The Dating Game: More Virtual Loving, Married Man #1 Bails, “Masculine” Potential

My Man in Ohio is back on the radar. My Married Man came down with a cold, or cold feet, and left me all dressed up and nowhere to go, so after watching Scoop with Big Chrissy, I chatted with my Ohio Man for a few hours. Here’s how the conversation went…

I’d say something complimentary and brash, but with enough self-depracation to avoid being thought of as aggressive.

There’d be this really long pause.

Someone else would message me.

I’d respond.

There’d be another really long pause.

I’d get a message from someone else.

Click click click click click click.

Another message from a new guy.

“No, I only use water-soluble products–it’s my name, ‘CHRIS KOmater.'”

Pause.

My Man in Ohio’s response would finally come through.

I’d respond.

That was one hour.

I did meet someone new and local over the course of our conversation, a potential real live future contestant on the Dating Game! He’s the most handsome guy on the internet. Really, I’m not kidding. I’ve seen him online and could never imagine sending him a greeting, much less receiving one from him. His masculinity is the kind that you just assume carries a little tag that says “No fats, no femmes.” (I fall screaming into the latter category.) His message was succinct: “Woof!” I wrote back, “Are you woofing at me?” Well, not only did he let me know that I was indeed the object of his woof, he meticulously described how he was going to stimulate every pleasure center on my body. Stunned, my fingers typed out indecencies the likes of which I haven’t even tested yet, but my fantasies flowed freely, drenching his screen and mine in copious and inspired fiery prose.

And god bless the daddy who’s got his own…

Tomorrow it’s out to dinner with Emily…

Dolls, the Dating Game: #13, MM#1

It’s my yard so I will try hard To welcome friends I’ve yet to know! Oh, I’ll plant my own tree!
My!
Own!
Tree!
And I!
(pause)
Will!
(pause)
Make!
(pause)
It!
(pause)
Grow!

Dean and Doug and Big Chrissy came over for dinner and The Valley of the Dolls Saturday night. Earlier Dean received a favorable but unsurprisingly not-cogent review in Our City’s Paper by Our Big Art Critic. Mr. Critic wrote that, for Dean, “Thinking seems entirely subsidiary to process.” In reality, Dean’s mastery of technique allows him to articulate his ideas through a labor-intensive process that mirrors the complexity of his thinking. Our Critic is smart enough–I should say, learned enough–but he lacks an ability to connect with, or even see, what artists are doing or saying. He consistently compares art to work that’s already been written about–ideas that have already been developed by other writers. If he can’t think of a comparison, he writes stupid shit like that. I love Peter Schjeldahl, who writes for the New Yorker. Not only is he incredibly smart, but he consistently brings his personal experience and biases to everything he writes about.

Anyway, I want my dolls!!!! What a fun movie. I’ve been humming the theme song for days and twirling around my house in a technicolor-infused holiday spirit.

Bachelor #13 has made a few more guest appearances at Casa Coco. I showed him Uncut, not the John Greyson movie, but the stupid Italian penis exploitation-fest. For the entire film, our headless hero tries to get laid, while the camera stays trained on his pee-pee. It’s a nice enough peep to watch, especially his balls going up and down with his changes in vocal intonation. He’s stuck in bed following an accident in which he mangles his leg–his girlfriend is presumed dead, and the police are suspicious–yet his thoughts are solely on getting laid, and every attempt is waylaid in often hilarious situations–and that’s the joy of the film. Unfortunately, it takes a few silly turns that make it one of the dumbest movies I’ve seen. Plus he’s a muff trimmer, and you all know how I feel about that.

Speaking of muff-trimming, #13 spoke favorably of the film’s star’s “haircut,” much to my dismay. Clip your hair below the neck and suffer the consequences, bachelors.

Oddly, I seem to have most in common with Married Man #1. I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow night. He quotes Pinter, reads, knows stuff…

When did I get, where did I
Why am I lost as a lamb
When will I know, where will I
How will I learn who I am
Is this a dream, am I here, where are you
Tell me, when will I know, how will I know
When will I know why?
When will I know why…

The Dating Game: Married Man #1, Bachelor #13

The Dating Game has taken an unexpected turn in a new direction; Casual Intimate Relations! I’ve met and gone out with a few sweet men since my last entry on the subject, but have been keeping my pearl beyond all price safely tucked away. Well, mostly. And except for this last Sunday…

I had placed a new personal ad on a site called Daddy Something-or-other, not imagining that all these cute guys would be hitting me up calling me “Daddy!” I took my ad down after a few days. There were either old dudes who wanted me to wear diapers, or young guys wanting–and needing, I might add–to be spanked. But I did meet one guy, exactly my age. “This bowl of porridge was JUST right…” Big floopy ears, adorable smile, soft pink skin. Keep in mind, I advertise myself as someone interested in almost everything, except for network TV and, importantly, one-night stands, but my profile has a picture of me shirtless in a come-take-me-now kind of slumped availability, so my carefully edited profile, and desired relationship orientation, is frequently overlooked. He didn’t seem to notice or care, told me he has a partner, and was very frank about his need for intimacy outside of his relationship. I warmed to his openness immediately, and even though I seek the Grail, decided to take him up on his kind offer to perform a lapdance for me at his place.

I told him that I’m not one to hop in the sack with a stranger, that I needed some other kind of connection. Is it okay if we just meet for tea and chat? He was very agreeable, and invited me over for Sunday morning tea. I got to his place and he ushered me into the bedroom, dimly lit by candle, condoms and lube on his nightstand, neatly folded towel on the edge of the bed. “I thought we’d lie on the bed and get to know each other. First.” Hmmmm, my idea of tea hadn’t been articulated clearly enough, obviously, but he did get the gist of my wish–to make a connection that might lead to physical intimacy, rather than the other way around. We talked and talked and talked, about San Francisco writers, history, art, his lover, school… I really liked him! He didn’t seem like a predatory power bottom at all, but someone genuinely interested in relating intimately in a full way. We connected. Four visits to the orgasmatron later, I left in a cloud of delicious aromas and an occasional gust of latex.

So there are beautiful people out there who can relate to me authentically and completely, within more limited parameters than I’m used to, and not push me out of my Bachelor ‘Hood. I’ve been liberated from the shackles of biological determinism!

Later that day…
I didn’t even have time to take a shower before Lucky Bachelor #13 showed up at my doorstep and whisked me away for goose and venison at Suppenküche. He had called me up the night before while I was in my bubble bath drinking a martini to announce that he had broken up with his boyfriend and would love to pick up where we had left off. Well, we had met only once, a memorable afternoon chat a few months back, but I was still in the process of prying myself from Bachelor #8, and by the time I gave him a second call he had met someone else and was even learning Hebrew and going to Synagogue with the guy! Of course, I was insanely jealous–just my type to dive in headfirst and so enthusiastically.

So anyway, at dinner we talked of how much we had learned from our respective doomed affairs, how we were each dating, enjoying being relatively young and single and free, blah blah blah. He told me that one reason he left his boyfriend was because his boyfriend was overdeveloped in a specific area that made relating to that region too great a challenge. He was afraid I’d think he was shallow, and I quickly calmed him by saying that of course he would feel bad about not being able to please his partner, and I understood how upsetting that would be for him. I nervously asked him “well, just how overdeveloped was he?” but didn’t get a response that I could really wrap myself around. I wanted to tell him that Bob had the exact same problem when we were first together, but with hard work and determination… But I didn’t. I put my coat on my lap, a faint whiff of latex wafted to my nose and I smiled.

The Dating Game, Maybe, and Anselm Kiefer

So I’m not too sure if last night was a date, but I had a great time a’dining and a’movie-ing with a great fellow. I even got a great kiss at the end of the night, which, for me anyway, was enough to qualify the evening as a bona fide Dating Game episode. We watched Brick, a contemporary noir film set in a southern California high school. The narrative, dialogue, and plot development were straight from Cain and Chandler, and played out in a very straightforward way, with no mannerist or stylistic flourishes, or Shyamalan-esque twists of the genre, other than kids enacting a classic noir tale. A very smart and fun movie.

This morning I woke to an amusing note from a fellow on Bear411: “Let’s keep in touch. We have some similar interests!” I took a gander at his profile… “Sleazy top bear pig into watersports, smokesex, three-ways, groups…” Smokesex? I can’t even imagine what that could be.

A few days ago Dean Smith and I, along with husbear Doug, and niece Jamie, visited the Anselm Kiefer show at SFMoMA. It’s a very powerful show, very beautifully installed, with lots of room to take in these very large works. They’re not just large physically, each is endowed with a heaviness of mood and content. The compositions are fairly uncomplicated, filled with magnificent brush work and dynamic materials. Despite the historical themes, Kiefer is always present as an artist, interpreter, and participant. They’re both grand and personal—like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing in your shower. We had an amazing dinner afterwards at Cafe Claude, which has become our little restaurant. I had a salad of greens, potatoes, bacon, and fois gras. Clothespin on aorta! This was followed by a seared tuna chunk swimming in a fabulous sauce of mushroom, cream, bacon again, and something else that overwhelmed the fish but was so delicious I forgot about the fish and just enjoyed it as a medium for carrying the sauce to my mouth. Liquid chocolate cake for dessert. This week’s food theme will be cruciferous and high-fiber.

Tonight I have a date with a gardener bear dude. Oh wait, I forgot to tell you about the little dude at Tower Market yesterday morning. He walked past me as I was making my cheese selection, and stared at me so intensely that I blushed and giggled, embarrassed that I could be the object of such a gaze. He was somehow in all the aisles that I ended up in, that same hungry look, the same blush and giggle, until I finally just walked up to him,

“Hi, I’m Chris.”

“Hey, I’m Chris, too! Are you single?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“—-.”

“—-.”

I’m frankly not sure what would have been different if I had responded that I was also unavailable, but I gave him my card, anyway. He’s so cute! The kind of cute that hurts. And topples presidencies.

**Brring**

**Brring**

So that was Gardener Bear Dude, canceling. He’s sick. What to do tonight?

The adventure continues…

Excuses and Recommendations

Although my life seems very full of activity and experience, I haven’t felt much of an urge to document it lately. Frankly, this single crap is the bunk. No matter what I tell myself, or you, I loathe the serenity that has settled on my home–everything orderly and predictable, low calorie, high fiber. Productive. I’d shuck it all for a furry femme-bear slobbering on my pillow right now.

In two days I turn 41. Prostate enlargement and cholesterol loom ominously over my psychic life.

Go see Dean Smith and Gay Outlaw’s show at Paule Anglim. Dean’s obsessively beautiful lines and liquid circles on paper play wonderfully against Gay’s pocked and probed 3-dimensional surfaces. Get thee to the gallery.

Of the billion movies that I’ve seen since my last entry, I highly recommend I Am a Sex Addict, by local filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, an exhilaratingly funny, inventive, and often squeamish comedy about the filmmaker’s obsession with prostitutes; and À Nos Amours, Sandrine Bonnaire’s extraordinary film debut as a 15 year old girl exploring sex and avoiding love in a story that seems drawn from real life, defying all cinematic narrative convention or cliche.

Summertime pictures

Here we are, leaves falling all around us, the last of the heirloom tomatoes ripening on our window sills… I thought I’d share some photos of a few of my summer-time adventures as we head into the fall and tanlines start to fade.

The summer began with a solo show at Meridian Gallery, “Spring,” in conjunction with a solo show of Dean Smith’s recent films. I previewed some new work, 10 color photos of plum blossoms, hung in a single row. I paired them with a grid of testicles,Symplegades, named after the clashing rocks that Jason and the Argonauts had to navigate in their quest for the Golden Fleece. 12 tiny speakers hung on an advacent wall, each played the sound of a man breathing, like flowers sprouting from the gallery floor, boy bees doing their thing. The dating game was in full swing, love was in the air…

For the 4th of July, I drove up the coast with Bachelor #8, staying in a former boys’ school about 20 miles north of Jenner. Isolated, just the sounds of peacocks–what is that sound called, that “pk-KAW pk-KAW?”–and the ocean… a Quinn Martin production of a contemporary gothic romance…

D and I visited his mom in Reno, taking side trips to Virginia City–a Silver Era town preserved in aspic and salt-water taffy–and Carson City for the museum, which has great dioramas and presentations about the history of the area, and an actual fake mine below the museum!

I mentioned my trip to Alabama and Florida to hang and sweat with the folks and sibs. I didn’t tell you about the annual ball-races that are held in my sister, Carol’s pool, of which I am reigning champion. The goal is to ride a pilates ball as far as one can across the pool without falling off. I’ve made it 3/4 of the way with my deceptively spastic frantic leg and arm waving technique. It’s not as easy as I make it look.

My little brother Mark turned 40 last month. We’re now the same age until November. He was like my twin growing up, we were in the same grade and everything. His buddies threw a big party that went until 6 in the morning, a rollicking affair with a “roast” by his friends, dancing and much merrymaking. Here we are as kids, the sheik and the clown, and below are pictures of us at 40…

Orsi italiani and Dad has open heart surgery

There are 23 pages–23! pages!–of Italian men, 12 per page, online right now, in Rome, on BearWWW, waiting for me. Hairy men, wearing european designer underwear or those speedo-y bathing suits that husky Americans wouldn’t be caught dead in! “Arrivederci, San Francisco! Ciao, orsi italiani!”

I was writing the above when my sister called to say that my dad had not passed his heart “stress” test. Indeed, they discovered that three of his arteries had major blockages (100%, 99%, 80%). He’s in surgery now. I started the Dewey Defeats Truman LJ post, but scrapped it in favor of the moment. All of my siblings are rushing to the south to help mom with dad’s recovery, with Paul coordinating everything. My brother Mark’s 40th birthday was Saturday night, and I made a dvd slide show of “40 Years of Mark,” which has put all of us in a weepy sentimental state. I’ll be flying out around the 24th and staying for a week, Nurse Bunny Coco. Cross you fingers that all goes well with the surgery!

My journal is starting to resemble a magazine from the 1940’s–have you seen those layouts with grisly war images on one side and sweater girls on the opposite page? I promise to have more sweater girl images soon, perhaps a pictorial summer wrap up?

Hugs!

The Dating Game: Virtual Reality

There’s this little cub in France who’s chatting me up on BearWWW, in another tab on Safari. He tells me he’s into older chubby guys, but that I’m cute and he’d make an exception for me. He has an older lover. I inquire about the older lover. Delicately. He tells me that he wants to snuggle. I say that I’d love to snuggle with him. And his lover. I imagine his older lover. They’re in France. I think of the coffee and brioche we’ll have in bed the next morning, the cheese. He goes on to describe this thing he’d do to me. I describe that thing I’d do to him. He describes this other thing he’d do to me. I describe that other thing I’d do to him. Where is this going? Isn’t it lunch time in France? He asks if he can chat with me again, that I’m very imaginative. Flattered, I say yes, you handsome little cub. Someone’s daddy bear in France needs me.

The Dating Game: I Wake Up

The dream began at a garden party. Richard was excited about his new book coming out, the garden was beautiful, shaded and lush, a nice breeze. On the drive home, I pulled over and a woman tried to get in and steal my wallet. I wrestled with her wordlessly, pushing her out and locking the doors, one at a time. I recognized her, but couldn’t remember if we knew each other… wasn’t she a performer of some sort? Alone in the car, I realized suddenly, again, that Manny hadn’t died, that his death had been staged. I scrambled to find my Palm Pilot to call Frank, the executor of Manny’s estate, and ask again if I could see him. Evidently I’d been trying unsuccessfully to see him for years. At this point I suppose I started to wake, and a taste of how dementia is going to be settled on me. I was very confused about whether or not Manny had actually died, not able to understand why he wouldn’t want to see me, why this elaborate hoax had been perpetrated. Then I remembered kissing his stone cold hard as stone body.

I’ve been crying the last half hour, unable to close my eyes tight enough to seal them from the darkness, which scares me. I’m alone, Manny won’t come back to take care of me, or protect me from the darkness. Outside there are robbers trying to get into the house, monsters under the bed. I’ll get things done, I’ll learn to be happy by myself, I’ll go to openings, I’ll take care of myself. Why don’t I go on a vacation–by myself?

I don’t want to. I don’t want to not have soft furry flesh pressed against mine when I wake up like this, a soft reassuring voice to let me know that I’m not alone, and alive. I won’t get used to this. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

It’s beautiful here now, so quiet at this time of morning. The heady scent of the last of the summer’s brugmansia florescence is wafting into my bedroom.

Reno, schlemiel, schlimazel, ready for next chapter of The Dating Game

I took D to Reno to visit his mom a few weeks ago. D’s got new glasses and had me trim his beard into a goatee. He looks like a european film director. The countryside and mountains are beautiful, the air thin, dry and cool. The casinos are just awful. Everybody smokes and sits in front of these machines pushing buttons over and over as their money disappears. There are no windows or clocks to remind you of how long you’ve been there, and all the big casinos are connected with overhead bridges that completely separate you from reality, nature and fresh air. It reminded me of something that Jesus would have flipped out over if Reno had made it into the New Testament–overturning slot machines, rolling roulette wheels over the hacking heathen.

Bachelor #8 got really mad at me because I bailed on going to his friends’ wedding in Boston. My brother Mark’s 40th birthday shindig is that weekend and I just can’t miss it. He said that if I really cared for him I’d go with him. I told him that’s co-dependent language and a perhaps more useful response would be, “I’m disappointed and angry, so give me a little time, I want to respect your reasons, which I’m having a hard time understanding.”

It’s apparent that we’re not going to make it as a couple. Not that it ever wasn’t, it’s just getting harder and harder to not acknowledge.

Over a recent lunch, he drove the wooden stake into the barely-pumping heart of our co-demented love. He refused to acknowledge that my feelings were open for discussion, going so far as to say that I was selfish. Me. I didn’t talk to him after that. He claims that he will have only fond memories of our time together. He should, since everything about our relationship was geared towards that–his happiness. Goodbye, Bachelor #8, I’m sorry our lighthearted screwball comedy took such a convoluted plot turn.

Bachelor #8 really did take me on a wild ride, with me hanging on trying to keep us on some track that took my interests into account, but I never felt that I could wrestle away the reins from my furry friend in the driver’s seat. I told you all along, Dear Reader, right, where this was headed? So this isn’t, like, a surprise?

Hop on the Love Train! Catch me on the rebound! I’m vulnerable! And needy!