How Hard Can It Be?

Dear Cory:

 Why is our government in the library business? This institution lends books to a large pool of people who are missing out on the pride of ownership. It's breeding a mentality that the world owes them something--in fact, practically everything! It's not just books that are handed out on demand, but newspapers, magazines, CDs, videos, DVDs, access to computers, the Internet, and on and on and on it goes.

I never use the library; why should I pay taxes for it? Libraries are inefficient, bureaucratic, and undermine the income of many talented people whose blood, sweat and tears pour into a product that can then be enjoyed by people who've never worked a day in their life!

If individuals want to share books, that is their right in a free country; nobody is stopping them. But why fund this ubiquitous, unwieldy institution which uses my tax dollars to buy a vast variety of materials which include much immoral garbage (smut!), ivory tower bafflegab from hypocritical eggheads, and anti-civilization screeds by anarchists who would be eating their own excrement if my tax dollars weren't keeping them in their charmed lifestyle! 

Libraries ought to be privatised and run by experienced business people.

Don't you agree?

Trevor Enchins

Dear Mr. Enchins

Certainly not. While perusing his in-box, with its motley and sometimes alarming content, Cory keeps in mind how the British were exhorted to act, in the medium of large red posters, should they have been invaded by the Nazis: “Keep Calm and Carry On”. Despite this, your letter brought what can only be described as a scowl to his smooth, moisturized features. At the risk of lapsing into psychobabble, you seem to know exactly where Cory’s “buttons” are -- pounding your fist on them as if they were stops on a mighty Wurlitzer organ.

Rigorous in his research, Cory undertook a field trip to his local library to search for immoral garbage and smut (thank you for using that word). Perhaps Cory’s morals are too elastic, but little of this alluring nature did he find in the library’s contents despite quizzing the librarian. He did find a heterosexual couple engaged in sexual congress in the remote stacks, and must admit their dusty union was taxpayer subsidized. Yet who among us cannot empathize with being young, aroused, in the company of the available, and having nowhere to go?

Libraries are unquestionably one of western civilization’s greatest achievements because, miraculously, they have found a way to make sharing work. Sharing is rare to the vanishing point in our greed-based system where each whirls in his own sad orbit. Libraries succeed because books can take a fair amount of abuse and are just expensive enough to make borrowing one tempting, but not so expensive that the odd unreturned book is going to bankrupt the system. They are also the perfect size, portable and not too big, but not so small as to be easily lost. Library books are not unique; there are many copies, so stealing them to hoard and collect makes little sense. Generally one wants to read them once and then move on to a fresh one. This is a fine balance hard to achieve with other goods.

Cory has contemplated, as he views the many towering apartment buildings visible from his aerie, the tens of thousands of vacuum cleaners that sit in their dark closets 98% of the time. Why couldn’t we have a vacuum cleaner centre to borrow from and lessen our waste of the earth’s resources? Well, they’re not portable enough, they’re too complex, too valuable and too difficult for the average slob to maintain or use properly. To illustrate, Cory recalls a slatternly neighbour who borrowed his vacuum cleaner (a restored vintage 1970 Hoover Constellation in avocado green) and used it to try to unblock the cesspool that was her kitchen sink. The Constellation is not a “wetvac”.

Your love of capitalist consumption was shared by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, yet he saw fit to fund the building of three thousand public libraries. He realized the value of literacy and the respite from corporate slavery that a good book can provide. He wrote that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced”, words you might keep in mind as an unreconstructed capitalist.

What better use of your tax money is there? Libraries provide access to knowledge and entertainment, sepulchral quiet (at least until the mobile telephone came along) and an environment highly conducive to cruising. If you want to buy your own copy of a book to languish unread in your mansion’s show library, feel free – sharing isn’t mandatory, it’s just the best part of human nature.

The phrase “the pride of ownership” is capitalist jingoism, created by advertising to sell the fashionable to the gullible, insecure or egotistical. You may have noticed that the pleasure of acquisition is the most fleeting of feelings, for a new fix is needed almost immediately. The results are all around us: mess, waste, destruction. Possessions must be serviced and maintained -- eventually this becomes a burden. Think how easy it is to buy something, and how nearly impossible it is to sell it. This should tell you something.

Cory couldn’t agree more on one point you make. “Ivory tower bafflegab” is yet another toxin, and an industry all to itself. Your use of the word “smut” is exemplary. Let’s make academics use powerful, clear words like that. In response to your unappealing fantasy about anarchists, Cory would just like to mention his affection for their quaint, impractical way of thinking. They are the court jesters of our time.

Do write again when you’ve had a social awakening.

Dear Cory:

What do people mean when they say "I did my best"? The expression makes my skin crawl. Why? The last time some miscreant used it, you sprang to mind as someone who might understand.

Doubting Thomas

Ah, Mr. Thomas, how Cory enjoys springing to your mind. Seldom has juicier bait been dangled in front of him. The expression is a multi-purpose self-exoneration, and a close relative of "It's not my fault".

Cory has been around humans for a while, his lithe and supple appearance notwithstanding. He believes that if we did our best regularly, our planet would be a garden of abundance and caring. Our best may occasionally be done, but our motivation is so mixed and contradictory, so riddled with emotion, that our best appears as rarely as the Queen wears sweatpants to a ball.

In any intimate relationship, this expression usually signals giving up, self-satisfaction and is a prelude to blame-shifting. It probably makes your skin crawl because your parents used it on you, perhaps in the form of, "I don't know what's the matter with you, I did my best to raise you properly." Parents who use this expression are oddly reluctant to receive a detailed and exhaustive inventory of their mistakes, inattentions and shortcomings as role models. Cory recommends a pert retort such as, "Yeah, you did your best to be an imperious martinet of properness", and while the parent runs to the dictionary to determine if he or she has been insulted, make your escape.

In the workplace (a word that makes Cory shudder), hearing "I did my best" from a delinquent colleague, probably accompanied by a gormless palms-up shrug, can be interpreted as "I did the quickest, sloppiest job I thought I could get away with so I could go home and jerk off".

Professional athletes understand that this expression is mealy-mouthed. Using it will certainly provoke their coach, and fans should they have any, to contemplate the quality of "their best" in unfavorable ways. Athletes know that their best is fantastically hard to realize.

We implore you, Mr. Thomas, to remain on the alert for expressions that are complete nonsense, and be rigorous in your challenge of them.

Dear Cory:

A close friend of mine has recently become quite obsessed with former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and I fear that his interest may be sexual rather than the usual level of respect one would be expected to have for a war hero and recipient of (count 'em) four 'Hero of the Soviet Union' medals. While Brezhnev's communist credentials are beyond reproach, his major shortcoming is that he died in 1982. This being the case, my friend's infatuation seems like a bizarre form of necrophilia. Is there an appropriate way for me to raise the subject with him, and perhaps steer him toward living communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev or Kim Jong Il?

One Confused Communist

Dear OCC:

Cory thought you must run with a very odd crowd until he thought some more. Fear not; it will all come right in the end.

You use the phrase “bizarre form of necrophilia”. Cory is perplexed. Is there a non-bizarre form of necrophilia? Your friend surely realizes that Leonid Brezhnev’s body, unlike that of Lenin, was not preserved and thus there is no chance of current bizarreness (Lenin’s embalmed body, by the way, needs daily injections, a yearly bath in potassium acetate, alcohol, glycerol and quinine, and treatment with hydrogen peroxide to remove emerging “dark spots”). Since gay men love shiny objects, it is more likely your friend was dazzled by the four Hero of the Soviet Union medals (Brezhnev sports the two he had received to date in the picture below). Who doesn’t like a gold star on a red ribbon?

 Why four of the same award, you ask? Since no higher award exists, if you have need to continue toadying up to a previous recipient who shows unexpected longevity, you must keep awarding the same thing. The same principle applies at Hollywood’s Academy Awards.

Your close attention to previous columns would have alerted you to “bears”, one of the ways gay men categorize male morphology. Bears are husky, hairy hombres. Brezhnev was in latter life a bear -- and how fitting this animal is the symbol of Russia. His eyebrows alone qualify him, with their luxuriant, bristly march across his forehead (Cory knows for a fact Brezhnev had no hair on his chest since his willowy research assistant brought him a very scary picture). Cory first thought your friend is a bear fancier since he finds this icon of dead ideology appealing. Such is not the case.

 In your linear way, OCC, you have overlooked the only logical answer to the case of your friend. Consider the following picture of Leonid at twenty-nine in his pre-bear days (1936):

 You sense, no doubt, that your friend has not been entirely forthcoming. The reason is not as perverse as you seem to think. Obviously he has invented or has access to a time-machine. Death means nothing to him, because he can travel to Russia in 1936 or earlier and visit Leonid in all of his dark, brooding, youthful juiciness.

Your friend is one you would be well-advised to cultivate and keep. He is in a position to purchase you Microsoft stock on March 13, 1986, the date of its first offering to the public. How to cultivate, you ask? Cory suggests finding a Hero of the Soviet Union medal as a little gift for your friend, presented on his next birthday with a knowing wink.

Since Cory is certain one, perhaps two, questions linger in your mind, let him add to your education by telling you how gay men would categorize the “types” of Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Jong Il. They are, respectively, “chub” and “troll”.

It’s wonderful to hear from a communist. Thank you for your willingness to share, at least in theory.

Dear Cory:

Has Cory ever been followed by a Moon Shadow?

American Breeder Boy

Dear ABB:

Cory lives in a rainforest. On those rare nights when mist and cloud evanesce and the moon is risen, yes, he has been followed by a moon shadow. He prefers it, though, when the moon is behind and his shadow dances in front so he can keep an eye on it. Cory is nothing if not watchful -- some say hypervigilant. After the many tabs of LSD he used to ingest, things like shadows still tend to fibrillate, melt and transform. If he may be permitted to wax personal rather than the usual self-referential (there is a difference), Cory would like to recall long, stoned walks in June when the shortest nights were filled with electricity and nature’s glistening fecundity.

You capitalize Moon Shadow, which leads to a suspicion that your question has some hidden meaning. Surely you do not lie awake of a night, your milky thighs sprawled atop the coverlet, wondering about Cory’s corporeality expressed in shadow, though that be a worthy pastime. Are you remembering the Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow” of 1970? Are you interested in the journey that led Cat to embrace Islam, take the name Yusuf Islam and work for peace and charity? If you are, you may, in his friend Dolly Parton’s words, think him “a precious man”, and with Dolly, recoil from Yusuf’s having been on Homeland Security’s watch list due to a “spelling error” and, for a time, excluded from the United States wherein you dwell. On the other hand, you might side with Salman Rushdie who took exception to Islam/Stevens saying on the ridiculous British television show Hypotheticals in 1989 that he wouldn’t mind if he saw Rushdie burned to death for his alleged blasphemy in The Satanic Verses. This might suggest Islam/Stevens was sometimes less a man of peace and more a fundamentalist approving the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwahs. More recently, Islam/Stevens is evolving into Stevens/Islam with a new popular album and explanations of his former fundamentalist statements (claiming for example, that his remarks about Rushdie were typical British “humour”). Say what you like, Jews and Christians are usually more forgiving of our society's near-constant blasphemy despite the Bible’s recommending that blasphemers be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:16). Cory doesn’t want to be that stoned.

Or are you more literal in your question, perhaps thinking Cory is one of the moon mission astronauts of that same hallucinogenic period? He is not, being far, far too young. But what a rush it would have been: clad in a rubbery suit, in low gravity, “leapin’ and hoppin’”, as Cat wrote, with a moonshadow on our satellite’s silvery dust and the earth hanging in the black sky. The astronauts’ first steps – and shadows -- on the moon took place on Cat Stevens’ twenty-first birthday.

Your mysterious question evokes in Cory blissful recollections. He thanks you for it!