Category: ultrapersonal

Bon Jour!

Notes from France:

  • French keyboards are absolutely maddening. This is my excuse for any subsequent typos.
  • When I first got here, I had to wander through a planeload of French Marines also arriving at the airport. Deeeeeeeeee-licious. What may be delicious is the food, but I’m not sure because I’ve been having terrible indigestion, making it hard for me to eat.
  • I am able to read more French than I thought, but I am able to speak much less. This language barrier is especially frustrating when handsome Frenchmen are whispering dirty propositions in your ear, but you are unable to decipher them. Luckily, not all forms or social interaction require much talking.
  • This is a very, very cruisy city. Like, out of control. It’s also kinda dirty and graffitti-covered, which is a very welcome surprise. I like seeing signs of life like that.
  • As much as I am used to turning corners and seeing surprises in New York City, it’s a very different thing when I turn corners here and see glorious architecture that I’ve studied for years. Even the regular buildings here have beautiful, enviable massing and proportions.
  • Versailles is a beautiful obscenity, but it totally lacks passion. It certainly doesn’t lack lavish splendor, though. I would have revolted because of it, too. And I’m a wuss.
  • My hotel is a block away from a gaudy neon stretch of strip clubs, peepshow theaters, and faux-scandalous cabarets like the Moulin Rouge. The most glamorous whores I have ever seen wander the side streets and the taxi-dancer bars: They are plump, saggy, made up like paintings, and dressed in cheap cocktail dresses and fur coats. I completely love them. Very Toulouse-Lautrec, even in this day and age.

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.

A Little Plug

Eagle-eyed New Yorkers will be able to spot a picture of me on page 52 of the current issue of Time Out New York (the 1/25-2/1 issue, with the ski bunny on the cover). Nothing very glam, just an unflattering shot of me addressing the rapt crowd at the last group meeting of the Brooklyn LiveWork Coalition. It’s a great article, actually, with a broad discussion of the issues at stake with this whole crackdown on loft living here in Crooklyn.

It’s been something of a revelation for me to get so involved with this whole thing. I’ve been spending about 20 hours week (you know, during all that spare time when I’m not scoping or working full-time) donating time to the Coalition, and I even seem to have become part of the leadership. It’s a shock to me because this issue has so easily tapped into some real passions of mine, passions I never really know about. I always saw myself as very apolitical, never getting myself into much of a twist about anything. This time around I haven’t felt any doubt or any apathy. Unlike times when I was faced with gay rights issues or presidential elections or whatnot, I really feel charged about the way my neighbors and I are caught in the middle of this time of adaptation in New York. As the city government reacts to the way life in the city has adapted on its own, I’ve realized that I am actually part of a community here in a way I haven’t experienced before. I started out just making sure I wouldn’t get booted to the street, but as I’ve gotten to know my neighbors and other painters, sculptors, musicians, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs and such I’ve realized that I really give a shit about making sure that we all have a way to continue living in a way that lets us unite our work lives with our domestic lives, uniting what might otherwise be disparate parts of ourselves. Not to mention it would be damn hard to pay for both homes and studios where we could really work.

It’s a delicate balance the Coalition is after. We actually enjoy the mixed character of our neighborhoods, and we want to be able to continue working where we live. As much as we want to bring improvements to these neighborhoods, we don’t actually want to see them overdevelop in ways that make it impossible for us to stay, the way things have gone overboard in Soho and Tribeca. Even though North Williamsburg has exploded in recent years, it’s still a long way off from that kind of exclusivity. I think that’s one way that living in Brooklyn may always make things a little easier for us: No matter how much things transform over here, New York’s geography will still concentrate the money and the attention in Manhattan.

We’ll see, I suppose. In the meantime, I have some more meetings to prepare for…

2001: A Spark’s Odyssey

This new year came in quietly but wonderfully, as I stayed home, huddled away from the cold, opting to curl up on the couch with some movies and a cute boy who knows how to kiss rather than give in to the pressure to go out and par-tay with the drunken revellers in the cold. It was a good note to start things off with. It was also nice to have a totally pleasant and relaxing night in the wake of the last horrible month.

I feel some sort of nebulous obligation to do a year-end wrap-up, but frankly that would be dull and redundant considering how thoroughly I’ve documented the year here. All in all, it was OK, with the usual amount of ups, downs, and change that I’ve come to expect in my life. If nothing else, I don’t sit still or settle into routine for very long.

Rather than dwell on the last year — there’s no point, seeing as I still don’t have a rocket car or a sleek pod-home on the moon — let’s think about the next. I don’t like the idea of resolutions, since they’re so easily broken. I like Andy’s idea of using a slogan as a guiding principle for the year, but it’s his schtick, and he already used the best one for this last year: “Less talk, more rock.” I guess the best thing for me, eternally bogged down by an endless list of projects to think about, would be to make an effort to reorder my long-term to-do list. so here, as of Janury 1, 2001, are the things that I would like to make higher priorities on the list:

  • Draw more. And draw to work out ideas rather than just doodle. I hate that I’ve all but stopped drawing. I’ve given up on the one activity that made my entire educational career tolerable. The new UltraSparky backgrounds will hopefully be a good reminder that I should work on more material.
  • Read more comic books. Related to the desire to draw more. Comic books have always been profoundly important to me, but I gave up following them years ago when I was a poor student. Their place in my life became primarily one of nostalgia. Dave and Andy and others have helped me keep up, though, and I’ve discovered another generation of books that really get me excited, and speak to a lot of ideas that I’ve pondered on my own over the years. The superhero genre is still pretty dear to me, and it’s exciting to see the kind of excitement, big ideas, and maturity shown in books like The Invisibles or The Authority.
  • Learn more programming and scripting. I like the stuff, but I’ve been dicking around without actually just learning to write usefull things like PERL or PHP. What kind of nerd am I without that stuff? A poseur nerd, that’s what.
  • Work more, and more efficiently. Who knows, maybe I’ll even look for a regular job that would be a good fit for me. As busy as I usually am, I wind up wasting a fuck of a lot of time, and squandering hours that could be better spent making myself more solvent. (Or drawing more.) I need to get my act together.
  • Stop sleeping around so much. The opposite of one of last year’s goals. Guess how I’ve squandered a lot of that time I mentioned? I got a lot out of my system, and I had an awful lot of fun, but I’ve been really feeling the need to focus again and shoot for quality instead of quantity. (I suppose this is more of a resolution than a reprioritization, but it’s been on my mind lately.)

Wish me luck, kids, and stay on my case if you catch me slacking off.

Getting Involved

OK, I’m a lot calmer now, thanks. No more undignified outbursts for a little while more, at least. (By the way, thanks for all the love, gang. It helped more than you may ever realize.) Yesterday was a pretty damn stressful day, spent worrying and panicking and running around trying to figure out what is going on with this big crackdown on artists’ lofts here in Brooklyn. There was a big community meeting about it last night (which I missed) and another one tonight (which I damn well won’t miss), so people are up in arms and on top of the situation, which is good. The people in my building met last night and we got ourselves organized so we can avert catastrophe by making a preemptive strike at getting things up to snuff around here before any inspectors come by and try to claim it’s not safe here. We even coined a plucky name (EWAC! The East Williamsburg Artists Coalition), set up a web page and an listserv, and started imagining how fun it would be to weld artwork to the outside of the building to baricade ourselves in if the bastards try to kick us out. Never say that activism doesn’t have room for a little goofiness.

The meeting really helped calm me down and realize that there are steps we can take to avert gettin’ the boot. Now that they’ve evacuated a few buildings and created such a fuss, the city agencies involved say that they would only evacuate buildings in imminent danger (a very sketchy evaluation, from the sound of it), and try to fine or warn the rest on the list of 121 targeted loft buildings. Presumably the political pressure now is for them to avoid kicking anyone else out into the streets around Christmas, so we’re counting on the inspectors to look favorably on anyone’s attempts to make sure their buildings comply with the fire code. That’s why we’re springing into action to make sure our building is OK before anyone gets in to look around. My building isn’t as raw as it looks, so things may not be so tenuous. The thing is, we want to know for sure before we take any chances. That’s why we’re all springing into action today — keeping exits clear, getting smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, taking care of any flammable materials we may have around our pads.

These aren’t all temporary measures to avert this catastrophe, even if that’s what has sprung us into action. We want the building to be safe. One of the things you can’t take for granted when you live in an artist’s loft is that everything is safe and honky-dory all the time (especially when the owner is a notorious loft slumlord). Also, we want to pull together as a building and a neighborhood of people with the same concerns about the life we’re trying to carve out here in the hinterlands of Brooklyn. So this organization of ours will hopefully live on past this dilemma and allow us to continue and improve our lot in life. Besides, why waste the snappy acronym?

Also, I’m glad that something has spurred me to getting to know my neighbors after living here for well over a year. One of the problems of life in New York, and this neighborhood in particular, is that it’s really easy to just hole up in your cave and never get many chances to know the people living mere feet away from you. It’s worse around here where there are no public places to congregate and mingle. I’ve said hello to plenty of the folks around here, but I now realize that I actually like everyone. Pretty much everyone in my building is really good-looking and hip, too, so that helps.

And, Dori, this is SO not Bushwick out here. I’ve lived in Bushwick, so trust me. I’m very happy to be on the East Williamsburg side of Flushing Ave., where it’s at least 20 percent less bleak.

Domestic Disturbance

Imminent ThreatHow much god-damned shittiness am I supposed to put up with in one month? I apologize if that’s not the most articulate, informative way to express the extreme aggravation, frustration, loneliness, disappointment, and despair that have been swirling around these last few weeks. Lots of things have sucked — family trauma, financial strains, work nonsense, regular holiday crap, and plenty of guy trouble — and now this fucking article comes along to let me know that I may be suddenly evicted at any point. A threat like this wouldn’t be welcome under the best of circumstances: It really sucks ass right now. It’s not perfect, but I really adore my bachelor pad, and I really don’t wanna get kicked out to the curb just when winter is setting in and my bank account is perpetually overdrawn as I deal with piles of various bills. I can’t even afford to live anywhere but here, much less put together the scratch to actually find a place and haul me and all my crap there.

You know, I was going to write a fun little entry about my sexy new cell phone (’cuz I lost mine this weekend) and how size envy with electronics is all about being small instead of big and what an incredible paradigm shift that is for luxury items. Maybe I was going to gripe a little bit about how demoralizing it is when guys you really like wind up with one another instead of being interested in you, but no. Now this last straw onto the camel’s back is provoking the crying jag that’s been building up the last couple of weeks. So rather than figure out what the fuck I should do right now, I think I’ll go cry myself to sleep like some fucking baby and prepare for the humiliating ritual of tucking my poor, loser tail between my legs and asking my parents for help.

Merry Christmas kids!

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.

Soapbox

I’m not participating in A Day Without Weblogs. This is not because I don’t think AIDS awareness is important, or because I think it’s a hollow gesture to remove your weblog for a day. On the contrary, I think any effort to shock people out of any complacency is vitally important. I think, though, that I would rather participate in World AIDS Day by taking a moment in this forum to make a call for continued dialogue and continued openness about the issue.

People I love have been deeply affected by AIDS and HIV. It’s touched my family and my friends, and it’s been the cause of grief, anger, and fear. The fear is the worst part, I fear, in terms of how our society on the whole deals with the presence of AIDS in our lives. When people react, ond overreact with fear, it breeds a climate that punishes the sufferers rather than battles the disease itself. I don’t want to live in a world where peope are ostracized and feared because of a health condition, especially one which is preventable and containable. I don’t want to live in a world where compassion and understanding and lucidity are shoved aside by hysteria, suspicion, intolerance, and moral indignation. Screw that.

I have friends with HIV, and it doesn’t freak me out. I have a brother with HIV, and it doesn’t freak me out. I’ve even dated guys with HIV, also: sometimes I’ve known about it, and sometimes I haven’t at the time. Either way, I’ve discovered that it doesn’t freak me out as much as I once thought it would. I’m grateful to know so that I have a chance to be a voice of reason rather than fear. What I’ve discovered each time I’ve learned about it is that it doesn’t change who that person may be, or how I feel about that person. The presence of HIV in their lives and mine may sadden me or make me angry sometimes, but it’s not the carrier I mind, it’s the virus. And it’s the way people react to it.

Don’t fear HIV. Don’t fear AIDS. Learn about them. Be smart and compassionate and careful. Prevent the spread of the virus. Don’t make martyrs or victims or pariahs or villains out of the people who have it. It’s not a judgement, it’s a disease. People get it, and that’s a tragedy, but pretending the tragedy doesn’t exist in your world will never ensure that it won’t.

Sorta Second Dates

Twice in the last week I have run into (ahem) cute, smart, attractive guys with whom I hit it off like gangbusters. With each one, we realized at some point while hanging out that we have had completely tawdry, anonymous sex with each other at some point in the previous year. And each time, I had wished that I had gotten more of a chance to follow up and get to know the fella in question. sometimes, serendipity sends a nice curve ball just when you could use a little cheering up.

Modern Telecommunications

The one thing I don’t like about writing posts on the Palm Pilot is that they don’t go up according to when they were written, just when they were uploaded. The following are a couple of posts I wrote on the way to Sorrento. I’m back, I had a fabulous time, I’m way jet-lagged, and I’m processing some really horrible family news that has me reeling. More later as I settle down from everything. But for now…

Commentary from the road, Thursday: I’m on the train to Boston and sure enough this guy gets on at New Haven and starts in with the cell phone. He didn’t look the type at first — he raced on all out-of-breath, wearing cut-off sweats and looking like some mook. Next thing I know, however, he’s got the headset on, the phone in a little stand, and he’s making a volley of calls telling all his colleagues and clients where to reach him. He hasn’t stopped yakking away yet. Yes, chowderhead, a cell phone is a useful tool, but we’d all be much happier if you valued your privacy a little bit more.

Meanwhile, my own phone rings with a call from my landlord, warning me that there’s some danger of my 1200 square feet of basement apartment flooding if we get a lot of rain in the next week. Apparently, the pump that usually keeps all us cave-dwellers dry may have been damaged by some gas-line work. If all my things are destroyed by the time I get back from Italy, I’ll be one morose kid.