Combat Queer Online

Nick Fury: Agent Of Nothing

So, I picked up the first issue of the new Nick Fury comic this week. It's actually called SECRET WARRIORS: Nick Fury: Agent of Nothing. Yeah, Brian Michael Bendis is rocking not just one subtitle, but two. Personally, I think the "Agent of Nothing" title is the best bit, but eh, who am I to say? I wasn't really sure what to expect. It's just that I've never really been the biggest fan of the character. I mean, I get it, he chomps cigars, he's a super-spy, he's somehow been about the same age since the end of World War II. He's a fine character.

But... I don't know. Maybe it's my distrust of unbridled patriotism, but I've never really gotten what the dude's motivation was. Normally he's basically a background concept, you know, "Where'd this secret base come from? Oh, Nick Fury left it for us." And that works. It's cool to have this big, powerful, basically good overwatch guy taking care of things, but as main character, I don't know if he really works very well.

This issue is pretty good though. Nothing spectacular, but good. It stars off your standard "ensemble cast learning to be a team" bit. They don't get along perfectly, and make some mistakes. It's nothing new, but it's done capably. There were one or two good little character moments, like Quake showing off the dude tooth stuck in her stick, and maybe this will improve in future issues.

Oh, and it was nice to see the Sentry working in his "government tool" role. It's strongly reminiscent of Superman in The Dark Knight Returns, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Marvel does with it. 

The real meat of the issue, though, is a noticeably older looking Nick Fury(all of a sudden he had gray hair!) looking spooked and uncharacteristically unsure of himself. And what does Fury do when he faced with an uncertain world? He turns to the man all good Americans know we can trust.

That's right, Barack Obama. 

Fury's visit with Obama was a little odd. Obama stands in the shadows for some reason. Is Marvel suddenly shy about showing our beloved Commander-In-Chief? Are they afraid to characterize him, afraid that he'd be the start of the scene? I don't know. 

Also, I noticed that Bendis felt the need to point out that Obama actually *reads* his daily security briefings. 

But whatevs.

The issue ends with the (SPOILER ALERT) revelation that Shield has always been a front for the ancient and evil organization Hydra, and that for all Fury's super-spy wits, he was dupe all along. We all so get several pages of Watchmen-style counterfeit primary source documents, which I love. It neat to be about to figure out what's happening without broad exposition.

But... I still don't know how I feel about the series. It seems like Bendis really wants to focus of Nick Fury more than the team of Secret Warriors, and that might be a good idea. It's always fun to watch a True Believer like Fury learn that everything he's built his life on is a lie. Also, now that the long arc of Secret Invasion is over, maybe Bendis will be able to recover some of his charm, and inject that into the writing. Who knows? This series might turn out good.

We get another conversation, then my favorite part of the issue, 

Expletive Failure

One difficult thing about being trans and at least kinda sorta trying to do the right thing is that you loose access to a lot of offensive words. For instance, when I cross paths with a coward, a sniveling, immoral weakling, I am at a loss for socially meaningful ways of referring to him offensively. I mean, if it doesn't mean anything bad to call someone a "woman" or a "homosexual," how do you degrade them?

For instance, yesterday evening I was introduced to man in his late 20's. Turns out, he's in my unit. I say, "Oh, I didn't know. Why haven't I seen you around?" 

He says, "Well, I felt like it would be best for my career if I went to OCS." That's Officer Candidate School.

"This close to the deployment?," says me.

"Oh no," he says, "because I'm going to OCS, I don't have to go on the deployment."

"Have you deployed before?"

"No, but I hear it's not so bad. With your MOS, you probably won't have to do anything."

And the smirk. You never saw a smirk like the smirk on this fellow's face. 

So, I'm at a loss as to want to call this individual. I mean, "fucking coward," "douchbag," "yellow piece of shit," they all just fall flat. 

Of course, because now that this fucker is sashaying around his one-weekend-a-month OCS classes, he technically outranks me.

Now, I'm really glad that we have a time table for pulling out of Iraq, but when lazy shit-bags like this one use that time table to avoid doing their job while still getting the status of having been in the military during war time, oh, oh, it makes me angry. 

Fucker's just smirking away, enjoying talking about his future as an officer, all the time safe and warm in his understanding that he won't be deploying to Iraq.

And I don't know a strong enough expletive for that kind of person.

The Most Subversive Thing

A friend of mine, one who knows about the trans thing but doesn't have much of clue about the military, she asked me, "So when you deploy in a few months, what do you think is the most subversive thing you can do as a trans-woman?"

And this question, well, it bothered me a little. I hear folks talking about being "subversive." They mean to go against the grain, to do something that changes the world for the better. Now, I'm all for going against the norm in a way that helps people, that helps the world. What bothers me, it's when people get so damn smug about being subversive. Some folks think that when your secretly being weird, that automatically makes what you're doing a good, worthwhile thing.

Here's what I told my friend: "Look buddy, the best thing any queer in the military, or anywhere else for that matter, it to do her or his job competently, quickly, and cheerfully. Through hard work, people can make themselves indispensable elements, and at some point, when you are know to be an honest, hard working individual, well, maybe it will stop mattering whether you are straight or queer."

And of course, my friend looked at me like I'd said that if you just eat an apple a day, you will never ever ever get sick or hurt or sad. 

Look, maybe I am being ridiculous. Maybe trans folk will never find wide acceptance in society. But Dear Reader, I will be fucked if I'm going to let somebody tell me not to do a good job just because it won't necessarily buy me the love and acceptance of everyone in the world. Some people are just bastards. If you let the bastards govern your life, well friend, you're something even worse. 

No matter what anyone else's opinion of you is, I believe that it is up to you to decide what sort of person you're going to be. If you're going to be lazy, if you're going to shrink from responsibility, if you're going to let someone else handle the big It, well, that's on you. 

I say fuck it. No matter what the consequence, I'm going to do my job as well as I possibly can. If that helps trans people, awesome. If not, too bad. I'm going to do my job, and every single other human being is free to decide how she or he feels about it. Nothing I can do to change how they feel.

Not Stopping

I was really touched by the comments and emails from folks who thought I was ending the blog. I found it a little ironic that people began to praise my writing but of a poorly worded sentence of nebulous meaning.

See, when I said, "So, I'm down in Washington DC for a day or two before I head out on the deployment," what I meant was "Before I head out on the deployment, I'm down in Washington DC for a day or two." My deployment doesn't start for, well, two weeks or so. Not much difference, but a little.

But here's the thing. I'm not going to stop writing just because they send me to the sandbox. Sure, posting will be more difficult(I'll never do it on a gov'ment computer), but I am going to keep writing, and keep post to the best if my ability.

The Army, well, it can be a pretty lonely place. It can also be an amazing place. You really get to see the best and worst of people. Being a part of this soup of morality and immorality, of accomplishment, of sloth, of ambition, and of keeping-your-head-down-ism, there's so much there to talk about. Like that mythical predatory elephant the Brits in Nigeria would talk about in 1950's, I can never catch the world of the Army, but I can describe it a little. 

The very act of communicating changes us. Maybe this blog is like one of the Tibetan prayer weeks, except that instead of a fixed mantra I'm adding a little every day, and instead of spinning it in the wind, I'm tossing it out on the flows and currents of the interwebs.  

In DC

So, I'm down in Washington DC for a day or two before I head out on the deployment.

First, man, DC is an awesome place to walk around. You hear about all these places, the Justice Department, the Capital, the FBI, the White House. You hear about them all the time, so regularly that they seem less like brick and mortar buildings full of flesh and blood people and more like... Platonic forms or something. 

Somehow it's very comforting to walk around and see them in their reality.

Right now I'm sitting the food court of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. This place is cool and all, what with talking about America's space race, but I swear, all the exibits talking about the possible future of technology, those exibits can't be less thank twenty years old(Seriously, I've seen three references so far to “affordable two-way television wristwatches")

 I already hit the Natural History Muesem, and still need to walk down to Lincoln Memorial and the Wall. 

The first time I saw the Wall, I was here with my dad. He'd brought some paper and a pencil, and carefully took rubbings of two of some of the names. My dad, he has some stories from Vietnam that he likes to tell, some that he tells rarely, and some I've only heard parts of. The Wall means a lot to him. When I was growing up there was sometimes a traveling replica of the Wall that would pass by, and if it was within an hour or two of us, he'd load up all the kids and take us to see it. 

Helicopter Prison Escape

Oh. My. God.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/22/greece.prison.break/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Now, Dear Reader, you may be thinking, "Oh man, some thugs kidnapped a helicopter pilot and forced him to help two prisoners escape. And that's awesome." And it is, it. 

But you know what the most awesome part of this story is? 

"The prison break by helicopter is the second for Paleokostas, who was convicted for abducting a businessman and escaped the prison the first time in June 2006. He was recaptured several months later."

This happened before. This is the second time dude escaped prison by helicopter. Friends, if you're a prison guard, and you have a guy who once escaped prison by use of helicopter, well, doesn't it seem like you may want to try to keep the fellow off the roof?

Wouldn't it be... stupid to let him hang out on the roof?

Anyway, I am shocked by the awesomeness.

Battlestar Galactica, Deadlock

So, lot's of folks seem to be unhappy with this week's new episode of BSG. "It's too melodramatic" they moan, "Too much exposition" they cry, "It's a little ridiculous" they grumble.

Well folks, I got news for you, BSG has been pretty ridiculous all along. Remember, this is a show about the remnants of humanity fleeing across the star because a) their home was blown up by killer robots and b) their president was having drug induced visions. There's been weird, religiousy, mysticy shit all along, and guess what? That's been one of the strengths of the show.

Oh, oh, and complaining about how the question everybody is asking is not just "how will these people survive," but also "do either of these two cultures deserve to survive?" Well friend, that's been the question of the show all along. It was brought up in the miniseries, it was brought up when Roslin split the fleet and went back to Kobal, It was brought up on New Caprica, and it's the question now. It's just part of the show.

And this week's episode, this week's episode was great. Why? Because it looked at another one of the big themes of show, "all this has happened before, all this will happen again." Cylons were built by man, almost wiped out the colonies, but then the colonies won the war. Things started to go better, future looked bright. Oh, until the Cylon's showed back up and nuked them 'til they glowed in the daylight. Ellen Tigh treaten and worsened Saul Tigh's life until she was died. Saul Tigh suffered, but then life moved on things started to look u, bright hope for the future, then Ellen comes back and fucks it all up. Cycles and cycles and cycles.

And yeah, it sucks that there are only a few episodes left, but the show's always been about the people in extraordinary situations, and that's what it is now. 

I can't wait to see what happens next 

Grass Is Always Greener

Tonight I went down to Elizabethtown to see some people I got to know during the campaign. It was great having dinner with the family who I lived with for two and a half months. I've missed them a surprising amount. They're good people. After dinner I ran off to meet up with my friend Tracy. 

Tracy's a smart, hardworking young woman. She's in her first job out of grad school, working as head of student affairs at Treamount University. She also a big Episcopalian, which is always awesome. She was always a fun person to have in the office during the campaign. No matter how tense the work got, she seemed like she was having fun.

Well, tonight I got to meet her new boyfriend. Dude is working construction for a year before getting a Masters in economics. Nice guy, but kind of bland. Normal, standard, average. 

And, dear reader, those two kids are as happy as can be.

I hope this doesn't sound too bad, because I know the Lord has blessed me far beyond anything I deserve, but man, it'd be a lie to say I wasn't deeply jealous. Not of dude's relationship with Tracy(she' straight as can, friendly to the idea of the trans folk, but not to the idea of romances with them), more, well, they get to be normal. They get to just have their jobs, their lives, their future. They go to work, make money, hit the bar on Friday and the church on Sunday. They work hard, and it's not terrible complicated.

And yes, I'm perfectly aware that everybody's got problems, nobody's life is perfect, I don't know their situation, etc etc, but friend, wouldn't it be nice to just... live? Just get by? Just do enough? Wouldn't it be nice not to have to worry about changing the world, worry about all the injustice, all the violence, all the sickness and hunger. Wouldn't it be nice if...

I don't know

things were easy?

And yes, I know I can be self-pitying fuck a lot of the time. There are very few things better than having an adventure ahead of you, and Iraq, the trans thing, big adventures. It's good, and I know I'm lucky, but friend, sometimes I just want to be normal.

Little E-3

Oh man, getting hormone refills. This'll be the last refill, I think. It's just not a good idea to keep actively transitioning in Iraq. Never mind the full-on possibility of outing, he chance that someone might noticed that I was a little bit different, that I was a little less than perfectly hetero-normative, that could be mean trouble for me. 

It might seem a little weird, but despite my fear of them, I really and truly believe that most of the people in my unit a good, hard working, moral people. It's just that despite that fact that these are hard working, honest professionals, there is not one of them who I would trust not to murder me in my sleep if they knew I was trans. 

The Army is such a strange place like that. I don't know what it is, but something activates this protective hyper-masculinism in Army guys. At drill about two months ago, I listened to this fellow, Little E-3 let's call im, bragging about how he beat "a gay" for "slapping his ass in highschool." Now, you maybe be wondering why I put "a gay" and "slapping his ass in high school" is quotes. It's because these aren't real things. While it's possible that Little E-3 was at some point physically aggressive to non-heteronormative fellow at his high school, it's not really the point.

Those terms are just variables, place-holders. The story isn't about the actual fact of the violence, no. The story is about how a) Little E-3 a powerful, manly member of the heteronormative class of males, b) Little E-3's position as a manly man at some point, and c) through the power of manly violence, Little E-3 was about to successfully defend his position as a many man. 

It's an old story. Lot's of rough young guys like to tell it. It helps them feel like they're something big, or that others see them as something big.

The problem comes, I think, when folks like Little E-3 get into a situation where they are afraid that if they don't act violently, violently in a manly way, that they will be in danger of falling from that most glorious, highly honored of places, heteronormative man-ness. 

A recent example of that, in the barracks on a training mission last year, another one of the E-3s kept leaving his music on late at night. He wouldn't use headphones for whatever reason, and would fall asleep with his music playing. Now, when you've been wet from the rain, cold from the wind, and are bone tired, it's easy to fall asleep no matter how much shitty Top 40 music is coming from the next rack. The problem is, two or three hours later that mess will wake you up, especially if it's just loud enough that you can hear it, sort of make out the melody, but not quite loud enough to locate exactly where it's coming from without waking up more than you already have. You can't quite identify it, and you can't quite ignore it. It's fucking awful.

Any, this kid left his music playing three damn nights in a row. After the second night I pulled him aside and advised him that annoying the shit out of folks is not the best way to make friends and get ahead in the unit. He apparently ignored me. 

Well, morning after the third night, Little E-3 comes over to the music lover and tells him that if the music gets left on again, he's going to pee on him. 

Yep.

Little E-3 threatened to pee on the other guy. 

Now, that might strike you as pretty gay. I don't like to throw that word around, but here, well, thats sort of threat seems more than vaguely homoerotic. 

And of course, it being the Army, a third guy picked up on the homoeroticism and started making fun of Little E-3 about it. Little E-3 goes red, swings, and suddenly both guys are down on the floor scraping and cursing. Folks near them jump in, pull them apart, and it's over.

...

And of course, not everybody in the Army is like Little E-3. Most folks just want to work hard, do their job, and go home. But there are a lot of Little E-3s, and sometimes it's hard to tell if someone is one or not. 

Somebody like that found out about the trans thing, my life would be in real danger. Some folks apparently see "not being physically violent towards" as the same thing as "accepting", and "accepting" as the same thing as "also queer." 

I don't know why the world's like this.

X-Factor #40

It's one of the best days of the month, the day when the new issue of X-Factor comes out. As I've said before, X-Factor is simply the most human superhero comic going right now. The characters act in ugly, imperfect ways, but that only makes you want to love them more. It's great.

Now, like last issue, Peter David has asked that online reviews don't give away spoilers for this issue. Once again, I'll honor David's wishes. This is a fine comic, and if the writer really wants a two or three issue spoiler blackout, well, I'm cool with that.

But the part of the issue not covered by spoilers, man, I enjoyed it a bunch. I can't tell you how much I like seeing a mutant Episcopal priest acting like, you know, an Episcopal priest. There are only a few reasons clergy usually show up in a comic. Those reasons are:

a) To spread hatred and fear through their narrow minded beliefs and prejudices. Rev. William Stryker, for instance.

or

b) To give a stilted message about how no one needs to believe in God, so long as we all come together around a generic message of vague up-lift. I can't find the Wikipedia page, but a few years ago there was a Superman story in which Sups battled a Superhero who was powered by a Pentecostal church's prayer(I'm not making this up). The prayer-powered fellow was intent on helping a group of missionaries who were being attacked in Africa because they had been trying to spread the gospel. Superman wanted to stop Prayer-Boy from saving the missionaries because, (and I'm paraphrasing) "There wouldn't have been any trouble if the missionaries hadn't gone over there." Somehow the Pentecostal minister decides evangelism is wrong and convinces everyone to go plant a community garden or some such. It was poorly written, and had a pretty creepy message. 

But luckily, Peter David knows what he's doing. We get the story of Jamie going to see his long-lost dup, Rev. John Maddox. Jamie, the Multiple Man, has been saving up his monolog about how awful the world is, how ready he is to kill himself. John knows he can't fix all Jamie's problems, but does what he can and talks to him in a pastoral manner. 

What's amazing about it is that it sounds just like someone going to talk to his priest. There are no epiphanies, everything isn't fixed, but it's a step towards the future. It's an opportunity for people, weighed down by the brokenness, to approach the divine, to talk with each other, to be hurt. 

Neither character here is less than perfect. I love the fact that when Jamie first shows up, John is terrified that Jamie has come to reabsorb him, to end his existence. That moment of fear, of self-interest, shows John Maddox to be more than a prop, more than the wise man to be wheeled out on stage when Jamie needs a good talking to. That speck of fear and self-interest, because the audience knows it exists, we also know that when John puts himself in harms way, it means something. There's a choice happening, he's not just acting Good because he's a Good Person.

Few comics could have an issue like this. I just don't think it would work elsewhere, unless the characters had grown into their current forms so naturally. 

...

Anyway, there is a big development, and I want to talk about it, but without giving anything away. This may not work, but bear with me. What happens at the end of this issue is something that I have long suspected would happen, but am still very glad to see. I think that the story is going to continue on in some very interesting directions. 

Ok, that was vague, but stick around next for for issue 41. I can't wait to see what's next.