Hell-fer-Sartain: After a horrible year teaching at Homophobia U., I escape to Anywhere That's Not Texas

 

After getting my M.A. from  Indiana University, I spent a year (actually 210 dreadful days) in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, about 15 miles north of Houston -- which meant an hour's drive on thoses parking lots they called freeways -- teaching English at Homophobia State University.  Nine months of frustration, anger, embarrassment, loneliness, anger, frustration, and frustration. 

1. The entire population of the U.S. moved to Houston that summer, so no one knew how to do anything.  The bank gave me checks for one account and put my money in another.  I used to walk down the street and pick up my mail from all of the houses where the postman dumped it.

2. And the most minor task, even going out to eat, meant a 30-minute drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic, past a construction site (so flat tires were a constant hassle), and waiting in an endless line.

3. I lived in a two-room apartment with no heat ("this is the South -- we don't need heat") in the coldest winter Houston had seen since 1891, with a heavy-metal enthusiast in the apartment next door and Larry the Cable Guy downstairs.

4. The students in English Composition were beyond illiterate; in Survey of American Literature, they complained to the department chair when I assigned poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes (only white men counted as canon); and in my side job teaching report writing at Houston Police Academy, they passed out a map of the neighborhoods where "homosexuals and other deviants" congregated.  

5. God forbid I come out to anyone, so I was beset upon by male colleagues asking me to rate the attractiveness of female movie stars, and female colleagues trying to fix me up with their unmarried sisters and nieces.

Left: University of Houston Chapel.  Ask the Hunky Jesus for deliverance.

6. The Montrose neighborhood had clandestine gay bars and the Wilde and Stein Bookstore, but it was too frustrating to get to, with hour-long traffic jams and constant flat tires, so I depended on a personal ad in The Montrose Voice.  First I was looking for dates, but soon I settled for a hookup.  Even then, it was a mess: 

"Why do you want to know my name? Are you a cop?"

"There was a car in the driveway of a house three doors down, so I got scared and bailed."

"Meet me at the public restroom somewhere far away, and we'll do it there."

The nickname comes from South from Hell-fer-Sartan, a collection of Kentucky folk tales.

I applied for jobs and graduate programs furiously, and finally made it into USC!  I'd be moving to West Hollywood!  But first I had to go home to Rock Island for the summer.

I purposely didn't assign any final papers or final exams, so classes ended on Thursday, and I was ready to go on Friday.  I walked my final grades to the horrible dean's office, turned in my office key, walked through the sweltering Sahara of a parking lot, and started driving.

The quickest way to get back to Rock Island was to head north, but that would mean five more hours in Texas, so instead I drove south on the I-45 toward Houston for twelve miles.

Fortunately I turned onto the I-610 before it became a parking lot.

Ten more miles around the eastern edge of Houston in traffic that was just horrible, not a parking lot.  Mostly I was surrounded by roaring trucks and nondescript Brutoian warehouses

Then the I-10 east in more horrible traffic through horrible Houston suburbs: Jacinto City, Cloverleaf, Channel View. Greens Bayou, Marwood.

Left: Jacinto City wrestlers.

I hooked up  with a guy in Jacinto City once.  I felt like the town's first  mayor, a guy named Inch Handler.

The suburbs went on endlessly. Nothing to see but billboards, car dealerships, warehouses, and the occasional streetful of fast-food joints.

Past Burnett Bay, the traffic thinned out,  and the highway narrowed.  I was out of Houston's clutches, but still in Texas, driving through a swampy no man's land,without even a billboard.

Or a rest stop.  I didn't care. I wasn't stopping until Texas was a distant memory.

At the small redneck town of Winnie, home of the Texas Rice Festival, the I-10 veered northeast.

More after the break

Martin Spanjers: Eight simple rules for determining if the "Eight Simple Rules" kid is gay

 

Rule 1: Does his character gawk at guys in the shower?

This is a still from Epiosde 3.1 of the  TGIF sitcom Eight Simple Rules (2002-2005).  It was originally Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, about an overprotective Dad played by John Ritter, but when Ritter died, it became a general family-angst dramedy.  I never watched, but in 2004 you could hardly turn on your computer without seeing Martin Spanjers as the teenage Rory gawking at Sam Horrigan.  

Only Seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Disney Plus, so I don't know what's going on in the scene, except that Rory doesn't want to shower after gym class due to his less than adequate package.  Maybe Sam Horrigan is a high school jock?  

2. Does he play a gay-vague teenager?

Fan consensus is that Rory is one of those gay-vague sitcom kids, soft, shy, pretty, and struggling valiantly to act girl-crazy because on American sitcoms, all teenage boys must be girl-crazy.

3. Does he show his butt on screen?

The next time I saw Martin Spanjers, he was still naked, playing the teenage shapeshifter Sam Merlotte in a 2009 episode of True Blood, about vampires, werewolves, and various other magical beings in rural Louisiana.  When you shift back to human form, you lose your clothes, so he's naked when he breaks into a house looking for food or something to steal.

4. Does he have a gay-subtext role?

The house happens to belong to a maenid (minor goddess) named Maryanne, who naturally wants to have sex with him.  He steals $10,000 on his way out, which causes the adult Sam Merlotte a lot of headaches.  

Although the encounter is heterosexual, Sam is homeless because his parents kicked him out when they discovered his "secret."  We can see a reflection of gay teens ejected by homophobic parents.  About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT.

More after the break

"True Blood": Vampires come out of the closet amid a Southern Gothic soap opera, with some vamp dicks

We have completely run out of tv shows to watch, except for The Simpsons and Doctor Who, which go on forever, so last night we latched onto True Blood, which ran from 2008 to 2014 on HBO.

This is the stereotypic South of Eudora Welty and Mama's Family, where people named Hoyt Fortenberry shop at the Piggly-Wiggly and drink sweet tea on the veranda, where everyone is related to everybody else's great-grand daddy once removed, and where the War means the Civil War...um, I mean the War of Yankee Aggression.   

It starts in media res, two years after vampires have "come out of the coffin," har har -- yep, the connection with LGBT people is just that heavy-handed -- due to the invention of artificial blood, brand name True Blood, which some humans have developed a taste for.  Snooty fratboy Brett (Josh Kelly, left), looking for a store that sells it, learns too late that every long-haired, multi-ringed Goth isn't a vampire; and sometimes chubby rednecks are.

We switch to the problems of Tara, who gets fired from or quits every job because she doesn't abide idiots and her best friend Sookie, who can read minds.  Sookie and soon Tara work at Merlotte's Bar, where the owner, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell, top photo and left), is in love with her.  He won't come out with it, but of course Sookie can read his mind.

The only gay character so far is the bar's swishy cook, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a stereotyped flamboyant, promiscuous queen who  claims he's done most of the men in town, and likes to flirt with racist, homophobic rednecks to get them all scared. He doesn't get a boyfriend until late in the series.

That same evening, the bar's other waitress, Maudette, hooks up with Sookie's brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten).  She's a fangbanger, a human who likes sex with vampires, because they get rough.  She offers to show him the video, which turns him on so much that he wants to do rough sex, including strangling her...a little too enthusiastically.  And she's taping the encounter!

Kwanten butt after the break