So last night BC and I watched a bear porn movie. There was no intimacy at all, only inert preening and the stimulation of three specific areas. There was also no kissing, except for some lip biting and straight porn lesbian-like tongue wrestling. One verbal imperative consistent throughout the film was the instructive “Do this to that, yeah,” which doesn’t make sense at all to me, except in the case of the nipple–there are two to choose from so specificity may be in order, but mostly these directives were issued after the activity had already started. A correct statement would be something to the effect of “Continue with that stimulating activity.” I’m concerned that our younger gay brothers may actually think that this is the way that men make love. Sigh. I remember a run-of-the-mill gay film from the late eighties about some bicyclist who ends up with a group of guys in a barn, all stripped down to their tube socks and tennies, that had some convincing dialogue and action. The guy who plays the bicyclist really seems new to the scene, and is obviously excited by all the muscular nudity around him. When he finally gets to it, he keeps saying “Oh boy, oh boy,” and you can see that he really means it, like he’s genuinely excited and genuinely surprised by his excitement. I have gone out with guys who you could tell watched a lot of porn. One of my old boyfriends, Bill, used to describe everything that was happening, like the “Do that thing, yeah” kind of stuff, only non-stop. This was the mid-eighties so he also did poppers and would turn all red and start yelling “Do it to me, do it to me!!” while I was, well, doing it to him, and I never knew what to say, except “I am, I am, yeah!” He tried to coach me to be more verbal, but I just couldn’t. I kept thinking of Madeline Kahn’s “Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you…” from Young Frankenstein. The only porn films I’ve enjoyed are the Gage Brothers films, which play a lot with masculinity, and the guys seem to really enjoy what they’re doing, and some classic straight porn, like Beyond the Green Door, which was made in the era when porn films were still art. I can’t remember the name of this other straight film that had a huge impact on me, but I remember a scene where this foxy black momma with mammoth mammaries is in some sort of hell-like place, surrounded by men in masks and huge erections. Today this would be a rape scene, as most of contemporary straight porn is even more screwed up and regressive, but this particular scene turned the tables around and was all about her pleasure. She was wild, so excited that she’d grab a guy, make him do this or that, and push him away to grab the next guy or two, voracious and starving. She needed that many guys to satisfy her, and her satisfaction was what it was all about, baby!
Balance
Last year the universe lifted its leg and showered me with grief, this year, this very night in fact, it presented me with a vintage Laurel lamp with a brass finish and mushroom shade. Following up the elegant and challenging The Conformist of yesterday, Philip treated me to the Tony Randal/Janet Leigh/Roddy McDowall underwater pop extravaganza Hello Down There, a film about the creative activity between narrative spaces. Actually, freed from narrative space. I won’t bore you with the details, nor with the plot, neither of which stirs any significant memories or even metaphors, I’m left with a bobbing head and the tune “Glub glub” whistling through the now vacant space that was only yesterday a frenetic cave buzzing with the complex beautiful images of Bertolucci’s achievment, now pushed aside… only shadows…
‘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?
Spent
Wow, I never thought this would happen so quickly, but I just met with Bob, and we chatted away like old times. I had asked for him to meet me, and over coffee offered several possible solutions to our current post-breakup quandry. Basically, there’s just no way that either of us is ever going to accept the other’s perspective so I suggested that we each compromise, especially since everything’s boiled down to one final item of contention. He said that he’d think my offer over, and then we chatted on about art, travel, Reese, etc… I even hugged him goodbye. Walking home I just started crying. As you all may have observed, I’m not terribly good at dealing with loose ends, even though I seem to create a lot of them, and the past year has been pretty tangley. Actually, the past 5 years. No wait… When have things not been tangley? I don’t want Bob to not be a part of my life, and I hope that we can agree to disagree, compromise, move on, and see if it’s possible to salvage the positive aspects of our relating. I just feel emotionally spent right now.
On the bright side, Charlie Kaufman and Alexander Payne received well-deserved Academy Awards.
I took D out for his birthday last week to see the Trisha Brown Dance Company in Berkeley. I saw her l’Orfeo in Paris a few years ago, one of the artistic high points of my life, and have been eager to see her smaller-scale pieces. Her dancers are very fluid, and move through many different visual planes, often being held aloft as they walk perpendicular to the audience or across and over and on top of each other. The first piece included a set design by Robert Rauschenberg that was so arresting that I had to mentally push it off to the side so that I could focus on the dance and Laurie Anderson’s vocals. A second dance, set to music by John Cage from the late 40’s, pushed movement into the even more abstract, and at points the audience gasped in unison, everyone stunned.
I’m off to see Altman’s Images, with Susanna York–that is, starring, Susannah York, not accompanied by, unfortunately.
My diet is going okay. I’ve decided to–hold your breath everybody–limit myself to one glass of wine when I drink. If I feel like getting loopy, I have 2. I hope I’m as lucid sober as I think I am pitched slightly on the edge of intoxication. No more lampshades for a while. Remember that Simpson’s episode where Marge wages war on violent cartoons? Where she succeeds in convincing the cartoon creators to make non-violent cartoons and all the kids turn off their TV’s and step outside, rubbing their eyes and then quickly engaging each other in creative game-play and healthy outdoorsy-ness? That’s kind of how I feel right now–but I know how the episode ends, so I’m going to make the most of it and enjoy my healthy non-pickled heart.
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.
I’m a Little Chipmunk
I had to cross the Anita Monga protest line last night at the Castro and see O Lucky Man, a movie that I’ve been avoiding seeing on video and waiting for years to see on the big screen. I had a very long talk with the leader of the protest and pledged my solidarity with their cause to bring Anita back home, and promised to boycott the concession stand and write a letter to the Nassers.
My moral wavering was so worth it, the movie was dynamite. Malcolm McDowell was the Ewan McGregor of the early 70’s, almost always stripped of clothes and subjected to all sorts of perverse torture introduced by whichever auteur director wanted him spanked and smiling.
Over the last week I also saw Meet the Fockers, Sunday Bloody Sunday. Umberto D, Band of Outsiders, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Kim-ki Duk’s Samaria, Love and Death, The Long Good Friday, In the Realms of the Unreal, Bride and Prejudice, A Very Long Engagement, Before Sunrise and After Sunset. I seem to be drifting back to the French and English new wave, or wanting to, but also want to get caught up on recent releases. Before Sunrise and After Sunset reminded me a lot of the films from the 60’s, not in the sense of style or shattering conventions, but in a return to dialogue. I could have followed those two around Paris and Vienna all day. I need to know more about Bresson, yearn to see more Ophüls, but none of his great films are available on dvd, and want to be Lindsay Anderson when I grow up, flash bulbs popping all around, sagging tits and in a tight red polyester shirt, sunglasses and bald spot. I only want to be a film maker to look hot at 60 with sagging tits, polyester shirt, sunglasses and bald spot.
But anyway, O Lucky Man was epic without ever loosing its intimacy, the humor subtle and sharp, and the visual structure a pastiche of technique and form. At one point the film suddenly shifts to a widescreen format, with no corresponding shift in the film’s emotional or narrative scale.
There wasn’t that much to really want to remember this holiday–my parents and sister visited which was actually a very good visit, lots of parties here and there, Bob wrote me nasty letters and called me the Wicked Witch of the West, then asked for half of my house but wished me a happy new year anyway and thanked me for the book I sent him, Big Chrissy has been sick for weeks and I am gonna need some serious wild monkey horizontal mambo like soon, D’s still working at getting better and we’re gradually taking him off his meds so maybe he’ll be less zombie-esque and more like the actively passive/apparently competent hypersensitive life of the party that I once knew.
Les (is more) Wright is arriving shortly, for a two-week re-investigation of Bay Area life and culture. He’ll be crashing in my office, so come by and say “Woof,” or “Moof,” or just “Hi, Les.” Better yet, take us out to dinner!
Cevan the Landscape Designer was at a Christmas Eve party at my sister, Diane’s and said that I looked like a chipmunk. I looked at pictures that sister Sue took, and I do! Could the Chipmunk be the next “Bear?” I’ll host a Mr. San Francisco Chipmunk contest to raise funds for at-risk-trangendered-youth and organize an alley fair! I’m a little chipmunk! Finally–I’ll just eroticise myself! And my sisters could make the outfits!
I’ve forgotten what my subject was. I saw The Bad and the Beautiful again the other day, and was so wowed by Lana Turner’s hysterical breakdown while driving in the storm, lights coming from all directions and horns beeping and cars careening by–I want to remake that scene. It is the most accurate representation of my late 30s.
Enough already.
My First 39th Year
Oh my aching head. 39 is it. No more mojito-wine-chocolate espresso martini-dinners. Yesterday I started the day of my birth with a visit to Lisa, my beloved hair stylist, for my usual haircut. This time I told her I wanted to let it grow, could she just take a little off, and sure enough, the same haircut. No matter what I tell her, it’s always the same haircut. I don’t have enough forward momentum to seek a new person to break in, so the Lisa Cut it is.
D and I then took in a late morning showing of The Polar Express in 3D on the IMAX screen. It was the same “if only you believe” story that I’ve seen a million times with the same soaring manipulative music. The animation was pretty impressive, but the expressions stiff and wax-museumesque. If I were a kid I would have been terrified. Although, let me tell you, Mindplay, girlfriend, the hair was something, as if each hair had a program written for it. And on that huge screen! I felt like I was in the movie, a flea or something.
So after the movie we called BC to join us for dim sum at Yank Sing, where I warned D and Chris not to eat too much as we were going to have a big dinner, and then took everything off every passing cart. I can’t resist such stimulation on my birthday.
After a very short nap, I watched my favorite Hong Kong lesbian assassin film, Naked Killer on BC’s big screen. Madame Cindy picks up Kitty and recruits her to be an assassin, but Princess, Madame Cindy’s former protege, and Baby, Princess’ new protege, are hired by the Japanese government to exterminate Cindy, but Princess becomes insanely jealous of Madame Cindy’s interest in Kitty and must kill her, too. Lots of bullets and scissors in testicles, at least one sliced salame, tons of simulated lesbian action, shower death scenes, swimming pool death scenes followed by gasping girl-on-girl action in bloody water, and hats as weapons of mass destruction. It’s the best movie ever made.
So then off to The Last Supper Club with Peter and Luis, Emily and Tim, Big Chris and D. Peter and Luis turned me on to what promises to be a new obsession–obscure post-WWII German studio pottery. We laughed and ate lots of yummy food, and drank not really that much, but the chocolate espresso martini thing at the end was like a delicious time bomb. I woke up at 4 completely anxious about the end of my thirties and how career anxiety has overtaken my relationship obsessions and D not being interested in anything but me and how I’m going to fit everybody at the table for Thanksgiving and when is my glass kettle going to arrive. And then, just like yesterday, the sun came up and it was all over.
Here’s a (very long) picture of the drunk and tired gang. Clicca qui.
So the birthday week continues… off to the opera tomorrow night.
(Wo)men in Love
Holy moley, am I all tingly and energized this morning. BC and I saw Ken Russell’s Women in Love last night, which should have been called Men in Love, as the sexual tension between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed so overpowers their heterosexual fumblings. Alan Bates, the cynic in search of depth is drawn to Oliver Reed’s intensity and desire to posses, but Reed is obsessed with Glenda Jackson, and who wouldn’t be?, but she leaves Reed to freeze in the snow and runs off to Germany with a big poof! The film explores the very complex desires of these characters in wonderfully subsersive ways. In once scene Oliver Reed beats a horse while Glenda looks on, excited and disgusted by his cruelty. Unlike the horse, Glenda’s not going to be tamed. Almost every line is underscored by the sexual longings of the principal characters–a roller coaster ride through late-60’s sexual fragmentation. It’s time to revisit Ken Russell.
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More Film Thoughts
Yesterday BC and I watched two films that pretty much spanned what was possible in 1972: Tarkovsky’s Solaris and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. Both made extreme appeals to the senses, but in completely opposite ways. When I was but a wee art student, one of my roommates was a film student. She had never made a film, or even shot any footage, and yet she considered herself a filmmaker. I was confounded by her identity, as mine was so steeped in a physical engagement with my medium. Today I feel a kind of connection with her, in that I’m starting to think and see from a filmmaker’s perspective, but I haven’t begun making my film yet. I also loved how all the film students dressed–they all smoked, and wore vintage clothes and had Louise Brooks or Errol Flynn haircuts, and had way more sex than the photographers. Or maybe they just talked about it more: “You’re not a lover till you blab about it,” Bob says at the opening ofJack the Modernist. Speaking of Bob, did you see that he made the cover, the ENTIRE cover, of the BAR’s art section this week? Anway, the approach I’m taking to my film will be somewhat similar to Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, but gay, hairy, weird, very sensual, and funny. I want to put the fun back in “avant garde!” There will also be singing flowers, an animated sequence, and talking dust bunnies. But enough for now, I have to finish being a photographer… For the LAB show in Feburary, I’ve decided to make a kind of transitional piece, called RGB, like my current photo series, but consisting of one big triptych, B, and 2 videos, R, and, you guessed it, G. D of course will be my star, and there will be lots of gently blowing hair–your eyes must put them all together into one blinding white light of sensuosity! Stay tuned for more developments…
Vague Film Thoughts
I’ve been thinking a lot, about images, situations, what I want to say with my film–if I decide to make one, that is. Emily says that because that’s all I want to do is see movies all day that I’m headed in the right direction. Several themes have popped up, that I’ve investigated over the years already, but statically–like obsession, love, longing, the male body. I finally saw Polanski’s amazing debut feature, Knife in the Water, and was intrigued by the beauty and simplicity of the premise–3 people on a boat. The whole film seethes with the tension and inevitability of human nature. An image that keeps popping up is Maria Falconetti’s anguished face in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, one of the most moving cinematic gestures, conveyed through an almost claustrophobic 120 minute closeup of a face. I’ve only seen one convincing eroticization of the big hairy (and much older) male, and that was Mark d’Auria’s Smoke, which was booed at the screening that I, all teary and excited, attended. I’m also thinking of films with knockout performances like Günter Lamprecht’s Franz Biberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz, or Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress, Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street. Would I make love to my subject the way Hitchcock did with Grace Kelley in Rear Window, or just follow my Mastroianni and Moreau around like Antonioni? My heroes are as diverse as Wong Kar Wai and Rouben Mamoulian. Whenever I think of looking at a body in film, I see Brigitte Bardot in that fantastic first scene in Contempt, and collapse under the weight of these glorious visionaries. I’m swimming in the dense vision of others right now, waiting to see if there’s anything original that I might like to add to the mix. I know that I don’t want to make gay film festival tripe, or jump on the indie narrative bandwagon. Scott King’s delicious Treasure Island is a sort of model, for its gratuitous male nudity, density, and queasy sexuality, what an IMDB reviewer called “A treasure of bad film making.” I would so love to have that be my epitaph.