Category: The Dating Game

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Detail of Geophagia, 2021, by Andy Goldsworthy

Ralph and I went to visit For-Site’s Lands End installation at San Francisco’s Cliff House on Friday. The Cliff House, perched on a bluff at Lands End, with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and Seal Rocks, for years was the restaurant that one brought one’s parents to when they visited town, but has been sitting vacant since the end of 2020. The For-Site Foundation has taken up temporary residence with a series of site-specific art installations decoratively aestheticizing the human impact on climate and what’s left of the natural world.

Installation view of migration (empire), 2008, by Doug Aitken

All of the work is beautiful and beautifully installed, each piece framed by the architecture and views. Doug Aitken’s single channel video installation, migration (empire), features various examples of migratory wildlife filmed inside vacant hotel rooms. The video allegorically and poetically references humankind’s steady seizure of and intrusion into the animal kingdom.

Andy Goldsworthy coated a single long table and adjacent dining booth tabletops with a thick layer of white clay. As the show has progressed, the white clay tablecloths have cracked, like dry riverbeds, or overbaked meringues, our current drought conditions in California rendered as conceptual frosting.

Also… well, there are many other wondrous works of art, and it’s an entertaining show, well worth seeing, but with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin now determining the destiny of our planet’s climate, it seems hopelessly pointless. Antarctica is melting.

Inside the Camera Obscura, Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Ralph and I met years ago, at a party at my friend Sarah’s house. I was immediately attracted to him. He’s an artist, a creator of interior spaces that blend whimsy and sophistication. His own home is a micro-museum of homoerotic imagery, photography, and tableaux of taxidermied animals, figurines, and other found objects, arranged in such dense and numerous sculptural installations as to make it almost impossible to take it all in during any one visit. I’ve never experienced such an environment, so much meaning and invention packed into 800 square feet.

Following a few exploratory romantic excursions, I told him a few days ago that I’m not feeling up to dating. I frankly don’t know exactly why–and did you ever think you’d hear me say that? He’s sexy and stylish, a fuzzy ex-New Yorker, engaged with film, art and design, just the kind of guy who ticks off a lot of my boxes.

Over the course of 20 years, my friendship with BC has evolved into a comfortable and loving companionship that has weathered exchanges with outside suitors, lovers, and wanna-be boyfriends. During the pandemic we’ve spent days in our respective homes, and nights together, me snuggled with our pups d’Auggie and Zoobie in his guest room on Twin Peaks. My frantic multi-decade search for a perfect companion has yielded only frustration, yet somehow, without trying, and despite years of resistance, a structure of domestic harmony has settled upon me, despite myself. At 56 I can’t imagine trying to know someone as deeply as I know BC, or, indeed, to give that up. In The Odyssey, Homer describes an ideal of like-mindedness in marriage, homophrosyne. After so many years of wandering, my Penelope awaits on Twin Peaks?

Or Midge. Once BC and I had an argument after watching Hitchcock’s Vertigo. I remarked how like Midge I thought I was. He scoffed, completely perplexed, insisting that HE was Midge, and that I was Scottie. Midge was an artist, lived near the Art Institute, bubbly, cute, sassy, driving a sporty little car. I was totally Midge. Midge and Scottie had dated, in the past, just like us. Years later I asked BC why he hadn’t seriously dated anyone else since our breakup. “You know there’s only one man in the world for me, Johnny-o,” he replied, quoting Midge. In the film, Scottie frantically chases after an illusion, while Midge watches, helpless, eventually fading into the shadows as Scottie struggles to give form to his obsession. I’m Scottie, for sure, and if BC’s not my Penelope, he’s definitely my Midge.

So it seems that my Dating Game has wrapped up another season. Like an enduring British sitcom, maybe there will be future episodes, rehashing old themes with half laughs and treacly sentiment. Or maybe I’ve jumped over the shark too many times already?

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James, Barb, Annetta & the Linebacker

During my time caring for my parents in Alabama, I met my friends James and Barb and Annetta for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Homewood. As they sat down, I blurted out “I just had a fling with a closeted former NFL linebacker. His thigh was the size of me…”

Barb looked at me disbelievingly, “You had sex with a stranger?”

“Well… his kids were at school and we…”

“Wait… Kids? At school? He’s married?”

“Well, separated, but…”

“And he’s closeted?”

“I assume so. So when I arrived he led me quickly to his basement where…”

“His basement?? You went to a complete stranger’s house and let him take you into his basement? He could have been an axe murderer…”

I hadn’t even thought of that. I started to get a little frustrated. I hadn’t had any sort of intimate relations in how long? and was eager to share my adventure with my friends. My linebacker was a very sweet man, so seemingly eager to connect. He lived only a few miles from my childhood home and told me of orgies that he’d arranged when he was a kid in middle and high school (middle school??) with the other boys in the neighborhood. I listened dumbfounded, remembering my fairly chaste adolescence and almost constant unfulfilled desire. And orgies were happening down the road? That I actually could have gone to?? I was mesmerized by this alternate vision of childhood.

Barb is a teacher, in a business college, and Annetta as well, instructional design and group dynamics stuff. They co-teach a class that integrates principles from Harry Potter and Hogwarts. They balance each other beautifully, Barb the gentle lecturer with lingering midwesternisms and Annetta from Salt Lake City but with what sounds like a Brooklyn maybe? accent, and an endearingly aggressive disposition, Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny with a huskier voice. James was my gay buddy in high school and is one of my closest friends still. James was very out by the time I met him, my first role model. Nobody messed with him, he was like Liberace or John Waters, fabulous and fearless and entertaining and smart. At the Miss Poinsettia contest in 10th grade, I wore a sexy strapless gown but forgot the words to my song when I stepped onto the stage, Leon Redbone’s “I Want to Be Seduced.” James appeared on stage blowing bubbles and giggling, just brilliant. James, Barb and Annetta are this dynamic trio of wit, intelligence and delight and I savor every moment with them.

The food arrived and my linebacker’s thigh faded from the conversation, the brief pleasure we experienced eclipsed by the comfort of beloved friends and great food.

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Stumbling from the Ashes

I haven’t felt like writing for a while now.  Life just keeps getting in the way, creating a kind of inertia that has propelled me forward with no real need for comment.  From 2016-19 I traveled back and forth to Alabama, taking turns with my siblings caring for our parents.  Dad died in 2018, after a few years of slowly fading away.  I fed him, changed his diaper, occasionally made him smile.  Suddenly he was gone, with no grand moment of connection or revelation, just not there anymore.  We cleaned out the house after his death, sold it, and moved mom to San Francisco, to spend her last 9 months with me.  (More about mom in an upcoming post.)

I started dating Hughshka around this time.  It didn’t work out.  He eventually split for the EU and a significantly younger heartthrob.  He left so many burning bridges behind, I was in awe of his incendiary commitment and steadfast determination to obliterate any emotional baggage.  We were woefully mismatched, the only thing uniting us our mutual desire for companionship.  I fell into a deep depression after mom’s death, and stumbled into a seemingly bottomless sadness after the Hughshka split.  I went to my friend David’s in Inverness for the weekend, sobbing, saying that I needed a companion, that I wasn’t meant to be alone, that I would always feel like half of something without someone else by my side.

Driving back home to San Francisco, my emotional exchange with David played back in my head.  I called my friend Jon with a revelation–I didn’t want to be that person.  Dependant on someone else for my happiness?  Someone else to make me feel complete?  I did not want to be that person.  But, frankly, I didn’t know how, or didn’t think I knew how, as so much of my energy over the 17 years since leaving Bob has been directed at this one goal.  I was devastated by my mom’s death, almost a year to the day after my dad’s, a few years after the death of my sister.  I had friends and family, but after the loss of a third of my inner family the depth of my loneliness was overwhelming.  I was finally alone, motherless, fatherless, the family home sold, tetherless.

And now, almost two years later, a sense of contentment has settled over me.  All of the previously perceived missteps since leaving Bob (Dean, Chris, Nemr, Stavros, etc…) I see now as really wonderful experiences, my former lovers now my closest confidantes and buddies.  The intimacy that we share as friends is easy in a way that was so much more convoluted, weighted and difficult as boyfriends.  Perhaps my blog readers never thought they’d ever hear these words stumble from my lips, but I’m actually quite happy being alone.

So in the coming days I’ll update you with some stories of my adventures over the past few years, and try to keep you updated on my current escapades.  Thanks for sticking around, gentle readers.

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The Dating Game: Hughshka

Hugh is his name. Hughshka, I call him. A ginger bear, my first. Well, actually my first-and-a-half if we count my unconsummated hometown crush. We were born on the same day. We both drive Priuses, both raised in the south, both tea drinkers, both seekers of profound and meaningful connections, both Newshour viewers, both lost sisters to cancer, and so eerily similar in so many other ways that it feels like dating a red-haired bigger hairier slightly younger maybe a little balder version of myself. I’m so completely mesmerized by his electric orange pubic hair. It’s like looking at a color negative, psychedelic radiance where there should be shadow…

But of course my attraction to him isn’t just about being so perfectly suited for each other and not because as my new muse he presents such a lushly verdant landscape for this photographer’s visual exploration… It’s because, well, first of all, he’s stunningly attractive, but no, that’s not the first thing. Yes, he’s gorgeous, but his genuine desire for a deep connection is both thrilling and a relief. Like, finally, someone I find fetching who values the same things. And the ways that we are not similar are also appealing… like his interest in Star Wars and Marvel Comics. We saw Captain Marvel with his delightfully geeky Marvel friends. Hughshka has provided his film buddies with lanyards, and at each film they see together, he presents them with new commemorative pins related to the film. I was so touched by the playful sweetness of the gesture. A complete neophyte, I was in awe of his friends’ mastery of all the technical aspects and interconnected narrative strands in the Marvel Universe, as well as their rigorous critical analysis. At dinner one of the group asked dismissively, “I mean, who HASN’T seen Deadpool?” I tried not to make eye contact, nervously thinking “That was a Marvel thing?” vaguely remembering skipping over the New York Times review. I want a lover who will lead me into unexplored territory. So the Marvel-verse it is.

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First Heartbreak, 1977

My first break up letter, from my girlfriend Kim, written in 1977, when I was 11. She was 2 years older than me, my first French kiss. She handed me the note and as I walked home after reading it, my little heart broken, I ripped it up and let the pieces fall behind me. I didn’t notice that Kim had followed me and picked them up, which she presented to me years later.

She was a tomboy, I was a sissy.  Once the other boys in the neighborhood tied Kim up to a tree and dangled daddy long-leg spiders in front of her.  I don’t think I could have survived such an ordeal, my knees trembled at the thought, but Kim just laughed, defiantly undaunted.  I was in awe.  In the mid-90s she and her girlfriend and I drove back to our old hometown and revisited the sites of our pre-teen romance.  We speculated that our attraction to each other as children could have been the foundations for our later same-sex desires, each of us exhibiting characteristics that we associated with the opposite sex.

We actually got in a real fight once, after the breakup.  At school, between classes, she would try to trip me on the stairs as we passed each other, headed in opposite directions.  Remember, she was 2 years older, a big scary tomboy.  After school one day in the driveway of a mutual friend, she kicked my skateboard and I just couldn’t take it anymore and slugged her, right in the face.  (You have to imagine the punch coming from someone who struck out in kickball, to get an accurate picture of my assault.)  It’s the only time I’ve ever struck anyone.  I ran home sobbing.

 A few years later, after my family had moved to a different town, Kim and I had a date.  I was maybe 14 then, and she at 16 had been having a serious relationship with some guy.  We double-dated with some friends of hers who had a car, and went somewhere and parked the car and made out, Lionel Ritchie on the car stereo.  It was obvious to me that she had learned some things from this guy, for she was very quickly batting us around all the bases.  No home run, but I couldn’t wait to tell my friends.

…break up. I… to get… took me… to get up… before… you …I been going with you… too long. I… you a little bit, not enough… on this relationship. I’m sorry, Kim. And then, in a little heart, Kim doesn’t love Chris anymore.

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Total & Partial Eclipses

I flew to Orlando a few weeks ago, to visit my beau-in-waiting, my Jersey-accented, deep voiced, furry-forearmed, bushy-tailed Kelley. It was our second and — as it turned out — final date, deciding afterwards that a prolonged long-distance courtship wasn’t appealing to either of us. He had flown to San Francisco several months prior and we had a wonderful visit, exploring the Sonoma Coast, watching and complaining about the new corporate purveyors of gay marketability at the SF Pride parade, celebrating our own little summer of love in Golden Gate Park…

From Orlando we drove up to South Carolina for the total solar eclipse, with an overnight stop in Augusta, Georgia. Augusta was founded in 1735 by James Oglethorpe, two years after founding Savanna, and settled by Noble Jones. Oglethorpe named the town in honor of Augusta, Princess of Wales, the mother of British monarch King George III. Augusta has a lovely tree-lined downtown with many interesting buildings from the early 19th- to mid-20th centuries. In the center of town is a delightful statue of local singer and Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, Mr. Please Please himself, James Brown, designed to encourage interaction and selfies.

The drive through South Carolina took us through dense green forests, cotton fields and many quaint southern towns. Our travel mate selected a cotton field in the middle of the line of totality, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was a stunningly perfect spot from which to view the eclipse, the sky open with only a smattering of clouds on the horizon.

Just prior to totality, the cicadas started chirping, the light of the sun dimmed, the dog ran under the car, the clouds turned pink, and an instant twilight settled on us. The moon’s blackness created a sort of hole in the sky, encircled by the sun’s fuzzy corona. I researched a lot of myths associated with eclipses and couldn’t find anything that matched my experience of it. At that moment of totality, the darkness of the moon created the illusion of an orifice, a black hole surrounded by flaming fur, the mysteries of the universe opening for us all to penetrate.

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The Good, the Sad and the Drugly

There’s an episode of the Simpsons where Lisa is really depressed. She’s assigned to write a report for her class about what Springfield will be like in 50 years, and after doing some internet research, is horrified by the dystopian possibilities, which she shares with her classmates, terrifying them. One jumps out of a window, screaming. Marge takes her to a psychiatrist who diagnoses Lisa with Environment-Related Despair, and puts her on Ignorital, causing her to see only smiley faces. After a potentially near-fatal mishap, Marge takes her off the drug, and Lisa realizes that she can’t run away from her problems, and decides to face them head on.

This has been the longest stretch of singleness in my half century. J’ai le cafard. “I have the cockroach,” as they say in France. Environment-Related Despair. My doctor put me on Ignorital. I’m not seeing smiley faces everywhere quite yet, but my anxiety has calmed to a point where my navigation of the Bachelor ‘Hood is becoming a bit less overwhelming. There are surprisingly more married guys my age out there looking for extramarital activity than single middle-aged guys looking to settle down, and those of us looking to settle down have pretty much all gone out with each other already, so the pickens are slim. I get frustrated, holding out for some idea of a perfect love that very well might not be possible, but at the same time not rushing into anything.

I had a very tender, but very brief affair with my punk rocker, steering us into friendship when I felt out of synch with what he was feeling. Plus I was really distracted by Jake, the filmmaker, who eventually gave me the boot when he felt out of synch with what I was feeling. Since then I’ve had some nice dates with a sweet Urgent Care man, sweet as the hopes on which starv’d lovers feed, and a dashing Intellectual Gascon. His story is worthy of a Dumas, or Harold Robbins, but it’s his to tell, so I’ll just say that he’s had a life rich with soap opera quality dramas, foreign lands, romance, adventure, and, I would imagine, some really good therapy.

Feeling blue while cleaning out my desk, a postcard from a local realtor fell on the floor. I don’t believe in cosmic interventions, but I’ve had a crush on this guy for years, and thought, what the heck, maybe the universe is actually getting off its ass and doing something for me. So I sent him an email, laying out my appeal as humorously and non-stalkerish as I could, while also taking great care to balance flattery with tact and the possibility of his already being hitched. He wrote back, so sweet and generous, and yes, he’s married, happily, but invited me to say hello and to give him a call if I ever decide to put my house on the market.

I have a few internet inamorati whom I’ve never met, some married, others just lonely. We have very lively discussions about art, our travels, our desires… We send each other titillating pictures and describe imaginary couplings and have even at times expressed love for each other. They’re just pixels, we’ve never smelled or touched each other, or heard each other speak. And yet they make me so happy. I imagine I’m fulfilling some desire that goes unexpressed in their marriages, a virtual courtesan. For me, I’m able to experience an authentically intimate exchange, uninhibited by the distractions of headaches, crabs…

Bob came to visit over the holidays and shed some new light on my Environment-Related Despair. I realized that our complete compatibility has been diverting me away from consideration of anyone deviating from our now blissfully idealized relationship. Despite our compatibility, I left Bob because my desire for something else was too much of an impediment to our continued success as a couple. Since then I’ve been driven by a desire to have it all. I want Bob Hoskins and Bob, complete physical and intellectual compatibility. Sure it’d be great to have it all, but if I can’t have both, passion is the one I can’t do without—I can always read a book. Jake and I have had many lively discussions about not being able to integrate these disparate needs and desires into our relationships. This was the particular problem in our brief exploration of possibilities with each other. He felt like he needed someone like me, but he wanted someone quite different physically. Maybe someday I’ll be Wilford Brimley, but for now I’m but a thin shadow of this particular ideal. I had to accept and respect this. We’re actually looking for the same thing. And, as it turns out, frequently the same guy. We now work as a team, sharing prospective leads.

I’ve committed to 6 months on the Ignorital, actually looking forward to the smiley faces, but also not quite ready to face the idea of 50-something spinsterhood head on.

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My Punk Rocker, and Some Notes on Jake

I had a date last night with a punk rocker. He fronts a band whose name brings to mind an eastern European metal group. His band is actually named after one of the Golden Girls, camouflaged by an umlaut. And despite his bouncer façade, he is the sweetest guy who ever lived. Everything about him is soft, from his body to his touch to his lips to his lilting, almost lispy voice. He busies himself with craft projects and cooking, listens to public radio and answers simple questions with long rambling narratives that steer this way and that, taking his incredulous listener on unexpected journeys that somehow, and long after you’ve forgotten what the original question was, wind back to an answer. A completely delightful date and a firecracker of a lover.

Meanwhile, I can’t seem to shake Jake out of my head. I resist the urge to blurt out that I love him already–hesitant not because I’m unsure of my feelings, and, despite evidence to the contrary (like everything I say), I am aware that love can’t be projected onto someone, that it does need time to develop on its own. But still, I feel, and I feel. My hesitation, and indeed my interest, stem from knowing him so keenly already. I’ve looked at his films, read one of his screenplays, his poetry. In the few works that he’s chosen to share with me, the older man who most passionately captures his engagement is aloof, distant, unavailable. His most vulnerable and articulate character is brutally abused by a younger man, a tragic victim of his expressed desires.

Terry Gross interviewed Woody Allen a few years ago, inquiring about the relation between his private life and his art. He seemed oblivious, firmly denying any connection. In his films, Allen’s characters each show such a keen sense of self, questioning and examining their motivations and desires articulately and passionately. I just wasn’t buying it. Jake’s characters are similarly introspective, yet Jake seems to know where he is in his art in a way that Allen won’t admit to. Jake has spoken of his fears of vulnerability and commitment, but I haven’t heard about or experienced much of his passions. I see them in his art, and thus a sort of ennui has settled over me, as my pitches to be considered an object of his desire seem so artfully deflected.

In early Renaissance painting, the saints are given blank expressions, so that the penitent may project his or her emotions onto the canvas. Jake’s beauty and guardedness present a complex medium onto which I’ve concentrated a lot of perhaps unrealistic romantic aspirations. I honestly don’t know yet what can happen off canvas, but the picture I see beguiles and entrances me.

The Dating Game continues…

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One Little Indian

It all happened so fast. I had just settled into bed when he texted, said he’d be over in 45 minutes. He arrived, we met, we kissed, he said “Let’s get naked,” and then after an hour and several emissions, he was gone.

I was very nervous, almost trembling as I met him at the door. His dark hair was shiny, like superhero shiny. His round dark eyes looked me up and down as he followed me up the stairs. He beamed this incredible smile at me and said in sumptuously Indian-accented english, “You are really quite handsome. Many guys don’t look like their pictures, but you look better.”

We’d been chatting and teasing each other for months, but somehow the time to meet had never been right. He’s married. His husband doesn’t know that his lover has what I assume are a profusion of playmates. He says they’re happily married, just that they don’t engage in intimate relations anymore. Or, I wanted to add, honesty. But hey, whatever works, I’m not one to judge. Or usually participate in any sort of deception… but there he was, this beautiful Indian man, almost all butt, out of which sprouted soft furry legs and arms and a mini Tom Selleck mustache and a smile that almost glowed in the dark. In short, pushing a lot of buttons.

I’m generally a very nervous person when it comes to intimate relations, preferring to engage in them only after lengthy courtship rituals and detailed examination of all previous relationship experience and film knowledge. And there I was, really enjoying getting to know this delightful man when the “Let’s get naked” comment came. I didn’t even have time to respond, he was suddenly in my bedroom, pulling items from his little bag and arranging them in a row on my nightstand: a bottle of lubricant, a single condom, a bottle of poppers (“I hope you don’t mind?”), and a small towel. He asked about my HIV status, if I was on PreP. He ripped off my clothes and glued his eyes to my central nether region, glued pretty much for the entire experience. When he asked if he could slip his prophylactic on me, I asked if he minded if I used my own, which, I didn’t say, are more comfortable and I know where they’ve been. With a sweet smile he said,  “I would prefer if you would use mine, please.” I remembered a demonstration by my friend Kimberly in college, putting one over her whole head, and said with a smile “Sure!”

When kissing, he tasted of Manny, a flavor sensation from 32 years ago. I just wanted to stay there and be in that kiss, to savor the memories from that first taste of my great love, now dead for 24 years. I really didn’t have time to stay in those reveries, for my Indian had a plan, and this plan included twisting and positioning me for his maximum pleasure. I made no objection to his orchestration, I was on a roller coaster careening through an amusement park of sensation. Suddenly, immediately after his second finale, he jumped up, beamed that lovely smile at me and said “I have to get back to my dog,” threw on his clothes, packed up his items from my dresser, hugged me, and was gone.

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That Danged Spice of Life Again

I’m in love. At this point, it’s just the idea of love that I love, but the idea has settled with such theoretical precision on the person of one particular person that I shall momentarily give in to the rush of hormonal giddiness and dance through the fields singing, with Mitzi Gaynor’s voice, of Kansas in August, blueberry pie, and the Fourth of July.

I met him online, let’s call him Jake. He’s an artist, a filmmaker, beautiful–beautiful in the sense of coming very close to a kind of Bob Hoskins perfection: furry, stocky, but tall, handsome, a bearded and bespectacled balding Gary Cooper playing Bob Hoskins, and with a deep baritone voice accented with a slight stoner giggle. Over Burmese food we talked of the current state of queer cinema, our art, the magic of “Moonlight…” We talked of our respective commitment issues–his avoidance of anything remotely resembling commitment and my enthusiastic embrace of committing my life to an eternal single but ever elusive love. We found mutual ground by committing to spending at least the rest of the evening together and proceeded to explore the horizontal possibilities of love in the afternoon.

The right guy just doesn’t come around every day. This guy’s the right guy. Well, except in the many ways that he isn’t. We clicked so instantly and easily. Can he not see this? Or does he click like this with everybody? I can see us having fun for the rest of our lives, I see us traveling and making art together, I see our lovemaking constantly evolving and deepening, I see looking into his eyes every morning…

But, alas, I’m not for him. It’s not so much that I’m not the right one for him, he just can’t deal with the idea of only one of me, for, like Tony Soprano, he likes a nice variety of… well, now that Donald Trump has denigrated the word, I just can’t bring myself to say it. He just likes a nice variety.