Part 2: Song 9
Ten entries about the ten best songs of all time.
Apocalypse Hoboken - "Microscopic"
(Warning: the above-linked song is intensely not work-safe.)
The other day I read something I desperately wanted to disagree with, but knew was horribly true. To wit: "[I]t's your sexuality that defines you, whoever you are - not the other way around."
Why is that so uncomfortable for me?
In issue 31 of The Maxx, Julie Winters recounts a story of a young girl who spent all her time in the library to avoid her family. She gawks at taller girls playing soccer, then locks herself in a room where she can watch old movies. She watches Hitchcock's Rebecca every day; when she gets to the part where Mrs. Danvers gets the protagonist to feel Rebecca's underwear, Megan unbuttons her overalls, sinks down against the wall, and starts masturbating. But that's how sexuality is, sometimes: weird. I've had two friends--two!--admit to me that they're turned on by colored pens. Colored pens, can you believe it? God damn.
I guess that's why. It's unpredictable and strange; even more so when you're unpredictable and strange. But there's no avoiding it, no hiding.
One of the best movies ever made, Pleasantville, explores this. At least, it does under one interpretation. A brother and sister are transported to a black-and-white 1950s sitcom, where everything is "perfect," and the sister messes everything up by teaching the young teens about sex (and the adults about masturbation). This turns everything color--except for those who remain black-and-white, trapped within the confines of a world without expression. The conservative town elder eventually erupts into an array of color himself when he shrieks that change is not inevitable. The characters in conclude that sex (or sexual liberation) was not the true key to changing color, but I think the movie implies the opposite. The authoritarian impulse of the elder is his sexuality, David's punching a jerk in the face is his sexuality, and the full-color Pleasantville at the end is a world of people who have come to accept this uncomfortable truth: It's your sexuality that defines you, whoever you are - not the other way around.
Of course, that's a work of fiction. But it's an easy idea to explore, if you like being introspective. That's why it's so entertaining to read those brief personals, where people follow their body stats with lists of "likes" and "dislikes," revealing large parts of their sexuality for all to see. What would it be like if people put the weird, awfully true stuff up there?
Turn-ons: Women who pretend they're smarter than they really are, but know deep down that they're kinda dumb and hate themselves for it; women who seek to impress others with every action while imagining they're too cool for everyone else; violent, bloody sex.
It's not the type of thing you want to wear on your sleeve. But it's good to know, recognize, accept all the same--after all, there will come a day when you'll have to face your sexuality with a partner, and if you feel demeaned or ashamed, then it will be over right there, whether you realize it or not.
Apocalypse Hoboken - "Microscopic"
(Warning: the above-linked song is intensely not work-safe.)
The other day I read something I desperately wanted to disagree with, but knew was horribly true. To wit: "[I]t's your sexuality that defines you, whoever you are - not the other way around."
Why is that so uncomfortable for me?
In issue 31 of The Maxx, Julie Winters recounts a story of a young girl who spent all her time in the library to avoid her family. She gawks at taller girls playing soccer, then locks herself in a room where she can watch old movies. She watches Hitchcock's Rebecca every day; when she gets to the part where Mrs. Danvers gets the protagonist to feel Rebecca's underwear, Megan unbuttons her overalls, sinks down against the wall, and starts masturbating. But that's how sexuality is, sometimes: weird. I've had two friends--two!--admit to me that they're turned on by colored pens. Colored pens, can you believe it? God damn.
I guess that's why. It's unpredictable and strange; even more so when you're unpredictable and strange. But there's no avoiding it, no hiding.
One of the best movies ever made, Pleasantville, explores this. At least, it does under one interpretation. A brother and sister are transported to a black-and-white 1950s sitcom, where everything is "perfect," and the sister messes everything up by teaching the young teens about sex (and the adults about masturbation). This turns everything color--except for those who remain black-and-white, trapped within the confines of a world without expression. The conservative town elder eventually erupts into an array of color himself when he shrieks that change is not inevitable. The characters in conclude that sex (or sexual liberation) was not the true key to changing color, but I think the movie implies the opposite. The authoritarian impulse of the elder is his sexuality, David's punching a jerk in the face is his sexuality, and the full-color Pleasantville at the end is a world of people who have come to accept this uncomfortable truth: It's your sexuality that defines you, whoever you are - not the other way around.
Of course, that's a work of fiction. But it's an easy idea to explore, if you like being introspective. That's why it's so entertaining to read those brief personals, where people follow their body stats with lists of "likes" and "dislikes," revealing large parts of their sexuality for all to see. What would it be like if people put the weird, awfully true stuff up there?
Turn-ons: Women who pretend they're smarter than they really are, but know deep down that they're kinda dumb and hate themselves for it; women who seek to impress others with every action while imagining they're too cool for everyone else; violent, bloody sex.
It's not the type of thing you want to wear on your sleeve. But it's good to know, recognize, accept all the same--after all, there will come a day when you'll have to face your sexuality with a partner, and if you feel demeaned or ashamed, then it will be over right there, whether you realize it or not.