Just when I'd given all sense of hope and was more inclined to sit on a bench and throw empty beer bottles at lovebirds within my circle of anger and frustration, I came across this cute little picture on the Adam & Andy page ... and I felt my hopes soar high once again. A huge "Aww...." fell from my lips. My emotion level: verklempt.
I'll never understand why some people continually insist on putting their foot in their mouth whenever they utter inanities. I'm starting to believe there has to be some proclivity for a foot-fetish happening here, because I see no reason to verify if in fact your ten little tootsies taste like Cheetos. And no, I most certainly haven't tried . . . but seriously, pee-ewe.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, much like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, are anomalies of nature who have turned the foot-in-mouth syndrome into an art form. Not content to do it once, they've repeated the act until the entire leg is so far down their throats one has to wonder if they might not be circus performers attempting the ultimate act of contortion.
But I won't go into the latter two. Aside from Palin's snide comment following President Barrack Obama's appearance in the estrogen-overload that is The View, I'll have to say, they've pretty much shut the fuck up for once.
No, let's focus on Lizzie Hassles (Glenn) Beck (and turns him blind, perhaps the only smart thing she's done). She's been lucky to be given a slot on the telly to speak up her usual barrage of blonde stupidities, and I guess Bah-bwa thinks it brings 'de youngah wimmins' in and guarantees views. I'd say I preferred Rosie—at least she was and is polemic, but sharp. However, beggars can't be choosers. Times are tough. The economy continues to stink. And La Walters dominates the show and says who stays, who goes.
Recently the ladies went into the topic of older lesbians. Whoopi Goldberg commented that women are coming out at a later age and are in meaningful relationships with women. Hasselbeck, dumb-dumb that she is, burped out that, and I quote, "I'll tell you what's happening. Older men are going for younger women and leaving the women with no one."
Really, smart-ass? And by that, you speak for yourself in the near future? I mean, unless you have sparks coming out of your hoo-haa, I really can't see you good for anyone else.
Informing yourself before you emit a comment is a priceless thing. No, really. Knowledge is all over the place. All you have to do is pursue it, and if you have a gab for playing with words, then you might sound smart and not rile up your own sex. You see, and it's been said over and over again, sexuality isn't a choice. Sure, women (and men) have been groomed into behaving a certain way—think of being told that even if she shoe was too tight, you had no other alternative but to use it. Until one day, when you stood up for yourself and took your life back. It's called stepping up to the system and reclaiming yourself. Thank you, Joy Behar, and all the women who have responded against this clueless statement.
They say ignorance is bliss. In this case, it's just pathetic.
Growing up an American citizen in Dominican Republic, a land that has to this day never known a single day's worth of uninterrupted energy, wasn't easy. Of course, don't tell that to the affluent minority that by means of cutely paying the "authorities" kept their service (and lifestyle) intact, because they might not concur. Of course, they failed to understand that while you were trying to sleep in a house that seemed to be going up in embers they enjoyed central cooling. What heat? Darling, you must be joking. Don't worry, in a mere sixteen hours you'll have your cheap fan back on.
Here in New York summers can be brutal. This one was no exception and it delivered in droves. And yes, the dreaded brown-outs made their ugly appearance as people took to their stoops and sat there waiting for the lights to come back on. Many complained, some saw their tempers threatening to go over, and bad fashion was all over the place in the form of undershirts and boxer shorts along with calypsos.
My Dominican neighbor saw me the night we had the brown-out and came over my stoop to shoot the breeze for a while. There we were, two people with ties to the island, observing our block becoming an anthill that has been stepped on. Kids were wailing. Another guy was in some kind of heated conversation over the phone. Even Lucky, Grace's usually button-cute poodle, bared its teeth at us. This was turning into a bad Stephen King morality play where a street or small town goes insane. And no hot men in sight. This was unacceptable.
"Compatriota, if they'd even know what we've been through . . ." he said to me in a conspiratorial voice as if we were the only two sane men on the block.
"It's only been fifteen minutes," I replied.
"We used to get fifteen hours! Trust me, these people have no idea what it's like to grow up without energy. Holy crap, they'd kill each other!"
"Yup." Meanwhile, a car alarm sounded, and the distant sounds of the fire engines tore through Palisades Avenue towards some fiery destination. It was only 9:00.
And the heat bore on.
Then, as if someone had heard our humorous yet cautious banter, the lights came back on. In scrambled our neighbors and I bade my Dominican friend good night.
In an industry that defines people into black and white roles gay and bisexual actors and actresses still lurk in the dark. Few come out, and those that have been pinpointed as even remotely having "gay tendencies" have gone to extreme measures to block the elephant in the room by placing a hand over his eye and affirming his alleged 'normalcy.'
Tom Hardy, a (very masculine) actor appearing in the Christopher Nolan film Inception, has expressed not just that there is a part of him that needs to explore gay relations, but that while he looks as masculine as they come, it's all due to a need to overcompensate: he's actually, internally, more closely linked to the feminine.
Such a statement could have ruined an actor's career years ago. Imagine Rock Hudson admitting to this? I can't.
Suddenly, I'm in total awe for this guy. It takes balls to be that out in the open (although he is engaged to actress Charlotte Riley. While I don't expect that a flurry of fellow male actors both British and American will all of sudden explode with gay confessions, I admire that at least someone can say it as it is and be done with it.
Every four years the entire Northeast of the US gets slammed by a merciless bout of heat that extends itself from the very end of June to the third week of July or even halfway into August. The usual mayhem ensues, from home fires to brownouts to people acting as if they were extras in a zombie movie and wanted to rip each others' eyeballs out and keep them as a trophy. One wonders if the temperature puppeteers up in the sky were trying to replicate the disaster of the Summer of '77 when New York was under siege by sheer chaos courtesy from Con Edison and its failing grid system. Because that was how this particular summer felt: an incursion into chaos in the midst of urban complacency.
On a very hot and humid night before I was to attend Goldfrapp at the Hammerstein I had a completely surreal encounter with shattered glass. I was walking home, deep in chill music courtesy from my Bose ear-buds. As hot as the air was, I loved the smells and visuals of the night my vicinity offers. Over the sounds of (the electronica group) Air I heard myself think "Wow . . . Jersey City really is this safe that I can walk down my street in the middle of the night and not worry a thing." I wasn't done with my private little train of thought that something urged me to take—no, yank—my ear-buds off, NOW. No sooner than I did I saw this crazy man—a mass of straggly brown hair, red T-shirt, dirty jeans, pop-out eyes and an unforgiving stank—lurch towards me, mumbling something unintelligible. I only reacted by replying (as I continued walking, now a bit faster), "Leave me alone."
He didn't seem to take it lightly as I heard him scream, "No, you listen to me! Listen to me!" I countered with, "Listen, I have no money now leave me ALONE!" He continued to babble on, keeping in step with me, his tweaked-out shuffle opposing my military gait that has a lot of the Type-A personality I inherited from New York By now I was beginning to lose it internally, after all, who could tell me he might not have a pocket knife with ill-intentions inside his pocket and saw me as an easy target? I didn't want to find out, so I suddenly came to a halt, wheeled around, registered him about to crash into me (a thing that his own manic state didn't allow to happen as he jerked to a standstill), raised my right arm outward, my palm facing him, and I yelled:
"I SAID STOP!"
He began to shake. I suspect he must have been heavy on meth and needed money for more, but I didn't want to find out. I glared at him as if I were about to strike myself for a solid minute, and saw him back off, one step back. Me? I kept my guard. When I saw he wouldn't resume his harassment I turned around, saw my house only one building away, and marched towards it. Internally, I was shaking, but I showed none of it. However it did leak through when I couldn't aim my key through the keyhole and when I forgot how to turn the knob
(it's stuck it's FUCKING stuck)
but I was home, and that was all that mattered. I looked back. He was nowhere in sight.
The door to the townhome across my house opened. For a moment I thought he'd made it to the neighbors' but it was just Grace, my elderly Italian neighbor, about to go for her midnight walk with Lucky, her poodle. She looked at me and smiled openly. I'll never forget her words:
It's a tragedy when a person is forced to resign from a position due to the fact that he is being himself. "Thank you for serving our country, please see yourself out the door, and never come back unless you decide to say you like pussy."
I don't know Lt. Dan Choi. I wasn't even aware of his existence until recently when he appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show. However, even when I don't have the honor of being in his presence I deem him a national hero. It's not an easy task, being yourself in a hyper-masculine milieu that adheres to antiquated modes of conduct and forces people to remain silent while serving and on more than one occasion deny their very selves or face an "honorable discharge". Lt. Choi, in an admirable display of identity and courage, decided to take the hard road, and while he has had to face the inevitable he raises the bar on being above all, truthful. Better to be living within the truth than enshrouding yourself in denial and a complacent "Ozzie and Harriet" pretense.
It's always darkest right before clear and brilliant sunshine, so the saying loosely goes. My Monday was one of those days. You could have mistaken me for the Hunchback of Notre Dame for all my slumping over, shuffling my heavy feet on pavement, looking forlorn and dejected like that queen-sized Sealy Posturepedic my Dominican neighbors threw out, all a mass of used and abused as if it were the oft-trafficked clitoris of a workaholic prostitute. Yes, that was lil' ole' moi. I cursed the humidity that made breathing an exercise in blowing your brains out as you placed a sheet of plastic over your nostrils and pulled in. I hated the blistering heat over my clean, clean clothes and saw myself turning into Pig-Pen as dirt and gnats and things collected on me. [What is this? Is Charles Schultz of Peanuts fame my new head resident? Jesus save me. Oh. Right. He can't. I'm gay.]
And so, I continued to move on at work, sluggish, barely here on Planet Earth, seeing the clock race into the future as fast as a glacier on quaaludes. A cup of hot coffee courtesy of the nearest Starbucks clung to my side, and I kept thinking of a certain mouse (i. e. homophobic coworker) who nibbled my cheese and wondered would I be able to bump into him again? After all, I had 20 ounces of sheer, scalding hot. With his name and face all over it, frantic for an up close and personal, quick, deep, and painful. Where was he? Where was he?
Speaking of glaciers, it wasn't a he that appeared, but a she, a very political but completely clueless she. Well, not in the flesh or she'd be en route to the hospital shrieking the alphabet in rapid-fire ululations as my cinammon dolce latte stripped her face, and her dignity, away. On the monitor as I opened Dictionary.com. Her lovely, vapid face. And her Audrey Hepburn do, circa Breakfast at Tiffany's. La Palin.
Suddenly, the skies parted. My soul was lifted. I felt my life suddenly shaping into meaning, the last piece fully integrated into the whole, and that piece was made of latex and pink and inside my hole. Yes, yes, yes! I was in hog heaven!
Of course, now the mystery remained: who to turn to and execute a killer pitch? I had all this coffee, ready to throw. Someone suggested I just man up and drink it. However, if I did, who'd to put me to sleep to-night? Certainly not George fucking Clooney and his delectable, chewable chin. I was happy, but in a dilemma.
I had to regroup; this was all too tragicomic.
Even so, I peeked into the monitor that faced me and savored that delicious, um, word.
Re…fu…di…ate.
Note: the title is a play on the Marguerite Duras novella "Destroy, She Said."
A quiet stroll on the High-Line in the middle of this blistering heat, thinking of nothing but observing everything, a thing I always do. I suddenly zoom in the space occupied between two young mommies pushing strollers with a romantic zeal I've only seen on certain bag-ladies (and an occasional bag-man) as they mutter run-on sentences to themselves and shuffle from one end of Penn Station to the other. It was quite interesting, the indistinct voices becoming more defined as I found myself drawing ever closer to them for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps it was that they were slender, blond, elegant, and almost unreal—akin to Stepford Wives, atrocious maxi skirts and giant period hair included as a bonus. I don't know. I'm always drawn to beauty in one shape or other, and camera in hand I was getting prepared to take a random shot when I saw one of them—I'll call her Patty—stop, a look of utter astonishment drawing itself in her facial features. She seemed rapt, about to take flight. One hand went to her delicate, tiny left breast, its nipple forming a miniature Ayers Rock underneath her sleeveless blouse, and I heard her cry to her friend whom I'll call Violet:
"Oh… look at Petey! Is there anything better than hearing your son say Mah-mah?"
Now, I have an female alter-ego and her name is Lucy. She's such a darling, that girl. Lucy has a way of popping out in the most inappropriate of places and can create situations that are downright embarrassing. She's such a darling, that girl. On hearing Patty utter her emotional, indubitably hormonal sentence, she leaped out of my body like a cheetah about to seize its prey, landed squarely in front of the two ladies, and yelled, "Honey! You are missing out! There is nothing better than sashaying your ass out of Neiman with your arms fulla giant shopping bags while you look do-o-o-w-wn on the tourists from Bumfuck who can only gawk and admire you for being the New York Lady that you are! That or getting action on the front door and the back. By two scorching hot messes. Toodles, bitches!"
And thus, a purpose has met its mark, and the day is complete.
I recant everything I said on my March posting condemning Lady Gaga’s video Telephone. At the time the song seemed an exercise in sheer shrillness and blatant Madonna-esque pastiche, abetted by an intense misandry that permeated every shot within its 9-minute run. After actually purchasing Gaga’s The Fame Monster complete I re-visited the song, and found a club-stomper not at a par with the overpowering, severe, German-techno based Bad Romance, but drenched with a razor-sharp sense of humor and exasperation closer to late 1970s Disco. You remember, right? Songs that clamored freedom over relationships, the need to dance the night and the pain away. What an era. Thankfully, it never went away and this is the result: Telephone is now blasting my tympanums into oblivion, and that video is a killer. Thank you, Tarantino.
Whenever I see these backstage videos I can only wish I were a fly on the wall. I'd be observing and enjoying the overwhelming hothouse scent of male muscularity, photographing every second with the thousands and thousand of lenses in my fly's eyes, registering every sensual movement with almost scrutinizing accuracy. This is the sole reason I train, what I identify with. This is whom I always was, and always will be. I could care less what any hater might say; words never cause me anything other than an adherence to what I want to achieve, and a honing of what I have achieved thus far. This is a lifestyle, a choice, a preference, a discipline, a love. It is me.
I really have to start buying seats that are considerably closer to the action because this isn't working it.
You can totally make out her features. Oh, absolutely. There's her shimmering silver glam-rock outfit with the gigantic feathery shoulder pads, the black vinyl boots, the wonderful golden curls that have become her trademark image.
Oh, who am I kidding. Of course you can't... even if you zoom in to ridiculous levels she's barely a blur and I look like I'm in the bleachers even when my flesh and brown eyes registered her at a better angle. This is why sometimes technology works against people. The iPhone now offers the zoom-in feature, but at the moment of my concert I didn't have this, so I had to console myself with a slew of pictures that make her look like a pin cushion.
Oh well... there's always Lady Gaga come February, and Margaret Cho come November. I'll be front and center.
It's always darkest right before clear and brilliant sunshine, so the saying loosely goes. My Monday was one of those days. You could have mistaken me for the Hunchback of Notre Dame for all my slumping over, shuffling my heavy feet on pavement, looking forlorn and dejected like that queen-sized Sealy Posturepedic my Dominican neighbors threw out, all a mass of used and abused as if it were the oft-trafficked clitoris of a workaholic prostitute. Yes, that was lil' ole' moi. I cursed the humidity that made breathing an exercise in blowing your brains out as you placed a sheet of plastic over your nostrils and pulled in. I hated the blistering heat over my clean, clean clothes and saw myself turning into Pig-Pen as dirt and gnats and things collected on me. [What is this? Is Charles Schultz of Peanuts fame my new head resident? Jesus save me. Oh. Right. He can't. I'm gay.]
