Invert(e)

The Way We Eat

I watch the way men eat. I mean, some men are simply disgusting: they chew loudly, swaying their thick lips to and fro and sideways, barely holding the juices in their hooves, their pupils dilated, their teeth slowly sinking into blue, rare flesh with no remorse — these men are hot!

Think about it. Men fuck they way they eat. No, I didn't read this in any research journal; my partner and I thought of it over the kitchen table, eating. I grew up around simmering cazuelas, oregano, the sting of cumin, the fragrance of cilantro and dollops of gossip, a world before that crop of TV physicians pronounced anything edible a drug or a psychological crutch, before pious, vegan people told me not to eat what I wasn’t ready to kill (I was ready to shoot one of them, but I probably wouldn’t eat their sorry gristle because I like my asses meaty). It was a world layered thick with the estrogen butter of women now imitated by the Nigellas, Marthas, and Rachel Rays in the current harem of foodies.

 

Lifted: The Geographical Healing

Ha! Bad news sends me on an upward spiral of words, good news sometimes leave me numb. Obama has lifted the HIV ban to HIV+ persons entering the US. Five months after my ‘accident’ ordeal at the Vancouver airport, it is now gone – however, who knows what bureaucratic hoops I will have to jump through to clear my name. My emotional reaction: numb. And the words of Dixie Chicks twirling in my head: “Forgive, sounds good; Forget, I’m not sure I could. They say time heals everything…but I’m still waiting”. I am still waiting for that cloud to be lifted from my shoulders, some wait for years.

Eggs & Sage & the Gay Tax

 

I think in Toronto, many breakfast diners give you three eggs routinely when you order anything with them on it. It is not the same in the west coast, where they only give you two, perhaps it is part of that obsession to be thin and young so much more pronounced there.

I take my Sunday brunch very seriously; this is why I try to go to Daybreak at the corner of Carlton and Church every Sunday. Yes, right kitty corner from the famous Maple Leaf Gardens. I can’t claim to have cut a great swatch of the entire city of Toronto yet, or in my many previous sojourns here over the years, but Daybreak is for me a hopping happening place, mostly because they are unabashedly friendly. And friendly is what one province boy like me, new immigrant (again??) needs and craves. It is the odd places, chockfull with mixed people where ‘community’ happens to me, even ‘gay community’ that elusive disappearing cluster with little glue that binds other than semen. It doesn’t take a lot to be friendly to strangers, especially when one is paying but the 'gay tax' seems to be more and more common and makes the bathhouse attendants, the bartenders, bouncers, and the patrons slightly sourpussed, even the prostitutes (!!)

 

This I find the norm here in TO and in many other places where gay men seem more barbed around each other than around 'others'  - is that homophobia hangover or what? I guess we, gay men, are invested in appering in very specific ways: young, decent, affluent and other illusions that seem nothing but layers of fear, loneliness and stigma – not to mention the mere fact we are raised as males, and we know how we machos are like…  Gay men seem to be having to prove ourselves to each other constantly, especially in ‘gay establishments’. We bring the 'gay tax' on.

 

Hence, it feels good to go to a place one doesn’t have to either contribut to, or pay the 'gay tax' and where one’s expectations are likely to be met. I mean, this is not a gay space where I expect Zac Efron to come in and shake my foundations, fall in love with me  (and ditto) and move quikcly on to the next star struck candidate, all I want is some good eggs, how difficult can that be?

 

Short order.

 

Daybreak delivers each time in the hands of a handful of hard working helpers, one of them one of the friendliest lesbians in the hood, I have said hello to her in passing on the street, just the same, and one mid thirties hottie middle eastern man babe that I have also seen at the gym and he said 'hello!'  I almost dropped my 25 pounds puny weights to crash my skull.

 

He is hot and he knows it and he is friendly – now that is a concept! – and he brings you food.

I pass on the feeble bland white Jonas Brothers or latest one hit wonders from Twilight, give me a working class dude with good eggs in his hands. In the weeks to come i will find out his name, I am a research, damn it, I am trained and qualified to do this.

 

Seeing misery makes me write

 

 

 

 

(excerpt)

The bodies in the ER

death hath warmed over

uneven parcels in ashen wraps

smuggled from their lives

disposed in shelves by triage

ready for immodest auscultation

naked brood hanging

amidst a humid jungle of catheters

pendant nests expelling shrieks

of throbbing sleep deprivation

ambling the corners

which Dickens would have recognized 

Living in Toronto - October 2009

Two months into this experiment, plus some technical difficulties, the anxiety of being connected, of living in an 8th floor above the ground for the first time in my life, dealing with some bouts of celulitis brought courtesy of a lymphatic system damaged by chemo and radiation in the 1990s, i site here in the bright sun of downtown to write a few words. Johnnie is in hate kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner for six of su, all dear friends, the world seems all right and yet, so much has changed and the thing with change is that it is irreversible, scary uh?

Just a few impressions accumulated in my past two months of living in Toronto, point form, yup, i am getting in sync with the east, shedding the fa-nous laid back west coast rhythm Of course, the point is that they are seen through a queer lens mainly, important detail.

Cue Mary Tyler Moore's shows song "you are going to make it on your own" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCL3B5LgUCo

Goin' Up the Country

I wish I'd been there.

Last weekend was the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, NY. I celebrated by downloading and listening to the brand-new 6 CD repackaging of the event, "40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm." When Woodstock took place, I was a scrawny 13-year-old (I tell a lie - I was never scrawny), but I remember being transfixed by the footage I saw on TV. I begged my folks to let me go, but they just laughed at me. If I'd have been two years older, I'd have run away from home to be there.

Even at 13, I had a sense that this was to be a monumental event; one that would stay with my generation for the rest of its life. And 40 years later, it's still being remembered, repackaged and resold to us in whatever new format the technology has to offer. It's the subject of movies, numerous books and even anniversary concerts (none of which, incidentally, can hold a candle in the rain to the original).

And why not? 

First of all, there's the music - Santana's fiery "Soul Sacrifice," Janis Joplin's amazing set of earth mama blooze, finger-shredding jams by Mountain and Johnny Winter, deep soul from Sly and the Family Stone, epileptic vocalizing by Joe Cocker and maniac morning music from the killer live band of all time, Jefferson Airplane. 6 CDs? It could have been 30 and there still wouldn't have been enough.

Sweet Home Invasion

Vancouver, July 26, 2009.

In “Saturday”, Ian McEwan described a horrible home invasion at the end of a long snug middle-class day. In my 2008 short story “awkward”, I describe a home invasion of a household on Halloween that overnight brings up the worst of a gay married couple. Amidst the chaos and the pain dished out to us in a satellite platter all around the clock, preparing for an open house send-off to Toronto party is a sweet expectation. I will miss for a while the entertaining that Johnny and I do together, the breaking of the fast of a humdrum and yet so necessary everydayness, I will surely miss the quirky habits of couples who have been together long, the ease of a reclining chair. We will have to work at reinventing the easy chair.

Moving to the grand Toronto, Toronto 'the good', a good move?

Toronto, July 19, 2009

Well, who gives a rat's ass, really, if one mid-life infected homosexual migrates? Who reads this column anyway? I like writing this complaint, and I fantasize that I could write lies, atrocious murders, crazy shit, and my hunch is no one reads it. I think there are hundred of adolescents and aging queers like me belaboring over our blogs and sex web sites profiles to anesthesize the loneliness and anxiety of the times, twittering ourselves to death. And so I write this column, with my heartfelt, not cynical apologies to the poor souls that may read it by chance (or intent, like my dears Gre and Ian).

What a year! It started with my sojourn in the scorching Santiago when I went to place my mother in a residence for folks with Alzheimer’s. "Is she dead yet? Is she dead yet?",  I call my friend and co-custodian of my mother weekly and ask him in jest.  It cannot be that much of a joke if one calls and asks often, right? We often want sick people to simply die and leave us alone and we react oddly when they don’t. I have lost friends this way – from not dying of AIDS. They could not bear the dissapointment and the betrayal. We might be like vltures a feed from death a bit, ugly to htink about it... But, not my mom,  now she is thriving, I got what I wanted. Damn it! I twisted the hand of fate and then the HIV ban was imposed on me on May 21 when going to visit my pal in San Francisco, and now changing cities from Vancouver to Toronto. Completely unplanned, before I got the HIV ban, before we could not go to Amsterdam, we had planned to come to Toronto.

"Fresh meat in 205!"

The Habana Inn in Oklahoma City is, simply put, a sex motel.

You heard me. A sex motel. It's a remodeled Ramada Inn just off I-44 - 164 rooms, two swimming pools, two clubs, a restaurant, a piano bar and a "unique gift shop" that sells condoms and a wide variety of lube. It's the heart of the OKC gay district (about two square blocks), and if you've never visited before, you owe yourself a night or two.

Oh sure, there other gay resorts - some even clothing optional - but I've never experienced anything like the Habana Inn. It's the place for straight and bi-curious men from all over OKC and the surrounding towns to come and get a little something they can't get at home. And do they come. Rooms are cheap, but it costs nothing to drive up, park and tread those well-worn walkways looking into 164 windows of possibilities. If you're ready for action, just leave your curtains open, crack your door and wait. Someone will be along shortly. When you've finished with that course and find yourself hungry again, open the drapes and begin trolling for the next guy.

Two Sides of Pride

I am a misanthrope.

This comes as no big surprise to anyone who knows me well. People, in general, simply piss me off. And large crowds of them piss me off exponentially. So why was I at Denver Pride yesterday, in the midst of a crowd large enough to pass for an emerging nation? Habit, I suppose. I always go to the parade despite my misgivings about assimilation and the increasingly corporate nature of the event.

At times, straight-run businesses and corporations seem to have overrun Pride - especially at the Festival in City Park at the end of the parade route - using our celebration as a tool for gathering that elusive and, in my case, mythical gay dollar. And I won't even go into my rant about the mixed message our GLBT Center sends when they spend big bucks all through the year on substance abuse programs for the queer population yet gladly accept sponsor dollars from Coors and Stoli for the beer and vodka tents.

That would be missing the point.

Cave-made Soundsuits and a Halloween Mummy

Nick Cave is a genius.  I’m talking about the visual artist/sculptor who makes the Soundsuits, not Nick Cave the singer who has plenty of fans even if I’m not among them.  What this Nick Cave does with day-glo colored hair in garishly beautiful combinations sewn into forms that use the human body to transcend the human body, well . . . just looking at them makes me feel like I dropped acid.  What he does with backing, buttons, plastic ties, and bits of yarn makes me shake my head until my mind just gives in to a sense of delight and wonderment. He paints huge round canvases with sequins and beads, and comes up with work that seems as cosmic as a Jackson Pollack to me.

The performance by people wearing his Soundsuits was great fun, if a shade disappointing. The dancing was joyful and cool, but not exactly a revelation. The audience only got to see the softest, most normal-looking (most human) of the bodysuits in action, however. No fifteen foot bear costume made out of old sweaters. No ten foot cages holding sci-fi toys from the Fifties resting on someone’s shoulders. None of the giant hair pieces shaped like tongue depressor. We got the earthier, tribal, funky, easy-to-dance-in outfits, and not the Kozmik, What-Universe-Are-We-In? Soundsuits. Still, I don’t mean to complain. It was sensational. Fabulous.  Eye-opening and mind-blowing. Plus, you could dance to it . . . in it (the craziest club-kid outfit EVER) . . . at least in your mind.

BANNED FROM YOU

It was after 23 years of coming and going that one officer decided to check on me, to single me out as a dangerous person that should not come into one country, that I should be hanged to a line in a policy, to hang to dry. Accidents, even bureaucratic ones, are like this, unsentimental, they happen upon you and leave you panting, bleeding with a body rush. I had not time to be angry or too sad during the sworn affidavit, saying ‘yes’ to anything put before be – so this is how you get innocents to islands and remand centres on charges as thin as the air in that immigration office? I see how it works now, I hope I made your day; you certainly made mine so senselessly. There is le petite drama and emotion in the self-righteous application of the law, any law you invent to keep your false purity, the bloodlines, the protection of the state, and this is what makes it dehumanizing, its vacuity.

Today, I am banned from your country, worse that persona non grata, worse than a whore outcast, a set of fingertips pointing into the space of machines without a motive, an administrative clearance by which you deny me entry to a place where my writing exists, where I have had lovers die, and friendships born – how fucking Christian it feels, that crucified without rhyme or reason I can say that you do not know what you are doing, that one of your officers was irked by my queerness, the tattoos sticking out of my white collar, the things that I work on, the names that I have, the tropical femininity maybe that escapes like marimbas, castanets and chancletas from behind the macho 46 years old exterior that I keep. Asian stocky man, speaking slowly, barely mutters the question “are you HIV positive?”... 

RIP Virginia Prince (1912 - 2009)

Dr. Richard Docter announced at dinner last night, here at the Liberty Conference, that Virginia Prince had died at the age of 96. She was in good health and mentally acute until about a month ago when her health began a steep decline. Docter was her biographer as a well as a friend. I met the grand dame here, in the Philly Airport Hilton hotel, about five years ago, and I am a little surprised by how moved I have been to hear of her passing. She was an imperfect person, as we all are, but rocked where it counted: having the cojones to be an out-transvestite in the 1950s. Her bravery is something we'd be fools, as a community, not to acknowledge. Imperfect, problematic, heroic. You often don't get one without the others. We have lost an important pioneer.

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

Thursday night, after a long, hard, profitable shift at the Diner, I indulged in the tiniest amount of herb ever, then, with this bowl of borrowed energy, made it to the Eagle. I was just in time for Blowie, a David Bowie cover band. They didn’t look like much as they were setting up. A dirty blond guy in white hippie bell-bottoms did not cut a convincing Mick Ronson figure. But starting off with a half-pub-rock, half-punk version of ‘Queen Bitch’ from Hunky Dory: that was brilliant. The lead singer came out, in a homemade version of that famous spandex pantsuit, the Ziggy number with only one leg and one arm. You’ve seen it. They did ‘Black Country Rock’ and ‘All the Madmen’ from The Man Who Sold the World. They were avoiding the hits, until “Hang on to Yourself,” “Moonage Daydream,” and “Ziggy Stardust.” Then, Mr. Blowie left the stage, the band went into a slow feedback ‘n’ drudge mode which eventually gelled into ‘Station to Station.’ Our Thin White Duke was singing on the bar, now in a black jumpsuit, with a long flap on either side, almost wings. It was Kraftwerk via Bowie, extra side of fairy dust, with the song grunged up and bleeding.

If ya gotta be a tribute band, this is how to do it.

He forced the audience to participate too. Stuck the mic in our faces, stuck his butt out every chance he got, bumped and grinded, and pushed us around until a mosh pit was formed . . . not an easy thing to do, at the Eagle, in 2009. Oh, and a cutie-pie at the door took a liking to me—God knows why—and joined me up front for a bit of grab-ass flirting and stuff.  Huge fun, wide grins all around.

As I went to unlock my bike outside, two young black guys walked by . . . one of whom looked like a collegiate track and field star, he was such a stud-muffin. My eyes couldn’t help but admire him, and—one miracle following another—he returned my attentions. The other young man said, “You guys can use my car.” They coaxed me in (not that hard to do) and next thing you know, this guy and I are taking turns giving each other head. When I came on my belly, both of them dipped their fingers in and ate it all up. Jesus.