Category: Family

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My Little Brother’s Big Wedding

My little brother Markie and his girlfriend, Keith, finally tied the knot yesterday. I was a groomsman. Warren was there, my old buddy from high school–well actually Mark’s old buddy and one of my greatest high school crushes. When I was applying for art schools I made up a story that I needed some nudes for my portfolio and convinced him to pose for me. I’ve since made a career of this ploy… So, my first close ups. God I wish I still had them–one of his testicles is now gone. Forever. I’ll tell you about Warren later… The wedding took place in a small garden in the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma County. The service was lovely, with a heavy emphasis on community. My family was all blubbery. The dinner was yummy and the wine not bad for 2.99 a bottle. We threw rosemary and lavender at the couple. The wedding party smelled of potpourri all evening. Keith’s mother, Jo (“Jo Momma”), had a little party in her suite at the Flamingo Hotel later. We drank, ate cake, and popped in and out of the hottub and pool ’til the wee hours. Mark and Keith have a nice gaggle of gay friends, including Frida B, a seven foot tall gender illusionist, and the ever-bouncy Andrew, one of Keith’s more full-figured bridesmaids and my vote for Miss Congeniality.

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A Wedding, Silent Japanese Films, Peter, Lee, Emily and I Want My Beard Back

My family is in town for my little brother Mark’s wedding, all of them, and they’re all staying with me, on the floor, in my bed, my studio… Carol and Sue are putting the finishing touches on Keith’s (the bride’s) dress, 80 buttons, Carol’s design–a low-back silk/satin sheath with a bateau neckline, lace appliqué and pearls, fish-tail hem, detachable silk organza sweep train. It’s stunning. Carol’s designs remind me of Adrian’s–typically cut on the bias and form fitting. She has a line of clothes called “Retreads” using vintage designs and made from vintage table cloths, wool blankets and such.

I saw three really interesting silent films at the PFA on Sunday. The films were presented with the live accompaniment of a Japanese benshi, one of the few remaining practitioners in Japan. Benshi provided simultaneous spoken interpretations of the dialogue and plot of silent films during screenings in the silent film era, which lasted in Japan well through the 1930’s. It was an art form that was integrated into the experience of silent film, similar to the narrator in Kabuki. The benshi, Midori Sawato, has been performing for 30 years, and although I didn’t understand much of what she said, her tonal inflections and mimicry of the dialogue really brought the images to life. My friend Earl Jackson, who speaks fluent Japanese, told me that she not only related interpretations of the dialog and scenario, but also offered her own interpretations of and speculations about manners, language and style.

One of the films was a very early film by Ozu, I Was Born, But…, made before he developed his signature visual style of single long shots, compositions with no closeups, panning, or tracking shots. The film is about how two young boys learn about the hierarchy of the Japanese social structure, coming to terms with who has power in the adult world and why, while realizing also that it doesn’t apply to them yet, and working it while they still can. There was also a short about a man who is killed by his lover’s father and then comes back as a ghost to successfully woo her. He returns to the world of the living only after trying and failing quite comically to get comfortable in his teeny little grave. The final film was Cecile B. DeMille’s The Cheat, and featured an evil high society Japanese character, who BRANDS his white socialite would-be-lover when she fails to surrender the pink after borrowing $10,000 to cover for her failed stock market investment–and remember this was all shown with the benshi’s near-hysterical renderings of all male and female dialog, in Japanese.

I’ve reconnected with my very dear friend, Peter, my oldest and bestest friefnd in town, with whom, for some inexplicable reason, I’d lost contact. His boyfriend of 13 years is leaving him, or until last night, was, anyway, but now it seems that they’re willing to call time out until the boyfriend works through his confusing and conflicting desires. Peter came over for dinner Friday and I wouldn’t let him go. Have you ever enjoyed someone’s presence so intensely that you fear the silence that will follow their departure? In Wuthering Heights, Cathy describes her love for Heathcliff and their kindred souls in increasingly histrionic terms, culminating in the realization “I AM HEATHCLIFF!” I AM PETER!

Speaking of Peter’s once and maybe future boyfriend–he has opened a Chinese antique shop south of market–I went to the opening tonight. It was like Auntie Mame’s place after the trip to the Orient. Oh my God. If you need a Tang Dynasty horse, get on down to “Artique.”

Speaking of antiquities, I picked up my latest piece of California Faience today–a matte blue vase, tapered severely at the base (making it top-heavy and thus scarce), with an elegant flanged top and inwardly tapered lip.

Tonight over dinner with the fabulous and talented artist Emily, we talked a lot about consumption, and love. As I was signing the bill, I realized that I had lost the ability to write cursive in sixth grade due to an intense crush that I had on Lee Little. Lee… I didn’t quite understand and couldn’t articulate the attraction that I felt for him back then, but instead adopted his printed upper case R’s and E’s as a way of having him in some way. Every time I wrote my full name, which has three R’s and two E’s, I was making love to Lee Little. Being him was the next best thing to loving him–or the only thing I could think of.

Okay, so after my brother’s wedding, I’m growing my beard back. I keep stroking my phantom fur, and there’s face, only face…

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Dinners

Mamooshka, what a grand feast Big Chrissy and I are preparing for you, our honored South Bay guest! …And in honor of your slightly closer proximity to our nearest southern neighbor, we are making a South-of-the-Border fiesta–special for you!

Although lard will not play as primary a role in our fiesta as it typically does—It’s bear vs. twink host here in San Francisco, so this will be more like a New World experience through the tastebuds of a Eurotrash supertaster.

So Reese enjoyed the full Rosh Hashana treatement tonight–lighting candles and the “mick-a-licka high mick-a hiney ho” prayer, chopped liver, chicken soup and kreplach (sp?), roast chicken, potato kugel, and creamed spinach. At one point, he asked me, “Coco, why are you celebrating this occasion with us and not Chris, since he’s not Jewish, like you?”

A lively discussion ensued.

He’s in the tub now, cleaning his Jewish foreskin, which, thanks partially to my input, he has.

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Florida

Hot, sweaty, moving from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space… I am in Florida, enjoying a visit with my sisters, Carol and Sue, and their mates and daughters. Last night we all hung out in the driveway, in my niece Megan’s car, listening to the Dixie Chicks and No Doubt on her new CD player, and then spent the rest of the evening looking at Carol’s prints and ceramics. At 49 she decided to finish her art degree, having spent the last 28 years raising a family and designing dresses.

Today Carol and I went to the Dali museum. The Persistence of Memory was visiting from MoMA.

It was nice to see it again, one of Dali’s really satisfying works. The museum presented sanitized interpretations of these paintings that are so filled with sexual anxiety that even I get nervous around them. His later paintings, called Masterworks, are beautifully painted and visually thrilling, but are weighed down by grand themes that are less interesting to me than his sexual anxiety and Gala’s vulva.

Last night’s dinner:
– Salad of romaine lettuce and hearts of palm
– Zipper peas
– Fried okra
– Steamed squash with vidalia onions and butter
– Alabama white corn bread with local tangerine marmalade
– Sweet potato pie

Mmmmmm….

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Earthquake!

Oh my god–the… mirror was, like, RATTLING, and the door, it CREAKED, and and… okay, it was a pretty lame earthquake–a 5.2, they’re saying. It did bring to mind a story that I recall from the ’89 quake (blur fizz twinkle twinkle)… Manny was on the bus, the 24 Divisadero, coming home from a Doctor’s appointment at Kaiser. There were several kids in the back of the bus making a lot of noise despite the driver’s repeated threats to kick them off the bus if they didn’t shut up. Fed up, the driver slammed on the brakes, ran to the back of the bus and shaking her finger at the kids, screamed “If you kids don’t stop this racket….” but was cut off as the bus started shaking due to the Loma Prieta earthquake. The bus was completely silent. The driver threw her hands up in the air, beat her chest with her fists, and screamed “I am THUNDER!” as everyone clapped and she danced back to her wheel.

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Carmina Burana, Hakuna Matata

Last night Reese sang with the SF Boys Chorus and the Berkeley Community Orchestra at St. Joseph the Worker (it was in Berkeley) Church in a production of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. What a completely hysterical but thrilling piece of music. I was able to read the libretto during the performance and really enjoyed it. Orff set the music to medieval poems about love, fate, drinking, and gambling, and the poems are quite bawdy and sensuous at times, even racy, but really, the music is just too much, although the solo parts were completely gorgeous. After the piece, I dropped Bob and Reese off at home and headed up the hill to BC’s and then back down to the Lone Star to see Randy and Matthew one more time before Randy heads back to the midwest. Randy and Matthew came over earlier in the afternoon for a drink in the garden and one of the last whiffs of my rhododendron “Mi Amor.” They’re both very sweet real people. What is it with you bear guys? It would be SO great if you were all artists instead of computer geeks. I’m hoping that Randy will write and stage something for our bear show in February, assuming I secure a space, artists, funding, etc, etc, blah blah blah. Maybe we could just have the show in a barn somewhere? And I could make the curtains? Reese’s moms are coming over this morning for a Mother’s Day breakfast with me and Bob, and then I’m off to BC’s for the afternoon and Sunday night on HBO.