#if only because its given up on any pretense of traditional role playing

[punkscowardschampions]

James & Ava

James: Good morning

James: how are you, darling?

Ava: Sleepy 🥱

Ava: but all the better starting my day with you, of course

Ava: how about you? 😊

James: hopeful that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, because likewise

James: & my cautious optimism doesn’t extend to the viewing I’m currently heading to

Ava: Oh, how have they oversold this one, I wonder

Ava: the adverts are nothing short of epic fiction

Ava: there should be awards for how they can spin any - into like +++

Ava: Where are you headed?

James: it would be inspirational if I were solely doing research for the novel but alas I need a suitable study first

James: [somewhere that’s one of the places we discounted]

Ava: I can believe estate agents are all unfulfilled creatives, definitely

Ava: I’ll 🤞 all my fingers and toes that it’s the one

Ava: though I could tell you more pubs and clubs in that area than nurseries…

James: absolutely up there with the teaching profession in terms of both dashed dreams setting them on that path & a litany of thankless tasks once they get there

James: thank you though

James: I’ll let you know if it constitutes enough of a disaster to warrant theoretically drowning my sorrows, after all, there isn’t a huge difference between some of the clubs Teddy frequents & soft play so I’ve no doubt my aide for today would be thrilled to hear every suggestion

Ava: You cannot make me feel bad for teachers today

Ava: not when Mr Hawthorne has beat you to it with the against argument in the form of his 🥱 inducing lectures

Ava: 😅 I don’t think foam parties are safe for anyone, 1-year-olds especially so though

James: there’s an argument to be made that I possess the ability to do so, however, if I’m going to use my powers of persuasion for anything 😈 I would argue it is indeed wasted on Mr Hawthorne

James: oh well in that case, the hunt for my sister’s baby shower venue also continues

Ava: If you used your powers of persuasions on Mr Hawthorne, I might be a tiny bit jealous

Ava: not to mention almost as confused as he would undoubtedly be

Ava: Joy of joys

Ava: it would be typical for that to be added to your to-do list as well, but at least a place for grown women to eat chocolate bars out of nappies isn’t as much like gold dust as a decent place in central

James: I’m jealous that he’s spending time with you right now, despite your attention being less than rapt & therefore promise to do nothing that benefits him in any way whatsoever

James: including, but not limited to, refusing to assist you in the homework he intends to set by being as distracting as I can later as well as now

James: you’re not wrong, but she is her belief that to this day I remain blacklisted by an extremely high percentage of clubs, thus sparing me being delegated the role even in these hypothetical planning stages

Ava: That would be a wild rumour, even for this place

Ava: and what can I say? You’re more worthy of my time and attention

Ava: as you’ve just proved 😍

Ava: Definite blessing in disguise

Ava: Will it be a women-only event?

James: I’d be lying if I didn’t say I miss you & am always willing to prove how much at every given opportunity

James: god, I hope so, even a foam party isn’t enough of an incentive to get me there if I am expected

Ava: I miss you too

Ava: I can come see you tonight though, if you’re free

Ava: sadly, I don’t think I can make a soft-play date so that’ll have to be just you two

Ava: and you’re lucky, I’ve been to so many baby showers it’s not even funny

James: I’m supposed to work late to make up the time I’ve taken off this morning but I can do that when you’re busy

James: that’s a shame, I’ll have to throw myself in the ball pit

James: time will tell if you have an invite to Diana’s, what’s incredibly lucky is that she won’t expect you to actually attend regardless of how you RSVP

Ava: Only if you’re sure

Ava: my plans can always be more fluid than yours

Ava: Ugh 😞 I’d LOVE to push you into a ball pit right now, life is unfair

Ava: I don’t think she was impressed with my party-planning skills enough to put in that call

James: I am very sure that I want to spend tonight with you instead of at the office

James: & I’m also suddenly determined to create our very own ball pit in the new place

James: [pictures like which room do you think we should fill with plastic balls lol but let’s say it’s all really small]

James: having to forgo a traditional master bedroom isn’t at all unfair, I’ll obviously sleep like a baby among the balls

Ava: 🥰

Ava: An absolute must

Ava: why brag of a ‘cosy’ third bedroom when you can boast a gigantic ball pit

Ava: I bet the girls would be more than willing for you to do that too

Ava: Party house has a whole new meaning 🥳

James: indeed

Ava: I hope there’s not too many people there this time though, really

James: I think there are more people here than at the last viewing we went to, impossible as that sounds

Ava: 😫 How, where do all these people spring from?!

Ava: At least you’re far more eligible than most young professionals

Ava: If I was looking for a model renter

James: what a pity you aren't, your rooftop garden has much greater appeal for this particular young professional, not least because I've seen its existence with my own eyes

Ava: If my landlords weren’t so involved…

Ava: This place is far too big for us now

James: hopefully they won't drag you along on yet more insufferable viewings if, or when, they decide to downsize since you're an undeniable pro now, because for that, there would only so many apologies I can offer you

Ava: I’m sure mum’s already getting the planning permission sorted for if and when

Ava: Sadly their portfolio doesn’t extend to a reasonable price range, I did ask

Ava: but if it isn’t something that would get her in Architect Digest, or whatever, she’s not interested so

Ava: As you said, it would be fun in a way, if all this looking didn’t mean you were still without your perfect family home

Ava: It takes people watching to a new level, and seeing the landlord’s ‘decor’ choices is also as revealing

James: it's okay, being indebted to my own parents is quite enough

James: it's becoming clear if my father visualizes me living here it's because he's done a drastic rewrite of the type of young professional I am

James: I could see you here, for instance, in a draft where I don't exist as your love interest, but in terms of a family home, perfect of otherwise, where we'd put Frank & the children is anyone's guess

James: perhaps some of these people are imagining wild architecture projects the likes of which your mother would have to act undaunted by, who's to say

Ava: I don’t love that rewrite

Ava: Frank is particularly demanding with how much space he needs to recline, relax, snooze and sleep…

Ava: You’ll find somewhere soon, I know it

Ava: If nothing else, this dull lesson is giving me all the time to refresh and refresh and repeat every listing I can find

James: cautious optimism as ever for our 2nd attempt

James: [deets because I'm gonna say that this is one he ends up loving that falls through somehow at some stage because how real and frustrating and then she can be the one who finds their forever home and they can look at it together]

Ava: Okay, I can picture that one

Ava: light and airy isn’t actually a lie this time, what a concept

Ava: 😍

Ava: All the rooms are a good size so you wouldn’t feel as if either girl was getting the short straw, and you won’t have to settle for sleeping amongst the balls either

James: I do have a genuinely good feeling about it, terrifying as that is to admit in our present surroundings where it feels as though someone will sense it & immediately swoop in, but yes

Ava: I know

Ava: It’s one of those things

Ava: You have to be cautious, because so many roadblocks are between you and the end goal

Ava: but similarly, how can you be, when it’s such a big life thing

Ava: You can be as honest and optimistic as you like with me, it doesn’t need to go any further, shark-like buyers and the girls alike

James: we aren’t anywhere close to the stressful moving in stage & I’m already acutely aware that I wouldn’t have survived up until now without your help, so I will, as long as you know the continued support is appreciated beyond words or any other measure

Ava: Stressful, but fun

Ava: you get to pick what colour your new room is 😌

Ava: It’ll be reward enough, to see you get the fresh start you deserve

James: [whatever her fave colour is] of course

James: then you won’t mind seeing me covered from head to toe in it, potentially indefinitely, when we discover I can’t fit in the tub at the new place either

Ava: Oh, I don’t think I would mind that no matter the colour

Ava: but I also would not mind you having an amazing shower so we could take care of that

James: if there isn’t I won’t mind adding it to my renovations to-do list

Ava: As long as I’m on that list too I’m happy

James: the top of any list I write is where I’m happy to put you

Ava: If you put in a bid, you should do it at/even over asking price, so they’ll take attention of you and then you can make a list of repairs/quality checks etc you want done before you agree to move in, then if they do them, they’re done for you, but more likely, they’ll not want to, and you can say take that cost off my offer then

Ava: one of the 💡 tips I’ve picked up and you’d undoubtedly thought of yourself but there we go

James: here’s where I could nod & keep up the pretense to avoid giving away what a total novice I am, but there’s very little point given than you know I’ve never done this, & a list of countless other things as long as my arm, for myself before

James: instead I’ll just take your advice & thank you accordingly

Ava: There’s so much we don’t get prepared for

Ava: even under normal circumstances

Ava: It isn’t as if I was told that at school, or I get told anything vaguely useful on the day-to-day by Hawthorne or any of the others worse or marginally better than him

Ava: You shouldn’t feel like you’re alone in feeling unprepared, is what I’m failing to say

Ava: Lots of people feel it, that’s why I could never just stay here, in the bubble of SW forever

James: don’t worry, you aren’t failing at anything where this conversation is concerned & whilst it is somewhat overwhelming at times, I don’t feel alone because I’ve got you to talk it through with

James: what that school taught me, all that living here has taught me, was how to avoid facing up to situations by lying & name dropping, which probably would assist me in climbing the property ladder but I’d rather be honest, if the bubble bursts as a result, I’m prepared for that from now on

Ava: I’m proud of you

Ava: and the girls will be too

Ava: It can be fun, and there are some good people here, just as there are everywhere

Ava: but outside of the postcode, the currency of who you know and where you went to school, it’s just not real, irrelevant

Ava: I don’t want to rely on my parents’ hard work, let alone someone else’s father knowing the crest on my blazer, you know

James: yes, I know exactly what having to rely on my father feels like, it isn’t fun or something to be proud of & it definitely isn’t a precedent I’d like to keep setting for my daughters

James: the stark reality & contrast of this fresh start needs to happen soon, while I still have Jay here to teach

Ava: She’s not going anywhere

James: she’s going to have to meet him eventually even if that’s under the guise of him being one of my old friends or your brother

Ava: And I understand that that’s fair

Ava: to him, I don’t know how to feel about it in regards to Jay, and it’s not even my job to so I know how hard this must be for you

Ava: but that doesn’t mean he should get to ‘keep’ her, for God’s sake, she has had no idea who he is until now, you’re her dad

James: I have to hope that he’ll understand that too, he’s not the villain here, as much as it would make my life easier to paint him as such

Ava: I hope so too

James: it’ll be okay, for her, I don’t know if I can make the same promise for us but I want to be able to

Ava: Don’t put yourself down like that

Ava: It wouldn’t be okay if she lost you

James: she isn’t going to lose me whatever Buster decides to do next, things may have to change but never that drastically, I’ll always be in her life

Ava: Providing he plays that nicely

Ava: I’m just scared he’ll do something that drastic, and stupid

James: if he doesn’t I won’t, I’m not afraid to fight fire with fire should that be the only option he leaves me with

Ava: Good

Ava: I wish I could promise it won’t be

Ava: but I don’t know what he will be prepared to do, so you should be prepared for any and all eventualities too

James: I am, my marriage made sure I was equipped to anticipate the unexpected & not to expect rational responses

Ava: Yeah, of course

Ava: Still no word from Chloe?

James: no & no trace of a belated birthday card

Ava: Typical

Ava: Good thing Mattie got spoiled by you and had a great party already

James: Jay is devastated she has to wait so long for you to throw one for her though, maybe we can find a way to cater the housewarming party to her

Ava: Awh, bless her

Ava: If there’s one thing Chelsea HAS taught me, is that you only need a vague notion of an idea to have a party and celebrate

Ava: Does she like fireworks?

James: she LOVES fireworks, if you weren’t in Dublin she’d have insisted you come with us to [wherever we’re gonna go see some on the night]

Ava: I am pretty gutted I can’t

Ava: but I’ll have to get some sparklers, probably not Catherine Wheels or Roman Candles, and do a belated bonfire themed do for her

Ava: smores are a good idea any night

James: I wonder if she’ll expect us to dye her hair red, orange or yellow this time

Ava: 😬 accidentally set a precedent

Ava: thank god for washouts

James: I’ll do what I can to have her convinced that face paint is a much better idea by the time you get back but she’s no Mr Hawthorne so

Ava: I admire a girl who requires more than a persuasive essay

Ava: you’ll have a great time

Ava: 🤞 the endless family drama doesn’t get in the way of me having one too

James: no amount of Catherine Wheels or Roman Candles could prevent me from being on the end of the phone whether you aren’t having a great time or simply want to tell me how much fun it is

Ava: You’re the best ❤️

Ava: It should be fine

Ava: If anything, hopefully someone else is bringing more drama than my parents or siblings could accuse me of, then it’ll really give them a bit of perspective 🤫

James: if your family resembles the dynamic of mine even slightly I won’t have to keep anything crossed in order to make that happen for you, but of course I will nevertheless, just in case

Ava: How soon is too soon to clue you in on my mad family dynamic 🤔😅

Ava: Maybe when you’re in your new home, so you have a door to politely shut in my face

James: having never kept an air of mystery there I can understand why you’d want to, but I would never christen my new front door like that

Ava: It was like an unspoken rule, when Buster was here too

Ava: I don’t really care that much, and anyway, he broke it big time

Ava: Every family has struggles and secrets, or are long overdue their share if not

James: I couldn’t agree more, my mother acts as though nobody else has skeletons hung up next to their hideously expensive coats & we must stay silent come what may, but she’s the last person to feign shock when any of said secrets inevitably come out

Ava: It’s such a waste of time and energy

Ava: not to mention resolves precisely (0) of said troubles, if and when they can be

Ava: I’m so glad you don’t want to keep up pretenses together

Ava: wouldn’t make for a very interesting story

James: exactly, if I adhered to her code of silence I wouldn’t have gone to rehab or spent any time & energy on recovery, god knows what trouble I’d be in right now in that instance, but we certainly wouldn’t have this plotline to delight in

Ava: Being dubious about the potential results, maybe

Ava: but the idea your own mum would rather you suffer in silence, literally, is beyond me

James: it’s an attitude worthy of an outdated classic novel, for sure, that we can all take ourselves in hand & address our flaws with a firm word or two but she isn’t alone in her 'you don't need outside help, you just need to learn and then follow through with setting your own limits' mentality

James: in my parents' defence I was still young, despite the baby I wasn't looking after properly or the wedding I don't remember very much of at all, & I know they'd argue, if pressed, that was the main reason for their anti-rehab stance

James: therefore, I'd like to believe, however naively perhaps, on this occasion it isn't entirely about saving face with yet more pretense but rather a glimpse at some character development for both of them, if only so the novel isn't doomed by one dimensional subplots, naturally

Ava: I can see that too, again, a lot of people’s problems go unaddressed or at least are allowed to get worse because the person is ‘too young’ for it to either be a problem, or it is something they will ‘bounce back’ from once they ‘calm down’ and mature

Ava: It doesn’t make your parents the devil, I wouldn’t suggest as much, nor the first people to fall into that trap

Ava: There are definitely instances of the exact same mindset I can point to within my own family

Ava: We’d all like to see the best in people, and sometimes, that desire lets us down

James: regardless this viewing has yet to let me down unlike the previous

James: I wish you were here

Ava: With any luck, I’ll be able to come see it with you next time

Ava: The pictures look great, trying to keep the optimism at the cautious level still but 🤞🤞😌

James: need I remind you I like your optimism as unabashed as your excitement

Ava: You don’t need to

Ava: but I wouldn’t be opposed

James: [tell her about whatever cute and romantic plans you've sorted for you two tonight so she'll be happy and excited]

Ava: How have you managed to sort that whilst at these viewings and also with Mattie 😍

James: it appears I’m guilty of similarly high levels of enthusiasm & so the greater crime would be letting it go to waste

Ava: AND being an excellent multi-tasker AND AND an even greater romantic

James: Mattie can & will take full credit for the former but the romanticism is a newly acquired skill that I’m still trying to find my feet with, & entirely down to you

Ava: I should feel bad for keeping it all for myself

James: I disagree but I’ll happily rush through the book’s publication if sharing will make you feel better

Ava: Should doesn’t mean would or could

Ava: because I don’t

Ava: It’s nice not being secret, but I’m still happy keeping you to myself for a while longer

James: oh good, because I’d rather continue to multitask like this than on a novel deadline

Ava: Being anything but a reprieve from all the other drains on your time is not very romantic heroine of me, so never

Ava: what would the readers think

James: you’ve got me there, by evoking how fickle our readers are more than likely to prove themselves to be, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about

Ava: You either think the protagonist is ‘relatable’ or you hate her because you deserve the love interest far more than her

James: nobody deserves me more than you, they’ll have no choice but to appreciate you

Ava: James

James: Ava

Ava: I can’t wait to see you later

James: can I pick you up from school or do you need to go home first?

Ava: I don’t need to go home 😊

James: I’ll see you there then, unfortunately, I have work to get back to & I’ve kept you from yours for longer than I responsibly should have, lest you end up at Kings after all

Ava: 🙄 I’m sure my career’s officer would tell me they’re higher in the rankings or something else that isn’t going to change my mind more than your experience and my own, however brief

Ava: If I were rating them on chance, perfect meetings, however

Ava: A++

Ava: I’ll see you later then, try not to get TOO exhausted by soft play 😏❤️

James: I’ll be certain to tell them now that’s not a secret, it wouldn’t surprise me if they used us a ringing endorsement for some kind of meet-cute society to take place weekly in The Vault

James: the allure of soft play meanwhile needs no advertising, with or without any single mothers trying to engineer romantic entanglements of their own

Ava: I’ll square that with my conscience and you run that gauntlet, love

James: I’ll do my best

[apptowonder]

On the Inherent Chaotic Queer Energy of “Cats” (No, Really)

In Which the Author Relates His Early Affinity For the Musical Cats, And Meditates in Rapt Contemplation On Its Effect On His Own Queer Coming of Age.

Ok, I’ll drop the Eliotian/Victorian pretense. But in all seriousness, this is going to be a long ramble on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats, because I saw the recording of the 1998 Broadway performance again for the first time in probably 14 years and it made me Feel Feelings (tm). Plus a comrade of mine expressed similar enthusiasm and it inspired me.

I -- First Viewing

When I was 10 or 11 years old, for a brief period after seeing Cats for the first time at a local dinner theater production, I was enamored in ways I couldn’t put into words. I was not, and have not really ever been a theater queer. I did a few plays up through high school, and stopped doing theater in college when I lost interest and found out it would take time away from gospel choir. But there was something about the way these characters moved, the charisma they carried themselves with that stuck with me. Unlike some of my queer friends, I don’t have the sense that “I always knew” I liked boys as well as other genders. As a tween, I felt very aloof from romantic interest except for one long-lasting crush on a girl in 5th grade that lasted through middle school. But as I continue to look back, I do think I felt a certain stirring in my gut for certain charismatic male figures, almost like an imprinting. Early affection and crushes manifested in a desire to be like the attractive heroes I admired.

I wanted to be Mr Mistofelees, the Original Conjuring Cat. I also wanted to be Munkustrap, the unassuming but brave and suave narrator, unofficial leader of the Jellicle Tribe. Honorable mention goes to the Rum Tum Tugger, whose rock star persona definitely exudes bi energy, but he felt less approachable to me. In any case, though I didn’t realize it at the time, something was very queer about these cats.

II -- On the Naming of Cats -- Munkustrap

Why I felt drawn to this character is hard to sum up. He doesn’t have his own song, his name is only listed in the program. But he does have considerable stage time. Serving as the narrator and Master of Ceremonies for the Jellicle Ball, right-hand man to Old Deuteronomy, and the only cat willing to go toe to toe with Macavity, he had a certain gravitas that I found compelling. He is humble, as I strive to be. Caring and protective of his family, but not overly aggressive. Confident, but not overbearing. He seemed that he would be the perfect gentle lover, someone who could take you to new and unexpected places but would also make sure that you were safe and loved. 

On a deeper level, perhaps my identifying with this character was a kind of rehearsal for the years to come. Munkustrap served as both the boy I wanted to meet and the boy I wanted to be. When I came out and became invested in queer community and queer Christian community especially, I found myself slowly falling into the role of psychopomp and threshold guardian for some of my gayby Christian friends who were either newly coming out or newly trying to reconcile their faith and sexuality. I would direct them to apologetics resources, but I think my greater strength was in being a kind of MC who would invite them into a new queer reality, a celebration of the richness of life and a vision of the vastness of both theology and queer vibrancy. In a sense, I invited them to a Jellicle ball.* I would invite them to dance beneath the moon of our shared experience, and show to them that far from being incomplete or broken, they had their own power and beauty, were possessed of “Terpsichorean powers” which would serve as a mysterious gift to the wider world.

The first boy I dated was a Munkustrap. Gentle, but fun-loving. Willing to meet me where I was, but also encouraging me to new heights of intimacy, feeling and adventure. Though we eventually parted ways, we remained good friends, and I will be forever grateful to him for leading me from an abstract appreciation of my queerness to a deeply embodied possession of it that I can now live out for the glory of God and the good of humanity, like a cat has a deep embodied possession of its third and secret name.

III -- On the Naming of Cats -- Mr. Mistoffelees

“Oh, well I never! Was there ever a cat so clever as magical Mr. Mistoffelees?”

Coming in at the eleventh hour to save the day, Mr. Mistoffelees employs his magical powers to rescue Old Deuteronomy when all other help fails. In the production I saw, he literally flies down onto the stage (on a wire) and proceeds to produce phantasmagorical phenomena and easily conjures up the kidnapped patriarch of the Jellicle Tribe from the place he’s been sequestered. He is flashy, elegant, flamboyant, coy, “aloof” but always fun-loving. Perhaps more importantly, in all the performances I’ve seen, he seems elegantly attuned to some deeper sixth sense. Beneath the playful surface is a deep power that manifests in impressive ways. The show relays his power through the metaphor of stage magic, but to me he also seemed to have a touch of something mystical, spiritual. I felt both awe and affection for that sensitive attunement, and how it was packaged in such a playful personality.

In my own life as queer clergy, I have sought to develop that kind of attunement. Though spirituality is a bit slower and more messy than conjuring, I have received compliments from colleagues queer and straight that I often speak the exact right prayer for the needs of a given moment. I write poems and try to breathe new life into the life-giving stories of my spiritual tradition, my life and the lives of my queer tribes. I’m always eager to come up with an impromptu liturgical service when circumstance dictates, and I draw on vocabulary from the saints and mystics as well as my own love of language and poetry. Playfulness is, to me, a spiritual virtue, and I love to offer inspiring surprises from the depths of the wisdom I have inherited from those who have gone before. When friends (especially queer Christian friends) are stuck in demoralizing binaries and limited horizons of purity culture, toxic theology, or other spiritual burdens, I will often pull a shimmering anecdote from the lives of the saints, or an ancient word of curiosity that opens up a new way of seeing the world. In a way, I’m pulling kittens out of hats. 

Ironically but also fittingly, when I kept my queerness under wraps, my poetry was vivid but strained. Overwrought, often melancholy but rarely insightful. And I would pray when someone asked me to, but it generally consisted of generic requests that didn’t really mean much to me. I had to become fabulous and be willing to be in touch with the queer wonder of both my loves and my experiences before I began to really tap into that spiritual current that I am still learning how to channel for the life of the world. I’m still a beginner, and in my day to day life I’m fairly quiet and introspective. Aloof, perhaps. But I feel that my openness to queer joy, queer eros and queer vibrancy have begun to throw open a way to my own wholeness and the invigorating and revival of many of my communities. I don’t do this alone, and I am still learning from my many queer elders and forerunners. As I study and practice and bring forth vision, I continue to learn “from Mr. Mistofelees’ conjuring turn.”

At Pride a year or two ago, I met a Mr. Mistofelees of sorts. A pagan boy, playful and flashy, with a golden voice. He ended up being a bit too flighty for me, but he helped me find a bit more of my flamboyant side by getting me to do karaoke, and introducing me to the queer night life in a new city. In our own separate ways, we both helped each other I think be deeper attuned to that electric queer energy that flows into creativity, presence, wonder and resilience like lightning flows from Mistofelees’ fingertips. We pranced about our respective stages and conjured beauty for one another.

IV -- Memory (Some Thoughts on the Queerness of the Musical, and Some Final Reflections)

And what of the musical as a whole. What is it about Cats that struck such a chord with my very young queer self, and still does?

To me, it has an energy to it that resonates very deeply with queer experience. It delights in elevated pageantry, but it takes its own internal logic and way of being seriously. There is something about the mystery and spectacle of it that feels like a queer way of being. Despite the charge leveled against us by demagogues and queerphobes that we’re simply decadent, queer experience to me has always been about experiencing a heightened sense of reality, be that in adventure, sensuality, joy, beauty, celebration or pleasure. As the meme goes, before you say we’re too much, ask yourself, are you even enough?

Furthermore, the show is sensual and embodied in a way that many more conventional Broadway musicals aren’t. It delights in being just a little bit bawdy, while at the same time showcasing an excellence in the choreography and visuals that requires a good deal of skill and physical effort. In coming out and coming to know queer community, I began to listen better to my body and to be more comfortable in my own skin. To delight in the magic of touch and sensory beauty.

Finally, the sensuousness that undergirds the show also displays a very free flowing romantic and affectional subtext between different characters. Two cats may flirt or make eyes at each other, but there’s no expectation that they might not also catch the eye of a completely different cat in the next scene. They perform with a subtle erotic undertone that suggests both tenderness and hedonism, but all in the context of a tight-knit community that cares for its own. The fanfiction community for Cats presents a rainbow of different romantic pairings for various characters, and the lack of consensus as to which ones are “canon” speaks to the show’s affectational fluidity and dynamism.

In the end, the Jellicle cats all present a world within the everyday that is deeply queer and fluid, a “thin space” where personalities are larger than life and anything is possible. In this gay and mystifying romp, I was moved to a consideration in the years since I saw it of my own “secret names” as a future queer seminarian and priest (though I didn’t know it then). While it may seem bewildering to some, I continue to cherish it as a tribute to the great mysteries of queer existence, love and community. And that’s how you address us cats.

*Props to my comrade for extending on and fleshing out this metaphor in his blog post.

[junker-town]

How women find freedom through soccer in a refugee camp

Inside the Angelina Jolie Primary School for girls in Kakuma, Kenya, the third-largest refugee camp in the world.

In May 2017, Louis Bien and Kainaz Amaria went to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya to document the start of the Kakuma Premier League soccer season for a piece called “Escaping Kakuma: Soccer and the pursuit of meaning inside the world’s third-largest refugee camp.” There were still many more stories to tell within the world’s third-largest refugee camp, however, a place where sports have greater meaning as a way to combat idleness within an oft-forgotten population. This is a story about the women of Kakuma.

The markets of Kakuma can make you forget where you are. The refugee camp is the third largest in the world, but it has been around for so long that it has lost any pretense that it’s supposed to be temporary. You can buy a cell phone or a Coca-Cola out of a thatch-and-tin shack off the road. You could get a macchiato and sip it in a plastic chair on a dirt floor by a rubber-clothed table. The markets are one of the few places where, if you live in Kakuma, it’s easy to take your mind off the reasons you’re there in the first place — the death, oppression, and longing that come to define you.

And in the market roads, women are often outnumbered by men, goats, and dogs. The refugees that reside there come from nations with prominently conservative cultures — primarily South Sudan and Somalia — where women are expected to stay in their homes and handle traditional household duties, like cooking, cleaning, and child-raising. The women you do see in the market are often carrying heavy loads of firewood. Every duty related to maintaining a homestead almost exclusively fall on women, while men — people who in a better world would be working — talk away their days.

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

The road running through the Somali market in Kakuma.

Women are not prominently seen at Kakuma’s “hotels,” which are actually combination cafes, restaurants, and social gathering spaces. You won’t see them at the video halls where men meet at night to watch Premier League soccer. And you are not likely to see them playing sports. According to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), there are 592 registered sports teams in Kakuma, and just 73 are women’s.

Unless you seek them out, refugee women are largely invisible in Kakuma — and not just there, but in other refugee camps, as well in their countries of origin, even when those nations are in periods of relative peace. To be a refugee man is to feel ignored by the world. To be a refugee woman, then, is to be erased from it.

Mark Munene for SB Nation

Aerial view of Kakuma, which hosts roughly 180,000 refugees across 12 square miles.

There’s nothing “good” about living in a refugee camp. What places like Kakuma offer must be couched in “better than” statements. Living in Kakuma is better than living in South Sudan, a nation erupting with famine in the midst of a civil war. There is food in Kakuma, though it is given out just twice a month in shrinking rations, and there is security, though the Kenyan police have been accused by refugees of rife corruption and unnecessary violence.

Kakuma may be a progressive place for refugee women relative to their countries of origin. The UNHCR, the camp’s governing body, stresses gender equality and enables other NGOs to implement programs that develop women professionally and spiritually. The LWF oversees Kakuma’s refugee services and recreation, including women’s sports, for example. The LWF has created a version of the Premier League for the men of Kakuma, which just concluded its second season, and is set to debut a women’s version this year.

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

Those programs are too few and underfunded, however. Space is a problem in a place like Kakuma, where stick and aluminum walls are usually all that separates one home from another. There’s no privacy, and almost no space for women to feel safe at all times and free to address the ways that life in Kakuma is fraught for them. Female genital mutilation is still a common and ghastly practice. Rape epidemics take place with alarming frequency.

Angelina Jolie Primary School stands apart from Kakuma’s hatchet-shaped cartography. It was opened in 2005 — funded by the actress and special envoy to the UNHCR — as a boarding school for bright or at-risk girls. There, they can be nurtured in a safer environment, away from the problems within Kakuma’s traditional borders. The girls are given a more focused education — the classrooms are much smaller than in the coed schools that pack upwards of a 100 students in one room — and they perform, on average, much better than the rest of Kakuma on Kenya’s standardized testing for secondary schools.

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

Inside a classroom at Angelina Jolie Primary School.

Angelina Jolie also gives girls access to athletics they might not otherwise have had. The school has performed well in inter-school competition against Turkana County teams. Gop Dhieu, 16, and Nyayiel Nnading, 17, are two of the school’s best athletes. Gop is an accomplished 800-meter runner and long jumper, as well as soccer midfielder. Nyayiel is a swimmer, volleyball player, and defender. If they hadn’t been accepted to Angelina Jolie, they may not have competed.

“Some of them they like playing football, but it's hard for them to get that opportunity simply because they are in the community,” Gop says. “They don't get time to go to the field. But for us, the field, is just here in the school, we go and play any time we feel like.”

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

Gop Dhieu on the soccer pitch in front of Angelina Jolie Primary School.

One of the problems with being in a “better than” place is the way it makes striving for more feel almost ungracious, especially for those who ran there. While Gop was born in Kakuma, Nyayiel came to the camp just six years ago from another refugee settlement in Ethiopia. Her father was a South Sudanese politician. When his family’s lives were threatened by an opposition party, they fled south.

“The only thing that helped us was that it was the only choice we had,” Nyayiel says. “So it was easy for us to just accept and just move on with life, because we came to a safer place and we have food.”

It’s hard to think about how one can thrive in a place like Kakuma, she explains, when safety and survival are such consuming concerns.

“It all starts with you,” Nyayiel says. “You have to accept whichever place you are, so that anything that someone accepts becomes easier for her.”

It shouldn’t need to be stated, but: The people of Kakuma have the same human potential as anyone in the world. That was the message of the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Five members of the 10-person team were selected from Kakuma to compete in track events. Two of them were women: Rose Lokonyen and Anjelina Lohalith.

Tim Ireland/AP

Refugee team's Rose Lokonyen crosses the finish line in a Women's 800m heat during the World Athletics Championships in London, on August 10, 2017.

They remain in a training program outside Nairobi with other refugee athletes, many more than the five from Kakuma who competed in Rio, including several athletes from Dadaab, a larger refugee camp in Kenya. Both Lokonyen and Lohalith competed at the 2017 World Championships in London this past August. With opportunity, they’ve not only been able to develop as athletes, but become ambassadors for other young, refugee women athletes.

“There's no education here,” Lokonyen says. She was the flag bearer for the Refugee Olympic Team in Rio. “So at least sometimes, when they have time, I can mobilize them and talk about the importance of education, or the importance of their sport. At least, girls who are just roaming around or being idle, at least the sport keeps you busy and you can forget about things that you have in your mind.”

Idleness can be a paralyzing feeling for refugees. With a lot of time and nothing to do, the mind tends to dwell on circumstances or bad memories, and in that way the possibility of all that free time is squashed. For the women of Kakuma, the more they are led to do, the more they are emboldened to forge their own identities.

“In camp, sometimes, the life is so hard, because a lot of them they lose their parents, some they are orphans, some they live alone,” Lokonyen says. “So you find yourself, the life is not too good. At least you are allowed to make your own decisions. You can say, 'Oh, let me just do these things.' At least now if you engage in sports, we help you.”

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

The Angelina Jolie primary school stresses possibility. Nyayiel says she’d like to be a pilot. Gop says she’d like to be a lawyer who advocates for women. They’re lucky to be among the few in Kakuma who live in an environment where their potential is acknowledged. There’s no one to tell them what their roles should be, and they’re too busy to listen anyway.

“I just decide to play football,” Nyayiel says. “I just like playing it the way I see it on TV.

“It makes me very light.”

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

Gop wants to run like Cristiano Ronaldo. She became an Arsenal fan, she says, because of the confidence they have — “They don’t give up.” Nyayiel, a Chelsea fan, wants to score like Didier Drogba. “Even when it is practice, what is on my mind is, 'I have to score,’” she says. “I dream of scoring goals.”

They’re both on the field as Angelina Jolie students scrimmage in baggy, solid red and yellow uniforms. Like all of the practice surfaces in Kakuma, they play on dirt, where the ball bounces high and often with a mind of its own. The sun and heat are constant and unyielding. Those circumstances mean that, if someone is really committed to the sport, it’s that much harder to improve with the same level of effort and commitment one might need anywhere else in the world.

They play with one of the best views in the area, however. The Angelina Jolie compound is situated almost in the shadow of Kalemchuch Hill, which people in Kakuma climb and find seclusion in a place where it’s difficult to be alone. It’s nicknamed “Love” Hill. From the top, the refugee settlement almost looks orderly. Tin roofs shine back at you, white and uniform; almost toy-like.

From below the Hill, you can only see the edge of the settlement. There is nothing as significant in your sightline as the Hill, and beyond that more hills, and in front of you what looks like limitless room to run.

Kainaz Amaria for SB Nation

Kalemchuch Hill.

[randobrandoblog-blog]

why we’re here

Every once in an extended while, my time carousel sees me back at one of three chief creative conceits, each of which I have about a jack/master aptitude for – I audition for a show I feel inclined to perform in, bag it on more occasions than not (due more, I’m sure, to savvy selectivity than ineffable brilliance), and get to act my heart out for two or so months. When this particular hunger strikes, I’m a little more discerning than a relative local and total national nonentity is probably entitled to be. I never audition for musicals, and I avoid the sort of stylized comedy whose illumination depends on that tense and tactile physical control for which we treasure so many different performers. This isn’t because I dislike either type; like any sane lover of art, I adore both if well-executed, and typically, if they’re being put on at all beyond high school, the cast and crew come fairly equipped for such stuff. As a sometime self-styled critic, I frequently marvel at strokes of these varieties. As a sometime self-styled actor, however, both are a bit beyond my reach and my preference. As it happens, I share these aversions with the screen performer I hope hardest to emulate whenever I try my hand at his trade. And as for the kinds of parts I do seek, he’s at the forefront of my mind too. My personal gold standard of acting, which I’ve found is seen as somewhat eccentric in regional context, is what I imagine to be most people’s gold standard in a broader context, and when they choose to think about acting at all: an evocation of reality, in all its mess and livewire unpredictability; a cocktail of arrhythmic emotional waves, bursting with responses apt enough to feel like the actor’s own. When it comes to theatre and film (which includes TV today), I regard no achievement greater than a performance in which actor and role become virtually indiscernible. Even if you have no inkling what the actor is like offstage, my ideal form of acting is the sort where you can’t imagine the human in front of you behaving any differently. Absolute, seamless naturalism, pass before you though jarring and unusual emotional extremes may. This impermeable commitment is necessary in your farces and your operas as well. But hyper human vérité is a flavor of performance I prefer the way I do coconut. I believe, too, that even as one mustn’t suggest a comparative denigration of those decidedly non-vérité forms, there is something of a golden mean quality to what I’m detailing. And when Marlon Brando first brought this sort of acting to the screen, history knows the liberation from all of that recycled cinematic convention was seismic. He wasn’t fluke enough to be the genuine first, of course – many people found theretofore-unseen magic ducking around expectations before our eyes, piercing those heavy (or corny) handed-down hands borne from decades of feeling into a fledgling and formerly voiceless medium. Even more than in small doses sometimes; Brando singled out Eleonora Duse and James Cagney, and if you’re a cinephile you’ve got your own few in mind. But Brando broke that barrier as forcefully and undeniably as Chuck Yeager, or Chuck Berry a few art forms over. Not only did he make such acting fashionable, he made it his calling, one which he honored almost slavishly (though he could be thrillingly novel circumventing it). To the historical chauvinism by which he wins this championship title, you can add American chauvinism too; well before obvious signposts like De Sica, overseas filmmakers and their actors proved to possess a firmer finger on these buttons. And of course, being the first famous realist actor on celluloid is speedily dwarfed by thoughts of centuries of stage performers – not to mention those teachers to whom Brando owed his inspiration, from the incomparable Stella Adler on up the line through Stanislavski. (As he himself would hasten to qualify, I refer to more than the often superficially tricksy “method” stuff.) But even today, when he’s been bested performance for performance by so many people, Brando’s strides, his conviction, avidity, fervor and jazz-like instincts, reverberate meaningfully enough to earn perennial gratitude. Even given the stale trappings of his early, mythmaking work, which weakens it a little now, one shudders to imagine the tradition evolving without his effort, ascendency, and influence. Of course, realism wasn’t the only thing on his résumé. As much as a desire to get it right, his inclination to the style was fueled by a desire to resist any encumberment he encountered – not even the result of oppressive genesis (though having two kinds of alcoholic parent, one loving but distant and one present but angry, can’t be a cakewalk) but an innate waggishness from which he drew his joy and energy. The suburbs in which Brando came of age weren’t unpleasant, but they were complacent and artificial, much like the tenor of the times. A youngster bursting with his immeasurable levels of curiosity and passion had only disruption in his fingertips, and having discovered he had no taste for destruction or foolishness, art was perhaps his only available salvation. Acting is the creative medium you throw yourself most literally into, and for an undisciplined, yet physically strong and clearly inspired, individual such as Brando it was a tailor fit, even as he consistently insisted he only did it out of base financial necessity and an absence of any other obvious natural talents. So we can easily conceive of how a lust for truth and an urge to resist merged to instigate his 1950s rise as a paragon of believable acting. But, though he lacked Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis’s finesse for detail when he went for pastures outside those he could summon within the skin he inhabited, Brando loved character work, and when we watch him attempt various accents or hide inside makeup choices, we come with him, witness the other half of his magnetism – he’s fun when he tosses any recognizable self aside, because it allows his madcap streak, his why-not puckishness, to flower untrammeled. Many critics bemoaned how recklessly Brando seemed to be skirting playing the clown, and he wasn’t afraid to be caught not trying. But fopping around in an obvious miss like the Mutiny of the Bounty remake was, however aesthetically wanting, a more valid punk gesture than anything he conveyed (or simulated) in The Wild One. Certainly, he flopped, sometimes hugely. But unlike at least one bazillionaire progeny, he couldn’t bore you if he tried. Despite his claims to eventual mellowness, which he might well have privately enjoyed in his later days, Brando’s notorious pugnacity, or its legend anyway, grew the way his body did. Thirteen years after his death, and considerably longer after his last great work (well – we’ll get to that argument), it’s not hard to recall, even as Johnny Depp faintly, ineptly retraces it, just how badly Brando encrusted himself in his own insistent eccentricity, for so long up to his passing. Forget Pauline Kael’s very early (1966) eulogy to his own control over his volcanic gifts and image. After the twin peaks of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris (Apocalypse Now is a whole other matter), what was formerly a cute game he concocted to cope with unprecedented fame and admiration rapidly mutated into an onanistic circus of disagreeable quirk. Even in his self-identified “Fuck You Years”, Brando maintained a commitment to a handful of his ideals. After finally unburdening himself of charm, all that remained was that compulsive resistance to any authority. But grotesque as Brando might seem revisiting what he became (and I mean as a human being, even as those final vestiges of sex appeal disappeared under poor health), only the pugnacity and some of the pretensions – odd to imagine how a lack thereof was his first gilded calling card – truly scuff the image. True, he had strange ways of treating and referring to women and Jews. But these two groups would seem to be the only two subject to lapses in his otherwise magnanimous attunement to demographic disadvantages. And he loved and admired both, from his ingrained distance; the only on-record reference to physical abuse against women in his career (besides “shoving” stalkers and unwanted pursuers) is his defending his mother from his father after Marlon Brando Sr. had vented his odious rage. Brando’s Pop seems to have been the only living thing he hated*. From small animals to every race or culture ever to find itself America’s victim, Brando was a tireless and unafraid defender of the sort of underdog he understood he never genuinely was. When a former miracle among mankind tumbles backward into their own freakshow, it tends, especially in this era, to be all we focus on once the last breath leaves the lips – think of his genius pal Michael Jackson, who was a disfigured paranoiac for much longer than he was a smooth, soulful sweetheart, and their mutual friend Elizabeth Taylor, almost unrecognizably boozy and bedraggled for practically as long as she was ravishing and respected. In fact, all three of these troubled icons share something special – an inspiring doggedness in the face of torrents of unmerited mockery, years after the proof of their respective wonders had waned and given way to a thirst for freedom, from an exhausting, inescapable legendary status. Well-compensated as they were, none of these people were allowed normal lives, and all exhibited the brand of toll that only someone of such enormous cultural import can comprehend. In this reflexively polemical age, they deserve a more dignified collective recollection. This blog couldn’t fuel Brando’s third alone – an even less important, less public gesture than the times I’ve stepped on a stage and tried to nail it like he did, and I don’t mean in a James Dean way (those are different strands of I-should-be-so-lucky). When I think of Brando, or when I strive to conjure similar intentions and outcomes, I think of how synoptically this self-proclaimed career liar cared about truth – as much as Hemingway, with a far less coarse course of pursuit. This was a man who steadfastly refused to vitiate his characters with bad dialogue, brainless effects, or lapses in logic. One whose care for the audience, which wasn’t always obvious, entailed a belief that they’d be able to see through any bullshit in any performance, any trace of trying, any betrayal of consistency and slip from integrity. “The actor is the boss”, Adler once declaimed with Olivier bombast, and as a person who knew how corrupt such unbridled power could become, Brando tended to that role with a remarkable, reverential grace. Stuffed as this intro entry is with overtures to encapsulation, all of Brando’s accomplishments, contradictions and unclassifiable quirks can only be adequately explored by way of the plan at hand: to experience and analyze the canon – forty wildly diverse onscreen performances over the span of a half a century – and to invite you to raise the discussion to whatever heights I can’t. Per my catchy (eh?) title, we are refusing to take the straight path through this journey. I figure that’s as apposite a tribute to the old master as anything. *not counting paparazzi