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I want an apology.
by Michael Kirwan — May 12, 2009
I want an apology.
I have no idea which individual or
organization is in the position to offer one, but some entity should
be responsible for setting the record straight. All my life, I’ve
heard the “experts” steadfastly assert (and their iron-clad claim
echoed in countless movies and television programs) that serial
killers escalate their activities until they are caught. I’ve seen
hundreds of dramas wherein the detectives wait expectantly for the
“next murder” to garner clues or anticipate a mistake on the
perpetrator’s part because at this point “he’s getting sloppy.” It
was a given. Mustached FBI profilers assured the public in televised
news interviews that such was the case. These sociopaths were
incapable of stopping themselves once they developed the knack of
disposing of strangers in whatever grisly fashion they adopted.
“They can’t help themselves. They are compelled to kill again and
again!” This we were dutifully informed by those psychological gurus
who had spent a lifetime tracking down just such blood-thirsty
miscreants.
I’m pretty leery about all generalizations
pertaining to human behavior, but I guess I bought the premise as it
was so pervasive throughout both fictitious and “real life” accounts
of these nefarious episodes. But then the “BTK” killer was
apprehended. His case revealed to the nation (as he had dispatched
his victims in some remote, uninteresting area of America so it was
unheard of outside that general location) that the guy had taken
seventeen years or something off from murdering people. He just
stopped hunting humans, became a dog-catcher and a church deacon,
and would’ve gotten away with his “binding-torturing-killing” past
had he not responded to taunts in the newspaper. He just stopped
killing people. There was a ton of news coverage after his capture
but not a single expert talking-head weighed in that he was an
aberration amongst serial killers. None of the geniuses (who’d
bellowed for decades that these types of murderers MUST KILL, KILL
and KILL AGAIN!!) opined that this instance was a fluke, an
almost-impossible deviation from the documented compulsive/obsessive
nature of these individuals. No, the law and psychiatric spokes
models never seemed to get around to explaining how their
decades-long dogma was disproven by this case. So, all of the
movies, books and crime dramas centered on this specific aspect of
criminality were essentially invalidated but no one was going to
mention it. This commonly-held theory was made publicly moot and
nobody was going to step forward and officially state that they were
WRONG, and that, yes indeed, many serial killers retire without ever
getting caught because they didn’t follow the "formula."
Just another occasion where we discover that the
suited know-it-alls actually don’t. But the populace still listens
to these charlatans like they have some great inner-knowledge on a
variety of topics to impart. The politicians, the Wall Street
honchos, and the god-spewers take to the spotlight. The media treats
these “leaders” as if their gravely-delivered assertions were
iron-clad, unquestionable truths and the public should feel HONORED
for the opportunity to lap the spillage from these founts of wisdom.
What is especially irksome is that these figures are continually
relied upon to voice an opinion even after their previous profound
pronouncements have been proven disastrously inaccurate. So we
invade Iraq for no particular reason other than the republicans had
a “plan” left over from twenty years ago. So everyone goes into debt
buying things they don’t need and can’t pay for because “credit is
good!” So corporations grow into monopolies and exert more and more
influence and power over a government intended to be ruled by its
citizenry. So we spend more on “defense” than all of the rest of the
world combined and have more people incarcerated per capita than any
other country could even dream of imprisoning. But who cares, right?
It’s the new season of AMERICAN IDOL!!!! Paris Hilton bought a new
belt and broke a fingernail!!! Are Brad and Angelina breaking
up???!!!!!! What difference does it make that we’re a country of
obese, poorly-educated, under-employed, over-medicated, jesus-loving
sheep? Right? Salute the flag and be a proud American!!!!! It ain’t
our fault. Yipee!!
Speaking of National Presumptions, that moronic war
criminal George Bush has been touting as one of the crowning
achievements of his horrific reign the fact that there weren’t any
follow-up attacks on US domestic soil since 9-11 to bolster his
historic legacy. I hate to be the one who brings the skunk to the
dog show but was there ever a need or desire to repeatedly bombard
the USA with acts of political violence? I think that the cumulative
reaction to 9-11 pretty much drove home the point to the
international community. Rather than being the “Big Brother
Benevolent Caretaker of the World” America presented itself as, we
were instead a paranoid, delusional, war-mongering, gas-greedy,
buffoonish entity that posed a dangerous global threat to any nation
refusing to kowtow to our self-proclaimed superiority. Why bother
with a whole series of “terrorist” episodes when the enemy (us, in
this case) was willing to burn billions of patriotic dollars,
squander any good will foreigners felt toward us, and betray our own
Constitution to torture, imprison and murder possibly innocent
civilians? After 9-11, our mask of supremacy was effectively removed
exposing us to be exactly what our detractors had claimed. Were yet
more attacks on the United States called for? Why waste the energy?
We’ve collectively tied ourselves in knots in the quest for ultimate
security and such a thing can never really exist. All the high-tech
gadgetry in the world can’t foil the plottings of a few determined
sociopaths. The “bad guys” could just sit back and watch us
bankrupt ourselves financially and morally as we ate our own young
due to the rabid fear engendered by the fall of the World Trade
Center (after all, the Pentagon IS a legitimate target for political
protest). And still those who trumpeted the invasion of Iraq are
writing newspaper columns and regularly pontificating on the 24-hour
“news” cycle. FOX is still allowed to broadcast “news” even though
they were wrong about everything. These are people who listen to
Rush Limbaugh. No one has ever been held accountable for all of the
misguiding propaganda we were fed and apparently that’s just
“business as usual” here in the land of the free, the brave and the
frequently lied to.
Here’s something else that’s been stuck in my craw
for a while — storage facilities. They’re all over the place. New
industrial ones, old classic buildings repurposed to house people’s
clutter in a tidy fashion. Am I the only one who thinks that if you
have so much shit that you need to pay someone else to hold it for
you that you just might be taking your role as a consumer too
seriously? People are paying hundreds of dollars a month (sometimes
FOR DECADES) to house junk in a space away from their primary
domicile. That doesn’t seem a little weird to anybody else? What
exactly is the operative mind-set governing this somewhat new
dependence on storage facilities? That one day all of this unused
stuff will suddenly become absolutely important when....when what?
When you can buy a MacMansion in the suburbs? When you can get
around to selling it on E-Bay? Somebody please explain to me why
anyone would need so much crap that renting a separate storage unit
to house it makes any sense. There’s something wrong with a society
that values possessions to the point where just knowing that they
are owned, even if remotely, is vital enough to pay for. I know that
our system depends upon people buying ever more items and products
to keep the economy rolling but at some juncture each individual
should ask themselves, “Do I really need that in order to exist?”
It’s just stuff. So you were once dumb enough to buy something or
accept from someone else, that doesn’t mean you should be required
to carry it throughout your entire life. If it hasn’t relevancy to
your day-to-day survival, it’s crap. Aside from serving as a
relatively unsupervised hideout for duct-taped trunks containing
victims of a serial killer, I’m dumbfounded as to why these things
are so popular.
I smoke cigarettes. Feel free to hate me, I don’t
give a shit. Us smokers are edging out child-molesters as the most
reviled category of humanity these days. Speaking of pedophiles, I
have to feel sorry for them on some level. I often find myself
riding a bus when the kiddies are let out of school. It seems
they’re released much earlier these days. I somehow assumed that
they could be avoided if I boarded before 3pm, but there must be
some new scheduling or something. And I’ve gotta say as kids, they’re a
very unappealing lot — ugly, fat, peculiar skull shapes, dead-eyed. I
don’t think I’ve seen any person under 15 who wasn’t either
repulsive or genuinely forgettable in the past ten years. There
isn’t even a whiff of that legendary “bloom of youth” to tide them
over into the next developmental phase. Perhaps it’s intentional.
Maybe the parents are rearing them specifically to be as
unattractive as possible to deflect the attention of potential
predators. If that’s the plan, they must be succeeding spectacularly
because honestly, I can’t imagine even the most determined creep
relishing the defilement of the soulless little drones I’ve
encountered out in public. It’s almost hard to imagine that their
own parents don’t have trouble mustering a degree of affection for
the unappetizing fruit of their own loins. Maybe it’s just the bus
routes and public venues wherein I find myself in proximity to kids
that the unconditionally dull and remarkably homely under-aged humans
gravitate toward. I’m just saying, I haven’t come across that
violate-worthy inspirational innocence that the little ones seemed
to possess twenty years ago. Maybe they have it still in small towns
somewhere. I’ll never know because I’m never going to visit any of
those places. I’m a city-boy and as far as I’m concerned the
provinces are where things like “Night of the Living Dead” or
"Children of the Corn" routinely
happen. I’ve yet to see a representation of “Small Town America”
that didn’t scare the shit out of me. But I digress, I’m not a
pedophile, but I am indeed a cigarette-smoker. That’s what I
wanted to address in this portion of the screed. I like to contend
that I’ll have the decency to commit suicide before I’m called upon
to wheel a miniature oxygen tank around to the leather bars. I
don’t deserve health insurance even if I could afford it. My bone of
contention is not the pariah status imposed by the Clean Lung League
but the government continually adding taxes on to the price of
cigarettes to pay for every woe befalling society at any given
moment. It’s not like any politician is going to say “no” to
increasing the financial burden of smokers so we as a “undesirable”
class have no actual representation in the legislature. Apparently
there are still some sly Republicans taking money from the tobacco
industry, but they aren’t trustworthy. The price of my brand rose a
dollar in the past two months. That’s an extra $365 a year I can
ill-afford. Personally, I don’t see why smokers aren’t given tax
breaks and incentives since we’ll undoubtedly die earlier and not be
a burden to Social Security system. But that’s not going to happen.
As far as I can determine, our culture demands that everyone last as
long as possible. People are assumed to want to hang on until they
reach 100. It doesn’t matter that their friends and loved-ones have
all vanished, or that their world has changed so much that they feel
alienated and isolated. It makes no difference whether or not they
contribute to society or even want to as long as they can take
pills, undergo operations, have endless tests and treatments,
take more pills to counteract the adverse effects of the first
pills, have frequent periods of hospitalization, and are willing to
become scar-riddled chemical zombies droning on about their ailments
so that even their closest relatives can’t recognize or care about
them anymore. As long as they have a single dime (of their own, or
insurance's, or the government’s) left to support the medical industry,
everybody should malinger as a way of life for as long as possible!
Because LIFE is just that precious. The bible says so. Or at least
that’s what the tubby boy-fingering pastor informed us that it said.
Unless you’re an Iraqi or Afghani. Then life isn’t quite as
precious. Most of them probably don’t even have a primary health
care provider. They’re SPITTING ON OUR WAY OF LIFE! They don’t care
that god only blesses America like Kate Smith sang.
Oops. Off on another tangent. Sorry. Back to
penalizing smokers. Yes, I will confirm the rumor that anyone who
has partaken in nicotine consorts with the devil. Happy now? I just
think it’s about time a new scapegoat was selected for excessive
taxation... churches, perhaps... or couples with more than three
children. There’s absolutely no reason for anyone to have more than
three kids these days. It’s not like they need extra hands around
the farm or a back-up is required should one be felled by polio or
malaria or the pox of your choosing. They use up more water and air
and space.
Or tax gun-owners! Tax those he-men, all-Americuns a yearly
$100 for every gun in the household (including BB guns just to hear
them howl)! Have a fleet of heavily-armed inspectors verifying
the tax counts (and probably getting shot — oh, just imagine the news
anchors breathlessly covering yet another bloody stand-off in the
“Heartlands”) to the blood vessel-bursting dismay of the NRA. Or tax folks with barking dogs. There are a wealth of candidates to
infuriate. We smokers just want to be left alone with our yellowed
fingers and morning coughing fits. We’re just too hateful to
organize.
Did anyone else notice that during the (and all)
political campaign season (two years for the last one) that all of
the promises were exclusively directed at “the middle class” (about
a thousand folks still occupy that designated niche) and “families”
and “home-owners?” It’s as if single people don’t even register in
the political lexicon. Single people who rent rather than own
(because “equity” is entitlement to more debt) are the truly
invisible class in this world. Apparently, the accepted principle is
that no one would actually CHOOSE to live a solitary existence. How
could anyone possibly prefer not to have a emotionally-damaged
spouse and a pack of screaming children to come home to every night?
Why on earth would a person opt to read a book or develop a project
when they could listen to endless bitching, crying, and having to
dumb-down every conversation so the little angels don’t feel left
out? Could anybody on Earth be so selfish that they’d want to take a
long hot bath rather than a three minute shower because Bobby or
Tiffany might set themselves on fire if left unsupervised for more
than a few minutes? No dirty words on TV as the CHILDREN MIGHT HEAR
THEM!!! No adult content, no sophistication, no cultural
enlightenment because we’ve got to make the world as bland and
mediocre and unchallenging as possible so the little squirmers won’t
get the “wrong” idea. Ugh. I applaud people like myself who enjoy
their own company and don’t need the trappings of a “happy family”
to prove their worthiness. We are the ones that put a real effort
into our occupations (because “family” always has to be paramount to
those others). We are ones that keep this civilization moving
forward rather than demanding that society remain static for the
sake of the children. We are the ones who can get involved in
promising causes because we don’t have to worry about the mortgage
or ferry the brood to hockey and ballet. Single men and women who
don’t even care if they find a mate deserve a lot more respect than
is currently offered in this surreal, delusional climate. The next
time one of those family-assholes looks upon you with pity you have
my expressed permission to bitch slap them silly.
So not only are loners unmentioned in the public
discourse, but there are actually very few instances where those
inhabiting the “low-lower-lowest class” receive any attention
either, except to have scorn heaped upon them for being criminals.
It’s as if the millions of people who are poor (and the numbers are
growing rapidly from what I can see) are too embarrassing or
hopeless to even have their predicament addressed by the “important”
voices of our time. The media seemed genuinely shocked during the
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita coverage that there were a vast number
of American citizens living in abject poverty. I think the entire
world was taken aback by the images of America’s dirty (definitely
not little) secret — entire populations that are ignored to death.
Who knows how many swatches of our geography are similarly home to
people with nothing and nothing to look forward to except the next
lottery drawing? I’ve got nowhere in particular to take this
observation. It’s just strange and unsettling that there seem to be
so many different tribes without a seat at the power-play table.
Queers used to be excluded but we have the visibility to safeguard
some of our civil rights in the last decade or so. My concern is
that those who speak for us, who represent us and who are in the
trenches working hard for our equal treatment under the law, may
concede too much of our established identity just to appease the
power brokers. I have this eerie feeling that only the “good homos”
may benefit from this transition. The “good homos” who own homes and
marry each other and socialize with their straight neighbors. The
ones who mimic the straight paradigm and will be indistinguishable
from the hets. You know, the #2 “daddy” who goes to school and
chats with the other mothers while waiting for little Caprice or
Darwin to be let out of class. Those “good homos,” the ones with the
charmingly inviting decor, may well feel that the “bad homos” are a
poor reflection on them, and the "good homos" are the ones in a political position to do
something about it. Someone like me, who (just barely) makes a
living doing something as unconventional as drawings of males
fucking each other, A SMOKER, A LONER, someone who hangs out
in leather bars and drinks to drunkenness (and occasionally gets
high), AND a person who trolls the parks and sucks straight guy dick,
someone like me may not really “fit” the new gay image criteria.
Those lovingly committed same-sex parents living in the “good” part
of town (as opposed to a gay ghetto or enclave where one of these
respectable fags could be tempted to betray his SACRED MATRIMONIAL
VOWS!!!) might just see queers of my ilk as a threat to their “good
gay name” and start inveigling for the closure of bookstores and
bars and bathhouses and any other venue where uncouth types (like
me) might enjoy ourselves. Because we should all be married. And
have kids or tiny over-bred dogs. And embrace monogamy because it’s
the DECENT and LOVING way to live.
If all of the “good homos” have a
problem with the degenerate clan of the tribe, their straight friends
will join on the bandwagon and people like me will be FUCKED.
They’ll make our particular way of life criminal and force us to
either live their boring ridiculous sham existence (because let’s
face it, they’re going to be as hypocritical as the hetero “happy
families” and get fucked by Lorenzo the gardener when “hubby” is out
with the acquired offspring) or force us to go underground where we will once
again have no civil rights. The “good homos” will be up in arms when
they understand that the “bad homos” are giving handjobs in the
public restroom of the very park they take their kiddies to. I’m 55
and a smoker so I doubt I’ll last to see this heinous state of
affairs come to pass. But mark my words, the same scenario has played
out for every other deprived caste who get an invite into the “big
tent” and it will certainly happen to the queers. All of those fine
folks so valiantly fighting for our freedom are the very characters
who will one day, in the not too distant future, steal other
freedoms away from
us leaving the unwashed, sex-pig, “Go Fuck Yourself” people like
me with much less opportunity or protection than we enjoy today. If
you don’t believe me, talk to an ex-smoker. You’ll see what I mean.
No one is more belligerently anti-smoking than those asswipes.
Just one more thing unconnected to the topics I’ve
covered thus far. When I “came out” to my father (although I doubt
it was much of a surprise as he had called me a “sissy” and a
“fairy” almost daily while I was a kid) he sighed theatrically and
said, “I just don’t want you to die alone in some hotel room.” I
realized that he was simply incapable of understanding who I was. I
could envision a no more perfect death than to be alone in a hotel
room (in Majorca or Ibiza would be extra nice) with none of the
trappings of family or my own past to distract me. His “worst case”
scenario was my number one choice in the matter should I get it. I
mean, if I can still afford to stay in a hotel during my final days,
I’ve done pretty fucking good.
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