A home for Alvaro

Alvaro and his daughter

“My daughter is a musician,” were Alvaro’s proud words as we shared a taxi into Caracas. He was the program coordinator for the Witness for Peace delegation that I had come to Venezuela to attend.

“Oh?” I asked, “What does she play?”

“Drums, mostly.” I nodded politely, but I confess, my inner cynic was sniping: Yeah, sure. Everyone’s kid is a brilliant drummer, just like everyone’s kid is a young Picasso. But a few days later, during which Alvaro manouvered, facilitated, and orchestrated our Venezuelan experience with virtuoso skill, something happened that made me question my snark.

We were in his hometown of Barquisimeto, so his wife and daughter had joined us for dinner. While we waited for the pollo to become asado, Alvaro thumped out a rhythm on the table top with fingers and palms.

His daughter, a five year old cherub with more than a sliver of impishness in her smile, looked at his hands for a moment. Maybe a moment and a half. Then her tiny hands were thumping the tabletop too, in perfect sync with her father. I was impressed; maybe she was a musician after all.

Sanare, "The Garden of Lara" (province)

The delegation proceeded to the hill town of Sanare, where Alvaro wrangled meetings with women’s co-operatives, community organizers, and the local radio station. One afternoon I rode with him to run a couple errands, and he pointed out the chaotic scribble of thick black wire that hung on the electrical poles.

“People connect their own wires to steal electricity. Then the power company comes by, installs meters on the lines, and starts charging them. It works, because they don’t have to do all the wiring themselves, saving everyone money and time.”

How’s that for a capsule of Venezuela: people doing what they can to get by, using their own wiles and agency, and a pragmatic government that works with things the way they are to bring everyone into the system. I was marveling at that when we stopped so Alvaro could go run a mysterious errand. “Eh...wait here, okay?” was all he said.

Wheelies for Bolivar

The next day was Simon Bolivar’s birthday, and you’d better believe Venezuela takes notice of The Liberator’s cumpleaños. I sat down to dinner after watching the town celebrate in the tidy plaza, and Alvaro’s secret errand was revealed when he carried out a massive birthday cake. It was birthday season, I guess, since in our five person delegation, two of us had birthdays that week as well. Kathy and I shared space among strawberries with Simon. Birthday solidarity; how wonderfully Venezuelan.

Alvaro and company drumming it out

Stuffed with information, experience, and frosting, we made our way back to Barquisimeto the next day, and Alvaro informed us that his community center had prepared “a little presentation” for us.

Every coastal province in Venezuela has its own Afro-Venezuelan traditions and heritage, with particular rhythms, songs, and drums. This community center performed them all. Grinning faces, welcoming words, and flashing hands from throughout the community piled into the room, and the drumbeats, singing, and guitar chords rose to the rafters.

My cheeks were already sore with enthusiasm, and my foot tingled from ceaseless tapping, when Alvaro’s daughter climbed up to sit on a drum far larger than she was. I thought it was sweet that everyone would indulge the five year old, but then she started playing.

Por dios! He wasn’t kidding, she IS a musician! She thumped and thwacked right along with the best of them, pixie grins breaking out only between songs, as the music filled the night, almost as loudly as the welcome.

I am indebted to Alvaro for all his hard work, both with our delegation and with his community center, which also organizes a massive summer camp for local kids every year. And I just genuinely like the man.

That made it that much worse when I heard that Alvaro’s house collapsed a couple days ago. He, his wife, and their daughter are now on the street in Barquisimeto, and need help raising the funds to rebuild their home.

If you can spare anything to help, I urge you to do so. This is a good man, doing good work, and I have seen firsthand how selfless he is, working tirelessly without pay for his community. Please see his fundraising page at: http://www.gofundme.com/AHomeForAlvaro

An unexpected chance to get killed in Mandalay (reblog)

Apparently this post never made it onto the blogspot version anyway. Oops.

Reminiscing about moto-taxi rides in Myanmar...

“On there?” I asked.
He smiled. “Yeah.”
“Am I going to fall off and die?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”

Folsom Street Fair; or, leashes, lashes, and laughter in San Francisco

It was a perfect Sunday afternoon, all things considered. Soft, warm air that eased around, but that fell far short of windy; and no rain, but solid overcast. Those clouds in particular were crucial, since nobody likes sunburned cheeks or roasted wieners. No, not hot dogs and not faces either, I’m talking about the posteriors being presented and penile plethora on parade on the streets of San Francisco yesterday.

Folsom Street Fair began in 1984 as “Megahood”, at a pivotal moment for the SoMa (South of Market St) neighborhood, which had long been a working-class/industrial/warehouse area, with a large population of sailors from the nearby port and a “skid row” reputation. But it had something else too: a strong identity as a hub of SF’s gay population.

Folsom Street was the heart of the community, and by the 1970s over 30 gay and leather clubs had earned the area the nickname “The Miracle Mile”. Authorities and their “vice squads” periodically raided and closed the bars, but the community held its own against redevelopment initiatives for decades, until the AIDS crisis decimated the population, leaving them vulnerable to the “revitalization” drives of city planners.

Dying, harassed, and terrified of a disease killing with a savagery they had never seen, the community was weakened, but far from defeated. Authorities picked up the pace of bathhouse closures and bar regulation in 1984, and that same year, Megahood/Folsom Street Fair began, declaring to the world, and city planners, that the gay population was still alive and strong.

Today the festival is the third largest single-day spectator event in California, after the Rose Parade presented by Honda, and San Francisco Pride Parade (presented by people with hearts and souls, just like Folsom), with 400,000 people filling 13 city blocks, and generates over $250,000 for local charities working in public health, human services, and the arts.

God I love this city.

Inexplicably, despite having grown up in the Bay Area, I had never been to “Folsom”, and jumped at the chance to go yesterday. Accompanied by my lady and two of her friends, I meandered through the press of leather harnesses, bare booties, and smiles. Leashes, lashes, and laughter. Corsets, ball gags, and unabashed joy. The fair celebrates not just gay and leather culture, but fetishism in general, and expands to be the sort of pan-inclusive acceptance that makes me so proud of my city.

Guiltily aware that it’s the privilege bestowed on me by the random circumstances of my birth, I always enjoy being in the minority, on Zambian trains or Kurdish streets, and now here, surrounded by a press of people so expressively interested in different things than I am; I felt comfort and an upwelling of joy. How beautiful that groups so long stigmatized and discriminated against are able to come together in the sun and dance in the street.

That joy is a great feeling, but was I missing an opportunity? I hunkered down to imagine a world where this was the everyday, a world dedicated and dominated by a sexuality I did not share...would it bother me?

The thought experiment failed, and I can tell you why. Simply being in the minority is not the point, not when the majority is so welcoming and supportive. There was no one shouting hateful “hetero!” in my face, nor denying me any sort of opportunity or possibility based on my natural inclinations. Here, people can just be as they are, the way god/nature/the matrix made them, without shame or condemnation for selves or others. Being in the minority here was less oppressive than being in the minority of people who wish book stores were open until midnight, and I wanted to hug every single person on that street.

Folsom Street Fair isn’t for everyone, and the consensus seems to be that if you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it enough, but I for one cannot wait for next year, to walk among that air of beautiful humanity, love and San Francisco at its finest.

My San Francisco Giants

I couldn’t remember the last time I went to a Giants game, but we definitely had a different president. That ain’t good, for a kid raised on Will Clark, Robbie Thompson, and (my personal favorite, the player whose cards I collected as a grubby-fingered youngling) Brett Butler.

So, back in the Bay Area after a few years among the baseball-deprived, the footie-fanatics, the soccer-seeking-savages, who think ERA is a brand name and OBP a medical disorder, going to a game was on deck. When I heard two of my dearest San Franciscans were going to marry each other, I looked at that beautiful union and thought “There’s an excuse to go to a Giants game.”

The park of my childhood was Candlestick, dug into the edge of San Francisco’s worst neighborhood, a fortress of cement so ominous it looked more like a Soviet mining camp than a stadium. We always peered down at the field from the nosebleed seats, even before I quite understood what that joke meant, but nachos never tasted as good as they did with those fog-chilled fingertips, and a paper cup of sickly sweet hot chocolate was too good for the gods.

Now we sat in a much nicer ballpark, where the fries come soaked in garlic, and beer has moved from an odor to a flavor. So close to the action, I could see the extent of the season’s beards, as well as the ubiquitous advertising, and paused a nostalgic moment to remember the days before branding conquered professional sports, and when prices were less punitive. Then the national anthem finished and my San Francisco Giants took the field.

The uniforms and the energy were the same, and musical queues still provoked their clap-response without my conscious action. The four note “up-down-up-down/Let’s Go Giants” plays and my hands smack out clap, clap, clapclapclap of their own volition. Pavlov’s palms.

A baseball game is the perfect place to hang out. It’s dull enough to allow time and space to sit back and focus on the company of friends, but irascible enough that at any moment you might have to jump up and scream yourself hoarse as that long fly ball decides whether or not to stay fair, or your leadoff hitter digs for two.

And in a world that seems increasingly contrived, political campaigns and international debacles seemingly orchestrated months in advance, baseball remains reliably unpredictable, where the worst team sweeps the best and the rookie strikes out the All Star. And in this Twitter-headed age that requires constant tension, you never know if you’re going to sit through a 0-1 sleeper, or a 9-10 festival of offense. The drama is so much more poignant when it’s real, unpredictable, out of anyone’s control. And this year’s last couple weeks to play have drama to spare, as both my Bay Area teams juggle the Wild Card.

Our game was...beautiful. The first third was a pitching battle, with moments of teasing promise, then clenching danger, and sighs of release when both came to naught. Bottom of the fourth and good solid baseball put the Giants up by 1. High fives until your hands tingle, and the throat needs a drink to cool it down again.

But top of the fifth, they tied it up with a solo shot to right; at least they earned it. More tension, pitches slapping into the catcher’s glove and cracks of the bat that open the eyes, but the side is retired. The seventh inning stretch must have relaxed the dugout too, because the bottom of the inning put us on top by one, again… But top of the ninth, they tied it up.

So. Here we were, in the sort of scenario imagined on playgrounds and vacant lots throughout the ages. Bottom of the ninth. Tie game. Two outs, one on, our star kid (I’m old now, I can call a 27-year old a ‘kid’, especially when he’s as fresh-faced as Buster Posey) walks up to the plate. He settles in. The sold out crowd stands. Fouls and balls, close calls and tricky takes, and it’s a full count. One more strike and we go to extra innings…

But instead it’s a high fly ball, going, going...veering towards the line...hard to tell from where we are...is it going to stay fair? The noise is already crashing when it lands in the seats, and the wave breaks. Beer is undoubtedly flying, somewhere, and no one cares. He rounds the bases while the bass vibrates our seats, and 41,503 people have both arms in the air, and a city is shouting.

We file out in the jubilant crowd, and I walk to the BART station in a steady flow of Giants jerseys, drifts of pot smoke, and the glitter and dance of the Bay Bridge’s nightly light show. Friends, my hometown, and a win for my team: it’s a mighty fine summer night in San Francisco.

"The Bay Lights" nightly show

A tangible reason to care about the future. In San Diego.

San Diego is paisley from above. Curls and loops and whorls of housing developments; conceived at desks, proposed in meetings, and built by contract. All those lives, churning away down there, unknowable, each ostensibly unique, yet seemingly interchangeable through an airplane’s porthole window.

One of those roofs, somewhere in the pattern, shelters my brother, his wife, and the newest bodacious audacity in my familial web: a niece. The niece. The first, perhaps the only, member of our next genetic generation; our reach for eternity; our most tangible reason to care about the future.

The niece

I’ve met enough of our multicrazy species to know that not everyone actually likes their siblings; blessed to genuinely like all four of mine, it feels like a waste not to take advantage of this fact. So as I caught the 992 bus at the airport, transferred to the trolley among beach boys in flip flops and Navy men in spotless dress uniforms, and disembarked in their neighborhood, my enthusiasm was tripartite at the upcoming reunion with a brother and dual introductions, to a new sister and a new baby.

Oh baby, the baby. What is it about babies?

I don’t personally plan to spawn, but that doesn’t mean I am blind to the sacred burble of the baby. I adore those soft tiny creatures, with their jiggly focus and massive craniums. To be in the presence of an organism with its whole life ahead of it is a reminder to love your own days, and to witness the curiosity that knows only relentlessness and insatiability, that exists in a state of genius-level observation, processing, and adaptation, is to have first row seats to Potential.

The niece is teething

Plus their laughs are like Christmas presents a week early; unexpected and pure.

I arrived just after midday in the vigorous San Diego sun, and my brother informed me that things were good, and/but that the wee one had gone down for the night at….10:00 that morning.

Oy. No, no plans to spawn.

But soon she was awake, all bright eyes and damn-bursting grins. Then she was sitting on my arm, a finite package filled with infinite meaning. Looking down into those eyes, I could immediately feel the compulsion to put this creature’s welfare before my own, to undergo hardship and do uncountable things, so that she might have the best life possible.

The niece flies

I can’t imagine what it is to be a parent. Terrifying and glorious. And utterly exhausting, down to the particles of fear, hope, and dedication that fill a parental bloodstream of anemic steel, worn out and indefatigable both.

The niece and me

Three days and one wedding later; one more sibling’s partner wholeheartedly welcomed to my family affection; and caffeinated with enthusiasm for The Niece, I again rose over the paisley whorls of San Diego. I still couldn’t tell you which roof was theirs, but knowing the treasure that lives below it, I couldn’t help but smile at all of them.

Why hang out with men, anyway?

At Man Skills Class we went over splitting wood with a knife, tying some knots, and removing a bra efficiently. These are all skills a woman can have; these are all skills a man doesn’t actually need.

So what’s the point?

My guest blogger suggested: “This class is aimed towards the guy who may feel... uncertain in his masculinity. Unskilled. In need of some self-assurance.”

While I agree that this may be part of the appeal, I think there is more to it. For example: me. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of being a man. I think I do well coping with my testosterone, respecting women, protecting children, treating others kindly, etc. All the really crucial aspects of being a Good Man.

It's amazing how much of the world
features giant spiders

And I've done some “manly” shit, too. I've hacked my way through a jungle or two. Spiders, snakes, and scorpions, oh my. I've gotten out of tense situations without a fight: manly. I’ve explored five continents, usually by myself. And, I have successfully removed a bra or two in my day; even without instruction.

If all that’s true, why would I be drawn to Man Skills class? Because there are other elements, alligators lurking in the swamp of my manly soul, and I think the organizers of this group have tapped into these desires, which are common among men in my situation.

I met that guy in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Anyone who sits in front of a computer all day moving zeros and ones around in a hypothetical universe, then gets up at the end of it to find the physical world unchanged, all his energy channeled into a plastic box that provides pale reassurance of his importance, might feel just a bit...unsatisfied. But when you set the solid weight of the survival knife on the wood, feel the thunk as it bites in, and see the wood fall apart with a crack?

Tangible reward. Satisfaction. Confidence.

Then what? Then the real fun begins. Because as pleasant as splitting wood in a room in the city is, it’s not really real until you do it in nature, arrange the pieces properly, and produce a healthy fire to warm, cook, and protect you from the night. That’s when a simple task has a subtle hint of adventure.

These mundane tasks are a vehicle, to take you into a natural setting, which nourishes the human soul at a profound level that is just not possible in a city. It makes sense of a biological level. Our ancestors quickly learned, and imprinted in our very genes, that a green place, growing things, running water and fresh air, was a good place to be. They hardwired us to find this important, relaxing, healthy. A gray expanse of barren dry rock where nothing grew was a place of stress, anxiety, and fear to be avoided.

Apartments in Hong Kong; can you breathe?

Which of those two landscapes does a city more resemble?

These things alone would be more than enough to draw me to a Man Skills meetup, but there is something else. Something explicitly acknowledged by the organizers in a show of vulnerability that surprised me, and provoked smiles and nods among everyone in attendance...the whole tribe, so to speak.

Isolation is one of the main themes of my life. It lurked around before I started traveling, and I walked openly with it down Serbian streets, through Salvadoran cityscapes, feeding leeches in Malaysian jungles, down the glass canyons of Hong Kong, and beside Venetian canals.

But now, as I move away from open-ended solo traveling, I want to put my life back in balance. I revere the Feminine energy (and will talk at length about the salvation for our species that I think it offers), but have found myself almost ridiculing the Masculine, which seems more intent on smashing beer cans on foreheads and tanks through front doors than on improving the human condition.

But that is not what it means to be a Man. Mindless aggression is for boys and fools. Nor does being a Man mean you have to know how to chop wood, tie a knot, or unclasp a bra, but somewhere in those things (and the multitude of other possibilities), one can find a format, a framework, a setting for the experience of Masculinity and Brotherhood.

That’s the secret fifth element of the Man Skills class, for me: an openness to brotherhood and community. “Social media” is all well and good for cute kitten videos, but it’s hard to fit camaraderie into a comment thread; time spent doing satisfying things with like-minded people? That’s a tribe.

If you’re looking for the same things, drop me a line or check out the Man Skills homepage at manskills.academy. And you’re going to LOVE the camping trips...

What men really want

I hope I’m not going to disappoint you.

Were you expecting (or fearing) a tale of knuckle-dragging meatheads? Jocks, frat-boys, and assorted male stereotypes who think their egos, biceps, and testicles form a sacred trinity entitling them to treat the world as their personal patriarchal fiefdom?

Cuz that's not what I found.

I'll be honest, as usual with humans, I had a script or three that I was prepared to confirm, when I walked into Man Skills class. The most delightfully awful would have been the above douchebaggery, and when the two organizers revealed themselves to be screenworthy specimens of broad shoulders, piercing eyes, and jutting jawlines, it would have been oh-so-easy to scorn them; dislike and dismiss them.

But those bastards had to go and be all...likeable.

And it gets worse. Because not only were they charismatic, but their vision was honest, appealing, and utterly devoid of misogyny. While the concerns and points raised by my lovely lady guest blogger are completely valid, once I heard them speak it was clear the group is consciously and overtly intended to address a need among men, to raise us higher with no corollary of pushing women down.

I'm tempted to expound for pages on masculinity in the modern world. Another day. Suffice to say, people have been railing against the “feminisation” of boys for well over a century, in fact it was this concern that lead to the creation of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. That generation went on to be the rugged dudes grinding up their own bodies in the trenches of The War to End All Wars; hardly wimps, but hardly complete role models either. (Man Skill #153: Dealing with trench foot?)

When the discussion is driven by Fear, it’s easy to get misogynistic overtones, as people lash out at anything they can convince themselves is an enemy. The founders of the Boy Scouts screamed “Women are feminising our sons!” Instead of the Fear, the Man Skills group seeks to address the Feeling. Instead of “Give us back our testicles, she-devil!” they say “We have grown distant from some aspects of the masculine experience.” There’s a pretty sharp difference there.

It should come as a surprise to precisely no one that many men these days feel removed from their masculine side. But before we ask “How do I get in touch with my masculinity?” we need to ask “What IS masculinity?”

A friend pointed out that women are also capable of all the things listed in the Man Skills curriculum, and she's absolutely right. Another reader asked “What do you think Woman Skills 101 would be?” The easy timeworn answers are cooking, cleaning, sewing, and child-raising. That might seem horrifically offensive until you acknowledge that those are skills men should have too.

Because nowadays? A man who doesn’t do any of those traditionally “female skills” is likely to be seen as kind of a jerk.

“How was lunch with Tina?”

“It was nice, but oh my god, did you know Brad never helps change their baby?”

“What, like, never never? Really?”

“I know, right?”

“Wow, I didn’t know he was like that.”

But the feeling is that we really don’t know as many of the “manly” skills as our forefathers did. Today if something breaks, we just buy a new one, but we suspect grandpa knew how to fix it. Mine was also the most sheltered generation to date, when parents tried to keep their kids from ever getting hurt, a trend that has gone through the roof since then. Of course Jim isn’t very good with an axe, little Jimmy wasn’t allowed to use a steak knife until he was 18.

Maybe I should have a class for Child Skills that includes climbing trees, scraping knees, and messing with bees. Except that I’d get sued for all three (and think bees should be protected and assisted, not messed with.)

So...if women are just as able and welcome to start fires, fix cars, and remove lingerie...and men are just as able and welcome to cook, clean, and fix their own damn buttons...what's the point of labeling these skills as male or female?

Maybe there is none.

Or maybe there is something else. Some other purpose this group explicitly addresses. Any guesses what it is? Part Two to follow...

[And let me repeat my marvelous guest blogger's apology for all the heteronormative labels and assumptions throughout these pieces. I wish I was able to more fully embrace the spectrum and variety of the human condition here, but my attempts to do so would be clumsy and wordy. An extension of these ideas to all those facets would be interesting and worthwhile...anybody want to guest blog that one?]

Guest Blog: A Helping Hand

So, now that we’ve all assumed that I’m terribly biased and probably a man-hating, ball-busting, bra-burning, angry feminist - let’s see what the other side might look like. Because there’s always more than one side to a story. And I believe in busting right through stereotypes, when at all possible, don’t you?

Reasons why we should not take offense at the inclusion of one-handed bra-unhooking in Man Skills:

Context

Man Skills. The creator is obviously using some pretty heavy sarcasm here. Further evidence for that is in the invite’s conclusion:

After we are done, we'll drink some beers and talk about how awesome we are. Reserve your spot now or be left in the cold with the growing herd of unprepared men.

He’s poking fun at ‘traditional’ ideals of manhood and male bonding, while using those same concepts to sell a Meetup as a ‘class’ that’s really an excuse to socialize with other men. Do we need to get upset about something that is likely self-aware humor?

Would it be beneficial, in fact, for us to NOT get upset by these types of things? Are we adding to the divide between those who identify as feminists and non-feminists (many of whom are women! See: Katy Perry) when we pounce on relatively small things like this?

Bra Realities

Bra-unhooking IS challenging for someone who isn’t fine-tuning their ability to manipulate the minuscule hook-and-eye set-up on a daily basis. Those things are fidgety; you can easily get one hook undone, then another, only to find that by the last hook, the first one has slipped back into its little eye again! Sneaky little buggers...

I know plenty of women who, despite years of bra-wrangling, have given up the fight entirely. They just put their bras on around their waist, with the hooks in front where they can be seen clearly, then do them up, turn them around, and: voilà! Bra on. Reverse the technique for removal.

And your average, straight male has pretty limited experience - only needing to unhook them when undressing a partner, which, let’s face it, is not the optimal time to be learning a finicky skill, or any skill for that matter. People tend to be somewhat...preoccupied in such moments, the blood literally going elsewhere.

Furthermore, how often does the act of undressing a partner happen? If you’re single, unless you’re Don Juan: not that often. And your average man is definitely not Don Juan. According to various US statistics, by the time he hits 45, the average male will have had 6 to 8 sexual partners.

All that to say: bra closures are pesky little things, and men have scant time and opportunities to figure them out under less-than-optimal learning conditions.

Target Audience

This class is aimed towards the guy who may feel...uncertain in his masculinity. Unskilled. In need of some self-assurance.

Being unable to get. the. damn. bra. off. can sometimes kill the mood, not to mention kill other, um, burgeoning things. Conceivably some men could also be concerned about triggering performance issues. They imagine a scene where foreplay has been halted by a struggle that may have involved inadvertently jabbing their partner’s back with tiny metal prongs; where the woman might deduce that he has no sexual skills, if he can’t even remove a bra.

If she’s still interested in continuing at that point, her expectations might be set to ‘ok, show me what you’ve got, because I have serious doubts’. No pressure there…

If you’re already a little shy, inexperienced, or just plain self-conscious, that could feel like a recipe for disaster. Anyone have Viagra on hand?

Intended message

You could even argue that being able to remove a bra without a fight to the bra-hook death, is a man’s way of showing that he cares. “I’m capable. I can take care of you. I want this to be a pleasurable experience for you. I can show you a good time.” Is it what every guy is trying to say by learning that skill? No. But maybe some men are? Perhaps a good portion of them even?

Do you have any more reasons why this isn’t a sexist class/lesson? Or why it is?

And for my curiosity, after reading both angles on the question, vote in the poll on the vagabondurges.com version.