Oscar nominations were announced this past week. As if it's in our DNA, it seems that gay men get incredibly excited about the Academy Awards year after year. I know that I do, and I'm not into Judy, Barbra, Cher, or Broadway shows in the least. I don't understand it; it's not as if I'm the one getting nominated, or even mentioned in the pool of possible nominees. Yet when pictures are mentioned, and especially performances, starting in September of every year as generating "Oscar buzz," my eyes zero in and my mind makes a mental note of that film or person come Oscar time. Another odd thing about this is that I usually do not even watch the Academy Awards; they're boring. Like I said, I'm not fucking nominated, so why bother?
Yet it seems like it is the ultimate accolade, is it not? Bigger than the Pulitzer, more esteemed than the Nobel. It seems like it says, "I am worthy, I am lovable, I have made it. I am in the canon of history as being loved and talented." No wonder Sally Field creamed her panties and cried something like "you really like me."
Is there a psychology to this with gay men? We seem to like movies so much (I am generalizing, yes, and I like to do that sometimes). I know that I admire the shit out of good actors (for instance, the cast of LOST - amazingly talented). Is it that they are there creating and I am admiring them? Do I want to be admired? (Yes.) Do I want to create to create or just to be admired for creating? I love good writing and music as well, but nothing seems as admirable as good acting. Is it that they get to be someone else, whilst (<-- who doesn't like to say "whilst" every once in a while?) we gay men have to be...gay. We have had to endure being told that we are bad and gross and weird and strange while having shining lights that burn burn burn and then need extinguishing if one isn't savvy or graced enough to find the correct channel. Everything requires so much work.
My father's father, and his father, were alcoholics. I think I come from a long line of them. My father never called his father "Dad," or "Daddy," or anything other than his first name. This is so they could be buddies when they went into bars. My father began drinking alcohol when he was 10. He went to whorehouses with his father when he was 13. My grandfather had a wet brain. He died in his early 50s when I was 11-years-old. He was skinny, with black hair and blue eyes, like my father. His hair was always slicked back with pomade. I do not remember a smell other than alcohol on him. When I was a child, my father took me to his apartment a few times. He would lie on a sofa with his roommate, his brother-in-law, another alcoholic, with the blinds drawn and a black and white television on. Both men kept buckets next to the couches for hocking phlegm. The bucket on my grandfather's was at least 3 inches full of saliva and phlegm. They would drink, smoke Chesterfields, and hock phlegm. That was my grandfather. When he was 15, my father was riding with his father on the El during rush hour. My grandfather was getting off the stop before my father. As the doors of the El were about to open, he raised his leg like a dog about to piss on a tree, farted wet and loud, and said, "That's for all you motherfuckers. Have a good day." Then he left my father to stand there red-faced and wanting to kill himself until he got off on the next stop. Because they were Catholic, my father's parents never divorced. They simply did not live together after my grandfather moved out when my father was a boy. My grandfather had his apartments. My parents, when they were teenagers in the 1960s, partying, smoking pot, drinking, and doing whatever else, used to hang out at my grandfather's apartment with their friends and get fucked up. My grandfather got possessive of his apartment one day and raged on the kids, screaming, "This is my fucking pad!" My father went on to have six children but never had a father of his own. I feel sad about that.
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