Category: The Dating Game

Posted on

‘at’s Amore

Only 8 more months to be fluent in Italian. It is truly such a sensual, musical, and thrilling language. Even banal words. When I say “nineteen” in Italian, “di-cia-NO-ve,” I imagine whispering it into Marcello Mastroianni’s ear right before he nibbles my t-shirt off.

Meanwhile, Spring seems to have settled in again, and I’m enjoying the scent of the blooming daphne wafting into my bedroom from the garden, and all this brightness. Tomorrow, instead of sun and scent, Emily and I are going to see The Conformist at noon, so I’m trying to breathe in as much as possible today.

My most recent attempt to break-up with BC didn’t get very far. We worked out a list of things we need to work on together and I promised not to break up with him for a while. Are all relationships such work? I remember when I went out with So-‘n-so, and concluded that he’d never find his mate because he had such a narrow idea of what he wanted and no one would be able to conform to such specificity. I sometimes think, when I’m in the breaking up mood, that I, too, have these demanding criteria for my mate and am not going to struggle anymore, and am going to hop in the car and find Mr. Perfect Pants right now! After 8 to 12 hours I realize how much we actually have grown together and that I’d rather not be alone like So-‘n-so, turn the car around, and try to make a go of it again.

So round and round we go, in a spin, loving that spin we’re in.

How do you say that in Italian?

Posted on

Sugarpuss O’Shea, Copyrights, Vacuum Pumps

I’ve discovered peer-sharing. I’ve been downloading these ridiculously expensive language tapes, and have no regrets about my infringement of the intellectual property rights of these new-age robber barons. I’m mortified because I accidentally purchased a course recently on e-bay, with “Buy-it-Now,” where they give you, like, 5 opportunities to make sure you’re sure of your purchase, a course for Italian speakers wishing to learn English. Great. After much pleading, the company reluctantly agreed to send me the 3rd course instead–I thought I was buying the 2nd–of the actual Italian language course for English speakers wishing to learn Italian, but at a highly inflated price, so I’ve been trying to download Course I and II for free, to make up for the difference. I also intend to digitize all of the Lessons and then immediately re-sell the course on e-bay once it actually arrives. When I browse the hosts of the Lessons that I need on this peer-sharing program, I find much pornography, and I’m usually, like, 10th in line to download a 28mb file from someone on dialup, so the process has been agonizingly slow. “Need more sources,” “Waiting for Busy Hosts,” “Waiting in Line, Postition 10.” We really are at the cusp of a completely new relation to originality and authorship, aren’t we? Or maybe all of you are already there?

I saw Ball of Fire the other night, which is one of the great screwball comedies of the 40’s. Gangster moll Sugarpuss O’Shea, played by Barbara Stanwyck, stumbles into the Victorian household of a bunch of sequestered professors working on an encyclopedia for a rich benefactor. They’re almost through with their project–at the letter “S.” Sugarpuss needs to lay low for a while because her lover, Dana Andrews, is under suspicion of murder and she’s being hunted down by the law because of a pair of jammies that she bought him, so she convinces the professors that her presence is essential in their study of “slang.” She spouts off many gems, including “I’ll have a jav, no calf,” and “..redder than the Daily Worker, and just as sore!” and works her way into all of their hearts, but also the pants of professor Gary Cooper, the youngster of the bunch, and of course they end up together at the end of the film and Dana Andrews gets tossed in jail through the intelligence of the professors–brains against brawn. And there’s a fabulous scene with Gene Krupa delicately playing drums with a pair of wooden matches, “Matchstick boogie.” You must see this film.

Next month Stanwyck’s ultimate pre-code masterpiece Baby Face is being released on dvd, and the world will continue spinning.

Staying in my bedroom, alone, and with no snoring to drown out the sounds of my downstairs neighbor, I haven’t been able to sleep since taking my break from BC (only 18 hours together instead of 24). The guy in the bedroom downstairs has a new device, the purpose of which still eludes me, but it makes this loud vacuum-cleaner sound followed fairly quickly by a muffled orgasmic aspiration. When his boyfriend stays over, there’s the sound of a very loud TV (until well past midnight !), and so much conversation that I imagine the very specific void that the vacuum cleaner fills in their once house-shaking sex life. Someone, get me a white noise machine.

Posted on

Jumping and Pushing

So BC has been pushing our relationship a certain way for some time now. “Go ahead. Jump. Jump and it will all be over..” Well, here goes. To paraphrase Klaus Nomi, I want to be a si-i-ngle man… Didn’t Carrie Bradshaw say it takes a week for every year you’ve been with a guy to get over the guy? Does this take into account how long the relationship actually worked, or just proximity? I feel liberated and relieved by this decision. We haven’t been able to construct a meaningful collaboration as lovers, but as friends, we’ve formed what I see is a pretty powerful and loving bond. I feel like I used to after Confession–clean, wary of the next misstep, but fully aware that I’m weak and am going to fall again. But not for a mammal outside of my own family and genus. Please.

So it looks like it’s finally going to happen. Alone at last. It only took 5 years, thousands of dollars in therapy, 4 broken hearts, 2 trips to Europe, 435 journal entries on the subject, and a blue ultra-suede Milo Baughman knock-off lounger. I expect that future updates to this journal will contain notes about my new projects and travels, and my chaste version of the single girl’s life, No Sex in the City. I’ll finally learn italian, read the book that Philip loaned to me in December, finish my movie, see every weird movie that only Emily or Davide will see with me, and sleep diagonally across the bed. Please let it last for more than a day this time. Don’t ask me out! I want to be alone! Take me to a movie, or dinner, but nowhere remotely romantic or dimly lit, and not without someone you find more irresistibly attractive. I’m totally looking forward to internet porn, candlelit dinners for one, passing out under the kitchen table, and lots and lots of movies…

A few hours pass.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, before I even post this, Chris and I are back in our comfy nest of indecision and clingy-ness. There seems to be just too much there there to just walk away, as was the plan when I started penning this post this morning. I offered that we study italian together tonight and take a few days to think about my leaping and his shoving.

I hate to leave you with a cliffhanger, but stay tuned for the next exciting adventures of Chris & Chris…

Posted on

Dave, BC, LC, Meltdowns, Slight Betrayals

If you people haven’t seen Dave’s comedy sketch group, Uphill Both Ways yet, then get thee to the Shelton Theater for a really good laugh.  BC and I went last night, after trying to undo the latest technological meltdown at Casa Coco–this time we deleted all of the files on my surviving computer. Chris was an absolute angel to throw so much time and energy at the problem. As my last backup was in May, 2003, all of my work and data from the past year have been lost. Some good news is that I’m able to use my laptop if I never close or jiggle it. Oh well… so Dave was a big fly in one hilarious sketch about the 1-minute life span of a fly, and luckily Big Chris and I had empty seats next to us to flop around in, for we were laughing like giggling sea lions, flopping all over the front row. The guy sitting a few seats to my right, looking suspiciously like a friend of the family, turned out to be a fellow blogger, Shnitzmi.  Perhaps because Chris and I had just seen Six Feet Under a few moments before, the Brenda Chenowith in me responded a little too vaguely to his inquiry about our relationship status. BC seemed unphased. Hopefully I won’t be given 2 more opportunities to deny my savior. Stay tuned for next week’s show…

Posted on

Advice Needed

Dear Sexperts,

Kissing BC is like kissing a big cat. His mouth is invariably dry, and while this may provide some interesting friction during some activities, when kissing, his salivatory disfunction is a challenge for which my own glands can’t compensate. Please help. Do any of you have advice on ways that I could introduce the moisture necessary for a less feline experience?

Thanks,
Licked in San Francisco

Posted on

When Loves Goes Wrong

When love goes wrong, nothing goes right… This one thing I know…

Dorothy Shaw and Lorelei Lee were right. Love went wrong, and nothing’s been right. The sun don’t beam, the moon don’t shine, the tide don’t ebb and flow. Bearbot after bearbot. Okay it’s only been 8 months since Bob and I split up for good, but really, we’re talking about 5,760 hours. Have you ever had to babysit a one-year old? for 6 hours? It’s like that, every time you look at the clock, “Ooh, 9 more minutes have passed, only 351 more.” Tick tock tick tock. The blues all gather ’round you, and day is dark as night. A man ain’t fit to live with, and a woman’s a sorry sight.

Do gentlemen prefer graying dirty blondes with beards and goofy glasses?

Evidently one particular gentleman does, and has, despite being swept under the rug a few times, left out in the rain, his advances alternately embraced and shunned. Perhaps you’ve read Coco’s Yo-Yo Guide to Love? He’s lost 100 pounds for me, supported me through all of my breakups with his temporary and significantly less intelligent replacements, loves my son and my family, is adventurous and fun, witty, creative and brilliant in that kind of unstable way that just melts my butter, and is a passionate and considerate lover to boot.

What the hell have I been doing?

Love isn’t somewhere else, I can’t melt those frozen bearsicle hearts, the key to what I’ve been wanting and waiting for has been hanging on my keychain for 4 years already, the key to 5 G****view Way. I don’t know how not to be as corny as Kansas in August when it comes to love, Bob’s the postmodernist, I’m Anita Loos and Busby Berkeley’s love child, in love with love, a spinning kaleidoscopic cliche of a thousand kicking legs, and I’m finally ready to say, YES, let’s give it a go. So take this down in black and white. After all, even educated fleas do it. No entanglements, no others, no obstacles except each other, just you and me, Big and Little, Chris and Chris, let’s see what happens. Oh what is this sudden jolt, I feel like a frightened colt, hit by a thunderbolt…

sound of needle scratching across hokey soundtrack

Okay, there are serious issues on both sides, so I’m not all stardust and moonbeams. I’ve spent the past week thinking about what my boundaries are, or should be, behavior patterns of the past that will not be welcomed or tolerated, communication issues that we need to address, and proposed conflict resolution strategies. This sounds like I’m waging war and not love, n’est ce pas?

meanwhile, back to our regularly scheduled romance…

Posted on

Nair For Men

The HORROR! A product that removes hair??? Sample packets of Nair for Men, a product that I couldn’t have imagined, were being passed out at the Gay Parade on Sunday. I tried to tackle one woman passing them out, “Stop her, don’t take any! Save the fur!!” I yelled… Here’s me and Big Chris and Little Dave at the parade, and Dave and me smushing the sinister sample packets…

So my current state of mind these days seems to be characterized by a queazy mix of vulnerability and eagerness. My eagerness is for intimacy, sexual and emotional, to bond with another, to share my love of life and experience. I have so much passion and intensity that’s been dammed up for such a long time that keeping the floodgates even partially closed is almost impossible. I’m the Hoover dam ready to burst on top of you. Kiss me and hold your breath, babe.

Man, has the dating scene changed over the past 11 years! Sex seems to be this exchange akin to a handshake. I can’t even read the expressions of love. I had a very intense sexual encounter the other night, the kind where if I had taken viagra we would have had to take me to the hospital according to the warnings in the commercials about four hour erections… Well, during this exchange, my partner looked at me at one point very intensely, for a long time. It was so intimate, he was so open–I couldn’t even handle it, looking away quickly, almost afraid of falling into him, afraid of his openness, not ready myself to be so vulnerable. The next afternoon, after sleeping only an hour, jumping up and down stairs and singing loudly every Cole Porter song about the delight and deliriousness of love, he informed me that the exchange meant something very different to him, that he’s not ready for anything more than friendship, and while he enjoyed our time together, I need to be aware of his limitations. And so I picked up my little heart which had shot out of my chest like a balloon in those Looney Tunes cartoons, bouncing off of the ceiling and walls, the shriveled bloody little lump landing at me feet, and stuffed it back down my throat and have been gasping for breath ever since.

Sure, I’ll try to be his friend, and I’ll respect his boundaries, and perhaps something will develop. Perhaps it won’t. But how could I have misread him so completely? Now here’s where we get into my scorpio-ness–am I trying to make something happen when he’s told me all-too clearly that he’s not interested? I can’t relate to the head’s domination of the heart, or even understand it, but I’m trying to accept it, and certainly not challenge it.

And I’m not going to play Plato’s “lover” and “beloved.”

So my head tells me…

HEAD: “Chris, he’s created this structure, defining who he is and what he’s ready for–he told you this in every piece of e-mail and conversation that you’ve had, why are you expecting more? Get a grip.”

Then my heart pushes my head off and kicks it down Collingwood Street, and says…

HEART: “No Chris, he’s just not in touch with what he’s really feeling–YOU felt it, you did, he’ll come around. Just play it cool and see what happens…”

At least they’re both telling me to play it cool.

So what do I do? I’m going to try to accept his boundaries, be honest about what I’m ready to pursue, and see what happens. This is the point where Big Chris is going to tell me that I’m deceiving myself, that I should walk away, I already know enough, etc,–but I can’t. “Hey boy, crazy boy, just play it cool, boy, real cool… da da da, da da da, da da da, da da da… snap, snap, snap, pshaw!”

Posted on

Arrividerci

I’m going to take a little break, but will be back soon. Not much happening beside the disintegration of my home and marriage, and I need to process in a less public venue. Little Chrissy Phoenix will arise in his new 20th Street Mod-Pad soon enough, so have a great summer and I’ll see you in the waiting room.

Here’s some Paella Chrissiana for you to munch on…

Posted on

A House Divided

Today Bob and I divided our things. It went really well, with both of us fairly content with the results, and no heated debates about anything. I’m sorry to say goodbye to some beloved works of art, but I know they’ll be well-loved in their new home–or sold for a very good price to support Bob in his infirmity, whenever that becomes necessary, and hopefully not for a long time. I ended up giving Bob three pieces of mine, but he wouldn’t budge an inch on the empire chaise, on which I would look quite fabulous being fed grapes and such. He wants to sell it, and I said, “I just gave you $8,000 worth of art, could we consider it a trade?” To which he replied, “You gave me those pieces…” …”So give me the chaise!” We’ll see, no big deal, and we had fun arguing our points. I helped pack his pottery collection, most of which I had given to him as gifts for birthdays or whatever, and just broke down on sealing the box. He was on the phone at this point, in another room, and I was sitting in the living room, looking at the remains of our broken home, our cozy little environment that we spent so much time creating together. This is so not easy for me, transition. But didn’t I tell you that already? Like, again and again? Do you get the picture yet? I’m no longer excited about the unknown. I want regular sex and tea and the New York Times in bed every morning, with a big hairy man snoring away right there next to me. Big Chrissy took me out to dinner, bless him, to try to cheer me up, and then spilled a glass of ice water on my crotch, the second glass of water spilled on me by a date in the past few months–I found it charming, and refreshing, as I was burning up in the place, anyway. I know this transition will be over soon, oh I hope so, and I’ll be back to some kind of regular something. Like sex. Lots of it. But didn’t I say that already? Hello?? Call me!

Posted on

Laptop Batteries Out of Juice

I just watched Shakespeare In Love, which I last tried to watch on one of the nights when D and I ended our affair a few years ago, but we ended up boinking, as one mostly does in an affair, so I never got to finish the film. I really liked it. Actually I drank a bottle of wine with it, and so I’m all giggly and weepy. Manny and I rented Misery the weekend he died, but we never got to watch it, either. I mean, he died. Regardless, I paid something like $50 to Superstar when I finally returned the video, after the burial. I told them, “My lover died, I didn’t get to see it.”  They charged me anyway. I will watch that movie someday. The narrrative of my love life is linked to films–mostly missed. Between lovers, I am getting caught up on the mound of Italian neo-realist, French New Wave, and Korean horror films that I wouldn’t subject anyone else to but myself. Will my next love share my taste in film? Or lack thereof? I was really nervous about my presentation at the library. It was actually fun, and I pulled it off, mostly, although in my nervousness I forgot Piero della Francesca’s name, and had to skip over most of the reason behind my series Ideal City because of it. Speaking of narrative, man, am I having a rough time with Bob’s complete exploitation of his experience with me. I remember him scribbling notes on his yellow pads while I was still post-orgasmic groggy, but I never imagined that he was taking notes about what had just transpired. The more I read of his latest book, the more resentful and angry I become, primarily because of his partial absence from the relationship and simultaneous denial of responsibility for its end. The details are fun, though. Today Peter and Luis and I went to see the Deco show at the Legion, and they confirmed my anger–Bob’s wonderful and brilliant, but he’s a cold distant fish and I am a live hot tomato. A successful entree we do not make. I’ve told him he could have everything, pretty much, I just want him to leave. I don’t want to be as materialistic as he is, although I do get to keep the Wormley sofa, if only because it’s too big to fit in his house. I’m now just another character in his autobiographical fiction–Ed, Denny, Kathy, Bruce, Nayland, L, Mack, etc… I wonder if he believes the fiction that he’s contextualized us all in? I don’t remember what the theme of this paragraph was supposed to be, but I’m sleepy, so forgive my lack of coherence and structural integrity and sleepum tightums.