Your humble correspondent

“Feel like making $200 the easy way?”

Sally, like me, was an artist and a pervert.  The difference between us was that, at this point, I had yet to monetize my perversions.  She, on the other hand, was a comparative mogul of filth.  A successful dominatrix with a sterling reputation and a frankly bewildering arsenal of gear and clothing, she’d come into my life when I very unexpectedly attended the Black and Blue Ball.  A friend’s friend had to drop out, which left an open ticket.  I attended, but only after being fussed over by a couple of dommes, trussed up in fishnets and rope and heels.  I looked, I thought, like a particularly chic lesbian.  Sally used me as a footrest for a while and we escaped to her place in Queens.  I woke up, realized my non-rope-heels-and-fishnet clothing was locked in my fellow partygoer’s apartment, and had to make the long trip back into the city looking, after an evening’s revelry, like a disheveled streetwalker.

But that’s not really what this story is about.

This story is about when Sally asked me if I’d like to make $200 the easy way.

At this point, we’d been lovers and play partners and friends, and I had a pretty solid idea of what she did for money.  Hell, I’d had a pretty solid idea before I met her, having attended several houses of domination as a young man (if not for sex workers, I’d never have had any idea how to process my more gonzo desires).  But all of my experience with sex work was on the client side.  Sally wanted to know if I was ready to hop the fence.

“So he loves having me come over and make fun of his penis.  And he loves it when I bring friends who humiliate him about it,” she explained.

“So it’s, what, small?”

“No.  I mean, it IS, but he doesn’t like being humiliated about that.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to make fun of if the size is off the table?”

She smirked.  “I don’t think you’ll have trouble.”

Slightly baffled, I agreed, and the next night I was on a train heading out onto Long Island.  Excitement and a certain terror were building within me.  Yes, this was an adventure, but was I crossing a line here?  What did it mean that I was about to accept money for getting someone off?  Was I going to be hauled off to some special prison for man-whores?  WHAT IF HE WAS THE PO-PO?

But then I remembered that I was about to be paid $200 to make fun of some rich guy’s penis, so, you know, good deal.  It was a fallow period for me as a performer.  I’d begun to do burlesque, but not with any regularity, and my legit acting career was stalled.  Not particularly thrilled about the idea of going back to the old days of eating 2 McChickens and walking both ways over the Brooklyn Bridge because I couldn’t afford subway fare, this sounded quite reasonable.  Let’s be honest, I wasn’t about to perform urethral sounding or flesh suspension.  The terror was decidedly short-lived.

(I was told years later by a brilliant woman, Jo Weldon, that when laypeople talk about “sex work,” they always focus on the first word.  The second word, however, is the key.)

We were greeted at the station by a little fellow who resembled a sausage casing fresh out of the tanning bed.  One of those pudgy, stocky, muscular men who’s always a bit red in the face and looks as if he simply hasn’t got enough skin to hold it all in.  Bleached hair, if I’m remembering correctly.  Crew cut.  Thin layer of Long Island sweat at all times.  We hopped into his sleek, silver automobile and away we were whisked.

Perhaps the most unnerving thing about him (and let’s call him James) was that he seemed to want to go out of his way to impress us.  The ride over was a series of boasts about the size of his mansion and the number of cars he owned, but, I mean, not really a big thing because that’s not what he cared about, man.  Not really his deal.  I mean, sure, it’s nice to own them, because there are so many of them and they’re so shiny and nice, but his concerns tended more toward the environmental.  Man.

The conversation about what really mattered to James continued as we strolled through the enormous front doors of his enormous house.  The ceiling was as high as any I’d ever seen, and there were a plethora of chandeliers.  The dinner table was perfectly set and all of the decor had an odd uniformity.  I realized: this was a pre-fab residence.  A McMansion.  While most of the place had an undisturbed sterility, the things that screamed of James and his tastes stuck out like a sore thumb.  A mess of unopened mail on the kitchen counter, a pile of DVDs, a surprising number of toys scattered around, and, most eyebrow-raisingly, a cardboard cut-out of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft from a theater standee.

My god, I thought.  I’m about to engage in professional kink with a 12 year-old boy.

“Most of my work is with my environmental charity.  I mean, like I said, that’s my passion. That’s what drives me.  It’s what pays for all, you know, THIS,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling with a garish sort of humility.

Sally and I nodded sagely.  I commended him on his dedication to the Right Things.

James shrugged and grinned.  “Well, we do what we can, you know?  Anyway, shall we head upstairs?”

And up we went.  The terror never returned, though my heart beat a bit faster as we hastened to the moment of truth.  Suddenly I remembered the mystery that had been tickling my mind since I agreed to the job: what on earth was the deal with his penis?  Why, apart from size, was this penis so eminently mockable?  What had Sally smirked about?

Once in James’s bedroom (the door to which was guarded, gargoyle-like, by another Jolie/Croft cut-out), things got underway with surprising haste.  Sally undressed to a fetching, if fairly unfancy, lingerie set, and James stripped down to nothing.  And once his underwear came off, I understood.  His penis was small, but that wasn’t what caught the eye.

His penis was curved.

It was curved to the left.

Not like a little curved, but curved in a way that if you’d put a red circle and bar over it, it’d look like a U-turn warning.

My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I’m fairly certain it had a curvature unlike any I’d ever imagined or seen.  And it began to erect instantly.  Maybe, I thought, it’ll straighten out as it fills with blood.  Like a garden hose.  But no, it began to leap to life and the curvature was more or less perfectly preserved.

Sally directed James to lie down and secured his hands to the bed.  I was still speechless, staring in astonishment at the most eccentric cock I’d ever encountered.  I imagined what it must be like to get fucked by that cock, and how perhaps if you did it with both bodies perpendicular, it might hit a woman’s g-spot well enough.  But…I mean, how did one even masturbate with it?  Did all of his tugs have to whip off to the left like an artist’s brush strokes?

Sally, being a professional, launched in with some very convincing and sensuous talk about how RIDICULOUS his cock was.  How pathetic and WEIRD. James was in total ecstasy his eyes rolling back and his prick jumping up and down.

Sally looked over at me.  “What do  you think?  Isn’t it silly?”

I paused for a moment.  And then replied, “Yeah.  It’s fucking ABSURD.  I mean, is it even a cock?  It’s shaped like a girl scout cookie.  Did you sleep on it weird when you were a kid?”

Pulse, pulse, throb, jump.  Oh holy FUCK, I was turning him on.  So I continued, voicing all of those odd questions I’d nursed on first sight with what I hoped would come off as a studied aloofness.

And so it went for a good long while.  I like to think I held my own, but watching Sally was an education.  Much of the time I was reduced to awed laughter at how she worked him, cajoling and teasing with a virtuosic fluidity and grace.  He was a puppet jangling at the end of expertly deployed strings.  I, meanwhile, felt like a heckler at the world’s strangest comedy club.

Eventually, of course, James would have to cum.  Sally snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and asked, “Are you ready for me to drain all of your power?”

“Yes, Mistress, please, drain all of my POWER…”

For this I had not prepared.  I’d assumed Sally would just have him jack off or maybe help him along, but what she did was fascinating: she placed the tip of her gloved finger on the underside of his glans and barely moved it at all.

“Can you feel it?  Can you feel me draining all of your power away?”

James writhed and groaned, helpless to whatever bizarre spell Sally was casting.  His cock jolted and leaked precum, which pooled amidst his pubic hair.  Sally turned to me and cocked her head.  An invitation.  She looked at the box of surgical gloves and then back at me.  It struck me that, considering I’d come all the way here and what had transpired, it would be genuinely weird of me to turn prude at the idea.  I pulled the glove onto my hand and, to see if it would make a difference, let it snap.  James twitched and moaned.  Oh, theater.

So I tickled his penis for a little while.  My only disappointment was that, while Sally seemed to have an almost supernaturally minimalist command, I was clearly a rank amateur.  After a few minutes, and a few more insults, I thought it best to let Sally finish him off.

I looked at the clock.  It was almost exactly an hour since we’d entered the bedroom when James’s cock erupted and spewed several thick globules of semen.  His orgasm was obviously a very intense experience for him, but I was at a certain remove.  I wondered how it must be to regularly work a job where the client’s fetishes may or (more likely on average) may not align with your own.  Sally seemed keen, engaged, nurturing.  After so many years did it ever become difficult to muster the enthusiasm, or even the appearance of it?  I’ve always felt it tasteless to ask.

As James dressed, he babbled a bit more in his signature humblebrag, but he did say something so ludicrous that I’ll never forget it.

“You know, I really envy you two.”

We looked back at him, unsure how to respond.

“I mean, you’re artists.  You don’t make much money.  That’s so much easier.  You don’t have all the responsibility that comes with…THIS.”  Again, he gestured around at his kingdom.  “You know, I was walking along the beach by my house in the Hamptons the other day, and I looked out at the ocean.”  His face became wistful, lost.  “It was just so huge and endless.  And the waves crashed on the shore.  And I thought…I’d give anything to live like you guys do.  No money.  No responsibilities.  Just free.  I envy you.”

After a moment, he returned to us and smiled beamingly.  “Anyway…let’s get the money out of the way.”

What do you say to that?

You don’t say anything.  You smile and take your $200.  And if you walk away, as I did, not feeling particularly compromised by the experience, well, you made it the easy way.

If, on the other hand, you wish to fall in love, movies have you covered.  On this particularly lovely Valentine’s Day, I’d like to share three of the screen romances I find most resonant.

The first woman I ever fell in love with was Sherry, a character in 1987′s Real Men.  Ostensibly a spy comedy/road movie starring Jim Belushi and John Ritter, Real Men is really just an excuse for loopy schtick and wayward plotting.  But about an hour into this snarky, harmless romp (which played on HBO what felt like every day of my youth) Jim Belushi meets a woman who, though sporting the look and mien of a mousey little librarian, is in fact a whip-cracking, order-barking, leather-clad dominatrix.  You know those feelings you can’t quite explain at the age of 11 or 12?  I began to feel those around 1:04:38 in the clip below (though for context, which is everything to a respectable pervert, watch from 1:01:38).

Sherry was played by Gail Barle, whose only other significant credit was another waitress role, this one working in the diner in Spaceballs.  She may never have set Hollywood on fire, but she awakened the nascent pervert in me.  Suddenly, after years of wondering why Playboy didn’t really do it for me, here was the ideal feminine creature: seductive, controlling, cajoling, punishing, and, finally, romantic.  Belushi can’t help but fall in love with her.  He needs her.  He’s always needed her, before he even knew she existed.  That’s how I felt the moment the penny dropped, and I began chasing the path that has led me to happiness and fulfillment as a grown man.  Barle can’t possibly know how weirdly meaningful her performance in Real Men was to me (and probably wouldn’t want to know the ways in which I expressed my gratitude), but I’d like to thank her here.  Had I never encountered this silly, flimsy little comedy, I might never have been able to decode my desires.  Imagine that. (Side note: after this film, I would never again empathize with a character played by Jim Belushi)

The next romance is, perhaps, an odd choice to follow what you just saw.  Even divorced from this context, one might choose almost any other duet between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  But I choose this exquisite tap routine from 1936′s Swing Time because of its offhanded elegance, and because of its demonstration of two bodies working in perfect symphony.  These are two souls who may be dashing and beautiful on their own, but put them together and every single move is pure magic.  The fondness they share is palpable in every feathery little nuance.  It is romance at its most urbane.

There’s little else to say.  It’s extraordinary, and it’s how we all wish to feel with our partners.  Perfectly in step.

The final romance is a resonant, eloquent portrait of the young man who still lives snugly within me, hopelessly in love with women, movies and love.  It is a scene from the 2006 Hindi blockbuster Om Shanti Om.  In it, Om, a hopelessly unsuccessful actor, has a surprise brush with Shantipriya, the superstar actress who has been the object of Om’s anguished yearning.

There’s a meta-joke playing out here; the loser is played by Hindi cinema’s most enduring star, Shahrukh Khan, and the superstar is played by then-debutante Deepika Padukone.  The core of the scene, though, is nothing but sincere.  In this one sequence, less than two minutes, we see the purest possible dramatization of a love affair with the movies: anticipation, wonderment, a brush with the sublime, and then a bittersweet deliverance back to reality.  The look on Om’s face as he’s dragged away is one that’s been on mine as the lights came up in a theater after a life-changing piece of cinema, and as I watched a woman I was about to marry approach me dressed in stunning white.

The romance between the two begins as one-sided; Om is an audience member, Shantipriya his unknowing obsession.  Isn’t all romance, though, one-sided at the start?  Is it ever possible to truly share the feelings that overtake us in our greatest raptures?

Movies, unlike people, never change.  They remain as beautiful, as perfect or as flawed as they ever were.  If the relationship changes, it’s because you changed.  But if you can preserve that part of yourself that fell in love way back at your first encounter, the romance will never die.  It should never have to.

And on that note, I’ll leave you with this:

A Democrat in the middle of an argument.

So let’s talk about the Democrat problem.

Shall we take it as read that we all watched the Republican National Convention and enjoyed it for the mad-as-fuck carnival of gross dishonesty and terrifying jingoism that it was?  Because come on, it was fun!  Isn’t it fun to watch the bullies eat each other, thinning their ranks to a dust-smattering of screaming yahoos and stuffed shirts?

Since I’m evaluating the Conventions as theater, I’d give the RNC high marks for sensation and low marks for content.  It was all empty calorie thrills, the kind you regret the next day.  Sort of a Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen of political conventions.  And just as endless (if you’ve never smoked weed and watched Transformers 2, I’m half-tempted to recommend it; it is an experience that turns your whole perception of narrative, time and sense on its head).

The Democrats have a slightly different problem: because they purport to care about people, they can be extremely boring.  John Kerry was the victim of two things: the utterly ghastly Swift Boat business, and his own agonizing dullness.  He was precisely the sort of worthy snooze that people support because, well, they’re supposed to.  When Howard Dean got carried away during the primaries in 2003 and screamed like a goon out of pure joy, I was thrilled.  Because here, finally, HERE was a liberal politician I could get behind.  The sort of New Deal Democrat who was uncool enough to ACTUALLY LOSE IT.

Of course, that was that.  And John Kerry ran and lost and we all sort of believed in him and sigh.

Adding to this problem is the fact that Democrats, as a group more liable to listen to other viewpoints than the doctrinaire, tend to get so swallowed up in the minutiae of policy and back-and-forth and compromise and this, that and the other thing, that they often have trouble presenting a unified front.  If a congressional supermajority can’t ram through a healthcare bill that doesn’t heavily feature conservative ideas from a decade ago and fat giveaways to the very businesses who profit on denying healthcare to paying customers, then Democrats can’t be said to be terribly good at sucking it up and getting the job done.  There’s a problem of unity here, and it needs to be addressed, because what Peter Barnes once called Slow Lawful Orthodox Progress (S.L.O.P.) is dying in the crib.  Because liberals squabble with each other as much as they do with conservatives.

I thought the Convention was pretty awesome theater in general, specifically Michelle Obama’s roof-raising rebuke to the cynicism and pitiless social Darwinism proposed by the Right…

President Obama’s sober, earnest evaluation of his own performance relative to the performance of the nation in general….

And of course, the master politician. Bill.

Bill represents such a difficult figure.  He’s the consummate politician, a slick, glad-handing dude all too happy to compromise if the ends come close to justifying the means (we can stop pretending he wasn’t complicit in the economic bubble’s eventual pop). But he’s also our foremost policy rock star; a man who can break down nearly every major piece of legislation the Right has used to tar President Obama and explain why it was good, necessary and sensible without sounding like…well…a constitutional law professor. With Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on the same stage (and, finally, on the same side) the DNC boasted more starpower than one could possibly imagine, the spectacle of our two greatest political orators coming together in tough times like the goddamn Wild Bunch.  Joe Biden, of course, dropped by to be the awesome uncle he’s always been (it is fucking impossible to hate biker-flirting, cuss-cussing, doofy joke-telling Joe Biden).

Sure there was some hokey shit, exemplified by the derp-y pandering of Montana Governer Brian Schweitzer.  But what do you want?  There was plenty of dignity to go around, and we can all enjoy the spastic insanity of the speech by Jennifer Granholm.

So there you go.  Rousing, impassioned, silly, nerdy, often inspiring, sometimes inspired.  There’s your DNC 2012 in a nutshell.  This was also the first DNC in a long time where there were some collective balls on display.  The party platform included reproductive choice, healthcare, marriage equality and immigration reforms.  And every single one of them got several mentions at the podium, and they were all applause lines.  Imagine that!  Applause lines!  Sandra Fluke, a women who was subject to cruel punchlines at the RNC, got a chance to speak and put paid to the stupid notion that the War on Women is some construct of the Left.

So it was good theater, the kind of meaty, soaring piece of work Spielberg could put together in his sleep.

But then came the hangnails.

I was rather excited that the DNC platform didn’t mention God.  Why on earth should it?  God’s not an elected official, nor did God write the constitution, no matter how much that psychotic infant Glenn Beck insists that he kinda sorta did.  The primacy of God (specifically the Judeo-Christian God, with an emphasis on Christian) in American political discourse has been a plague.  Of course, the Republicans have made rather good business out of God.  And, like always, the Democrats fall in line because no point is so persuasive that it can’t be argued.

Back went God into the party platform, despite the vociferous disagreement of a large number of delegates present for the vote.  Just look at this video, and cringe in embarrassment:

That was not consensus.  It was the sight of a political party shitting its pants the second it heard “boo.”

Oh, and you may have heard something in there about Jerusalem.  The mere omission of the word from the party platform struck some idiots as an insult to Israel.  The last time I checked on that, we don’t answer to Israel.  They are an ally of ours, but they are run by a xenophobic hawk, the sort of man who doesn’t consider the lives of the Palestinians on the West Bank particularly worthy of concern, and who thinks nothing of driving the world into conflict with Iran.  But hell, enough people have falsely conflated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, so let’s just bend the knee on that one.

What of the Palestinians?  Did they consent to living on occupied land?  Are we not grown-up enough to have a real talk about the two-state solution?

Never mind.  Don’t want to upset the horses.

The Democrats are only just learning to talk tough (there was a disturbing streak of hawkishness in this year’s Convention; yes, it was great to get bin Laden, no, you are not The Expendables).  If they do well in the 2012 elections, expect to see much more spine on the Progressive movement.  If not, expect further retrenchment and political center limping ever further right.

Hang on, though, stop the presses.

Mitt Romney’s stolen the spotlight again, and for all the wrong reasons.  You’ve already heard his disgraceful comments on the administration’s response to the attacks in Libya (which may not have been from the administration, or in response to the attacks, but let’s not nitpick a Mormon), but if you haven’t seen his astonishing performance for a room of $50,000-a-plate donors, you haven’t lived.

If you ever wanted to see a full, ugly portrait of the plutocracy in bloom, look no further.  Government has a habit of kissing big money ass, but to see it like this is something special.  Mittington Romnecious makes some fine and disturbing comments about foreign policy, but the real meat is in his tone when he talks about people on governmental assistance.  47% of people choose to be victims?  I’m sure veterans, old people and those whose jobs were shipped to China by YOUR FUCKING COMPANY really appreciate the name-calling.  You don’t get to actively work to calcify the class division in America and then tell The Poors what a bunch of lazy sacks of shit they are for not being born rich.

Government assistance makes you a victim by choice, eh?  How about the government assistance that comprises tax breaks for the immensely rich?  That permits them to all but BRIBE politicians while calling it “lobbying?”  Of course that’s different.  After all, the monied class chose to be successful.  In the view of those who benefit from these handouts, these are just the rewards of that choice.

No one chooses poverty.  The idea that anyone does so is a sick, strange Randian fantasy.  It lets the Objectivist strivers who languish in it imagine that somehow they’re better than the others and would get a chance to shine if only the government would get out of the way, and it functions as a sort of conscience-bypass for the immensely rich.  It is a delusion, it is hurtful, and it deprives the underprivileged of dignity.

In order for people to choose, they have to have the right to do so.  Voter fraud laws, gutting welfare, shipping jobs overseas and draconian immigration laws all deprive the individual of the opportunity to choose.  They make blatant the Conservative inclination to shut out “those people,” whether those people be ethnic, poor or just different.  Those in a de facto position of authority have a responsibility to create the conditions in which consent can even be a factor.  If you’re working for a plutocracy, you don’t care about consent.  If you’re working for a theocracy, you don’t care about consent.  Democracy may be a shitty, ludicrous system prone to breakdowns and absurdities, but it’s the best one we have.  Because it lets us choose.  And that’s a responsibility as much as it is a gift.

So choose wisely.

“Suck it, fags!” Your possible next president.

If you, like me, are a voracious political junkie, then you know that there is no sweeter hit than the televised National Conventions of our two major political parties.  This is not to say that it is nourishing; junkies don’t seek nourishment, they seek highs.  And if you want to see the art of politics (which is to say, the art of the sale) practiced on a level of concentrated Jedi magnitude, you have to see what happens when the party of Small Government and the party of We Actually Kind of Give a Shit present their unified fronts.

All politics is, in a sense, theater.  But only once every four years do you get to see the forces that dictate policy in our great nation put on the equivalent of an insanely well-funded school play.  Sure, the debates and election night itself are required viewing.  The debates are stage managed to be great television, and the built-in tension (to say nothing of real-life stakes) of election night keep you up into the wee hours, red eyes glued to the screen, begging for that last district in Ohio to just FUCKING GET ON WITH IT.  But the Conventions are different.  The Conventions are where we most clearly get to see what the parties present rub up against what they’re actually offering, and the friction is magnificent.

Katy Waldman of Slate wrote a wonderfully lucid explanation of why Conventions no longer fulfill the function for which they were invented (http://tinyurl.com/c3svr8c). I say, thank fuck they don’t.  If this year’s RNC had really been about selecting a candidate, we’d have been spared a cavalcade of righteous bullshit spun around the endlessly amusing spectacle of a bunch of angry religious people punching themselves in the face and trying to get psyched about a candidate who couldn’t find a foot-long clitoris with night vision goggles.  The 2012 RNC was not about Mitt Romney, not really (and if it ever was, Clint Eastwood put an end to that).  It was about smacking a hive of bees with an oar and, as they swarmed in attack formation, pointing at the Black guy and saying, “He did it.”

The word “birther” was never uttered, of course.  Nor “birth certificate,” nor “Kenya,” nor any of the obvious buzzwords tossed around by the Tea Party’s most noxious subset.  Still, the message was so obvious that calling any of it subtext seems like a joke: Barack Obama wants to transform America, because he does not love it the way you do.  No, sir, he couldn’t possibly love it the way a hard-working American from America does.  And if you think we’re racist, think again!  Look, all these wonderful minority figures from our party have been given a chance to speak!  Why, some of our best friends are…you know…ethnic.

It was the kind of manic overcompensating that a loudmouth drunk does at a party when he realizes he’s gone too far.  The Republicans know that they have no support among Blacks.  Among Hispanics, they are flatlining.  And they know why.  You don’t spend four years condoning insidious race-baiting (the birth certificate nonsense, the often insane anti-immigrant fervor) without consequences.  The most tragic programming flail was Marco Rubio’s speech on the final night of the convention.  An impassioned, articulate orator, Rubio spent 18 minutes spewing platitudes and soothing the consciences of a bunch of delegates who would never have allowed a story like his to occur in the first place.  The son of two Cuban immigrants, Rubio would be the cherubic face of job-theft in a modern campaign commercial.  And yet there he was, telling a bunch of people who want to keep America pure that anything is possible if you just BELIEVE.

The official party position on immigration boils down to, “Get out and stay out.”  This is not an exaggeration.  The platform encourages welcoming “highly educated immigrants,” while in the case of your garden variety Brown person, “self-deportation” is the ultimate goal. (Here’s the document in full: http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/)

Nice.

It was riveting viewing all around.  Plenty of women were doing PR work for a party that opposes equal pay for equal work.  Ann Romney and Governer Nikki Haley (Indian American AND a woman?  SCORE!) made beautiful work of their speeches.  One a housewife who seems genuinely confused that a woman would want a job outside the house, the other Governer of a state where not meeting the rigorous standards of a “legal abortion” can get a gal a $10,000 fine and 3 years imprisonment.  Girl power!

Paul Ryan gave a speech notable for his creepy resemblance to a marionette, but the real story is his cotton-mouthed inability to make an honest sale.  Watch the speech and you’ll see what I mean.  It’s been fact-checked to death by many (The Times did a customarily nice job of it: http://nyti.ms/UdRfOZ), largely because he’s a massive fucking liar.

Just look at the little prick squirm.  He makes misleading assertions, criticizes policies he voted for, and cannot for the life of him tell us what he might actually DO as Mitt Romney’s VP.  But watch the shortness of breath.  The way his voice trails off.  His intense, unnerving stare.  This is a kid who hasn’t done a lick of fucking research giving his end-of-term presentation.  No, it’s that kid in front of his teacher trying to EXPLAIN.  The RNC was full of these sorts of speeches, flop sweaty declarations that were received as red meat by a bunch of delegates who really, REALLY want to believe.  They cheered louder the less specific and more agitated things got.

Nowhere was this clearer than the speech given by Clint Eastwood, whose utterly insane performance art dominated the news cycle the next day.  If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Let me make this perfectly clear: one of America’s greatest movie stars and filmmakers spent about 11 minutes talking to a fucking chair.  Setting aside the monumental hypocrisy of Republicans who usually think that actors ought to stay out of politics cheering on Clint just because they AGREE on some stuff (though not, notably, on marriage equality and abortion), this was the perfect metaphor for the modern GOP.  An old white man putting words in the mouth of an imaginary Black man.  I don’t think, as many do, that Eastwood was displaying signs of senility.  I think he was doing a bit off the cuff that just wasn’t playing.  You can tell by the long stretches of oxygen-free silence and the forced applause and laughter when he lands a “zinger.”  Some people can improv and some cannot.  UCB is always holding classes, so Eastwood may wish to sign up.

Mitt Romney also spoke, but who gives a shit about him?  It was the usual bunch of calorie-free American exceptionalist claptrap, punctuated by a bunch of near-offensive pandering.  And, of course, the usual policy-free yammering about how HE WILL GIVE US ALL JOBS AND A PONY.  Exactly the speech you’d expect from a guy who looks like he’s auditioning for the Hall of Presidents.

What all of these speeches added up to was the character assassination of a President who only exists in the minds of a dying race, the sick white fantasy of a Black Socialist Kenyan who will drive us all to destruction out of some desire to redress historical wrongs.  Having failed utterly to convince us that one of the most vetted presidents in modern history is hiding something, the GOP has resorted to simply telling us that he CANNOT be a true American because of…I don’t know…something about him.  Something.

There were others, but the overall impression was that the seams had begun to split.  The genteel, fresh-scrubbed face of Conservatism has begun to rot, and the content no longer matches the presentation (Chris Christie was the only speaker who set the merciless social Darwinism of his words to a bracingly mean-spirited delivery).  The RNC was Marat Sade for morons.  Equal parts inane and insane.

Pass the popcorn.

But let’s talk about abortion.  Sorry, no.  THE SANCTITY OF LIFE, the GOP calls it.  Ever notice how when grown-ups try and explain things to children, they use nicer words?  Mommy didn’t die, she went to a better place.  Uncle Jack isn’t drunk, he just had a little too much juice.  We don’t think queers are entitled to fewer rights, we just believe in TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE.  They think we’re children, and they talk to us like we are.  If Conventions are theater, the RNC is one of those pantomimes pitched to babies who like flashy colors and reassuring noises.

The abortion debate (which, unless I’m very much mistaken, was settled by Roe v. Wade) has opened up a can of worms that the GOP cannot easily close up again.  Todd Akin did the unforgivable with his “illegitimate rape” comments.  He spoke the truth about the near-psychotic attitude that modern social conservatives hold toward women and their insides.  These days, a gaffe is not misspeaking, it is saying exactly what you mean out loud.

Many called the abortion issue a “distraction.”  John Boehner, the world’s only orange rectum, said that everyone’s biggest question was, “Where are the jobs?”  And this is true.  But as long as Republicans refuse to cooperate on a simple jobs bill, they’ll be vulnerable to questions that reach into the dark, weird heart of their poisonous fascinations.  The splendid irony of it all is that, while the GOP seems unable to give any specifics on exactly how they’ll boost the economy, they get pretty fucking detailed about why abortions should be illegal and queers shouldn’t marry.

These hooligans have the audacity to build into their party platform specific provisions about marriage equality and reproductive rights and then tell anyone who calls them on it that they’re just “distractions.”  It’s the worst kind of passive-aggressive horseshit.  Because a cursory glance at the last few years of GOP activity reveal a throbbing ulcer of sick desire.  The number of anti-choice initiatives that have sprung up since the Tea Party sprang to prominence have been dazzling in both number and grossness (the invasive ultrasounds business is something out of a horror story).

If women consent to sex, then they consent to shaming, is the basic gist of it.  The GOP, having now strangled the last of Goldwater’s reasonable Conservatism and leapt full-bore into bible-thumping madness, think that if you’re not fucking to make children, you’re violating the American contract.  The contract between God and His favorite country.  But who tries to remedy that by sticking a rod up some poor woman’s hole?  A pervert who cannot satisfy his desires within the social construct to which he has committed and thus turns them into punishment for someone else, is who.

But what of the rape victims?  The incest survivors?  Those who did NOT consent to sex?  Well, apparently, if you get pregnant by rape or incest, you’re no longer a victim but blessed with the joyous gift of life.  The fact that any women can vote for these apes is terrifying.  That any women can shill for them is ghastly.  They are beyond hope, and the best we can do is to let them die.

Religious Conservatives have a skewed notion of consent.  Because they hold so much privilege, they assume that they are entitled to live in a society that reflects their interests and no one else’s.  Here’s where I’ll leave it, because this has become longer and more wide-ranging than I’d intended: Queers getting married when you do not wish them to is NOT a violation of your consent.  Women getting abortions when you feel they shouldn’t is NOT a violation of consent.  A government that reaches out to help the disadvantaged when you feel like you ought to pay less in taxes (at a time when you are paying less in taxes than EVER BEFORE) is not violating your consent.  No matter how much these shit-for-brains scream about it, THEY ARE NOT UNDER ATTACK.

Women are under attack when they cannot safely be in public or private without the specter of assault.  When a teenage girl can be fucked against her will and forced to carry the resulting pregnancy to term.  When elected officials care so little about her well-being that they would rather LET HER DIE than allow an abortion.

People of color are under attack when they can be pulled over and carded because they might be immigrants.  When they are treated as unwelcome guests in the poor house AND the White House.  When they are used as pawns by white power.  When they drown and the government does nothing.

Queers are under attack when they are derided as sick and unwanted by politicians, many of whom are secretly queer themselves.  When they are bullied until suicide seems the happier option.  When they are denied one of America’s most important rights: The Pursuit of Happiness.

The entire point of Conservatism was, really, that the populace was only governed by its own consent.  By narrowing the focus of the party to the interests of white, heteronormative, Christian males, the movement has become draconian.

In the GOP, anyone is welcome.  As long as they don’t publicly disagree (and aren’t Clint Fucking Eastwood).  This is in stark opposition to the main problem of the Democrats.  But we’ll tackle that next time.

Last night, I paid full price to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Delirious after the screening, I tweeted a few thoughts.  Among them:

“Forget what cinema has accomplished til now. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter vaults past cinema straight into madness.”

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was so amazing that after the end credits, I marched up to the ticket booth and demanded to pay again.”

“The Hunter is pitched at the crossroads of disbelief, awesomeness and insanity. Benjamin Walker gives a Bizarro World Oscar performance.”

It’s true, my entire experience of the film was one of astonishment.  First, that it existed at ALL.  Then that the director, Timur Bekmambetov (he of the vile action flick Wanted and the grandly amusing Russian vampire epic Night Watch) seemed to be playing it utterly straight.  Finally, I was left in slack-jawed amazement at the sheer pleasure I was taking from scene to scene.  I knew as I was watching that it was not a good film, but I was equally sure that it was a delightful and frequently amazing one.  Never again will there be a motion picture that features our 16th president chopping up hordes of kung fu vampires with his black sidekick atop a speeding locomotive.

This brings up what is perhaps a more pertinent question than the one in the title: If bad art becomes enjoyable, is it still bad art?  This is complicated.  The gays, as usual, got here before anyone else did.  Camp was initially defined as “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals. So as a noun, ‘camp’ behaviour, mannerisms, et cetera. (cf. quot. 1909); a man exhibiting such behaviour.” (Thanks, OED)  It eventually grew into something broader, a notion of art so over the top that its quality was secondary to its fascination.  When gay men seized on unintentionally terrible old cinema (its shoddy glamour, its torrid melodrama, its outdated sense of shock), the modern notion of camp was born.  Mystery Science Theatre 3000 made a legendary broadcasting career out of teasing the silly, perverse, sometimes homoerotic subtext from self-serious cinema (it also marked a watershed moment in “dude” camp, a moment where the jokes took on a heteronormative panic in intimations of queerness).

Dave Kehr, one of our canniest print critics, observed that “Camp cannot be made, only found,” and of course he’s right.  The great works of modern camp genius are not attempts at comically bad filmmaking, but born of genuine commitment to an artistic vision.  Russ Meyer, for instance, may have had a sense of humor, but his keynote works are imbued with as much auteurist passion as anything by Kubrick or Welles.  John Waters may seem a frivolous or primitive filmmaker to some, but you know a Waters film when you watch one.  It is impossible to say whether their movies are, strictly, GOOD, but they’re never boring.  Does awkward camera work, hamfisted editing, jarring sound design, ridiculous dialogue, and stiff, often incompetent acting make a movie bad?  Objectively, sure.  But when those elements combine harmoniously into a sublime viewing experience, what’s the takeaway?  I’ve seen much more professionally assembled films than, say, Supervixens, but few as continuously captivating.  How can something this demonstrably NOT GOOD be GREAT?

I mean, I could think of a COUPLE of ways.

Which brings us back to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  And its new genre, Gothic Action Social Studies Camp.

The concept of Bekmambetov’s film (the script is Seth Grahame Smith’s loose adaptation of his own novel) is right there in the title.  Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, history’s most reasonable Republican, was secretly a vampire hunter.  That’s it.  That’s literally IT.  The title is the plot, in four words.  When I first heard the idea, I was reminded of the spoofs in Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF.  Conan the Librarian or Ghandi 2: This Time It’s Personal.  In other words, it sounds like sketch comedy.  This should not be the premise for a full-length film, and looking over the Rotten Tomatoes review round-up, most critics seem to agree.  One of the more common complaints is that the film takes itself far too seriously.  Only Roger Ebert seems to grasp why the tone works: something this ridiculous can only fly when it “cautiously avoids any attempt to seem funny.”

And he’s right.  This is a movie in which slavery is actually the work of greedy, evil, undead succubi (a pretty great metaphor, actually), and which suggests (SPOILER ALERT) that the Civil War was REALLY won by Lincoln and the Underground Railroad smuggling vampire-destroying silver to the Union armies.  How is anyone supposed to REVIEW this thing?  I could talk about the performances (all of them are committed and sincere, though Benjamin Walker really does go above and beyond), the cinematography (a mix of weirdly cheap History Channel re-enactment and wild digital abstraction), the script (it is about Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter), you name it…but it’s useless.  You’re either in or you’re out.  Bekmambetov?  He’s in.  He got the script and said, “COOL!” and just shot the damn thing, making sure not to leave out the scene where a vampire throws a horse at Abe Lincoln’s face and Abe Lincoln jumps onto it and gives chase.

The tone of the thing represents an act of total naivety.  It really is as if no one involved understood how thoroughly nutty the premise was.  The politics aren’t played for laughs (the Lincoln-Douglas debates are, at least briefly, dramatized), the vampires are actually sometimes kind of scary, the action is well-choreographed….I mean, the DEATH OF LINCOLN’S CHILD AT THE HANDS OF A SEXY LEATHER FETISHIST VAMPIRE is presented as tear-jerking tragedy.  And Mary Lincoln’s revenge on the fanged bitch is a fist-pumping payback moment that made theater 4 in the Court Street Stadium 12 cheer aloud.  Timur Bekmambetov doesn’t want you to laugh, he wants you to believe.  Which is absurd.  But also wonderful.  But terrible.  But great.

I don’t know how much clearer I can make it: this movie is exactly what it says on the box.  You want an Abe Lincoln vampire movie with jokes?  Go make one.  This is NOT IT.

I make a habit of seeking out great bad art.  My show Bastardpiece Theatre enshrines compulsively watchable trash.  I don’t know if my taste has gotten worse over the years, or if it’s just gotten broader (I still watch and enjoy conventionally good cinema, I promise!).  But I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that the good/bad paradigm has become obsolete in evaluating cinema.  It’s an artform founded on, and grown on, sensation.  The more useful metric might be this: since it’s all calories, are they empty or nourishing?  After watching a film, whether studio-slick, indie-raw or porno-clunky, how do you feel?  If you feel more alive at the end of a film than at the beginning, more awake, more engaged, you can be sure it was worth your while.

I’m not suggesting abandoning criticism.  On the contrary, intelligent criticism is more vital now than ever.  But the best critics (and for how often I disagree with him, Ebert is undoubtedly one of them) understand that the intellectual must sit side-by-side with the gut, that one feeds the other.  The intellect can tell you what a great movie is, and the gut can tell you what a great EXPERIENCE at the movies is.  Both are valuable.  And while Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is nearly unreviewable as a film, it’s unbeatable as an experience.