Category: ultrahistorical

I’m a Bad Geek

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big nerd. I was a little slow to give myself over to the world of electronics — I never played video games very much, and I never used a word processor until I was a sophomore in college — but I sure as hell made up for lost time. At this point I can work a computer like it’s an extension of my hands. Technical glitches are generally little more than a series of logically connected hurdles to me, and I’ve got good intuition for technical matters that helps me make a few bold leaps along the way. Software makes sense to me, and I love the speedy efficiency of digital technology. I have no fear of it.

This level of comfort with modern technology extends far beyond the workaday world of computers. Let’s be realistic: even though I may take to computers more easily than others, if I didn’t have some degree of comfort with them I wouldn’t really be able to hold down a job at this point, would I? No, I really like almost all things electronic. I like having an alarm clock that I can set by pushing a couple of buttons while I’m half asleep. I like having voice-mail and managing it without the use of clunky machines and crappy Radio Shack tapes. My six-disk CD player is like having a shrine to music inside my apartment. I pride myself on having not spoken to a bank teller in six years except to open an account or purchase foreign currency. And don’t even get me started on how much e-mail has kept my family and friends together as we’ve scattered across the globe.

A friend once told me that he thought I’d be happiest if I could manage my life while strapped to my computer all day being fed Skittles through a pneumatic tube. This is not true, and not just because the Skittles would send my blood sugar level soaring out of control.

I’m very critical of the media trend —spearheaded by technology pundits,
the advertising efforts of hi-tech companies, and everyone connected to
Wired magazine —that would have us believe that a better world awaits us in which we can fuse the Internet to our television programming, solve problems at work from the beach, and satisfy all our consumer needs without ever leaving home. I like leaving home and think people should get out more often. You don’t have to live in a cramped New York studio to know that there’s plenty more going on in the outside world to amuse people.

I worry about the death of printed matter that techno-doomsayers keep threatening. I worry about becoming more isolated from people on a daily basis than I already am. I worry about homogenization of the things I touch and the things I see and the things I read. While I support technology and the convenience, efficiency, and new opportunities it can offer our culture, I worry about what it’s doing to our critical standards and our self-reliance.

I’m a bad geek, because I also believe in lo-tech.

Continue reading “I’m a Bad Geek”

Is That Really Natural Gas?

Odor-ama numbers
Odor-ama art

Oh, the sad and sorry life of Francine Fishpaw! But the pungently sweet glories of having my very own Odorama card! Carefully preserved since a 1988 showing of “Polyester” at Cinema Village in New York, I only take this out once every couple of years or so in order to let someone or another have their very own sniff of this holy relic.

This card became even more important to me during college, when I went to a double bill of Hairspray and Polyester at the Somerville Theater, hoping to get my hands on another card or two. I was anxious because the show was billed as having the last load of Odorama cards in existence, and sure enough, I arrived five minutes after the last ones had been dispersed.

I’ve heard that New Line Cinema manufactured more cards to be packaged with the laserdisc of the movie, but apparently they were not able to perfectly duplicate all the original smells.

I have HAD It!

One of the recurring themes of my sad, sorry life is my inability to find that ideal sidekick who’s just the right combination of brainiac, goofball, sidekick, hipster, nerd, sexual dynamo, little kid, and muse. Granted, I’m pretty fussy, but I can’t be the only fag in the world whose criteria are so inconveniently eclectic, can I?

Are you wondering if you’re the kind of fella I might like? Browsing around here in the RumpWeb will certainly give you some idea of the kinds of things that capture my interest. Of course, you probably wouldn’t even be considering all this nonsense if the things here didn’t strike a chord with you already. As far as the looks and style issue is concerned, see if you fit the bill by checking out the next page for some visual references.

NOTE TO THE OLD-FASHIONED: If you don’t want to think about this sort of thing, DON’T GO LOOKING AT IT! I’m not saying there’s anything smutty
ahead — there’s definitely not — but there is some pretty strong imagery best left to the eyes of those who care for it, and I don’t want to hear any clucks of
disapproval because you’ve got a hopelessly fifties attitude about my penchant
for other guys.

Continue reading “I have HAD It!”

The Rumpus Room Manifesto

Originally written in February 1994.

I tend to feel disenfranchised, outcast, eccentric. I’ve got feminist sensibilities that make me feel guilty because I’m a man. I feel like my manhood is skewed because I’m not a straight man, so I can’t buy into the whole straight, white male cultural elite mindset. I feel alienated from the gay community because I can’t fathom or play the social/power games I see all over it, I bristle at a lot of its affectations, and can’t understand its rituals and customs. I feel separated from my friends for being too weird or not weird enough. I have no lover, so I don’t feel like I belong to a cozy twosome. At work I feel too young or too powerless and impatient.

My vision of the Rumpus Room . . . is to define my place, my sensibilities, my ideas. Ideally, others will respond, but this project is too personal for me to make concessions for the sake of popularity. I want to use Rumpus Room to explore my philosophy, my humor, my politics, my aesthetic, my abilities.

My vision for the magazine (my marketing vision, my conceptual vision) is to give other people a chance to respond to what’s in Rumpus Room, not allow it to become so half-assed that it becomes accessible to the lowest common denominator.

The rumpus room is a place to gossip, to gab, to argue, to tell jokes, to watch TV, and to play cards and stuff. It’s the rec room, the family room, the living room.

Imagine you’re hearing a low wolf whistle

If you’ve come this far, you should know right off the bat that I’m not holding out for some unearthly hunk that’s so far out of my league that I may as well be playing another sport altogether. Attraction is a delicate balancing act of looks, personality, wit, style, and all that other junk. It’s too hard (and it would be too misleading) for a simple guy like me to try and come up with a bulleted list of stuff that makes me all hot and bothered and sappy and mushy. Of course, I also know what will make me lose track of what I’m thinking if I see it walking down the street. So to give you some idea of what sets my hormones a-raging (as far as purely external qualities go), here are a few quick things to look at.

This “Perfect Love” Business Is Horseshit!

I’m pretty convinced of it. I desperately want to believe that such a thing exists, but I’m immediately suspicious whenever people claim to have found it. I think they’re deluding themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. I think love is out there — I’ve gotten to play the game myself a couple of times. I just don’t think love is perfect. It’s not all goodness and light, chickadees and rainbows. Love at first sight — the happy, Davey Jones eye-twinkle, babytalk love — is a crock. It’s lust that somehow manages to make the successful transition to an actual relationship without too much agony along the way. I think love is made up of lots of compromise, patience, friction, and the reluctance to just bag it when the going gets rough.

Even to me, my words sound a little harsh. Although a lot of the last paragraph is paraphrased from the writings of love guru Leo Buscaglia, it nevertheless has the stink of the charred hair of someone who’s been burned. I must be frank — I have been.

Continue reading “This “Perfect Love” Business Is Horseshit!”

The Painful Truth Is It Might Be Worth It

Written by Mark Scarola

“I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to someone else’s
is about as much as I can stand.”

— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

So, having been informed that the topic of this issue is the ever-elusive “perfect love” (or, as Winnie-the-Pooh might say, “the emotional Heffalump”), I sat down and took pen in hand. Oddly, I simply couldn’t bring pen to paper. At first I thought it might be fear that my current companion would take offense at something I wrote and abandon me, forcing me to rewrite the entire essay. That certainly wasn’t the case, so I stared at the paper for a few minutes, and then it struck me. The problem is that “perfect love” does not exist.

You see, “perfect love” is an oxymoron. Anyone who has experienced love can testify that it is awkward and clumsy, ill-timed and clammy, embarrassing and demeaning, elevating and debasing, and yet there is no greater endeavor. To expect love to be pure joy and elation is to miss exactly what makes it so wonderful. Love allows one to experience the full range and scope of human emotion. The highs give you nosebleeds, and the lows set you up for the bends. Even the time in between is filled with interesting emotional spasms. (Personally, I enjoy the moments following a phone conversation, when I realize I’ve said something very inappropriate, and verbally thrash myself out loud for the next few minutes.) If one experienced only the euphoria and not the nagging doubts, then one is not truly in love but truly moronic. If only the exaggerated moments of self-loathing are explored, then once again, it is not love but phone sex.

True “lovers” are deaf, blind, and mute. They hear the intonations of voice and carefully chosen words of their companion, but are unable to register the meaning of these things, leading them to ask questions like “What do you think he meant when he said he really likes me?” and the inevitable follow-up: “Do you think he really likes me?” One in love sees his lover’s face in microscopic detail, yet is completely incapable of reading its countenance. “What in the world is she staring at?” asks the man who cannot fathom that another might find him attractive. The one in love presumes it is a physical deformity that is being assessed, rather than the beauty he possesses.

Of course, the greatest disability of a person in love, and the one that causes the most pain to those who surround him or her, is the inability to semicoherently express feelings through the use of language. Some try anyway, which is why we are tortured by such songs as “I Can’t Smile Without You,” “I Honestly Love You,” and “Hey, Did You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Girl in the World?” (not to mention “Georgy Girl”). A lover who happens to possess a simulacrum of taste chooses instead to say as little as humanly possible, for fear of blurting out something like, “Hey, you know, Debbie, I just wanna let you know that I got all these feelings and stuff that I got for you and I wanted to let you know because sometimes I think you know but I really don’t know if you do, so I figured I’d tell you.”

Trying to deduce the feelings of your possible mate is perhaps the most anxiety-provoking part of this enigma we call love. And for those of you who need a bit of assistance, I offer an ancient piece of wisdom that I have just recently concocted. My theorem states, “The strength of one’s feelings towards another is directly related to the number of segues used in normal conversation with that significant other.” One who has been smitten by another is often over-cautious when approaching a conversation, especially if the conversation is of no interest to the listener. Rather than directly stating what needs to be said, the conversation is characterized by the use of particularly awkward segues. For example:

Woman: I was thinking that we might see a movie tonight.

Man: That sounds good . . . which reminds me that I just saw a preview
for that new John Waters film, Serial Mom, and I got to thinking that I’d call my Mom because I haven’t talked to her in a while, so I did,
and then I started to feel bad because she hasn’t gone out much since Dad got his goiter, so I invited her along with us tonight, if you don’t mind.

Here we clearly hear the nervousness and hesitance in the man’s words, because I would have rewritten it if we couldn’t. His verbal constipation is demonstrative of his desire to please his companion. Compare this with the speech of a man who has little concern for his prospective mate’s feelings:

Woman: I was thinking that we might see a movie tonight.

Man: Quit yapping, I’m scratching myself.

My theorem is correct! Just as I would have hoped!

Love is buoyant and unsinkable. No, that was the Titanic. Love, in fact, is fragile and easily corrupted. Into each relationship we carry the weight of all our past relationships. We expect love to raise our disenchanted and world-weary spirits and we simultaneously expect it to heal old wounds. What it really does is create new and more painful wounds — so painful that we simply forget about our old scabs, which eventually fall off, leaving us with only the new ones to tend to. Much like a good parachute jump, love must be approached with great fear and determination. (Note: the elderly, those with heart problems, and pregnant women please be warned.) In fact, love is like falling into a bottomless pit with Astroturf walls: one simultaneously feels the euphoria of freefall combined with the intense pain of rug burn when one accidentally brushes the sides.

Despite my obvious wisdom and level-headedness, I would hereby like to let you know that you should discount all that you have read so far. I’m an idiot. I know nothing. I’m in love.

It Just Don’t Come Easy

Welcome, humans, to the second fab-u-luxe trip into the depths of the rumpus
room. As promised, this issue is devoted to “The Search for the Elusive Perfect Love,” a topic near and dear to all of our hearts, presumably. The chat this time has pretty much come to the consensus that love may be out there, and even be worth the painful efforts to find it, but . . .

IT JUST DON’T COME EASY

All in all, this was one hell of a gripe session to put together. Lots of folks bagged on their initial promises to write stories, but that’s okay. Illustrations required hours of thumbing through the books and magazines littering my overstuffed apartment. Without going into the messy details (other than the ones you’ll read about in twenty-one pages), I ran the full-scale of emotions connected with an unsuccessful bid at romance, only to be left with a good story to vent in the rumpus room. Also, I have found myself dirt-poor after putting out issue 1.1, which was slower to catch on than I might have hoped. I don’t even want to get into everything that’s gone down since my family read the last issue . . .

Bitch, bitch, bitch. I’ll stop wallowing in self-pity now (cut me some slack — I just woke up to a rainy Saturday morning in a messy apartment) and get on to the glories of the hot little number you’re holding in your hands. This time around, I’ve invited a few friends, and even a stranger, to spout off on the topic at hand. The results are a nice mix of laughs, fun, and pathos. Like I said last time, this is not for the squeamish or the faint-of-heart: the personal commentary can get pretty raw. On a lighter note, though, we have free stickers in every issue! Seven in all! Paste ’em to your cat, paste ’em on a friend, collect and trade with friends!

Welcome, and remember to wipe your feet at the top of the stairs. There are some snacks and Cokes on the mini-bar, so help yourselves.