Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

It always seems to start with something simple. I take a blade and cut open a box. Pick up an ink marker and write on a paper bag. Open a newspaper or magazine and fall into the pictures and text. At this point, I fear things can get tricky. Will the contents of the box be what I expected? So many things have happened to that box before I opened it and in its processing and travels, anything could have happened. The ink marker may be dry. The newspaper or magazine may have some horrible news in it or notification of someone's recent death. Or it may be a complete waste of time and I will rue having thrown away valuable time.

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Then there's learning new things. Simple? Not always. Too many things seem unnecessarily complex, designed by committees, the members of which might benefit from a quick study of the Shakers. What may start off simple can morph into an ordeal, and that means work. And my work ethic, as I age, gets spottier. Given the parameters of this culture, my "fun" ethic is also spotty, practically in full dissent mode. I do wonder. Why do so many do so many things I find repugnant? I think I more fully fit the prototypical stereotype of a gay man with each passing decade. I have no interest in organized sports. I can't stand crowds. Contemporary popular music is boring and often outright annoying. My first stepmother once hosted a cookout, featuring a slaughtered pig on a spit over an open fire. The sight horrified me; the whole idea was repulsive. I was a lad with delicate sensibilities.

I've tried events advertised as "fun." Once was often enough-- I'm thinking particularly of the time I was in Times Square in New York on a New Year's Eve. It seemed to me I was caught in the mob scene in Nathanael West's Day Of The Locust, one of my favorite authors at that time and still pretty damn good. I like the company of men in the general sense, but I wonder why so many of them are loud, bumptious, and physically awkward. This may only apply to American men. Somewhere, in one of his novels, Scott Fitzgerald commented that he could always spot which men in Paris were American-- they never knew what to do with their hands, were always fidgeting, touching their faces, etc.

I see this in my bookstore. Many men will just plunk down their paws on the counters and tip over part of my fabulous DVD display-- they haven't a clue. I once thought "Clumsy Quean" was an oxymoron; I have learned otherwise.

I seek to keep my lists short and simple. Things I like. People I want to see or talk to. Menus are simple. I hate shopping and attempt to make these forays as brief as possible. Like Walt Whitman, I have an enormous talent for sitting still, but strangely not for diversions. I still haven't made it through the six-hour DVD of Angels in America, a commitment that makes Parsifal seem like a picnic, albeit a somewhat odd one. It's old advice but more essential over time-- keep it short, keep it simple.

There is a prominent exception to this rule: good conversation, something generally not encouraged in this culture. I love a good conversation that will start at point A, Rock Hudson-Doris day movies, say, and will meander through bridge design, failures in foreign policy, the reasons behind changes in military uniforms, planetary exploration, and wind up somewhere way down the alphabet, wrapping with a reprise of Patty Mania. (One friend who lived in the Bay Area during Patty Mania had a sweet, but sharp, quean for a friend and this guy sent her a handmade valentine. It was constructed from letters cut out from newspaper headlines, much like kidnapping ransom notes of yore. On the cover of the card it read: "Be My Valentine." Opening up the card, she read: "Or Patty Dies!")

Jokes, too, should be brief, as should, as Dorothy Parker famously observed, lingerie. Dorothy's advice should be better heeded today, as the trend in long undies, starting some years ago, I have found distressing. And even though, as noted earlier, I am no big sports fan, I do like to look at pictures of men in their team uniforms. I have never understood why basketball players now wear such baggy uniforms, with a variety of undergarments accessorizing their look. It used to be short shorts and a scooped-neck, sleeveless top. It's sort of a reverse Bloomer effect, the women get looser, skimpier clothes, and the men get more cloth, more skin covered, less erotic-- which is what professional sports is all about, just like pop music and the movie culture: selling eroticism and sex. Simpler is better and more pleasing to the eye. Think of James Dean in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of jeans (before the 60s, jeans were regarded as A. work clothes and B. sex clothes, though these are not mutually exclusive) and the image is pure pleasure, if your tastes are so inclined.

Simple? Too bad the word has gotten linked to other words like minded and Simon. For me, it's a watchword. Not to the exclusion of complexity, which I sometimes welcome. But as amulet to ward off uselessness and stupidity, the point of so much of the blather out there today. There aren't enough levees to hold it back. My design, made famous by Dame Reagan, is, simply, to say no. Quietly and with no fuss.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com