Because I want to be.
My therapist once told me that a good relationship is like icing on the cake, and you can’t frost a cake until it’s finished baking. I clearly took this to heart, as it’s been nearly a decade and I still bring up the analogy in casual conversation. I’ll be 27 in a few months, and I still don’t feel like a complete person — which is fine. But given my unfinished state, I’m not sure I’m ready to inflict myself on someone else. And what if it were the right guy? He might not like me as I am, realizing how much growing I have left to do. I could squander a great opportunity — or I could wait.

(I’m talking out of my ass.)
Maybe there’s some truth to the cake analogy, or maybe it’s something single people tell ourselves to feel better. All I know is I enjoy cake and I enjoy cake batter and I enjoy frosting on a cake and I enjoy frosting by itself. This idea that one has to be fully-formed before entering into a relationship is silly for a couple reasons. One, we are always growing, so to wait until we’re a complete human is absurd and frankly impossible. Two, we grow with other people. Which is to say, we adapt with one another. A successful relationship means that the growth process has to be shared, not finished ahead of time, separately.

Because I don’t need someone else to complete me.
I resent the idea that I’m somehow lacking without a partner by my side. I want to define myself, not to be defined by whom I date. Too often with couples, you see one or both of them losing an identity. He becomes another facet of his partner’s personality. She fades into the background as a plus-one. Moreover, the constant search for someone to spend one’s life with is a distraction — it ignores all the individual development the single person could be working on instead. And then what happens when your partner leaves? Are you a mere fraction of what you were before?

(But perhaps it’s not about completing a person. Perhaps it’s about completing a life.)
The fear of losing oneself in another is daunting, and it’s based in reality. We’ve all had a love affair (or at least a really intense crush) that took over entirely. We couldn’t focus on anything else, and every moment was defined by that other person. Love isn’t always like that, though: it doesn’t have to be all-consuming. And a person in love can still be just a person — there are couples that have lives outside of each other. And I think, yes, you shouldn’t need someone else to make you who you are, but maybe it’s not about that. There could be someone out there who doesn’t overwhelm your life so much as make it better.

Because I live a full life without a partner.
I complain a lot, but things are pretty good overall: I have friends I care about, a job I love, and a reasonable amount of people to read my ramblings. I get plenty of love in my relationships, even if none of them is A Relationship. I know these people care about me, and they show affection, and, perhaps most importantly, they stick around past the complications that would end many romantic relationships. Attraction fades and romance withers, but friendship endures. I think of the people I wanted to date who are friends now and I feel relief: would we still know each other if we’d been lovers?

(So why does it feel like something’s missing?)
Chalk it up to popular culture or holiday party invites that allow you to bring a boyfriend/girlfriend (not a friend, not a relative, not just someone you’re dating, OK?), but yeah, there is a lack you feel when you’re single. Sometimes it’s vague; sometimes it’s a direct and pressing need. Either way, this longing can put a damper on everything from dinners out with friends to birthdays to celebrating personal successes. There’s this nagging voice that says, “Yes, but” because as full as your life is, it’s not all the way there. And fuck, with a partner at your side, imagine how much fuller…

Everything is less complicated.
The more I see my friends argue with significant others, whether over where to eat out or something more substantial, the less I want that in my life. I’ve been in a relationship before, and I remember how much work it is. There’s compromise — and it’s never as easy as just meeting in the middle — and there’s the need to always account for someone other than yourself. I like being an independent unit, because I never have to check in with anyone. I make plans for me and I go about my day without worrying what my theoretical boyfriend is doing. There’s no fighting. No anxiety over weeks without sex. It’s simple, and it works.

(But oh, God, the nights get hard sometimes.)
And I’ll think, I don’t care about fighting and I don’t care about compromise — I’d take it all just to be held from the moment I shut my eyes at night to the moment I open them in the morning. And maybe I don’t want to just worry about me anymore, because it feels selfish and immature, like the one last thing I’m not willing to accept about adulthood. It would be work, but that’s part of it. You’d feel the lows, but you’d also get to feel the highs. And you wouldn’t have to write about your feelings, which, incidentally, Stephen Sondheim already captured a lot more succinctly in “Being Alive”: “Somebody, need me too much / Somebody, know me too well / Somebody, pull me up short / And put me through hell / And give me support / For being alive…”

“You’ve got so many reasons for not being with someone, but Robert, you haven’t got one good reason for being alone.”

Louis 10 Years Ago is my new Twitter project: you can find it here. It’s a real-time simulation of what I would have tweeted 10 years ago, if I’d been on Twitter instead of LiveJournal.

Twitter didn’t exist 10 years ago.

I know, smart-ass. That’s why it’s just a simulation.

How does it work?

I’ve been combing my LiveJournal for hilariously melancholy or dated excerpts that work well in the 140-character format. They will be queued so that they roughly match when I would have tweeted them 10 years ago. I began my LiveJournal on February 15, 2003 at 2:09 p.m., so Louis 10 Years Ago will begin tweeting on February 15, 2013 at 2:09 p.m.

That’s pretty anal.

Yeah, to a completely unnecessary extent.

What can I expect to see if I follow this account?

My transformation from awkward, depressed closeted gay teen to slightly less awkward, slightly less depressed openly gay twentysomething. To that end: tweets about high school, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and feeling fat. No joke-jokes, but plenty to laugh at, in a cringeworthy way.

Are you hesitant to expose yourself in that way?

Nah. When have I ever been hesitant to expose myself? No, that doesn’t sound right. I guess I don’t mind sharing the more embarrassing aspects of my past because, at best, they show how far I’ve come. At worst, they’re a good reminder that some things never change — I may always be insecure, a little out-of-place, and uncomfortable in my own skin.

I already know you’re neurotic from following your regular account. Why should I follow Louis 10 Years Ago?

Well, you shouldn’t if you’re going to come into it with that attitude. Seriously, it’s entirely up to you to let high school me into your life. I think it’s funny and a little sad, but your mileage may vary. I’m mostly doing this for myself anyway.

You are such a liar.

I know.

Can you give me some sample tweets?

Sure.

“apparently having my cell phone off for 30 minutes is scandalous. if they only knew exaclty how NOT rebellious i am.”
“watched ‘donnie darko,’ which was fantastic but paralyzing and mind-numbing.”
“i can’t think of a moment during the past month where i haven’t been confused. my only fear right now is this: what if things never get easier?”

Christ, you’re annoying.

I was 16, so yes.

What’s with all the lowercase?

I thought that was very edgy. Don’t worry, I discovered capital letters eventually.

How often will Louis 10 Years Ago be tweeting?

Sparingly at first. I wasn’t always a frequent LiveJournal user. And either way, I’m not tweeting every line of my LiveJournal — not even close — so it’ll never be too much. On rare occasions, there might be a burst of tweets, but nothing so extreme you can’t scroll past it if you’re not willing to commit.

How long will this project go on?

Good question! I have about a year’s worth of tweets now, but I can conceivably keep this up for the next few years. That’s way too far ahead for me to worry about now. It all depends on how receptive people are to the project, and if I can continue tweeting from Louis 10 Years Ago without losing my mind. No promises!

There’s one thing I still don’t get.

Ask me privately. Or just follow the account: I think it will be pretty self-explanatory once it gets going.

Would you like a hug?

More than anything.

I met K. through mutual friends on Twitter. We bonded pretty quickly, as is often the case with people I get to know on the internet. When you put two neurotic, self-involved individuals together, they will never run out of things to talk about. We love finding out that we’re crazy in all the same ways! For a while, we chatted every day — first on Gchat, then via text. I had a friendcrush, and if I’m being honest, a crush-crush, too. Can you blame me? He was a musician. And even though he was straight, he liked to flirt, sometimes almost dangling the possibility of a tryst in front of me. I’m not saying I fell hard or anything. I’m just saying he was cute.

We made plans to meet up in person. He was going to stay with me for a whole weekend, and I was kind of thrilled. I felt like we’d really gotten to know each other at that point, but I was eager to see how we connected IRL. We talked about watching The Simpsons and staying up all night talking about our feelings. It sounded pretty ideal. The night before he was supposed to fly out to LA, he called me. It was the first time we’d ever spoken on the phone, and yes, I was enough of a dork to make note of that. I was panicked that he was going to cancel. Instead, he’d called because he wanted to tell me how excited he was about hanging out.

And then came the next day: the frantic early morning text, the cancellation, the tough-to-swallow story, the promise to make it up to me. I’m ashamed to say this happened three weekends in a row. Seriously. Each time, the excuse was harder to believe, but always too serious to call his bluff. Was he lying about a sick parent, a suicidal friend, a medical emergency? The second time he flaked I realized there was something not right, but he assured me that he was on the level. He knew how it looked, but it was just a case of really bad timing, and the universe being a colossal piece of shit. That was something I could get behind. I had an easier time accepting that the fates were conspiring against us than that someone I considered a good friend was a compulsive liar.

Over time, I began to suspect that the problem was him. His stories didn’t line up. He would contradict himself mid-conversation. It all came to a head when I learned about the lies he was telling other people. I won’t go into that: like I said, it’s not my story to tell. Suffice it to say, others had it way worse than I did. I tried to intervene on a couple occasions. The first time, he was able to talk himself out of it. I pointed out how unlikely it was that he was really a victim on all this — where there’s smoke… But he was very convincing. I let it go for a while. When it came up again, I confronted him more assertively. That’s when he told me to stop getting involved in other people’s business.

I was livid. I was hurt, too, but that seemed secondary. I tried to tell people that he was full of shit, that I’d seen through his lies, but I had little evidence. Worse, I worried about the repercussions of waging a full-on campaign against him. As outraged as I was by what he was doing to people I cared about, I feared that when the dust settled, I’d look like the asshole. He’d turn it all against me, and I’d just be some whiny asshole who got jealous and tried to make life difficult for someone cooler than he was. Even when I felt justified in my cause, I also kind of felt like a dick. And there was always this stupid doubt gnawing at me: what if he really was telling the truth? Maybe I didn’t have the whole story.

I know what I said about K. got to him eventually. That’s OK — I heard some of the awful things he said about me. It stung, but I felt some need to keep up appearances. We tweeted at each other, sometimes with slight hostility but always under the guise of friendship. It seems dumb in retrospect, but it was part my being taken in by his lies, and part my fear of consequences. Once when I did unfollow him after a particularly heated exchange, he sent me an apology email. The apology email is my greatest weakness: I probably shouldn’t admit this, but it’s the easiest way to end a conflict with me. I will always accept your apology. I will always feel crappy that I was ever angry.

When I first heard that his life was falling apart, I thought, “Fucking finally.” I’m not exactly proud of that reaction. On the one hand, I wanted him to suffer for what he’d put my friends through. On the other, I was reveling in the misfortune of someone else. There was so much about his behavior that never made sense — it was fucked-up and terrible, but it was also pathological. That’s a word I used often when trying to explain him. (Is it even the right one? What do I know.) This guy was a womanizer and a dickbag and a shitty friend, but he was also like me: a person whose brain didn’t function properly, a tremendously insecure narcissist, a drug addict.

And so, eventually, the anger faded. It’s not hard to forgive him for what he did to me, because it really wasn’t much. If I let him take me in, that’s my fault, too. But I can’t forgive him for what he did to anyone else — that’s not my place. And I want to reiterate that I’m not defending anyone: your actions may be reprehensible because of bad wiring in your brain, but they’re still reprehensible. I’m not making excuses — I’m looking for compassion. I hope that distinction makes sense. Maybe it seems silly that I’m writing all of this. If you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to get it out. It’s still such a small fraction of the bigger picture: it’s inconsequential in the long run.

For what it’s worth, though, I feel a little better.

But being thankful is a big part of sobriety. Last night I went to a Buddhist recovery meeting and the theme was “gratitude.” I listened to what those around me said, and I thought about what I would share if I were called on. I wasn’t, but I have a blog (albeit a neglected one), and what better place to put those thoughts down. As always, I’m choosing to make this public instead of keeping it to myself just in case it helps anyone. If you can relate, or if it provokes any emotional response at all, it’ll be worth the embarrassment that accompanies this type of exposure.

I mean, maybe.

I’m thankful for the ability to try new things — both the opportunity to do so, and the willingness to let my guard down and embrace the unknown. I’m thankful that these new things are working for me, so far. Sobriety is a new thing, and it’s one of the scariest of all. I’m still adjusting to life as a sober person, but I’m grateful for the outlook it’s given me already. My eyes are open; I’m experiencing everything on a different level. It’s not all sunshine and Otter Pops — a lot of it is total crap. The ability to take in and accept both is pretty great, though. Clarity is a gift.

Another thing that is new to me: all this hippie shit. Yoga, meditation, acupuncture — it’s everything I spent years rejecting. Not because I don’t believe in the power of alternative medicine (although I’m sure for a while that was part of it), but because it’s easier not to try. Focus on your breathing. Sit cross-legged on a mat. Get some needles in your skin. Or don’t, and enjoy the comfort of what you know. The familiar is easy but it’s not always right, so before I got sober, I resolved to try everything that came my way, no matter how awkward or granola. I’m grateful I did. Have you ever had acupuncture? It’s kiiind of amazing.

I’m thankful for my words. At my darkest moments, I’ve always had the power of self-expression, and that is really fucking cool. For every time I have felt desperate and hopeless, there’s been a blog post, tweet, or Facebook status update to help me articulate it. That might sound silly to some, which is fine. I won’t crap on your recovery if you don’t crap on mine. But whether you like what I write or not, it helps me immeasurably to get it out. This is therapy for me. (Even this, right now! This very sentence that I’m typing. Period.)

I’m thankful for other people’s words. Everything I read on Twitter. Everything I hear in groups and meetings. Everything George R. R. Martin has written, which is seriously a lot.

We prattle on about the internet’s tendency to isolate, but there’s also an amazing sense of community here, and I think in many ways we help each other survive that same isolation we’re apparently engendering. So, thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for being there. Thanks for letting me be there for you. I know sincerity is gross, and I promise not to be this zen all the time. But for now, just let the warmth wash over you. (So gross.)

What else? I’m thankful for Jeff Mangum. He gets it.

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all ’round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I’ll be laughing out loud
I’ll be laughing with everyone I see
Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all

And in a fantasy world, maybe that would work. You’d take a page from Harry Potter and refer to James Holmes as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” denying him power. You’d promise to never say “Wade Michael Page” three times in a dark bathroom, lest he crawl out of the mirror Bloody Mary-style and open fire.

These are superstitions. We don’t create psychopaths by putting them on the front page.

To be fair, there is a rational basis for the correlation — mass murderers are, at times, motivated by a desire for media attention. A shooter could carry out a brutal act of violence with the hope of getting his name in print. He may not be alive to see it, but yes, perhaps his dying wish was to go out in a blaze of 24-hour-news-cycle “glory.”

But it’s naive to think theoretical media coverage is what pushes a person over the edge, as though not printing James Holmes’ name or photo would somehow stay the hand of a white supremacist gun nut like Wade Michael Page. It’s a pleasant thought in some ways, because it allows us to feel we have a modicum of control over unpredictable acts of violence. Don’t give these people attention, and poof, they’re gone.

“You’re making this monster famous,” the internet commenters decry. No, that’s not how it works. You gain infamy by shooting a U.S. congresswoman in the head, or by opening fire on a midnight showing at a movie theater. These acts aren’t soon forgotten, and the perpetrators receive the notoriety assigned to all mass murderers. It’s not a reward — it’s a fact of life. Do something horrible and be remembered for doing something horrible.

These are killers, not Kardashians: not talking about them does nothing to undo what they did, nor does it prevent future mentally unbalanced people from doing the same. It’s also important to note the distinction between infamy and celebrity — to print James Holmes’ picture is not to make him a star. He doesn’t become a style icon. He doesn’t get a reality show. Outside of a few disturbed individuals on Facebook, he’s universally reviled, not a cult hero.

The pearl-clutching “You mustn’t say his name” response comes from fear, but it’s also a self-righteous declaration of moral superiority. It’s a way of letting everyone know that you’re above the news coverage and the media frenzy — the same thing you could accomplish, on a more personal level, by turning off the TV. I won’t pin this all on Aaron Sorkin and The Newsroom, but blaming the “broken media” feels more de rigueur than ever.

“What happened to the good old days of news coverage?” This criticism suggests that we haven’t always sensationalized crimes and expressed a fascination with mass murderers. It also strikes me as weirdly repetitive: blaming the media is only the latest iteration of blaming video games, blaming movies, and blaming TV. It comes from the misguided belief that the depiction of violence creates more violence.

Does a flashy CNN graphic give people like Page ideas? Maybe. So, too, a first-person shooter or a movie about a mass murderer. Psychopaths will find inspiration wherever they can, but the media they consume isn’t what turns them into monsters. We want this to be true, because it’s nice to believe that violence isn’t innate so much as something we’ve inflicted on our culture. But no, acts of terror existed long before the representation of terror.

You can criticize the media for “breeding the next generation of psychopaths,” as one Gawker commenter so absurdly suggested. It won’t change the way we report news, or the fact that terrible people do terrible things. But it’s tough to accept the reality of a mass shooting a mere 16 days after the last one.

Assign blame where you see fit and find comfort in false beliefs: the boogeymen aren’t going anywhere.

WARNING: Vague spoilers through the most recent episode of Breaking Bad. Read at your own discretion.

Skyler is my favorite character on Breaking Bad. Seriously. This isn’t a new development: I’ve loved her from the beginning. But over the course of the past three seasons, she’s become the most sympathetic character. In my mind, she’s our point of identification, the sane person caught in the middle of Walt’s bullshit, trying to keep her head above water and protect her family. Skyler gets shit on the most and offends the least. She’s the victim in all of this.

These are my opinions, and I understand they’re contentious. You don’t have to love Skyler the way I do, of course, but hating her seems unjustified. Again, these things are subjective: I can’t help if there’s just something about Anna Gunn that rubs you the wrong way. But what has the character of Skyler really done to earn your hatred? How can you dismiss her as the show’s weakest link? (Especially when that position so clearly belongs to poor Walt Jr.)

Here is what bothers me about the Skyler hate: it’s the same misplaced hostility faced by countless TV wives in the past. And while you certainly can dislike a female character without being a misogynist, so much of the vitriol against Skyler uses the gendered language you might expect: She’s a bitch, she’s a cunt, she’s the shrew wife.

What it comes down to is that Skyler, the ol’ ball and chain, is a thorn in Walt’s side. She’s not submissive or even faithful. She questions his behavior and she challenges his plans. And somehow, that makes her a bitch.

Here’s what all of Skyler’s critics seem to forget — Walt is a fucking terrible person. Whatever noble causes he once had are gone. He’s a power-hungry egomaniac and a danger to those around him. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy Walt as a character, but I can’t fathom siding with him. Meth aside, this is a man who let his friend’s girlfriend choke to death on her own vomit, who poisoned a child just to spur his plan into action. Hating Skyler for the way she responds to Walt is absurd: she’s reacting out of fear and a desire to protect her loved ones.

But she’s a pain in the ass to our main character, and that makes it easy to dismiss her as a “bitch.” We see this often in sitcoms: the obnoxious manchild of a leading man gets a free pass on being an imbecile, while his wife — the one who calls him on his bad behavior — is a nag. In some ways, Malcolm in the Middle is a good example of this, and not only because of the Bryan Cranston connection. It’s not quite the same in that Lois is admittedly a nutball (this being the heightened reality of a sitcom), but I still think she is unfairly maligned. Look at her husband and her asshole kids — is it really any wonder she spent so much of the series losing her shit?

Skyler isn’t without fault: she’s been put into a situation that has forced her to do some terrible things. Which is not to say she’s justified, but rather that her mistakes are a product of her circumstance. There was a time when I would say the same about Walt, but it’s clear he’s no longer doing this for anyone but himself. Skyler’s transition from ignorant wife to scheming accomplice is about protecting her son, her baby, and herself. She’s not mad with power or rolling around in piles of meth money. She’s simply the only one holding it all together.

I’ve posed this question on Twitter and on Facebook, and now I ask it here: Why do you hate Skyler? Of all the characters, she really does strike me as the most blameless. Whether or not she’s a saint, she’s about the furthest thing from a villain. And it’s silly for me to get so worked up, but so much of the response I’ve seen does tend to stem from this anti-feminist conception of a “good wife,” which Skyler isn’t. She’s a bitch because she’s difficult. I can’t accept that.

There’s no denying that, at her most confrontational, Skyler makes things harder for Walt — but can you really argue that he doesn’t deserve it?

At the same time, the “right to privacy” argument is misguided. It equates sexual identity with sexual behavior — and though the two do go hand in hand, they’re not one in the same. We’re past the point of identifying as “sodomites”: what we do in the bedroom feels secondary to how we carry ourselves in public. Homosexuality may be defined by same-sex attraction, but it’s also cultural. In the same way race may be defined by origin or the amount of melanin in one’s skin, sexuality is based in the biological but not limited to it.

I’m not sure if Anderson Cooper timed his coming out with the New York Times’ debate “Do Gay Celebrities Have The Obligation to Come Out?” I doubt it, but it’s definitely convenient. Cooper is the latest in a group of “open secret” gays to come out matter-of-factly. (He follows Jim Parsons and Matt Bomer, both of whom prompted reactions of, “He wasn’t out already?”) His wording — “The fact is, I’m gay” — actually reflects the point I’m trying to make. Sexuality isn’t a preference so much as an innate characteristic.

(Brief aside: when Cynthia Nixon referred to her sexuality as a “choice” and got shit on by the queer community, I defended her. The difference is, Nixon was expressing her own journey of self-discovery. Everyone has the right to self-define. Moreover, there’s a distinction between arguing that sexual identity is not fundamental, and explaining one’s personal path toward realizing it.)

Publicist Howard Bragman takes the “right to privacy” argument in his debate contribution, “It’s a Personal Choice, Not a Moral One.” When phrased that way, it’s easy to see his point of view, but Bragman’s opening paragraph betrays the bias of this conversation.

If we suggested that gay celebrities have a moral obligation to come out, then any celebrity would have the same responsibility to acknowledge any hidden situation whose disclosure could theoretically help society. The heartbreak of psoriasis? Do a public service announcement. A victim of sexual abuse? You need to go talk about it on “The View.” Going bankrupt? Get ahead of this story and help other Americans in similar situations.

Implicitly or not, he equates sexual identity with psoriasis, sexual abuse, and bankruptcy — all of which, we can agree, are very bad things. I’m not suggesting Bragman is a homophobe: he’s simply articulating the fact that we conflate “things that are hidden” with “things that are wrong.” The right to privacy, no matter how noble a concept in origin, automatically implies some level of guilt, embarrassment, and shame.

Bragman continues, “We’re talking about people’s romantic lives, which are, by definition, notoriously confusing and fickle.” Are we, though? Aside from Cooper’s saying, “I love, and I am loved,” there is nothing in his email to Andrew Sullivan about his boyfriend or his sexual preferences. A celebrity’s right to privacy in terms of whom he or she dates is respectable (regardless of how difficult it is to maintain in an era of TMZ). But coming out doesn’t mean introducing the world to your significant other, or letting everyone know whether you prefer to top or bottom in bed.

Anderson Cooper gets it. From his email:

I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something — something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true.

I question his assertion that, “I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something.” What is the act of not disclosing, or deflecting the question when asked, if not hiding? But I’m not going to criticize Cooper for taking his time to come out, not when I’m so glad that he finally did. Obviously I see this as a “the sooner, the better” situation, but the last thing he needs right now is the gay community rejecting him for not coming out sooner.

And that’s not what I’m doing — Anderson Cooper is only a jumping off point for what I’ve long tried to argue. Sexual identity isn’t private. It’s a characteristic as intrinsic as race and should be treated accordingly. Obviously it’s not as simple as that, because we live in a society where a disturbing percentage of people are still ass-backwards enough to view same-sex attraction as an abomination. But catering to bigots isn’t a solution. We don’t tell celebrities of color that they should hide their identity lest racists are turned off to their work.

There’s a difference, of course. You don’t need to come out as a Black man, or a Latina woman. But that’s all the more reason to come out as gay. Unfortunately, not publicly identifying as gay means society sees you as straight — you are essentially “passing.” (Though in the case of the aforementioned Cooper, Bomer, and Parsons, not necessarily well.) That wouldn’t be an issue if we treated sexuality as more of a biological fact: “What color are your eyes?” “How tall are you?” “How do you identify on the spectrum of sexuality?”

I’ll leave the “moral obligation” side of the debate to someone else. (I think Kate Aurthur expresses it well in her debate contribution, “Be a Hero, Not Part of the Problem.”) What I’m advocating is a change in the conversation, a clear distinction between what is and isn’t private. March in the Pride parade or don’t — but accept your sexual identity as a personal characteristic that isn’t going anywhere. The less we talk about it in terms of privacy, the less anyone will care.

When you use substances as a crutch, they function like a security blanket. Sometimes they’re all you need — an alternative to friends or lovers or leaving the house. Sobriety feels like someone pulling that blanket away.

First it’s embarrassing. No matter what anyone says, you feel shame, and there is nothing to cover yourself up with. You grasp for something, anything, and you come up empty-handed. No one is pointing and laughing, but you still feel that judgment. They never got your blanket, anyway. That kind of bond is singular. It’s not just them, though: now when you look down, you see yourself, all those belly rolls and blemishes you’d been covering up. You don’t want to see them, but you can’t look away.

Then you’re angry, because someone fucking took your blanket. It was yours, and you needed it, and now it’s gone. In what universe is that fair? It’s not anyone’s business what you use to sleep at night or cling to when you’re sad — that’s personal. Maybe you took the blanket away, in which case you’re mad at yourself for choosing so-called rational thought over impulse and emotion. You yearn for independence and the ability to handle life without the help, but did you ever stop to consider how hard that would be? You’re selfish. You’re terrible. You fucked up.

Mostly it’s sad and you feel crappy. You’d been using that blanket for so long, you kind of forgot it was there. It wasn’t even a source of pleasure so much as stability: the kind of thing you only really miss when it’s gone. And there is nothing to replace it with, just distractions that help you forget (for minutes at a time) that gnawing void. It’s depressing to care so much about something you swore you didn’t need, and now you have to deal with that — sadness that it’s gone, sadness that you care, sadness that you’re writing self-indulgent blog posts about it.

But hey, at least you’re writing. There’s a lot more time for that now. Because man, when you wrapped yourself in that blanket, the hours just sped by…

In the spirit of the former, though, I’m going to try to make “assorted pop culture bitching” a semi-regular feature here. Keep in mind I sometimes go a month or two without blogging. If I manage to churn out one of these posts a year, that probably qualifies as semi-regular.

This particular set of complaints is horror-themed. Boo, etc.

The Paranormal Activity series
I just finished watching Paranormal Activity 3, which was — like the previous installments — annoyingly frightening. Not frightening in the sense that I’m going to have to sleep with the lights on tonight (I always fall asleep to The Golden Girls, anyway), but frightening in that I jumped several times.

“Annoyingly” because these are cheap scares, and they are the same in every Paranormal Activity movie. These films are not without merit: the first was the closest we’ve come to Blair Witch Project since, uh, Blair Witch Project. And there’s something particularly effective about scenes of mundanity (people sleeping, chattering on about bullshit) punctuated with loud bangs and creepy shit happening.

But “effective” doesn’t mean “good.” Once the novelty wears off, we’re left with reiterations of the same concept, and that pisses me off. There was more creativity in the Saw series, which — while often uniquely terrible — at least gave us different deaths each go-around. I keep watching Paranormal Activity movies because I half-expect them to try something new. Will I ever learn?

Probably not. Look, I don’t mind sitting through 90 minutes of people sleeping and occasionally being thrown into walls once a year, but if you want to actually impress me, find something new to do with the found-footage horror genre. At this point, we’re basically over it, because we get how it works. We’ll jump, and then we’ll shrug it off. There is unique work to be done with first-person perspective. It’s just not happening in this series.

Zombie apocalypse guides
Today I got a press release about a new zombie apocalypse guide. I’m not going to link to it, because I refuse to encourage this behavior. This was (or should have been) a single-use idea. Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide is brilliant, because it follows the form of actual survival guides and gives it a fun, supernatural twist.

Treating the horror world with sincerity was a somewhat novel concept at the time, and Brooks’ execution is perfect. It’s hilarious, because you’re reading a how-to guide on an impossible situation, but it’s also a little bit scary — some tiny part of you can’t help thinking, “Wait, but what if…?” Brooks’ novel World War Z works in a similar fashion. I highly recommend both.

But seriously, fuck the knock-offs. We can stop talking about how to survive the zombie apocalypse now. There will never be a zombie apocalypse. I am not sure of most things, but I’m willing to bet on that. If I’m wrong — well, if I’m wrong I’ll be torn apart by the undead, which is at least as bad as hearing you say, “I told you so.” It’s just such an absurd concept to keep milking, and nothing anyone does will stop feeling derivative.

I guess part of me is also annoyed by the way these persistent guides remove the mystery from the supernatural. It’s fun to do every once in a while: tell me how to stop a werewolf, or the best way to ward off vampires. But when you treat this as an actual genre with new, increasingly mechanical installments, you dilute supernatural fiction as a whole. Find a way to make zombies scary again, or move on to mummies.

Horror on television
I would love to see a good horror TV series, but I recognize that’s probably impossible. There are a lot of limitations to the form — on a practical level, a smaller screen size makes it tougher to scare your audience. Also, most shows won’t kill off major characters, so there’s not the same sense of foreboding. And violence, while not essential to all horror, is restricted on non-cable networks.

Still, TV horror could be better. I loved the sequence in the season finale of The Vampire Diaries in which Alaric stalked Rebekah (just smile and nod, non-fans), because it felt like I was watching a slasher movie. On a smaller scale, sure, but the set-up, cinematography, and direction all worked together to give the scene a horror movie feel. More of that, please.

The X-Files used to do it pretty well. But Supernatural is the closest thing we have to The X-Files now, and aside from the fact the current season is awful, it’s just not scary. The pilot was to some extent, so why doesn’t the show try for that anymore? American Horror Story attempted it, but mostly ended up being really gross. I will give the show props for (SPOILER ALERT) killing off essentially every character in the first season. The stakes were high, at least.

One of my silly dreams that I don’t often admit is the creation of a horror anthology series, like Tales From the Crypt. (I’ve seen some episodes of Masters of Horror. Meh.) Perhaps horror doesn’t work episodically: colossal disappointment The River was largely done in by unfortunate pacing and commercial breaks. Anyway, if someone wants to finance Peitzman Presents or whatever, I promise I’ll at least try to creep you out.

I’m not going to agree with an evisceration of a series I’m already quite fond of, but a well written negative review will at least give me something to think about. Eileen Jones’ “The Horror of HBO’s Girls“ for The Exiled is not a well written negative review. It’s actually kind of terrible. And while I usually don’t relish criticizing other writers, I’ve decided Jones’ review merits dissection.

So let’s go through this sucker, paragraph by paragraph!

The tidal wave of reviewer praise for the foul new HBO show Girls has washed up against a wall of resistance recently. But as far as I can tell, nobody, whether praising or blaming, has actually conveyed what this miserable crap-colored show is like to watch.

My first issue with this review? The use of the phrase “crap-colored” as a pejorative. It may seem like a minor point, but Jones later criticizes Girls for not being “real.” Depressing as it may be, the real world is more “crap-colored” than much of what we see on TV. The color scheme Jones objects to is, in my mind, far more grounded than the bubble-gum colors of Glee or anything on ABC Family.

First scene: our homely heroine Hannah, played by writer-director-producer-monster Lena Dunham, is trying to persuade her parents to continue supporting her while she lives and perpetually interns in New York City, where everything looks drably brown. These are immediate tip-offs: we’re in mumblecore territory here. Mumblecore’s an indie film genre about contemporary affluent young white people who don’t know what to do with their lives and are generally dreary and despicable. And indeed, Lena Dunham is a mumblecore film director, who did Tiny Furniture in 2010.

“Homely heroine,” Jones writes, as though Dunham’s unconventional look is a mark against her. She will repeatedly return to this point, callously suggesting that Dunham’s “TV ugly” face and curvy body should be kept off of our TV screens.

But I’m almost as annoyed by Jones’ depiction of mumblecore. Maybe that’s because I love films like Funny Ha Ha and Humpday. These movies (and Girls) capture a very particular life experience, one that is worthy of representation. Our problems are relative: are Hannah’s financial woes on par with Greece’s collapsing economy? Obviously not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not scary as shit to be a creative person in your 20s without a clear idea of where you’re going in life.

Next we have a scene featuring Hannah passively enduring rotten sex with a vile jerk named Adam (Adam Driver). Adam insists that Hannah pretend to be an 11-year-old girl he’s raping after abducting her on her way home from school, and she goes along: fine, whatever. Critic Dave Wiegand, in his rave review of the show, describes this as one of Adam’s “hysterically inappropriate fantasy scenes when he’s having sex.” Yeah, I guess Dave laughed and laughed at those.

Yep, Adam’s a vile jerk, and Girls does nothing to suggest otherwise. He’s a reflection of Hannah’s miserable self-esteem, which—as it does in real life—sometimes manifests itself as sex with someone unworthy. If we’re laughing, it’s because we relate—perhaps we’ve slept with a guy as douchey and noncommittal as Adam. His rape fantasy is, first of all, a fantasy, and second of all, the fantasy of a twentysomething guy who lacks basic courtesy and self-awareness. That’s why it’s funny.

Lena Dunham is getting hosannas from critics for exposing her nude doughy depressing body in humiliating ways throughout the show—makes it all so “real,” somehow. They’re all calling Dunham “the voice of her generation,” and maybe she’s the body of her generation too. She must’ve known she could count on critics to dutifully take dictation when she had her character Hannah ironically describe herself as “the voice of my generation…or of a generation.” You can picture them all noting it down carefully, muttering, “‘Voice of generation’…oh, yeah, that is GOLD.”

Yes, how dare Lena Dunham expose her “doughy depressing body.” (This is Jones’ most offensive phrase, and she should apologize for it.) You know why Hannah’s awkward nakedness makes the show real? Because that’s really Dunham’s naked body, and these are uncomfortable sexual situations that many young women have actually found themselves in. Moreover, what if Dunham’s is “the body of her generation”? Better that than an unhealthy focus on skinniness and “perfection.”

The “voice of my generation” bit is something that many Girls haters have latched on to, apparently unable to identify the irony of the statement. When Hannah says that to her parents, she’s supposed to sound ridiculous—in the same way she sounds ridiculous when she explains that she can’t finish her book of personal essays until she’s lived more of her life. Hannah is both naïve and entitled: these are not qualities Girls is asking us to praise. And if denser critics have chosen to take “the voice of a generation” at face value—well, that’s on them, isn’t it?

There’s been no irony in the way show-creator Dunham augments her generational-voice status by making the PR rounds, talking about how she was inspired to create Girls because she never saw herself or her friends represented on TV shows. So she set out to remedy this by showcasing her particular demographic, the creepy white female.

OK, you can’t have it both ways, Jones. Is Dunham writing for her entire generation, or for the particular demographic you have dubbed “the creepy white female”? It seems to me that she is writing about herself and her friends, which is exactly what she said. She’s writing what she knows, not pretending to speak for all young women. And if you’d object to her assertion that Dunham did not see her friends represented on TV shows, find me another show with characters like those on Girls.

The half-hour show drags on as you meet Hannah’s horrible friends, all of whom hold forth with bizarre self-importance on the topics of sex and abortion and AIDS and media and female identity, even the one who’s a cruel caricature of a provincial inexperienced girl (Zosia Mamet). There’s also the mean, square-jawed, gimlet-eyed “best friend” (Allison Williams), and the nasty Brit bitch (Jemima Kirke). All have hard poker faces and flat affectless voices. It’s impossible to imagine them laughing out loud, or relaxing, or having a nice meal or non-grim sex. Maybe they do those things in later episodes, but like I said, it’s tough to imagine.

Wait, twentysomethings discuss issues with “bizarre self-importance”? Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with people in my age group knows how accurately Girls depicts them. I disagree that Hannah’s friends are “horrible”: I’d categorize them as “flawed.” Some are more likable than others, but that’s the way groups of friends are.

And if they seem too serious for “laughing out loud” or having “non-grim sex,” perhaps that speaks to the same self-importance Jones misidentifies as unintentional. There is no question that the characters on Girls alternately take themselves too seriously and not seriously enough. This is a reflection of real-life, not bad writing.

The backlash against the show has been mainly about the all-whiteness of the cast, the way there are no people in color in Lena Dunham’s NYC except bit-part, background workers here and there. Personally I think people of color have dodged a bullet, and should celebrate their own non-representation in this TV-mumblecore hellscape. While this show slimes along, I like to imagine the whole rest of mixed-race NYC having a terrific time everywhere that Lena Dunham and her friends are not, letting Dunhamites move around in a permanent bubble of privileged-white-girl malevolence, shunned by all decent people.

How interesting that Jones complains about “privileged-white-girl malevolence” when her review itself is so needlessly malevolent. The characters Dunham writes about may not be aware of the bubble in which they live, but that doesn’t mean Dunham isn’t. How else would she capture her peers so accurately? And while they may be a very particular group of people in New York, they do exist. Some of them are even “decent people.”

I’ll skip over the next bit, in which Jones remarks on a controversial tweet by Girls writer Lesley Arfin, and a Gawker post by Max Read. Lesley is a Twitter friend of mine, and Max is a colleague: I think that’s a pretty clear conflict of interest. And there’s so much else wrong in Jones’ review, I think we can overlook this section.

Let’s skip ahead to what Jones incorrectly identifies as the final scene of the first episode—it’s actually the final scene of the second. Incidentally, nothing undermines your credibility as a critic more than making such a glaring factual error. But enough about that.

The final scene features Hannah at a clinic where she’s getting tested for AIDS, a personal obsession of hers. There’s a woman of color as the gynecologist who’s forced to play the role as the wise-subaltern, feeding straight lines to Lena Dunham while squatting between her legs, so Dunham can toss off more of her dubious wit and wisdom about the harsh realities faced by snotty white mumblecore females today.

I loved this scene, and Jones willfully misreads it. In many ways, this is the most annoying part of her review—she refuses to look at what the scene is actually saying, because the words coming out of Hannah’s mouth are, on the surface, so offensive.

Hannah tells the gynecologist that she wishes she had AIDS. She actually says that! And yes, what an ignorant, awful thing to say—but indeed, something that a young woman like Hannah might jokingly assert without thinking about the implications. That same self-obsession, coupled with the desire to be funny before being sincere, is why she fumbles her job interview earlier in the episode. Hannah’s date rape joke isn’t funny: what’s funny is how little she understands about what date rape really means, and why it’s not something to be glib about to a potential employer.

There’s a bit more to Jones’ review, but you get the idea: she’s wrong. She’s wrong on every level, and reviews like hers take away from any legitimate criticism that might be leveled against Girls. It’s backlash for the sake of backlash, without any substance to it.

And maybe that’s how Jones would feel about my blog post. In fact, I welcome her response.