2007-06-02 - 7:28 p.m.
This fellow with the TB just makes me laugh and laugh, I gotta say. Am I being unduly spiteful if I admit that I kind of hope he comes to an unpleasant end?
Yes, I suppose that is rather a revolting thing to say. After all, he’s damned cute. And, the truth is, he might be the first idiot to contract TB -- putting hundreds, if not thousands of people at risk of contracting a fatal illness -- to still come through with his own TV and movie deal. I mean, he’s one good looking fellow.
But, really, what a dope! No, that is not the right word: He’s an asshole, that’s what he is. A pompous upper middle class white guy -- beautiful and jocky, used to getting his way in every single way in our society, who decided that the rules simply didn’t apply to him.
“So I am sick?” he says to himself. “So I might transmit a ghastly form of TB to all the passengers on the 767 jet from Italy to Montreal, and then to Greece? So folks with bad lungs might just drop dead from one whif of the disgusting germ I am carrying in my fetid, upper middle class, entitled lungs?”
“Oh well! Sucks to be them!”
“After all, am I not one of the Beautiful People? I mean, look at my snazzy suit! Look at the JFK Jr. chiseled chin! I am a young lawyer, so you KNOW I am well educated. And I am marrying into big money!”
“So, you see, dear hearts, other folks don’t matter. And rules were made to be broken – particularly those rules prohibiting people with TB from traveling on airplanes with sealed ventilation systems that pump disgusting germs from one end of the plane to the other, and then back again, and then back again again, until the 16 hour flight lands, and the flight attendant pops open the door.”
The story is funny on so many levels, really: First, there is the fact that you’ve got this entitled, rich, white Alpha Male dude in his God’s anointed late 20s/early 30s, who clearly thinks that the rules don’t apply to him. He is told in no uncertain terms that he is carrying a most lethal and vile disease – it’s a disease that’s grinding his little lungs to mulch, turning them into sodden bags of viscid goo.
And, even more absurd, his father in law turns out to be the very man in charge of investigating TB for the Center for Disease Control. So are you telling me the jerk off had no idea of what to do if he contracts TB? Oh, what a good idea – let’s go flying!
One suspects the psychological underpinnings behind the man’s decisions are probably quite fascinating. Because don’t think for a moment that this was a simple case of a man behaving ignorantly. He knew all he needed to know about TB and how to treat it. He did what he did knowingly, oh so knowingly. So why did he do this? Spite?
Was he like those guys who are diagnosed with AIDS but who still go out and have unsafe sex without telling people they’re sick? Those guys get tried for murder – but this fellow is likely only to get “best wishes on your wedding!” cards.
But in a wider scope, as you know, this also says something about the so-called screening process at our borders. I mean, if you read the article in the New York Times, the guy at customs didn’t stop the man, even though he was on a “do not fly” watch list because, um, “He didn’t look sick.” No, he didn’t did he? He looked like a rich lawyer. A white guy. An ex college football star. One of the American Brahmins.
I assure you, if he was a black guy, with big ole eyes, or a Mexican American guy with a thick accent, he would have been dragged off to a little room, beaten with a rubber hose, and then subjected to hours of painful tests until he screeched for Allah and then some.
But, no: He didn’t “look sick.” So by all means – let him fly! Let him be some disgusting Typhoid Yuppie infecting the world so he can have a pretty wedding at The Hotel DiCaprio somewhere, following his cruise of the Island of Tostatos or whatever.
Oh and now the damned TB carrier is giving gigantic press conferences in which he is shown snuggling with his wife, who is generally posed in a white mask that perfectly matches the clingy tank top that barely covers her huge knockers.
The latest report states that the fellow is moaning and sighing, “Geee! I hope that they forgive me!”
Forgive you? I hope that they sue your ass! I hope they sue you so much you are forced to work in the drive thru of the local El Pollo Loco! That would suit me just fine!
Anyway, as you can tell from all this, I am particularly incensed by this story because I myself have a chest cold. And, as is only natural when I have a chest cold, my thoughts inevitably turn to those of TB. After all, I am quite the hypochondriac, and it seems only too likely that I somehow caught this jerk’s incurable TB, even though I am in LA and he went through Montreal, Philadelphia, and Rome. I was in Montreal once! So I might have got it that way.
Mind you, I must confess that I was even more incensed by another article in the New York Times, which was on the same page as the article as the TB guy. This article was about how folks do not manage to save for retirement. And the gist of the piece was that one must be exceedingly sensible and save all one’s pennies if one doesn’t want to be pushing a shopping cart and living in a cardboard box on Alverado and Wilshire when one is sixty five.
And, worst yet, it turns out that I have made every single mistake that the article warns you about, from not putting aside enough money every month for an IRA or a 401 K or whatever, to being a spend thrift in my daily life.
“One thing you must do,” this article states, “Is stop having little luxuries like lattes and muffins – they add up and you can save the money for something more worthwhile!” Oh dear.
But the truth is there really isn’t that much I can do about it now. For another thing the article stated is that if you start saving in your 20s, you only need to put aside 50 bucks a month to have something like a $200,000 nest egg when you retire. However, if you are to start saving in 45, which is only I shudder to admit, a few years away – well, in that case, you need to save something like $1,950 a month. A month!
Well, perhaps I shall be lucky and die young. That does seem to be my only option for success. Just after reading this article, I was talking it over with my dear mother over some soup at Amelia’s, and she mused, “Yes, you do have a point.”
She noted, “It’s true, there might be a bit of an inheritance coming from Rich Grandma, but you have to remember – your stepdad and I will probably spend it all. I mean, why not, right? But you’ll come up with something. You always do.”
Reassuring.
Meanwhile, I just picked up the most recent issue of IN Magazine, which I discover to my horror is announcing that Gay Pride Week is just a week away. For goodness sakes! Do they have to do this odious thing every year?
Is it my imagination or is Gay Pride Week really somewhat of an anachronism? It seems to me that more young folks than ever are refusing to “label” themselves as gay and choose to present themselves as being attracted to whatever they are attracted to each other at the moment. Yes, it’s true, a lot of these folks are creepy, self denying closet cases, but others are true creatures of the Zeitgeist who really do eschew labels and whatnot.
So who is gay pride for, then? Why, it is just an opportunity to showcase the loathsome mainstream gay culture of twinkiness and bubblegum and lame comedy. Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand and Madonna and Britney and who’s the latest one, I wouldn’t know, I’m in my dotage.
I mean, before gay pride we had authors, artists, and intellectuals like Marcel Proust, E. M. Forster, Michelangelo, and Albert Turing. Nowadays, just look at this issue of IN. We have Ant, that excessively loathsome comedian and host of “America’s Greatest Celebrity Pigs Lose Weight” or whatever it’s called.
We have that old goat Michael Kearns, yapping about how all actors should come out of the closet. There’s that talentless Chad Wright, with his creepy eyes. We have the usual profiles of Ivy Bottini, the doubtlessly pleasant but utterly inconsequential real estate agent lesbian, and of Harvey Kite, the old fellow who did something rather important about gay life, I am sure, but no one remembers and if he did do something for the gays, they don’t deserve it because all they do is dance and have sex anyway.
And look at the so-called “Gay Pride Calendar” for the “party” being held after the parade. I mean, Jesus. Look at the list of has beens and never weres and PR hungry queens desperate for stage time. I mean, Billy Masters as the MC, assisted by the drag queen Momma? Then you have a song by Tiffany, the washed up ‘80s pop star, followed by Martha Wash and Ant (again)? This is the best that the gays can do? I swear, it’s better to be in the closet.
Anyway, I am over the whole thing because you know that after the parade everyone goes to the Zone and slurps on cocks in the dark room where no one can see them and where they can’t see anyone. And that is the true definition of gay pride, when push comes to shove.
