=burn diary=

Baptized by Sharks With Cocklight

Well, I can't entirely explain this one.  But I'll take a provisional stab at it.  As a good little Catholic child, it wasn't Jesus who I admired most of all; it wasn't Christ who seemed most worthy of emulation—after all, he was the star of the show, he got the spotlight and the accolades. It's not as hard to sacrifice yourself, I figured, if you got the top billing. Not hard to let yourself be crucified if you knew deep-down you were actually God Himself and your death was basically an act in a passion play. 

Instead, it was the all-too-human John the Baptist who seemed to me the epitome of modesty and altruism. He could have claimed to be the top dog but deferred to Jesus. He admitted he was nothing more than a second-banana, a faithful lieutenant, the emcee introducing the Greatest Show on Earth. "Heeeere's JESUS!" he said, working the audience into a frenzy, and then stepping off-stage into the shadows.

At some point, I saw Leonardo's incredibly sexy painting of John the Baptist and I immediately and instinctively felt that I wasn't looking at any ordinary man—rather, I was certain that Leonardo had coded a visual secret in plain sight into this painting: John the Baptist was a transgendered person.  John as imagined by Leonard was a boy-girl, just like me. My identification with him/her was complete. 

It seemed clear to me that John adored Jesus the way a woman loves a man—because he was, essentially, a woman. Then came the part where Salome tries to seduce him with her Dance of the Seven Veils. John remains unseduced. Why? Because, as a heterosexual transwoman, he cannot be seduced by Salome. S/he is a seductress him/herself. S/he knows all the tricks. What's more, s/he wants to play that role; it turns her/him on to dance for men, just as it does Salome. They are one of a kind. So John loses his head…i.e., he's castrated. 

I suspect that "explains" the background of a lot of what is going on in Baptized by Sharks With Cocklight.