Monthly Archives: March 2008

Mystery Dance

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Just got back from Manhattan. Just wandered around, stopped by Farfetched saw Lois and Harpy. It’s funny, usually when I go there it’s often Harpy by himself. Today Lois was there and I love Lois but it was like there was no cutting up while Lois was running the show. Lois, I guess plays the more mature role, the schoolmarm. Susan I suppose would be the hip teacher and Harpy plays the role of Karen Valentine, the substitute or rather, the student teacher. It was a nice chat with the two of them, Lois asking about various people in my life, who happen to be going through tough times of their own.

After that I wandered over to Whiskers, the holistic pet store and visited with Kathe, my former next door neighbor in Weehawken, also Chaz’ estranged wife. It was great to see Kathe, it had been a number of months. She was glad to see me as well. But it being a nice Saturday afternoon everybody seemed to be shopping for holistic items, lambs lung and other disgusting items that dogs like. Too hectic to hang out so I said good bye, agreeing to meet for a drink sometime one day when she’s not working.

Before I went into the city I watched Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I saw it when it came out in the theaters and I liked it but didn’t get most of it, one of the first instances where there was so much going on, on the screen that I couldn’t figure out or even remember different parts of it. The first Lord of the Rings movie was the same. So much going on, but seeing it years later on video made me ask where was I when I first saw this in a theater?

Cloverfield was the latest movie, though I think it would be better to watch it on a TV since it was filmed on a digital camera. Watching it on a big screen was a little too much. That bothered Pedro when I told him about the movie after I finally saw it, weeks after he saw it and months after I originally hyped it up. He really wanted my opinion and all I could say was I’d rather wait for the DVD. It would be better to watching it on his giant flat screen TV in Otisville.

Tonight is the infamous Black Party at Roseland in midtown. It’s a 36 hour bacchanal,and for me occasionally tempting. But I always remind myself that it is nothing but club music and I generally dislike club music. That would be hell for me, though when in the act, I’d rather hear something I don’t know. But me and club music? Forget it.

One blog that I read had an article about the Black Party, the blogger had gone a few times already and posts something about it every year. This year while hyping it, he followed that entry with one about HIV infections being up 48%. Now there’s a reason NOT to go.

Potential anonymous sex with a thousand men? Hmmm… and even if you don’t get HIV there are a few other STD’s that you might catch. Not to mention the headache of club music. I don’t know what it is, but I am out of step with most of the human race and definitely out of step with most of gay men. I don’t dress like them, I don’t listen to the same music, I don’t go to the same bars. Just about the only thing I have in common with them is a predilection for play mates of the same sex. And it’s always safe, by the way.

It’s always been like that. From the early 80’s when I was attending meetings for the Gay Activists Alliance of North New Jersey or GAANNJ, even though I tried, I just couldn’t connect with my fellow gay men on a social level. True, I was young and impetuous and they were in their 30’s and 40’s but there was nothing at all that could form a bond. I never really talked to anyone, they didn’t talk to me. I would sit in the back and listen to whatever was going on, close to the exit.

It was there that I first heard of AIDS, in 1982 when it was called GRID, or gay cancer. But no one asked my name and I didn’t ask for theirs. I am usually the invisible man at gay bars, that is when I actually go. I’m often ignored by bartenders. It generally provides me with a reason never to go back to that particular bar again, only I rarely go to bars these days. Maybe once or twice a year.

McSwells was a cool bar, listed in the Gay Yellow Pages back then as a gay/straight bar and it was. Most of the guys there were gay, and there was some cliquishness but overall it was a friendly spot. Never had any hook ups there, by the end of the night we were all more interested in getting party supplies to the after party. I started out going to McSwells for the music, and while it was the main reason, at some point I was spending more time socializing in the front room rather than the back room where the music was.

Still I am a gay man and the LGBT are my people. I will march with them or cheer them on and stand with them should the need or outrage arise. I am also part of the generation of LGBT people that have buried quite a few friends.

And here is my gayest look for Jay Leno
my-gayest-look-002a.jpg
cut n’ paste
http://www.mygayestlook.com/

Words

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I wrote this last night after I posted.

I was just reading a blog that mentioned a young gay entrepreneur in Manchester, England. This young man was able to secure a business grant at the age of 18 to run and maintain a website designed to break down walls and remove labels on race, sexuality for young people. He mentioned that his sexuality caused him major problems, being brought up to think that being gay was wrong and horrible. That struck a chord in me, and a righteous chord at that. I too, like many others, grew up in a house with a loving family. Some people don’t, I know. But included in that loving atmosphere, however dented, was an very strong anti gay vibe.

Queer jokes, gay bashing (verbally) went on. Racial jokes were made as well. I too was brought up by my family and my Catholic schooling taught that being gay was the absolute worst thing a person could be. So imagine finding out on your own, that you are what you were told was disgusting and immoral. Imagine finding that out at 14. No one to talk to about. Run to the encyclopedia, run to the dictionary and reading that you’re abnormal, a deviant. A lot, not all, but a lot of heterosexual people ask, ‘why make it a big deal about being gay?’

Because it will show that things we were told about ourselves when we were growing up was wrong. Sometimes murderously wrong, sometimes suicidally wrong. Education could be the solution to this epidemic of ignorance, but then you have certain sections of this country dead set against any positive portrayals of gay life. Or it goes so far as to not mention gay people at all. In a society that’s ever changing, it’s not changing fast enough. And it’s not just this country, it’s the whole world.

About 15 years ago when I was working at Skyline Studios, there was this young man, Roget Romain who had a deal to do some downtime production work. He worked with some up and coming artists in hip hop. It was a cool studio and a lot of times I would hang out after I was through working. One night I was with Roget and my friend Miriam who was working as an engineer. We were getting jazzy. I was as I am now, open about my sexuality, but not in your face about it. The three of us, hanging out, listing to dub.

Roget wanted to ask me a question about being gay. I was open to it and gave him a green light. First off, the main question, ‘When did I decide to be gay?’ I think it was the first time I was actually asked that, and I had no set answer. Me, being me did say this, ‘When did you decide to be straight?’ He was taken aback. ‘I didn’t decide to be straight. It just happened. It’s how I am.’ I had to ask, ‘What makes you think it wasn’t the same for me?’ I think most questions about gay people, can usually be answered by changing the gender of one of the subjects.

Roget then moved into sexuality. ‘How can a guy take it up the ass? How can a dude suck a cock?’ I asked him ‘Do all the women that he’s been with, do they all like to suck cock? Do they take it through the back door?’ ‘No, some do, some don’t.’ ‘Well there you have it. Not all gay guys like to do this, some do, some don’t.’ It was fun to just hang out with an open minded young man, maybe I planted a seed in his brain. Cracked open his door of perception just a bit I like to think. There is no shame in being gay, lesbian bisexual or transgendered. Some people see it as a frivolous lifestyle choice.

There are many good and great things about being LGBT, but there are some battles that come along with it. Some kids when they come out to their families, they are out on the street. Abandoned by parents who’s child they loved one day unconditionally, now repulsed and shamed by something that was out of anyone’s control. They would prefer to live the life of a lie. In the closet. Get married, have kids, and fuck around on the side.

About 12 years ago I answered an ad in the Village Voice, met an older guy at a bar in the Village. We didn’t click sexually but had a good chat over a few pints. He was married, hadn’t had sex with his wife since 1980, has three kids, all grown more or less. He was gay. For some reason I was filled with righteousness that night, telling him that he’s getting up there in years, living a lie. Do you want to go out the same way? You’re doing more harm than good to yourself by living this way, a shamed existence, shamed by yourself.

We parted ways, and I gave him a kiss as he was about to get on his way to Penn Station. He was surprised and probably the first time he was ever kissed by another man in public, on a street corner. I gave him my number and asked him to keep in touch. He called a few days later. He told his wife, she was filing for divorce. Two of his kids were fine with it, one had a problem. But he was glad he did it.

He felt free.

I’m just so tired that people need to be told this. I know the five of you that read this irregularly are somewhat enlightened but I just wanted to get this off my chest. Preaching to the choir, perhaps. But I guess it has to be told, over and over, one way or another. And while you may be enlightened, the majority of the five of you aren’t LGBT (at least as far as I know) and you wouldn’t really know, you couldn’t walk in our cha cha heels. Like I wouldn’t know how it is to be anything or anyone else, other than knowing how it is to be me.