BijouBlog

Pizza's been in the news big time lately, and it is a big deal because of the LGBT rights issues involved. Memories Pizza in Indiana claimed they would not cater a same-sex wedding (not that this Mom and Pop outfit catered weddings anyway, but that's beside the point, and I don't really know of a wedding reception with pizza as the main course unless it was on the show Extreme Cheapskates, again, beside the point). This outfit, since closed, received almost a million dollars in support from most probably religious fundamentalists of a certain ilk.

Pizza, rather than a wedding cake, has become the food of controversy in the same-sex marriage debate.

Now, based on people's general attitudes about pizza, I'm not that surprised that at some point a pizza outfit got involved in this controversy.

Pizza: what is it about pizza? It's not that is just a popular food that has taken on so many shapes and forms (and in gay porn, sex with pizza delivery boy is a cliché) but there's something, I don't know, deeply psychosocial about the way we approach it in the United States. Quite amazing for a food that essentially began as a vegetarian “peasant” food, a simple dough with a simple sauce on it.

In the United States, pizza seems to be the center of so many social functions. Not just the obvious ones like the Superbowl Party, but diverse work and school functions. In fact, I remember pizza was often a bribe to keep the masses docile.

In elementary school, the promise of a pizza party was definitely held over our heads to promise good behavior. The good classes got pizza, but the bad classes got nothing. The really bad classes got to pull weeds outside.

When I ushered at benefit concerts in college, the ushers got pizza to ensure they were not served food only for the wealthy benefactors, which happened one year, creating a furor among the administration.

And at one notably condescending paternalistic place I worked at, the floor who got the people out in the least amount of time for the fire drill “won a pizza party.” Yes, pizza on paper plates, and you got your own soft drink from the vending machine. Thrillsville. Our floor didn't win.
 

Oh, one of my brain candy shows has started another season on TLC aka “Sideshow America.”

There seems to be the usual people eating strange supposedly inedible objects (many of these people suffer from a disease called pica), but one guy, who lives not far from Chicago, shared an addiction which for many in the BDSM community is not that highly unusual a fetish.

Kevin from suburban Lombard, Illinois is a straight guy (who from what I saw would be very popular in the gay bear community) who is addicted to casts. Yes, casts, what gets put on a limb if you break a bone.
 

Now, from what I saw, it's not like he is always putting on a plaster cast (remember how exciting it was when you are a kid, at least I remember, that you got to sign someone's cast or get yours signed); some that he wears seem to be made of some cloth-like material.

And it's not clear, I gather, from the show, if he is getting off sexually from putting himself into this form of restrictive bondage. Perhaps he is, but it's not something he seems to be able to integrate into his intimate relationships.

He is straight and has had girlfriends, and the one on the show who basically told him shrilly to choose between her and all the casts broke up with him soon afterward, but I wasn't getting the sense that the sex involved doing something with the casts.

He seemed to be more of an exhibitionist, perhaps, and the episode showed an obviously staged, scripted incident involving Kevin and his too-too embarrassed sidekick (who always gets roped into putting his buddy into his more elaborate casts, hello, Ethel) parading down Michigan Avenue. Kevin was in some kind of cast that basically covered his torso and pinned his arms to his sides. It's the type of cast someone would wear if he or she, for example, got hit by a truck.

Now, the usual end of this show is some meeting with a medical professional, in this case, a psychologist. The doctor proclaims, sadly, that Kevin will always be alone. His addiction (I guess fetish, but as I said above, I just can't tell how sexual it is for him), according to the doctor, isn't something he can or even will manage to overcome, much less integrate into the rest of his life.

I've seen plenty of guys get into all types of restrictive bondage (I've even seen a plaster cast scene at one event), but the elaborate bondage was part of a large dominance/submission dynamic. Plus it was clear the guys got off on the activity (not that I could see evidence if the cock was covered by plaster!). Plus they were playing with like-minded people in a sexual setting. In Kevin's case, how he approaches his addiction to casts doesn't really fit into this play party context.

Now I've seen (and known) plenty of guys with sexual fetishes become so addicted to the fetish that they lose sight of actually relating to a person. I think specifically of guys who post multiple times a week on craigslist. (I am thinking in Chicago of Mr. I want to lick the mud off the boots of a UPS driver or Mr. karate kick me in the balls.) I guess they are reaching out and don't want to jack off alone, but the person they play with is a means, not an end.

I do sincerely hope that Kevin will find a castmate (pun intended) because of the show's publicity.

Check out our website for some of classic BDSM videos, and don't forget to check out all our fetish books and magazines too.

 

Now, many of us remember Schroeder's tempestuous relationship with Lucy, he being the object of her doomed, unrequited infatuation. 

Schroeder is so NOT interested. 

For example, on one occasion, Lucy remarks to Schroeder "Beethoven wasn't so great." Irritated, Schroeder asks Lucy to explain her comment. Lucy replies, "You've never seen his face on a bubblegum card, have you?" 

Face it, Lucy, you can't compete with Beethoven. 

I'm not really getting a gay vibe, but is Schroeder perhaps behaving like a little gay elitist snob? 

I think to understand Schroeder, you've got to understand Beethoven. 
 

His idol, Beethoven, was certainly no elitist: 

“His attitude to the princes and nobles who paid him was conveyed in a famous painting. The composer is shown in the course of a stroll with the poet Goethe, the Archduchess Rudolph and the Empress. While Goethe respectfully gave way to the royal pair, politely removing his hat, Beethoven completely ignored them and continued walking without even acknowledging the greetings of the imperial family.” 

And he was also a “confirmed bachelor.” 

Now, some critics have made out that Beethoven was some kind of repressed misognyistic homosexual who took out his frustrations on his adopted nephew Karl and Karl's mother, even though he displayed warm relationships with many women, such as Magdalena Willmann, Josephine Deym, Bettina Bretano. 

He also suffered through several youthful infatuations with women. One of these was a countess who came to him for piano lessons. It didn't work out. 
 

So, what does this have to do with Schroeder? Schroeder is mirroring Beethoven; Lucy wants to be his muse, but she isn't up to his standard. In Schroeder's case, no one is. Music is his lover, his god. Whether that's healthy or unhealthy in the long-term, who am I to judge? 

In fact, unrequited love seems to be a major theme in Peanuts: Charlie Brown for the the little red-headed girl, Peppermint Patty and Marcie for Charlie Brown, Marcie for Peppermint Patty, maybe (that's the gay relationship in Peanuts, I think), Sally for Linus, Linus for Miss Othmar. 
 

Only Schroeder seems immune to such earthly complexities. He gets to be horrified when he forgets Beethoven's birthday, but his sighs and tears are mostly sublimated in music. 

And it's not like he's always behaves like a total snot to Lucy. 

In reaction to her constant advances, Schroeder has been known to occasionally humor her, somewhat good-naturedly. He gave her a Valentine after confirming that he didn't have to love her to give her one, just "barely being able to tolerate her" was fine. 

Schroeder demonstrates the same fondly teasing tone toward Lucy in the December 14, 1975 Sunday strip, whispering a flirtatious comments to her while she pretends to be asleep on his piano. 

He addresses her as "pretty girl", and says "I think you're kind of cute! You really fascinate me!" He ends his string of flirtatious remarks with "I guess I love everything about you... Sweet baby!" Lucy cannot help but grin, to which Schroeder exclaims, "Ha! I knew you weren't asleep!" Lucy responds with "Rats!" 

So, is the eternally prepubescent Schroeder gay? The jury is still out on that one, but I think he's more “queer” than gay, using the definition of “queer” as nonconforming or eccentric. I also think he kind of fits in with the Oscar Wilde-like late nineteenth century aesthete, living for art, and art alone, or, closer to Beethoven, a Romantic artistic antihero loner type. 

I remember in the movie You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown there's a dreamily beautiful sequence of Schroeder playing Beethoven, and he seems to morph into his idol. 

Note the combination of churches from Beethoven's time period and psychedelic imagery like flowers and dancing flames. 

That's the essence of Schroeder. He dreams, but for him, the dream is real. And come to think of it how many of us are that in tune with our own “queer” dreams that won't allow themselves to be scaled down to a picture on Lucy's bubblegum card or an app on a smartphone?

Now, at one point in the movie, Reverend Mother guilt-trips the girls into entertaining one day during the holiday season the residents of what appears to be a women-only old folks home with “refreshments, songs, and readings.” Hayley aka Mary Clancy and her partner in mayhem Rachel are actually cooperating for a change. 

Then Mary sees Mother Superior comforting an elderly woman who is weeping. Her family will not be able to come to see her for Christmas. The woman feels slighted, perhaps because she gave them everything when they were young (nothing was too much), why can't they come see her? I have gifts for them she laments. But it's not just that she is laying on selfish guilt. She feels unwanted, useless. Why? Because she can't give to them. 
 

The Mother Superior perhaps senses this feeling. But she challenges the woman to give her family one more gift. “Be happy!” she gently commands. “Put on a pretty face and come down to the party!” 

Now, I think there's more going on here then that old trope of the clown smiling through the tears like Pagliacci, which could be tied into that stereotype of the closeted gay man “covering” because of individual and social rejection. The flamboyance and the wit and the camp supposedly conceal a deep hurt and self-hate. 
 

For the holy haters, being gay means not being happy or even capable of happiness. That a gay person is somehow broken or incomplete. Some like the British romance novelist Norah Lofts in her book Queens of England have even claimed that the word gay, which can still mean happy, “has been debased” (how ironic, given the title of her book). 

Now that gays are out and proud and can “come down to the party” without hiding, both stereotypes are offensive and insulting. But when you hear Mary Clancy's angry response (she, like many others, misses the point) to the scene, “I hope I die wealthy!” I wonder if there's something here that a gay person (or any person) can connect to. 

Giving is not just giving gifts or money or affection or prayers as objects. Giving is giving the self as a subject, without expecting an object in return. The total person, gay or straight or transgender or bi-curious ad infinitum is a gift, and by simply gifting himself to others (coming down to the party), he loses his feeling of being unwanted; his sense of self is no longer determined by what he quantitatively does for others or by what others do to him. Voila! Happiness. 

So be happy and be gay! Live, live, live! Life's a banquet, and too many poor suckers are starving to death! (Well, Auntie Mame was wealthy, but that's beside the point here!) 
 

 

 

The world has recently lost two immensely talented figures, one so tragically by suicide, one dying at a ripe old age. 

Both were able to reach deep into the heart of the human condition, using wit and humor with compassion and grace. 

In her own words, Lauren Bacall: 
 

“Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.” 

“I am not a has-been. I am a will be.” 

“Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.”  

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”

“You realize yourself when you start reflecting–because I don’t live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are–that you can’t ignore it. But I don’t look at scrapbooks.” 

“You can’t always be a leading lady.” 

“I'd like to meet the man who decided that people do or don't look Jewish. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it the American penchant for pinning things down, categorizing, for pigeonholing people? Whatever it is, it's wrong.” 

"My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings. And a favorite book as a child? Growing up, it was 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' — I would read the whole C.S. Lewis series out loud to my kids. I was once reading to Zelda, and she said 'don't do any voices. Just read it as yourself.' So I did, I just read it straight, and she said 'that's better.'" 

"You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." 

"Do you think God gets stoned? I think so ... look at the platypus." 

"When in doubt, go for the dick joke." 

On his mentor, Jonathan Winters: "Jonathan taught me that the world is open for play, that everything and everybody is mockable, in a wonderful way." 

"I love kids, but they are a tough audience." 

“You'll always have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to.” – Robin Williams as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting 

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change this world. –Dead Poets Society 
 

May they rest in peace and continue to inspire us by making us laugh.