The Capital limes OPINION/EPITORIAL Monday, December 7,1998 111
New crusade will remedy the scourge of our nation
By Crispin Sartwell
Adviser
Though the Bible enjoins us to love our
fellow man, I have always preferred women.
I admit frankly that I am a heterosexual. But
with God’s help all things are possible, and I
am praying to be healed.
Heterosexuality is a disease, like alcohol
ism and kleptomania, from which I also suf
fer. When you think about it, many if not most
of the terrible problems of human beings are
caused by heterosexuality.
If Adam and Eve had been gay, there would
have been no fall. If Paris and Helen had been
gay, there would have been no Trojan war. If
Bill Clinton had been gay, there would have
been no DNA on the blue dress. Statistics
show that heterosexuality is often a factor in
spouse abuse, rape, teenage pregnancy, abor
tion, adultery, divorce, overpopulation, sexual
harassment and NASCAR racing. Astound
ing? Yes. Yet that is what statistics show.
As God looks down and ponders the apoca
lypse, heterosexuality is soaking the moral
fabric of our great nation in gasoline and
lighting a match. Most pornography is aimed
at heterosexuals, and most prostitutes cater
to them. Many heterosexuals engage in anal
sex and masturbation. Many pederasts are
Shopping can quickly kill almost anyone's holiday spirit
Continued from page 10
like animal dung in “country-fresh” air on
the turnpike.
I duck into a store, but feel a mounting re
sistance to movement: every aisle is crowded
with people and their kids and toys. I begin
to get hot, really uncomfortably hot, and I
stumble in between groupings of these per
sons who are getting a head start on what jun
ior wants this year.
And junior’s letting the parent people know
in loud voices: “I want this and this and this
and this. Hey, come here! I really, really want
this. Mommeee, Mom look, come here, I
want this, too.”
If that’s not getting the parents attention,
some are singing it persistently into a Spice
Girls microphone, “I’ll tell ya what I want, I
really, really want this.”
A group of adolescent girls finds a display
of “Blues Clues” paraphernalia that makes
them all begin to sing loudly, “We just fig
ured out Blues Clues, we just figured out
Blues Clues, we just figured out Blues Clues,
because we’re really smart.” They shriek and
collapse into hysterical laughter.
The Spice Girls mic is free, so one of them
picks it up and starts crooning in a loud mono
tone, “I just figured out Blues Clues ...”
I press on toward the back of the store, but
the store’s music is loudest there under the
speaker. I was in here a month ago to get a
birthday gift, and the music playing over and
over was Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
At the time I thought it was a very odd choice
As God looks down and ponders the
apocalypse, heterosexuality is soaking the
moral fabric of our great nation in gasoline
and lighting a match... Clearly
heterosexuality is tearing apart the
American family, the foundation of our
beloved way of life. We cannot sit idly by if
there is any hope for change.
heterosexuals. Clearly heterosexuality is tear
ing apart the American family, the founda
tion of our beloved way of life. We cannot
sit idly by if there is any hope for change.
And I am here to testify that there is indeed
hope. I am not a bad person praying to be
good, but a sick person praying to be well. I
think I will probably always have fantasies
about women, but perhaps if I have enough
kinky sex with enough men I will find my
deeply buried homosexual self. That’s why
my minister has me frenching every Tom,
Dick, and Harry I can lay my lips on.
of music for a toy store, but now I get it: it
was the employees anthem to bolster them
for the holiday season. Especially since the
music playing now is “Grandma Got Run
Over By A Rain Deer.”
I focus on the present for a second, I hear
the words, “You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch”
coming over the
speaker. I feel visible
and absurd; the line is
long, Barbie will just
have to go without
pajamas on Christ
mas Eve.
I am carried along
with the flow into the
center of the mall.
The bright sunlight is
streaming down onto
the center court,
where Santa has parked himself for a while.
I stare at him for a few minutes. That people
around the world perpetuate the myth of an
elderly man who wears outlandish velvet
pajamas (and only ever that), has hair like a
wild mountain man, and holds the conferred
role of “Keeper and Granter of Materialistic
Dreams” is astonishingly bizarre.
I keep drifting and hear a different holiday
song coming loudly from every store I pass,
all in competition with the mail’s own omni
present music track. I am losing ambition to
even walk, and my head has begun to drill a
sharp ache from the inside out, or maybe it’s
the outside trying to get in. I am starting to
sigh deeply, like I’m carrying a heavy load
I’m beginning to
feel aisle-rage...
Barbie will just
have to go without
pajamas.
The folks who are helping transform me
from butch bubba to flamboyant swish love
me in the deepest, most physical sense. They
hate the sin and love the sinner. They love
me and hate my sexuality. They love me and
hate what I do, love me and hate who I am.
Rarely have I experienced a love like that.
I’ve stopped listening to Hank Williams,
Jr. and started listening to disco. I’ve switched
from Pabst to Chardonnay, Hustler to Blue
Boy.
I don’t yet enjoy having sex with men. I
still need to imbibe a double dose of my medi-
on my back.
I enter a department store. People clog the
aisle of every way I turn: every damn one.
They act annoyed that I’d like to get by them.
Everyone seems to be in this aisle-hog mode.
I’m beginning to feel aisle-rage.
I see the artificial Christmas tree decora-
One voice is coining
from a small, two
foot artificial tree, while the other ...
This display is directly across from a bunch
of recliner furniture for sale. I sink into one
of them as I see the source of singing. It is an
ugly, tacky artificial Christmas tree “face”
that you blend into your artificial tree to make
it “come alive” and sing snatches of “Oh,
Christmas Tree” after saying “Merry Christ
mas!” every couple minutes. It reminds me
of a head-injury patient who keeps reliving
the same moment again and again until their
brain catches up with reality.
Under two horizontal tree “eyebrows” are
two eerie “eyeballs”. The lids snap open and
the tree branch mouth starts to sing. I hope
that people are buying this ~ if at all ~ as a
tion section and aim
there. As I get closer,
I hear two competing
ghoulish voices.
They seem to be say
ing the same thing,
which is, “Merry
Christmas!” and
then grating singing
begins with “Oh,
Christmas Tree.”
cation, a Yohimbe/Viagra cocktail, in order
to get it. . . together. But Lord knows lam
practicing. My fellow heterophobes have
been assisting me in a hundred creative ways.
Once I’m cured, married in Hawaii to a nice
hairdresser or interior decorator, I hope to
help others recover from heterosexuality.
Congress needs to hold hearings on how to
control this terrible scourge, to which we lose
so many of our impressionable young people.
I would be happy to testify. In fact, if Trent
Lott or Newt Gingrich are heterosexuals, I
might be able to give them a helping hand.
Not that I have any reason to believe that
Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich are heterosexu
als. To call them heterosexuals would be defa
mation of character. They certainly don’t act
like heterosexuals (though perhaps I am
merely stereotyping heterosexuals as manly
straight-talkers).
I’m only saying that if they share this ter
rible problem and want to change, I can of
fer them my ... help.
The community of recovering heterosexu
als would reach out to Trent with true accep
tance. We would affirm even his toupee, ridi
culed by so many. There is love here, Trent:
good, good love that comes straight from the
Godhead. Come and enter our fellowship. Or
vice versa.
joke or for special relatives birthdays, in-laws
for example.
I can see the door of the store leading
through their garden center and the sunlight
shining brightly outside. I move toward the
light. The songs overhead in this festive area
blend together like a funeral dirge: They
drone on about how on the millionth day of
Christmas our true love would give us strange
items if only he were home. And he would
be if you had chestnuts on that fire.
I feel ashamed and embarrassed because
the words seem so fake and ridiculous. This
stuff gets packed back up and tossed in a
holding warehouse. December 26 is the day
it gets switched in the warehouse with
Valentine’s Day stuff.
It all seems so small and self-serving, idi
otic and robotic and brain-dead. Walking
dead, going slower through the mall, hoard
ing whole aisles to ourselves. Whispering
wishes for material blessings in the ears of a
made-up old man, wishes for microphones
to amplify our gaudy desires, and on and on
in a spiral like a Christmas tree, crowned with
ourselves at the top.
But outside, the air is sweet; it is refresh
ing to breathe as I finally make it to the door.
I close my eyes and can feel the light of the
golden sun enlivening my being. I can feel it
somewhere in the center of me that is alive,
where trees and stars and the light of the sun
are real and people I love need attention.
According to the mall and the calendar, it’s
Christmas time. According to this lovely day,
it’s time to be awake and alive.