Jeez, I’ve FINALLY caught up with my work–thanks largely to the recent hiring of a new staff member who’s taken over some of my duties. I think I’m going to relax now….

In the meantime, you might enjoy a new story I’ve posted in the Miscellaneous section. I think it’s kinda funny. Maybe you will, too. Or maybe you won’t.

Feh.

Two Things

One

Brasilia. Beatrice Dalle. The Belle Stars. Holy Smoke. What do these things all have in common? Ample resources and seriously squandered opportunities.

Poor Kate Winslet. I’d have only needed to hear two words before I ran screaming from Ms. Campion’s office: “Harvey Keitel.”

Two

This evening Jonno helped remind me of something that I’d nearly erased from memory: back in high school, there was a kid one grade ahead with exactly the same name as me.

Now, ordinarily that wouldn’t have been so bad, except this particular Richard (everyone called him Richie) was slightly insane and extremely homosexual and claimed he had Rod Stewart’s baby in a shoebox buried in his backyard. In case you’ve forgotten, our story is set in Mississippi. Ergo, Richie was not the most popular kid in town. (Of course, I doubt his plight would have been much different had we grown up in San Francisco.)

So every year on the first day of classes, I’d have at least one teacher who’d never encountered either of us. Since his reputation preceeded him, the profs would ask me hesitantly, “Are you Richie?” And with all the vehemence of a teenage faggot trying to hide his love of uncut cock, I’d state with a mildly haughty toss of the head, “No, I’m Richard, actually.” And I believed it; I believed in our mutual exclusivity. So far as I was concerned, Richie and I had nothing in common….

I like to think I’m older and wiser now. At the very least, I’m older. When I go home and see Richie at the Hattiesburg gay bar (as I sometimes do), I should be able to walk over to him and laugh and buy him a drink, but I don’t. And I probably won’t. My inner hippie tells me I need to apologize to him, but really, how conceited is that? Richie probably doesn’t even remember who I am, and he seems to be getting along just fine without hearing the words “I’m sorry” fall from my lips. Why bother?

Sometimes I hate the 60s and the touchy-feely crap that followed in their wake. Hackneyed sentimentality. I mean, I’m no Kathy Acker, either–just cynical.

I agree, Steve: teenpopbimbogoddessmonsters suck.

However, I do give props to Vitamin C, if only because Colleen Fitzpatrick was the whiny and moderately evil Amber von Tussle in Hairspray. Sure, it’s a flawed movie (frankly, my interest in John Waters tapered off after Polyester), but I can’t help smiling when one of Mr. Waters’ hand-picked freaks (e.g. Divine, Mink Stole, even Rikki Lake) makes a ripple in mainstream cultcha.

…so then he just dropped his pants and started touching himself–right in the middle of the street! Good God almighty, Mabel, I near about had a stroke at the feet of Naomi Jeffcoat–and she never would have let me live that down, let me tell you. After that tabasco incident at the Easter bake sale, I absolutely refuse to trust that woman! Now don’t go getting me wrong: I adore the pastor, but sugar, that Naomi never has been nothing but trouble…

Are you listening to me, Mabel? …Well, all right then. I never heard you so quiet. What’s got into you? Is Ed at it again? Mabel, I tell you, you got to keep that man away from Dr. Chisolm’s office. He’s gonna kill you one of these days–along with half the church choir! He ain’t right! I just wish you’d been out back with us the other night after the service. Why, out of nowhere he just starts in on Shirley P., and you know how fluttery her heart is these days…

Oh, gotta run. Almost time for The Simpsons. I’ll talk to you later dear. Give Ed my love…

I’m back where I belong.

I hope John Brown’s car is, too.

John, you see, was kind enough to take me out on the town last night. After a leisurely dinner (made slightly more leisurely by the fact that we were waiting in vain for my friend Kellum to show up), we wound our way to a bar called Mary’s. Of course, Zod–the one friend in Atlanta I’ve been unable to reach by phone–and his boyfriend Todd were the first people I saw when I walked in the door.

After the requisite screaming and good, honest hugs, we grabbed drinks, slunk to the back of the bar, and chewed some serious fat–meeting quite a few folks from John and Zod’s non-overlapping circle of friends along the way. Wonderful, warm evening. Good buddies. Nothing better.

(I am painfully aware that I just described the world’s sappiest gay beer commercial. Sorry.)

Anyway, being the responsible-to-a-fault kinda guy that I am and knowing that my flight left early in the morning, I had to call it a night around 1am. Rounds of hugs, kisses, then John and I stepped out into the parking lot. And, verily, we discovered that some tow truck-driving cretin had tried to cramp our style by hauling off John’s adorable little car.

If you’re reading this, Mr. Cretin, it would perhaps behoove you to note that neither of us were phased in the least. We simply stepped right back into Mary’s, intent on calling a cab, but Zod and Todd insisted on giving us a ride.

In Todd’s truck.

In Todd’s cute but compact little truck.

But no matter. Being from Mississippi the vehicular specifics were of little concern to me. Todd and John took the front, Zod and I grabbed our cigarettes and a cup of bourbon (to keep us warm) and lay down in the back (riding semi-drunk in the bed of a pickup is surely illegal, or at least very suspicious), and very shortly we were on the interstate headed back downtown. The night was cold but the sky was beautiful. The undersides of overpasses were sudden and startling and very, very funny.

Fifteen minutes after we’d begun, I bounded from the back of the truck onto the cobbled pavement of the motor court of one of the most expensive and overrated hotels in Atlanta (hey, I wasn’t paying for it), hugged everyone again, dashed upstairs, and crept into bed glowing from a really good night.

Except, I guess, for the fact that John Brown is probably out a hundred bucks. That sucks. But apart from that…

Hey. I leave for Atlanta tomorrow. You ho’s out yonder drop me an email and lemme know your schedules. I gotta plan my Pernod intake, you know.

So, Jonno and I were walking down West 23rd Street in New York, very near the corner of 9th Avenue. It was a pretty day–not particularly sunny, but not cloudy either, nice temp–and I’m not sure what possessed me (the weather? too much coffee?), but I suddenly took Jonno in my arms and started waltzing across the sidewalk. It was a cute, loving gesture, but Jonno would have nothing of it and pushed me away. I don’t think his rejection had anything to do with a fear of dancing like a maniac in public–those of you who remember Jonno’s Girlina-inspired flashdanceathon at Voodoo on Decadence Sunday know he ain’t afraid of cuttin’ up. He probably just didn’t like the song I was singing in his ear as we danced: it was the Musak version of “Physical,” taken straight from a current Ameritrade commercial.

As punishment for my bad choice of music, the next thing I knew Jonno and I found ourselves in a small backyard in New Orleans doing aerobics in our street clothes with a large group of strangers. The group was being led by an ex of mine who never really struck me as the aerobics instructor type, but I guess you never can tell these days. The tunes were much better than in the previous segment: we were sweating to Bio’s high-tech theme song from Bust-a-Groove. The scene was still a little strange, though, ’cause the song was being played live by the Treme Brass Band. Nevertheless, I was doin’ pretty good keeping up with everybody, but I was dancing very close to a window-unit air conditioner and was in continual danger of jumping up too high and giving myself a concussion.

I guess consuming large quantities of nearly raw meat before bedtime isn’t a very good idea.

I went searching for couple of things in my “important box”–the one I use to keep old photos, subway maps from long-ago vacations, decade-old tax returns–and happened across my college journals. I’d almost forgotten they were there.

It’s a little painful, looking back; lots of silly observations and stuff. But surprisingly, some of it’s pretty good, too–even a couple of the poems.

Of course, today these notebooks are most interesting as a sort of time capsule. It’s funny how the images I used then (I was a big fan of the Imagist movement, especially the work of cigar-smoking, combat-boot-wearing Amy Lowell) can remind me of exactly what I was thinking when I wrote some of these pieces.

I won’t bore you with any of it now, but maybe later.

And oh, yes, Chad, I’m flattered, although I don’t really see the resemblance.

A little trivia for compugeeks who adore Southern literature (and I’m sure there are at least two of ya’). Funny how it all ties into Jonno’s new-found favorite short story….

It’s Gay Pride weekend in New Orleans. Nearly every other queer community on the planet holds Pride in June to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, but after years of following that plan, New Orleans’ Pride organizers had become discouraged by the light crowds. They assumed the problem was the weather–June’s not usually scorching, but it’s not usually pleasant to be outside for long periods of time then either. So a couple of years ago, the Pride Committee moved the event to September/October (theoretically, to coincide with National Coming Out Day), assuming they’d have a larger turnout.

I think I can say they were mistaken.

Pride is held in Armstrong Park now, closer to the Fruit Loop–Ground Zero for gay bars and clubs. Spatially, it’s bigger than it used to be when Pride was held at Washington Square in the Marigny, but the crowd’s essentially the same size. And, of course, the gay parade still sucks–but to be fair, I guess it takes a lot to impress the New Orleanaise when it comes to parades.

So, anyway….

My first thought for the day is this: despite the fact that New Orleans has a long and colorful history as a homosexual haven, homosexuality doesn’t mean much here, politically or socially. In New Orleans, the most significant factor in determining your social worth is how many generations your family’s been here–and of course, bound up in that, how you rank economically. If you’re of a certain class and you’ve got three or more generations worth of New Orleanians in your photo album, you hang with certain people; they may be gay, they may be straight, but what binds you together–the identity that galvanizes you–is class. It works the same for most other minorities–in the African American community, for example: the Honores, the Glapions, the Hazeurs, they know they sit high in the pecking order and they aren’t afraid to let you know it, no matter who you are.

Second thought: homosexuality, when normative (e.g. on Eighth Avenue in New York, on Commercial Street in Provincetown, at the corner of Castro and 18th in San Francisco), is boring. It is herd-mentality incarnate, from the hackneyed political rhetoric to the rainbow shoelaces. Or maybe that’s just me and my homosexual “got-to-be-different” gene, afraid of the fact that I’ve been totally assimilated… Yeah, that’s probably it.

Final thought: tonight’s episode of The Simpsons revolved around Mr. Burns long-lost son (played by Rodney Dangerfield). But that’s not important. What’s important is that it ended with a massive street party scene, with every citizen of Springfield dancing to Journey’s “Anyway You Want It.” It’s a song I haven’t heard much since it came out in 1980, and it brought back a creepy wave of nostalgia: bad-ass, long-haired, beer-swilling girls driving Buick Regals up and down the main drag of town with their excitingly redneck boyfriends; the first time I kissed another boy and the conflicting emotions I felt as my lips rubbed across the stubble of his adolescent beard; my constant search for homosex in my hometown and the simultaneous fear that I’d one day be outed–not to my parents or even the general public, but to my friends (I guess like most teens, my parents were at the bottom of my list of concerns). It made my stomach churn. In a bad way and a good way.

Pretty scattered today, huh?