Category: The Dating Game

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Makropulos, Clomiphene, and San Francisco’s Finest

Dean W and I saw Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Case last week at the SF Opera.  It’s a stunning opera—visually, conceptually and musically—about the meaninglessness of a life without end, without enduring love.

This weekend I went a-gallery-hopping with Emily and Big Chrissy.  Nothing really exciting, except for a fascinating show by Ishan Clemenco at NOMA Gallery of chalk drawings on light filters and film.  Ephemeral and delicate, their existence impossible to imagine outside of the show—just for us.  Oh, and Bruno Fazzolari’s show at Jancar Jones, a small grouping of paintings with colorful squiggly gestures and jiggly lines that almost coalesce into something recognizable, and a perfume that when sprayed at Emily, coalesced into too much association.  And stayed with us the rest of the afternoon.  Bravo, what a great show.

Earlier in the day, I was told by my then current paramour that he was feeling depressed.  I promised to return as soon as I could to check in on him, and that we would have the evening to spend together to get to what was going on.  After galleries, I ran up to his place to check in on him, and in his place found used condoms and condom wrappers scattered about.  Actually, they weren’t scattered about—not by him, anyway, and not to begin with—they were in the trash, which I had dumped out on the floor before tossing them onto his bed.  Then I called and left a message on his voicemail, an angry but concise admonition saying I looked forward to hearing about the DNA I had just encountered.  See you at 6, honey.

I went on to Chris J’s 70th birthday party, with Big Chrissy and my sister, June.  Chris lives in an environment that seems dreamed up by Armistead Maupin.  From a south-of-Market alley, you pass through a low-ceilinged walkway into a lush garden, with overgrown tropical plants and a giant redwood tree, a koi pond and bridge, antique asian garden ornamentation, lanterns, and oversized mirrors that extend the garden into impossible space.  Hovering over one side of the garden, above the entryway, is a quaint little Victorian cottage.  To the left is a showroom featuring asian and european antiques.  The showroom is a cavernous space, a giant fireplace on one side, flanked by 2nd floor balconies overlooking the main gallery, packed with polychromed crucifixes from 16th century Genoa, antique phalluses, masks, japanese pottery…  Chris lives in an apartment adjacent to the main gallery, stylishly decorated to match the asian sensibility on display next door.  A magical space.  I mingled with the glamoratti of the San Francisco landscaping world, as well as old buddies that I hadn’t seen in decades, all of us middle-aged and beyond, and looking it with our graying whiskers and expanding waistlines.  Except for Michael Brown, who looks exactly like he did when we tossed dough at Marcello’s Pizza 25 years ago.

When I got home, he was there, my depressed paramour, in my bed. He claimed that he didn’t know how the condoms got there. The used condoms in his studio apartment.  Where he lives alone. We’d been through this before, so I calmly, no, hysterically and yes, okay, histrionically, asked him to leave, that I’d finally had enough.  Get out. I left the bedroom to cool off and when I came back he was in the kitchen, trying to cut his wrists with the wrong side of the knife.  I rolled my eyes and asked for the knife.

“I took your Vicodin,” he said.

Where? How many? I had a prescription that my oral surgeon gave me last week following a wisdom tooth removal. I checked them, they seemed all there.

“Oh, is that your Vicodin? I took something from the cabinet.” I went to the cabinet and noticed the empty bottle.  You took my Clomiphene??  Do you know how expensive that is?  How many?

“7. What’s Clomiphene?”

I ignored the question.  I don’t know if that’s a lethal dose, I have to call 911.  I called.  “What’s Clomiphene?”  the operator asked.

It’s a fertility treatment for women.

“Do you have a roommate who wants to get pregnant?”

No, it’s mine.  I use it because my testosterone level was low.

“A fertility treatment for women?  What does this have to do with your testosterone level?”

It works this way in men, increasing their testosterone level.

“Oh, that’s great.  We’re sending someone out immediately.  Is he suicidal?”

Are you suicidal?

“No, I just want to sleep.”

No, he says he was just trying to sleep, but earlier he was depressed and then I went to his house and found these used condoms and confronted him about them.  I think he’s been cheating on me.

“I’d say you’re probably right.  Well, the paramedics will be there any minute.  Stay with me, let know if he looks drowsy.”  There was a knock at the door.  6 police officers came up the stairs. 6 incredibly handsome burly pink-faced men in black.

“What’s the problem?”

I batted my eyes. He took an overdose of Clomiphene. I pointed at  him.

“What’s Clomiphene?”

It’s a fertility treatment for women, induces ovulation.

“Why did he take it?”

He thought it was Vicodin.

“Why do you have it?”

My testosterone level was low, it stimulates testosterone production in men, even though it wasn’t designed to do this.  My doctor is at the forefront of studying this drug’s effect on testosterone levels.

“How is that working for you?”

Fine, thanks.  I blushed.  The paramedics then arrived, 6 more guys in my little bedroom.  6 more handsome burly lifesavers. “What’s going on?  What did he take?” one of them asked.

He took 7 Clomiphene.

“What’s Clomiphene?”

“Evidently, it induces ovulation in women,” the first police officer replied.

“Who does it belong to?”

“Him.”  All 12 guys looked at me.  Before they opened their mouths to ask, I blurted, It also increases the production of testosterone in men.  My testosterone level was low.  It’s an alternative to taking testosterone shots, inducing the body to produce it naturally.  But could we really stop talking about my testosterone level?  Is he going to die?  Do you have to pump his stomach?

“That’s so interesting,” one paramedic said, “I haven’t heard of Clomiphene being used for low testosterone levels.”

“Yea,” said another.  A third cleared his throat, then turned to my suicidal bed guest.  “Are you suicidal?”

“No, I just want to sleep.”

Earlier he was depressed and then I went to his house and found these used condoms and confronted him about them.  I think he’s been cheating on me.

“I’d say that’s a good guess,” he snickered at me under his breath.  Turning to the furry little man who was supposed to love me and only me forever, he said “Okay, let’s get you to the hospital.”

And away they went.

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Down for the count

I told my Foreign Correspondent last night that I needed to not hear from him for a while. What I would be hearing right now is all about his exploits with other members of his sub-species who share a need for a kind of physical interaction devoid of any kind of emotional entanglements—the kinds of entanglements that were the basis of our relationship. I don’t want to hear about it.

I haven’t written about this past year yet, as it’s been a bumpy one. I guess I should start filling you in by saying that we finally broke up, as breaking up seemed the only direction this relationship ever seemed headed in. “Separated” is how we’re defining it. I told him that we should spend some time seeing other people, learning about ourselves… when really, I just wanted to set him free to openly do all the things that he had already been doing behind my back, and to separate myself from it.

He’s been a pretty clumsy fabricator, so when he finally confessed to all of his indiscretions, he was merely confirming what I knew already but hadn’t been able to squeeze out of him. There was a simultaneous sense of release—I wasn’t crazy for assuming that the condoms on the floor weren’t part of some complicated home theatrical production after all!—and a great sense of failure.

I’m not mad at him, as I don’t think he did anything that isn’t in his nature. I suppose I’m a little disappointed in myself, for not embracing it, and for trying to impose something on him that his actions didn’t support. I thought I could sway him towards monogamy, toward something he claimed to desire. In the end, my siren’s song fell on plugged ears. His nature punched my nature in the face, and I don’t know how long it’ll be before I’m up and ready for more.

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In the Woods

My Foreign Corresondent and I spent a romantic weekend in Guerneville last weekend. We stayed at the Woods, which was like staying on a porn set. The pool is supposed to be clothing optional, but seemed more like nudity required. We obliged. Mon petit, having come from a completely repressive society, drops his shorts at any opportunity. Our pool buddies at one point bid us a temporary adieu and made their way up to their room, where they left the door open, beckoning visitors to join in their post-pool activities. Our host wandered in at one point, but we stayed huddled by the pool.

We had an incredible meal at Eloise, a French restaurant near Sebastopol. Plate after plate of inventive flavorful sensations were set down in front of us by a staff that seemed even more excited than we. If not for the limitations of stomach space, I would have worked my way through the entire menu, every dish so masterfully constructed to tantalize and seduce our senses.

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Que sera sera

And so, my dream man isn’t quite the man of my dreams, after all.  He still looks like him, though.  He’s someone who dreams—of someone like me, of a life like mine.  His history, his relation to his sexuality, his relationships, his openness… we share little common experience.  He assures me that we want the same things, so I proceed, cautiously, but hopefully, positively, happily, into a future with him.  I love him, I want this to work.  I’m so happy that he’s opened up as much as he has, and I’m girding my loins for whatever else comes tumbling my way.  I’ve grown calm, let go of specific expectations, and am open to exploring what’s possible with this man who has stepped out of the romantic fog and into the light of day.  I still love what I see, the clarity just giving focus to different possible paths, with different obstacles.  I find that I’m still squinting, though, this lucidity a bit jarring.  I felt more at ease in my romantic haze.

It’s been a challenge to get comfortable, to transition from the smooth ride of a few months ago, and over and past the bumps of the past few weeks.  I’m so settled, so established, love the only thing missing from an otherwise very full life.  He doesn’t have a home, a job, friends.  He’s moving to a new country, leaving friends and family behind, so much to establish—a complete identity in fact.  I have to be patient.  He needs me to be supportive, needs me to be patient.  I want him to need me, to depend on me.  I had envisioned being with someone my age (he’s 16 years my junior), someone with a similar sense of establishment and comfort.  I so don’t want to be one of those old needy guys—“What, you have to work late again?”—and this situation seems to present a scenario in which my needs may be subsumed by his, if only in volume.

I can hear my Chorus of Therapists, “Coco, only an independent YOU will be able to join with an independent HIM to make a healthy union.  Focus on yourself, find happiness within.”  Of course I scoff at those SINGLE bald dudes looking at me over their little horn-rim glasses and yell back, “Haven’t you people been listening to me??  I want to be codependent, to be lost in the melding of two beautiful minds and sweaty bodies!  Stop with the independent crap already, you guys are killing me!  I can’t be alone, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.  I’m dying alone, dying! Why can’t you see that?  Could you talk to him for a change?  Why aren’t you all bugging him?  Just fucking tell him to smother me with love, kisses, his touch, constant affection, copious orgasms, 100 emails a day, an incessant and nonstop presence…  It’s so easy to make me happy!  I know what I want, to be SMOTHERED by love, oozing into and out of every orifice.  I can’t do this, I can’t pleasure myself—he has to, just tell him!  And throw in what a great lover I am, how sensitive and caring and talented and hung!  Do something for your $175/hour!!!”

Que sera sera.

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Falling, falling, falling

I really understand the term “falling” in love.  I’m without ground, my breath constantly being taken away, my body tumbling from a cliff, occasionally smashing into a rocky outcrop, landing momentarily on a soft branch, feeling like I’m going to hit bottom and go splat at any second, Wile E. Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon.

I’ve fallen in love with this guy on the other side of the planet.  If you can call it that, we haven’t even met.  Falling, that’s what I’m doing, grasping for anything to hold onto.  I watched him sleep last week, via Skype, for 8 hours.  I watched him toss and turn, invited Bob to watch the butt-filled screen for a bit while we ate dinner to his cute little snores, wept over his occasionally tented undies, imagined my head on his gently heaving chest, his heartbeat in my ear…

I can’t think of anything else.  If I wake and there’s no email from him, I panic.

We’re experiencing some bumps on our road to virtual bliss—inconsistencies that I’ve found hard to overlook and have brought up for discussion.  As I’m discovering, he initially presented to me this person that he wanted to be.  He’s in advertising.  I sensed that there was something behind the façade, that perfection out of sync with something in his character.  I pried my way into the cracks, and he has, little by little, opened up, but his desire is for rebranding.  It’s not possible to reposition one’s identity, to forget, not possible to put these monsters under the bed without them coming out from time to time.  I can’t know him without getting to know these monsters.  They’re going to be living under my bed, too.

What can I do?  How can I stay calm?  How can I give him space?  We’re several hemispheres apart already!

A relationship devoid of physical contact means a relationship splayed out in my very fertile imagination, my needs addressed solely through my fingers clicking across a keyboard.  Every nerve cell in my body is screaming for attention, aching for stimuli, sending frantic messages nonstop to my brain for relief…  Au secours! My brain is trying so hard to work through all these signals, so impossible to evade or to satisfy, or to even consider locating elsewhere.  And yet, this is all I have right now, frantic and intense feelings of love and despair and longing and anguish and desire, hunger, all attached to something that I can’t touch.

Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil, her still-beautiful sad sack mask of a face encircled in smoke, she puffs, “You a mess, honey.”

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Meanwhile, Back to my Butt

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my butt, hasn’t it? Well, since my procedure in early February and the complications that followed, I’ve had another procedure, to remove the tissue that formed after one complication exploded. Sheesh. Yesterday the doctor pulled the stitches out. I was so nervous and sweaty going in, that when he asked me to pull my cheeks apart they kept slipping out of my grasp, so he had to kind of elbow his way in there.

And thus, my life since February, aside from going to New York a few weeks ago, has pretty much been about fiber, and not much else. Oh, and love. It’s awfully convenient during this convalescence to have a boyfriend on the other side of the planet. There’s no pressure to actually use any part of my body other than my fingers, which type away countless passionate emails to my sweet furry foreigner.

Having never met, there’s this part of me, the part that has seen maybe too many episodes of Oprah, that wonders if this is all too good to be true. I imagine myself on The Saddest Episode of Oprah, the one about women who sign over their mutual funds to serial polygamists, my friend Susan reading my missives to the far corners of the earth, illustrating the purity of my love and gullibility, tears streaming down my face, the audience sniffing, Oprah carefully dabbing a tear so as not to smudge her mascara.

But then I immediately think that the reason for this absurd paranoia is that I’ve found my total fantasy man, and it’s just not part of what I had planned, or imagined. I’ve never seen this episode of Oprah. I didn’t believe someone existed, or could exist, who not only conforms to every fantasy I’ve ever had, but who could love me so completely, to already pledge himself so fully to me, I mean without even meeting. This kind of love is just so easy. What will I write about now? I usually channel Raymond Chandler in my relationships, not Danielle Steele. Where’s the struggle? Where’s the heartache? The pain? The convoluted and almost impossible to follow narrative? There’s only bliss, now and forever. Our happiness is so entwined. We have envisioned ourselves as such a part of the other’s future that it’s hard for us to be in the present, for the present can only be incomplete without each other. If this is codependence, then I should have been looking for a codependent relationship all this time.

Speaking of Michael Jackson, I’m so fascinated by the contents of Neverland Ranch that are being auctioned off–or were being auctioned off. I’m so intrigued by Michael’s taste. I’ve been flipping though the catalog, was thinking of bidding on some things that look like they were made by the same people who make Jeff Koons’ sculptures. While there are many fine decorative arts pieces, most of the fine art is compelling in the absence of any aesthetic or material refinement. Like what a child with a lot of money would think of as fancy.

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Coco Invasion: My Foreign Correspondent Speaks!

This is my first time to write on my boyfriend’s blog.

The story is that i was very lonely, aching for something i don’t have the most; a real person.

I said to myself, well why not check the worst tool on earth; online profiles. I uploaded some photos for me, thinking that there will be impossible chance to find someone who fits my profile. Then i went through the profiles, stared 4 minutes on broad shoulders, crisp eyes, and tremendous perfection. I wrote some words, desperate words, for such perfection is hard to be left without a lifetime companion to take care of and to cherish.

The weirdness is that i found a reply, a sweet message that shows quality, perfect written language, intellectuality and a soft tone.

And oh my Lord it was a killer!

I found what is called love it all came facile and easy. A love of a lifetime grew and embraced me in a disregard of pain. Oh Chris came to my life a man beyond all expectations. A reason to live for.

He invades me all of me and control my heart until i can’t breathe whenever i listen to his melodic voice. A love that can’t be found in this century. A challenge of two gay people in the time of the war. An open poem that will never end except with our own life time. A man that is once in a lifetime. A deep inside agony whenever he leaves my sight or the time takes few minutes away from his smile.

Whoever knows Chris sit in his chair that he has just left and feel his presence in its warmth and tell me how the ease and comfort is; because i miss him so much.

Each time i see Chris is a new life for me. Now it is 124 days since Chris invaded my leftovers embraced them and made me what i am now …. A happy man.

Who ever saw Chris in the street stop him and ask him for the time or anything and tell me did he smile to you? How it feels when he smiles? Isn’t it he the most handsome guy in the whole world.

If you work in a restaurant that Chris eats at it, collect the ashes of air that touched his beard and blow them to me. As i miss his smell in my pillows and my my shoulders.

Oh Chris i can’t stop loving you, who taught you to be what you are? What are you made of? Oh baby you wasted me but i love it. You made me moan for you.

Chris thank you.

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Book Group, Shame

Emily relocated her book group to my house last night, so I was finally able to attend. We discussed a recent issue of Cabinet devoted to the theme of shame. Most of the discussion centered around shame and guilt; the distinction between the two, their manifestations, depictions and expressions. I was eager to talk about nudity and shame, but Emily kept steering us to the death of capitalism. Like she always does.

My Foreign Correspondent and I have become quite entranced with each other. We have yet to meet, as he’s still on another continent, but of the nearly 7 billion people to choose from, I can imagine loving no other. Suddenly everything that was out of sync with the men I’ve been dating is apparent: they weren’t he. He’s happy and sweet and smart and beautiful. My sense of irony is gone. Sincerity and cliché have settled over me. Meaning is different, it suddenly has location and focus. I’m dancing en pointe through a Botticelli landscape strewn with flowers and prancing putti, my pudgy paramour reaching to me from the clouds, my naked and suddenly slim again quattrocento body warmed by the light emanating from his divine stubbled face.

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Trouble in the Middle East, Porn Theater

I received a most peculiar call this morning, from a guy in Tel Aviv who, while searching for pictures of the bear porn überstar Jack Radcliffe, somehow came across me and decided that I was the one for him. Jack Radcliffe… or me? I’d go with Jack, honey.

I told my other middle eastern admirer, who was rather ruffled by the perceived competition. So I go for months without a date, and suddenly my love life is the cause of a new conflict in the Middle East. If only the other conflicts there could be solved with copious amounts of sex.

And speaking of copious amounts of sex, check out Jacques Nolot’s Porn Theater, an amazing film that I saw with Dean Smith the other night. Inside the theater, the camera, from the perspective of the screen, slowly pans back and forth, providing glimpses of these often wordless seductions between the men in the theater and the drag queens who circle endlessly around the auditorium.  Outside the theater, another kind of seduction is going on between the middle-aged female cashier who’s seen it all, the young projectionist, and an older gay man who alternates between engaging with them and the men inside.  So you see people connecting sexually on the inside of the theater through a very specific pared-down almost theatrical and very graphic interaction, then you see the three at the box office connecting in a different way, deeply, through language and the intimacy of shared experience.  The film ends with the three walking away together for a drink, but we know they’re going to end up sharing more, the perfect ending to this X-rated fairy tale.