Off To A Good Start

Since removing all traces of self-loathing from the pages of the Pop Culture Institute at least meets with the approval of one Mr. Davey I am feeling especially virtuous today. I've been able to retain what is a valuable outlet for me in Self-Loathario (not to mention creating with that same outlet a means for possibly helping others), while at the same time bringing a new kind of professionalism to my already established brand. Win-win.

When it comes to talking about any issue, the main difficulty is just in doing it. For instance, one cannot talk about racism without, at least accidentally, being racist. Any reasonable, calm person who encounters such racism will address and correct it, just as any calm, reasonable person will see the error of their former ways and hopefully attempt to expunge that racism from their souls.

Unfortunately, very few calm, reasonable people are engaged in discussions of racism; either that, or very few reasonable, calm solutions to racism are sexy enough to be trumpeted all over the news. Especially when vilifying Michael Richards is so much more fun than getting at the real problem.

(Among the ranks of the professionally offended, actually solving any such problem means they'll be out of work. So they're the last place to look for solutions to anything.)

Well, self-loathing is the ultimate racism. One oppresses one's self. One is the bigot and the victim simultaneously, and so bears a double stigma. In order to disentangle one's self from the ganglian of disordered thinking responsible for self-loathing it's all gotta be out there. Otherwise, you might as well be untying macrame in the dark.

The only thing is, the mere mention of self-loathing makes a great many people very nervous.

I took a course on this very issue, offered by the Alphabet Soup Centre in Vancouver (GLTBQ). There were about a dozen people in the class: me, a couple of guys older than me, and nine smoking hot supermodel types who all felt they were ugly because they only had six dates the previous week, whereas they'd had seven the week before.

So of course, in the interest of giving each man in attendance their equal time I hadda sit there for a good hour and a half listening to twinks empathise with each other on how hard it is to be hot. Oh, and all the gym time, and how expensive undereye concealer is, and one of them got dumped because he got a cold, and on and on... All terrible, mind you, yet all preventable.

The course was two evenings, one week apart. And as long as those nights felt for me, imagine what a long week that must have been for Mr. Barr (who was my roommate at the time). He tried and tried to convince me that hot guys also have low self-esteem. Likewise, Mr. Gagne has talked until capable of a Smurf impression about why I should feel bad for hot guys.

All for naught.

I have more sympathy for Jeffrey Dahmer than I do for any hot guy. Yet I have friends like Ken and Terry and Jesse who are all total babes. Because they seem to like me I can just about empathise with them. When they say they can't meet anybody I tell them to make the first move. They have no idea how threatening their beauty is, nor do they have any sense of what bitches most hot guys are to guys who aren't. Because they're all good-looking, they think everyone is nice, since everyone but journalists and bloggers is nice to beautiful people.

As smart as they are, this is a no-brainer for me.

I have one thing wrong with my life: I'm not good-looking. It's affected everything I've ever done. I'm sure it's kept me from getting jobs, it's garnered me insults galore, and ensured that I stayed single and celibate so long I no longer have any idea how not to be. The last all-gay crowd I found myself in gave me a panic attack.

A lot of hot guys only have one thing going for them, their hotness. It fades, of course, or at least changes, and when it does where does that leave Mr. Hottie? Yet in the meantime, at least they had a bit of fun, didn't they?

So I guess during all those years I was getting called a troll at the Bear Night have paid off. Rather than spending five hours a day dragging my fat ass through some bar to find some guy to assuage my insecurities, I was reading. Their tricks are long gone and forgotten by now, but I still can remember all the books I've read.

There is a nightmare scenario running in my head now that someday this site will be inundated by really hella-hot guys who all hate themselves because they feel they should be hotter, even though for that to happen municipal fire codes would have to be rewritten. I have no idea if I'll be able to empathize, since their experience is so far outside my own there aren't even any reference points. Only the fact that it could be a learning experience for me pushes the monsters back under the bed.

My final insight came last night. I was hanging out with a friend, and we were talking about the various rites of passage men go through. He noted something which had never occurred to me before: I've done everything out of order. For instance, while most people experiment with drugs as teenagers, I never did until I was 30. He suggested that while your 20s and 30s are most people's most sexually active time, mine might be my 40s and 50s.

And so they might be. They might be indeed.