Bastas Ursuul

SWEET • BOY

make no mistake: my grandpa was very insecure of his own masculinity, which he disguised as bravado, but he never struck me as gay. what I am saying is that once we were watching a movie and he said, unprompted, "I cannot tell when a man is handsome." I was a teen and literally did not ask. Lee Van Cleef was on-screen though, his favorite actor and a "real man" as per his words, so maybe that had something to do with it, and he had to reassure himself.

what I am saying is that my grandpa held firmly to his idea of masculinity. strong as an ox and traumatized from childhood, he genuinely thought you had to be strong and smart in order to survive the world, and prove it to everyone with arrogance. he did not play with his kids, he never talked to them about feelings, he did not do the cooking or the cleaning, he was frequently unfaithful to his wife and fathered many children out of wedlock and mistreated all of them in one way or another. for the most part, he really thought this is what a man was, and he stuck with it whether he liked it or benefited from it or not. he stuck with it even though he loved being clean, and looking dapper, and wearing fine cologne, and reciting and writing poetry, and watching beautiful films, and drawing, and hugging his grandchildren. those parts of him he let you peek at from time to time below his armor.

what I am saying is that these films he loved, they allowed him to see a world where men acted and looked the way he thought men ought to look, which made them safe, but they also offered glimpses of what tenderness and earnestness did for their souls. these were films where the boundaries of close relationships were a little blurred, where physicality was allowed, where love was important. he could sit and see a world in which he could tell his friends he loved them and it wouldn't be weird.

Let's have the conversation about UBI.

And oops there it is. Better jobs.

Better jobs

Capitalism needs an underclass. It's not that these jobs are less valuable - in fact, many of them are necessary for society to function. (thank you, sanitation workers!) It's more that capitalism needs these jobs to be seen as less-than so that they can get away with treating these people like shit - bad wages, bad treatment, etc.