Not y'all fucking with the new Pope
It was 09:55 PST, May 13th, and there was a Full Moon in Scorpio
Dearest F@ggots,
Have you ever been so dumbstruck by beauty that you became an AMC Stubs A-Lister?
Last week, dried out and dehydrated from the spa, I popped into the nearest movie theater to up my sodium intake. After leaving concessions with small bag of popcorn, I swished my hips over to Guest Services to inquire about the MET’s livestream of Salome. There, clad in black and towering behind the counter, a six-foot-four Filipino beaux smiled. Needless to say, my inquiry was derailed. His broad shoulders and bouyant pectorals seemed to be reaching out to me from underneath his work-issued polo. I glanced at his nametag and knew God’s eyes were on me. Adonis, I thought, this motherfucker’s name is Adonis. He asked me what I need and I felt myself respond though I couldn’t tell you what I was saying. Again, I was dumbstruck, derailed. His sleeve of inane tattoos shimmered and whirled as he spoke. (Only faggots use their hands to speak so expressively.) Suddenly, Adonis had my routing number and account information. Twenty-eight dollars later, he handed me a broucher and I became an AMC Stubs A-Lister. Three movies per week, mobile order concessions, and 10% off the fire water. Who could ask for anything more? (Me! Seconds after making the sale, Adonis had to deescalate an alterction with a customer at the soda fountain.) Seven days later, I came back hoping to run into him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there. Defeated and pittiful, I watched Bonjour Tristesse and Sinners on two seperate occasions. Maybe he’ll be there when I see Salome on Saturday? Le sigh.
Sincerely,
E.Y. Patriceanne Washington
P.S. Regarding Pope Leo, I am reminded of my beloved French philosopher Rene Girard. He wrote quite a bit and most of it can be reduced to the following sentiment: Love doesn’t bring people together, hate does. I think he’d be proud to see us coming together because Pope Leo condemns Trump just as much as we do.
Bookslut Caught in the White and Wicked Wild:
During the last week of April, San Diego’s indie bookstores get together and host a book crawl. Word nerds traverse the beloved city, visiting bookstores, and purchasing books. You will be sad to know that I have never been able to attend because I am usually in rehearsal. This year, I woke up early, snuck away to my beloved Libelua Books, and bought Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry. I started reading it, am nearly finished, and just in awe of the book. “My people,” she writes, “gave the world’s favorite color a sound.” The Blues! I am a firm believer that books come to us when we need them and I needed this book. Bluets by Maggie Nelson is sitting on my to-be-read pile and irritated. She will have to wait. Perry and I are enmeshed. What a delicious read to accompany Sinners! So much serendipity.
Books with Pictures, Books with Words, Books that Captured My Freewheeling Attention:
Why @blkcatamyte?
In “The Gender of Sound,” essayist Anne Carson summarizes Aristole saying “if you hear a man talking in a gentle or high pitched voice, you know he is a kinaidos (“catamite").” New slur just dropped! Aristole called you a faggot long before I did. Scholar Tom Sapsford, author of Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Mediterranean Cultures, notes that cinaedus——the latinized version of the word——was slanderously graffitied on the walls of Pompeii. “NICIA CINAEDE CACATOR,” for instance, translates as Nicia the Shitting Bottom. (For the briefest of moments, I thought I was on Twitter after reading such an epithet.) Sapsford also mentions that there are only two instances of men self-identifying as catamites in Antiquity. Tryphon and Strouthion——the first name means dainty, the second sparrow or ostrich——made pilgrimage to the Temple of Isis and etched their names on her site. There, they called themselves her kinaidos which harkens back to the word’s origin: Jupiter’s Beloved Cup-Bearer, Ganymede. To make a long story short, Jupiter took Ganymede to Mount Olympus, gave him immortality, and a chalice. He became Jupiter’s lover and was thereafter seen as the god of homosexual love. Hilariously, the asteriod Ganymede 1036 features prominently in my chart. So much serendipity and history, the name felt serious, silly, and right.
Notes: This year, I would like to write and send handwritten letters to friends. Imani Perry’s essay “Letter From Home” has only reinforced my resolution. Clearly, I am enraptured by her. Let’s be enraptured together!
Letter From Home
by Imani Perry
My grandmother steady, brown, and irate would sit and write letters. Discontented, disappointed, or enraged by your behavior, she put it in writing. We still laugh about the terror those letters would strike in her children’s hearts.
Rarely, she would also send a letter when she wanted to raise your sunken chin. I think those were reserved for her grandchildren mostly. I have saved one of them and placed it on the altar in my bedroom. It is the one where she told me that any unkindness I suffered (“if anybody treats you mean”) would come back on the perpetrator threefold.
“So smile,” she concluded.
I laughed because she taught me to. I laugh still, when I think about it. Simple justice.