Brokeback Mountain

Last night, “Brokeback Mountain” opened in New York. All showings were sold-out, and although we had tickets and arrived early, we could not find two adjacent seats. I scanned the crowd wondering who all these people were who wanted to see two cowboys in love.I would estimate the crowd to have been 95% straight and rather young. During the previews, a recruitment ad for the National Guard was shown. It contained comments from enlistees who gushed about how “wunnerful it is to serve Amurka in the Guard”. This was greeted by some clever anti-war-in-Iraq shouts from the crowd that had everyone laughing. They seemed liberal, but I began to worry about how they would react during the love scenes we were probably about to see in the feature. My worries proved needless, and the highest tribute I can pay to this extremely fine movie is that everyone in the theater was spellbound by it from start to finish.

See it.

Do not read any reviews before you see it. Especially avoid Stephen Holden’s review in the New York Times. It is downright stupid for a reviewer to tell his readers the story of the movie, to outline the plot, more or less, and to disclose the happy, sad, ambiguous, redemptive, win or lose ending to any movie. I prefer not to know what happens until I see it happen. For this reason, I stopped reading that review after a few paragraphs, and I am glad I did.

Without causing harm, I can tell you that everything about this movie is almost perfectly rendered, but as C and I walked out of the theater we were both surprised by our mutual wondering about one odd scene. It involved a lingering close-up of the back of Jack’s hand. There seemed to be wide discolorations on his skin. Were they lesions? If so, nothing before or after that shot related in any way to the spots we both noticed. We think it was accidental. To be sure, I may read Annie Proulx’s novella to see if there is some reference that was almost entirely edited out of the film, with one shot accidentally remaining. I’ll be curious to know if anyone else notices or can explain this.

See it.

The Prey

C and I and

Joe. Our. God.

were en ville and at the convivially crowded Barrage on Saturday night. We stood at the angle near the Suzy-homemaker DJ, and huddled over our three beers on the bar. Without warning, a sallow-eyed fellow with badly shaped black hair framing taciturn features hanging over thin shoulders under the oppression of a dark long-coat inserted himself with this line:

"Excuse me. Mind if I join you? I just got robbed and I don't want to be alone right now."

Before finishing this announcement, he boldly placed his drink on the bar in the center of our three beers as if to nail down his positioning.

Joe's eyes turned a glowing red as he sniffed fresh blog meat, and he asked the man where it had happened.

I, with the scepticism of Judge Judy, narrowed my view of this critter, wondering how he had purchased a big ole drink if he had just been robbed, and why his announcement rang with the indifference of someone channel-surfing through an evening of CSI reruns.

The surprise reaction however was from C who is ordinarily compassionate and benevolent in his acceptance of the premises of confidence men everywhere. Without a moment's hesitation, he said "Yes".

The guy seemed surprised by this, but chose to ignore it. C persisted.

"Actually, yes, we do mind if you join us."

The guy silently retrieved his drink and wandered back into the crowd in search of better victims.

This left Joe mildly chagrined, and it left me with a strong desire to claim that I had to piss, pretend to head toward the bathroom but run back home to post this before Joe had a chance to deliver his iteration.

Really, we actually do have lives.

Our children

DSC02259, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

Ten years ago, C tossed me a fun assignment. He had a client who wanted some "wild art" for their corporate headquarters in Connecticut. In those days, I was totally absorbed with Photoshop which was not the yawn it is today. Nine hours playing with Photoshop felt to me like five minutes.

I met with the VP assigned to design the work space. He told me that I could do anything I wanted to do except that he didn't want any photos of "men blowing dogs". I told him that restriction would eliminate three quarters of my portfolio. We laughed and I knew we'd be OK.

C installed about a dozen different floor-to-ceiling images. This one is my favorite. It is a composite of photos of gargoyles from the Southam Building in Montreal, a background that is a close-up of the root ball from a Clivia that we were transplanting, a building we loved in the Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris, and some hydrangeas from the farm. I was particularly ecstatic when I managed to "light" the tops of the columns of the building which were actually a dull verdigris, and to create an artificial smoke and glow from inside the building.

These photos were taken last week. I was surprised that the restless and clever employees of this software company had not doctored or defaced the images over the past ten years. No changes in ten years, right down to the furniture placement. The images still entertain in a way that makes words on a screen seem as dry and ephemeral as maple leaves decomposing underfoot on a busy sidewalk..

Book of the Dead

DSC02258, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

I learned at our walk-through that this image would be installed in an area of file cabinets. I took some photos of the banks of cabinets in my own office, collided them, and combined them with some photos of text from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I was, in those days, fond of invoking Ra at the beach in Ptown using the correct incantations found in this book. It kept the rain away.

for the bosses

DSC02251, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

This is in the Executive Wing. The execs didn't like the first image I had selected for them that C had installed. They felt it looked "bloody" and "disturbing". I replaced it with this one, which is a composite of autumn hosta from C's shade garden and a photo of a green row boat in the harbor where we would walk with our morning coffee near our Ptown house. It's more L.L. Bean. They liked it.

We need more time.

We need more time.

JohnCardinalWright

JohnCardinalWright, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

Here we are escorting (hoisting) the massive and brilliant John Cardinal Wright out the door of a banquet hall in Rome on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1973. I’ll call my classmate on the left Ned. We met on the Rafaello as it left New York on a sunny August afternoon. We were immediate friends and spent the entire seven day crossing on deck chairs calling for drinks. Ned taught me how to drink gin: it is a clear beverage and must be approached with the same hospitality afforded water. When Ned announced as we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar that he had dated Cybil Shepard in high school, my awe was boundless and I knew that we were in for constant adventure.

In Rome, our rooms overlooked clay courts and I insisted that Ned and I take up tennis. Ned agreed, and found that by carrying the balls in his shorts, he could fill the cannister with a healthy gin and tonic, and, turn heads on the way to our game.

I don’t remember the details of my first six months in Rome. Over the Christmas holiday, Ned and I were to tour Vienna, Salzburg and Munich by train with three other classmates. The two of us celebrated the day with extreme verve, and our companions were forced to pack our bags for us, and to cart us to the station that evening to commence the vacation. I woke up somewhere in the Alps to the sound of Ned shrieking as he rummaged through his suitcase. What they had packed for him was not the problem, as his clothing was all impeccable. What they had neglected to include made him distraught. I joined the wailing when I discovered that my own bag did not contain a hairdryer and that no one else had packed one. In those days, I had the kind of hair that needed a sustained and well-aimed shot of hot dry air to create the tossably feathered and straightened chestnut shag that I felt was owed the continent. Luckily, the bathroom in the seminary in Vienna had a hot air hand dryer that saved the day. It was mounted low upon the wall. Ned and I knelt under it having a religious moment that the Viennese seminarians found curious. In order to survive the rest of the trip, while our companions dutifully inspected art, Ned and I visited several Viennese furriers and purchased cloudlike hats of lush and radiant animal pelts. I’d be broke for the rest of the trip, but fabulously.

I returned to Rome with the realization that I was not constructed for gin. I could not keep up with Ned, and so I gave it up. A glass of Orvieto bianco at pranzo and Rosso Antico on ice in the late hours were all I really wanted. Ned and I grew apart.

A few years later, as I was dressing for the sacrament that, if in fact it actually took, would end my life as a seminarian, Ned stopped by to bestow a hug and a kiss and wishes. He sat on the bed while I applied a bronzer guaranteed not to streak even under perspiration. He confessed that he hadn’t been around much during the last three years because he was being kept by a jealous young Italian doctor. He wondered if I had known that, and if he had been the object of quiet and long-term gossip. Nope. News to me, you lucky dog.

His own ordination followed several months later, after our return to the States. We saw each other once more at a reunion, after which our lives were entirely disconnected. One day, rectory phones around the country were white hot with news. My classmate in Iowa was the first to reach me. It seemed that Ned, discontent with the décor of the church to which his bishop had assigned him, burned it to the ground and announced to the parish that proceeds from insurance would provide them with a gorgeous new house of worship. He was soon uncovered, having rather botched the deed, and he now resides in an ecclesiastical prison that exclusively houses criminal priests. Know that the inmates of this place are not there because of sexual misconduct. They are men who have mishandled money, a far greater crime in the eyes of the Church.

Sometimes I look at this photo and see only the face of John Cardinal Wright.

In the summer of 1975, I ran an office for visitors to the Vatican. Every morning, Cardinal Wright would slowly and painfully cross the piazza on the arm of his handsome secretary (now a prominent American archbishop). I would come to the door of my office to greet him with a faux-fawning "Buongiorno, Eminenza". He would pause for a few words, always full of delicious sarcasm and clever delivery. I adored him. Another classmate once told me that he had modeled his entire ministry on the advice of John Cardinal Wright who held that the best priests are always theologically conservative while socially liberal and entirely forgiving. I don’t suppose he’d much approve of how I turned out, but I made a finer go of it than Ned, didn’t I, and in the end, he’d still hug our shoulders close to him, laughing as we groaned under his weight.

We need more money.

We need more money.

Sunday night spectacular

We have often traveled with friends who look forward to sitting at a bar, looking up at boyish men who dance for their dollars.

I have never quite understood the allure. If, for instance, Montreal is the destination, why pay to see what can be had so readily for free? The boys who dance there may be handsome, but no more so than the one who while serve you coffee, or the one across the terrace from your kitchen or the ones you will encounter at any one of the fourteen bath houses within walking distance. Certainly no one has ever stuffed a dollar in the jock of one of these boys because of their dancing skills which consist of dodging drinks underfoot while maneuvering a washcloth to offer various glimpses of body parts not seen on the street. Again, in Montreal, those parts are frequently seen on the street.

So what’s the deal? In Fort Lauderdale, I went to The Boardwalk with two friends of a certain age who, having filled their pockets with singles, made frequent marches up to the stage to express their appreciation of the dancers who each got no more than five minutes to perform before taking their bows and threading their way through the crowd, offering private dances in the back room. I ended the evening wondering if each of those friends would have gone into the back room on the hand of a dancer if he had been alone and unobserved by friends with telephones that talk to other mutual friends. I also found their knowledge of the fact that many of those dancers are straight and married to be disconcerting. This is prostitution set to bad music.

Given my rather high-handed disdain for this type of entertainment, you’ll be surprised to learn that I had a grand time in NYC on Sunday evening at an event featuring a slew of naked boys dancing on bars. Before I get to the details, I’ll establish the reason for my satisfaction. These boys (and let’s assume they were all at least eighteen years old) were engaging, in every way imaginable and seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Unencumbered by jock straps, the only repository for dollars would have been their socks/boots, but they seemed more interested in snagging the admiration of the drinkers rather than their money, and that after all is what makes one of these boys worth looking at: the illusion that in a crowded room, he of the perfect young body only has eyes for you. They spun out their lines liberally, like spoiled fishermen casting about in a well-stocked lake. I doubt any of the fish went home without having received at least a few seconds of their undivided attention.

That brings me to the specifics. Twenty dollars got you through the door and up to an open bar between the hours of ten and eleven. The crowd sized itself up with satisfaction and the relieving realization that the downstairs dark area would not go to waste. We do not feel swindled, and the night has barely begun.

When the dancers emerge and mount the bar, I want to congratulate the producer of this event. These boys seem to have been picked at the exact moment of their finest flowering. They may never in their lives look this good again, and they almost seem to know it. Their skin glows under warm lighting. They are immediately comfortable with their postings, and were I a regular at other venues around town, I would probably recognize them and know that they are experienced beyond their years. I look for signs of drugs in their eyes but I do not find the usual edgy panic that always seems to fuel the East Side iterations of this type of event. They seem composed and eager to please. Their erections occur at a convincing pace, allowing the superb reversal in which the drinkers are made to feel like sex objects. So far, I am pleasantly on board with the evening, in the company of C, our houseguests and two favorite blogger friends whose descriptions of the evening I await.

Set free of not only the need for a jock strap but also the common boundaries of dancer behavior, these boys unleashed their personalities as well as their dicks, and obliterated any distance between their bodies and the patrons, squatting into open mouths and growing aroused by their own hands and by having sex with each other before an appreciative audience.

I liked a longhaired Hispanic with languid eyes, a wicked smile and a body that reminded me of the bronze Davids by Verrocchio and Donatello. At one point he stretched out on the bar with one knee bent, smiling benevolently at anyone who came forth to suck his dick.

This is the one feature of the event that I found distasteful. The dancers delivered too easy access to their genitals, and men got in line continuously to take a turn at sucking them. Some guys went from one line to the next as though they were at an all-you-can-eat buffet at a Las Vegas casino. The positioning of the dancers during this odd ritual reminded me of a meet-the-authors book-signing event at Barnes and Noble. The event producer would have done better to instruct the dancers to have contact with the patrons without suspending all movement. By granting stationary compliance with lines of eager mouths, each dancer became rather maternal, like a sow on its side, allowing its brood of piglets to feed rudely on its swollen teats.

Re-reading all of the above makes me suspect that any of you who were absent will probably wish you had been there to form your own impressions, and that those of you who invested your twenty bucks will question my exclusion of a description of what went on downstairs where a set of couches in the darkness broke many a fall. Another day perhaps.

New broom misses the old dirt

These clouds contain rain.

Unmasked, this is Benedict's effort to rid the American church of pedophile leadership. It shows the usual ignorance about these issues, but its side effects are chilling. The American church will shrink, becoming a relic. The priests ( synonym for gay priests) who are safely "grandfathered" by this witch hunt will reach a new level of disgust with their church and a heightened feeling of shame among their gay friends. This is what it must have felt like to live in Germany in the 1940's. The progressive clarification of where you stood, and the step-by-step clarification about what group could claim you as a member, would finally force you to choose one thing or another. No more ambiguity, no more toleration for a double standard, no more no-asking-no-telling. Either you wear the armband or not. There are consequences to this kind of clarification.

On the brighter side, most of my gay priest friends won't feel any of this anxiety. They won't be reading this article, won't know what's going on in the seminaries and won't hear about the ban on gay priests until next they visit us. They are too busy assembling new gear for the next Folsom Street.

The Times cruises a parking lot

I like

this story

.

The reporter got some things right and some things wrong, but he captures the experience in a wistful, almost sweet way, with only a residual hint of desire to "expose" the underbelly of gay cruising.

He got right:

a) The fact that the kids who are arriving with Mom for their games in the park are not being menaced by the gay men in their cars.

b) The fact that this activity has been going on for decades, often with the same group of attendees, some of whom even admit to having spent their entire youth trolling the same parking lot (that is a distressing topic for another time).

c) The fact that married men are the major benefactors of the lot.

d) The fact that these places provide socialization for older lonely gay men who form a sort of Greek chorus as they watch the desire under the elms.

He got wrong:

a) a missed opportunity to complete his report without once adopting the tone of someone seeking to expose something shocking. He is overly deliberate in his specificity about the exact location of the parking lot. It seems he wants the locals to go there and to upset the long-term peace between the various communities of the park and its lot.

b) the clear presentation of the married men as recipients of oral sex because they are not getting any at home or because they are bored. I am here to tell you that the married men (happy or otherwise) who are having sex at rest stops, public parks or gym shower rooms are giving as much oral sex as they are getting, and they are doing it because they like it.

Mandate

So,

The New York Times

is reporting that the Pope has mandated (a great word for him) a search of American seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality".

Hmmm. Statues of Mary? Check.
Long flowing brightly colored silk brocade garments? Check.
No girls? Check. Check . Check.

Actually, this witch hunt would be horrendous and distressing if it had been mandated decades ago when the seminaries were full and fully gay. Today, they are largely empty, and the inquisitors will have no more success than they had when their clipboards read "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

Further sad hilarity can be had when one realizes that any inspection team assembled by the Vatican or by the American Catholic clergy at the request of the Vatican will consist largely of gay men (i.e., those lazy fat old queens who never got out while they were young enough to do something else with their lives).

Evidence.

I may have left an empty bottle of poppers and an early issue of Details in the loo of a Benedictine seminary in southern Indiana.

Light for the last rose

les rayons ultimes, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

C took this photo of my regret about the passing of summer, while we waited for the elevator in our building.
Because I think "derniers" carries the sense of "next" sometimes, I don't want to refer to this as "Les derniers rayons de l'ete", or even "Les rayons derniers de l'ete". I suppose "Les rayons finals de l'ete" would be clear, but I really like "Les rayons ultimes de l'ete". Anyway, the summer sun has left milky white chevrons on top of my feet where it could not penetrate the skin shielded by the straps of my flip flops. I dread the entombment of my feet into winter shoes. Any French scholars with opinions?

Self Sabotage

He

said:

It's a monday morning and i am overwhelmed with doubts. I know doubts come with relationships, all of them - whether "mere" friendships, or the kind that involve sex, and shared secrets, and hopes for a life together. I know this, I have experienced it, and yet, now, right now, for the moment anyway, I doubt I am right for him. This is no time for "hey guy, you're cool, you're a great guy" etc. I am not writing this to get that reaction. I think I am writing this to flesh these jumbled up thoughts for myself, and the structure of making it semi-coherant here in 'public' might help. Friends can't answer the question of whether I am a nice guy, am i a smart-ass, am I too biting and sarcastic and downright rude sometimes. They don't have so much invested, they don't experience the worries and doubts that, well, lovers do. Perhaps ex-boyfriends can help me understand what it is about me that gives mixed signals - "i love you" vs. "leave me alone I'm not even awake yet" - OK, those are poor examples. But apparently somethings i do or say, or the manner in which i say or do them, are rude and hurtful. And it is vague, and I don't quite see it, and that there is the problem. It is not OK for me to conclude that it is his problem. That is never the right answer, no matter what the relationship is - if indeed you want it to continue and in fact get even better. But I am genuinely perplexed, and saddened by this dilemna. I want to fix it, yet i don't, honestly, know what I am doing wrong, and so can't begin to be better. I am overwhelmed and frankly, a bit frozen - worried about making more, and bigger mistakes. Doubting even the little nicenesses that I want to do on a whim because they may seem contrived, or calculated. This is not what he has said, but more my anxiety getting the better of me and just doubting everything for now (I hope it is just for now).



My comment:

When I met C, I had to clear the house in order to enter the relationship.

I had to move my closest friends, who arrived like clockwork every friday at 6PM and stayed for the weekend, out. I had to get through to them that the thing I really wanted had arrived, and that it would take their place. I handled this poorly, and those two people were hurt very deeply. (We are all three on speaking terms, but no longer close. They soon found love, and they are both in relationships that are just as long as mine.)

When C and I first moved in together, I was rude and irritable about a number of things. I guess I was nervous, more about myself than about him. I would mentally replay the tapes of things I said to him, and be mortified. He didn't seem to feel them half as much as I did. This was a surprise and a relief to me. When he behaved badly, I made so much noise about it, you'd think I had been crucified.

And then, luckily, time passed, and we were able to correct the foolishness in order to save the goodness of being together.

Time passed! So wonderfully, we survived ourselves.

Something in your words reminded me of me. I hope you will have also some of my other qualities - the redeeming ones - that will see you through this moment.

The problem with blogging

The problem with blogging is the allure of speed.
We are tempted to post without previewing our words.
We are tempted to comment everywhere and about everything, like drunken bees, like cocktail-fueled dilettanti, like shoppers who caress but do not buy.
Addicted to the sugar of any strong headline, we begin to stop conjuring, and opt for reacting to the spark of other fires.
We sell our own furniture and begin to reside in the rooms of others.

Central Park Proposal

DSC01792, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

This man has just proposed marriage to this woman at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. The waiter brought her two chocolate cupcakes iced with the words of proposal. "Will you" on one. "Marry Me" on the other. Her boyfriend got down on his knees by the table. She accepted him, and the crowd applauded.

Does one propose en publique to help insure a "yes"? Does a woman receiving a public proposal say yes for fear of creating a disturbing common memory, knowing that she can always rescind? What if she had said "This is so sweet...I'm overwhelmed. I need some time to think." the cupcakes would have tasted like vinegar. What would she have worn, if she had known in advance?

On the shore beyond the boats (you can't see it, blocked by her head) is a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken next to the Bethesda Fountain.

These two seem to be happily accepting their place in Time, while we happily accepted our third set of Ketel One Bloody Marys (Hey. We had to wait an hour for the table, OK?)

The newly engaged couple shared one cupcake, and then she explained to the waiter that she wanted to keep the second one. maybe they'll eat it on their anniversary. Maybe it'll someday be dumped with the trash, put out in front of their brownstone as we walk by on a Sunday morning, looking into the windows of other people's lives. Stats say it's a 50/50.

The Bethesda Fountain

DSC01799, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

My Sennelier oil pastels melting in the sun of a sultry weekend.

The summer of 1977

David Thorstad recently wrote to David McReynolds:

David,
Your summary is accurate, based on what I have experienced.† Here's one
more anecdote:
†
In summer 1977, after the Anita Bryant antigay victory in Dade County,
Florida, New York's Gay Activists Alliance, Lesbian Feminist
Liberation, Church of the Beloved Disciple, and others organized a
protest in Sheridan Square, which continued, without a permit, some
6,000 strong, up Sixth Avenue.† I was one of the organizers, and walked
at the head of the march.† The rear saw cops in pigmobiles actually
ramming slightly marchers in the back end of the march. Around 36th
Street or so, all of a sudden, I saw†the Workers World contingent try
one of the ploys it used frequently during the antiwar movement:† As a
group, they rushed to take over the front of the march.† I yelled at
them to "Get the fuck out of here!†This is a gay march!" They did, and
moved farther back.
††† This was clearly a planned and staged effort to take over the front
of the march, presumably so their banner would be sure to be
photographed, and, misleadingly, give the impression that they were
leading the protest. They were not.
Best,
David

When I thanked David McReynolds for sharing so much gay history with us in his frequent group e-mails, he asked me if I was in that march.

In the summer of 1977, I was just back from four years in Rome. I purchased packets of Rit dye to mix in the bath tub in order to achieve the right tones of salmon, acqua and olive drab needed on my tee shirts, to offset my white painters jeans and web belts. I picked up Mark, my classmate from Oakland California, at the airport, in my brand new white MGB. I had one task left before we officially embarked on our vacation in Ptown. The next morning, I delivered a sermon entitled "Maria Goretti, Model of Virtue". We drove to Ptown with the top down, tape deck screaming. Absolutely, sweetly, blissfully nothing in our heads. We were young. We were pretty. We were precious.

I wonder what everyone else was doing that summer (C says he was at Bible Camp).

C in Exit Art

DSC01738, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

I get dragged by C to so many galleries when what I really want to do is take a nap, but they are inevitably engaging, as was this installation at Exit Art (475 Tenth Avenue). The artist invited participation, so C entered into it and I held the camera. His shirt clashed with the orange flooring, so I asked for its removal. (The director of the gallery, Jeanette Ingberman has great and copious hair.)

New York City Pride 2005

pride 2005, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

bulging with Pride

pride 2005, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

This lady cop was such a good sport. The guy with the matching body walked the whole length of the parade with a flag in his ass. Something to tell his grandchildren.

???

pride ???, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

We are at the NYC Pride parade. This creature and his comrades are pushing the envelope of post-modern demonstration in which symbols are drained of meaning, and all that remains is a vague desire for liposuction or heatstroke.

homocorps @ CBGB

CBGB bathroom, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

We attended the final edition of Dean Johnson's Homocorps @ CBGB on NYC Pride weekend. We had to see the bathroom one more time before they close this place. We are accompanied by a blogger in a yellow jock. He's on my blog roll. Guess which one.

Doing my part

OK. This is to the reader in the Pentagon who goes from here to Joe.My.God:

I am available as a consultant to your organization. I specialize in the design, installation and management of permanent and/or temporary shower room facilities for the military. Because I am patriotic, I offer this service for free and am willing to share lodging with my clients. Please e-mail me (farmboyz@mac.com) for a brochure that includes my recently patented and popular soap dispenser which is wall-mounted just two inches above the shower room floor. Very ADA compliant.

Also, while Joe and I are glad to keep your Pentagonal workdays lively, we are not sure whether your attention will land us in the Lincoln bedroom or a federal pen.

(I know the Lincoln bedroom is not in the Pentagon, but maybe he's got connegshuns.)

folsommmm

folsommmm, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

We ran into a friend, Enrico Vega (left). He has graduated from starring in porn to making his own movies. He introduced us to Manuel Torres (right) who is the man of the moment on video. Manny, a nurse aspirant, spoke of the evisceration of fantasy that comes with sexual achievement, a topic close to my heart. He's likable, and C, who turned into Gidget at the sight of him, finds him quite doable. OK, so do I. He's rather an Hispanic George Clooney. (The guy in the middle looks so familiar. I think he blogs. I don't have his name.)

folsomadonna

folsomadonna, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

We stood behind this man in the line to get into the Eagle. His ink was problematic. I tapped him on Mary's forehead. "Excuse me, but weren't there seven swords of sorrow that pierced the heart of the Madonna? There's only six here."
He smiled. "The last one is somewhere else on me."

folsomacabre

folsomacabre, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

There are no words

folsomummy

folsomummy, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

We went to Folsom Street East on Sunday (West 28th St). Great fun, but there were moments when we visited some of the far outposts of the gay family where dwell folks with whom we have little in common.

We love our Harry

Harry sends us email like no others. We miss him. He's long since left these parts for San Francisco, where he moved in with an ex-Colt model and really nice guy with whom he has formed a new life.
I met Harry several years ago in the Macho bar in Provincetown at the height of peak season. C was in NYC for a few days, and I, left to my own devices, was out for Montage. (Sorry, I'll define that sometime in the future). The place was a testosteroom of hot shirtless desire. Harry stood in the front rank of the standing-beer-armed soldiers. His smoldering hispanic looks caught my eye immediately. We fell into each other and for nearly an hour and a half, made-out cinematically (think of Moulin Rouge. We must have looked hot. The next day, friends and strangers complimented me on our display and the provoked envy). We ended up back at my house and slightly before dawn, Harry left.

Six hours later, when I awoke, he was sitting on a chair by the bed.

This was odd. I never locked the doors in Ptown, but I have never had a trick return that soon, and without the usual mechanisms of invitation and response. He had made coffee in the kitchen, and despairing over my possible resolution to sleep out the entire day, was writing me a long note while he sat by the bed.

I reached over and snatched the note from his hands and read it aloud. That was my first experience of Harry's tendency to write beautifully long, elaborate and fearless notes. Harry doesn't need to edit himself because his instincts (trained by an earlier career in theater) are perfect. Here is his latest to us, written after he read the Spes Messis in Semine series: (Oh , and Harry, I still have that first note, and C sends his love, and we are hoping you guys will come east soon. We'll be staying with Bob and Peter during Carnivale week in Ptown. Game?)

from Harry:

Dearest _____ - - I was compelled to write after reading some of your entries on life in the seminary. Needless to say, it triggered long forgotten memories - (cue background pipe organ music and a filtered lense montage accompanied by chords from a distant harp...) from a lifetime ago. I was overwhelmed by one particular occasion - a memory stemming from the sensation of a stiff and bleached white collar fastened tightly by the gaudiest of red faux bow ties. I remember how the collar chaffed against my neck, almost unbearable in the summer heat. Beads of sweat rolled down my back forming tiny rivulets hidden under the bulky weight of red and white vestments. Normally they would flow and billow in a passing breeze but that day they were still as if wilted under the heat. Sweat ran down my shoulders and arms, down to my wrist. In my grip dangled a gold plated censer swinging lazily from a taunt, discolored chain. Faint white smoke floated in delicate spirals from cross shaped holes and at times was obsured by the beams of colored sunlight shooting through stained glass. The droning organ music, combined with the humidity and my nervous energy, made it impossible to focus. I was nervous. This was my first time and I wondered how it would go. Contemplating the growing number of possibilities, I managed to turn my attention down the aisle without drawing any focus on myself. I looked past the rows of pews filled with my classmates and the rest of the school, just beyond the Sixth Station of the Cross near the confessionals. There he was. He stepped into his ensemble with methodical percision. It seemed as if he was visible only to me. The door was opened part of the way but he was framed perfectly against the dark word paneling. Even from my vantage point I see how he would tower over me, he was well over 6 feet with the lanky legs of a basketball player and the visage of an early Chuck Conners (sans the deranged stare and, sadly, sans a shirtless, hemp rope bound William Conrad in tow). He was younger than most clergymen I had seen and an affable man whose hearty laugh and kind eyes endeared the hardest of hearts. There had been rumors he was married at one time which wasn't hard to believe. Even under the bulk of his cassock and vestments, you could still follow the contour of his large body, the fabric hugging and draping the rise and fall of his generous chest, the curve of his back. He had the figure of the ideal woodsman, broad shouldered with arms that yearned to burst from his shirt sleeves, with tufts of dark hair peeking through his short sleeves giving him a hint of primal energy. He moved with equal grace and precision despite his long legs. On the warm days when he was not dressed for mass, I would look forward to seeing him in his summer blacks. There was the aforementioned short sleeve shirt framing his handsome upper body but it was his pants which were the highlight of my midday treat. His pants could barely contain the two physical attributes which forever cemented the memovy of Father Rock: his thighs had the girth of tree trunks and he was blessed with an outline of a bulge so prominent one could safely conclude he was gifted with a prodigious endowment. puffing slowly, intently on last time before he would have to extinguish his treasure stogie. I saw his ice baby blues narrow behind his gold rimmed aviator sunglasses, his fat cigar jutting from his supple lips. Was he grinning? I couldn't tell without leaning forward and squinting and inevitably draw attention to me. He finished slipping into his knee high black boots (...just buffed and polished by Sister Agathe Ignacia - a gargoyle of a woman but a fierce boot black) and he was threading the final strap of his harness. The final touch to this exercise was the captain's hat which sat with the slight tilt, his chestnut mane concealed in favor of the stark conformity of worn leather, dulled chains and his exposed skin. Draped arms that welcomed congregants to prayer on Sunday were now a visceral display of long milkly white arms and even from I stood I see the biceps flex and release as he slipped on the gloves. Gone was the crucifix. Now there rested a metallic ring anchoring the harness and framing his sternum. And there were his chest, defined even in partial light The cindered glow grew brighter as he turned and he beckoned me closer with a gloved hand. Commandant Rock was ready. He picked up a riding crop as I began my slow approach. My throat was dry and yet I managed to swallow. Still nervous. On that day "Make me channel of your peace" lost its hallowed earnestness and took on a more sinister application...

An unknown soldier

Would the soldier (you're in Bagdad or maybe Moscow judging by the time zone marker) who daily reads this blog and then goes to Joe.My.God. please email me. I have so many questions. farmboyz@mac.com

diversion

Because several clergy friends are privately conveying their admission about following the Spes Messis in Semine business, I'm going to take a few days to edit the next parts for accuracy.
Meanwhile, here's part one of "You Again" which announced itself after I got in at 5AM Saturday. PS, having entered "one of those places" in midtown, I walked past a rack of videos, one of which caught my eye. It was entitled "That Touch of Twink". This put a winning smile on my face as I passed through the turnstile.

What can this mean?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

seminary

, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

When we walk out onto our deck at dawn before work, or at dusk when we return, this is part of the generous panorama that will make it hard for us to abandon this spot, this home of ours, built from scratch a few years back. This picture does not include the city skyline, or the old farm silos or the ancient cemetery or the village of homes just below us, but it does show you the Gothic tower of the seminary in which I lived for six years, on the edge of a valley cut by what the Indians called "the long tidal river". I was a little boy. All of fourteen. Ready for anything that would take me away. Story to follow.

Come sono caduto in baso

We drive into the city listening to Tears for Fears' Beatlesian "Sowing the Seeds of Love". The song ran itself onto a sandbar just beneath my forehead for the rest of the night. As we walked into Barrage, the bridge was on continuous loop: "Time to eat all your words, swallow your pride, open your eyes". Rather appropriate for an event built around words, and the seeing of the guys behind them. (God, will I ever be free of this homiletic style?)

In somma, if I were a single gay man looking for a boyfriend, Ida bin at Barrage on Friday night to dive into a fine combination of brain and brawn. As a five star yenta, that'll be my best advice from now on. Husband hunters should read blog, follow what fits and then stalk the hell out of a love object.

Really, I wanted only to dispel the rumor that Perge Modo is written by the retired big band singer Margaret Whiting, propped up on a Florida-based sofa, and transcribing snippets of letters left behind by her deceased husband, porn star Jack Wrangler. (If you check out Joe's blue-light-special photos of the event, you can see quite plainly that this blog is written by Rasputin and Alice B. Toklas. Seriously, I love that photo of C and me.)

We got to meet and touch the steamy Tolkienesque Aaron, the Watch-out-Bruce-Vilanch hot Joe, the velvet BJ (whom we have already touched many times in the icky way) the dewy and alluringly handsome Myoclonus and that very bad boy from Philadelphia with whom I re-enacted in the bathroom the steamroom scene from Thunderball. He's the hottest, cuttest, sweettest, and I'm-sure-to-never-hear-from-him-again-ist guy in this hemisphere. Oh well, I don't think anyone was damaged. The band width of the attendees didn't really allow for damage; only for celebration.

Aside: the guys who kept their jackets on were the non-bloggers. One of them, a short lean guy who turned out to be Pakistani (who should have been resting up for a run at Belmont) and spun out some tale about only being Out for a few months, was deliberately not helpful when my hand got stuck beyond his waistband. He had the enviable ability to keep his dick hard while conversing about housewares. There. I used the word "dick" in this post just to play to the person who told me that my blog is "borderline porn". That was the only surprising moment of the night. I don't remember who said it. I don't watch or read much porn. My stuff is more of an effort to record what no one else is willing even to discuss, like the fact of sex with married guys at the gym. I never think of it in terms of titillation. I plan to think more about that. But who has time? They have introduced hanging plastic dividers at Siberia on Saturdays. It was only a matter of time. I surrender to the venues of my age.

Melody of Love

For reasons unknown, some of my fave bloggers are writing about music these days, and so, not one to drop my oar, I offer the following which has been simmering within me since the colder months.

All last winter, at the Club Fort Lauderdale, they played the same four songs endlessly and repeatedly and loudly. At first, I was glad for the fact that these songs had replaced J Lo reminding us that she's just Jenny from the Block which was the previous mantra that filled those halls. It was annoying because, in fact, none of those present were just Jenny from the block, although on occasion, with the right piece in one's hand, the lyric "I used to have a little now I got a lot" did seem to make some sense.

The Four Inevitables, as I referred to them in my unheeded complaints to the manager, were

"Beautiful Soul" by Jesse McCartney, which contains the words "I don't want another pretty face". Those of us who sang along while sauntering or posing were outright liars.

"True" by Ryan Cabrera, which contains the words "I've waited all my life to be with you". Another terrific lie. Most of us in that place would wait longer for an ATM to spit out twenty bucks than we would for the attentions of the next man to come around the corner.

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day, featuring the constant phrase "I walk alone". This choice was only partially absurd. I did occasionally walk alone, usually while exiting someone's room and wiping my hands along the walls on my way to the showers. That moment, however, did not capture the existential yearning intended by the Green Day.

"I'm With You" by Avril LaVigne. Finally a tolerable anthem for many of those evenings. Ms. LaVigne commences with the words "It's a damn cold night" which was certainly true of Fort Lauderdale during its last unusually frigid high season, and when she wails "Take me by the hand...I don't know who you are but I'm with you", well there just wasn't a dry dick in the place.

I once read that "Chocolate Cake" by Crowded House was first a hit in the bath houses of Australia, and that the Finn brothers took this as a fine compliment. I wonder if Captain and Tennille would have felt the same if they had heard me whistling "Do that to me one more time" while walking the halls of the Sloane House YMCA many years ago. I liked the fact that there was no music piped into the halls of that wonderful place. Some guys, using a shoe to prop open the door, indicating an interest in the reception of guests, had radios that might catch your ear as you passed, but not in the agressive way that the speakers mounted overhead in most bath houses deliver divas where you just don't want them.

Next career: traveling bath house music consultant. So easy to pack. Won't even need the overhead bin.

Fortune

As we were getting into bed last night, C. said, "Do you realize that I have spent the majority of my life with you?"

"No. I hadn't really thought of that but I guess it's true, isn't it?" After a few seconds, I added, "Are you happy?"

Without hesitation, with eyes closed and forehead scrunched against my shoulder, he smiled and vigorously nodded yes.

"Well I've spent the majority of my life with you too", I announced.

"No you haven't", he murmured, "Unless you've been lieing about your age."

"Sweet, if I were going to lie about my age, I certainly wouldn't have been padding it all these years, would I? I'm simply discounting and subtracting those years of my early childhood in which I was obsessed with and desired only sapphires, leopard skin and Troy Donahue. I think it's only fair to let me bundle up and sequester those years in the way that a freed prisoner might sidestep his time of incarceration while making cocktail chat, or an ex-addict might set-aside his pre-clean years or the way someone coming out of a coma might box up the years of oblivion and refer to them as a separate and distinct life. And incidentally, you would think that by now someone would have bought me at least a small sapphire, but no, I remain unadorned, like the last unpurchased Christmas tree on the street corner, late on the 24th, destined for blinglessnessdom."

It took me three tries to get that last word out correctly. Put the blame on the meds I am taking for the pain of my recent back injury (see below). C. missed the whole of my ramble for he had fallen asleep within seconds of closing his eyes. This is his way, and mine as well, for more than twenty years. At various times in the course of the night we will twist and turn, always making sure that some parts of our bodies are touching.

I have lost almost all the jewelry I have ever owned.

I am allergic to cats.

There is definitely no room for Troy in this bed.

"I'm happy too", I whispered into the top of his head.

A Plenary Indulgence

By way of follow up to my mention of the indulgence to be gained by correctly receiving Ratzie's Urbe et Orbe blessing, I offer the following interchange with a Monsignor who knows all this stuff. He once taught me the words to Wallis Simpson's favorite hymn entitled "Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?"

Dear_______,
What kind of indulgence does one get for receiving the first U et O
blessing of a new Pope?

Is it valid via CNN, or does one have to have gotten it through Fox News?

Seriously, what's the indulgence attached to it? Do you have to hear it
live? Via TV OK? Aside from having to be disposed to the indulgence,
what are the requisite prayers that must also be said in order to make
it work?

Dear ____________,

It is plenary -- and even over the radio or TV. However, one has to be in a
state of grace, and free of "any attachment" at that current instant to
venial sin. Since I think neither of us can claim the "any attachment"
part, any indulgence we received from receiving the blessing would be
"partial," rather than plenary, and God would deliver, based upon our good
will. So there!

Benedict XVI

There won't be much of a honeymoon. The faithful have already been forced into bed with this guy for decades, and it hasn't been fun. There's something in his smile that betrays his relishment of the role of Grand Inquisitor. He tried to twist that smile into something conveying Benevolent Pastor as he presented himself on the balcony for the Urbe et Orbe blessing (which, big time sinners take note, is good for a whooping big indulgence). Think formulaic Hollywood: the seemingly nice man smiles upon his victim revealing the bloodied fangs of a vampire. My body hair stood up as I received this blessing. It was cold and unGodly.

I hear that he has said quite plainly that he will not mind the shrinkage of the Roman Catholic Church due to conservative adherence to doctrine. OK, so he's just another stubborn old man who has stopped trusting the unfettered breezes of the Holy Spirit for guidance, preferring to rail against the targets of the old school: gays and women. He stands with that group in "The Poseidon Adventure" that did not go with Shelley Winters. They said, "Nope. We're going to stay right here in the ballroom. Better to dig in our heels rather than to start scampering about." We all know what happened to them.

His choice of name is telling. While casting back to a time and place in which he would feel comfortable, he logically discarded John, Paul and the two John Pauls. But some may wonder why he sidestepped the last century's hugest Germanophile, Pius XII. Maybe it is because of Pius's own difficulties with the Nazis, or because Ratzinger knows that when John XXIII became Pope, the first thing he found on his desk was Pius's plan to call for a Vatican Council, but I suspect the real reason has more to do with Pius's relationship with Cardinal Spellman. There's not much in Benedict XV that stirs the modern heart, but by golly, Ratzinger could place a dollar on the fact that he was a damn fine specimen of an asexual priest.

He's 78. His dictates will be largely ignored, and he is probably not the last nail in the coffin of Roman Catholicism.

The Spectator Pumps and Sling Backs of Mrs. Noreen Hamilton of Fort Lauderdale, Florida

DSC00528, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

Not sure why I painted this. We looked at her condo a few years ago when we were looking for a Fort Lauderdale place. She greeted us and the agent in a floor length aquamarine caftan. She was tiny and quite elderly and full of laughter.She had placed a copy of a high end shelter mag by the door. The condo was featured on the cover. She was the widow of an FBI honcho who had worked with J. Edgar. He had taken care of her. Every cabinet she opened contained bottles. She offered us a drink (10:30AM) and even financing as I snapped pictures. When she led me into the depths of her walk-in, I could sense pride in her arrangement of footwear. We didn't buy the place. Should have. She planned to move to a building nearer the Galleria. Must look her up.I think she'd like this.

Snaxx

At the advice of a blogger, we attend this bi-weekly event at the Westside Tavern last Friday night, and we are pleased with what we find. Upon arrival, we pass through a laconic straight crowd draped about the main floor. Dante, or our instinct, guides us past these creatures to a sign that commands "LOUNGE". We make the descent into a cellar where an attentive bartender efficiently fuels a thick mob of men who are mostly taller than us. I shout over the noise to C. that they must be lacing the drinks with calcium. An intelligent DJ has blessedly subtracted any hint of a vocal line from his mix, charging the air with that sort of frisson one feels just before a lightening strike. The men here, with few exceptions, are very white, and all rather butch and built. (Margaret Butch-White?) Their coloration is neither a positive nor a negative. It is simply worth noting, in a city that usually contains more variety. Most everyone has hair that has been allowed to follow the natural contours of the face, like winter rye in a fallow place. No geometric cuts that seem to be lifted from A Pattern Language. And, unlike in other neighborhoods, no one is smoking. Also unlike in other neighborhoods, these men appear to have left their genitals at home, or perhaps to have placed them in some sort of timed-release security box under their vigilantly zippered jeans. There's not a dick to be seen, nor groping nor pawing nor squeezing of the crotch. C. and I, like those shipwrecked boys in Lord of the Flies have almost forgotten this sort of civilized behavior. We are more accustomed to venues in which the objective is to make Origami folds in jeans worn entirely at the ankles. We behave, and acquire a second drink. These men appear to be assessing each other, perhaps taking notes that might be played out over laundry in weeks to come, as in, "Didn't I see you at Snaxx in a Def Leppard tee shirt?". C. remarks that they are the exact same men who may be seen at Siberia. Very Edith Wharton, but a pleasant spectacle, and one which we will return to perhaps with our single, out-of-town, hairy, butch, built, white and taller friends, should we ever acquire any.

Vox Christi

Saturday February 19, 2005

Provoke.
Invoke.
Evocative.
Convocation.
Vocation.

Oddly enough, these words, all rooted in the vocal, seemed to crowd out all other observations as we walked through “The Gates” in Central Park at 10AM in full sun. Odd because despite the huge crowd, a quiet solemnity prevailed. At first I assumed this was by dint of the extreme cold, but came to realize that what we were hearing was the sound of people thinking rather than talking. I cannot recall a time when I have been part of a throng this big that wasn’t jabbering, fidgeting, jostling, shrieking, chanting or cheering. Even in Rome, when we trotted out the Pope, the crowd was about as ruly as that of a Superbowl, bruising their neighbors to get a full frontal into their cameras.

For this reason above all others, we decide the installation is good.

C feels it conjures fluorescent laundry. I counter with the impression of a bevy of Catholic school girls, but that is because I am obsessed with pleats. Yup, I love em. (I think that in heaven, if Miss Jesus will have me, I will be perpetually draped in Mariano Fortuny, but still allowed upstairs at the Eagle.)

As we approach The Boathouse for brunch, C, who loves this park, says that he’ll side with the Christo fans, but he is glad the installation is temporary “like when the carnival comes to town”.

I am distracted by the sight of a volunteer wearing an official beige “Gates” vest. He holds a long pole with a yellow tennis ball skewered on its tip. This is used to adjust the saffron when the wind twists it over the armatures (and, we agree wholeheartedly with that savvy stud from Philadelphia who observed that the armatures should have been grey to blend in with the winter trees and make the saffron really float.)

C suggests that we should be Christo volunteers next time. I agree and share the rumor that Jeanne-Claude has announced her desire to cover Jeff Stryker with red and gold flocked wallpaper. Wheat paste: the lube of a legend.

Later that evening, I laugh as I enter the soaring atrium of the Time Warner building and am assaulted by the sight of two one hundred foot long orange curtains and a matching valance framing the escalator down to Whole Foods. Is this a tribute or is it a nasty bit of mockery? Either way, it’s just pitifully lame. Worse is next door, where the window dressers at Hugo Boss have replaced the relentlessly black clothing with some orange tat. Everyone seems to have gotten the spirit except for the dour clerks at the Thomas Pink store where the colors were recalcitrant. I suppose that to be a function of the brand name, and I rethink my decision that if C and I ever had a daughter, we would name her Saffron. She might never be pretty in pink. I return to our earlier choice: Aerial Surveillance. She’ll grow into it.

In 2008

An openly gay man will be elected president, because:
a) he will run largely under the radar screen, on the net

b) he will get the youth, urban and swiftly growing minority vote

c) he will get the women vote because he won't be pushing a moral agenda that is prohibitive

d) the media will come up with names of people he has had sex with. It will be a long list. He will beam while proudly admitting to having had sex with them all (even the ones he can't quite recall)

e) the Libertarians will toss in with him just before the election, giving him the support of guys like Clint Eastwood and Kurt Russell

f) The two party system, which is as close to death as the electoral college, will once again produce two candidates who will be distasteful to most of America. Americans will look about for a hero and will sense something in the voice of the gay candidate: that long-lost sound of sincerety.

g) Other countries (need I name them?) will toss in with the gay candidate, as will Oprah

(h) It will help if he has military and government experience)

i) Barbra Streisand will get to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom again.

Early in his presidency, he will be assassinated, and will become instantly heroic in memoriam. Gay issues will reach resolution. He will have been the catalyst.

I know that all this sounds Messianic, but that is rather what is born of oppression.
Who's it going to be? I've been scanning the horizon for sight of him. He hasn't yet appeared. He's out there somewhere maybe just beginning to sense his responsibility and destiny.

Skin Flint

(As I said in askisadora.com)

Sean,
There are gradations to which you must pay attention if you are to get this:

a) heterosexual men do not moisturize, unless they are farmers who use a product called Bag Balm. It was designed for a cow's utter and comes in a nifty tin with some green and rose campion colored graphics. It is vile smelling, but efficient.

b) Suburban metrosexual men of the lowest rank will moisturize but only after they are married, have begun to see wrinkles, and reaching first into their wives' side of the medicine cabinet, uncork potions that don't smell butch. The more persistent of this group will go to the CVS or to Costco, and stock up on Lubriderm or a similar generic.

c) The next rank of metrosexuals are single men who discover that they are better looking than their buddies (mostly because girls tell them this, but sometimes because they are narcissies). They nurture a fascination with their own looks that is free of the boundaries set by heterosexual men.

There are two subsets of this group:
1) black and hispanic men who have been using nail polish for decades
2) television weather forecasters (also known as meteorosexuals)

d) the highest rank of metrosexuals are those men who have extended the investments made by their ego to encompass their face and body. Not only do they have to have the best car, condo, job and babe, but they have to have the best skin, hair, muscles and suits. These are the guys who study grooming products and sometimes consult with their gay friends. These are also the guys who stand on the precarious edge of actually having sex with other men. Afterall, their preoccupation with the whole "men" thing can't help but lead them to appreciation of some men as sex objects.

e) And finally, Sean, there are the homosexuals who have been moisturizing since kindergarten. (No joke, I begged my Aunt Claire to let me use her Noxema, and I knew, even at the age of five, that this was something best kept between her and me.)

Homosexuals don't need to shop in the "Men's Grooming" section for their products. We head straight to the L'Oreal Plenitude Revitalift with brazen assurance (when the jar is empty, the labels are easily removed and you can refill them with pesto for freezing and gifting through the winter.)

The way-high level of this group is the New York homosexual who gets advance notice that Kiehl's is opening a new store on the Upper West Side. He's there right away, and because he drops a hundred bucks on 1.7 ounces of cryste marine cream, and a small jar of multi-purpose facial formula (and because he compliments the salesgirl on her thick mahogany mane), he walks out with enough sample packets to furnish his gym bag for months.

The very highest level of homosexual is inhabited by only one man: me. I am the person who, while visiting the island of Montserrat (two years before it blew up) brought a dozen zip lock bags with me and filled them with various colored muds from the simmering volcano. This made for some very heavy luggage which I forced my very annoyed partner to share. Getting through customs was hilarious. When we got home, I ruined my Cuisinart food processor by trying to mix the mud with some almond paste and eucalyptus oil. Within a few weeks, the baggies of mud hardened into bricks. I set them out as the threshold of the herb garden we put in that year. They were soon covered with glorious lichen and moss. And yes, while putting in that garden, the only thing that replenished my hands was a good dollop of bag balm.

And that, Sean, should answer your question.

We are a what?!

Someone on the television just reminded us that we are afterall a "faith-based nation". He offered this as explanation for the election of Bush to a second term. Never before has this concept been clear to me. I now see that this nation is viewed by most of its citizens as a club of God-fearers. This is not at all the collection of tolerant, freedom-loving and courageous folks who, despising oppression and able to endorse with conviction the welcoming inscription of the statue of liberty, set up this country as a refuge. Don't get me wrong. I am well aware of the enormity of conservative America, but I thought a larger portion of that mass was tempered by compassion for the rest of us. I was wrong.

We are nolonger about inclusion. We are now about the enforcement of someone's boundaries for right and wrong.

The idea that a President should give us comfort by steering a moral course for us is so foreign to me that I wonder how I could have actually grown up amidst these people.

I thought the President was supposed to keep us safe (even while we are performing sex acts he may not agree with).

If you say "faith-based nation" three times fast, you end up saying "faith-bashed nation".

Just like in nature,

blue balls of Bloomfield, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

Just like in nature, one of these balls is slightly larger than the other.
But really, what were they thinking?

a) "Look Honey, the shiny things are on sale. Let's get two."
b) "Might as well put it out there with the one she gave us last Christmas".
c) "Well, we figured we had two windows..."
d) "That'll show those Hendersons a thing or two."


Feel free:

Two lesbians have informed me that

in the town of Ubud, on Bali, having sex is referred to as "jig-a-jig".

This fact has been labeled "permanent" and stored in the far lobes.

I think you can safely judge a person by the information he has chosen to retain or discard. For instance, it may be significant that I can name the nine muses, list the eight members of the band playing on deck while the Titanic sank, describe Jason Kidd's tattoos, and accurately deliver every word and pause recorded by Karen Carpenter.

I won't begin to list the things I have forgotten, but I am proud of my editing, and pleased with the shiny things I have kept dusted and neatly displayed on the shelves of memory. All the rest has slipped through the cracks and joints of the floorboards and has been carried off by that dark and silent river flowing beneath us while we sleep.

absurd house

absurd house, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

While this may not be the ugliest house in Connecticut, it is certainly the most absurd. It has not a single architectural feature that has not been misapplied, misused, misinterpreted or combined recklessly beyond the limits of sensible proportion. Looking at this house is profoundly irritating, but living in it is probably easier (once inside the foolish front door, you don't have to look at it). Is that the lady of the house coming forth as I get back into my car? I can tell she wants to obtain the name of the high end shelter mag in which her gracious home will be featured. Her hair is five times as large as her skull, and sprayed to imitate a five point buck. I speed away sparing her the reality.

The dinosaurs are dragging

their feet. Their breath is labored. There is desperation in their eyes as they sniff at their eggs, spoiling and not hatching. The sky is an odd color.

When the last living of their kind crashes chin first to the ground, smaller critters come out of hiding, as would Munchkins, to marvel at the remains glistening in the newly returned sunlight. Hairy men pull out the dreadful teeth and string them into necklaces that will cement their tribal positions.

To have been around for that! To have witnessed the extinction.

We should not feel too deprived, as we are today witnessing the extinction of three huge dinosaurs: the gasoline engine, the American two-party system, and the Roman Catholic Church.

The earlier situation that did in the T Rex and relatives had mysterious causes. Comet? Global climate change? Virus? The three that we are witnessing are clearly caused by unresponsive recalcitrance and greed for money or power.

The gasoline engine is something we have loved too much, like fried dough or the cigarette. GM and similar companies cannot stop themselves from selling it to us, and we have shown an inability to stop buying it. We are all guilty addicts for this sloppy invention. Mercifully, fossil fuel (remember those earlier dinosaurs? They growl to life again every time you turn the key in the ignition) will be depleted or too costly. There won't be any virtue in our switch to clean fuel. As a culture, we are like the obese who can't start a diet until they are in a coma.

The two-party system would almost be acceptable were it not for the fact that its leadership and message are interchangeably bad. The parties attract neither the heroic nor the inspired. Natural born American leaders like Oprah Winfrey or Garrison Keillor can't be bothered. This should be over by 2008. The vehicle and birth mother of an heroic and inspired president will not be the Green party or the Libertarians or any existing third party. It will be the gay community, flexing its powerful bicep nationally, and producing a startlingly wonderful leader who will, of course, be assassinated early in his presidency.

Finally, there is the pathetic matter of Roman Catholicism. Talk about squandering a franchise. For centuries, these guys had us believing that they owned the gates to heaven and hell. They picked the pockets of those in line at either entrance. We now have a pope who lingers, like that final dinosaur. Years from now, looters will plunder his grave, not recognizing the carved letters of his name as they pick the rubies out of his rotting vestments. John Paul wanted to be holy. He settled for stubborn. The horses (and the sheep) have left the barn.

Gender is what we

need more of in English. Yup. The French have their Le/La to infuse even the most sexless of objects (stones, doors, rugs) with the whimsicality of femininity or the weightiness of masculinity. La whim, le weight. Teachers who bestow French upon English speaking students say, "Aren't you glad we don't have to worry about that in English?" It's really just another Anglo attempt to denigrate all things Frenchular.

Some guys (think the John Goodman character on the old Rosanne show)like to use the La with some nouns when skewering what they think is a pansy-fied subject. La moisturizer. La scented candle. ("La President?" comes the retort from other parts of the room.) This tells us that even among the testosterone replete whose T shirts ride up over their bellies is the desire for a more poetic approach to all things neuter.

Some others will protest that adding gender to objects would be a politically incorrect misstep. So what? Colorful is superior to correct, any day.

Let's make "the" masculine, and invent a feminine article. My first find would be "tha", but this won't work because its pronunciation is too close to its masculine counterpart. How about "ta"? It looks like "la" so it already has some familiarity, and it can be pronounced as either "tuh" or "tah", just like "the" is spoken in various ways.

Ok, so we've got the and ta. Now boys and girls, let's use them in a sentence. "The guy in the red truck went on a date with ta hairdresser". Hmm. Problems already? Ta hairdresser may be a guy. Duh, he's still proudly Ta Hairdresser, especially at the moment he steps down from that red truck and shakes his shiny shag as he enters Ta Starlight Cafe on The Hairy Arm of The Truck Guy. See what fun we can have here?

I propose a modification of the French assignments. In English, let's let the speaker decide the gender of whatever noun he or she calls forth. Why should ta cake knife always be feminine and the switchblade always be masculine?

These thoughts came to mind yesterday while in the shower. With disposable razor in hand, I was considering the fact that one's first day usage of a disposable razor is never as good as the second day. On day one, the razor can cut you. On day two and three, you get the smoothest and safest shave. After about a week, you've got to toss it or suffer the irritations of a dull blade. I thought that this must be what sex is like for a virgin. The first time's marked by some pain and indelicacy. Smooth sailing doesn't really happen until the follow-ups. Why can't someone invent a disposable razor that is pleasant even on the first usage? Did a woman or a man invent the disposable razor and decide just how sharp those little twin blades ought to be? Since its performance tracks a woman's sexual initiations, should it be Ta Disposable, or, since it's my face that suffers the consequences, should we keep it as The Shaver, and let those sleeping dogs lie dreaming of their first time? Ta choice is yours.

What if I lost

it? My looks.

Isadora Alman once offered to introduce me to a friend of hers who had been a model for Tom of Finland. She cautioned me that he had, in recent years, finally lost his looks. My first reaction was to protest that I would be the judge of that. Afterall, when a man starts out at such a high plateau, even a drastic fall should still land him among the lesser gods (think the aged Don Ameche in Cocoon. Still eminently doable). My second reaction was to wonder if someone would someday say that about me. Some young research assistant or art student:

"I'm going uptown to West 68th on the Park to visit somebody I met a few months ago."
"Oh? Some hot guy?"
"No. Not really. But they say he used to be hot. He used to rule at El Mirage and The House of Regrets. Maybe you'd recognize him."
"Sorry. I don't do Old".
"Not true. I've seen you in more than one back room after your fifth cosmo. On your knees, clawing your way through their aluminum walkers, trying to get at their pleated twills."

When the young man arrives, will I answer the door in a kaftan? Or jeans, cut for a season on the verge of ressurection as retro? Will I eye him with the sleazy hunger of Maurice Chevalier, humming "Thank heaven for little girls" in straw hat and cane?

A few years ago, a frustrated Deanna Durbin released a recent photo of herself to confound the widespread rumor that she was a recluse in the south of France, having become a grotesque, weighing over 400 pounds. The part about France was true, but in the photo she was only rather plump and still pretty enough to advertize something (like Coronet toilet tissue?).

To pass through a crowd undesired by strangers. To sway in a packed subway without anyone tracing the sinews of your arm holding the bar near their face. To step among the machinery at the gym without being the fantasy of at least a few of the married men and women who mentally undress you as you pass by their treadmill. To go out some night and to come home scoreless and relegated and marked-down. What would that be like?

Many years ago, on Valentine's Day at Blue's in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas, C and I won "Cute Couple". There was another couple in the room. Rumor was that they had been together for thirty years. Their comportment was impeccable. Their clothing classic and effortless. They left at a reasonable hour. Everyone wanted a chance to speak with them. I dissected the elements of their features, trying to imagine what they had looked like before they were old. This was foolish on my part. Their current composites were highly attractive. They were still hot. I wondered then if we would ever get there.

We seem to be correctly en route, and far away from that dreaded moment. But when it comes, will I know it? Will friends gently tell me so? Or, will I simply become invisible in public, unseen by strangers who will invest their desire elsewhere? That's finally how you realize you've lost it, right?

I do not like

work. I have no admiration for those described as "hardworking". I do not see work as valuable, in and of itself. Don't want it scribbled even in rain-pervious chalk upon my gravestone. The most I can say about work is just what Queen Elizabeth, when pressed by her people, finally said about Diana. "She was a remarkable woman". I, in front of the TV, hooted with appreciation of her adroit use of English. Diana, she had said, was a woman able-to-be-remarked-about. Nothing more. The queen didn't really give an inch to her subjects. That's about all I can say of work. It worth talking about. The fact that the world is full of folks subscribing to striving is remarkable.

Gotta get stuff done? Well don't forget the old acid test: if you knew you had one day left to live...Some would reach for the vacuum cleaner, others for unpaid bills. First I'd grab C. before he could go off to work. Then, armed with chocolate and coffee, we'd watch the sunrise over the distant hills of Manchester and watch the miniature skyline of Hartford (workplace-to-be-avoided)begin to catch fire. We'd look through our entire photo collection and I'd open the storage boxes that hold all our old T shirts. Touch each one of them just once more. I'd rummage through the box labeled "Ephemera" into which were tossed all the bits of paper that used to be on the fridge, labels from significant bottles of wine, our subway passes from Paris, a verdigrised shower drain salvaged from an old YMCA, a shriveled leather racquetball glove. In the evening, while C. would make his (some would call it remarkable) wonderful pasta and peppers, I'd paint a final picture without plan or direction. It's fascinating to me that I have no idea what this would look like. I suspect that it would contain that shade of periwinkle that is my own natural color. The color of a pack of those French cigarettes, Galois (sp?).

We'd open a bottle of Shiraz Mourvedre, and then I'd spend the rest of the night doing what I do best: haggling, bargaining and ultimately winning from the clock more time, more days, more wine.

That's the best thing about being a person who plays more than works: I don't have any sense that this will ever end. Workers, on the other hand, always have a sense of the goal and the accomplishment. Work is always terminal, but never over. I've never heard a worker say "That floor could not be cleaner. There is no speck of dirt on it." The most they will say as they hang up the mop is "You could eat off that floor". Well so what? I've put my mouth on some things a lot more suspect in this world of dirt than most of the floors we transgress and I'm no worse for it.

You will excuse me. I've got to get cleaned up and dressed because I am now extremely late for work.

There is no one alive today

who is anything like Eve Arden. What happened to that type of actress? To that type of role? Has that type of person become extinct?

For those of you who do not remember her, Eve Arden played the reluctant friend/co-worker/participant in the life of the lead actress in a zillion movies. Everything she said was a stand-alone zinger expressing chagrined acceptance about the fact that life's tough, but, hey, someone's got to do the cooking, so hand me that apron and run for cover. If you played an ingenue who lands a job in a fashion house in Paris, she'd play the hard working ex-patriot who's been abroad for fifteen years, seen 'em come and go, has managed to survive and can tell you why. If she was in the chorus, and you were in tears because you had just broken up with the producer, she'd be rubbing her tired feet in the dressing room, but able to deliver a bromide and walk you home. Before you got to your door, she'd have completed ten perfect statements beginning with words like "That's the problem with men...", or, "Honey, haven't you figured out that all guys...", or, "Well if you ever find a man who...". If you concoct a plot-centric scheme involving lies and jewelry and an out-of-town ruse, she'd shake her head, tell you it will never work, but faithfully execute her part of the deception just because she's your pal. She never seemed to be accompanied by a boyfriend or a husband. Never admitted to wanting one, except once-per-movie when she'd allow you a brief glimpse into her lonely soul before slipping back into her hard shell.

Because she played the same character in each movie and because her lines were invariably of the same caliber and cadence, I am convinced that she had an agent who must have said "Miss Arden will appear in your picture under one condition: she will furnish her own lines."

I'm having trouble picturing her dead, although I assume she is indeed that. Her eyes not fixing you with a mock-glare, the corner of her mouth not turning down with a cynical aside, her big shoulders not nudging you with "buck-up" support. In her casket, she is probably informing her cemetery neighbors "Well there's not much of a view but I've always liked putting my feet up at the end of a hard day".

She made her films in a time when nudity and sex were not on the menu, but had she been called upon, I'm sure she would have delivered the goods. Imagine her taking off her bra in front of Jesse White as the Maytag repairman. "OK buddy, the store's open. Step right up and make your selection. The shelves are pretty much stocked with two of almost everything you're looking for, except my heart, and remember, if you break it, it's yours."

Where'd you go, Eve? Why no daughter, no passing of your torch?

I can't even begin to imagine the face of

God. For that matter, I can't even begin to imagine the dimensions and boundaries and fabric of the next life. If it lacks both time and space, I have no ingredients and hence no recipe for it.

This irritating situation came up last week while Hurricane Frances battered our windows and screamed about the seventeenth floor of our tower on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Knowing that my corrugated metal storm shutters had sealed off my view, my neighbors invited me next door for dinner and to witness the storm through their newly installed high-impact-glass-category-five-proof windows. We watched the waves literally deliver the beach up onto Route A1A and began to talk about our lapsed practice of Roman Catholicism. We watched the blue flashes from arcing power stations to the north, somewhere near Oakland Park Blvd, while performing the ritual trashing of absurd 20th century church leadership. We saw the entire city north of our perch on East Sunrise Blvd slip into darkness as power failed, while we recalled our childhood exposure to Limbo.

A nun in the 1950's explained to her class that the unbaptized (mostly infants whose brevity on earth did not allow for the spilling of holy water across their brows, and folks trapped in the outback of Australia) who, through no fault of their own, had missed the golden opportunity to join the family of God, should expect to end up in Limbo rather than in Heaven. The words Limbo and Heaven were delicious and as attractive and unknowable as were the daily televised Mouseketeers whom I was sadly certain I would never meet and never join. Each day, in order to get to this nun's classroom, I took a bus labeled Blue Hills. I never rode that bus to the end, and I assumed that Blue Hills was the last stop before Limbo which neatly preceded Heaven.

Supposedly, in Limbo, one enjoys all the pleasures of Heaven except for the joy of seeing the face of God. He simply doesn't go there. The nun went on to assure us that the infants and Australians don't really miss his company because they are afterall, immersed in every other conceivable and inconceivable pleasure.

As soon as she said this, I began to long for Limbo and to resent my parents for having baptized me before I could think for myself and fend off the holy water. I began to imagine living in Heaven. I'm in my perfect home. My quarreling parents do not exist. My younger brother does not exist. I am eating great stuff, and the Mouseketeers are with me. We are singing when the doorbell announces a visit from God. Annette quickly cleans the kitchen table while I run to make the bed. We welcome God into the house and have a cordial visit. Things are just fine. Would you like some coffee? God, it's wonderful to see your face. Come again soon.

I imagine Limbo right down to the same doorbell, but without the visit from God. What could possibly be better? If I had been ten years older, I would have framed this in terms of "no need to hide the magazines or flush the drugs". That evening, at the dinner table, I glared at my parents and protested my permanent and relentless baptism. They looked at me as if I were not their spawn, but trapped as they were in an unhappy marriage with responsibilities that they wished would disappear, their eyes betrayed a longing for the Limbo I described to them.

The next day, as I boarded the bus to school, I decided that since Limbo was off limits, I would opt for Blue Hills rather than Heaven. This plan has led me through a wonderful life of serious sin in which I swear I've seen the face of God many times. He smiles at me before he slips out the back door in the early hours and returns to his obligations. He's OK with my choices. He's relying on me for his inconceivable and conceivable pleasures.

I woke up too early

and I knew that I would not be able to reconvene the troops of sleep for the two hours before the alarm. I lay still, with eyes closed, invoking any deity who might be perched over the bed and knew the way back to sleep. Instead, these thoughts were among the two hour parade that passed through my head:

Is it really such a good thing that despite my restless thrashing, this mattress does not transmit any ripples of movement to C's side of the bed? Maybe humans have evolved to need to feel their partner's sleep movements. Maybe this high tech-induced deprivation is the cause of much urban irritability.

I'm in a hospital room seated in a visitor chair between two beds. The friend I am visiting has been wheeled away for tests. In the other bed is a woman who looks like Laura Dern. Her husband arrives. He looks like Patrick Swayze. They have murmured conversation and then ask me if I would be offended if they had sex. I say no and remain in my rather front row seat. He draws the cubicle curtain around her bed and includes my chair within the private space. He climbs up onto the bed and they begin to have somewhat conventional sex. They seem anxious. He looks over at me and says "Please, please join us". We're off to the races.

Which dining room chairs should we use in New York? If it's the turquoise vinyl mid-century modern set, the wooden parts need to be stained black. No. Wait. Make that bleached white. No. Maybe stained honey. like in the fifties. Well there are three of them. Let's do one in each color. Nevermind. There's only three of them, and the table really needs four. How about the Thonet chairs? There's four of them. They need to be taken apart, sanded and urethaned to death. How about the iron and oak theater seats from Provincetown? They need a lot of work, but I love the way they rock slightly when you sit in them, and I've got twelve of them. Mostly in storage. C hates those chairs. I'll have to buy cushions to appease him, but really they don't need it.

Are maggots just the larval form of a critter that then makes some kind of subterranean cocoon and emerges prettier, or is a maggot always a maggot from birth to death? How is it that maggots appear wherever there is carnage? Were they just passing by, and lucky to stumble upon some corpse, or are they always nearby, lurking and waiting for that sniff of decay?