Me, Anatole

Looking back upon my life, I am content--Satisfied? Relieved?--to have done pretty much what I wanted to do, had as much sex as I wanted to have, seen the art and the places I wanted to see, listened to the music I loved the most, and written the songs that I needed/wanted/intended to write--and all without doing the world and the creatures in it much harm.  I managed quite successfully in my time to be a good-looking young gay man--one who kept his figure, gracile and muscular, till he was in his fifties--doing my share of the things that young gay men do, and somehow getting through a time of plague (with what seems now a sleepwalker's perilous aplomb), without contracting the HIV virus.

It is also worthy of note that, although a good many of my friends (some quite close) and acquaintances did die of AIDS in the Decade of Death between 1985 and 1995, I never, ever, had sex with any of them--and not because they did not solicit my favors, and not because they, or I, were not beautiful enough; but simply because at the time (so far as I can remember), though I loved them sometimes dearly, I found them sexually repulsive.  And, child of Venus-in-detriment in Virgo that I have faithfully been my whole life long--were it the smell (though never so faint) of shit, or a nauseating hint of effeminacy, or obesity, or ugliness, or deformity, or just not coming up to specs--sexual repulsion (Ick!) has always been my absolute cut-off point, beyond which I proudly, though with some bemusement, may say that I have never, ever, gone, or even begun to go.  Call it (Virgo) Chastity, call it Pudeur.  It's who I am.  And of similar note is the fact that none, of the two or three hundred perhaps, almost all men, that I did have sex with in this charming life, that I know of, ever contracted HIV, or, to my knowledge, died of AIDS.  And furthermore, and likewise--though I have, on occasion,  and not always with sensible preparation, been variously both a "bottom" and a "top" in anal sex, and not disdained even to rim those asses that I found irresistibly alléchants--yet never once did I encounter the fact, or detect the former presence or the faintest odor, of fecal matter.  I'm not saying I wasn't lucky--just that it wasn't all luck.

At any rate, when Luck struck a half a dozen years ago, and bestowed upon me the world's finest home computer, along with high-speed Internet connection, I discovered that the bizarre vulgarism "fudge-packer" is a virtually universal hearty (hardy-har-har) heterosexualism, among English-speaking straight men and trannies, for us whom they would otherwise call "faggots" or, apparently, "cocksuckers."  God the cuteness of calling shit fudge.  Somebody with pimples and a lard ass and bad breath must've sat up all night thinking that one up.

Haydn Symphony No 104 'London' D major - Minkowski

W. A. Mozart - Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" in C major (Harnoncourt)

W. A. Mozart - Symphony No. 40 in G minor (Harnoncourt)

MOZART - Symphony 38 in D major KV.504 "Prague" (1/4) - Nikolaus Harnonc...

W. A. Mozart - Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major (Harnoncourt)

Lupu plays Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467: Third Movement [Part ...

Lupu plays Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467: Second Movement [Part...

Lupu plays Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467: First Movement [Part ...

Mozart Piano Concerto No23-3M (3/3) Sándor Végh Radu Lupu Vienna Philhar...

Mozart Piano Concerto No23-2M (2/3) Sándor Végh Radu Lupu Vienna Philhar...

Mozart Piano Concerto No23-1M (1/3) Sándor Végh Radu Lupu Vienna Philhar...

Mormon War Video on Anti Masturbation

What prevents the makers of this video--those who conceived of it, and those executed it--from realizing what utterly ridiculous, embarrassing fools it shows them to be?  I read somewhere (I think it was an essay in Salon magazine, though it may have been in the Atlantic Monthly) that fools--such, for example, as right wing fundamentalist Christians--who may be defined as those who believe such utterly absurd, illogical, and unscientific things as that the universe is 6,000 years old, when confronted with their folly, and shown irrefutable proofs to the contrary, simply, sublimely, dismiss such proofs, and go on believing as they have always, wrongly, believed, without a hitch or flicker of even mild discomfort or doubt.  That what they believe is absurd, that they are absurd, simply doesn't register on their glassy, cool, impervious little minds.  Imagine.

Schubert- Sonata Arpeggione for cello and piano, Tanya Anisimova - Cello...

The Best Ever Locatelli Cello Sonata in D - Tanya Anisimova - Cello, Pi...

Mozart Piano Concerto No 27 B flat major K 595 Joao Pires, Pinnock

Cahill Smith - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K 482 (complete)

One down...100 to go....

I just yesterday finished the first Maigret detective story I have ever read, Un Echec de Maigret--and to say that I'm enthralled and bemused is scarcely to overstate it.   As André Gide, a big-gun Georges Simenon fan, said (something to the effect), that "Simenon novels make you think and reflect after you've read them--like all really good literature."  Certainly that has been the effect on me.  What struck me particularly in this novel was our eponymous hero's excruciatingly exact use of the second person familiar:  at the beginning of the book he pointblank refuses to use it, and insists on being addressed as "vous," by someone he'd gone to school with, whom he detests, and whose father Maigret's father had detested.  Simenon, I gather, has incurred the fervent displeasure of feminists and women generally for his "misogyny"--and for having had sex with more than 10,000 different women    throughout the course of his long and not uneventful life:  I frankly don't see the connection, unless every time he had coitus with a woman it was some sort of exercise in conscious male superiority.  Nonetheless, in this my first Maigret detective novel, I find Maigret's interview at dinner with the murder victim's mistress ("kept woman" is really what she is) profoundly disturbing:  She calls him "vous," and he calls her "tu," like a servant talking with an aristocrat in a 17th century drama;  both find it (the disparity of their language) normal and comfortable--though it seems, sub-textually, to be saying that she is the sort of poor whore who has no rights or dignity of her own, and that she would find it confusing if she were treated as if she did.  There is no suggestion of tenderness or affection in Maigret's use of the familiar form of address with the kept woman, and there are several indications that Maigret, and his Creator, find her contemptible--a lower form of life in fact.  All of which (harsh, classist judgementalism) seems to be compensated for in Maigret's long interrogation of the "clochard" alcoholic, whom he treats respectfully and compassionately, using the polite "vous" for the first several pages, and actually giving him a couple of shots of his own brandy; but suddenly, with the affect of maternal tenderness, Maigret switches to "tu" at the conclusion of the interview, telling the poor drunken wretch that he's going to be detained for a couple of more days in comfortable quarters with a real bed, just so he can dry out (Well, he'll get a glass of wine for breakfast), get some solid nourishment and rest up.  Maigret's use of the familiar with his subordinates at the Palais de Justice seems matter-of-fact, business-like and affectionate--fatherly, so to speak.  All very, very interesting.

Anyway, having raced through it, I re-read it, and looked up our author and his works on the Internet--Un Echec de Maigret is apparently not one of the better Maigret novels--of which there are extant fully 101 exemplars; the best, by consensus of aficionados, being the first, written in the decade after 1922.  Well, I'll save them for last....