Suddenly–and I’m not sure how this happened–it seem that I’m finally caught up.
Of course, most of my bills are overdue. And Geronimo himself could set up an ambush behind the mounds of paper looming over my desk. There’s also that matter of the mold-ridden coffee cup that’s been slouching toward my keyboard for the past two months. But other than that, everything’s okay.
Oops. I spoke too soon.
Things I’m currently missing:
Funny what goes through your mind when you’re standing listless in the shower.
P.S. If someone doesn’t cut it out, I’m gonna get the big head.
In case any of you care (and I hope you don’t), the Honorary International Committee for Longue Vue House and Gardens’ sesquiannual Sentimental Journeys gala includes the Maharana and Maharani Arvind Singh Mewar, the Contessa Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, and Mr. and Mrs. Joaquin Fernandez de Cordova Hohenlohe, Marquess and Marchioness of Povar.
Which led me to ask: where the hell is Povar? It’s not in my olde-skoole 50-pound office dictionary, and all I could find via Google were a lot of gamer websites for some kinda MUD or MOO (remember those?). Wouldn’t it be funny if Mr. and Mrs. Hohenlohe were just a couple of bourgeois computer geeks who’d tantalized the gala committee with a really long name….
This may sound kinda funny coming from a theatre fag, but I don’t like drama. In fact, I hate it. Hate, hate, hate…
Luckily, I know very few people who are prone to such antics. Since high school, I’ve been pretty good at cutting those folks out of my life.
Today, however, I’ve encountered two of ’em–two drama queens I could easily live without. The first I put in her place (as much as I could, the brainless tart), the other, who followed close on her heels…well, let’s just say I’ve never seen a straight man with such a penchant for melodrama. At one point during his bombastic tirade, I wanted to blurt out, “You’re too fat for that gesture,” but I held my tongue.
May they all rot in hell, Amen.
I received my MA in New Orleans nearly eight years ago, then I signed on to a doctoral program at NYU. Some of my friends here were concerned about a lil’ ol’ Southern boy like me livin’ up in the Big City, but I wasn’t worried in the least. I’d visited New York enough to know the lay of the land reasonably well, and I had quite a few friends there already. Nothing to worry about, right?
Wrong. You know that truism that goes, “There’s no place lonelier than a crowd?” Well, that’s the way I felt for most of my time in New York. As if the city’s pervasive, numbing anonymity weren’t enough to bring on the blues, my friends were all too busy making rent to spend much time with me, so I was left to wander the streets alone. Then one night, one of my co-workers from French Connection (yes, dearie, I was a retail ho’) suggested I stop by the club where he toiled after hours: the now defunct Glitz, at 13th and Broadway. Little did I know that things were about to change. Sort of.
Having nothing better to do, I traipsed to the club at the appointed hour, paid a couple of bucks to get in, and chatted with my friend, who was one of the hostesses that evening. The tunes were good, so I decided to dance a bit, and there, in the corner of the floor, turning it out with Girlina and her pack of clubby minions, I saw the world’s Most Adorable Boy. With his swarthy, Mediterranean looks and a bit of a tan, dressed only in a wifebeater and jeans (hey, it was summer), he practically glowed. I couldn’t stop looking at him. We exchanged glances a couple of times, but I was too shy and he didn’t seem particularly interested, just amused, so ultimately I let it go.
Flash forward to a dark and sultry night about a month later. I was casually seeing someone–very nice, very cute, but we didn’t share a lot of, um, interests. That night, the night of my 25th birthday, the guy dumped me. “It’s all moving too fast, too quickly,” yadda yadda yadda. I hung up. Fuck him.
So, I could have stayed home and listened to my collection of Bread LPs and felt sorry for myself, but no, I went out–first to Glitz, where nothing was happening, and then to a club I’d seen advertised in HX, Zone DK. It was, for all intents and purposes, a sex club. Not a very good sex club, mind you–which explains why it went out of business–but a sex club nonetheless. And there, amidst the typical license plate/warehouse decor and the surpisingly sexy clientele, who should I see but Mr. Wifebeater….
We made eye contact, he and I, then crossed paths in the itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, teeny-weeny back area. Nothing serious happened–just a lot of heavy petting. But even with all the crowds and the pushing and shoving, it was pretty damn nice. When we were finally overcome by claustrophobia, we stepped out to the bar and chatted a bit. I was swooning, but I played it cool, gave him my card, he said he’d call.
He didn’t. In fact, although I saw him nearly every week for the next year, he barely returned my glances. I was completely confused: we were so obviously meant to be together, why couldn’t he see that? (God, if that doesn’t make me sound like a stalker from a CBS movie of the week, I don’t know what will.)
Over three years later, he finally came ’round, thanks to a little nudge from Lady Luck. But if I’d stayed back at the hotel the night we were re-introduced, or if he’d gone to bed and not come out, where would either of us be now? Fate isn’t just about happy coincidence. It’s about the terrifying possibility of ships passing in the night.
As of yesterday, we’re four years down, with several score more to go. Happy anniversary, boyfriend.
As a rule, I’m pretty jaded. Pierced your kidneys? So last month. Tattooed your retina? Woman, please. Had all your teeth extracted in the name of performance art? How very.
But every so often, I come across something that makes me say, “Huh?” This is one of those times. (Some of you might be interested to note he’s from Atlanta. What the hell is in y’all’s water, anyway?)
Thanks for the link, Steve. I think.
The scariest part of being found through a Google search for gay circuit party photos isn’t that I was on the list. It’s that I was #2 on the list.
Oh, yeah: Dante was #10.
For the past month or so, my life has been a relentless search for angles–marketing angles, that is. How can we pitch this to the public? To the press? What’s our next project? What can we do to build on what we’ve already done? And so on.
A few years ago, I would never have seen myself doing this. I had very clear ideas about what’s entertaining and what isn’t. Back then, good art was all you needed; mount a good production, and people will come crawling out of the woodwork to see it.
Then I had a course in arts marketing, I realized that good art is as much about the public as it is the product. You don’t just bring in Robert Wilson to direct Yoko Ono’s latest dreck and assume that you’re going to sell out a three month run.
I know, it’s obvious. But I find it funny how much I’ve changed my tune.
And every so often, I wish I could sit back and enjoy things.
I’ll probably catch a lot of flack for this–especially from my boyfriend, Yankee that he is–but I can’t help feeling a little conflicted about the state flag issue going on in Mississippi. On the one hand, I understand how some folks feel the current flag is a symbol of racial inequity. And I’m sure the state’s surprising number of white liberals feel just as guilty as can be about having it fly over the capitol building nearly 150 years after the Civil War.
On the other hand, it’s a flag. And if a flag’s supposed to represent anything, it’s identity–national, regional, or statewide. I could see how a new flag would be important in the formation of a new state, but that’s not happening. (And no, I don’t buy the pr/marketing angle that the Mississippi of 2001 is a “new” Mississippi.) Flags are graphic symbols; a new flag should symbolize something newly important, something newly profound, something newly shared. The proposed new flag does none of those things. And there’s a good chance it would only enhance racial tensions throughout the state.
I also don’t buy the notion that a new flag is somehow going to encourage massive amounts of new business investments in the state (one of the major incentives pushed by the “new flag” side). It’s not the flag that’s a turn-off to Fortune 500 companies–it’s the poor quality of public education and the general lack of kick-ass corporate tax breaks. Trust me, I know: we’re having the same problems in New Orleans.
Of course, being the pomo homo that I am, I’m aware that my sentiments are influenced by the fact that (a) I’m a white male, (b) I no longer live in Mississippi and have little investment in the issue, and (c) I have a certain fondness for the rebel insignia due to the numerous Ole Miss games I attended as a wee lad. Not that any of that would keep me from opening my big fat mouth….
