Your Nobel Peace Prize President speaks: “War: bad, but necessary. America: mistrusted, but a force for good. Tyranny: terrible, especially in Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, and North Korea. Me: deeply unworthy, hoping to be better.” Did I miss anything? Looks like he hit everything on the checklist.

Dear Wendy Metzger,

I’m sorry for singing the last verse of “Stairway to Heaven” into your ear while we were slow dancing.

This was when we were in 7th grade. In Markham Place gym, getting towards the end of our first official school dance. I hadn’t danced with anyone up to the moment you approached me. I was a dork, you’ll remember. I wore flood-ready jeans and the same exact off-white baseball t-shirt with three-quarter-length navy-blue sleeves every day. (I had six of them.) And a grey Members Only jacket, much like the ones worn by my dork friends Jeff Cadman, Peter Arbour and Chris Bruno. I’d spent most of that evening standing in a tight circle with those guys, air-guitaring to “Beat It” and “White Wedding.” Thank god it was dark in that gym.

We all stole glances at Mark McCarthy making out with Suzy Lambert — right there in front of everyone, right in the middle of the floor. Mark was in our grade, but Suzy Lambert was an eighth-grader, a very pretty and developed one. Mark’s eyes were closed, but I’m sure he knew everyone was watching him. I remember wondering what he must have been thinking, how much like a champion he must have felt. It was like looking at a taller, different, cooler species of human. How must someone’s brain have worked to allow for something like that to happen?

I’m sure my friends tittered when you walked up and tapped me on the shoulder. But you seemed way more confident than any of us did. You smiled when you asked me to dance, hamming up a Sadie Hawkins-style formality. I’m sure I made some joke for my friends benefit, but I was very happy to say yes, happy to be the one walking away with a girl. I don’t know what song what song we danced to first. “Little Red Corvette”? Probably not, I doubt I could have made it through the part about “Trojans, some of them used” in that situation. Maybe “Every Breath You Take,” or “Faithfully.”

I know it was a slow song, because I was acutely aware of how close our pelvises were, and I was having a very hard time figuring how high, or low, on your back my hands should go. You talked to me, nicely — we were getting to be something of friends in Mrs. Gill’s science class-and by the end of the song, I was comfortable enough to ask you to dance again. The lights blinked on for a moment, last call, and then the gentle notes started up and the flute, as familiar to me as my own name, and I knew I was in trouble. It was “Stairway To Heaven,” the live version from The Song Remains The Same album. I was a total Zep Head at the time, regularly thrown into geekazoid spasms of ecstacy at the sound of their music. As far as I was concerned, “Stairway to Heaven” was the greatest song ever written, the single greatest piece of art ever created, the pinnacle of human cultural achievement. How would I keep my composure?

Not so well, as it turned out. I did all right at the start, holding you closer than I had before. “This is an awesome song,” I whispered. And I think you agreed. Everyone knew it. The music teacher, Mrs. Bloomberg, let us sing it in music class.

But as considerate as it was of the DJ to play it as the last song (and we’d come to learn that it was played as the last song at each and every school dance), because it was ten minutes and fifteen minutes seconds long, “Stairway To Heaven” is a terrible song to dance to. It gathers in tempo and heaviness as it goes along, and you really don’t know how to keep swaying, locked in an awkward 12-year-old embrace, through the changes. (Mark and Suzy weren’t having any difficulty, I noticed. They weren’t even swaying, really. And both Mark’s hands were on her butt.)

A little after the half-way point, when the drums had kicked in, I was fingering imaginary double-neck guitar riffs on your dress. Softly enough, I hoped, that you wouldn’t feel them. But you probably did anyway. “The piper’s calling you to join him,” Robert Plant sang, and a couple of minutes later, by the end of Jimmy Page’s solo, the song in full stomp, I was helpless. I knew I was going to sing the last verse. It wasn’t quite an uncontrollable urge. Almost. But it also had to do with holding on to what was my strongest sense of identity at that point. I was a Zeppelin fan. A rocker, even if only in my mind. I always sang along with this song. Usually in full-throat screaming, drowned out by the speakers in my room. It felt like I’d be breaking some kind of promise to myself if I stifled the words I knew by heart.

So, unlucky you, out they came. “And as we wind on down the road…” Had my voice changed yet? I don’t remember. But I’m guessing whatever adenoidal falsetto I mustered up probably didn’t sound quite as polished as Robert Plant’s golden pipes. It must have seemed very strange. Did you wonder if I was singing to you, like a serenade? Or maybe that there was something wrong with me, something wrong with most boys our age? Maybe you were impressed? That I knew all the lyrics? Or you thought how attractively uninhibited I was for singing along when the spirit struck me? That’s hard to imagine, knowing how I felt back then, and how I felt like I looked, and how much I thought about that. I could never have come off as uninhibited. You were probably just confused. I would have been if I were you. I was confused and I was me.

Jesus, thinking back, what a performance it must have been. All the way to the end. That last line is so comically melodramatic in hindsight, stretching “buying” and “stairway” into three syllable words. Sorry again. You must have been relieved when it was over.

A part of me was relieved, too. But another part of me would have stayed there dancing with you all night. Your hair smelled like shampoo.

Dave Bry’s come a long way, honest.

I’m really sorry about how my thoughts work, but all this talk of Uganda and the gays is horrifying and depressing and scary and then totally reminds me of the fact that Uganda is partially responsible for this one maybe incredible thing that you can get tyrannized into spending loads of money on for the holidays. It’s the Filson Original Briefcase in a super limited-edition (only 200!), quickstrike colorway that isn’t Otter Green, Brown or Tan. It’s the first Filson collaboration ever and made from 17.5oz Ugandan cotton sourced by the nonprofit Invisible Children. This is just where my brain went because it goes UgandaSadfaceGaysHappyfaceFilson. And instead of pre-ordering one I’m going to buy a benefit calendar and hug myself.

Times bloggers Gail Collins and David Brooks are getting into it over, you know, the future of America and stuff. I love that they have, I guess, iChat now! Gail: When the bubble burst last year, I didn’t see it as the end to our economic power. But I did wonder if it was the end of the American Dream, or at least the version we’ve come to regard as practically a national birthright. What do you think? If you have an encouraging response, I am prepared to embrace it wholeheartedly.” David: [No Intelligible Answer].

Oh look, it’s already time for the death lists for 2009! Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time to die this year.

Two recent items of interest regarding Uganda: this, on what one Ugandan gay men expects. (“Will I be fired if the company is threatened? Of course.”) That is a blog we’re going to be reading regularly now. And also, Awl pal Andrew Rice’s commentary over at Gawker was fascinating.

We actually look forward to the hate mail. Though this is particularly choice, from New Yorker TV critic Nancy Franklin. “I wrote about [Glenn] Beck last month, and now I’ve reconsidered my opinion of him and what he has to offer. I got a letter from a reader-not a letter, exactly, but my own piece torn from the issue and written on with black magic marker-that makes me realize how blind I’ve been.”

I think that was sarcastic!

She goes on: “I don’t know the reader’s name or sex, only that the envelope was postmarked Little Rock. With the kind of tenderness that John Adams expressed in letters to his wife and the wit of Mark Twain, the reader wrote: “Hey Nancy Liberal ass holes like you ought to pay some attention to what Glenn Beck-as well as Rush Limbaugh and other right wing people have to say. People in Fly over country don’t buy your kind of bullshit. You don’t have a Fucking clue to how the real world works. Have a nice rest of the year idiot!” Thanks, you, too! Too bad there was no return address-I could have told my dear reader that I myself have never used the term ‘flyover country,’ and that not only did I not I not fly over his country this year, I flew to it. That’s right, I went to Arkansas. By choice. On vacation. I spent a week there, and went to Little Rock, Fayetteville, Eureka Springs, Fort Smith, and Hot Springs. So there. Also, there should be a comma before ‘idiot.’”

I KNOW, that comma thing was driving me CRAZY.

What Christmas with our own belovedMary HK Choi is like: “My favorite spontaneous trip ever was to Saratoga Springs from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. My best friend had just suffered an EPIC breakup and was in a really sinister and twisty headspace so we just got the hell out of dodge, booked a hotel room, had burgers at Chez Sophie and martinis at 9 Maple for Christmas dinner, smoked our faces off, went thrifting at this spot called Reruns that has an incredible collection of ’50s dresses and coats, and bought a cheapo DVD player so we could do nothing but watch multiple seasons of House. It was our gift to each other and to date my happiest Christmas.” Also there is very good advice about traveling in Asia!

by Abe Sauer

We met Zack P. back in August, when he was the sole protester at the Grand Forks, North Dakota Tea Parties. So, what has Zack been up to? I recently received an email answering just that question. “Abe: Am working on a protest of Focus on the Family and their hate-filled B.S. and I can tell by some of the comments on The Awl that people tend to think of North Dakota as a bunch of rednecks… just don’t want my hometown to seem like Laramie. Interested?” I was. But when I arrived at the church, Zack was nowhere to be found. Just two police cruisers.

The event was sponsored by Grand Forks Hope Covenant Church and was titled “Balancing Truth & Grace: A Christian Response To Homosexuality.” Their intent was “to inform in the spirit of truth and grace to fully understand the issue and be equipped to minister to someone dealing with same-sex attractions.” Speakers at the event included Melissa Fryrear (of Exodus International) and Jeff Johnston, who is the author of the must-read report “Childhood Sexual Abuse and Male Homosexuality.”

Zack was not arrested. He has mostly good things to say about the church and how welcoming they were. The police were called more for his safety than anything else. And Zack had managed to motivate a group of people to join him in the peaceful protest. He told me all this when I met him for beers later at a bar in downtown Grand Forks.

Zack has written letters to the editor of the Grand Forks Herald about gay rights. One supported the passage of North Dakota state bill SB2278, a sexual orientation rights bill which would make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation for employment, housing, and other services. The bill made it all the way through the state Senate before being killed, in April, in the House.

This means that in North Dakota, you can legally be denied a job or bank credit, or be evicted, because you are gay. Meanwhile, the North Dakota Family Alliance asked the governor to designate November 15–21 as “Family Week,” to “honor the family and encourage families to spend time together.” Because Governor John Hoeven is spineless, he immediately did so.

Zack actually wrote letters to the editor in support of this bill after it died (“Bill would have let gays ‘live as themselves’”). A month later he wrote another one (“No turning back tide of gay rights”). He did this under his full name.

Not long after these letters appeared, Zack lost his housing and job at the Masonic Temple, where he was also a building manager. The reason given for his firing and eviction was tight funding. That may be true. But even if it was because he was gay, that is a totally legal reason.

After that, Zack moved in with his parents. After the typical initial shock, awkward discomfort and distancing that comes with having a child “come out,” they treat him as any plain old loving parents would.

Zack is 21 and he works two jobs. He is a proud North Dakotan who, in true regional character, wants government out his business and the right to work hard and have a nice home. To be his Facebook friend is to be inundated with updates about a guy perpetually at, going to, or coming from, work. He is a mechanic at a locally-owned gas station. He learned to fix cars from restoring his own “projects,” including a decrepit 1970 Coronet that he pulled out of a field one summer. He dropped a 500-horsepower 440 with a built 727 into it (with plans of adding a set of headers and 2.5 exhaust with cutouts with 3.55 sure grip and slicks). The Coronet then exploded, due to too much power. He’s going to start over.

His other job has been managing shipping inventory at one of Grand Forks’ warehouse retailers. He needs the money because there is this great old house in town he wants to renovate-and he wants to get his own apartment again. But he just lost this warehouse job; that particular national retailer (Target) frowns on moonlighters.

Gay life in Grand Forks, North Dakota is not the black hole one might imagine. The North Dakota Ten Percent Society is active at the university. They throw parties from time to time. But it’s still a small town and being openly gay is to take your safety into your own hands.

He often thinks about leaving, because… come on. “I would love to settle down with somebody and have a kid someday,” he said, with the emphasis on “someday.” “But what happens at school during parent teacher conferences? My two dads are going to go in there? That’s crap. I mean, I can take it. But I can’t put a kid through that here.”

But without any connections in larger cities like Minneapolis, or the savings to make that kind of move, he probably can’t leave. And, anyway, Zack loves North Dakota. That is a tremendous tragedy because North Dakota does not love Zack.

Meanwhile, Levi Johnston is a sex symbol (even, inexplicably, a gay one). He has been in pistachio commercials and magazines and on red carpets. The feckless media that have pathetically wallowed in the mud to take advantage of (and subsequently enrich) Johnston include Vanity Fair, GQ, and New York magazine. Gawker exploited him by giving him an award. Playgirl, a tug rag that never pretended to be about anything but exploitation, came out in the end as, surprisingly, the most principled. Levi Johnston became a celebrity, and a wealthier man, all because of how much the people who write for these publications hate the woman he is tangentially connected to. (The enemy of my enemy is my intellectually-shameless disposable fetish-object.)

Levi Johnston’s only accomplishment is displeasing a woman that a bunch of so-called free thinkers are displeased by-and he accomplished that largely by not wearing a condom. That is his only real accomplishment. That is his only attempt at a real accomplishment.

Zack P. is not from an out-of-touch family that is famous or rich or of political royalty. He is not a pointy-headed elitist coaster who knows what’s best for everyone. He carries no baggage from the 1960s. He’s young. He’s a hard-working guy from Middle America and he gets down and dirty politically and risks his neck for what he believes in. He should be the left’s future. He should be the left’s poster child, its goddamn sex symbol-not some actor who happens to lend his good looks to whatever “awareness” campaign is hot. Zack is not the future America deserves but he’s the one it needs. Zack should be one of this pitiful nation’s sexiest people.

To this end, The Awl has put together a 2010 benefit calendar of sexy Zack goodness. The calendar features a collection of photos that are preposterous, topical, sexy, poignant, naked, embarrassing and bad-sometimes all at the same time. (If you are a nit-picky art director, you may have some complaints about the execution, in which case, you are welcome to art-direct next year’s calendar-pro bono, of course. Also, the online preview looks terrible, but it looks much better in print!)

All proceeds go to Zack, to be used for making protest posters or buying extra locks for his new house (cross your fingers!) or for taking a trip to somewhere warm. (The details: Manufacturing cost is $12.49, Lulu.com takes $1.50, and the remaining $6 go to Zack.) And in the unlikely event that this is an overly-successful venture, he will be donating a portion of the profits to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Abe Sauer would like you to buy this calendar.

Do you like movies? Do you also like watching them? How about if I told you that you could get paid to watch them? Great news for the 55 60! newly-unemployed newspaper film critics of America: If you are a freelance (also known as “not-really-working”) film critic, you can now get a whole hundred dollars per screening (that’s like 1/2 to 1/3rd of what you’ll get paid for a piece at a good website!). As long as you’re willing to fill out the focus group survey after. Go on! Don’t be ashamed. I’d take that $100 and buy a bunch of socks and food with it.