If you’d like to be a contestant on The Dating Game, send a self-addressed stamped envelope with your weight and Fur Factor to: Coco, General Delivery, San Francisco. I’ll get back to you with rendezvous specifics and my free Instruction Booklet, Navigating Coco’s 7 Erogenous Zones: What Every Chubby Person with a Beard Should Know. Better yet, just respond to this post with appropriate fervor and butter-melting woo-pitching.
The Dating Game: #10 and the Kama Sutra
I was right about #10 and the tantric sex. Omigod. He even did dishes. I had to pry him off and toss him out of the house Saturday morning, though, to nap and make way for #8, with whom I was later to see the play, A Number at ACT. The play was great, and as if tailor made for my frantic dating schedule, only an hour long. #8 is growing on me. We still don’t have much in common. He’s fat and bald and hairy and he makes me happy. I’m thinking that that might be enough for now.
Does anybody live in Portland? I have some work in a show there that’s opening this week, called grey|area, curated by celebutante, TJ Norris, at the Guestroom Gallery, 128 NE Russell, Portland, Oregon. The opening reception is Friday June 2, from 6-9pm. Go and tell me about it!
The Dating Game: Coco’s Opening, Meet Bachelor #10
The opening last night was fun. I ended up adding an extra work, a little quadrant of Dean Smith as a sort of flower/sphincter/target. It provided some balance and focus on the tiny wall as you exit, and a nice segue into Dean’s work. Thank you, everybody, for coming out! Tell your friends!
So five of the guys that I’ve seen lately showed up–numbers 1, 2, 4, and 8–and the latest dream date, Mr. 10. 4 and 10 had dinner with me, Philip, Dean, and his friend, Dean, afterwards, at Cafe Bastille. I’m at a strange point in this “game,” where I’ve met many interesting men, each of whom appeals to me in different ways. I see all these different paths available–do I hunker down with the Cowardly Lion and bad TV? Travel the world with the sexy newcomer? Be part of a boho artist couple? And then there’s #9, whom I hardly know but really like being around. This kind of dating is new to me–the calm and open kind. I don’t feel ready to commit yet to any one in particular, even for “serious” dating. I told Philip on the way home last night that I feel pulled by the growing attachments, afraid of hurting these very sweet men, but also afraid of jumping into something too quickly. Baby steps. (I immediately free-associated Baby Face, the pre-code classic with Barbara Stanwyck as the babe who sleeps her way to the top, stepping over and discarding the men she longer needs. Focus, Coco–baby steps, the basement…)
So keep your belt fastened, Coco, and remain seated for the duration of the flight.
By the way, there is a lot of whimsy in how I present this in my journal. I’ve chosen to number the guys only because I’d rather not mention names at this point, plus it lets me be more intimate and detailed, and I can indulge my fantasies without getting in too much trouble.
So Mr. 10 is like one of those guys that you see when you travel and think, “If only he lived in San Francisco and were gay…” Well, he IS gay, and he DOES live in San Francisco, and he’s as bright and charming as you thought–in a “rock flute” or “cool jazz” kind of way. His card says he’s a “guide.” I just think “tantric sex.”
The Dating Game: P_
With #8 out of town, and a bit of acting out around the house, I called P_ and asked if he’d like to get together. “Come over for dinner,” he said. Great, a fabulous meal with a fabulous friend, thank you Oh Mighty Isis for taking me away from it all. Well, he made an amazing dinner: a soup of beans, nettles, and artichokes; roasted chicken served over oak-leaf-lettuce; and a ricotta cheesecake and cherries for dessert. I shouldn’t say that the dinner was amazing, it was a work of culinary and visual art, one of the most memorable meals of my life, the evening itself to unfold in cinematic dimensions.
We watched Two for the Road, which he thought that I had recommended to him at some point, which I don’t remember, but we agreed on the lack of compelling dialogue and a mutual aversion to Albert Finney’s character–but Audrey’s clothes! Worth the ride. After the movie, and during dessert, he came over to my side of the table and kissed me, just a little peck, but with something behind it that hadn’t been yet expressed, well, besides in a jokey or teasing context, but there it was, this delicate little tap. And the walls came tumbling down. I was alternately incredibly excited and intensely scared–this guy’s one of my best friends–is this going to ruin the intimacy that we already share? Is it just an extension of it that I shouldn’t be so anxious about? What about bachelors number 8 through 10? He knows too much! While trying to read the confusing messages ping-ponging across my brain, D called. I was late coming home and he was worried. Did anyone see Love, Actually? Remember the Laura Linney character with the mentally ill brother? Bingo. P_ made me pull my socks on and go home.
Now, it’s that time in the movie when everything would seem to be in falling into place. Our hero has perused a healthy cross section of eligible San Francisco inamorati… and bam! the best friend, the one that the audience has been rooting for all along, the one slinking in the shadows but always available, always sympathetic, the one with the most in common, suddenly grabs our hero and plants one on him. Curtains close, The End, don’t forget your umbrella.
The Dating Game: #4, #9, #10 Coming Soon!
I’m not sure yet if he’d be comfortable being considered Bachelor #9, but #9 came over for dinner and a movie Thursday night. We quickly ditched the movie idea and settled into a very comfy tête-à-tête and post-dinner mini snuggle-pet. #9 is a very fine fellow, with an easy likable manner, and warm. He has cute dimples and is going to change the world, an inch at a time. (He said it, not me.) I’m convinced, and eager to do my part.
But, Sunday I visited Emily’s studio, I’ll tell you that much. Emily’s the best. Her work is so strong and so real and so intoxicatingly good. It makes me so happy to see this stuff that tumbles so easily from her brain directly onto the canvas, or paper, or whatever she’s spilling herself onto. Anyway, we hopped over to Bachelor #4’s in Oakland, for brunch with 4 and his childhood friend, Lori, whom I actually knew but hadn’t seen in 10 or so years since I was a resident at the Villa Montalvo when she was the artist residency coordinator. She has a cute Moroccan hubbie, and is planning to set up a residency program in Morocco some day! Sign me up, and bring on the dancing boys! From there we attended the artist-led walk-through of the MFA show at the UC Berkeley Art Museum. Of course, 4 was the best, the most articulate, charming and intelligent.
Please stay tuned for the next installment of Chris Komater’s The Dating Game. What happens when Bachelor #8 returns to town. Does #9 get asked on a second date? We meet #10… And what wacky antics ensue when they ALL show up at Coco’s opening on Thursday???
The Dating Game: #8 Revelations, etc…
So #8 Überbear isn’t a slut after all. The other night, after watching Eros, and just after the Wong Kar-Wai part–fabulous by the way, using sentiment, cliche, and even melodrama to create erotic tension–I called up #8 to say nighty night. Well, somehow we got to talking about our impressions of each other and how those impressions have been feeding certain behavior patterns. He thought that he’s been withholding sexually (remember the log trick?) and I thought I’ve been withholding the responsibility of my pleasure from him–his perceived lack of interest in my pleasure actually a sensitivity to my distance, a distance based on my mistaken belief that he was the slut of all time, but actually his interest in a monogamous relationship goes beyond curiosity, he actually wants it, but I’ve been afraid to fall into his hands, hands that I thought weren’t able to hold on for very long–but get this, we’re like, ON THE SAME PAGE.
What a wacky pair!
There is a complication, in the person of an out-of-towner who will soon be visiting, and whose affections predate mine, so Good Luck #8, call me if and when the coast is clear.
Whew.
Let’s all take a deep breath and move on to Bachelor #9.
Although… back to Bachelor #8, now I’m all kind of excited. There doesn’t seem to be much there there, but I feel a warm tingley-ness when I think of him now. BC is bent on exposing his dark underbelly, but I just want to bury my face in it. Could I love someone who’s just centered and communicative and makes me happy and excited but who has no interest in mid-20th century lighting or non-narrative film?
Last night Dave, BC, and D joined me and Little Reesey for dinner. Reese seemed very amused that my dating life was the subject of so much heated dinner conversation, and even more amused by D’s overt and extended pass at poor Little Dave. Dave behaved admirably, simultaneously deflecting and honoring D’s misguided amorous advances.
The Dating Game: Art School Confidential, #4 and #8 again
#4 and I went to see Art School Confidential tonight. We both wondered what people who hadn’t been to art school would think of it. We agreed that to us, all of the insightful and accurate observations about art school intrigued and delighted us more than the plot, but to others, the siting of the story in art school might be secondary to considerations of things like plot and narrative. People coming out seemed to dislike it pretty intensely. “I want my money back,” someone pleaded as The End came up on the screen, and three couples each chanted “Horrible” as they shuffled out. In San Francisco!
Well, I thought it was great, with that kind of purposely bad acting that Todd Solondz and his generation have woven into their bleak abstractions of reality. I love that kind of artificiality in film. It’s different from the John Waters School of bad acting–which seems an extension of camp–drawing our attention to the inherent fakeness of movies.
We had a fantabulous dinner at House of Nanking afterwards, as usual asking Mr. Pokerface to take care of us with three dazzling dishes of his choice, including a dish of calamari strips lightly fried and served in a coconut milk, vinegar and hot oil sauce. Omigod. We walked back to #4’s usual parking spot in the city, off of 6th Street near the Chronicle. There are always parking places there because of the broken bottles, needles, piss, and crack ho’s. I don’t think the Meter Maids even go there.
We seem to be getting along smashingly, #4 and I, although I’m still not feeling anything related to a spark, more like a warm fuzzy feeling that most likely is a friendly warm fuzzy feeling and not a lovey dovey warm fuzzy feeling.
#8 spent the night again last night, the hottest night of the year. I do not do well in heat. When I see sweaty couples making soupy love in movies set in Vietnam, I get a rash. When I have to actually be in that kind of heat, and have sex in it, I just want to get the whole uncomfortable thing over with and push him over to his side of the bed as fast as possible. Plus I had to watch Charmed. “Now, why are they hurling fireballs at each other again, honey?” I pleaded with him to give up Desperate Housewives so that we could watch The Sopranos, and chat about the warped duality at the core of the Cosa Nostra’s sense of morality. “But ‘leading a good life’ excludes on-the-clock murder and extortion, honey.”
The Dating Game: Sunday Morning in Bed with Nuttin’ But My Chrissy
Did anyone else see The Giant Spider Invasion? Since the 4th grade, I’ve been haunted by a scene where the drunken wife, who gets blamed by her no-goodnick farmer husband for all the spiderwebs suddenly appearing around the house, makes a shake in a blender filled with spiders. My nightmare came true this morning. Sipping some OJ in bed, I glanced into my glass to see a GIANT SPIDER squirming in the bottom of the glass! AAAAAAhhhhh! When I poured it out, it seemed like half of its legs were missing. AAAAAAhhhhh! EEEEEEEwwwww! AAAAAAhhhhh! Will I be climbing walls tomorrow? Fighting crime?
Speaking of movies, Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton did Jerome’s paintings in Art School Confindential! Anyone who’s been to my house has seen her portrait of me “Kissin’ Bunny,” and in the old days might remember the portrait that she made of Bob in black and white makeup as my Genet-inspired Prisoner of Love. I haven’t seen the movie yet (going with #4 on Monday), but she says they really got the art school experience right on. Yay Caitlin!
Back to the spider experience. Why is it that these things–spider, snakes, mice–make grown men, well, this grown man, behave like someone about to be knifed 50 times in a horror film? I scream, really, like scream, an involuntary blood curdling hands thrown in the air 5-alarm scream. Spiders are all over my garden and house, but as soon as they get in my orange juice, they become something else, a threat so deeply frightening that some inner alarm goes off and my head pops off like in a Warner Brothers cartoon. Did you see that Spongebob about “Wormy”? The one where Sandy goes on vacation and leaves Spongebob and Patrick to watch her little friend, a caterpillar that she calls “Wormy?” After a day of fun with their new friend, Patrick and Spongebob come back to find the glass bottle that Wormy was in broken, and they see a butterfly flit by. Suddenly cut to an extreme video closeup of the butterfly’s real face–“A monster!! It ate wormy!!!”–something so terrifying to them and the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom that the whole town ends up in flames as the citizens run in terror from the delicate little butterfly.
The sun is shining, the tea is steeping, and lover man, oh where can you be?
The Dating Game: Another Sat’day Night
Today’s Dating Game Update is brought to you by the Number 4, and the Number 8.
#4 came over for dinner on Thursday, and Busby Berkeley Night. I played Ruby Keeler to his Dick Powell–that is, Ruby at the beginning of Footlight Parade, before she got the haircut and took off the goofy glasses and gave in to Dick Powell’s delicate woo-pitching. He gave me a sweet peck as he left, then pulled me in harder for another, which I deflected demurely, channeling Ruby’s you’re-going-to-have-to-work-a-little-harder-to-get-in-these-stockings attitude. I don’t want to lose sight of his brain this early on, which is the part that I’m lusting after most urgently.
Meanwhile, #8 had significantly less in between his pitching and my catching the following night. I picked him up at work, and after a swift, but elegant dinner, took the ferry to Larskpur and eventually to his bubbling cauldron of chlorine. He makes these wonderful sounds that drive me crazy. Wild. Instead of “uh-huh,” he says, “uh-yeah.” Not as two syllables, though, really fast, like a cough, only excited. “Uh-yeah.”
BC and I checked out the Calder show at SFMoMA this afternoon, and the surrealist photography show. One piece in particular of Calder’s stood out, called “Tightrope,” of a wire strung between two abstract conical forms, with little loops and squiggles of wire balancing delicately across the span. It was him at his best–spare, with just a suggestion of form. The wires on the span seemed like they’d blow right off if anyone walked by too quickly, and created a circus-like tension of imminent collapse. The photo show had many fabulous iconic Man Ray photos, but way too many of everybody else. Edit, girl. Please.
Philip and I joined up later for dinner at Dosa, and bumped into Philip Kaufman. The director. “Phil, this is Chris. Chris, Phil,” blah blah blah, “Enjoy your dinner.” “Wait… that was The Right Stuff Henry and June Unbearable Lightness of Being Kaufman Phil?!!” “Yes,” Philip said matter-of-factly. Philip hides his glamour well, but I’m happy to be around when it slips out. After dinner we watched the thoroughly enjoyable Match Point at the Coco Monoplex, interrupted briefly by the fireworks outside. Woody Allen makes me squirm these days. The critics all seem to want to examine his work independent of his personal life, but really, doesn’t it seem like his last few films have been so much about latent Soon Yi guilt?
I work and I play and think I’m enjoying being in the world by myself, engaging with people and ideas, but really, I just want a plump furry man in my bed. Who worships me. And moves. Without me having to flip him over all the time. And has a place in Rome. And reads. And cries. And sends me little notes. And…
The Dating Game: Dinner With a Friend and More Notes on #8
Dean came over for dinner last night. We had gnocchi, and a salad of greens tossed with grapefruit, avocado, and olive oil–just perfect–and prosecco, wine, and limoncello. I filled him in on the Dating Game, which took up the bulk of our conversation–and is going to probably take up the bulk of this post–and the challenges of living with my mentally ill ward, still residing downstairs in my studio. I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about the latest with him yet, but I will tell you that I’ve come to grasp the true meaning of compassion, and the limits of my capacity to stay calm under extreme and daily manipulation.
It’s been fun playing the Dating Game, but #8 has thrown me off balance a bit. I’m conscious of hormones kicking in and taking over, some inner caveman bonking my outer Po-Mo and shaking his club over my head in conquest of rationality.
You’re not only fascinated by the car wreck, you want to be in it! Flee the scene, Coco, flee!
So Rational Coco is obviously flummoxed by Caveman Coco’s insistence on… on… on what? I’m not even sure. I’ve sort of been in the driver’s seat with #8’s predecessors, could it be that his distance and lack of focus is somehow attractive? Is this just about conquest? Intertia? Why isn’t there some equal and opposite bachelor exerting pressure to slow down? Have I become one of those horrid people who thinks he can project desire and substance on an empty vessel?
No, Coco, no! You’re not that guy! You’re just having what we like to call “a co-dependent moment.” Relax and it’ll pass. We have about 5 more minutes, so could we wrap this up?
CAVEMAN COCO [shakes club over head]: Caveman Coco want #8 to take down internet ad and love only Coco.
RATIONAL COCO: Are you bananas, Caveman Coco? That’s who he is! You can’t change that, and despite what he says about wanting to be in a relationship, he’s a child of 70’s Gay Liberation and he’ll never give up free love for a secure future and only one pussy.
CAVEMAN COCO: Caveman Coco make #8 love him with club.
RATIONAL COCO: Put. The. Club. Down.