Nei Giardini della Residenza del Principe-Vescovo a Würzburg, speaking of Rape and the Perceptual Advantage of a Classical Education

Between terms at the universities of Perugia and Siena, I spent the month of September, 2001, travelling through France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland; visiting notably: the Louvre in Paris, the coffeehouses of Amsterdam, my friend Phil in Köln, and the Residence of the Princebishop in Würzburg, Lower Franconia.  I was an hour early in the morning at the Residenz, before the doors opened, so I took a turn through the gardens...

It struck me forcibly that the subjects, of the two largest sculptural groups in this earthly prince-episcopal garden, were of the two most renowned allegorical rapes, Europa's and Persephone's--quite distinctly "saying," to anyone with a grounding in Classical Mythology (like me, it occurred to me, and the people who had made this place), "Such is Nature, the World we live in."  Such that, when the doors opened and I ascended the grand staircase beneath Tiepolo's depiction of the Four Corners of the World (whose allegorical components I instantly recognized), I said to myself, "Hey, I know this place. This is home!"

There's enough testimony, from a broad enough sampling of witnesses, to establish that Omar Mateen was himself gay--

The sickest, most twisted, most violent kind of homophobe--that it but needed that the FBI should have asked (as they have done, according to the new Brazilian boyfriend of Mateen's ex-wife) those closest to Mateen to lie and say that he was not gay.  Speaking of Evil (the FBI) corrupt, mendacious and intransigeant, and still, it would seem, guarding Jedgar's precious reputation.

But now Sin....

Back when I was a mere boy, and my Innate Virtue was being assaulted by a concerted effort, on the part of the Powers that were, to convert me to Christianity, I clearly saw that the greatest weaknesses,  among the several fraudulent ploys advanced against me to that end, were the concept of Sin (my own supposed sins) and the absurdly frivolous and cowardly notion that, rather than atone for my sins, or compensate for them, I might wish, by some divine agency, it was vilely suggested, to be absolved of them or "saved" from them.  No, and no, and again no.  The difference between me as an eleven-year-old and the Apostle Paul was that I hadn't been instrumental in anybody's murder, nor promised anybody that I'd be faithful to her only.

Paul Bowles

Maybe not a bad person, though he was married to that dismal Jane-something for ever so long, and she, for sure, is or was a relentless pain in the ass. But Mr. Bowles, for all his ingestion of cannabis and his love of local boys, I nonetheless remember he wrote a novel or a long short story called The Sheltering Sky, which I must never read, or suffer to have described to me, or know anything further about, or let myself remember: because it's unspeakably horrible.

So 50 Gays and Lesbians dead, shot to death, in Orlando today, and about the same number wounded

Poor Brock Turner

Unlike his victim, I gather that he does have some memory of what he did. Eeeww. Ick.  I'm guessing that, even on a party night, she stank and continually farted (what with her chronic yeast infection and nigh-crippling constipation) all through that "20 minutes of work"--whatever it was--that got pine needles up her snatch.  Jeezuz.

Heterosexuals!

Being masculine, and having what girls and sissies, particularly, perceive as a Masculine Persona, like my being gay, was something that just happened to me...

But the fact is that nobody in my life, however angry he (or even she) ever got with me, has ever called me a "faggot" or implied that I was effeminate.  At my most disagreeable--as infrequently, of course, as I ever may actually have been disagreeable--yet to those who, nonetheless, somehow did contrive to find me disagreeable, I have always been a "macho son of a bitch," by fairly universal consensus.

It's not something I take credit for--and frankly I don't know how I do it.  I suspect that DNA--or some such hypothesis as Aristophanes', whereby I simply wasn't born with any (not even the usual number of) female parts--is the root cause of my overbearing masculinity, or, if you will, stony, harsh unfemininity.  (Item) Having been raped myself, I don't see--unless it hurts--what all the fuss is about.  (Item) Though, for the most part, I adore the works and the verses of Jean Racine, I detest the whole sentimental edifice, and even the individual couplets, of Bérénice, causing my revered instructor in college to say, "Vous avez un coeur de pierre."

My guru and mentor, Bill Weaver, sometimes referred to it in rather unflattering terms as the "machismo of you guys who are strung out over in the extreme male/male end of the spectrum"; which is a reference back to Plato/Aristophanes and to the (for my money, somewhat disgusting) Tibettan Tantric Yoga of which Bill was an adept.