It took me a while to recognize why Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore bothered me.

It’s not because a mega-billionaire author turned around and categorized a major character in a children’s series as gay.  I think that’s hilarious. I’ve never seen an author explicitly validate an entire sub-genre of slash fiction devoted to her work.  Can you imagine Gene Roddenberry standing up and saying “Yeah, you know, you guys were pretty much right about Kirk and Spock. There was a reason they always got themselves mind controlled so they could wrestle each other with their shirts off.”

No, my problem is the justification that Rowling gives.  She talks about Dumbledore’s youthful friendship with the dark wizard Grindelward, and remarks “He met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him.”

I take issue with this reading because it continues a tradition of pointing at close, affectionate male relationships and basically saying “Yeah, that’s just suppressed gayness.” It has the effect of bringing back a different kind of homophobia by saying that anything involving deep emotional bonding between men can’t be affection for its own sake but rather subconscious sexuality.

I, myself, have suffered from this sort of viewpoint.  My friends can tell you that I’m the single worst hugger on the planet. I don’t really hug people; I kind of hang off them like a jacket that’s three sizes two small. It’s even worse when I hug my male friends. Sure, I can take responsibility for my own hugging inadequacies, but when you have a society that says “close male friendships = gay,” it doesn’t really help one to improve one’s hugging prowess.  I need society’s support in my attempts to hold my male friends close without suddenly being the love that dare not speak its name.

There are many famous male friends who shared close, intimate emotional relationships without being gay.  Lewis and Clark. Mason and Dixon. Penn and Teller.  Shatner and Spader.

When I was sixteen, my friend and I got drunk behind a supermarket. (We were subsequently arrested by a pair of Mormon cops, but that’s another story.) We had been a bit estranged prior to that evening, but the alcohol helped remove our emotional inhibitions and we admitted that we cared about each other and that we were, in fact, friends. And yes, we hugged.  Shouldn’t men in our society be able to do this without the influencing factors of alcohol or, worse, Mormonism?

Don’t get me wrong: Rowling is the writer and I completely accept her interpretation of her own character. I’m even entertained by it. I’m simply saying that her justification for the interpretation raises its own problems because it allows very little space for non-sexual male bonding.  To my mind, homosexuality isn’t simply a byproduct of male intimacy but something that specifically denotes sexual attraction.  Well, that and also an extremely intuitive ability to accessorize.

I spent most of last week in Boulder, a trendy college town in Colorado, and got a chance to scratch off one of my life to-dos: try a hookah.

My life to-do list is still pretty long--I still haven’t gone on a safari, had a constellation named after me, or taught traffic school to a classroom full of Maggie Gyllenhaals--but hey, one down is one down.

It cost about $10 per flavor, and I think we chose something like strawberry and watermelon. Sure, those flavors sound pretty weak, but they don’t sell hashish over the counter yet.  And I like them anyway because they taste good and make you forget that you’re turning your lungs into a toxic waste dump.

There are other good aspects of a hookah:

You can talk in a throaty voice and give instructions to Alice:

“One side of the mushroom makes you grow larger; the other one makes you grow shorter.” Jesus, no wonder I never liked mushrooms.

The other thing I learned--or re-learned, to be more accurate--is that I’m too old to hang out in college towns, hookah bars being the exception to the rule.  This is what you tend to realize when you look around and wonder how all these kids got past the guy checking IDs, and realize that they are, in fact, probably 21.  At least, in dog years.

Posted by Greg at 10:56 AM on 10/21/07

(9) Bring It • Link to This

I bought and used my first cordless drill today!  It is cool because you can wave it around and use it even though it’s not plugged into the wall. Which may be self-evident from the term “cordless drill,” but it’s one thing to say it and another thing to experience it.

I’ll tell you one thing, though--I sure am glad I read the instructions before using it.  It says “Do not operate this equipment while under the influence of alcohol.”

Wow!  I sure am grateful to the brain trust that came up with that nugget of zen wisdom.  I only hope it’s not too late to log on to Evite and cancel my “Do Tequila Shots While Helping Greg Install His New Window Blinds” extravaganza!

On a not-entirely unrelated note, I’d like to mention to my friends that yes, I put together the wine cabinet myself.  And yes, that is not necessarily good news considering that I got a B minus in shop because my wooden elephant looked more like an aardvark (I lived Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club*).  And yes, that does mean you shouldn’t make any sudden moves in my living room. Really, it’s a wine cabinet that’s a lot like that cute freshman girl that we all knew in college who was from a strict upbringing and away from home from the first time--you put some wine inside of it, and it starts trembling, and shaking, and basically feeling a little fragile.

*Minus the bit with the flare gun.

My communications person returned from maternity leave, so I excitedly asked the right people what I needed to do to ensure she was reinstated in the company system with regular paychecks and whatnot.

I was told: “She’ll need a note from her doctor.”

I said, “What do you mean? She wasn’t sick. She was having a baby.”

“Being out on maternity leave is technically a kind of disability.”

“Okay, I can sort of see that, but I don’t see why she needs a note from her doctor.”

“The note from the doctor would simply say that she’s able to return to work and no longer disabled.”

No wonder we can’t achieve equal rights across genders; women can’t even have a baby without suddenly becoming candidates for the special olympics. In a just society, there’d be a derogatory term for men who see a pretty girl and then have to walk around with their sweaters pulled down over their jeans, but no, that’s just business as usual and then there’s disabled women having children.

I said, “Look, she’s already back at work, and a cursory glance will reveal that she no longer has a baby inside of her. The baby left her body, much like a kidney stone being passed or the miracle of life or something--one of the two.  Furthermore, she can prove it. She’ll be very happy to show you the baby pictures.  It’s a really nice looking baby.”

”We need a note from her doctor.”

My vote is that we change this system. In order for it be just a bit more high school than it already is, I advocate that pregnant employees deliver a note before they go on maternity leave. But the note should be from the woman’s mother, not her doctor. It should say “Please excuse my daughter for the next five months or so; she will be unable to complete her projects on account of passing on the family genes.” And failing that, I think the least we can do is refer to mothers-to-be--those lifegivers, those childbearers, those goddesses who soldier on for months and suffer terrible pain in order to give us sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren--as differently abled.