No 1. GO RUBYSTREAK GO! Welcome to the boards. Reading your posts has been a pleasure.
No 2. YEAH MATT_MCL! YOU GO!
hehe…
Am I the only one to pick up this part of Realitychuck’s post, **He was not and it would hardly be his intention to portray an unnatural and perverted crime against God in ** and figure the rest of his post to be blanatly homophobic. Being a historian my self I have always thought the retot “thats just the way they talked/acted/whatever” says more about the modern mindset than the thoughts and actions of the past. However one should NOT read to much modern connotation into past words. (Did I just contradict myself?) Its a fine line to walk.
Krisfer, thanks for the support (along with matt, malthus, pepperlandgirl. and everyone else who chimed in. I knew I wasn’t crazy when I read that chapter and thought, “Hmmm.”
A friend of mine, when we discussed this issue, said he was reminded of the Ambiguously Gay Duo. Picture Peleg and Bildad on the Pequod as Ishmael and Queequeg come aboard the ship for the first time. Ishmael is holding Queequeg’s “harpoon,” and then they turn around say, “What is everybody looking at?” “Nothing! [whispers, ‘Didja see that?’]”
But seriously, if Meadow Soprano can lecture Carmella about the homoerotic themes of Billy Budd, I think I can feel confident in my reading of Moby Dick… men in the 19th century didn’t “think” that way… riiiiiiight.
Actually, you articulated exactly what I thought years and years ago when I first read Moby Dick.
I was forced to read it for high school, and (alone among the class) I really got into it - and one think I noticed right away was “wow, this book has lots of heavy-duty homoerotic imagry!”. I suspected as much in the “bed” scene at the beginning, but the “sperm” scene is I think beyond dispute - a deliberate double-entendre playing on the word “sperm” is just the beginning of that extraordinary passage.
I even considered doing a paper on the subject, but was dissuaded by the thought that people would think I was gay (in high school, sadly, this was a consideration. By university, I knew better than to give a shit).