Midnight Cowboy

"Our neighbor's head landed in our house." --a young Syrian refugee


If there is the slimmest possibility that I can manage the relocation necessary for any author who truly takes risks, that I can stave off degeneration long enough to accomplish something and redeem my self-respect, I'd like to end this last score of my life as an investigative journalist. I like asking hard questions, and making everyone uncomfortable, not that this would be easy for a spastic quad on her last legs, but I know my own self-worth. I am smarter and sharper than Josie Byzek, the Jesus dyke who knows whats best except for when it comes to violating my trust, and I am a better writer than Daniel. In truth, I feel some pity for Schneider's wasted potential, and I hit on it yesterday. He does not apply himself to focusing on what he knows how to do in his on voice, and devolves in semi-automatic recriminations that interest no one. My persona and his are not so dissimilar, but I have an agenda. Does he, other than culling stray pups to be his online personal groupie base? If you are one of his sympathizers and think you have some insight, I will approve your comment and let it stand, and I don't bruise easily. If you want to let me have it, you may.

Michael Snyder is more informative on Herlihy than either Dan or I are on any topic, but does not answer the central question. If James and Tennessee were so complete in themselves, why did Herlihy kill himself in 1993? He was aging, certainly, but was he sick, tired of being a one note wonder compared to Steinbeck? Lee's stills are priceless and come as a bit of a shock, as both the playwright and novelist look like wax contortions in pain, not only from a different era, but otherworldly, except that their lifestyle, their coded literary subversions, are as familiar to me as the piss in Erika's urine bag. I am interested in an answer, because I am working, torturing, if you like, an essay on writers suicides, and need more facts on the more notorious, and Herlihy made my list.

I empathize with Voight's Joe in the film, and if I can manage, intend to watch it early Friday morning, again. When I will start the digital etext, only Josie's *baby boy* in the manger may know, but I do agree with other viewer comments that the jump cuts in the film suggesting that Buck was gang raped take the edginess out of Herlihy's seminal accomplishment, because it obscures the narrative arc. If Joe and Ratso trend gay, Schlesinger seems comfortable leaving new wave homoeroticism swinging on its own rope, murky in terms of Buck's future maturity and wisdom.

I want progressives, or left center moderates, to understand something: I treated the Philadelphia community I knew with all the tolerance I had, that started to come to an end in 2006, after Miss Eddy, the mixed race inner city woman, threw all her sexual needs into hitting on me, when she was my agency aide. My anger does not stem from an auto-erotic response. I am physically impaired, and I am tired of being used for target practice by men, women, lesbians, and other sociopathic reflectors, whatever the ethnicity, and I did a disservice to my own esteem in breaking bread with Josie and Ginny, even if that social setting was their gesture of remorse. An atypical opponent, I am not quite an over-simplified redneck. The gay scene is not healthy for heterosexual confidence, not in terms of emotional intimacy, confiding friendships. I am going to dismantle your comfort zone, gay equality be damned.