The End of the End
Part Two: Two No-Brainers, Plus: Anticlimactic Torturous Head
by Adam Haynes
Everett Stillwell and myself sit in his cabin. Outside, the night is hostile and frigid. We’re drinking cheap wine, watching TV, and talking about queers. “You really think they’re all that special?” I ask him.
“Why not?” Everett shudders forth a serious belch and I smell sardines. On his slate-colored ten-year-old Trinitron, Ellen gets embarrassed and says something to her girlfriend.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“Sure it was funny!”
“That’s the oldest joke there is. It’s predictable. It’s stupid. They’re not even trying to make it character driven.”
“Yeah,” Everett gives me that sly wink, “but they’re queers.”
“There you go again with this queer talk!”
“This ain’t queer talk, this is straight talk! But you can’t handle it!”
I open another bottle of Boone’s Farm and Ellen cuts to a commercial. “Why don’t you explain it to me, then?” I ask Stillwell, but he’s captivated by this ad for razor blades. It’s transporting him somewhere far away.
Fifteen seconds later he’s looking at me again. “What the fuck did you say? Gimme some of that wine!”
“We’ve been talking about queers for almost a half an hour,” I remind him, watching the old guy chug down a fourth of the bottle.
“Queers, well, them’s a tricky thing.”
“Yeah, how?”
“Take Ellen. Horrible show. Everything you said, predictable, unfunny. All that. But you make her queer. Wammo! Suddenly all those dead jokes can get up and walk around again. Everyone loves it. Gay America loves it because finally they have a national character who acts just as lame and stupid as all those straight people on TV. They love that equality crap. Straight America loves the show because they see a gay character acting just as dumb and predictable as Roseanne or Bill, or Tim.”
“That’s the reason the show’s doing well.”
“Yes. Why else would they make such a big hoopla over Ellen herself being gay? What does her personal sexuality have do with a fictional character she plays?”
“I got you. So, if they say she’s gay in real life at the same time her character becomes gay, then all the cowpokes in middle America, and co-menstruaters up at Smith will think in real life gay people are just as predictable and non-threatening as the characters they play on TV.”
“Exactly. Brilliant.”
“Brilliant because the producers are selling the whole thing as this radical step forward in the gay rights crusade – all that equality crap – when it’s actually one giant leap back.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s all so politically correct, so exactly unchallenging and nice that soybean- and college-fed liberals embrace it with open arms. You can’t have your cake and eat it too without also getting the lobotomy. Just ask that frog queen.”
“Pimping dykism to sell Pepsi. Everyone bends over for hegemonic order. TV conquers all… That reminds me, you think Rite-Aid’s open? I got a sudden urge to get me some new razor blades.”
On the screen Ellen learns an important lesson about homosexuality and plumbing. I realize that, when I squint my eyes, I can see wrinkles under her pancake makeup.
“Hey,” says Everett, “it’s time for Law and Order. Damn, I love that show!” Apparently he’s no longer interested in razor blades. The remote doesn’t work, so he goes over to the TV and punches buttons. When this too fails, he starts screaming and banging on the set.
“Do you believe in God?” he asks me.
“No way,” I say. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“I love peanut butter. And Colgate toothpaste,” he responds, giving the top of the set a good slap. The screen blitzes. Now we are watching NBC. I want to say something about how it’s too easy to compare TV to God or religion but I know he’ll just tell me to shut up.
“So what were we talking about?” Everett’s sitting on the floor in front the TV, like a child.
“Why don’t you come back to the couch? Your head’s in my way.”
“Damn, kid. Too tired. All that exertion. You’ll have to watch through my head.”
I’m not sure why, but that gets me thinking about Matt Damon.
“Matt Damon, who isn‘t thinking about Matt Damon?” says Everett, who has this annoying habit of sometimes reading my mind. “You’re thinking about Matt Damon because he’s just like Ellen.”
“Huh? You mean he’s queer?”
“Naw, naw, it’ll be another seven years before being gay will enhance a male star’s popularity. I was taking about image manipulation. Using that to sell product. Must, must move product.”
“I got yah. Like everyone’s going to see Good Will Hunting because it stars Matt Damon, and he wrote it. Except, the truth is he only wrote a very rough first draft that was some sort of sex thriller which was then rewritten by professionals like thirty-odd times into this arbitrary showcase for him.” “There is no such thing as arbitration, only attrition. You see it yet?”
“Good Will Hunting? You mean you haven’t seen it?” Everett Stillwell being a self-proclaimed film prophet and all that.
“I already told you, the last time I saw a Robin Williams movie I started growing hair on my tongue.”
“Oh, right. Hey, wanna know something?”
“What’s that?”
“There’s this scene toward the end movie where Matt Damon is lying naked on his stomach and he’s got this huge amount of hair in the top of his ass crack.”
“It’s probably because Robin Williams touched him, maybe even rubbed against him.”
“And you know, now that I think about it, there were some other pretty queer things going on in that movie.”
“Hit me.”
Knowing that in like, thirty seconds, Law and Order is going to start, I open my mouth and spew: “Okay, well, the whole thing can be very easily seen as this huge anti-homosexual allegory. You got this cute young man, Matt Damon, who hangs around with his crude, working class buddies. They represent naïve sexuality. This Matt guy’s like real smart. He has the ability to choose what his future, or, sexuality will be. The character’s name is Will. Will Power – get it? So he starts doing hard math with this MIT man, and that’s the homosexual road. You know, all abstracts and esthetics and shit. At one point this MIT man even starts touching his head. Physical contact – sexuality – aimed at the brain. But then Robin Williams comes along as this therapist to try to figure out why Matt is so unstable. Williams is heterosexuality, and, after he enters the picture, it becomes a war as to which person, the personification of homo, or the personification of hetero, ultimately converts our gorgeous hero. In the end, Williams wins and you know it’s true because the last time he and Matt meet, they embrace. Matt asks him if what they’re doing is okay and Williams says, as long as you don’t grab my ass. Get it? This isn’t surprising actually when you think that director Gus Van Sant has a hard-on for homosexual anguish in his pictures.”
“You know what it sounds like to me?”
“What?”
“Like you’re talking out of your ass.”
I let it slide. Stillwell can get righteous when he’s shitty drunk. Leaning back into the couch, I light a cigarette. On the screen, Sam Waterston is saying something that sounds very moral and erect, but I can’t see because Stillwell’s head’s in the way. I can’t see shit through his head.
