Sauna night at Olivin

I’m not certain, but I think the last time that I was at the sauna may have been with my blind date.  He was very tall, lean, dark haired and handsome.  A basketball coach. He was beautiful naked but strangely shy.  I liked him for that and had to resist staring.

But that was then.  Tonight, Eleni and I are in the showers when she says, hey, this is where we first met.

Of course.  I had forgotten.  We two lovers then of the same man meeting for the first time.  And here we are two years later, or nearly so as Eleni points out.  Speaking of the lover is, by my decision, verboten.  Eleni is bursting at the seams though, wanting to whisper to me of their last encounter as we sweat it out in the sauna room.  I stop her and we whisper instead of people sharing the evening with us here.  One man, standing outside in the rear garden under the cold shower had turned our way, innocently enough, cooling off from the scented heat of the last Aufguss.  Eleni and I look at each other, our mouths fallen open.  Oh my, say her eyes.  Oh my, say mine.  And we share a low giggle.

Two weeks ago in Vienna

Goldegg

At breakfast in Vienna with Ralf
Posted via Pixelpipe.

McCain beat by a community organizer. And now, the real work.

I have had about 3 hours of sleep but still didn’t manage to be awake for the 11 a.m. EST call of the election.  Vicki rang up at 7, sounding more calm than she had in weeks.

All the jubilation about the Obama victory aside, we are all still awaiting the results of California’s Proposition 8.

Mr. Obama, as everyone declares your election “transcendence” over historical bigotry, I will look to you — the media’s celebrated biracial prodigy — to take a stronger and more principled stance in support of same-sex marriage.

And, no, “civil unions” are not the same.

I look forward (my god, for the first time in many, many years) to our country walking a new path.

I’m not an elitist, but I embrace my racism

Wow.

Wow.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she [Hillary Clinton] said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

It’s 1 a.m. and I have been sitting with this one for a while now.

WTF.

The Pillory for Billary

Imagine, if you will, that a prominent corporation is holding final talks for its CEO position and one of the leading applicants invites her spouse to speak on her behalf at the last interview.

Welcome to the “Billary” campaign for Brand America.

To whomever coined the Billary term, my nod for the apt neologism. It should be a place of shame and public scorn — for the Hillary Clinton campaign specifically and for women in politics in general — that Frau Clinton cannot run a campaign for the most influential position in world politics without her husband holding solo press conferences that snipe at her political opponent.

In Monday’s ABC Morning News interview, Obama responds, “You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling.”

That’s an understatement.

There’s no doubt that President Clinton’s time on the campaign trail has directly influenced the race. Indeed, CNN reports that yesterday’s exit polling in South Carolina may have created a net negative effect that handed the state to Obama. And one Charleston reporter for the Sunday Times went so far as to say “Bill Clinton’s emergence as the leading attack dog for his wife raises the vexing question of whether Hillary can win and govern without him.”

…a position that the Republican Party will be sure to exploit should Billary win the Democratic nomination.

Disturbingly, Frau Clinton’s campaign remains not only unapologetic but defensive of President Clinton’s meddling.

Enough already!

It is either time to put “Billary” aside and have Hilary Clinton re-emerge as a qualified candidate on her own merits or for Democratic voters to decide that she evidently doesn’t have what it takes to become President of the United States of America.

–

Bonus link: Bill Clinton says, “Screw it. I’m in.” (The Onion, 23 Jan 2008)

It’s been 2 years

…and Berlin still holds me close. Do I dare leave? Even for a moment?

Homeward I go.

Home.

Where is that exactly?

Just 30 more days and I will fly back for my first visit in two fleet-footed years. I’ve seen Amsterdam again in the time since. And both Begur and Barcelona, although I neglected to blog of it.

But heading back for three weeks in D.C. seems practically unreal. How could I have been away for so long?

How can it be that as quickly as I will arrive, I will be gone again.

Friends here occasionally ask me what I miss.

Well, it sure ain’t politics. (Although seeing Hilary Clinton eat crow on CNN in the post-Iowa fallout sure felt nice.)

I miss veggie burgers at the American City Diner with Vicki. Chocolate bread pudding, tofu-avocado salad, Tex-Mex-Salvadoran… And just yesterday, Meg, Kathy and I were chatting about RT’s and the best calamari in town.

It will be a food tour!

And, no doubt, I will be craving a Berliner Currywurst by the time it is all done.

It’s nearly 1:30 a.m. here. Alex comes tomorrow and we will paint my kitchen wall into a big ol’ magnetized chalkboard. (Maybe that’s it: Home is Where the Paint Is.)

Time for bed.

See you all soon.

No, no, really.

Soon.

—

P.S. I miss you too.

Two years and I am still very much

Yours.

Dumb-Ass Dobbs

It is unfortunate that I must torture myself with watching the news at breakfast, of course. And especially in these months and days counting down to a U.S. presidential election. But torture myself I do, and this morning with Larry King Live on CNN. Larry was speaking last night with Lou Dobbs, re-Christened here to the more appropriate name DAD, who is shilling his “Independence Day: The Awakening of the American Spirit.”*

But back to CNN.

DAD wants to pass on his wisdom to the U.S. public.

Oh?

Here’s just a few gems of that Dobbs would like CNN viewers to believe.

On Governor Eliot Spitzer’s initiative to have only legally licensed drivers on New York streets, including undocumented immigrants, Dobbs: “What is the purpose of an American driver’s license? It’s de facto citizenship.”

For those of you not familiar with the process, USA.gov clarifies that “a U.S. driver’s license is not a federal document, but it’s a permit issued by one of the 50 states’ motor vehicle departments.”

Wow. I bet any immigrant applying for a U.S. green card knows the difference between citizenship and a driver’s test, so why not you, DAD?

On the state of education in the U.S., Dobbs: “Almost half of the black students in the country are dropping out of high school.”

I am sure this will be a matter of surprise for the U.S. Department of Education, whose most current statistics show 10.4 percent for blacks and 6.0 percent for whites.

From whom are you getting your information, DAD? The Klan?

On his detractors, Dobbs: “The fact of the matter is I have tried to bring rationality — despite the accusations of xenophobia, racism, nonsense…”

How could we ever doubt you, DAD?

–
* I am hyperlinking DAD’s book to the Noam Chomsky website to better awaken my fellow Americans. (You’re welcome.)

I expect better, Obama!

Vicki sent me a WTF message today on the McClurkin-Obama controversy. As the queer press is spinning it, the Obama campaign has gotten into bed with an anti-gay gospel singer. I would love to believe differently but, yeah Vicki, my own mini-research backs it up. Dang. WTF.

So I have some some questions for my fellow Obama supporters.

1) Why a gospel tour at all? We Black folks listen to all kinds of music, and gospel is the least of it these days. What’s with the religious pandering?

2) And what’s with the Obama staff’s lack of oversight? In the Google era, surely the Obama team could have read about his views in advance and averted this disaster by not inviting him along at all.

3) Why not admit fault? Gaffs will occur, but I cannot believe that the Obama team is willing to endure this crisis rather than simply ask this man to step aside. If McClurkin’s as supportive of the Obama campaign as he insists in today’s press, certainly he would choose to step aside for the greater good of the campaign?

To which, McClurkin states in today’s paper that he is not anti-gay. I went back to his piece in Charisma Magazine, and can only note that he’s mincing words (i.e. “God hates the sin, not the sinner.”) I’ve been there as a Christian, and know that this place of pity is not the same as supporting a LGBT rights agenda.

Here’s a clip from the article:

“These tendencies surfaced because a broken man thrust an 8-year-old boy into this whirlwind. Thus my first sexual relationship was with a man. Before I could ever know the purpose or pleasure of a woman, have my first date or even my first kiss, the wound was inflicted, and the seed was planted.”

Before you go all liberal with this “he’s just talking about his own experience” stuff, let’s clarify that he’s hooked “a message” onto this experience for his fellow Christians.

“There may be some who will read this and resent some of the statements made about homosexuality. I understand. Some have no desire to change this lifestyle. But there are countless numbers of people who are not happy in this lifestyle and want to be freed from it…For them, I write this without apology, knowing that I’ve been through this and have experienced God’s power to change my lifestyle. I believed that I was meant to be a whole man, made for one woman, and God brought it all about. I am delivered, and I know God can deliver others too.”

McClurkin wrote a book with this same message, by the way.

McClurkin sees those “in the lifestyle” as broken people, abused and in need of healing just as he was. While I understand and support his quest to understand the affect of his rape on his sexual development, the message of “gays are broken and should be delivered by God from their sin” has given succor to the hatemongers (including Our Dear Idiot, Mr. Bush).

And, hey, this idea that violence turns victims from their real sexual orientation should be scoffed at. Indeed, you Andrea Dworkin fans notwithstanding, I think we can all agree that the Obama campaign would (and should) run from someone who’d issue a statement like that on the origins of female heterosexuality.

To which, let’s rightfully ask the Obama campaign why they believe defending this performer under the “Embrace the Change” banner makes sense.

—

Related: Nooses in the news. WTF.

Voices

On 7/29/07, Tammi L. Coles wrote:

Raining men here, metaphorically and literally.
Was with Thomas this morning at his place when
we heard a loud crashing of glass, a scream, a thud
and then more screaming. A man had fallen (or
jumped?) from a fourth floor window. I stroked his
back until the ambulance crew arrived, trying to keep
him calm. Thomas and I were both pretty shaken
thereafter. Not even 7:30 in the morning, and hard to
return to sleep.

At least it was dry then, and I didn’t have to see the
rain carry his blood about the ground. Pouring cats
and dogs now.

Copying this to Nielsy because how many times do I want
to tell that story?? For the blog? ((shudder))

Miss you both.

Tammi

—

8/1/07

The neighbors have been talking. They remember us in the courtyard with the police, the blood and our fallen man. They come to Thomas for news and to offer… what can they do exactly?

His friend finally brings news. The hospital. His legs. An induced coma. But what we want to know is

Why? asks Thomas.
Why?

Voices, said the friend. He suffers from schizophrenia had stopped taking his medication. He was hearing voices and, speculates the friend, wanted them to stop.

Balcony daze, part two

I never get sick, Adam said, snuffling and sneezing about the office. I watched him carefully: where he put his hand on the doorknob, the way he held the phone…

My body fought it for most of the weekend. But late on Sunday afternoon I fell into Griebnitzee, and climbed out, laughing, in my soaking sundress. Maybe that was enough. (But, oh, What a glorious day we had!)

So I am home sick. And without “the nighttime sneezing, sniffling, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine” of good ol’ American television to keep me company.

Still, I have my memories of a wonderful weekend. A kick-ass Modest Mouse concert on Thursday night with Niels and Julian, crowned by sex on the balcony in the late cool air. Then the six of us — Julian, Jill, Rossi, Steffi, Horst, and I — crowded out there on Friday night, laughing and drinking and making right idiots of ourselves. Saturday’s race from the crowded Freibad Pankow with Stephanie, landing just moments before the rain shower at her favorite chocolate cafe. Mmmm. Kakao. Fantastic. The so-late-it’s-dawn of Sunday morning, leaning against Julian in the queue for the Berghain before finally giving in to our exhaustion and cycling home. Later, in the heat of the day, kayaking on the lake — oh the lake! — with Nils and Jenny, whom I met the same day. Afterwards, a late night of relaxing with Wendy, David, and Julian at the Angus on Kreuzbergstrasse.

Even worn, sore and ill, I couldn’t resist the balcony this morning. I’ve planted flowers and herbs — Niels even pointed out my very first tomato. Wunderbar.

P.S. to Julian: are we there yet?