J. Beaman - The Magazine

So, this week I received an email from my dad’s brother (the significance of that is here, here and here) who I haven’t seen in 25 years. I called him about ten or eleven years ago but I might have been drunk. Those early twenties were a bit jangly. But he found me through the blog and wrote and I wrote back and we’ll see how it plays. It’s hella weird. I spent a day or so with a sick fucking knot in my gut alternating between a profound sense of aloneness and a chunk of visceral anger. The kind that’s bad for your teeth. But he did write something that made me laugh out loud:

We have read parts of your blog, some of it makes us so sad and we can read the anger in it. Some of it we just have to skip over.

Ha! I wonder what parts they (him and my aunt and my cousins, I presume) had to skip over? I’ll write him back soon. “Anger is art.” I’ll say. It’s cathartic, sure, but mostly it’s just fun write angry screeds and make people uncomfortable. It’s a hoot.

But today. I actually am angry. It’s not just for fun. It’s for really reals.

As most of you know I have been an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. I’m thrilled that he has been elected and I see it as a turning point for the US and the world. But, people, we have a huge fucking problem.

The people of the my great state of California have apparently amended their constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. And I’m pissed. FUCK THESE PEOPLE. The christians. The mormons. The fucking uneducated (see here. Every single county in California where less than 10% of the population has a bachelors degree voted for this shit.) Who the fuck do they think they are? And I know, some of your parents voted for this. Some of your Aunts and Uncles and cousins. Loving and kind people who are charming and helpful. Well, fuck them. They’re bigots and they should be shamed into obscurity. Some of you are moderate, loving, good religious people who think this amendment is awful. And I love you for that.

One other important thing. And this is key. DON’T GET MARRIED. To loosely quote Henri, “If the Christians want to play keepaway with the word marriage let them have it.” If our gay friends, relatives and loved ones can’t get married the we have no fucking right to either. No Fucking Right.

Let’s amend the constitution so that if you’re IQ is under 120 you can’t get married. Or have children. Or fucking vote.

And a direct message to those who voted for this: How fucking dare you? You have no right to strip a whole class of citizens of the right to marry. In America. Fucking America. I despise you and a day will come when you are social pariahs. And I will dance on your cultural grave. James Dobson, Chuck Colson you will be shamed and shunned from any civilized discourse. You are the new Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

Am I bad for the movement? Probably. But, thankfully, no one really cares what I think.

Shit. I just watched Obama’s victory speech and now I feel like a crank. Everything’s is going to fine. It’s all ok.

Steve’s insanely cute kid.

I found a bacon cheeseburger.

My favorite Brazilinan food. Carne de Sol com Mandioca. Little bits of beef with fried mandioca (yucca root). You can get it almost anywhere and it’s a neat treat.

A weird-ass monkey that was cruising round at Luciana’s parents farm.

Something weird happened here with my iPhone but you get the idea. Taken at Bolão, in Santa Teresa. Open till 5am, Sepultura shit all over the walls (apparently those guys grew up in the neighborhood). Best meal ever.

On a little hike with Steve.

Brad said to me a few weeks ago, “When there’s nothing on the blog I just assume things must be going well.” Not true really. I’m writing here when things are going well. If I write about the shitty things it’s because they’re not shitty anymore. I can only write about them then. Post-shitty. So, here I am, post-shitty. Post the shittiest I’ve been in years. Probably 5 five years. It was dark. I was hanging out with the dark friends in that cramped and moldy dark place they like so much. I don’t really like it there but I spent most of my early 20’s there so it’s not entirely uncomfortable. But, thankfully, the more time I spend in the light, the less I like the dark. But, sometimes, you just have to sit in your own shit.

In portuguese the verb, to stay, is ficar. As in, “Eu estou indo ficar no Brasil” (literally i am going to stay in the brazil). But it’s also used as a verb, to hook-up, as in with a tall, gorgeous, fashion designy, Bikini Kill listening broads. Anyway. Eu fiquei (the past tense of ficar) com ela duas vezes. That’s it. Two times. And she blew me off. I went all mopey mcgee about for about a week. It really surprised me but it shouldn’t have. Surprised me. Must crush the oppressive burden of high expectations. Plus this fucking place is littered with girls to ficar with. It was made for it.

It was also slightly more complicated than that. Something about vulnerability and a person’s innate desire to be good at things. Maybe I want to be good at things more than the average person. It’s hard to be the charming and hilarious wordsmith when you don’t speak the language. And with that vulnerability (being blown off, not being able to express my awesomeness) came some old shit. Some old darkness.

Here’s an aside:

Last night, the subject of my mom came up with Marcelo and, god bless his good intentions, he began advise me on how I should not talk about it so casually; how it could/might/will inhibit my ability to ficar with pretty, young girls. He began to share an anecdote about how he told a girl at a party about some trouble he had in high school and how he found out later that she was turned off by his over-share. He, naively and stacked up with good intentions, tried to equate tough high school days with an unspeakable trauma. I like him so I mostly let it go. But I did explain this: I do it, talk about my mom casually, because I have to. Because if I don’t, it just sits there like a puss-filled, festering sore. Besides, I don’t really like secrets. If you’re easy with your secrets, they’re easy on you.

So, the over-share:

I was kicked out of the Navy because I had post-traumatic stress disorder. From the whole dead mom dealio. When I was a little dude and I would have a fever I would have these terrifying waking nightmares that I described to my shrink (Mark) as screaming, screeching, battling clouds. It would only happen when I was sick and, in turn, I fucking hated being sick. I still hate it. I fall apart when I have a fever. Terrified. And it suddenly stopped when I was 10 or 11. Just went away. But, like all awesome things, it came back. When I was 16 or 17 I started having them regularly and not only when I was sick; in class, at the dinner table, with no warning and fucking relentless. They would last for 2 to 10 seconds and the longer they lasted the more debilitating they were. Sometimes, with the longer ones, I would actually drop to my knees and dry heave. The feeling, as I’ve read, is similar to a panic attack.

Well, I got kicked out of the Navy for it. I had no problem with this. I wanted out of the Navy and I even initiated the kick-out (with a shrinks help). A few years later, I wrangled myself a delightful, dirt-worshiping shrink in San Luis Obispo (Nancy) in my early 20’s and through the magical fucking miracle of talk-therapy I pretty much had them under control by the time I was 24. In the last 10 years I typically have 1 or 2 a year and they usually only last 1 to 2 seconds. Not bad. Totally liveable. And not entirely unwelcome. You see, I don’t really want to be “all better”. I crave the memory of what happened and I always want it to hurt. To be terrifying.

Back to vulnerability. Sick as a little kid, adolescence, the navy, my early 20’s. All incredibly vulnerable times for me. Well, it happened four fucking times last week. Four Fucking Times. Twice in one night.

So, that’s why I haven’t been writing.

Everything is fine now. Thanks for asking.

Korean photographer Yeondoo Jung stages photographs based on children’s drawings and awesomeness ensuses.

He then compares the game to, of all things, polio. “Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio. We now have vaccines for that virus… The ‘vaccine’ that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this. If you doubt me, look at the aforementioned streaming audio/video. It will make you sick.”This is where the story takes a turn, because Jack Thompson provides a link to a video, put together by the gaming news site IGN, called “Ladies of Liberty City.” Be careful clicking on that link; there is absolutely nothing there that is safe for work.

GTA IV sex video gives Thompson, other critics fresh ammo

Polio. Really? If only polio was as fun as GTA IV. By the way, I grabbed a copy. Katy, Mark and I got pretty drunk at Mission Bar last night (Mission Bar is right next door to the Gamespot) waiting for the line to go down, played for about an hour and then passed out.

Here’s the video:

DSC00934.JPG, originally uploaded by georgebeaman.

Goddamn she’s cute.

Chocolate!