foot hits something slimy... gooey... slippery.... SSSSSSS.. TAKOOO! It slides from under me. For a second, I'm in the air... Peter Pan over Bleecker Street. TWATOOOM! I'm on the sidewalk... my ass a mass of coffee-colored pain... my hands aching and slimy. I look at them. They too are brown... palms covered in shit. Splashed onto my wrists, the sides of my pants. I slipped on dog ooze and landed in it palms first. The smell makes me gag.

FLASHBACK TO 1997: I don't have a cellphone. I won't be bullied into getting one for a couple years. But I need to make a call. In the 90s, there were things called COIN PHONES. The body of the phone was attached to a little stand. You picked up the receiver (a black piece of plastic with a speaker for your ear and one to catch your voice) and listened for something called a DIAL TONE. Once you heard the tone, you put some money-- usually a quarter-- into a slot at the top of the fixed part of the phone. Then you dialed the person you wanted to speak to. There must be an instructional video on YouTube someplace.

This time, though, the act of picking up the receiver, putting it next to my head... against my ear... and speaking into it is … well... there's something slimy on my ear, something squishy on my hand, something foul-tasting in front of my lips. You guessed it! It's covered in shit! This time I vomit... right into the receiver.

FLASH TO LAST WEEK: First class over, now! An intestine full of last night's Red Horse beer … Red, now brown... waiting to burst out... I can just about make it to the men's. Rip open my belt... unzip... now... now... NOW! BLLLAAAUUUUPPPP! A blast... a joyful noise... a liquid soup... a number three.... exploding from my rectum with such force it splashes the bowlful of water back up... mix of shit and bogwater coat my ass... drips from my balls... FFFFFRRRRT.. an aftershock... another ecstatic explosion. My God... the best feeling of the day... the week... the month... I'm pregnant... giving birth... releasing the universe inside. The best shit... uhhhh... wait.

Shit! Shit? Good or bad. Most evil of face filthers or most delicious of joys? Maybe it's neither... or both... or... And of this shit begins this column.

SHIFT TO A BOOK: Recommended to me by my jailbird friend Kyle, it's written by Robert Anton Wilson. He's best known for his conspiracy trilogy THE ILLUMINATUS... and his participation in lots of Libertarian events. It's the third part in another trilogy: the Trigger Books. The quote at the start of this column is from that book.

Wilson writes the entire book without using the verb TO BE (am, is, are, were, was etc) except when quoting someone else. The reason? He believes that TO BE stops thought. If I say, “It IS cold outside.” there is no room for discussion... only right or wrong. Disagreement becomes personal attack. A position is hard... fixed. Whereas if I say, “From my life experience, and in comparison to other temperatures I've observed, the weather seems colder than at other times.” I open the door to intelligent discussion and a world of possibility closed to the IS COLD absolutism.

If we only have IS, we can only counter with IS NOT. We're trained to make binary decisions. A or B. Hot or cold. Right or wrong. Good or bad. Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler. The world isn't like that. There's a complicated range of possibilities... and they can be different depending on what side of the sphincter you're on.

Intellectually, that appeals to me. Stylistically, it sucks. I like the idea though, and will take a lesson... or two..., from it. Lesson one:

Take Israel... please.

The original idea of Israel was to make a socialist paradise-- a safe haven for any Jew under attack. It was supposed to be an example. A utopia... a lesson for the world on how to live... a place to go when the going gets rough (as it often does for Jews). That's a worthy cause.... a good cause. But there's been a lot of lead over the desert since then.

In the current war, thousands of Palestinians have been killed... fewer than a dozen Israelis-- all soldiers. A U.S. funded Iron Dome system protects Israel. It destroys in-coming rockets before they reach their target. Gaza has no such system... so they die from Israeli rockets. How can Israel excuse such a one-sided massacre? What's left to say... they WANT to die?

Yep, that's what they say. According to the Israelis, Palestinians hide the rockets in schools, hospitals, and apartment complexes. The Israelis warn them of coming attacks and the locals climb to the building tops to wave on the attackers. The fact that there are tens of thousands of refugees running from the war doesn't change this opinion. Running away or not-- they still WANT to be killed. How can people believe that? It's easy, because the opinion doesn't come from facts... it comes from viewpoint, from BEING.

I AM a Jew. Jews support Israel. First support Israel, then bend the facts to fit that support.

And what of those lefty Jews? Those who say I AM a liberal. The ones outraged by environmental degradation... refusing to shop at Walmart because the company pays slave wages... marching against climate change... what are their feelings on Israel? Support a massacre, an ethnic cleansing. They find their views are exactly the same as FOX NEWS... How do THEY feel when their liberal perspective suddenly turns conservative? When Glenn Beck visits Israel and wears a yarmulke? How do they choose between I AM a Jew and I AM a liberal?

Why support Israel just because you ARE a Jew? Jewdom has a myriad ways of expressing itself. It's a religion, a nationality, a culture. You don't have to believe in Israel any more than you have to believe God turned Sodomites into salt. You can start with some version of reality and THEN see if that leads to supporting or opposing the Jewish state. You can start with the moral action, rather than the rules you have to follow by BEING Jewish. Same, of course, with BEING a liberal.

Lesson two:

Or take feminism... double please.

The idea went through a myriad of changing. Starting (in the US) with an angry Carrie Nation's saloon smashing, morphing into a voting rights movement, now finding itself at war with transexuals. Calling the trannies bed wetters in bad wigs.

Like being pro-Israel, if you start out being feminist (in the 2014 sense), you see things in a completely different way from someone who is not feminist. Feminist Susan McClary, for example, writes that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is about rape:

“The point of recapitulation of the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music... which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist.”

Oh please! I hate Beethoven as much as the next guy. The music may be boring, but it ain't rape. From her feminist-first point of view, however, that's the reality.

Now we see lefty wars between feminists and trannies... and you can't even say “tranny” anymore. (NOTE: I AM Mykel Board. I can... and do... say what I want.) Fox News' Gavin McInnes was fired both from his Fox TV job and the ad agency he helped start. This for writing on the internet:

(Transsexuals) are mentally ill gays who need help, and that help doesn’t include being maimed by physicians. These aren’t women trapped in a man’s body. They are nuts trapped in a crazy person’s body. I see them on the streets of New York. They are guys with tits and a sweatshirt. They wear jeans and New Balance. “What’s the matter with simply being a fag who wears makeup?” I think when I see them. You’re not a woman. You’re a tomboy at best. Get fucked in the ass. And ladies, if you’re a butch lesbian, you’re a lady with a lot of testosterone. Put a dick on a belt and fuck your girlfriend. You don’t need to turn your vagina inside out. You’re not a man.

Here we see rightist FOX-NEWS Gavin taking the same side as the radical feminists. But maybe he knows this and has decided not to BE a right-winger, but to SAY what he thinks is right. Fuck the requirements of TO BE ideology.

Of course I disagree with him... but NOT completely. I want to fight the binary.

Gavin says, “You ARE NOT a man?” Does that mean you ARE a woman? We're caught in the binary again, instead of the realm of infinite possibilities. Why are there only two choices? There aren't!

I know many transfolks are not gay. Half the guys who become women become lesbians. Is that gay? I don't know. But Gavin asks questions that go beyond the gonzo writing. Some transactivists want children “born in the wrong body” to be given hormones... starting as young as 8 years old. That way, they say, the kids can have a smoother transition.

WTF? eight-year olds cannot legally decide who to fuck. They're not allowed to fuck anyone, actually. Yet they can decide to take hormones leading to major surgery? Huh? When I was eight years old I wanted to be a cop... or maybe an astronaut. Kids-- all people-- change their minds. One false move as a kid and POW! you're on hormones! This thinking disappears when you get rid of the verb TO BE, at least when it comes to gender. Not I AM a girl or I want TO BE a boy... but

“Johnny, you may be right and don't feel like you're a boy. That doesn't mean you're a girl. You don't have to be one or the other. You're JOHNNY! Different from everyone else. Okay?”

Of course I support the freedom to choose your gender... and the freedom to unchoose it. But if we stop looking at gender as something you ARE... instead just doing what feels good, we can kiss the hormones and the scalpels goodbye.

Here's where that copula-cutting works. If I say (and I used to) I AM a leftist does that mean I support Fox's censorship of Gavin McInnes? That's what leftists do. I don't. If I say I AM a Jew, do I have to support the Israeli genocide? That's what Jews do. I don't.

I've written before about homosexuality and how people DO homosexual... not ARE homosexual. Maybe it's time to rein in the BE... er... in my opinion, the time has arrived to rein in the BE... not to eliminate it, but to think a bit before using it.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Full-disclosure dept: The coin phone episode is true... but it didn't happen to me. It happened to my friend Bianca... and was the reason she got a cell phone.

-->Had to happen department: An ALS fatality... some idiot decided to do the ice bucket one better. Jump in to a pool at the bottom of a cliff... a 100+ foot drop... plow... didn't make it. I guess he won't have a chance to challenge someone else.

Me? I was challenged and rejected the challenge... or tried to. At the bar we ordered 3 bucketfuls of Red Horse beer. I explained how I'd decided to refuse to be intimidated into supporting a rich charity where most of the money goes to the board of directors. My friends answered by holding me down, pouring the water and ice from all the buckets... over my head. Fortunately, they forgot to video the farce.

-->Just because it's in the Post doesn't mean it's wrong dept: The NY Post reports that private eyes have started using drones to spy both on cheating spouses, and people filing false disability claims. “The drones are a game changer,” says one of NY's private dicks.

-->Censorship is censorship dept: I'm not sure of the best way to support Gavin McInnes in his ouster from Fox and his ad company, Rooster. Try send emails of support to Fox and to the Rooster Ad Company complaining about the censorship.

-->Quote of the Month dept: President Obama is a member of a minority and as such I'm sure during his lifetime he has been prejudiced against... Now he's doing the exact same thing, talking about the top 1 percent as if there's something wrong with us. --Cypress Semiconductor CEO TJ Rodgers

-->Compassion, Swine and the 1%-- South Africa style dept: Thandi Modise, chairwoman of the S.A. National Council of Provinces, was paying workers on her pig farm sub-McDonalds wages. They walked off the job. Without attendants, the animals starved, became cannibals and drank their own piss. When the woman was confronted with the facts, she said, “The suffering the animals endured does not compare to the financial loss I suffered.”

-->More on the 1%-ers dept: 1%-er Michael Bloomberg's website Bloomberg.com reports that economists at the European Central Bank said that a new study shows the percent of earnings of the 1% is not 30% as usually stated, but 36%... and may be higher. Study author Philip Vermeulen said, “The results clearly indicate that surveys are very likely to underestimate wealth at the top.”

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, and a few CDs. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

-end-

WHITE MEN? PUL-- EEZE! Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 12

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST-MRR COLUMNS

by Mykel Board

aka: WHITE MEN? PUL-- EEZE! 

"People who get upset over the mildest racial slur aren't nearly so bothered by obscenities such as "war stimulates the economy" or "the poor you shall always have with you." But this kind of thinking has killed more people, black and white, than racism ever has.” --Jim Goad

[Last column I wrote about my trip to Detroit. That episode was about my adventures with Unitarian Men's Liberationists. Now let's flash to the Allied Media Conference... the main reason I'm here.]

I'm madder than a feminist at a free-speech rally. It's my chance and THEY blew it.

Detroit, city of possibilities, dreams... a blank slate. I'm here for the Allied Media Conference: a collection of alternative types from all over America. In my mind that means lesbos, homos, punks, colored folks... the full spectrum... snow to fudge syrup... everything in-between. Genders up the wazoo.... the full spectrum... Rihanna to Arnold Schwartzenegger... everything in between. It'll be a mammoth mingle... a coming together... freaks of all kinds in one big jumble... up each other's wazoo. Oh boy!

Hosted at Detroit's Wayne State University, they'll use the classrooms to teach-- and celebrate-- the possibilities of Freak Media in a boring world.

There'll be real mutants and marginals... Not the LTGs on the NYUed streets of The Village, but hardcore girls who wear their lesbitude on their chest. And the drag kings who make such pretty boys that I could cum in my Depends. (Someday, I want to make an LP called Boy With A Cunt. Whoops, I already did.)

And there'll be all those sissy boys, prancing around... begging for sexual favors from a literary superstar, fired from MRR for being too punk.

It'll be one fantastic educational, sensual, groping, orgy. And, I'll learn something from it too! Yeah!

Check out some of the workshops on tap.

FAT ACTIVISM FOR UNRULY PEOPLE. Catalog description: I'm not looking for fat activism that produces well-behaved citizens while reinforcing existing inequalities: what I want is wild, weird, funny and free.

or

REIMAGINING DESIRE. Catalog description: This workshop will create a safe(r) shame-free space to explore the ways we can help shift and explore our own desires.

or maybe my favorite

CREATIVE DIGESTION FOR PEOPLE OF COLOR. Catalog description: In this caucus we will reclaim the dirtiest parts of ourselves. Come prepared to make art, share stories, and get messy.

This is gonna be fun.

I arrive at the check-in, greeted by a huge Negress “manning” the information booth. Smiley, funny, in great humor. I LOVE fat people. Especially the ones who are comfortable in their bodies. And there are... er... a ton of 'em here. Sexy fat colored girls, fat dykes who look like the cops in Tom of Finland drawings, bulky boys with double-D tits. Hubba Hubba!

Then I wake up. This crew is not punk. There's a bit of colored hair, but it's collegiate colored hair, not punk colored hair. In fact, the entire conference has the odor of college about it. Academic freaks rather than street freaks. FTG? Uh oh!

It's time for the first workshop. The REIMAGINING DESIRE one. Shame-free! Yeah, bring it on. I'm so there.

I check the catalog entry to confirm the time. Rereading the description, I see that it says, Open to all self-identifying people of color.

What? White people are not allowed??? If you're white but don't “act white” or think of yourself as white, it's okay? What the fuck? That is racist. No two ways about it. Entrance by race is racist. That's as clear as the freckles on my back.

Okay, I need a quick second choice. I decide on SELFIES & SURVEILLANCE: Where do our Pics Go? It's about photos on the internet. Not spectacular, but better than Software for Accessible Game Design.

The presenter is an academic-looking white woman with curly hair and glasses. The glasses do not have a chain that goes around the back, but they should. She introduces herself.

“My name is Karen Schwartz,” she says. “I'm an academic.”

Is this an AA meeting?

She continues, “When you fill out the cards I'll hand you... if you don't mind... could you include some demographics? Age, gender, affiliation. Academics like that sort of thing. You don't have to put your name on it.”

“But first,” she concludes, “let's go around the room and ask each person to introduce themselves. Tell us your organization, and your preferred pronoun.”

Preferred pronoun? I have a preferred sexual position (top). A preferred beer (U Fleku). A preferred degree of doneness in beef (rare). But a preferred pronoun?

“My name is Cassie,” says the first girl, sitting in front, all the way to the left. “I work with Feminists Against The Patriarchy. My preferred pronoun is SHE.”

“Nice to meet you, Cassie,” says the leader.

“My name is Madison,” says the next girl, a beautiful colored girl with beach-weaved hair. “I work with Detroit Women of Color Preserving Neighborhoods. My preferred pronoun is SHE.”

“Nice to meet you, Madison,” says the leader.

Then comes a cute school-boyish something. Blond hair, cut like a 1950s farmer boy... smooth face, no Adam's apple, but jeans and a boy's haircut. Speaking in a medium tenor voice, “My name is Dan. I work with Trans-people Trans-forming America. My preferred pronoun is HE.”

“Nice to meet you, Dan,” says the leader.

Then it's my turn. “I'm Mykel,” I say, “I work with anyone who'll have me. My preferred pronoun is ME.”

“Nice to meet you, Mykel,” says nobody.

Then the next person, a hugely fat woman... dressed like one of the Village People... begins to speak. “My name is Nicole,” she says... and the introductions continue.

After the introductions, the academic hands out her cards and asks us to write down-- next to our demographics-- who we take pictures of and why... what we look for in a picture... what we're careful of.

“I like taking pictures of people who are proud of their difference,” I write on the card. “I want to concentrate on their self-confidence rather than on their freakdom.”

I steal a glance at the tall trannie with black hair sitting in the back of the room. She wears pointy glasses and a very prim office-lady dress. She doesn't notice me.

The academic in the front of the room discusses the dangers of posting pictures online, who can use those pictures, how they can be taken and put anywhere and how we have no control over them.

I think about evil Mayor Giuliani suing to have his picture removed from an ad for New York Magazine. The tagline was

“Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for.” 

He was the fuckin' mayor. His face was all over the place... in every newspaper. How could he complain about it in an ad? Anyway, his suit created more publicity for the magazine than the ad campaign alone ever could.

“How can we keep our images among ourselves?” asks the academic. “How can we prevent others from taking them and using them to their advantage?”

I raise my hand. You do that when there's an academic at the head of the room. She nods to me.

“Why bother?” I ask. “If you don't fear how people use an image, you can't be harmed by it. Bill Gates' mug shot is all over the internet. Nothing is private. Why should we worry?”

“Don't you see,” says the academic woman, “this is about power.”

“Bill Gates doesn't have power?” I ask.

The tall trannie in the corner stands. “Why is it always WHITE MEN who are so free with other people's images? Why is it always WHITE MEN who don't get it?” she says.

She says white men the same way New Yorkers say white bread... the curled lip, metaphorical hand on metaphorical hip.

Then the class breaks into small discussion groups-- they call 'em breakout groups-- to talk about nothing. Instead of learning from a teacher, we have to geek off each other and talk about ourselves. Usually, I'm the last person to refrain from talking about himself... but I'm here to learn, to discuss among EVERYBODY.

This small group shit is a waste of time, but they do it in this workshop... and in every other one. I never learn if it's some kind of feminist/identity plot... or just a new fad in pedagogy. In any case, it's annoying and a time waster.

The other two people in my group are women-- one white, one Oriental. They discuss ways that their images have been misused. I don't have much to say.

After the small groups, the academic talks some more. Some people exchange email addresses and facebook names. No one asks for mine. The seminar is over.

Okay, what's next?

I can't go to the Arab Women in Sports one. The notes say that it's only for people “who self-identify as Muslim.” That leaves me out.

Okay here's Femmes After the Apocalypse. Sounds cool, sissy boys after World War Three maybe. Who knows who I could pick up?... uh.. nope. Not that one either. The fine print: We respectfully ask that white allies do not attend. I guess I could go and say I'm NOT an ally but an adversary... but there's a fuck of a lot more of THEM than of ME.

Well, here's one. Hooeey, talk about up one's alley. It's Bromance: Sex in the Bois Room. It's about... it doesn't matter. It's a closed and confidential space QPOC only. In case you don't get it by now: Queer People of Color.

Racist and heterophobic... what the fuck?

What am I gonna do? Ah here's one... Erotica/Porn as a Tool for Social Justice. I read the description...the fine print... twice. White people are allowed. Even white men! I'm there!

But more on that one next month.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003.

If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Middle East Department: Let me get this straight. The US and Israel should invade Iran because they might make nuclear weapons and bring them into the Middle East. Hamas fires rockets at an Israeli Nuclear Weapons facility, which means Israel already has nuclear weapons, and has brought them into the Middle East. Does that mean the Iran and the US should attack Israel?

-->Wanna bet they won't fade from the NSA dept: A new email service allows you to send emails that fade away seconds after the recipient opens them. You just add fade.li to the end of an email address (e.g. god@mykelboard.com.fade.li) and the reader's version of the email will disappear.

Too bad they don't make an app where the reader herself fades away after opening the message. You computer geeks! Work on that!

-->Hometown Embarrassment Dept: The Long Island town of Old Westbury (right next to my hometown of Hicksville), may ban a statue by Damien Hirst called Virgin Mother. It's a visible-woman type sculpture, showing how a baby rests in its mom's womb. The reason for the ban? The statue shows the woman's nipples.

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, and a few CDs. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

-end-

Eureka? You're Boring! (Column Meant for Street Carnage)

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ARE WE NOT MEN? Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 11

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

Post MRR Column 11
“Are We Not Men?”

by Mykel Board

“To trust in men is itself to let oneself be killed a little.”-- Celine

Every guy worth his weight in foreskins knows that the best place to pick up girls is a homobar. Usually sitting on an empty bar stool, they'll be waiting to talk to you... to find out about your history... to mother you... to show you that girls are nothing to be afraid of... to show you that if you try it... you'll see it's not so bad.

You put on your I've-never-done-this-before-so-be-gentle-with-me face, and before you know it, you're at her place, listening to... (maybe), “You're so good. I can't believe you've never done this before.” or (more likely) “Don't worry. You'll learn. It takes time.”

I write this in the lobby of the McGreggor building at Detroit's Wayne State University. I'm here for the AMC (Allied Media Conference) The conference is NOT punk. It IS homo. A huge gay bar... waiting for me to confess I've-never-done-this before-so-be-gentle-with-me. NOT!

I can hardly talk to any of these people, let alone pick one up for a roll in the Haymarket. Conference attendees are so self-absorbed, insular and identity-based, it reminds me of of those Mens Liberation groups I've heard about... where the members get in a big circle, hug each other, and scream WE ARE MEN. WE ARE BROTHERS. WE ARE MEN. Oy vey!

I've come to Detroit with a second motive... a fantasy.... news reports of a deserted city... empty... cultureless... depopulated. After Clinton's NAFTA killed the American auto industry, there was nothing left. Kill City again... like the 70s... a blank slate... move here and you can do anything. If you fail, it won't cost you much to try again.

I have a (low-paying) job I like in NYC. I have a (tiny) cheap apartment. I have the freedom to take a (non-paid) week... month... year... off work and have a job when I return. As long as that remains, I'm not going anywhere. But what if it changes? If I lose my job, my apartment, my benefits, where'm I gonna go? Detroit?

FLASH TO THE LAGUARDIA AIRPORT: At the gate, I survey the waiting crowd. They look like anybody anywhere. More fat people than you'd see on a typical NYC street, but otherwise... no... there's one girl... dyed black hair... tattoos... skinny... Hoooeee! She might be on my flight. I walk over... take a seat as close as I can to the sexy girl. Close enough to read the Bob Dylan quote in her tattoo. I gave her my heart, she wanted my soul. Holy cow, lesbo too! I'm in love!

I'm wearing my THORAZINE t-shirt, the one where Alice holds a smoking gun... the white rabbit lying dead at her feet.

“I love your t-shirt,” this girl's gonna say. “I know Thorazine from Philly.” Those words will make me come.

Doesn't happen.

FLASH TO DETROIT: I've pick up my rental and am off to my couch-surfing hosts. I end up in a neighborhood someplace. The streets don't have lights, but the houses are big... like mansions... huge white columns... a historic district... next to Henry Ford's historic home. That's where my scummy couch-surfing hosts are. Huh?

More about the neighborhood-- and people later. I drop my bags off and go to meet Dennis, another couch-surfer... in the burbs. He's invited me to dinner with some friends.

Dennis sits in the back yard of his house... a suburban-looking place in a suburb whose name I forget. I pull into the driveway next to the back yard. He waves to me, but doesn't stand up. We shake hands. He's a man about my own age, short cropped gray hair, shorts and sandals.

“Sit down, Mykel,” he says. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Wachya got?” I ask.

“I got water, juice, may have a beer,” he says.

“A beer'd be great,” I tell him.

When he gets up, I see that he walks with a limp... stepping ahead with one leg and dragging the other behind. In a few minutes, he limps back with my first can of Michigan beer. [Aside: during this week I'll have a ton of Michigan beers. Not a bad one in the bunch. Two especially good ones, Nicie Spicie and Ghettoblaster, are better than The Beer Advocate says.]

“Glad you could make it,” he says, “and you're coming to dinner with my friends, right? My church friends... Unitarian Universalist... you saw the church in Detroit?”

“I passed it coming here,” I tell him. Maybe I'm telling the truth.

Detroit churches are so ubiquitous-- and so beautiful-- that I've been looking at them since I arrived. And I THINK I saw the Unitarian one.

After the beer: “Okay, let's go to my friend's house-- church brethren-- for dinner.”

FLASH TO THE LIVING ROOM OF THE SECOND SUBURBAN HOUSEHOLD: A half dozen of us around at table: Dennis, Me, the host/cook, a guy who looks like a truck driver-- baseball hat, beard, a fourth who looks like a TV sportscaster-- clean-cut as a Mormon, and one guy who looks slightly... off... a bit chubby... doesn't look at you... quiet... he rocks a bit when he's eating.

After dinner, we sit around a fire burning in a huge concrete cauldron in the back yard. The sun is just dipping into the horizon. Dennis starts talking , his face lit by the glow of the fire and the setting sun.

“My wife has done it again,” he says. “She's demanded that I stop having people over. She won't talk to my friends... Last week it was worse. She got out of the car... at a stoplight... she just opened the door and ran.”

The other guys shake their collective heads. Then, the next man speaks... the trucker.

“My wife has been treating me like dirt,” he says, and he continues to talk about his better half in a not better-half-friendly way.

One-by-one, the men talk. They talk about their wives... in one case a girlfriend... they complain... seek sympathy... get it. Eventually, it's my turn.

“I don't really know what to say,” I tell them, “I'm single. Never been married. I'm here for an Alternative Media Conference.”

“Why aren't you married, Mykel?” asks the host, a round-faced man with a farmer's tan and Alfred Hitchcock belly.

“Once in my life I asked a girl to marry me,” I answer. “She said no and immediately became a lesbian.”

Instead of the laughter that line usually brings, I get tsk-tsks and head shakes. The quiet, slightly-off guy looks at me. His eyes glisten. “I have two kids,” he says, “a daughter and a son. Both of them are gay. How do you figure it?”

“Tell us about the shirt,” the trucker says to me. “I know Thorazine... it's a drug. Had it forced on me in the hospital once. But I don't get the picture.”

“Thorazine is a band... from Philadelphia,” I tell him. “I like the picture. I figured I could wear it at this conference. It's got a slightly feminist message, you know?”

Silence.

The metaphorical speaking stick passes to the last guy in the circle... the Mormon. He talks about how he's forced to work two jobs to pay for what his wife spends “willy-nilly on whatever she wants.”

After he speaks, we stand. I figure we're leaving. I figure wrong.

“Mykel,” says Dennis, “come and join us.”

The group has formed a standing circle... arms over each other's shoulders.

“Together,” says Dennis, “WE ARE MEN. WE ARE BROTHERS. WE ARE MEN.”

We group hug. Then get into our individual cars and go off. I head back to downtown Detroit and my couch-surfed home.

ENDNOTES: [Contact: You can email me at god@mykelboard.com. For postal contact (send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else-- legal only!) write to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003 If you like my writing, I can tell you when anything new is available. (I also have a travel blog and some other stuff.) Join the MYKEL'S READERS YAHOO GROUP readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Every little bit helps dept: Heeb Magazine reports that the GENESIS PRIZE, is given by a group of wealthy Jews to other Jews who “help inspire a new generation of Jewish leaders.” Last year, the $1,000,000 prize was given to: Michael Bloomberg... a billionaire 17 times over.

Yeah, that sure inspires!

-->War Crimes Dept: Anjolina Jouli has been active in convening a United Nations group to make it illegal to use rape or sexual violence as a weapon of war. She was joined in her activism by British foreign secretary, William Hague. The focus was punishing those “war criminals” guilty of sexual violence.

Hmmmm, seems to me, torture and murder are more important war crimes than sexual ones... but that would be helping when the victims are MEN. We wouldn't want that, would we... BROTHERS?

-->Thought Crimes Dept: A man in Olathe, Kansas, was prosecuted for possession of child pornography. He had pasted a photo of a young person's face onto a larger nude picture of an adult woman "with the intent to satisfy his sexual desires." The man was acquitted, but only because the judge could not determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the face in the picture was of a child under 18. Despite his acquittal, the court would not release the man's book of pictures of girls taken from legal catalogs and magazines, nor his diary which chronicled his dreams, including some of young girls.

-->Tit Crimes Dept: The Galveston, Texas City Council drafted an ordinance that would prohibit the baring of women's breasts, “real or in image.” The law would make it illegal to wear novelty vests embossed with bare breasts and asses, or tee shirts with photos or drawings of bare breasts or asses. City Attorney Barbara Roberts assured the City Council that a similar Fort Worth law had been constitutionally tested and upheld.

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, and a few CDs. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

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