San Noirsisco

I just want to be white and male, to insist on being what I am, which means I want to be myself, whatever I may be, without a sign in my window advertising the virtues of my awareness. As far as my prejudices in both individual and group politics, I would dearly love to see everyone respect everyone else, while using the common sense of the golden rule, which I know is much too much to ask, but will insist on nevertheless. I will not retreat into my whiteness or my masculinity, or overreach unnaturally to blackness or yellowness of whatever other color or sex a human being comes in; I really don’t care what you look like or if you have a penis for a knee or a vagina for an eyelash. I don’t care, knowing the price you must have paid for the transformation.

Compassion is practical, the most real, viable, politically expedient form of leadership there is, but as a white male I am interested in learning how many of the people who stormed the Capitol January 6th are the beneficiaries of some sort of government ‘assistance’—SS, food stamps, FHA or Small Biz loans etc. I feel it’s my journalistic right-to-know.

As to hugging during the pandemic? I actually like not hugging, not liking being hugged in the first place, and especially not liking the social expectations of the hug, that there is always the giver of the hug and the receiver and rarely are they equals, as one relies on reciprocity and the other on the hug as a perfunctory status symbol signifying one’s cultural superiority, or at least one’s ability to use the word auto de fe and know what it means and how to pronounce it correctly.

And yet as clearly as I can see that this is the case regarding the hug, I continue to be sustained by the fantasy that some day I’ll wake up and find that the world has finally accepted the concept of a universal living wage, and is busy creating a system for the equitable distribution of resources, free from petty nationalism etc etc, so that no one goes hungry or without adequate shelter.

San Francisco, from Jackson Square, as shot through the noir lens, Friday, March 19, 2021