Censorship? I Hope Not...

I logged in via my IMCPL (Indiana Marion County Public Library) account to iLibrary and subsequently to Academic Search Premiere, looking to see what journals have full texts of issues available online via this system.

While I was excited to discover things like New Orleans Review, Ploughshares, and other literary journals where I'm wanting to send my stories, I'm disappointed by the severe lack of full text for "gay" journals, such as the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.

In fact, such content seems so wholly and blatantly lacking, that it makes me wonder if there is deliberate omission and/or censorship occuring. I have asked the reference librarians if they can give me information that might disabuse me of such a notion.

Below is a list from my publications search (subject = gay), where only two of the listed periodicals appear to have full text available, and they are not journals at all but rather of a light, and I would say, of perhaps a more hetero-friendly nature:

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy
Bibliographic Records:01/01/1989 to present

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies
Bibliographic Records:01/01/1997 to present

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services
Bibliographic Records:01/01/2000 to present

Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
Bibliographic Records:01/01/2000 to present

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues In Education
Bibliographic Records:01/01/2003 to present

Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly
Bibliographic Records:03/01/2006 to 09/01/2007

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health
Bibliographic Records:01/01/1989 to present

Lambda Book Report
Bibliographic Records:01/01/1995 to 04/01/2009
Full Text:01/01/1995 to 04/01/2009
PDF Full Text; HTML Full Text

James White Review
Bibliographic Records:09/01/2000 to 06/01/2004

Advocate
Bibliographic Records:09/17/1996 to present
Full Text:09/17/1996 to present
PDF Full Text; HTML Full Text

Not so much a Block...

I'm having one of those mornings when I'm having trouble getting started writing and I don't know why. I mean, it is not a block as I know what the upcoming scenes are; heck I know what the whole scope of the novel is. It's not initial novel hesitation as I'm well into halfway through.

There is some doubt I know of the story coming out like I want it to. It is a more complicated and darker story than I've written before; I'm conscious of having the right tone. But I also know that if I just start writing the creativity will take care of itself. Words build upon words just as thoughts build upon thoughts.

Yet here instead of doing what I love doing, what I should be doing, what I will feel like a failure all day if I don’t spend at least some time doing, I instead start thinking about: Did I register for paperless billing with account X? How should my Internet toolbar be setup? Do I have holds to pick up at the library?

This and many other things that are important, yes, to one degree or another, but nothing that can't wait. Meanwhile, forget the tick-tock of the passing clock. I'm more concerned about the wasted thump-thumps of my heart that will eventually cease beating while all around the clocks still keep time for someone else.

Maybe it's a form of self-sabotage. Mental suicide with a dull knife of inflicted tedium. A melancholic feeling of inferiority that becomes self-fulfilling. I know the current novel could be great... so maybe it's just the plain old fear -- that never really goes away -- that I lack the means to make it so.

After I post this, I'm going to try, try again to write those pages that I should have already written today.

What else is there besides trying...
except for maybe dying?

IYG Board

Last night I worked at IYG and spoke with the executive director about becoming an IYG board member. She asked me to send her an e-mail with background, interest, etc. I find writing such missives interesting because it causes me to try and boil down "me" in succinct fashion. I think the result turned out decent enough:

Mary,

Per our conversation last night, this e-mail is to reiterate and formalize my interest in becoming an IYG board member.

My professional background is records management, educational background philosophy, and passion is writing. I have previously served on the board of a local chapter of AIIM (Records Management), as an officer in my alma mater's philosophy club, and as a first reader on the fiction board for Copper Nickel. My significant other and I strive to be agents of change for the better, like with championing the arrival of a day when our 17-year relationship will be legally recognized as the marriage that it is.

I am "out" in all areas of my life, though I think it is probably more accurate to say I am "John" in all areas of my life.

I want to help IYG continue to grow. I see IYG as being not only a resource for youth but as a source of empowered youth ready to take ownership of the world. After all, when it gets down to it, it is their world and us adults are just holding it for them.

Best regards,
John Fox

Censorship Encourages Greed

Okay, that may be the wrong causal flow. It might be more accurate to say:

Greed exploits censorship.

But either way, I do think there exists a dangerous correlation that has yet to be looked at –- and taken -- seriously. We live in a time when we are increasingly allowing non-creators to corrupt art for their own ends; and we do so with such little protest it boggles my mind.

I’m not talking slippery slope here, but more like a cliff drop.

The drop starts out with the theoretically good intentions of self-proclaimed “moral” people saying they are just trying to protect children or some other disingenuous holier-than-thou claim. They bleep over a “Fuck” or fuzz out a nipple. They cut away from a knife going into flesh. And Heaven forbid a penis, soft or erect, ever is viewed.

We wouldn’t want Americans to think people were born without clothes or that all that begetting in the bible has anything to do with sexual organs. Protecting the innocence of ignorance is evidently worth the cost of such defamation and goes largely unchallenged.

But cutting is an addiction. Soon whole scenes are deleted, or CGI altered to meet a current and ephemeral social inclination. Soon, great swaths of film are butchered; not just for ostensibly “moral” reasons, but rather for the avarice of subverted capitalism.

Have a ninety-minute movie with a two hour slot, but want forty-five minutes of commercials? No problem; just cut wherever. Who reads credits, anyway? So run them up the half-screen as fast as can be. Have some all-important show announcement to make? Flash it on the screen with some cheery animation. And don’t forget the growing-ever-larger network bug; who cares about what’s going on movie-wise in that bottom right-hand corner, anyway?

I do. That’s who. And I wonder if I am the only one.

I do, because I care deeply about the words I put on the page. I care about the words others put on the page. I care about film and paintings and sculptures. I care about dance and song and poetry. I care about vivid expressions of humanity that are far more priceless than an American Express card.

I care about the creative force of our culture being lost; of it being subjugated by the almighty dollar.

How much of our soul will we allow to be deceptively “edited for content” before we rise up and say, “What the hell do you think you are doing? Keep your filthy, infernal hands off MY art.”

How long before we take back control over our own creations?
Will we ever?

On Suicide

I have frequent suicidal thoughts.

I mean where I can vividly picture myself slicing my wrists, hanging from a beam, or jumping in front of a bus. I mean where I look at a knife and think “Hmm... Maybe. Maybe not, but just maybe...” Cutting would probably be the way I would choose to do it...

But anyway, I’m not writing the above for sympathy or sermonizing, but just as a statement. I’m not writing it to discuss technique. It’s just a fact of my life right now that I have periods of extreme bleakness that I deal with in my own way, usually by creating art.

“What stops you?” my therapist asks me.

“The next moment,” I say.

For the next moment is always a new moment, one full of potentiality that would disappear in death. Potential badness, yes, but also potential goodness. Since death stops all potential, all chances to create, why not just hang on one more moment and see what it holds? Why not try to live one more moment before stopping all moments? Why not try to create one more page before calling it quits?

In my novel-in-progress, an uncle is advising his twelve-year-old nephew who has recently come out to him. He wants to be the role model he never had back twenty-three years ago when he was a twelve-year-old self-identified gay boy. His own coming out had some tragic, childhood-scarring consequences. He wants to be the role model he never had while not letting his own fucked-up experience contaminate what should be a normal rite of passage for his nephew; a rite of passage where his nephew should feel a-okay for being born this way.

The uncle doesn’t just want to tell his nephew that it gets better; he wants to make his nephew’s life better. The kind of better that the 1980s didn’t permit.

Jamey Rodemeyer recently called it quits after, ironically, making an “It Gets Better” video; which he probably made for himself as much as for anyone else. I wish I could have replaced Jamey’s present moment with one precious next moment that would have allowed him to hold on, proclaiming: “It IS better!”

“...the journey from Kamakura to Kyoto takes twelve days. If you travel for eleven but stop with only one day remaining, how can you admire the moon over the capital?”
- Nicheren Letter to Niike

IYG Prom

I had the wonderful opportunity last Saturday to work the IYG prom; a prom for GLBTQ youth. It is so refreshing to see youth being empowered and their identities affirmed in a way that many schools and American society at large has continuously failed to do.

Some of the faulty threads of reasoning used by the oppressors of gay youth (such as American Family Association, Family Research Council, and many others using deceptive “nice-sounding” names to hide their hate) are that kids are too young to know their orientation, that they were not born that way, and that someone/something/some being (but curiously never god, who apparently made everything in the universe BUT gays) must have made (corrupted/converted/bent) them that way.

Such argumentative threads never get applied to straight kids. If you are heterosexual, your sexuality is promoted, encouraged and embraced from the time you first show any interest at all. It is assumed you know yourself and your knowledge is validated. But it is at this very level of knowing that I think things become twisted by those who would doubt the existence of gay kids.

For knowing skips a step.

That goes for whether you are a boy liking another boy or if you think you might like girls. Such attraction is first and foremost a question of feel. Knowing makes it sound like it is something you’ve figured out after lots of thinking about it. ‘I know the house would withstand the earthquake because I did the math.’ But attraction isn’t academic. Nor do you have to be some magic old enough to feel what’s in your heart. When you feel attracted to a boy or to a girl, it just is. You can subsequently know that you feel that attraction, but the feel has to be there first.

I “felt” attraction to males as long as I can remember. But I “knew” the environment around me was hostile to such feelings, so I ignored them to the point of nearly erasing myself altogether. A place like IYG and activities like the GLBT would have made my own childhood much brighter.

But I won’t dwell on that darkness. Instead, I am happy at long last to be a part of the reverse eclipse, with its rays of rainbow light expelling the homophobic night.

HJR 0006

Wrote each member of the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee:

Dear Senator,

The heinous HJR0006 is a threat to my family and I urge you to not let this backwards legislation get out of committee. As it is, I already am, for the time being, "Legally Single" because of the repugnant DOMA. My religious marriage -- witnessed in Indiana, incidentally -- of fifteen+ years has yet to be recognized. I urge you to not allow my own state to tighten the existing homophobic noose further with this amendment. I further urge you to encourage others to move in the opposite, family-affirming direction of promoting marriage between committed folks like myself regardless of your party affiliation and regardless of pressure from anti-family profiteers like Maggie Gallagher.

Thanks for reading,
John Fox
Hoosier born and bred homosexual
http://outsidethefox.blogspot.com/

15th Anniversary Poem

(For Gary, of course)

Here is a poem for a cheaper anniversary,
the kind of anniversary
you can get away with when

You’re living in a basement apartment
and not doing gift exchanges
as you weather the current financial storm
as you always have – together.

Here is a poem for a cheaper anniversary,
the kind of anniversary
you can get away with when

You’re well past the wooing stage
and well into the “whew”ing stage
looking back and past a decade and a half
of remembrances you help each other remember.

Here is a poem for a cheaper anniversary,
the kind of anniversary
you can get away with when

There is no more modesty,
your undressing and intimate exposure
being at times a matter of foreplay
and at other times a matter of course.

Here is a poem for a cheaper anniversary,
the kind of anniversary
you can get away with when

There is really no such thing,
your formative years together weaving
a comforting quilt of exquisite design
that can only be appraised as priceless.

Here is a poem and just a poem
so cheap it’s not even printed out
saving ink, paper, and trees.

Here is a poem that is nonetheless a poem
penned from the heart and written
for no one else in the world but you,
my one and only true love.

So did I get away with it?

That Fargo Kid - Draft Thoughts

That Fargo Kid post-draft thoughts.
Draft 2, 134,016 words.

A bit late on getting this down, but I call Draft 2 from March 3, 2011 of 134,016 words the first official draft. Draft “1” was more a rough cut, so hence draft 2. But draft 2 “finished” has several loose ends and an unconvincing ending. The ending in itself I like, with Randy’s realization of his deeper feelings for Donnie that transcends the physical, but that outcome’s credibility is stretched based on what has come before in the form of Randy’s behavior.

The problem is twofold. The first involves the original length and the second involves what type of story I want to tell. Right now the novel seems an unwieldy, bastard child containing too many different stories; I mean different stories pulling at the protagonist in unhelpful ways, not just via entwining fictions or internal character conflicts.

I wrote D1 with a short story in mind, but then after completion decided it didn’t probe deep enough for the story I wanted to tell: a rich, complicated relationship between Randy and mentally-challenged Donnie that changes/develops over time. So I set about expanding elements; going way back in time and moving forward literally year by year. But in the course of expansion, some of the already written components of the story had to be tweaked or outright omitted.

Some of my original sequences were downright off and when I went through with the expansion I also worked to make everything more logically consistent with respect to school time, calendar, days of the week, etc. The problem is, I really liked the language of some of those written parts and labored over how to make certain passages fit in the revision. It maybe would have been better if I had never finished the rough cut version, leaving me with less of a structure in place…

The second fold of the problem is Randy becoming too worldly in terms of sexual experience. As such experience unfolded, I though this could work, making him into an anti-hero. After all, the cornerstone of the story is his relationship and possible abuse (depending on perspective) of Donnie; make him into the kind of person that is using pretty much everyone, male and female, for gratification, including Ken’s younger brother Carson.

But in retrospect, that seems to make the story less about That Fargo Kid and more about That Randy Kid. For how do I get someone who is using people in that fashion to really care what happens to Donnie at the end when the others attack Donnie? And the addition of Carson as told seems to take the story in a different, unwanted direction. Carson might be better as an outtake – a dark short story in itself. I might have to deconstruct this draft and mine it for different story strands:

Story 1: Original, Randy taking advantage of Donnie and also, later, Andy. Exploitative with respect to Donnie and Andy, but Randy retaining an innocence where it seems the events have sucked him in (the power of circumstances) rather than his actively being (merely) an exploiter himself.
Story 2: Randy becoming (more) corrupted and using others besides Donnie and Andy; more exploitative all around with Randy being conscious of his exploitation and working it.
Story 3: Cookie Monster (Dark short story, involving Ken’s younger brother Carson and Randy’s abuse)
Story 4: Tree (Dark short story involving Richard, Robert, Kevin and Randy)
Story 5: Nerds (Dark short story involving Kevin and Carson)

For the ending to play right, I need to strengthen Andy and Randy’s scenes together. And I’m thinking now such scenes would be stronger if they didn’t ever have sex during the course of the story – leaving that unrequited urge untapped and pushing a jealous Andy to incite the crowd against Donnie.

There are multiple loose ends, particularly involving the different levels of abuse (or use, depending on perspective) that take place throughout the story. I should either refine them or eliminate them altogether:

1) Andy’s physical abuse by his mother
2) Andy’s emotional abuse by Randy
3) Carson’s abuse by Randy
4) Carson’s (near) abuse by Kevin
5) Randy’s abuse by Kevin
6) Randy’s abuse by Robert.
7) Margaret’s role in things
8) Andy and Randy’s boyfriend status
9) What happened to Richard and Robert?
10) What happened to Kevin?
11) Need to hint more about the thematic meaning behind Donnie’s collection of rocks.
12) Need to hint more at the meaning (and symbolism) of Keebler and its significance with regards to Donnie’s understanding of boyfriend.

The story focus has moved away from Donnie into a less literary and more boysploitation realm. I need to reel it back in; not for qualms about writing such things, but simply because the increasing worldliness of Randy has diluted my original story, which requires more subtlety as things change between Donnie and Randy (and eventually Andy too).

I haven’t developed the non-amorous portions to the extent they should be developed. There are a lot of different components – and expressions -- of intimacy and I need to show their more nuanced aspects. I especially need to nail the ones that contribute to Randy’s taking advantage of Andy’s liking him. I also need to make the symbolism in the story clearer without being explicit or obvious to the point of distraction.

And, of course, I need to ensure the final story is ultimately about That Fargo Kid!

Letter to State Representative

I decided to follow Gary's lead and write our state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan:

Dear Mrs. Mary Ann Sullivan,

Sharing our 17th Valentine's day together, my husband and I were dismayed to hear of Indiana's movement towards an anti-marriage amendment that would serve no purpose but to promote the view of gay people as "lesser than".

Gary and I met Oct 8, 1994. On March 9, 1996 we had a religious marriage ceremony among family and friends. We are still waiting to legalize it. We don't drink, we don't smoke, and we don't do drugs. I work full time and we are both involved in the community. We have strong values and a sense of civic pride.

Our bond, our marriage, to each other is strong and filled with love. The proposed Indiana legislation would try to convince people otherwise. I want to shout from the rooftops how so wrong that legislation is. Please raise your voice with mine.

Respectfully,

John D Fox

New Year

I've been writing on my current novel daily though I haven't always posted the count here. Been writing daily, but my output has been inconsistent, particularly of late. That's one of the things, among a host of other things, I want to improve this year.

My 43rd new year.

It's not enough to just keep the flame alive; it needs to burn, baby, burn.