Category: ultrapersonal

Gay Shame

It’s Homo Overload…whoops, I mean Gay Pride Week here in New York, so I guess it’s only fitting that I chime in on the subject. But before I do, I just want y’all to think about this question posed by the Paris ACT UP chapter: “Proud of what?”

Gay Pride doesn’t inspire any particular pride in me. In fact, it makes me cringe with embarrassment and loathing. Not the idea of it, but the actual event in all its glitzy, our-way-or-the-highway madness. I don’t even know where to begin. (Paul Baker’s Burn Your Jockstrap site articulates my frustrations with gay culture much better than I ever could, anyway, so go look at that.) The homos are pretty homogenous — at least within each of their cliques — and it irritates me that there’s a parade to prove it.

The thing to keep in mind is that I love being gay. I mean, there’s no question about it. I’m really, really gay. And yes, I’m proud of it. I don’t mean that I’m a prancing nancy, or a pumped-up pretty boy, or straight-acting bear (all of which are terms that could be used to describe people I love). I’m Sparky. I am, among other things, an enthusiatic lover of other fellas. And goddamn I’m proud of that! It’s a part of me, and a pretty significant part, one which influences a lot of the other parts.

Coming out wasn’t a huge dilemma for me, even though I did it at the ripe old age of 21. I did it when the time was right for me, when I had the insight and energy to deal with that aspect of life. No trauma, just a couple of awkward conversations. But to get to that point, I had to figure out some stuff about my life and the world around me, and that’s good. If I weren’t gay, I may not have thought as much about what makes me the person I am. I’m proud that I had to ask myself difficult questions, and proud that I sorted out some sort of direction in a sea of conflicting opinions. I’m proud that I chose for myself what I want, and didn’t hold myself to what my folks or my school or my friends naturally assumed would be the way things worked.

I didn’t shut off that way of thinking when I confronted gay culture, which is why I get so incensed by this feeling that the so-called gay counter-culture would, if it could, impose the same kind of rigorous expectations on me as the so-called mainstream. screw it. I’m not any more likely to go to the gym to beef up my tits than I am to marry the girl next door and settle down in a house in Nutley, New Jersey, or shoot heroin in a crack den. I said “no” to all that. And I don‘t wish to be told I’m a loser for not making any one of those things a priority.

For me, gay pride is an everyday fact of life. An excuse to say, “That’s me, dig it or ditch it,” just like any other aspect of myself. I don’t want to be like every other gay person in the world, especially not if they’re trying to be just like everyone else (except, of course, for more inherently fabulous because they’re gay). If I were to let that happen, I’d be a whole let less Sparky, wouldn’t I?

Wilting in the Heat

As you may notice, all those software demos didn’t kill me, although I did get an extra nine hours of them that I wasn’t expecting. Every once in a while during the meetings, I would be amazed that people were actually deferring to my analysis of one damn thing or another, and it seemed just crazy. Who am I that I should be expected to have a reliable opinion about anything? Then, of course, I’d remember that I am almost thirty, after all (despite my boyish good looks), and I’ve been working in some variation of the same field for about 10 years. Then I would ask why I’m not more successful, and then I would remind myself that I purposely kept switching gears to learn or to do cool new things instead of just plodding ahead, and…

Oh well, you get it. The mind wanders when one is tired, right? But it’s been a week like that. Too poor to go out much. Too hot to have much sex when the opportunities present themselves (seeing as they’ve only been presenting themselves in places where it’s much too hot). Too much work to just hang out in the hammock and catch up on this month’s magazines (Wired, Paper, Metropolis, Emigre, Wallpaper, Nest). so all the mind wandering squeezes itself the little nooks and crannies of my attention span, forcing itself its way into my jam-packed mental space.

Today’s entry is dedicated to my faithful Manservant Hecubus, as a reminder that he’s still aces in my book, even if I have been too big a lazy bastard to write and catch up lately.

Room at the Inn

Things could get wacky here this summer. I don’t mean “here” as in this site, although there could be spillage into my online life, but “here” as in my house, since I’m taking in a lodger for the summer. My old roommate David, he of the Twine Tour, is going to be in town for the summer working on a movie and we figured that we could solve the problem of his accomodations and my rent increase with one fell swoop. I haven’t had a non-romantic roommate in a long time, and I have no interior walls in my loft, so this should be kooky.

Of course, things have always been kooky for David and I. When we first met, small-world factor reared it’s ugly head when he realized that the year before a good friend of his had been telling him about a guy (me) he met at a movie who also had a copy (just like David’s) of the photo-novelization of Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People movie. Kismet! Our kitsch-loving paths would be forever intertwined from then on.

In other news of kookiness, the new episode of Ooze is finally out, much to the dismay of the easily offended everywhere. My oldest pal Eddie and his cronies continue to spread the word of juvenile antics. Be sure to check out their promotional video for PWEETA, People Who Enjoy Eating Tasty Animals.

Debtor’s Prison

My ass is killing me! Except for an hour-long emergency nap, I basically sat in my uncomfortable desk chair for 17 hours straight yesterday, moving from some blogging to designing tedious trade show banners (and does anyone else think Adobe Streamline sucks as much as I do?) to hours and tedious hours of formatting lesson plans for a Thirteen project.

Yes, the deadlines are starting to come together, I’m in that uncomfortable space between one income trailing off and another beginning, and the IRS just realized that I neglected to include a check with my tax return for last year. You’d never know from my apparent poverty that I actually make pretty decent money. But a series of ridiculous expenditures over the years has kept me in a constant state of catch-up, and it sucks. Here are the primary culprits:

  • Moving back to New York from Boston I had no debt at all shortly before I left Boston, but a last-minute trip to China put me in the hole. so when I got back, the whole move down here basically done on credit.
  • The Bushwick Loft An enormous, awesome 4,000 square feet of raw loft deliciousness that Mark and I lived in when I first moved back to New York. It was cool as hell, but it took many visits to Home Depot and Ikea to get it to look that way. Ch-ching! Of course, all that money was wasted by the next year because the junkie we were subletting our half of the floor from basically chased us out. Oh yeah, then paying for another move 14 months after moving in.
  • Brazil An incredible trip, but it basically wiped me out. that’s what I get for travelling to exotic foreign countries on a whim. Again. It was one of those moments where you have such an incredible time that you think, “I’m young, I’m fabulous, and I have the rest of my life to pay for this. Oh wow, look at the bunda on that one…”
  • Grad school A very, very expensive way for me to learn that I have too much experience to get much out of being a part-time student in a program that’s not as customizable as it first appears. Doing just enough work to finish in time for class still had me somewhere at the top of the curve, meaning I could slack off when I didn’t have time to devote to my projects and no one would worry about it since I was still getting A’s. (And for the copy editors out there, I know there should be no apostrophe after that A, but I just don’t want it to look like “as”. Deal.) Oy! The money I spent on tuition and my projects. And those student loan people are like vultures!
  • Gadgets! I’m one of those guys with the gadget gene, meaning I begin to salivate uncontrollably when I see electronics I think I need. Now, I admit that I needed the second computer for a huge freelance project, but did I really need to splurge for the Palm V when I needed some way to keep track of my hours? I know it’s sexier than the earlier ones by half, but it was a little pricey. Oh well, as long as the G4s stay completely, stratospherically out of my price range, I guess I’m safe.
  • That one month where I had to pay my rent with my credit card Oh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

So remember kids, if you or anyone you know is in need of a graphic designer with a truckload of experience and mad skillz (as the kids say), don’t be afraid to come a-knockin’. My real expertise is with typography and print, but you might have noticed that I also know how to throw together a web site.

The Long Late-Night Haul

Once again, coming back to Brooklyn on a weekend night has been an odyssey of train delays, shuttle buses, and alternate routes. Ya know, if I didn’t have so much space for so little money, I might not be tempted to put up with it. But, since I have a sweet deal, I’ll just continute to rely on my thorough familiarity with the subway system. At least the Morplay show I went to was a whole lot of fun, even if Cazwell’s cute roommate still won’t flirt with me.

Body Clock Upset

I’m tired. In my efforts to shed my commuter’s sleep schedule, I’ve been staying up later and later and sleeping irregularly, and now I can’t get drowsy before 4 in the morning. It’s hell on those mornings when I have to get up for meetings and stuff. I need to pretend I have jet lag and stay awake for 30 hours or so and shock myself back into a schedule that is a little more practical. (Note: This would be slightly related to the tactic that got me in this mess in the forst place, back when I decided to go out and stay out all night, just because I could for the first time in seven months.)

Pals Is Pals

If June comes bustin’ out all over, don’t think that I’m gonna clean up the mess. I have enough to do this week.

I have taken a moment, though, for a shout-out to a bunch of my Internet pals. As a nerd, there are a whole lot of folks I chat and correspond with regularly — and have even met in person occasionally — who I’ve come to know and treasure, but yet it seems odd to put them in the same group as all the friends who’ve been on hand for road trips, breakdowns, and other assorted hijinks. I dunno.

Very Important Mini-Treatise on Electronic Self-Publishing

More blogging than journal-writing today. Can’t tell the difference? Than you’ve probably just been reading this, my half-assed journal, instead of my half-assed blog over at the Rumpus Room. Journal = self-indulgent ramblings that only Internet voyeurs like you may enjoy. Blog = pithy observations about stuff I read on the Web or movies I watch.

There, that’s my spin on the whole debate.

What’s the Rumpus?

You know, even in the 12 years or so since I’ve been in high school, I can see that things have really come a long way. Check out this great story about New Orleans’ gay prom. It’s so sweet I’m about to pass out from a hypoglycemic fit. All things being equal, I would much rather worry about finding the right skaterboy to take to the prom, rather than finding the right beard or sympathetic female friend. (Props to Don for the link. Go read his saucy site.)

And for the record, I did not go to my high school prom, even though it was being held at the swanky Plaza Hotel. However, I did go to another prom at the end of my freshman year of college at the highly overrated Tavern on the Green. It was there that I began to really appreciate the charms of the beautiful woman (not my date, but that’s another story altogether) who I would date for the next year-and-a-half. Yes, it’s true. Actual, true love — with a chick! Life is a journey, as they say.

Now that I’m working from home again, I’ve been playing all these CDs I have that I never liked enough to listen to all that much. (Ouch! Did that sentence throw grammar to the wind, or what? You try diagramming it.) so I slap in this Hooverphonic CD someone sent me and suddenly realize that I own the piece of music from the vapor-colored Volkswagon commercial that everyone seems to be scrambling to identify. I guess I was cool enough to dismiss it months ago. By the way, does anyone else think that every under-30 dot-com millionaire is scrambling to be one of the 2000 lucky owners of those things? I bet we see a hundred of them up on eBay before too long, at double the price.