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The Dating Game: Another One From Los Angeles
This morning I had breakfast with a guy who stirred that stupid part of me that I’ve been trying to calm since age 8. I was so overwhelmed by hormones and endorphins that I consciously had to not say “I’ve fallen in love with you” as we got up to settle the check. We’ve been chatting online for a few months now, he’s up from southern California for the weekend. (Yes, another one.) This morning’s breakfast was our first contact without computer screens between us. I’m salivating as I write this, a sudden hunger for his flesh, to lick the nape of his neck… I feel so victimized by evolution, by the years and years of subtle mutations that have resulted in the synaptic and hormonal storm that is raging in my body right now–and just to produce a few involuntary muscular contractions. Did anyone see La Grande Bouffe? It’s a story about several men who get together for a weekend to eat themselves to death. I could imagine our relationship following a similar narrative trajectory, the two of us collapsing from our inability to quell our insatiable hunger for each other. Despite my attempts at restraint I blurted out, “I think you’re just adorable” as I hugged him goodbye. For one second I didn’t feel in my life anymore, but in the big-budget romantic comedy version of it and I was Meg Ryan and the camera was circling around us as we kissed and I had finally arrived in the scene that I’d been preparing for all my life. I didn’t kiss him, the world stopped spinning, he walked off toward his destination without uttering “Coco, I think you’re adorable, too!” and I got in the CocoMobile and sped off into the gray day.
Other than meeting the Man of My Dreams, the weekend has been busy with visiting parents and sisters, my brother’s turducken, chipped dishes, Grace Cathedral, butter, a really good turkey pot pie last night, and Bob’s mom’s visit–all the exes giggling and hunkered down with Bob’s tarte tatin. I’ve had a birthday since my last entry. I’m now 42. Gloeden came to town from Chicago and charmed us with his intelligence and wit–Resse, especially. Reese told me later that he wanted him to move to San Francisco and go to his school and be his best friend. My show closes on Friday. No reviews, no sales. My next show will be in a padded cell with me the only audience.
My soon-to-be 80-year old mom asked the now 14-year old Reese if he had any girlfriends. “It’s complicated,” Reese replied. He went on to tell my mom about a schoolmate who had recently asked if he was interested in being her “friend-with-benefits” which segued into a conversation about how his friend could only be bisexual if she had produced orgasms with another girl. Reese insists on specificity in sexual matters.
Maybe when they release Max Ophüls on dvd will I find true happiness. Or if some money gets dumped in my lap–I know what to buy to make me happy. You’re all wrong and so are all of my therapists: I’m not the only person who can make me happy. It’s that guy from Southern California.
Pizza, Tales, Gigggles, 21 Year Olds
Can there be a better pizza in town than Little Star? (I’m talking deep dish here.) The crust is like running through the corn fields at dawn with nothing on except a chopped tomato and mozarella blanket. I had 4 pieces last night–half of a large pie. Since Viccolo closed, I’ve been in pizza limbo, yet Little Star is a little slice of heaven right here in San Francisco.
Reese and BC and I have been watching “Tales of the City” on Friday nights. Reese gets kind of bored and starts doing contortions on the floor, and covers his eyes during the nudes scenes. When it was broadcast originally on Channel 9 (the year Reese was born, I keep telling him) I remember they used some sort of optical zoom to crop the nude parts out. Reese resists his time as much as we yearned for it.
I finished my sound piece for my show yesterday. It’s an hour of me giggling, that I plan to play as a loop during the course of the show. I love the idea of it catching, and everybody giggling at my opening. Since I’ve never sold a sound piece, I plan to distribute free CDs, “Chris Komater Giggling,” at the opening, so you can giggle along with me in the privacy of your own home and think of my furry flowers. And for nothing!
I have a 21 year old chasing after me. A 21 year old. I keep telling him that my stepson has more in common with him, and that he should chase after his boyfriend, the one he already has. That seems to turn him on more, my repeated rejections. And he keeps asking for pictures. Like everytime I see him online, “Do you have any pics?” I don’t get it. And he’s always always horny. What is that nogoodnick boyfriend for? I tell him, more or less, look, grasshopper, we’ll have a few laughs, and then what? I’ve had my laughs, I want a boyfriend, you already have one, now scram. “lol, UR hot!”
I Left My Heart on Red Hollow Road
Wednesday…
I’m on the plane from Dallas to Birmingham, zipping across the south to visit with my parents. The flight’s not full at all–who goes to Birmingham in August? The plane to Dallas was jam-packed, and the guy with the hairiest forearms in Texas sat right next to me. His elbows extended slightly into my space, and my arm, moving up and down due to my accelerated breathing, gently brushed against his furriness. He was wearing shorts, too, and had gorgeous thick brown tree-trunk legs covered in blonde fur. I didn’t look at the rest of him. I didn’t need the rest of him. I was suddenly relieved that I hadn’t brought my first reading choice, I Love Dick, by Chris Kraus, and could hide behind less-suggestive titles. Instead I read about the more appropriate bonobos, ape cousins of the chimpanzees–distinct from chimps with their smaller heads, dominant females, easy-going peaceful nature, and frequent and incessant copulation.
I met a few really interesting fellows last week: one a corporate executive in New York with tattoos that you can barely see under his dense body hair; the other an artist bodybuilder who sells a “product” that sounds a lot like steroids; another guy whose moniker is something close to “largeorganedbottom” who sounds too good to be true; and about three guys who are all the same age, with the same look, jobs, dispositions, and male-pattern baldness. I’d love to take the last three out on a reality-series type date where a panel of Coco Libido Specialists eliminates two for me.
On the plane I’ve been catching up on not only the apes, but also the problem and history of spam, Gustave Courbet, honey bees, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. You know, there’s a major die-out of bees that’s been going on, with whole colonies of honey bees just disappearing. They call it Colony Collapse Disorder, and the bees that have been examined seem to have something like Bee AIDS, their entire immune system wrecked as scores of parasites, mites, and viruses attack their whole system. There aren’t a lot of pollinators like bees, who’ll go for just about any flower. Our entire (commercial) food chain depends on them. I love bees. The males are just around to mate, then after being tolerated by the female workers, are systematically destroyed by them.
I am arrived. It is hot. At 10pm the temperature is 100 degrees. My cute little mommy made salmon patties, salad, and miniature low-fat strawberry cheesecakes for me! It’s hot as hell, but I’m in heaven!
Thursday…
Today I spent the afternoon with James, my total-queen high school buddy. They don’t make queens like they do in the south. His house is Fabu-Chic White Trash, all the walls different saturated colors, whimsical thrift shop furniture and paintings everywhere. He even has a complete Avon after-shave chess set. He lives in Adamsville, which is about a 40 minute drive from my parents’ house. In the absence of markers like rivers or town grids, I never know which way is north or south, just which road leads to which road, which ‘dale is next to which ‘ville. The countryside was absolutely beautiful, lush rolling hills and bright green kudzu. On the way to Adamsville I listened to country music turned up real loud. …two peas in a po-od—me and Go-od… I listen to country music unironically here, and feel the sincerity behind all the Jesus-loving and wife-cheating.
Sofia and Her Shoe Thing, Japanese New Wave, Out of Control dvd Madness
Sister Sue is still here, the last of the lingering Thanksgiving visitors. We saw Marie Antoinette the other night, and completely loved it. The film creates a vision of adolescence confined by excess and formality. If you could imagine. What else to do but buy shoes, eat fabulous pastry, and stage little performances in your Petite Trianon? It’s Sofia Coppola’s Picnic at Hanging Rock–the same kind of tension and sensual immersion, but with butter!
Face of Another, Teshigahara’s masterpiece (with screenplay by Kôbô Abe, from his novel!) played last night at the Castro. I didn’t see it, but was so excited by the possibility of seeing it again, I had to tell you. It’s one of my favortie movies about identity. Another favorite Japanese film dealing with identity from that era is Death By Hanging, by Oshima, about a man sentenced to death by hanging. He survives, and his executioners, as well as a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, and the dead woman herself, decide what to do next…
I’ve maxed out my dvd shelves. It had to happen. Actually, it has happened several times, but now the floor below and space above the shelves are full. It’s all ready to topple on top of me in the event of the slightest tremor. I’m in the process of replacing the thicker covers with the thin 5mm deals–except for my beloved Criterions, OOP’s, and box sets–filing away the printed covers, and making my own printed covers with titles in Standard Coco Futura Condensed. Do other people do this kind of thing? Am I scaring you away?
Mangia! Mangia!
Sisters Sue and Carol; Carol’s husband Bruce; their kids Megan and Aimée; and Aimée’s boyfriend, Jeremy are out for a Thanksgiving visit. I’m learning how to let go of the spatial tension that I’ve created in my bachelo-sphere, letting them spill all over the house. I’ll spend several hours figuring out which angle the new Cobra Lamp should be in relation to the curve of the Milo Baughman chair, so it’s a test to have things randomly moved to fit some need other than aesthetic tension. It’s the problem with being me at the moment. I need a sloppy husbear to disrupt and challenge my obsessive compulsive feng shui illusion of harmony.
Prior to the family’s arrival, birthday activities occupied much of my time. BC took me to the Last Supper Club, where I am sad to say, and despite Big Chrissy’s charming company, the food was only so-so. The fried artichoke appetizer, for instance, should have been about artichoke, salt, extra virgin olive oil, and fried-ness. Instead, they mucked it up by drowning everything in a sugary raspberry vinegar. Some italian mamma ancestor of mine is rolling in her grave, cursing misguided American innovation. The pasta with the pork ragu was pretty tasty, though, as was my salad.
Moving forward in time, but backward as the stomach churns, D treated me to a nice Thai lunch and lots of pink roses. And then Philip treated me to some tasty pancakes at a birthday breakfast the next morning at It’s Tops. Blueberry buckwheat. Yum-babba!
I’ve been listening to teen emo-chick music lately. I’m totally in love with Camera Obscura, and their sweet ballads about heart ache & break.
Meanwhile, the family and I loudly munched along towards Thanksgiving. For the big day, Brother Mark made a turducken–a duck stuffed in a chicken, stuffed in a turkey. It was so very strange and delicious. I was an appetizing dish myself by evening’s end–a plump and juicy tur-Coco-ducken! I made a wild mushroom pate as appetizer, and a salad of arugula, fennel, and persimmon. Aimée shocked me senseless with her chocolate crinkle cookies and kiwi and raspberry goat cheese tart. While we were cooking, Aimée never noticed when the timer went off, seemed distracted by having fun, and then, as if completely by random, out pop some of the most tasty treats I’ve had this millennium.
I hope you all had lots of Thanksgiving goodness, and are enjoying the tryptophan-driven groggy stupor that we’ll all be in for the next few days!
Serious as a Heart Attack!
Greetings from Alabama. Alabama the Beautiful, the license plates say. Dad’s had a triple coronary bypass, and I’m the last of the siblings to make the pilgrimage to Birmingham to help nurse him back to health. He’s been cranky the last few days, contrary to the mood of his post-operation survival euphoria. Yesterday during his checkup, the doctors found that half of one of his lungs was filled with fluid, hence his getting winded so easily, and genetic predisposition for crankiness aside, the root of his recent crankiness. So I’m sitting in the Same-Day Services Waiting Room while he gets checked in for the procedure. They say he’s going to be here for a day or two. Two days just to stick a needle in his lungs? Can’t they just turn him upside down? I’m experiencing the paranoia of an early 30’s heroine told that everything’s going to be fine, and then the next scene the doctor’s turning to his assistant and shaking his head.
S_ picked me up at the airport. Her daughter’s having a rough time, going through the rebel teen years. She’s fallen head over heals for an unexceptional little dude from, as S_ puts it, “an unexceptional family,” unexceptional except for their criminal records–a murderer, an alcoholic, a registered sex-offender. “But the mom’s a Christian,” S_ was quick to add. Little 16 year old C_’s passion seems entirely hormone driven, and given blind forward momentum by her dad’s steadfast refusal to bless her little love. I respond to everything with, “Family counseling, family counseling,” but according to S_, C_ adamantly refuses, failing to understand that a counselor is going to actually listen to her and guide her through living harmoniously with mom and dad and her feelings for the unexceptional little dude. I’m afraid that she’s not going to be able to set aside her willful rebellion and see this guy with any clarity until they’re living in someone’s tool shed with a bun in the oven and a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart. In a way it’s very romantic, or could be, but I’ve seen the movie, and since 1938 the ending has always been tragic.
Someone in the waiting room has a telephone with a series of warbly histrionic country love song ring tones. Turned up full blast. The phone’s owner has temporarily disappeared, but left his bag behind with his clueless but you can tell tender-hearted beer-bellied baseball-hatted totally-my-type friends, so every like two minutes there’s a new tear-jerking tune jolting me and the blue-haired ladies out of our seats as the buddies shift nervously.
Tyra’s on the TV here in the waiting room. It’s a show about straight girls who like to make out with women, with some lesbian wanna-be’s and a panel of expert lesbians. The guys in the waiting room are all totally turned on, and the women look occasionally at the TV and let out exasperated huffs. I watched Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends the other night. It’s like Fassbinder never happened in this country. A thing that I love about his films is that most of them are really structured like standard Hollywood melodramas, but with an unapologetic gay disposition transposed on the directorship and narrative. He’s my total hero of the moment. When I get back, I’ll screen his BRD Trilogy, so let me know if you want to join me at the Coco-Plex.
The Lesbians are riding horses on Tyra now.
Look who just walked in. Omigod. He’s like 7 feet tall, teetering on cowboy boots, with a 10-gallon hat, horseshoe mustache, and a tiny little girlfriend who fits at his side like a polyp. He mumbles an incomprehensible southern scramble of words to her occasionally as his eyes shift from under his hat towards me. I blush and squirm under his intense but sweet honey gaze and focus on my laptop. His little belly wobbles as he fills out his admission form.
There don’t seem to be any single men around, just a lot of married men looking for “friends.” And what is it with those half-naked married guys who are just “looking for friends?” I’m ready to start perusing the Convicted Sex Offender list.
Showtime, Tut, Helen Keller Mole, Kiss Me Kate
I’ve started sending out packets to galleries, feeling good about my new work and ready to work with a new dealer. I got a nibble from one of the 49 Geary dealers, who wants to meet with me and discuss a proposal for an installation. It’s in THE coolest space in the building, so I’m pretty psyched. Cross your fingers, pray to Allah, light a candle… I’m already thinking of doing some super gigantic piece that covers an entire wall, my obsession writ large, but of course accompanied by gorgeous and affordable little things. I tend to work better once I’ve established a structure or context for my art, and this space is a humdinger, so the creaky wheels of my creativity are turning once again.
Big Chrissy flew out to Chicago with me last week, for my cousin Dawn’s wedding, and to visit his family. We saw the King Tut show at the Field Museum. At one point I got choked up, remembering how I had ached to see the Tut show when it came to the US in the 70’s but had to settle for the National Geographic issue and the Steve Martin ’45. Aside from the elegance and intricate beauty of the objects, there was also a simplicity, in either expression or execution that touched me, particularly a portrait bust of Nefertiti that captured nobility, humanity and godliness, all at once, voluptuously. Seeing the various little sarcophogi for this pharoah’s viscera and that pharoah’s organs, I thought how sad it was that the egyptians spent so much time and energy preparing for an afterlife in Chicago.
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We had a few good meals out, no Alinea this time, but one memorable meal at a Mexican restaurant in Boy’s Town, or whatever they call the gay ghetto over there. Oh, and the boys are pretty hot. Like milk-fed steak-eating hot. Anyway, I had the chicken mole, and the sauce, in the dim light of the restaurant, was so black that no light was reflected. A dark plate was set in front of me on the table and I couldn’t see anything in it, only empty nothingness, which I prodded with a fork until I found chicken. It was like Hellen Keller’s trip to Mexico.
Katherine Hepburn was interviewed by Dick Cavett tonight on TCM. It was her first televised interview, from 1973. I’ve been watching the Cavett interviews and they’re fascinating. He chats with these stars for a full hour each. You feel like you really get to know them, relaxing into normalness with them. Hepburn was an amazing contrast to Bette Davis, interviewed a few weeks ago. While Davis seemed fully aware and in control of being and being seen as an icon, speaking cleverly and wittily, and clearly to future biographers, Hepburn seemed like somebody totally enmeshed in family life, just a lucky dame who made movies for a living, oblivious to being one of the greatest actresses of the 20th Century, her legs spread apart, one propped up on a table, hair a mess. At the end of the hour, Cavett started to say that the interview was coming to an end and Kate just hopped up and said “Okay, bye,” and ran off the set. Cavett didn’t even have time to finish his sentence. As he pleaded, stunned, asking “Aren’t you going to wait while I…?” she paused for a moment and said, “No, you take it from here,” and disappeared behind a curtain with a quick wave. He just looked at the camera and mumbled something about the interview continuing with Part 2 next week… Can’t wait!
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…
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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…
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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!
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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.
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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…
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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!