Category: Friends

Posted on

A Play, an Exhibition, a Movie, the Daves, and Alicia Finally Leaves

I saw Caroline, or Change at the Curran last weekend with my fellow Underbears, BC and D. Caroline, the maid, is allowed to keep the change that she finds in the pants pockets of the boy whose family she works for, when doing laundry. The tension, excitement, and apprehension that result are given context in the racial turbulence of the 60’s and the emotional conflicts and changing dynamics within the families. It’s an amazing play, with clever lyrics, beautifully sung music, and a pared-down dazzling production. The Underbears say “3 paws up!”

The Hairy Bodies show is coming together nicely, with dynamite pieces by Nayland, Nick, Dean Smith, and BC, a sumptuous video by Ruth, a really strange and disturbing installation by Su-Chen, and my own first dive into video. My videos are going to be static, and sculptural, jiggling accompaniments to my photographs. Please come to the opening next Friday!

Last night I saw Million dollar Baby, the new Clint Eastwood flick. I really like his films. He’s like old Hollywood, well, his is old Hollywood. There’s no dazzle, or gimmickry, just straightforward storytelling. And nothing new in the storytelling department either. The story was almost mythic, very lyrical and allegorical. And Hilary Swank gives an amazing performance, very modulated, yet energetic and extremely moving.

The Daves are here, the Daves are here! Dave and Dave are in the final stages of their 2004-5 Western Hemisphere Tour, staying with BC. We were all treated to a delightful dinner at Steve and Jack’s a few nights ago. I gained back all of my recently shed poundage in an intimate bonding with their delectable lasagna. I could have had a third slice if my inner Thighmaster had been a little more intoxicated. I contributed my first tarte tatin, actually a pear tarte tatin, to the dinner. It worked! nicely caramelized and full of pear-ness. I was given the opportunity to see why such a thing tastes so good–it’s like HALF butter!

Alicia, my delightfully irresponsible houseguest, has flown back to Telluride, and Les, after a yummy dim sum brunch, back to Massachusetts. Alicia was going to stay just a night, but I made her a big dinner when she arrived and breakfast the next morning, so she decided to stay for three more days of pampering and feeding. She told me of her recent, well, eight or so years ago, trip to some Caribbean island, where she saw an ad for a hostess on a ship, and ditched her boyfriend and went to work on a boat for three months. Her work consisted of “making” cereal for breakfast and tuna fish sandwiches for lunch everyday. The captain made dinner, which consisted of the day’s catch. For this she was paid $500 a week. The owner took his clothes off and swung his willy in circles for her, demanding that she, too take her clothes off when at sea. She didn’t tell me if she had to swing anything, too. The captain asked Alicia what she was into. She said yoga, art, meditation–what are you into? “Masturbation.” Which, she says, he did many times a day, at sea and on land, wherever a closet or bush was to be had. She’s currently juggling 2 lovers–one the father of her child, the other a poor carpenter who “loaves me, Chrees!” She’s still a knockout at 44, with gorgeous gray streaks in her long brown hair. Her utter devotion to her self, though, is challenging to be around for more than a few days.

Posted on

Glamour

Sunday I went to SFMoMA with Philip, a very nice day with an utterly likeable fellow, the Lichtenstein show surprisingly enjoyable, but the Glamour show a bomb, with totally not enough dresses and stupid architecture that had nothing remotely to do with glamour.

I did get cruised by this totally hot daddy bear–not in the way that I’ve ever been cruised by a totally hot daddy bear, either. Wait–was this the first time that I’ve ever been cruised by a totally hot daddy bear? Maybe it had to do with my own different relation to my newly middle-aged self. Typically, if a dude of this dude’s grandeur and pheromones directs any kind of desire my way, I assume it’s because I’m this young thing and he’s this tired old guy, and I hop to it and make it my mission to remind him of what it was like to be young and admired and virile. Well, sad but true, I’m no longer this hot young thing, but with a gray beard and in bed by 11. This time I felt a tension of familiarity, not of imbalance, like we were just two guys sniffing each other’s butts. I’m still anxious from the encounter, and of this new relation to desire and intimacy. It really is just chemicals, right? Perhaps my high blood pressure and challenged waistline are indicators of this new chemical reaction, too. What’s next? Cancer and love?

BC, my big bunny warmer, is snoring away on the kitchen banquette, speaking of age and glamor. Yes, he’s still sick, and yes, I’m still in dire need of the horizontal mambo. Won’t someone rid me of this meddlesome libido?

Having Les here is at least intellectually stimulating. This morning we talked of Marlon Riggs, Genet, socialized health care, gay representation, stereotypes, North Korean hair propaganda, Soap, the new California Garden, umlauts, and the objective “I.” He’s a treasure.

Alicia, my dear old Brazilian college buddy is in town, and will take over Les’ place on my office sofa when he departs on Sunday. Alicia is this truly glamorous mix of beauty and irresponsibility. We met in China in 1987–the rest of my group (we were students for the summer at the Zheziang Academy of Fine Arts) would be grumbling and sweating over our rice gruel at breakfast, and Alicia would burst into the room in a lovely flowing dress and sandals, scoop up some gruel, and exclaim, “I LOVE this delicious rice pudding, and how moist and ALIVE my skin feels here…” We’d all smile and forget our rashes and dysentery, and toss more peanuts and pickles into our savory breakfast mush. She just spent a month in Bali with her new lover, leaving her 7 year-old with the jealous father of the child, while she explored “being free.” I love Alicia only because I embrace her disdain for restraint. Like, I’d never ever meet her somewhere. Time is only a suggestion to her. As are traffic signals and recipes.

Well, it’s getting past 11….

Posted on

Christmas, Crabs and Pussies

I love the idea of having a chopped down tree in the house, I love how it smells, and all the shoppers descending upon my neighborhood in their red felt hats, and the short days and long snuggly nights, and eggnog, Bobbie Helms and Brenda Lee, Garry’s latkes… Last year Ted was totally against Christmas. We had a fight when I tried to give him a present. We compromised when I told him that I had bought him a second gift–I honored his tradition by not giving him the alleged second one, and he honored mine by accepting the first. Bob was so freaked out by my wanting a tree, no not a tree, a representation of the triumph of the Christians, that I suggested we put a golden calf on top. (We even made a tangerine liqueur that year that we called “Golden Calf: The Drink the Israelites Worshipped” that we handed out as Christmas presents.) No more such boyfriends. My favorite Christmas, though, was with Bob in Florence, opening the windows of Palazzo Frescobaldi in the freezing winter to hear the town’s bells at midnight, just magical. Earlier we went all the way across town to buy an Iris Cake, supposedly a Christmas favorite of the Florentines, and ate the dry crumbly tasteless confection in our freezing romantic palazzo while the bells clattered away.

The season thus far has been a good one. Geoff’s intimate potluck, Garry’s greasy latke party, cooking crabs with D and BC, the annual trip to visit Big Chris’s family in Illinois… This time there was snow on the ground when we arrived, but it all melted in a few days. Having grown up in the south, I go wild in the snow, wanting to shovel all the neighbors driveways, and like a dog at the ocean, running around until I’m dragged into the house blue and shivering. Chris’ mom and sisters treated us to many homey delights, such as grilled cheese sammies, chili with real meat, cookies, lasagna, and Whitey’s malts. We spent a few days in Chicago with Chris’s dad, Stephanie. The new Millennium Park is a wonderful new public space, with a large polished steel bean-shaped sculpture by Anish Kapoor, pedestrian bridge and concert hall by Frank Gehry, and a whimsical and monolithic fountain designed by Jaume Plensa, consisting of 2 large video portraits of people smiling, facing each other across a shallow reflecting pool, water splurting down occasionally from their open mouths. One evening Stephanie’s friend Deirdre treated us to an evening at her “club.” We didn’t find out until we got there, in our blue jeans, our winter coats standing in briefly for dinner jackets, that the “Cliff Dwellers Club” is a swank private club founded in 1907 for people interested in the arts–like Roger Ebert, who’s a member.  That kind of artist. Chris and I were the only ones who looked like we were involved in the making of art, the others all looked like lawyers. The club was hosting an exhibition of just awful paintings, but we had a nice dinner on the top floor of a building with expansive windows overlooking the Art Institute, the Field Museum and Millennium Park. Deirdre was a male economist and historian once, and became a female one about 7 years ago. She’s written many interesting books in her field, as well as a fascinating book about her experience becoming a woman, called Crossing: A Memoir.

Reading Deirdre’s revealing book, in many ways a man’s perspective on an idealized and regressive womanhood, has brought up far more questions for me than answers. I’ve met only a few transgendered people, including Chris’ dad, with whom I’ve become quite close. As a creator of things myself, I’m interested in how one can create a new identity and gender, and am curious about what it’s all about. I’ve noticed that both Steph and Deirdre’s awareness of their feminine side developed alongside a fetishistic relation to women’s clothes. This is what intrigues me: both say that gender and sexuality are completely unrelated for them, yet Deirdre describes how her cross-dressing often culminated in a masturbatory event. Is the sexual desire for another directed toward the self? That is, the “other” that the self has transformed into? Neither woman seems particularly interested in sex anymore (they’re both in their 60’s, so maybe it’s an age thing), but I think if I suddenly had a pussy, I’d be using it.

Posted on

Plan 1

I’ve decided on a tentative plan: For my 40th birthday (November, 2005), I’m going to start off with a few weeks in Rome. My last few trips there were about Caravaggio and Bellini, so I’d like to visit my old friends, but this time I’m thinking of following the della Francesca and Perugino trails, which will take me to Urbino, Arezzo, Perugia, Monterchi, Sansepolcro, Citta del Pieve, Spello and Panicale. Caravaggio and Bellini were big inspirations to me in my 30’s: Bellini with his exquisitely painted depictions of other-worldliness, and Caravaggio for his images so rooted in reality. The artists shocked me into an awareness of how art can structure experience and spirituality in such completely different ways. I’m drawn to Perugino and della Francesca for their serenity and simplicity. This is how I want to enter my 40’s–I want tranquility. There’s also a painting in a tiny convent in Florence that I’d love to revisit, by Perugino. It’s a crucifiction scene, but almost conceptual art. The cross is positioned in the center of 3 arches, with saints depicted under the flanking arches. The beams of the cross touch the edge of the arch, both on the sides and on the bottom, bringing the crucifix into our world, touching the frame of our space, but having nothing to do with where it should be accurately positioned visually. So perhaps a few weeks in Rome, and then spend a week working my way up to Florence and Arrezo, and then back to Rome for the final bacchanalia.

40 is a big deal for me. So excuse my ruminating on the subject of what to do for it so much and so far in advance.

Posted on

Can’t Sleep

I can’t sleep. I immediately think of that awful trailer for the new Christian Bale movie, where if he were any skinnier he’d be a ghost, the trailer that relates the entire story in 10 gruelling minutes, and then tells you again that if he were any skinnier he’d be a ghost. I’ll try to do that.

I had dinner with Rocco Pizzoferrato tonight at Delfina. It was an amazing meal. Actually it was the equivalent of an amazing two meals. An all-too brief sensual highlight was the tagliatelle in a butter and cream sauce with truffles shaved over the top. The beauty for me of Italian food is the melding of a few simple ingredients to stimulate the senses into an awareness of the joy and wonder of the coming together of those ingredients. The truffles were like the musty underwear of some beautiful and tragic Greek hero. I wanted to lick my plate, and shed a silent tear as they tore it away from me.

There’s a new show that I put up a few days ago at Marjorie Wood–a wacky video by Connie Harris, accompanied by a short story by On Our Back editor Diana Cage. Coco says check it out, culture vultures. You can look at art, and don’t have to leave your laptops!

Speaking of laptops, remember that I broke mine a while ago? Well, instead of paying Apple $1,400 to fix it (the Apple Associate told me on the phone, “Honey, just buy a new one”), or buying a new one (my idea of selling things on eBay to finance the transaction ended up in me acquiring all sorts of expensive new decorative items for the house–give me the cow and I’ll buy expensive beans, every time), I’ve decided to fix it myself! I bought the hinges for $90 (eBay), have accumulated enough advice about how to do it from people who have done it, and as soon as the hinges arrive, I’m Coco, Powerbook Repairman! Evidently these hinge breaks are common in the G4 Titanium Powerbooks, so if yours breaks, give me a jingle, and I’ll share my conquest of the hinge!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Super Bear Powers, Activate

So who are these people who voted for Bush? I heard something on NPR the other day about half-full and half-empty glass attitudes, with Bush rejecting either notion in favor of declaring that the glass was all his. Is that what it’s about? Maintaining our dominance? Have these people traveled or read a newspaper in the past four years? I yearn for educated masses and compassionate socialism. Why should we have to pay for health care anyway? Back to the personal as political for me.

And speaking of superpowers, this weekend was filled with lots of them. Saturday night, Alex and I made our way across the bay to see Mark Morris, who wowed us with his super choreography. The music was mostly baroque, and the dances went beyond illustrating the thrilling and delightful highly ornamented music and song by drawing from the sensibilities of the time and and the music while seeming very contemporary. I was so happy at one point that I just started crying. I really am hysterical, n’est ce pas?

Anyway, Sunday found Dean, Chris and me sitting around stately Coco Manor, reading back issues of ArtForum…

when suddenly the Bear phone rang…

and away we bounced… (cue Super Bear Action theme)

only to spring from the refrigerator a few moments later, Under Bear Chrissy the first to the Barry McGee action phone…

CAPTAIN COCO AND THE UNDERBEARS!!!!

Sorry that we didn’t see you out and about Sunday night, Citizens, but our duty was elsewhere. Remember, eat between meals, and never, ever clip below the neckline.

Posted on

Little Pumpkins

Last night BC and I sent my just-turned-13 year old nephew, Nathan, off to the opera with his mom and dad, a gift from us to honor his coming of age. They saw Ligetti’s Le Grand Macabre, which we’ll be seeing in a few weeks. Nathan’s little bro, Sammy, came over to hang with Reese, and we carved pumpkins and ate pizza and watched Plan 9 From Outer Space until we all fell asleep and everybody snapped awake at the same time and yelled at me for choosing such an awful movie. It really does live up to its reputation as the worst movie ever made. Reese has developed such an accute grasp of irony that I was surprised that he didn’t appreciate the wonder that was Ed Wood. His English class assignment last week was to write a biography from the perspective of a personal hero–he chose Gypsy Rose Lee. Off to brunch with Emily…

Posted on

Super Bears

So none of my co-revelers is co-operating with my Halloween costume master plan. My vision involves me, BC and D dressing up as the Super Bears, with plaid capes, masks, and plastic bear noses, with furry “SB”s and an “SC” (in my case) emblazoned across our carefully tailored t-shirts. Blue jeans and stomper boots complete our ensemble, plus some kind of utility belt containing the supplies necessary for fighting and containing twinkdom. Being a superhero is easy, looking like one is difficult.