Thursday, July 11, 2002

Augusten Burroughs

Two more essays at Salon from the author of Running With Scissors.

The first, Fabulous Fantasies, has this teaser sentence: In third grade I wore polyester stretch bell-bottoms and wanted to be Christine Jorgensen, the world's first famous transsexual.

Kewl bit:

It wasn't so much that I wanted to be a girl. It was that I wanted to make a dramatic change in my life. My parents hated each other and I hated them. I longed for them to die in an auto accident so that I could be whisked away by uniformed officers and sent to live in a compound near a major city.

I was in the midst of an unhappy childhood and was ripe for transformation. The idea that a person could make such a dramatic change of life gave me hope. In my world there were boys and there were girls and that was it. And here's this girl who used to be a boy. My whole idea of what was possible in life expanded.

The second is Dating An Undertaker.

Excerpt:

When I was with him, he was an eccentric entrepreneur. But as soon as we parted he became an undertaker again. I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that I was dating somebody who had held somebody else's decapitated head in his hands. Who regularly tied string tight around the end of a dead man's penis so that fluids didn't leak out and stain the tuxedo pants. I was dating somebody who had stitched a suicide's wrists shut after the fact. All with the same two hands that rubbed my back between the shoulder blades, in exactly the right spot.

The only other people who have had similar experiences to this man were locked inside institutions for the criminally insane. The difference is, this guy gets business cards.

Burroughs is the same fellow who wrote that great piece on gay personal ad dating, Beating Raoul, and A Priest On His Knees -- which was designated the best Pederast Priest Crisis personal experience essay by yours truly -- the Bohica.

His web site can be found here.

I recently cashed in my Discover Card reward balance -- that accumulated half percent of all purchases Discover takes from the three and a half percent fee it docks merchants and "gives" to me -- for Barnes and Noble Gift Cards and California Cheese Cake Factory Gift Certificates -- Discover rewards partners program participants.

It was not an easy choice to make.

You see -- I could either take a check for the amount, apply it to my Discover bill, or get twice as much through the partners program. Forget donating it to a Discover selected charity -- that was never an option. I earned that reward -- Dammit!

But I was torn... on one hand, I'd ostensibly "double" my money by choosing gift certificates from the partners. However, they would be for goods and services I don't really "need" and the partner choices were limited.

Also, I'd recently sworn off the two I went with.... B&N from frustration and CCCF as too trendy.

But the other partners did even less for me, and I do love books and food.

In the end, the lure of "twice" as much reward won -- but writing this now, I still feel decision angst.

What does this have to do with the writings of Mr. Burroughs?

Well.

The B&N cards arrived a few weeks ago and I'm making up a wish list. Running with Scissors is a contender.

Not that I need any more books. The house is overrun as it is, but now I have a hundred and twenty bucks to blow!

Thank you, Discover. (?)

posted by Bohica at 10:05 AM