The French and the Restless

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My Take on Pop Culture Events of the Summer

I was in the US for three months and needed to soak up enough TV to last through another year in France. Where to start? Star Jones, Katie Couric, Rosie O’Donnell. Mark Foley, Jim McGreevey, Project Runway, Pluto — so much of over blown non-importance happened.

Daytime television turned into a merry-go-round of perky women. Katie Couric jumped to the evening news and her presentation of world events was critiqued less than her wardrobe. News anchor as fashion plate, she sported a swanky white jacket and a belt on the outside of her sweater in her first week on the air. I lost my appetite for television news sometime around the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder investigation (the first one), so I could only stomach two outings with Ms. Couric.

What I did stomach this summmer though was Rosie O’Donnell’s camera hogging on The View. Is “brassy” overused to describe her? Did Barbara Walters make a mistake hiring her? Ratings suggest it was a good idea, but it no longer looks like Ms. Walter’s show. The best news for the show though is that with O’Donnell on screen no one can remember the Star Jones dismissal.

Speaking of stars, in the outer reaches of the solar system, Pluto lost it’s status as a planet. Scorpios the world over noticed a change in our personalities. The only sign of the zodiac influenced by two planets, does the diminished Pluto still hold a secretive sway over us? Or is the agressive nature of Mars our sole guide now? One theory holds that the stripping of Pluto of its planethood is actually just another admission of our human denial of death. By pushing Pluto, already the smallest and furthest, out of the solar system hierarchy we are in fact burying our heads in the sand on the topic of any afterlife. If Pluto has no importance, then neither does death, the argument goes.

What did matter, a ton, this summer was fashion. In addition to Katie Couric’s outfits, I really got into Project Runway, the Bravo! reality series with competing designer wannabes. Coupled with the popularity of The Devil Wears Prada, everywhere I turn I pay extra attention to cut and fabric. And stitching. And details like button plackets and cotton/poly blends. That’s all.

In politics gay men continued to dominate, without actually having any power. Jim McGreevey, the gay ex-governor of New Jersey, was on tour promoting his book. While discussing it on The View he was criticized by co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck for including overt descriptions of his covert sex life. She used the boring objection “children could read it”. If we have to live in a child-proof world does that mean all personal development stops at puberty?

Speaking of taking advantage of children and gay politicians (this is painful), Mark Foley sure came out of his Closet of Power with a bang. And a bottle of sacramental chardonnay too, if you believe his “I was drunk and abused by priests” defense. After getting caught sexually electronically harrassing teenage Congressional pages, the GOP publicity whore from Florida resigned and drove out of town in his convertible. A few summers ago when I volunteered at a charity event where he was present, he never once flirted with me. Granted, by his standards I’m an old fart. What I find most interesting about the Foley scandal - Trollgate, if you will - is the national impact it has had on House races. Is the American electorate so fickle that a letch from Florida could cause doubts about a candidate in the suburbs of Omaha? We’ll found out in November. I’ll be in France, observing from a distance.

About Three Times

About three times today I made a mental note to email Matt about something that was happening. And so, about three times today I had to slow my mental pace. Three times today I remembered what it felt like to let the news of his death sink in. Three times I felt isolated. Three times I had to readjust.

I didn’t realize until he was gone just how much I relied on Matt. He’s definitely high on my list of people I talk about. “You know such interesting people,” my mom told me once. I sure do. What’s the point in knowing boring people? And Matt was interesting.

If you want to know who impacts you, move away. Move to a new city and meet new people. And then listen to who you talk about to your new friends. You might think your ex-boyfriend was important, but it could be the administrative assistant at your old job who you talk about the most. Maybe you were in the same classes with a good friend all through grad school, but it could be the once a week coffee-break partner who’s advice you repeat.

Matt was like that for me. He wasn’t a fully integrated part of my circle of friends in Boston - how could he be? He spent half of each year living on a tropical beach counting turtle eggs or lecturing about blue footed boobies - but through long distance communication he became important. His take on my life was virtually as an outsider. Most of the people I whined about he’d only met once, if at all. He was seemingly impartial, and it was easy to be honest with him about things that mattered. And he became someone I repeated.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s research categorizes grief into 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. The more recent work of John Bowlby puts grief into 4 categories: Shock and Numbness, Yearning and Searching, Disorganization and Despair, and Reorganization. It sort of pisses me off that the Bowlby research doesn’t include a stronger spot for Anger. It is the closest descriptor for what I feel. Somedays I feel like I have moved on to Acceptance, but only in terms of accepting my anger. I accepted that Matt is dead shortly after hearing the news. But that’s when the anger intensified.

It was pointed out to me that a gay man my age 20 years ago would have witnessed the death of nearly half his friends. I should be content that I’ve been spared that experience. I suppose.

I suppose that each time today I felt the urge to contact him I should count as a blessing that at one time it was a possibility.

Tonight I’m wondering what Matt would think of the hard time I’m having with his death. I’m wondering why I found him easy to confide in. I’m wondering if at the time I even knew what a good friend he was. I wonder if he realized how important he was. I hope I returned the favor.