E4: Ned Rorem Black Hole Puckering During Pee-Wee’s Cosmic Activity; S13: Once You're Happy in Tennessee Williams, You'll Never Be Happy Again, Even In Perez Hilton Leaving Las Vegas

It may seem fairly strange that Pee-wee Herman is on the cover of this episode—especially after you listen and discover that the episode is not, in any meaningful sense, about Pee-wee Herman.Pee-wee is there because much of the episode circles around a euphemism I invent for masturbation: cosmic activity. The association arrived because Pee-wee had his secret word, and I apparently needed a secret word of my own before I could begin talking about something we are all supposed to pretend is either medically embarrassing, morally significant, psychologically revealing, or simply not happening.Even with the euphemism, I didn’t quite get where I wanted to go. I got near it. I could see it. Then I became afraid of going there and started moving sideways. In another episode, I do go there. So this episode is a bridge to that one.It is a fairly long bridge.It has many, many off-ramps.Those off-ramps pass Ned Rorem, aging, art, plumbing, pleasure, shame, AIDS, AA, grooming, memory, Harry Hay, complicated elders, and the problem of telling the truth about people who offered something valuable while also being profoundly wrong. Ned Rorem functions less as the destination than as a nearby gravitational body, pulling everything slightly out of its expected course.The opening song asks what it means to leave the bad part in: not to turn biography into a fan club, but also not to flatten a complicated person into a monster so we can stop thinking. The monologue then tests that principle by wandering through pleasure, fear, influence, survival, and the strange machinery by which a person attempts to say something while also avoiding saying it.Some of the off-ramps may appear to go into a black hole.If you believe that, then you know nothing about a black hole, because a black hole would fucking eat everything: the bridge, the off-ramps, Ned Rorem, Pee-wee Herman, the cosmic activity, the person describing it, and eventually you.Content includes candid discussion of masturbation, grooming, adolescent sexuality, AIDS, addiction and recovery, self-harm, and Harry Hay’s support for NAMBLA.