My LiveJournal buddy, Prince Charles, hasn’t been in good spirits lately. And who can blame him? Just look at the poor guy! He’s been Prince for the longest time without becoming King, and now all of a sudden everybody thinks he’s a Queen!
Life must have been a series of disappointments for him. If I were Crown Prince of Britain or, like Moby Dick, the Prince of Wales, I’d want to sit on the family throne. Remembering John Wilmot’s lines about the size of King Charles II’s scepter, I’d want to smite commoners just for the fun of it. Scattering my large-ass largesse to the masses, I’d invite random citizens to play checkers. When it would be my turn to say, ‘King me,’ I’d be like ‘Hey wait, I’m already King! Bleat like a sheep and enjoy it, serf!’
But Chuck doesn’t have that. He doesn’t get the crown he gets into an unhappy marriage and then, when things are looking up in the mid-90s, Bruce Dickinson leaves Iron Maiden. Finally, after all these years, just as the media was starting to focus its attention on America and call Bush an idiot for a change, he gets hit by all those allegations of kissing a man and whatnot. It’s hard on a guy.
It’s been rumored (by some late-night comic who I’m stealing from) that the reason Dubya is insisting on all this protection in England is he’s afraid not of anarchists but of the Little Prince lookin’ for some late night love. When you’re quartered in a castle with a raving sex maniac, you don’t want him to be bucking your ham. You’ll get your wind sore.
Naturally, Chuck’s hurt by Dubya’s inconsideration. But I asked him to lend me an ear (because Allah knows he can!) and gave him the best advice: move to Massachusetts. People here won’t care what the papers say, they’ll accept him for who he is a regular guy who likes to write poems about sunsets, get drunk with the boys and bitch about Oliver Cromwell.
Also, he can marry a man if he wants.
And why not? I hate to point out the patently obvious, but men and women have been sleeping with members of the same sex for thousands of years. Even Aristophanes’ proto-sexual cart-wheeling retromingent creatures could be homosexual, and Plato would say ‘Dude, that’s chill!’
The concept of ‘gay’ is a relatively new one, going back to 100 years or so, and it’s a very exclusive term. If you’re ‘gay,’ you immediately attach yourself to a subculture that’s modulated by rules more stringent than say the goth subculture, which merely requires you to wear black and worship Satan. A fairly large number of gay rights activists are heterophobes. And who can really blame them? People tend to think that homosexuality is anything ranging from a disease to an all-encompassing lifestyle. You’re required to flounce around in red sweaters and pink hair if you’re a guy, or be mannish and hairy if you’re a girl. And that’s patently false! I know several mannish and hairy girls who like men and field hockey!
It’s acceptable for females to be ‘bi’ and remain ‘normal’ girls, i.e. objects of sexual attraction. That’s as bad as classifying people on the basis of their sexual orientation, since a woman then is judged solely on the gratification she has to offer. I’m not saying that Jenna Jameson and Sylvia Saint getting it on isn’t hot. It’s incredibly hot, and if I ever lose 100 lbs. and suddenly turn handsome, the first thing I’m going to do is go up to them and say ‘How’re you doin’?’ (Well, that scenario also presupposes that the restraint orders will have been revoked by then, but you get my point.)
But you are not who you do. An English professor once said of Lord Byron: ‘If it moved, chances are that he sexed it.’ And I think Byron’s example is one that we should live up to, i.e., have sex with (or want to have sex with, as in my case) whomever you want, but don’t let it define you. One of my closest male friends (let’s call him Vincent James) started sleeping with guys last semester. (It was an improvement over his ex-girlfriend though!) He rides the ‘bi’-cycle now, but it hasn’t suddenly given him an appreciation for Gloria Gaynor or showering. Vincent James is still the moley, malodorous ugly that he’s always been, headbanging to Minstrel Uthyr and carrying his vodka to class in a clear plastic water bottle just like he used to when the only woman in his life was a woman.
I said all this to His Royal Highness Chuck, and the noble noble was really grateful. He said that whatever the world might throw at him, and whatever his sexual activities may be, he would remain true to his manhood and his public office, and preserve his sense of self-respect. He also denied the charges of having sexual relations with a man. However, given that Vincent James is at the moment spending his semester in London, and constantly talks about his friend Prince from Gloucestershire, I’d take that with a pinch of salt.
Arafat Kazi, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press and can be reached at futhman@thewatsonbrothers.com
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