Riding the subway has a way of screwing up normal boundaries. See, there’s this really sexy guy I usually see on the L train in the mornings — blond crew cut, pale blue eyes little chin strap beard, thin and wiry, hipsterish — who I’ve developed a wee crush on. Nothing serious, just the kind of fascination that can be provoked by an interesting, unavailable straight boy one sees often enough to make an impression. Today, he was standing by the door as I got on, with one of the few available handholds right in front of him. As the train continued further toward Manhattan, he and I kept getting pushed closer together as the train filled up. Even though I kept my head down, reading my Palm Pilot, I was fully aware of his proximity. Especially since it’s warm today, and he was wearing an old t-shirt instead of the usual bulky Carhartt jacket, and his little round bicep dangled in front of my forehead. It was odd, the way we stood there facing each other, standing closer than we would even if we were on a date, me making myself look down, him looking down the car — uncomfortably intimate proximity with a stranger forcing each of us to pretend no one was there at all.
Category: ultragay
When It Rains It Pours
I finally told my depression to go fuck itself and went back out into the world this weekend, and what did I find? New friends, friendly old flings, ex-quasi-boyfriends, former Regians turned fellow Brooklyn homos, new pals with blogs, sexy ex-junkies, cheerleaders, punk rock fags, a former classmate who’s become a popular drag king, flirtations and brief kisses, flirtations that went nowhere, lots of coffee, bad ideas that are even worse in practice, frigid strolls, and the news that one of my closest friends has cancer, and another is probably going to die from the cancer she’s been battling.
No wonder I feel so overwhelmed when late-winter gloom and the mean reds set in, robbing me of all the energy I need to deal with everyday life.
The Paw
I am such a procrastinating bastard. I must go get my laundry so I can start packing so I can get the hell out of this country, but I can’t seem to tear myself away from perusing the cute punk rock boys at the Make Out Club. I am officially on my way to becoming a lech.
Not as bad as this guy who was bothering me while I was out last night, though. Dude just wouldn’t take a fucking hint, or even a polite but firm “no.” After walking past me at one point and not bothering to stare at anything but my crotch, he comes up to me with some corny line, which I gently rebuffed. Then he does it again ten minutes later! And then he walks by me with some other corny line and paws my crotch. so I grab his arm, move it, give him a dirty look and walk away. Then he comes up to me whispering more cornball, canned-porn-movie shit. This is repeated about a half-dozen times over the course of the evening, and I’m getting more and more pissed off all the time. After a while, he tries to apologize and say that he recognized me from Pratt yadda yadda yadda (I think he was in one of the more bullshit required classes that I dropped) and he just wanted me to be cool and relax since I looked so tense. since “no thanks” and “no, I don’t want to chat” and “leave me the fuck alone” didn’t work yet, I wasn’t too shocked that he didn’t quite the get the point of “I’m not tense, I’m just fucking irritated.” What a pain.
Fancy Restaurants and Dank Basements
I also meant to mention a few things spotted during the trip to San Francisco that were actually about New York.
First, I was thumbing through the in-flight rag on the American plane, and came across a gushing profile of Williamsburg, of all places. It’s not bad enough that Bedford Ave. is already clogged with hipsters, or that The Real World may be coming here next year, but now hordes of tourists are being encouraged to cross the river and go slumming. Mark my words, it won’t be long before they open a Marriott there. Sheesh! I’m glad I live off in the boonies, where it’s still more ghetto.
Second, I was looking at this beautiful coffee-table book about the photography of James Bidgood, and I was startled to learn that Bidgood met Bobby Kendall, and quite a few of his other models, at a place called Club 82. Apparently, this was quite the swinging joint in its day, with cabaret shows and go-go boys and all manner of decadence. I even discovered that Blondie played there back in the early ’80s. As fellow connoisseurs of contemporary homo East Village sleaze know, this place is still kicking and is still good for a thrill or two, but it’s a far cry now from its more flamboyant past. I love discovering ghosts like this in places that I know around the city. Reading books like Low Life (by fellow Regis alum Luc sante) and Gay New York clued me in to all sorts of colorful tidbits about parts of the city that have fascinating, racy histories that would really put the wind up your skirts.
Gay-Hating Kooks
Are there any gay-hating kooks out there who read this site? Are any of you also pedophiles? If so, please, let me know so I can respond. My mother is very concerned that my visibility on the web may be making me a target. This wave of paranoia was prompted by an e-mail she received from my uncle, who found this site while searching for his last name and was very alarmed that there are pictures of my nieces and nephews to be found here. (Witness, if you will, the speed with which any presence of children on a site with gay content becomes associated with the threat of pedophilia.) Apparently, by acknowledging that I have a family who I love and choosing to share some of my expereriences with them with my small cadre of readers, any display of the children will send the many pedophiles who frequent my site into a stalking frenzy. And apparently when pedophiles are prowling the internet for children to abuse, their searches will bring them right here, from which they will be able to play detective and track down my nieces and nephews, despite the complete lack of information about them besides who their parents might be. Parents, I should mention, who have been pleased to see family pictures presented on the web in a loving context. Their parents also, presumably, are doing a damn good job of monitoring their children’s online activites, which are where the real risks would arise.
I have no sympathy or patience for anyone who would cause any harm to a child, particularly a child who I know and love. There are reasons I don’t include addresses for e-mail address for my nieces and nephews, or any other child who makes an appearance here. I think it’s a hysterical, knee-jerk reaction to assume that an image of a child immediately puts that child at risk. Where can the line be drawn? Should children be shrouded in public like Muslim women? Should they be banned from appearing in magazines, television, movies, sports? When does fear and concern require withdrawal from society?
On a final note, I’m pleased to say that after five years or so of publishing on the web, I have never been a focus for the attention of gay-hating kooks. I suppose there’s plenty of better fodder for their narrow agenda. I have, however, grown as a writer and a person and made countless wonderful friends. I have encouraged a few people to accept themselves and come out to their own family and friends, with great results. I have inspired a few people to indulge their own creative instincts. I’ve gotten an unflattering e-mail or two, but usually because someone disagreed with my opinion or didn’t get a joke. I haven’t seen any risks online that don’t exist for any person who engages in real-world society, but I have seen advantages that I would not have experienced otherwise.
Yes, I Like Cute Guys
I don’t know why, but yesterday’s posts about cute boys seems to have inspired a number of snarky comments from the peanut gallery. What? Did someone not get the press release about me being an ardent supporter of the man-man lovin’? It shouldn’t be such an eyebrow-raiser that I just get all teenage-girly and get wistful about the charms of cute boys once in a while. Time was I used to do that all the time in this journal. Maybe I need to start publishing monthly lists of current crushes again.
I guess it’s my own fault for being all serious and geeky and gripey for the last couple months, talking mostly about work and crisis and my emotions and other boring stuff. Y’all got used to that and forgot that Sparky loves him some lovin’!
Passing Glimpses
In defense of cute boys, though, they really are yummy. I was sitting across from a guy on the subway who was just adorable in an amiable, straight-boy sort of way. Big puppy-dog brown eyes, a sweet look on his face, knit hat, big coat, baggy khakis. We got off at the same stop and I was on the stairs behind him, and I noticed that he was wearing tennis socks with his sneakers, even though we had another snow storm this weekend. Those unexpected glimpses of his shapely ankles as he climbed the stairs were just the perfect detail to top it all off and make me all smiley.
The Usual Whine
Cute boys can be so predictable sometimes. I mean it wasn’t SO long ago that we had our tongues down each other’s mouths and our hands and whatnot on each other’s privates, and it was all very friendly and fun. Would it have been such a big breech of protocol to even say “Hi” when we unexpectedly run into each other while hanging with friends at the local watering hole? (Seriously, just a little local watering hole, not even a gay bar where this sorta nonsense is so common.) I wasn’t even trying to be all cruisy, just neighborly. Yeesh!
More support for my pet theory that all the fun, smart, goofy, polite, cute, clever, sexy guys who I’d actually get along with are having a swinging good time in some kind of hipster homo orgy commune somewhere without me. And without the usual handful of like minds I know of scattered about the place. I say we put together a search party. Who’s with me?
East Side Ecstasy
If you watch any documentary before you die, you really ought to watch East Side Story, an incredible look at communist musicals in East Germany and the soviet Union. Man, it’ll get your heart pumping to watch those men sing about the glories of their tractors, or watch textile-mill ballet sequence. Of course, now that I think about it, you also should make sure that before you die you see such other incredible documentaries as Grey Gardens, Crumb, and Trekkies. Any of those will be a great reminder that reality can be so much more fascinating than fiction.
On a totally different pop-culture note, I’ve found myself talking with lots of guys recently about how they also always thought that Aquaman was totally hot. So it’s not just me. It’s almost weird how often this has been happening, like some great pent-up surge of homosexual zeitgeist blowing a gasket. A friend spontaneously got me a totally hot Aquaman poster by Alex Ross for my birthday. Another announced he’s planning on fulfilling a lifelong dream and getting an Aquaman tattoo. Various other guys, when I’ve started to mention who the hottest superfriend was, beat me to the punch by screaming out, “Aquaman!” This has been even more startling than the realization a few years back that the homos all seemed to have a thing for Boba Fett.
Insecure Freak
God, I can be such an insecure freak sometimes. This isn’t helped by my occasional inability to make sense of a situation when I like a guy. Usually, it’s no problem for me to figure out the who-likes-who dynamics of a situation, but with this one I’m just lost. It’s happened before: I know I have an interest in things working out, so I just can’t make heads or tails out of the situation if it doesn’t all happen easily. Good grief. Just when I was convinced that he was trying to butter me up for the brush off (the infamous “You’re the nicest guy ever” remark was my tip-off), he calls all happy to talk to me and asks me to dinner.
Now, the big question is: How much of this is a reflection of my own fears about the risks of sleeping with him some more? Is it pathetically passive-aggressive of me to assume he’s being a jerk so I don’t have to figure out how comfortable I can be dating someone who’s positive?
Speaking of which, it’s high time I get tested again. It’s been a long time since my last test, and I’ve been a bigger slut during that time than ever before. As fastidious as I am, I know I’ve slipped a couple of times out of those dozens and dozens. Between this one (who still hasn’t actually mentioned anything about it to me) and my sister’s bout with a brain tumor, you can imagine how thoughts of mortality are darting around in my head.