My Testimony

11 years and one month ago, I had a revelation...

March 26, 1998

…the time has come for me to face the truth. I am gay. Those three words have been in the back of my mind since I was 14 years old, but until today, I could never say them, even to myself. This can't simply be a stage I'm going through, because stages don't last for 13 years. This realization does not bring me any particular sense of peace or well being, but a sense of loneliness because it throws into chaos all the plans I have for my life.

I don't like going to gay clubs and standing around listening to house music all night long. I think most drag queens have deep-seated emotional issues and I would never be caught dead making a fool of myself at a gay pride parade. Gay pride is a misnomer for my life. I am neither proud nor ashamed of it. It is just who I am.

I have never felt so lonely as when I am in a room full of gay men. I feel no kinship with them. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that we have in common is our sexual desire for men (real men, not effeminate male women). Other than that I am a completely average Black male.

How did I get here? When I am honest with myself, I spent the last 13 years in a fantasy world called Soon. Soon was that completely tangible, yet totally unknown day in the not-to-distant future when this stage of my existence would end. I kept thinking it would come next week, or in a month, or next year, but definitely by the time I was 18 or 21 or 25 or 30. Until today, I was always certain that it would come. Soon.

But Soon never came and now it's time I stopped bullshitting myself. Soon hasn't shown up yet and it probably never will. What the fuck am I going to do now? Soon provided the sufficient fiction on which I based everything in my life.

I know that eventually I will come to terms with my life, my mission and my place in the world. But right now, I feel completely and utterly lost…

At What Price Freedom?

from washingtonpost.com:

During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for "a hard time."

Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

Sometime during those early weeks, Mohammed started talking, providing information that supporters of harsh interrogations would later cite in defending the practices. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney has justified such interrogations by saying that intelligence gained from Mohammed resulted in the takedown of al-Qaeda plots.

But whether harsh tactics were decisive in Mohammed's interrogation may never be conclusively known, in large part because the CIA appears not to have tried traditional tactics for much time, if at all. According to the agency's own accounting, Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times during his first four weeks in a CIA secret prison.

I assume the forced enema was so he wouldn't shit himself during the times when CIA operatives were repeatedly slamming his head into the wall or holding him under water until he almost drowned.

What did we gain from this treatment? According to the same article, the CIA alledges three specific success from this torture: the identification of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla; the discovery of a "Second Wave" attack targeting Los Angeles; and the break-up of the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya cell, an al-Qaeda ally. Other CIA analysts and Obama administration officials dispute these successes, but assuming everything adds up, at what cost was this information obtained.

Well, we certainly can't say that the United States never tortured anyone in its care. Every statement by Bush and Cheney to the contrary is now shown to be a bold-faced lie. Now only did we torture this man, but we engaged in a systematic course of torture of detainees while failing to utilize any established methods of interrogation beyond saying, "Tell me what you know."

On some level, I have to be thankful that that the Dirty Bomb plot was uncovered. That plot involved detonating an explosive in downtown DC that would spread radiation, in addition to any immediate damage done by the blast. If the plot had been successful, I could be dead right now, or dying of radiation-induced cancer. I would rather that information have been obtained by more traditional techniques though.

I worry that this will put our soldiers and other operatives further in harm's way. After all, Al Qaeda operatives cut off people's heads in response to a cartoon depicting a Muslim religious figure. What will they do in retaliation for forced enemas, water-boarding and inflicted head trauma?

I do not envy President Obama's position. On the one hand, if he declines to prosecute those involves, it sends the signal to the world that the US condones these techniques, even while publicly disavowing them. If he seeks prosecution of those involved, including the former President and Vice-President, he risks fracturing the country in ways that might not heal for years or even decades.

The best way to avoid this predicament in the future is to ban these techniques entirely.

I'm back!!

Sorry for the sparseness of posts over the past several weeks. As you can see from the previous post, I bought a house. Err, actually, I will have bought it in a mere 360 monthly payments.

Home ownership is fun. You get to be on the phone with customer service people from Verizon and Comcast and the electric company and the water company who could give a shyt about your little slice of heaven and in fact, may be more than a little jealous. When you look at the lawn and think, "Someone needs to cut this grass," you realize that the someone in question is you. There are also lots of trips to home improvement stores. Every weekend since I closed I have been to Lowes and/or Home Depot at least once.

Sidebar... Must remember not to make eye contact with the latin men lingering on the edges of the parking lot at Home Depot. Although the atmosphere is definitely cruisy, they are cruising for work, not dick and ass. As a rule.

Other observations...

...Home security system salesmen are kinda pushy and not very cute

...The men are much more attractive in hood-adjacent transitional neighborhoods.

...The presence of a Whole Foods Market and a Harris Teeter are the hallmarks of a good neighborhood.

Jezebel's new home

My new car in front of my new house!
Originally uploaded by blkarkitect

Jezebel was feeling cold and lonelyin front of my apartment, so to make her feel better, I bought a house to park her in front of. Jezebel is so proud!

My new car!

My new car!
Originally uploaded by blkarkitect

Well, after 3 years without a working vehicle, I decided to treat myself to a new car for my birthday. Ladies, gentlemen and those who have yet to make a decision, meet Jezebel.