EDGE on the Net

After what seemed like an incurable New York winter, I took advantage of the first warm night and grabbed my pug to sit on the building stoop. It was a lovely evening, people walking by and smiling, that rush of summer in the air. Some couples walked arm-in-arm, some folks were alone, politely approaching to greet my dog. There were even a few fellow neighbors taking their own pooches out for extended strolls, and we all chatted and laughed, so fresh were the flavored breezes.

It was one of those rare Manhattan moments when you can’t imagine living anywhere else. When my doorman of ten years swatted me with a piece of paper and said "Move...You’re blocking the entrance!" it was one of those rare New York moments when you lament the fact that misery trumps company.

The next morning, needing to escape the confinements of my building -- literally -- and my own melancholy state, I decided to venture out in search of a place where "Love Thy Neighbor" is not just a slogan co-op boards won’t allow you to place on your door. I decided to hit one of the outdoor cafes along Second Avenue, which, this being a workday, were all crammed full. I sneezed, unfortunately, and the patrons dashed out of the restaurant faster than the rest of the city dashed away from low-flying jets. Since the subway, and every other form of transportation, had been Bidened-off, I hit the safe confines of the cinema to watch the chick-hit flick "Obsessed," or, as it should more appropriately be called, "Beyonce, Play Misty Attraction for Me."

More than twenty years after Glenn Close refused to be ignored, we’re still mis-communicating with our loved ones. While the movie shows that, on the singer-turned-screen-star scale, Ms. Knowles is a league ahead of Madonna, there’s something hypocritical in her fictional character’s family values home. From the get-go, the perfect married couple shares everything but trust, and, in the first encounter, the two women revel in their bitchy, hissy-fit exchange (perhaps to satisfy the bitchy, hissing-fitting, "you go, girl" chants from the largely female audience). When Beyonce finally morphs into Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character to destroy the Ali Larter Alien predator, I half-expected her to paraphrase the First Lady’s Hillary barb, with "If you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the white picket-fence house...bitch!" The subject of male infidelity is treated with such barbaric dishonor that, if there’s a sequel, it won’t be a rabbit you find boiling on the stove.

The film was so torturous I got sentimental over waterboarding. Now there’s a sexy fact of life the kids should know about. Birds don’t do it, bees don’t do it, but educated ex vice presidents can’t stop salivating over it. A nipple exposed in front of a Super Bowl Audience will spin your career out of control, but pretend to drown someone a few hundred times and you won’t even get a slap on the wrist -- and for good reason; hitting is against the law. To be fair, as Hardball’s Pat Buchanan pointed out, people in the past have done rather nasty things and not been punished (FDR and Japanese Internment Camps), and to be more fair, when we don’t learn from our mistakes, we’re bound to repeat them. If Denial is not just a river, then Geneva is not just a lake.

It’s so much easier for those in charge to simply sweep ugly things under the rug; war, poverty, a 21-year-old gay man left comatose on a chain-link fence after being robbed, beaten, pistol-whipped, and...rhymes with "orchard." North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx testified in a Session of the House of Representatives that Matthew Shepard’s death was, indeed, an "unfortunate incident," but had nothing to do with his being gay, and was a "hoax" to help pass a hateful hate-crimes bill. Matthew Shepard’s mom was seated nearby. To paraphrase Diane Chambers, this woman "is allowed to vote and drive cars." She’s also allowed to help pass legislation and supervise children. I wonder how quickly any of the above "unfortunate" acts would be indictable crimes were they committed against well-to-do heterosexual grey-haired Republican-American white women from the South. I’m fairly convinced at least the torture part would garner a hefty hate-crimes bill in North Carolina. I also think no one would hesitate in calling it illegal.

I was starting to think those flu masks should also be worn over our eyes and ears when my ex-boyfriend called, out of the blue, and said he needed me. I was so flattered that the one-time love of my life had come to his senses after a dozen years of aloofness at best, avoidance at most. When Jay told me he’d answered his own question before he called, and then didn’t hang up, I realized it was his shy way of saying he wanted reconciliation, or a quick love nookie. When I offered the latter, the guy who makes a living providing spiritual consultation and psychic evaluations and letting-go sodomy seminars called me a passive-aggressive fuck and left my life for good. I ate through the fish hook and swam away.

Jay had initially drawn my attentions because of his "Help me, I’m pretty" gaze, and I wasted a lot of time caring about someone I never cared about to begin with. The only people more self-righteous than those who wear their religion on their sleeve are those who wear their spirituality like a mink coat. Jay flaunted his aura to cloak the emptiness underneath. Unfortunately, I spent so much time obsessed with shiny surfaces I forgot to check the cabinet for bugs.

Miss California has two shiny surfaces, both paid for by the Miss USA pageant. I’m no expert, but isn’t that a little like a baseball team paying for the steroids? Many people were shocked at the blonde beauty’s anti-gay-marriage stance, and some say it cost her the crown. I, for one, thought it made perfect sense that the Golden State’s Carrie Prejean should follow in the footsteps of the Sunshine State’s Anita Bryant in a quest to save the world from homosexual domination -- though Prejean might want to check out how the latter’s anti-fairy-tale ended before she starts picking fruit from her own tree of intolerance.

California, my own home state, has always been somewhat defined by its Disneyland trademark; a lavish playground that’s patrolled with almost Fascist security, and surrounded by a county on Orange Alert. Roseanne’s family doesn’t live there; the Brady’s do. Tourists arrive to see that It’s a Small World After All, everyone smiling and carefree and a universe away from the cold confines of the Other 49. Take those sunglasses off, however, and you’ll find the robots are merely running in circles, on tracks, and have been singing that tune so long they don’t even know it’s pre-recorded.

The beauty queen with the breasts created in the image of Hugh Hefner’s God might just as well be one of those adorable cartoon creatures who greet you and take their picture with you and who never take off their masks or actually touch you. She also might be the close-hair-cropped Christian English teacher who proudly told your long-haired Atheist brother he’d never graduate; the same brother who majored in Economics, with honors. She could be the across-the-creek neighbors, who, for kicks, crucified frogs along the summery banks where we played as children. They never missed Sunday School but shouldn’t be confused with the neighbor who took a carving knife to our creek’s rope swing, where everyone laughed and played and enjoyed the community heat. They’d never be confused with the Peeping Tom neighbor who stalked my pre-teen sisters for a nightmarish year. You can’t I.D. a face that hides in your bushes and peeks through vine-covered windows and who doesn’t leave the trace of a car engine or even shoe-prints.

All of them lived in our peaceful, suburban California neighborhood that did its moral duty in tearing down the peace signs we periodically put up in our yard. They all wore masks and I left them all behind.

When I came back home and noticed the doorman had no problem with the next-door neighbor blowing his nightly smoke in the foyer (the two were yacking it up in a night created for conversation), I suppose I could have cut off the rope swing to create a fuss. But rules are rules, and I’d rather live by the real thing than pick my sins from someone else’s personal Jesus.