2006-03-12 - 2:38 a.m.
Isn�t it funny how (for some of us, anyway) our name spelled wrong isn�t our name at all? Am I too visual? Rarely is my last name pronounced wrong, regardless of how somebody may be visualizing it, but rarely is it ever spelled right. I wonder why that is? I suppose, for one thing, the silent �e� at the end of it disappears from the mind and therefore people often spell it entirely phonetically, without that �e�, which, to me, is despicable, leaving the name far too short and plebian and missing a certain ending flourish which I believe is required in order to be accurate. It�s a kind of follow through.
Maybe the silent �e� is viewed as too pretentious, sort of like a kind of effete British spelling, taking it from, say, �program� to �programme�, or �modern� to �moderne�, and therefore people purposely trim it off to make it more solid and undramatic, reflecting their own psyche and not mine. If silent letters in words were like serifs on letters, such people take my �Times Roman� name and turn it into �Letter Gothic� in much the same way that an Excel spreadsheet defaults to the plain and ugly �Arial�.
However, far more often than they slice off the final �e�, they add an even more unnecessary �u� to the �o� in the second syllable, changing it to �ou�. Why on Earth? It must be one of those peculiar mind tricks, in which they notice the silent ending �e�, think it puts the name into a fussy category, and therefore they overkill by inflating the fussiness even further. Which they tend to do with my whole name, in which I am the �II�, but invariably people will inflate it to �III�. Do their eyes have blurry vision which makes it difficult to count how many Roman numerals there are in my subscript? �How many fingers am I holding up? Yes, only one, the middle one.� Or is it because they just don�t understand what the �II� even means, thinking that it really should be �Jr.�, but since they vaguely remember Roman numerals, it must be a �III�. For those who don�t know, �II� means that a person is named after a relative other than their father; in my case, it was a grandfather. �Jr.� is reserved for being named after a boy�s father (unless the father is a �Jr.�, in which case the boy will be a �III�, which he also would be if his father is a �II�.)
When people ask me why I wasn�t named after my father then, I explain that my grandfather was much older (obviously) and my parents wanted to honor him by naming a son after him, and applied that honor to me, their first-born son, while they still had a chance. They didn�t know if my grandfather would live long enough for them to use that name for a later son who might or might not come along. That make sense, no? It is, then, my brother, six years younger than I, who is named after our father, and he is, of course, a �Jr.� Also, for those who don�t know, you put a comma after the last name when it is followed by �Jr.�, but dear God please no, do NOT put a comma after the last name when followed by a �II�, �III�, or any other combination of Roman numerals. Whenever I see this misplaced comma on somebody�s business card, for example, I know I am dealing with a rube who comes from a family who, not understanding how to write it, certainly shouldn�t be using this convention in naming their kids, and clearly in such a family, there is no relative illustrious enough for such commemoration by naming. Just as in England it is apparently impossible for even the most expert linguist to faithfully duplicate an upper class accent when he wasn�t born into it--My Fair Lady notwithstanding, although if one remembers the story, Henry Higgins wasn�t entirely successful with Eliza Doolittle, either, for, at her triumph at the ball, they concluded she was Hungarian!�you likewise can�t impose yourself into American WASPish society if you can�t write properly.
So, what�s this all about?
Well, let me explain.
A few days ago, I got a phone call from the editor of an L.A. gay newspaper called Fab!. This is the kind of thing that in the �70s (when I was active in the scene) used to be called a �bar rag,� referring to a cheap, throw-away newspaper that would be available for free at all the gay bars, and mostly filled with trashy gossip of the local community and advertisements for some of the bars. I had a lover at the time whose nude photo had been featured on the cover of three of them. However, I do think Fab!, although sharing a bar rag�s roots, is really on a higher level than that, although it is not, shall we say, the Christian Science Monitor. I really do like it�they have informative, intelligently-written articles and features and also have some columnists who are quite admirable (especially the syndicated Ann Rostow). Unfortunately, their most popular columnist, Paulo Murillo, is someone whose attitude I all but despise�he is someone who represents what I consider to be the very worst of gay life in West Hollywood and very much demonstrates why I don�t go out anymore. This kind of person has completely wrecked it for my kind of person.
And I am not alone in my negative view. In each issue the Letters to the Editor section has at least one impassioned letter, but sometimes several, complaining about this particular guy�s columns, decrying some offensive thing he has written and describing him as a disgrace to gay people in particular and to all of humanity in general, and demanding that the newspaper stop printing his column. But these letters about Paulo Murillo are like Christians picketing a Hollywood movie--box office gold. The more that people write negative letters about Murillo, the more adamant that the publishers of Fab! would be about printing Murillo and I truly do think he is their bread and butter. Most denizens of the West Hollywood gay scene share Murillo�s attitude lock stock and barrel. There are those who write letters saying that Murillo is the first thing they turn to when they open the newspaper. And I have to admit that despite my despising him, I have to read him every time. It�s like driving slowly past a car wreck.
So, I, too, have often felt the urge to write my own anti-Murillo letter to the editor, but I knew it would do no good, it would only increase Murillo�s strength. However, one Saturday morning about three weeks ago, I woke up with an idea that I just couldn�t get out of my head. I had read Murillo�s latest offensive offering the night before and I guess the whole thing kept spinning around in my head like a flushing, but stopped-up, toilet. I thought to myself that all of his columns say basically the same thing or describe basically the same pattern of events. One could simply write their own Paulo Murillo column, simply choosing which particular choices they felt like reading about this time. So, I sat down and wrote something I called �The Paulo Murillo Automatic Column Generator� and sent it off to the Letters to the Editor section, explaining that nowadays with all the outsourcing and downsizing and the high cost of keeping a newspaper going in competition with the Internet that I now had a solution that would save Fab!, with my Paulo Murillo Automatic Column Generator, they could fire Murillo and save the money they had been paying him, but their readers could still get their Murillo fix�perfect solution, and available 24/7!
I felt that this would be the greatest revenge against Murillo�it would distill him down to his murky essence and almost make it impossible for him to write any more columns. He could write them, but when people read them, they would sigh in boredom, because now they fully got his shtick. Murillo would now have to suddenly become very creative and clever in order to keep his gig going.
Not that I had absolutely any expectation that Fab! would publish the piece. For one thing (compared to a letter), it was too long, and for another, it wasn�t really a �letter�. Still, it was something I had had to write and, upon writing it, I had to send it to them. At least ONE other pair of eyes had to see this!
Three weeks later, I got a phone call from the very appealing-sounding editor. He apologized profusely for taking so long to communicate with me. He told me that the piece had him rolling on the floor and not only him, but everyone else in the office, too. Getting it just made his day. He praised me so much, saying it was so funny and so clever and I had truly gotten Murillo down. �Do you know him?� he asked me, for apparently, I must really know Murillo well in order to have written something like that.
�No,� I only read him, I explained, suddenly sounding like the most dedicated Murillo fan, and suddenly, I felt like maybe I really was.
�Well, Paul came in here and I read it to him,� the editor continued, �and he gave a sort of sick laugh, you know, and then he said, �who is this guy again?��
I can imagine Murillo�s pea-brain rummaging around in his memory--was this a trick he fucked (or fucked-over is more like it), maybe a former boyfriend--but no, I�m just a total stranger and, actually, the kind of guy he writes so disparagingly about in every column, his and every other young self-appointed hot West Hollywood stud�s greatest nightmare, a person over 40 he might run into in the same bar who might, gasp actually LOOK at him (defiling his beauty with wrinkled eyeballs), or perhaps, double shudder put the make on him (�and I don�t do trolls for any amount of money,� Murillo might say), except I don�t go to the places he would go to (I wouldn�t be welcome) and I wouldn�t attempt to pick up the arrogant boystown boys who�d view me as being at the stage where I�d have to pay for it. (�Get outta Abbey/Rage/Mickey�s/Factory and get thee to Numbers*, old man.�) [*Well-known silver fox/hustler bar.]
�We wanted to print it so badly,� the enthusiastic editor continued, �that we decided to devote the whole Letters column to it and even put a teaser on the cover mentioning your name.�
I was very excited about all this, to say the least, and I was even starting to love Paulo Murillo, since he was the genesis of this. The editor invited me to send them more stuff, falling just short of actually offering me a column of my own.
The paper hits the newsstands this coming Monday, and I will definitely want to get for myself a couple of issues. I was so excited that tonight I had the idea that maybe they have a website, perhaps I could get an early peek into what it will look like (on the cover, anyway). I wanted to see what this �teaser� with my name was going to be all about.
Well, yes, it took some searching, but I found it, they do have a website and do show the cover of the upcoming issue (real cute twink on the cover and a lead article about the serious damage done by so-called gay-curing organizations) and sure enough there was the teaser the editor talked about�with my name spelled wrong. They added a �u� to the �o� in the second syllable. Which means that they don�t have my name at all, or, when I look at it, it doesn�t communicate to myself that it is me. �If a tree falls in the forest and it is spelled wrong, it didn�t fall.�
Well, you�d think that a newspaper would want to be accurate and when the editor seemed to love the piece so much, I�d think getting my name right would be an important detail. But as they say, and I have experienced it enough to know how true it is, �Whenever you are involved with or know something about what is printed in the newspaper, you see that they get it wrong.� Yes they do, which is why I don�t read newspapers. But they get it wrong on television, too, such as the feature story on UFO cults (after the Heaven�s Gate suicides) I sold to �Hard Copy� (and for which they showed me on screen for about two seconds, despite interviewing and filming me for over two hours) and thoroughly distorted what it was that I was saying.
Which takes me back to Paulo Murillo�maybe I really don�t know what he is like at all. Maybe this whole time, they�ve been changing his words and altering his true attitude, too? Or maybe he just writes this stuff because it sells, it�s popular, but it�s not how he really feels at all. (He also looks like he is near the high side of 30, so his attitude will change whether he wants it to or not.) I figured from the teaser that Fab! saw my piece as a Murillo love-fest rather than a satirical dig at him. And at this point, I kinda think maybe I do love him. He and I are both on the same side, in a way�we are both published writers, subject to the whim of an editor. Wouldn�t it be funny if my piece ends up making him even more popular than he already is? The essence that I distilled him down into becomes the trendy new West Hollywood fragrance that every A-list gay guy wants to dab behind his ears. Bye bye CK, hello PM. Or maybe even this new line: "Pitbullsharke". Except the manufacturer would misspell it: "Pitboullsharke".
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