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By
Mitzel
Outside my place of business, and down the street two doors, there is a public waste receptacle. On the side of this item, someone recently placed a
bumper sticker. The sticker reads: "Bush Lied."
Is this the shortest poem in the English language? Something not self-evident? Something to make stickers about and run around town posting them?
I can't imagine why this would even be an observation. Lying from the highest executive office in our land is a practice so well-entrenched, I would think
that acknowledging it is not news but a comparative study of the various fabrications might have some merit.
When is it useful to be mendacious? Is this something for the personal realm or the public? Should one be selective or just blatant? Is withholding the truth
the same as actively lying? Which type of liars do you prefer?
I like them over the top; it takes so little work to see through them. Richard Nixon, of course, created the template. "I am not a crook." It was the best
laugh line of the 1970s; these days people forget Nixon's great comedic capacities.
My gay liar friends, most of whom I ditch after awhile-- and, at this point in my life, no longer acquire-- have always proved to be instructional. There are
the name-dropping types. This kind of quean lacks luster for me, as I really don't care very much and never did-- a child of the 60s-- about which New
York/Hollywood celebrity so-and-so had met, or more likely didn't. Alas, so much of gay life, historically, but maybe even now, has been validated by proximity to
show-biz celebrity. (Shall I be the next gay guy to wed Liza Minnelli?) I never got it and still don't, but that's true of most of what passes for culture in this society.
Any sensible person in their right mind would do everything within her/his power to avoid celebrity in Amerika; what a ghastly oubliette to be tossed into. You
never get out. You just stay and rot. Fame is one of the worst curses but it's always a spectator sport to watch the moths to the flame.
Oscar Wilde, the saint, wrote the fabulous essay, "The Decay Of Lying," a challenge to his age to improve their prevarications. What was the British Empire
but a trail of lies? I'm surprised they got away with it as long as they did. (There's always Gandhi's great quip. When asked what he thought of Western
Civilization, G opined: "It sounds like a good idea!")
What of the Amerikan Empire? Does it have a future without massive falsehoods? Now that gays are so in media favor, perhaps this administration, while
it lasts, can bring in some queans to do the pitch, sort of the queer eye for the neo-con imperium. I recall this story: shortly after China decided to "open to
the West," a ruse to get manufacturing jobs, largely textile, exported to that nation, a friend of a friend of mine joined a junket to Beijing to reconnoiter the joint.
This quean worked for a house in the rag trade in New York and was a major 70s-80s "lifestyle quean." He flew over with folks from his company and the Chinese
trade people showed them about. It was fabulous. When leaving, this quean told the comrade: "Thank you so much for showing us your fabulous communist
lifestyle. I hope next time you are in New York, you'll let me show you our fabulous Seventh Avenue lifestyle." He was shocked when the comrade told him, in English:
"I don't give a shit about your Seventh Avenue lifestyle." I presume this statement was not a lie, and I would think it more useful for the communist comrades
to reacquaint themselves with the gift of the artful dodge. It will certainly help when they deal with those types from New York.
Must people know the truth? I always thought this was a given. Certainly in sexual matters, as the late, great Boyd McDonald noted-- and made a
hallmark-- the truth is always more interesting than what people make up about their erotic histories. Why is this? Are hard facts the Tiffany standard of what we like
to hear? Or are fictive capacities among the good folks in a decrepit state? As a child, I loved to be tricked. In my 20s, I met my dear friend Max Maven (check
out his website), who, at that time, was coming into his own as a mentalist and illusionist. Max was and is still fascinating. Hi, Max!
I recall Max Maven once offered excellent advice. My dear friend, Charley Shively, as chosen speaker at the 1977 Gay Pride March and celebration, was
speaking at the Parkman Bandstand on the famous Boston Common. He gave a powerfully-charged speech, an indictment of all the anti-gay forces we face--
workplace, insurance, government, and religion-- and at the end of his speech, he tossed his personal copy of the bible into a wok filled with lighter fluid and set it
ablaze (other documents had preceded this volume into the flames). There were Christian groups in the crowd, and one Roman Catholic contingent got very upset
and started to march to the Bandstand. Charley was concerned. A lesbian state representative at that time, then famous, told Charley: "They're probably coming
up here to kill you." Max Maven was also on the bandstand and Charley turned to Max for advice. "I've just been told the Christians are coming up here to kill me.
Is there anything you can recommend?" Max was practical and down-to-earth. He said: "For $10,000, I can make them disappear!" Charley did not elect this
option, but one wonders the gifts that someone like Max could bring to the national scene, the magic without the fustian.
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