tommyomalley

[tommyomalley]

Overstated Harm

I have been thinking lately about harm—when it’s real, and when it’s exaggerated for political reasons. And as harm escalates, at what point does it require us to intervene on behalf of ourselves or others?

Yesterday, I recorded a conversation for my podcast Theater Fag with playwright Isaac Gomez. We met in the offices of Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where his new play “La Ruta” is currently finishing a sold-out run. “La Ruta” is about the women of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city that suffers one of the highest crime rates in North America, if not the world. Disproportionately impacted by the violence in Juárez are women, who regularly go missing without any hope of being found.

Obviously the situation in Juárez is an example of real harm. Like gay men with AIDS in the 1980s—like trans women of color in the United States today—the women of Juárez are dying preventable deaths at an insane rate, and nobody in the dominant culture gives enough of a shit to make it stop. Isaac’s play, “La Ruta,” is a tortured cry for mercy, one belonging to a theatrical tradition that includes plays like Larry Kramer’s seminal AIDS polemic “The Normal Heart” and “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” Anna Deveare Smith’s verbatim account of the Los Angeles riots (in which Congresswoman Maxine Waters is a character, by the way).

In our conversation, Isaac and I discussed the roots of violence in Juárez, which Isaac attributed to toxic masculinity and failed US policy. Of the former, Isaac elaborated that he can draw a straight line from small acts of gendered insensitivity—microaggressions such as a man interrupting a woman to explain a point she was in the middle of making—to more grandiose expressions of violence, such as rape or murder. My impulse in the moment was to disagree and question the equivalence I thought Isaac was making. But after a night’s sleep on the matter, I think agree with Isaac’s general point—unchecked privilege corrupts, and if we don’t intervene when violence presents itself, it will escalate.

The women of Juárez are in a daily fight for their lives. The stakes for them could not be higher. That’s why, when people start to talk about feeling “safe” and the stakes fall somewhere short of life or death, it’s important to pause before offering our support and validation. Unfortunately, not all claims of victimhood are intellectually honest, and sometimes, folks who identify as victims are actually perpetrators. These situations require a different kind of intervention.

This week, the boys from Covington Catholic high school in a Kentucky have been all over the news, after a viral video clip in which one boy wearing a MAGA hat—Nick Sandmann—stared down an indigenous veteran named Nathan Phillips, who was seemingly just banging his drum. Since the release of that initial video, dozens more clips have surfaced, some of which show that Mr. Phillips intentionally walked into the Covington Catholic group, and others of which show an unrelated group of Black Israelites screaming nasty shit at every person who passed them, including the Covington Catholic boys and Nathan Phillips.

Some people claim these videos exonerate the Covington Catholic boys. Others say they implicate Nathan Phillips as a provocateur. What’s compelling to me is the immediacy with which reactions split along party lines. Lefties are Team Phillips, righties are Team CovCath. I have way too much trauma surrounding Catholic schoolboys of my youth to be impartial, but what I will argue is that the Covington Catholic boys are not victims here. I don’t want them destroyed, but I want to see some accountability. And when I see a lot of white adults minimizing their actions, I feel compelled to intervene.

The fact remains that Nick Sandmann stood aggressively close to Nathan Phillips, his posture and smirk fixed with a rigidity familiar to anyone who, like me, has been physically threatened or assaulted by a Catholic school meathead. Regardless of the aftermath, this was not a boy who was standing by innocently. He was full of the all the bravado an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex allows, and that—to my eye—is undeniable in any of the videos I’ve seen so far. It’s an expression of the toxic masculinity Isaac mentioned in our discussion of “La Ruta.”

Part of the PR campaign the Covington Catholic community is waging involves blaming the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group of absolutely wild bigots that stand in public spaces and say naaaaaaaasty stuff about gays, women, etc. The reason for this PR move, I believe, is that Covington Catholic knows on some level that truth seekers will look at Nick Sandmann in those videos and see a young man eager for conflict, not peace. To avoid this murky discussion, they instead point to the Black Israelites as the instigators. “Look, these folks said faggot, that’s way worse.” Unfortunately, these two unrelated wrongs don’t change the interaction between Sandmann and Phillips on that video.

I was once a teenage boy, and I remember what a brutal period of self-discovery those years were for me. I made so many mistakes and treated folks around me with tremendous disrespect. To say the least, I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood making right the wrongs of my youth, and I am so lucky that every single fucking person wasn’t armed with a recording device when I was 16. I share this because I truly wish the best for the Covington Catholic boys—that they may overcome this moment, emerging on the other end with renewed faith and commitment to peace. I don’t see that happening, however, because as Nick Sandmann told the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie, his only regret is that he didn’t walk away from Nathan Phillips (a subtle suggestion that Phillips was the aggressor), and he does not feel that he has anything for which to be sorry. If the only offense the Covington Catholic boys committed that day was Nick Sandmann glaring disrespectfully at an elder, then that would be enough to warrant an apology. Unfortunately, Nick Sandmann and whatever crisis PR firm is handling his case do not agree. (If you do not think Nick Sandmann’s glare was disrespectful, then let me ask you this: how would you feel if you saw him standing that way before your mother, father, grandparent?)

The problem is not so much the Covington Catholic boys as it is the adults who thrust victimhood on them. (And unrelatedly, I can’t help but imagine, if society cared this much about gay boys as it does about these Catholics then Bryan Singer would’ve been dealt with decades ago. But that’s another story.) The community that has built around Covington Catholic is absolute—the boys were not wrong, and any assertion otherwise is an attempt to ruin children's lives. Their supporters are misrepresenting the stakes in order to argue that MAGA folks are under attack. An attack on these boys gives MAGA supporters a chance to transfer their own feelings of victimhood, and so the amplification of their stories has created a deafening “poor me” echo chamber.

Speaking of poor me, in December I got into a Twitter fight with a playwright named Jeremy O. Harris, whose “Slave Play” was a controversial hit for the New York Theatre Workshop. The controversy wasn’t so much about the play as the playwright himself. I haven’t read or seen Slave Play, so I can’t speak to the piece’s merits, but I can speak to the way Jeremy behaves on social media, which seems to be carefully cultivated.

The initial buzz around “Slave Play” was huuuuge. As Jeremy himself said, the play went viral. The reviews from white NYC theater critics were overwhelmingly positive, with a few notable exceptions. On Twitter, however, criticism began to mount from a surprising corner: other black theater makers took serious issue with the way black women in particular are treated in the play. Some folks went as far as to say that Jeremy’s play was its own sort of violent act against black women, and they used things he’s said and tweeted publicly to support this. I won’t quote any of them, but it’s all there for you to find, if you want to.

All I can honestly say about Jeremy Harris is that I do not believe his social media persona is authentic. While “Slave Play” was enjoying an often sold-out run, he began tweeting about all the death threats he and his cast were receiving. For sure, horrific shit got hurled at Jeremy and his collaborators. At the same time this was happening, producers were looking seriously to bring the show to Broadway. Jeremy took to Twitter and called attention to the tweets and emails, claiming the threats he and others received numbered in the hundreds. I called bullshit on that number, and I wondered whether every mean tweet he received was actually a “death threat.” I suggested Jeremy was performing victimhood to engender sympathy that would distract from his critics and/or help facilitate a transfer, and perhaps that’s a leap too far. But I tweeted what I tweeted: I do not believe Jeremy Harris received “hundreds” of credible death threats over a play at an off-Broadway house. (For the record I never @ mentioned Jeremy on Twitter, he found my tweets on his own.)

In my back-and-forth with Jeremy, I made the mistake of roping critic Elizabeth Vincentelli into the discussion. Wasn’t really fair of me, because I don’t know her. But she was one of the only mainstream dissenting voices in her assessment of “Slave Play,” which she said ripped off better plays like “An Octaroon” and “Underground Railroad Game.” Elizabeth responded on Twitter to tell me that her problem was with the play, not the playwright, and she sort of scolded me for making inferences about Jeremy’s personality based on his tweets. Jeremy, who loves to herd critics on social media, jumped back in after EV’s capitulation, letting her (and me) know that “we stan critics.” The “we” referred only to him. Lol.

The funnier thing is that, two weeks later, on her podcast “Three on the Aisle,” Elizabeth did exactly what she admonished me for doing on Twitter—drawing conclusions about Jeremy the person—and she used much harsher language than anything I tweeted. She doubled down on the derivative nature of “Slave Play,” describing it as “a play that is embarrassing in its self-satisfaction and the way it revels in this empty provocation that is not really provoking, because people are just expecting it.” She elaborated:

“It’s is also written in an incoherent, smug manner that I found really, really annoying. Just the ineptitude of the writing was confounding, I felt. This play should’ve stayed in the oven, it was not ready to be pulled out… Reading the script afterwards, it annoyed me even more. The script is a window into the way this playwright’s mind works that is not really all that interesting.”

She later described anyone who was shocked by an event that happens in Jeremy’s play as “a target sitting still.” Harsh words for an artist and his audience. I wondered why she would be so brazen on a podcast yet conciliatory on Twitter. It made me wonder if she was afraid to bring the full weight of her position to Twitter, in writing, before Jeremy. And if that’s the case, then what positional power does she perceive that he has over her? Could be generational. Jeremy and his social media followers are presumably savvier to the medium than EV, which I imagine she would understand, so perhaps that’s part of the reason. Regardless, my question now, in light of everything, is: do we still stan critics like Elizabeth? (FWIW, I do. EV is one of the greats among NY’s theater critics.)

My beef with Jeremy truly isn’t so personal, although his personality seems challenging based on our Twitter interactions. That’s not real life, though, I know that. Jeremy and I have never met, only battled from our phones. Theater is the art I care most about, and I’m interested in who holds the power to create it.

Jeremy is a power-holder, despite repeatedly trying to position himself as an outsider. As far as I can smell, Jeremy is disingenuous in these claims, as he was when he overstated the number of actual threats he and others received. I believe that doing so helped bring attention to his play. Of course I have absolutely no concept of what it’s like to be a queer black person in America, but I do know that Yale Drama School—where Jeremy is finishing up his MFA—is the nerve center of NYC’s theater establishment. You cannot graduate from Yale Drama School and call yourself a theater outsider. Sorry. It’s just not honest. And when we allow dishonesty, for whatever reason, we allow injustice to escalate. And we stan only what’s just.

[tommyomalley]

Carol Channing, 1921-2019

July 2005. My editor at the Austin American-Statesman, Michael Barnes, asked me, do you want to interview Carol Channing? And I was like, is Dolly Gallagher Levi a widow?

The reason for the interview was that my friend Stuart Moulton, artistic director of Austin Cabaret Theatre, was bringing Carol to Austin to perform at his company’s gala. The day before she arrived, Stuart called me and asked, “Do you want to pick Carol up from the airport tomorrow with me in a limo?” And I was like, do gentlemen prefer blondes?

That July, I got to spend an hour interviewing 84 year-old Carol Channing on the phone, another hour or so picking her up from the airport and walking her to her suite at the Stephen F. Austin hotel, and another hour or so watching her perform her cabaret act while seated about five feet away from Lady Bird Johnson, who was confined to a wheelchair and nonverbal at the time. In fact, when Carol sang “Hello, Dolly,” she came out into the audience, put Lady Bird’s face between her hands, and delivered the song directly to the First Lady. 

These are among my happiest memories of living in Austin, a place I called home for more than 5 years. Today I’m feeling for the contributions Carol Channing made to our American theater in her 97 years. 

Below is the article I wrote based on my interview. The Statesman’s archives are not easy to navigate, so I had to dig into my old word files to find this. I believe my editor took out all the references I made to pissing my pants when it went to print, but this is what 22 year-old me thought was appropriate to publish. And here are a few gems I didn’t put into the article, presumably because my frontal lobe was just coming into formation:

--on more than one occasion, Carol Channing fell from the stage into the orchestra pit & broke bones. Still, she never missed a performance.

--on the movie version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes being cast with Marilyn Monroe instead of her as Lorelei, a role she created on Broadway: “It’s like taking your baby and kidnapping it... I just saw my friend Jane Russell last night in Santa Barbara, and I said to her, ‘I’m still so proud it took two of you to play my part in the movie.’”

###

JULY 2005

Full disclosure (since that’s fashionable these days): By the time I was born, Carol Channing – who will perform her solo show “The First 80 Years Are the Hardest” at an Austin Cabaret Theatre benefit on July 26 – and Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi (DGL) had been acquainted for nearly twenty years. Truth is, my first introduction to the diamond-dusted diva was by voice alone (thanks to both the original “Hello, Dolly!” cast recording and “The Addams Family” animated series, in which she portrayed Granny). As a preteen, I admired Channing’s panache. Away from my Catholic mother’s view, I would lip-synch, “When a man with a timid tongue/ Meets a girl with a diffident air…” before an audience of suit jackets and dress shirts, hanging appropriately in the closet.

Channing is exactly the second person I’ve interviewed professionally. A sweet sophomore opportunity, I’m aware. In the time leading to our conversation, I was admittedly wracked with dread. This is, after all, a woman who refers to Al and Lynne (Lunt and Fontanne) like I refer to my roommate Lennie. No amount of preparation helped curb the urge to urinate when Harry Kullijian – Channing’s junior high school sweetheart who she recently married – called to start the interview.

“Carol, this is the Austin American… hold on. Austin American what?” Kullijian reconfirmed.

“Statesman.  The Austin American-Statesman,” I replied, noting that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone if I actually wet myself. Before I could decided what to do, that voice – rich with the insight its 84 years allow – hit the receiver.

“Good morning, Aushtin American Shtateshman!  With whom am I speaking?” Channing initiated, sounding more enthusiastic than she probably was. My inner musical queen begged me to respond, “Hello, Carol. Well hello, Carol.” But my outer professional, who values his job, decided instead to introduce myself and brief her on the interview format.

We began with requisite discussions about Austin – “I’ve performed there many, many times.  They’re a great audience,” she volunteered – and Texas in general. Musing on distinctly Texan pronunciations, Channing said, “Lots of things are odd in Texas” (a sentiment this Yankee seconds). She also mentioned a party being thrown in her honor by Liz Carpenter, the Statesman reporter who went to Washington and became Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary. Channing has maintained a bond with the Johnson family since she sang “Hello, Lyndon!” for the President’s 1964 reelection campaign. She reproduced the chorus over the phone, providing yet another assault on my already overactive bladder. Once talk of Texas grew tired, the conversation migrated 2,200 miles northeast.

I saw my first professional production – a pre-Broadway tryout of the Rosie O’Donnell “Grease” – at the Colonial Theatre in Boston.  A half century earlier, Channing, having “(written) papers on communism, socialism and democracy at Bennington College in Vermont,” went to Boston for an audition to be Eve Arden’s understudy in the Danny Kaye musical, “Let’s Face It.” On the same stage that I would later hear O’Donnell warble “There Are Worse Thing I Could Do” – itself a singular theatrical event – Channing landed one of her first Broadway parts, a milestone she attributes to the fact she and Arden wore the same size. Almost thirty years later, when Channing left “Hello, Dolly” in Chicago to film “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (one of her only forays into movies, for which she received an Oscar nomination), the prolific producer David Merrick got Arden to fill in. Arden reportedly greeted the cast with the disclaimer, “The reason I got the part is because I fit into Ms. Channing’s costumes.”

As an understudy, Channing began her career shadowing other performers. Later, she made a name for herself mimicking them. Her popularity grew with a role in the Charles Gaynor review “Lend an Ear,” which featured choreography by her eventual “Dolly” director, Gower Champion. Marge Champion, who had seen Channing’s act, introduced the starlet to her husband at an audition. Of that fateful first meeting, Channing recounted, “Marge just said, ‘Do Getrude Lawrence. Do Ethel Waters.’ I did Ethel Merman and Bea Lillie… Well I got all the way through with 12 numbers and (Gower) said, ‘Do you have any more?’ And I didn’t, (so) he said, ‘Go back and start again.’”

Channing did, and, as a result, won a role that would catch the eye of the late showbiz caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld sketched Channing in the show’s comic “Gladiola Girl” scene. “It did it for me,” she remembered. “I had no idea how funny the character was (until then).” The audiences and critics, on the other hand, had been noticing all along.

Channing’s status as a headlining star was solidified by her Lorelei Lee in 1949’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Marilyn Monroe’s constipated “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from the 1953 film will forever be linked to the role, thanks to the medium’s permanence. But to the discerning ear, only Channing’s gravelly refinement will ever do the song justice. About Monroe’s Lorelei, Channing said flatly, “It’s like taking your baby and kidnapping it.”  

A stint replacing Rosalind Russell in “Wonderful Town” followed (postpartum poster person Brooke Shields played the same role recently). In 1951, Channing received her first Tony nomination for the flop, “The Vamp.” A second nomination came in 1961 for “The Showgirl,” a compilation of her nightclub acts. Three years later, Channing won a Tony for her immortal performance in “Hello, Dolly!” She toured DGL around the country on and off for more than thirty years. Amazingly, in more than 5,000 performances she never used an understudy. In 1964, Joanne Worley (pronounced like “worldly,” as Ms. Channing pointed out to me), was Carol’s stand-by. At the outset, Channing said to her, “Oh Joanne, you’ll never go on, but come along.  You’re great company.”

Her work horse mentality sets Channing apart from every subsequent generation of actors. Asked about her perfect batting average, which she maintains to this day, the accidental legend offered a typically self-effacing response: “At the end of each show when I was sick, I either felt better or I was getting cured. I did it for selfish reasons.” With what she has given to generations of theatergoers, Channing’s claims of selfishness were difficult to process.

By the time our hour was up, I had gotten through all the important stuff. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak with one of the true greats, and more importantly, I was grateful for not soaking my shorts in the process.

[tommyomalley]

Dubrovnik is lovely, but perhaps its charms are best expressed off-season.

[tommyomalley]

Kotor, Montenegro. Right now.

[tommyomalley]

When I saw this Tinkertoy airplane that was to carry me from Warsaw to Zagreb, I just about lost the contents of my bowels on the spot. I boarded. An aisle with 20 rows, two seats on either side, not counting the 8 identical seats in "first class." The entire fucking plane is first class. But people like to feel superior because of cash. I took my window seat in row 11. A few moments later, a woman and her young daughter took the seat next to me. She couldn't have been more than one. A blonde haired, blue eyed, Balkan dream of a child. The propellers began spinning, timed perfectly to the rate of sweat racing from my palms, feet and folds. Take off, a nightmare, every curve of the wind reverberating throughout the cabin. I blessed my self approximately 17 times within the first five minutes of airtime. The only time I ever really bless myself is on airplanes. Magical thinking, it works for me when I feel my continued life is beyond my control. The mom made a game of the turbulence for her daughter. Weeeeeeeee, she squealed, like we were on a roller coaster you'd find in Dante's innermost circle. The little girl giggled and played along. I felt shame. I thought of my my new nephew, born a mere six hours ago, and my other five nieces and nephews. How would I behave if any of them were sitting next to me? I snapped out of it. I looked at the girl and smiled. She smiled back. I realized it's misguided to call people babies when they show weakness or fear, because this little lady was cool as a sheep on the cliff's edge. I calmed right the fuck down. I cannot wait to meet my nephew.

[tommyomalley]

Kraków is for lovers (of anonymous blowjobs)

[tommyomalley]

I'm sitting in front of an iron fence. It's covered in ivy. Or some kind of green vine with a leaf. I'm not a botanist, but I can tell you that it obstructs the view of what's on the other side. I'm on John Paul II Street, a major thoroughfare in Warsaw, a city that was leveled--literally leveled--by the Germans during WWII. Much of the city, including the Old Town, has been rebuilt, restored, revised perhaps. New, but made to look like it's been here for centuries, as its rubbled predecessor had been. War is a real son of a bitch. But a city like Warsaw gives me hope for places like Baghdad. The trauma of the recent past hangs thick all around, but the city lives on. The people live on, in spite of, and because of, the thousands and millions lost within many of my living relatives' lifetimes. I'm sitting in front of this ivy-covered iron gate, looking across at the marks of a modern city: glass towers with letters like EY & HSBC, and words familiar to English speakers like Deloitte and Starbucks. Behind this fence, opposite the neon shine of capital-G Globalization, is a courtyard. At the far end of the courtyard is an old brick wall, about as tall as I am. It has a small plaque on it. This wall is all that remains of the barrier that once ghettoized nearly half a million Polish Jews during WWII. This wall witnessed the deportation of nearly 350,000 of those Jews to death camps. This wall stood by while 100,000 more of those Jews died from starvation. This wall should be a place where people pray, absorb sorry, and feel tremendous gratitude for the example of the Polish people who survived in spite of, and because of, what it represents.

[tommyomalley]

America from 30k ft & a bunch of miles away

One item per day Be it a poem A scene Some story A video, picture, drawing, gif One thing per day That's the beginning That's what I will post Many false starts along the way Along my 33 years And some real progress as well Often instigated by a trauma Which in retrospect begs the question Is trauma the universe's way Gods way Of redirecting your path Not to undersell its impact Or negative effects But does it help you If you're willing Or able I think it does For me If that's not true for you Well I'm not writing about your experience So write your own Two weeks away from the States Officially the longest I've been away With 11+ days to go And from where I am 30,000 feet in the air Approaching Warsaw I have to say I don't feel much pull Back to the land that bore me Reared me Abandoned me Embraced me Taught be to be hard and soft and angry and empathetic America is full of people So many wonderful people So many awful people So many fucking people Last week In County Mayo The birthplace of my maternal grandmother A woman I never met But now know A little bit better I was standing on a mountain Which I climbed The mountain under whose shadow my Ma was born 110 years ago Looking down at her house And the bay behind it The islands behind it Green and blue and white as far as I could see Geographically pretty much the closest place I've been to NYC on this trip But another world completely A place where sheep outnumber people And the nearest gay on Grinder was miles Plural Away from me Depleted but not exhausted Breath I had to earn Sweat that felt like a blanket I thought I could do this For a good while anyway And besides Dublin is only a three hour, €20 train ride away And Dublin That's a dope fucking city Ireland is international Especially in Dublin Maybe less so in Mayo But my Mexican friend who visited my roots with me He felt welcome Even if people in the pub let their eyes linger on him while he wasn't looking Differences among people are a thing Equality isn't about ignoring that It's about not being a dick when you notice or acknowledge it And if you happen to be a dick Which we all can be It's about moving on from that impulse And allowing others space to move on as well When I look at my home country with a bit of time and space between us My home city of Boston My adopted home city of New York I see people clinging to their identities in a way that prevents actual progress You don't have the right to say this because of how you were born How many of us have said that? How you were born By the way A thing we have literally no control over But don't let that unavoidable reality get in the way of your anger Whether justified or fabricated I had a conversation on Crass to Mouth recently In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting (I hate guns) With Jared Freid and Keren Margolis Straight folk Straight talkers Straight up good eggs And I said Straight people You have no business at my Pride Because I'm gay And I've suffered Because of you And I want my space Well I've changed my mind Come gawk, heteroamericans Come see the faggots in the zoo Just try not to be a dick when you see something you don't understand And if you are a dick That's ok I'll do my best to help you get better Because that's my job Not as a gay person But as a person In this With you America Whatever that means I think it forces us to forget The great singularity As Ray Kurzweil calls is The fact that we are all the same We're born We bleed We shit We fuck (some of us better than others) We eat We think We die We can make the steps between born and dead easy or hard In America It's a struggle YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT I AM SO SICK OF X GROUP YOUR PERSPECTIVE DISTURBS ME THIS IS ABUSE Motherfucker Relax And really think Because evil exists True evil In the form of people But like anger, love, money, sex And lots of other valuable shit If you throw it around all willy nilly It doesn't mean balls True evil is rare Evil born in the marrow I'm talking about Thank god Because that shit is hopeless But adopted evil Learned evil Can be changed Can be overcome If we realize we've all got it And we all can forgive it One time in Boston I was waiting on a couple of old women at brunch And at the table next to them A baby was shrieking Wildly And the parents were helpless Nothing they did could stop it One of the old women said Loud enough for everyone to hear But to no one in particular "There's two reasons a baby screams like that: they're either hungry, or they're rotten." And then "That baby. Is rotten." You are not a rotten baby, America At least I hope you're not Plane's about to land in Poland Where I will see the ruins of true evil I will pray And pray That we can learn And avoid the outcome That so many seem to want Without really knowing the consequences

[tommyomalley]

I'm spending most of August traveling to places in Europe. Gonna connect w my roots, see some history, and hopefully meet a few hot Syrians on Grindr. I KID I KID (about the history). ✌🏻️ USA. Do something about fucking Trump's numbers while I'm away.