one of the cooler parts of growing up is realizing that you were being incessantly lied to throughout highschool and that fat gay people are not only capable of being desired, but are actively and often voraciously lusted after
Hot dog water - there’s a Tumblr post out there I’ve seen saying hot dog water is the opposite of holy water, due to the fact that a single drop of it will contaminate what it touches. I assume this was partly inspired by this allusion but who knows for sure.
Also the the idea of holy water as inhuman and cleaning vs hot dog water as the remains of feeding someone - often a child - and entirely human. It may be dirty and I do not want it on me but God hot dog water has some memories. You will not wash away my sins. They’re mine. Also, anyone can make hot dog water but holy water is refined, restricted (yes anyone can make it in an emergency but lay people are restricted from it)
“you and I both know”
Unlike baptism for babies, this one is done between two people who are both aware of what is happening. The one receiving the baptism gives the orders about what they want to happen. The giver and receiver are portrayed as equals. They are equally aware of their humanity.
“the holy stuff won’t take”
Ooof heartbreaking, amazing line. Raises so many questions. What does it mean when the water “takes”? What has the receiver done that makes them unfit for holy water? Or, what has the holy water done that makes it to weak to help, to be a part of your life?
The poem as a whole - I love the lack of capitalization. It adds a sort of intimacy to the poem, and the statement from the speaker. The high words “baptise” and “holy” being offset by “take” and “hot dog”. Also “hot dog water” vs “holy stuff.” The cadence! I would lick it.
this poem is moving me to tears. the only reason twitter user yiffpolice thinks it’s self-evidently garbage is theyre trying to read it as prose
i read “the holy stuff won’t take” slightly differently though. when you look at other things that are said to “not take” it’s an expression that refers to impermanence, generally of training or a mark. in that context, for holy water not to take comes to mean that the speaker will not remain holy after a baptism, with the suggestion from “you and i both know” that this has already been proven
the use of the word “take” further reinforces the idea of training or marking and ties in with the idea of the speaker’s incompatibility with holiness by suggesting that god has rejected them, that they have rejected god, or both
this also ties back in to the request for baptism in the opposite of cleansing water and creates a narrative in which the speaker has tried repeatedly to be Good but to no avail and is now choosing to try being Bad on purpose in search of a choice at which they can succeed, but needs help to do this; needs someone to baptise them. the implication being that they’ve spent so much time trying uselessly to be Good that they don’t know how to stop
with hot dog water as a metaphor for human connection, especially framed as a foil to divinity, this turns the poem into a call for help from a speaker whose righteous isolation is killing them but who only has one person, if any, who can connect them to their first real community, which they hope will destroy the urge to be Good with a permanency that destroying the urge to be Bad has never had
EDIT BC I’M NOT DONE: also the way the only two-syllable words are “baptise” and “water” and “holy” suggests a rejection of the lofty in favor of the base
“baptise” is semisarcastic, used only as an explicit and intentional misappropriation for want of a secular equivalent
“water” is even more explicitly appropriated from its orifinal context, with holy water being reduced to holy “stuff” and the water itself being explicitly and intentionally corrupted and placed at the opposite end of the line from “baptise”
and “holy” is of course separated by an entire line—one which speaks of agency—from both of these sister words, only to be directly rejected wholesale
EDIT 2: someone in the notes said its trochaic and i realized:
the first line is in trochaic tetrameter, which sets you up to read the second line as trochaic, but its five syllables have a symmetrical stress pattern, which leads you smoothly into the iambic trimeter of the third line, which is not only an inversion of the trochaic first, but feels clipped by comparison
this poem, hated by the poet (which thematically adds to it, imho), is not just moving in content but also technically very well constructed
You Are Not Wasting Time; It Was Given To You As A Gift, Freely and Generously; Is Rain Wasted Because It Falls On Gardens, Grass, Disgruntled Birds, and Umbrellas All The Same?
i know people make these kinds of posts with fictional characters a lot but like. hank green truly is one of The Most Guys Ever. like. he’s one of the earliest youtubers who is still on there. he’s a 43-year-old tiktok star. he’s a science educator. he got cancer and his response was to make a tier list of the press’s coverage of his cancer announcement. the president of the united states sent him a message of support and he told the president that he was pissing out the cancer. years earlier he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and his response was to write a polka song about it. he created vidcon. he’s the ceo of a company that produces a shitton of educational series (well, not acting ceo at the moment due to the aforementioned cancer). his guitar says “this machine pwns n00bs” on it. he invented 2D glasses. one of his earliest videos to get popular was about animal sex. between him and his brother, he was known as “the science one” (or “the music one”) while his brother was “the writer one,” and then he wrote two new york times bestselling novels. his most controversial opinion is that butt is legs. he’s done so many things that there is a website dedicated to counting the number of days since he started a new thing. he and his brother use their internet following to (among other things) fight maternal/infant mortality in sierra leone. he has a baked bean furby. hes even bisexual
In 1998. his Winter Park High School classmates named him “Best Dancer.” He’s had an album on the Billboard Charts, and he won an Emmy for a web-based adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. He co-founded DFTBA.com, the Awesome Coffee Club, the Awesome Sock Club, and Sun Basin Soap–but doesn’t make money from any of them. Instead he’s led these brands to donate over $5,000,000 to a hospital in Sierra Leone. His companies, when he stepped down as CEO due to the cancer, had over 115 full-time employees, all of whom receive a living wage and good benefits. His production company, Complexly, has made educational videos with 5 billion total views, and helped hundreds of millions learn through SciShow and Crash Course. He is the sweetest dad to the world’s most amazing six-year-old, and the spouse of one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet, and he is loved–ferociously–by his brother. He truly is among the Most Guys Ever.
