Whenever I get excited about something, even just a little, I need to expel waste product. If I pick up a movie calendar and spot a good double feature, or if a moment of semi-inspiration comes and there’s finally something to write for the zine, or if I’m meeting someone somewhere in half an hour — I gotta take a dump, and now, and how.

Is this normal human physiology, I wonder, an involuntary tightening of the abdominal muscles? Or does this only happen with phenomenally fat people, like me?

This weekend has been extra problematic, as my poop cycle seems to be perfectly synched with everyone else in the hotel. The communal john down the hall has been occupied every dang time I’ve needed it. I’ve been using the toilet downstairs, or the toilet upstairs, but often someone’s sitting there, too.

Just now, I couldn’t wait any longer, spread out a Chronicle editorial page, and gave it what it deserved. El turdo, hot and stinky, right there on the floor. Then I folded it up, stuffed it into an old bread wrapper, and dropped it down the trash chute, just as a toilet flushing down the hall could finally be heard. For the homeless and hungry, happy dumpster diving tomorrow.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’m finally getting around to glancing at Friday’s news in Saturday’s newspaper on Sunday afternoon, and the front-page story should be headlined, “Nation is run by idiots.” President Clinton has fired the Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, because she gave a smart, honest answer to a question about masturbation.

Can’t find a verbatim transcript of the unholy words, because the Chronicle won’t let Elders speak for herself — everything in the article is a summary, a paraphrase, or quoted semi-sentences sewn together by professional journalists.

Seems someone asked Elders if a more explicit discussion of beating off might help fight the spread of AIDS, and she answered that masturbation is “part of human sexuality,” but that “many of our parents have difficulty teaching certain things,” so the normalcy of fiddling with your own diddle is “a part of something that perhaps should be taught” in school.

Is that scandalous? The usual Republicans did their usual Republican thing, got all shocked and infuriated and 100% proved her point. And Clinton, a Democrat who seems about 1/3 Republican, issued a terse one-sentence announcement: “Dr Elders’ public statements reflecting differences with administration policy and my own convictions have made it necessary for her to tender her resignation.”

I hadn’t been aware that Clinton had an “administration policy” on masturbation, or any “convictions” firm enough to get a grip on.

A sidebar to the article lists several of Elders’ previous “controversial statements,” but, of course, it’s journalism again — there are no direct quotes, only summaries and paraphrases. If what’s “controversial” is what she said, why won’t the Chronicle let us read what she said?

The gist of all her “controversial” statements is that she thinks
    • lesbians and gays shouldn’t be denied the legal and social standing everyone else takes for granted
    • the government should study legalizing drugs
    • drug and alcohol education should begin in kindergarten
    • and now, gasp, that masturbation shouldn’t be a forbidden topic.

There’s also a weird line about Medicaid, but it’s so mangled and probably misconstrued by the media, I’m not even sure what she meant. Other than that, there’s nothing in the Chronicle’s list of Elders’ “controversial” statements that’s controversial. It’s all “of course” to me.

I wish she’d gone further. What’s to “study” about legalizing drugs? Just legalize drugs.

Until yesterday there was one intelligent, principled, thinking human in the Clinton administration, but now there’s none.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kallie and I met at the Roxie to see Gimme Shelter (1970), which I’d thought it would be a toe-tapping rockumentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, against a backdrop of the Altamont disaster. Instead it was a documentary about Altamont, with the music in the background. That’s not to say I was disappointed, though, not at all. It was excellent, and I was floored.

When the Stones finished their 1969 American tour, the last show was a free concert at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco (neither Kallie nor I have any idea where Altamont is, or was), and the event was billed as “Woodstock West.” It was woefully under-planned, though, and whatever could go wrong, did go wrong.

According to the story as told by everyone who wasn’t there, Mick Jagger kept singing, and even egged the crowd on, as a man was stabbed to death in full view of the band, by out-of-control Hell’s Angels who’d been hired as security. The reality is more ambiguous, as reality tends to be.

The concert’s logistics had been arranged by the band’s handlers and lawyer Melvin Belli (Star Trek‘s Gorgan), and all the planning was just amazingly haphazard and don’t-give-a-damn. Hiring Hell’s Angels as the concert’s only security — and paying them in beer — wasn’t the only stupidity, either. In the movie’s sweeping views of 300,000 spectators, I couldn’t see any SaniCans, and there’s a public-address announcement asking if anyone in the crowd has some bandages.

The movie shows Belli making plans for the concert well in advance, and it doesn’t take much brains to think people might need Band-Aids and porta-potties, or that Hell’s Angels might make questionable security. So I’m blaming Belli for this mess.

Did Jagger urge the crowd on? Absolutely not. That’s, I think, bullshit from the same right-wing bullshitters who make up bullshit about anything and anyone that’s not normal for the 1950s. The movie shows Jagger and bassist Keith Richards emphatically pleading over and over into the microphone for the crowd to stop fighting, and every time it was apparent there was trouble, the band stopped playing. Don’t know what more they could’ve done from the stage — if they’d packed their gear and ended the concert, it’s easy to imagine an already agitated crowd going angrier.

I also want to defend the Hell’s Angels, at least to some extent. They have a well-earned reputation as a bunch of bullies and thugs, and Belli was insane to hire them as security, but from what’s shown in the documentary, their behavior in a ‘police’ role wasn’t any worse than the way real police behave.

Most surprisingly, the filmmakers caught the stabbing on camera, the one incident that made the Altamont concert famous as “the day the sixties died,” and it’s not what the world has been told. Shown in slow-motion, frame by frame, this wasn’t a random man being stabbed by Hell’s Angels — it’s a man with a gun. He’d pulled a gun, for whatever reason — maybe to settle an argument, to shoot into the crowd, perhaps to shoot at the Rolling Stones — and he was waving the gun around, so one of the Hell’s Angels stabbed him in the back.

By my definition, that’s at least arguably justifiable homicide. They took him down and he never got up, but history shouldn’t much mourn the death of a man who pulled a gun in a crowd.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the show, I’d promised to take Kallie to lunch at the Sincere Cafe, but they’re closed for vacation until January 16 (a nice long vacation), so we went to El Castillito instead. We talked about the movie, and about how you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. Then we went shopping at the Rainbow Store, and took BART in opposite directions to our homes.

The movie gets a good review, the burrito gets a good review, and Kallie gets a good review, and here’s something I hadn’t noticed until tonight. The zine makes it easier for me to be a sparkling conversationalist. In a social setting when I’d usually wonder what to say, I can now come up with a spur-of-the-moment spiel on just about anything, and nobody knows I’m just recreating a rant that took half an hour to write for the zine.

Like, in the store, when Kallie pointed as the mistletoe for sale, I said some of what I’d written about mistletoe and kissing Friday (without, of course, mentioning who I’d like to kiss).

Pathetic Life
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