HUMOR
0ÏTHE
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L
ike Gov. Jim MeGreevey of New Jersey, I,
tex), am a gay American, although 1 think
it makes us Kith sound as if we just
sashayed out o f some gay shtetl in Eastern
Europe, belting out the score to Vent/.
But that’s neither queer nor there.
Because I’m also a New Jerseyan, I’ve been
following every sordid detail of the MeGreevey
scandal with keen interest (that is, until Sur
vivor finally started and my empty life once
again had meaning). That the governor of my
birth state is corrupt comes as no surprise; most
of us Jerseyans think of
The Sopranos as reality
TV. The big twist
here, of course, is that
the gov had a homo
security adviser.
Now, I don’t know
if G olan Cipel is queer
(I certainly haven’t
slept with him), but
since MeGreevey is
way cuter I’m inclined
to believe the sex was
consensual. Which is
probably why I’m not
by M a rc Acito
making a career in law
enforcement. I mean, I’m the guy who thought
the Beltway sniper was hot.
Then there’s David Miller, who claimed
MeGreevey wasn’t the only one to invade
G olan’s tights. Miller also claimed to be a C IA
operative with ties to al-Qaeda and warned
that terrorists would blow up the Essex County
Courthouse. Then he flapped his arms and flew
back to Cloud Cuckooland.
Originally Miller was identified as an
adjunct professor at Montclair State University,
The Gospel
According
to M arc
Back to tke future
W hat’s n ew In Jersey
but apparently this looney tune makes his liv
ing deciphering secret messages from the moth
er ship. A s for the real Professor David Miller,
he reportedly received several interesting
phone calls from U .S. Rep. Ed Schrock.
Interestingly, the crazy David Miller attends
the same synagogue as Charles Kushner,
MeGreevey s top donor. You might remember
Kushner as the guy who paid a prostitute to
seduce his sister’s husband and videotape it in
retaliation for his brother-in-law testifying
against him in a fraud investigation. The tape
will be judged later this month on America’s
Scummiest Home Videos by a celebrity panel
made up o f Paris Hilton, Tommy Lee and Rob
Lowe.
A s it turns out, 1 was back in the Garden
State the day the gayvemor came out, though 1
swear I had nothing to do with it. (I certainly
haven’t slept with him, either.) No, I was there
to celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding
anniversary.
I approach these family events with a cer
tain amount of trepidation. In a reversal that
proves my family does everything backward,
my father’s generation, which came of age in
the 1950s, is decidedly hipper than many
members of my generation, who seem deter
mined to live in the ’50s. So it’s my peers who
end up shouting “AK>rtion is murder” before
storming out the door, or insisting that my
partner and I not discuss being gay in front of
their little darlings.
A
A
6
&
&
j
We are the forbidden
fruits.
So going to family
gatherings gives me that
same feeling I got when
everyone in the Cheney
family tcx>k to the stage at
the Republican National
Convention except poor muff
diving Mary, who sat in the
shadows with her partner. It
reminded me of those weddings
where Floyd and I sat in the comer
while the straight people all did the Macare
na. Or in my family’s case, the Macaroni.
1 can’t know for certain whether
McGreevey’s coming out had anything to do
with it, but I noticed immediately that atti
tudes seemed to have shifted. Even the
aKirtion-is-murder guy told me he thought the
problem with the governor wasn’t his sexual
orientation but his McGreevous lack of judg
ment. Then he went on to tell me he thcxjght
lesbians were really hot.
As MeGreevey himself said, “ If any good is
to come from this episode...it is that New
Jersey and increasingly America recognizes that
sexuality is an individual imprint and not a
statement of competency and capability.”
Fifty years ago, my uncle’s mother objected
to him dating my aunt because his family is
Polish and mine is Italian. Ditto for my Irish
aunt, whose mother asked my olive-skinned
L
uncle if he would please wear a hat in the sum
mer so his skin wouldn’t get so dark. (Remem
ber, 1954 was the year it took a bunch of
activist judges to integrate schools.)
Fifty years later we can laugh about it,
thinking how inane those prejudices were. And
as I stood with my partner eating sausage and
peppers, a warm, optimistic feeling came over
me. Fifty years from now I bet we’ll all look
back at this MeGreevey mess and say: “Do you
remember when there was all that fuss about
people being gay? Wasn’t that STU PID?”
And that, my friends, is The Gospel
According to Marc. J H
M arc Acrro is the author of How I Paid for
College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and
Musical Theater. Write him at wiew.marcaato.com.
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