Category: Friends

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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.

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Life Munches On

Life munches on.

I spent last weekend at Dean & Doug’s Inverness pad. We picked huckleberries, which turned into a delicious ice cream topping, donned our netting and fed the bees. Dean did the best Queen Bee imitation. I brought up an apple pie that I made from apples that they had brought to my house the previous weekend. Apples, apples, apples–everywhere apples! I made about 3 pies with them and still have more! We spent the bulk of the weekend picking fruit and cooking and eating and drinking, like what people used to do before TV. They recently put up a deer fence, so they toss spent apples over the fence for the deer to nibble on. And nibble they do. It’s like putting out used furniture on 20th street in front of my house–gone in 15 minutes. Where are the deer when there are no apples for them to eat? How do they just suddenly appear? They are so adorable, I don’t see how people can shoot them, their swirling pink tongues and quivering little white tails and (real!) doe eyes.

We took a walk after dinner on Saturday night–an incredible vegetarian dinner involving artichokes, barley, cauliflower, corn, and love–a walk “around the block.” It was so dark from the dense canopy of trees that I could only make out a slightly less-dark trapezoid under my feet that was the road. Everything was blurry, like walking in a cartoon. I could hear the crunch of my feet on pavement, but couldn’t see my feet. I’d stick my hands out in front of me and they’d melt into the less-dark-ness of the road. Then I’d turn to the side and see trees disorientingly silhouetted against the night sky in remarkably sharp focus, and then look straight ahead again into the blurry abstraction of the road. It was thrilling. Sleeping was like that, too, pitch black and hallucinatory. I could hear every sound of the many creatures visiting the improvised feed lot outside my window–munching sounds and cracking twigs. Were I not surrounded by my dear hosts and dear deer, I would have thought I was in a horror film.

Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton had a show at Paule Anglim that was pretty dynamite last month–very large caricatured portraits of her contemporaries on scrolls of linen, big bold blobs of color. She’s my kind of painter–expressive and gestural. If Fat Albert had a painter friend in the ‘hood, it would be Caitlin, master portraitist of the new Cosby kids.

Nick Dong finally returned my Inter-Personal Masculinity Evaluator, so line up to be evaluated.

A crisp new version of Lang’s Scarlet Street came out a while back and I finally watched it, having seen it many times over the years as a fuzzy scratchy worn out print. It’s the story of my life, rich with gender ambiguities and frustrated attempts to love the person that you eventually have to kill. Chris Cross, played by Edward G. Robinson, is a meek clerk who, in his spare time and in the bathroom, paints naive portraits of “what he feels.” The film opens with Chris being feted for decades of service to the firm, with no hopes for advancement. He glances out the window to notice the boss’ beautiful mistress waiting in a limo outside. He says to his colleague, “I wonder what it’s like to be loved by a woman like that.” Not “I wonder what it’s like to LOVE a woman like that,” but “I wonder what it’s like to BE loved by a woman like that,” establishing his passivity. He finds out alright, and ends up homeless, unable to claim his identity as the painter of his own masterworks that were improperly (but with his blessing) attributed to the woman he desires most but kills; Kitty, who led him to his downfall, the love that he can never attain, but whose voice calling out to her lover–who gets blamed for her death and is fried in the electric chair–will haunt him for eternity. It’s a sublime masterpiece.

I’m getting into Top Chef. I developed a big crush on Joey, the chunky italian, who was asked to pack up his knives and hit the road last week. He breaks down and cries, it’s so heartbreaking. I’ve watched the last 10 minutes about 5 times already in reruns, and I cry each time, hoping that this time he’ll be spared, that it won’t be the last time I’ll see him. He even says, “This isn’t the last you’ll see of me,” but come on. The other hot chunky guy, Howie, is a thug, and while cute, he’s a thug, really, with no inter-personal relating skills. The other chef-testants cower in fear when they have to break up into groups, fearful that they’ll end up in his group and have to deal with his misanthropic dictatorial take on group dynamics. Still, I’d boink him. And eat his food, of course.

What else? Reese turned 14–Bob made a volcano cake that spewed lava. Many contestants on The Dating Game, but none worth mentioning. I drove D to Reno to visit his mom and discovered that everybody there is overweight and limps. No dates, though. I’m having dinner with Thomas Hardy tonight. I didn’t get ANY of the grants that I applied for. But you haven’t seen the last of me…

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The Dating Game: Coco is Sad, and Yet They Come

I’ve been flirting with this “bottom” south of San Francisco. It took 20 questions to discover that he was from Iraq. He skillfully evaded all of my questions with vague responses, I even asked if he was from Persia, hoping to give him a safe way out. Finally I just asked, “Are you from Iraq?” We seemed to hit it off quite well online, and then he called, leaving a message asking if I’d join him at the Lone Star for a drink. I called him back and told him that I’d love to meet him somewhere where we could talk and get to know each other, but that I’m not really a bar person. A week went by and he called again, asking me if I’d like to join him at the Watergarden, a gay bathhouse in San Jose. “We don’t have to do anything.” Again, I returned his call and left a message with the same response, “You know, I’m not really a bar or bathhouse kind of homosexual. I’m probably more like your mother. And I’d prefer to get to know your upper half before being exposed to your lower half.” Well, I didn’t hear back from him.

I’ve been revisiting Brideshead Revisited. In high school it made such a deep impression on me, Charles and Sebastian’s deep intimacy, Charles’ detachment and longing. Like the older Charles Ryder, returning to the scene of his young love… Christian Huygen called me up last week. “Guess where I am?” I haven’t seen Christian in about 11 years. We went out, briefly, 15 years ago, but I wasn’t ready to be with him, and he had his own complications. We spent several days together last week, and it was like the intervening years hadn’t intervened at all, like we were continuing a conversation from 15 years ago. We both recognized it, like what drew us together in the first place was still firmly there, and all the successes and failures and heartaches of the decade and a half that had passed between us meant nothing.

I’m finding San Francisco bereft of men interested in intellectual or romantic life. It’s like being in the Children of Men. “It’s 2007. The last homosexual looking for a relationship died 10 years ago…” Seeing the brilliant and charming Christian jolted me a bit, too. There is hope, but I’m not finding it here. I have found one dreamy man in Denver that I just adore, but he lives in Denver. I would marry my Minneapolis musician this instant if he didn’t live in Minneapolis or already have a lover. Of my cyber boyfriends, my Philly psychologist is coming to visit in May, my Birmingham lawyer in June, and my italian art teacher in London in July. But I find no comfort in the prospect of these brief–if wildly fantastic and even sexually exhalting–encounters. I need a husband and I need one quick.

I even told my furry ward that I needed to be away from him for a while. Well, okay–AGAIN–but this time I mean it! There must be some term for falling in love with your patient. Or what happened to Patti Hearst. I need to be around mentally stable intellectually stimulating chubby hairy men. Should I start a reading group?

Sigh.

There’s a Guy in this old town
I’m tellin’ you a fact
He measures five feet up and down
And five feet front and back
He’s a Roly Poly Baby
Pleasin’ as they come
He’s a Roly Poly Baby
A Ton of Fun

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Infernal Name Dropping

Steve is in town for the weekend, staying with Albie downstairs. They came over for dinner and Infernal Affairs Saturday night. Infernal Affairs is so much more interesting than Scorsese’s re-make, The Departed–grander. See it! Anyway, Steve is on his way back home to Hawaii following a trip to Paris to help his friend open her new spa. He had thought that her spa business partner was named “Stinking Trudie” until she corrected him: “Sting and Trudie.”

“Wait a minute,” I asked, “How does she know Sting?”

Steve was a little embarrassed by our fascination with his name dropping, but couldn’t seem to stop. “Madonna.”

“She’s friends with Madonna?!?”

“You know, spa stuff. So anyway, she also needed help with this party that she’s throwing for Boutros…”

“Wait, ‘Boutros-Boutros Ghali’–the former Secretary General of the UN?”

Steve was embarrassed again, “They have the same cleaning lady. She wanted me to go to Egypt with her for the weekend, but I was just too tired. I asked her, ‘Egypt, don’t they hang gay people there?’ but she assured me that ‘Boutros would never let that happen!'”

It went on and on, with more and more celebutantes and diplomats spilling from Steve’s lips. I told him to tell Madonna, Sting and Boutros that they must look me up next time they’re in town.

Earlier in the day I went a-gallerying with Emily, David, and David’s boyfriend, Scott. David and Scott are former-mormons and have matching glasses, cute little bellies, and sweet dispositions. I fell in love with their sweet togetherness and innocent delight in all the strange artwork that we introduced to them.

“And this is Nayland Blake’s work, he used to live here and was Bob’s boyfriend.” Nayland’s aesthetically and psychologically complex examination of self, sexuality, and relationships led to a lively discussion of Bob’s and my life, together and apart. David is a writer who was greatly influenced by Bob, and so was intensely excited about suddenly having access to a different view of Bob’s autobiograph-ing.

A silhouette of trees against an impossibly bright night sky at Fraenkel Gallery by Robert Adams was the highlight for all of us. “I was Jeffrey Fraenkel’s gardener. I set off his burglar alarm.” My name-dropping went unacknowledged.

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Judy!

Yesterday Minnette had a little brunch for Judy Dater, just returning from her honeymoon in Paris with her umpteenth husband. Judy’s this uber famous photographer, whose tender nude studies and shimmering gray scale influenced me as a budding photographer. I’ve since moved away from that tradition, but all of the other photographers in attendance were still shooting traditional nudes or street scenes, all talking dismissingly of digital photography and the scramble for replacing their no-longer-manufactured gelatin silver papers.

I was talking to Judy about our favorite Paris museums and what she was currently working on, just falling in love with how accessible and glowing she was, but ended up being drawn away by the most bitter of the bunch. This guy, wearing the hunting jacket and sun hat of the seeker of the “decisive moment,” was still upset about the shift caused by Szarkowski’s Arbus, Winogrand and Friedlander “New Documents” show—that was 40 years ago—even referring to Arbus as “that woman who killed herself.”

“So what do you do?” he finally asked me. “I photograph big hairy guys very closeup and put the images together in large abstract arrays, providing an intimate access to a body that we don’t generally look at very closely.” He didn’t know what to do. “What size are your prints?” So we chatted about process and papers, and I finally pulled myself away and ran to gather some lemons from Minnette’s tree. I came home and made lemonade.

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Pygmalion Ha!

My furry ward has left the nest. Today I moved him into his new apartment in the lower Haight. He’s sharing it with a successful hair dresser who has his own shop, and the gayest taste I have ever seen: wrought iron dining chairs, salmon leather sofa, faux paint job on every wall… You’d think he watches way too much Home & Garden TV, but he doesn’t have a TV. It’s all genetic!

So I got very weepy a few days ago, well okay, sobby. Some three odd years have passed since I plucked him from his board-and-care and invited him to live in my studio. He was then a catatonic hairy shell who could hardly carry on a conversation, and now he’s living on his own and charming every other available twinkie in town. My Galatea’s off in his own new direction, and I’m the waving midwestern mom slowly fading from view in his rearview mirror.

I think that I’ve come to know him better than anyone I’ve ever known. I experience his mental illness as two distinct personalities. One side can lie to me and believe it, the other side can hold me so tightly that I feel I’m going to die from being loved so hard. I used to think that people were either good or bad. Not both–and not at the same time. There’s no morality guiding him, just self-preservation and passion.

And I love this person. Frequently I’ll call Big Chrissy. “I can’t take it anymore, he’s got to leave, he’s driving me crazy, he did this unmentionable thing, he did that unmentionable thing, he used my good silver to clean his pipe…” And then he hugs me and I don’t care that he just chipped my majolica. Again. Everything fades and sappy music plays and fireworks go off and bands go marching by and the United States declares victory over Japan and kids scream and a child is born in the East…

What is this love that has nothing to do with reason, or taxes? I’m sure that if he told me that he’s decided–as he’s done frequently when I’m dating or married to someone else–that I’m the only one for him, I’d chuck the whole lot of you and move into his little room and spend the rest of my life–well, okay, a week–in furry bliss. No, I’m not sure I’d do that, but I’m scared to death of the part of me that wants to.

So tomorrow is the first day of this part of the rest of my life. Again. I’ve shot the images for the next pieces, two flowers. One flower is made of images of his butt, too close to even be read, but familiar to those who have been there, the other a rose made up of images of my fingers in his chest hair. We’ll die. I’ll forget. Here’s something of us.

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Dinner with Emily; The Dating Game: Juicy Forgotten MM#1 Details

Emily treated me to dinner at Chez Panisse Wednesday night, my second such treat in the last two months. While we didn’t get to sit at the Chef’s table, we did enjoy an equally memorable meal upstairs in the Cafe. I had the fixed meal: mixed greens; porcini mushrooms and polenta; ice cream and chocolate sauce. Getting the simplest-sounding dishes is key to understanding what they’re up to over there, and indeed, everything that could have been expressed in a salad of “mixed greens” seduced and wooed my tender taste buds into complete submission to flavor and freshness.

Emily might be showing with me next October at Mark Wolfe. I hope it works out, she’s hot! Her abstractions are painterly in a way that my work isn’t–gestural and worked, all about surface and color–but her use of line and the grid will play nicely against and with what I’m constructing.

So did I tell you? I’m having a solo show next October at Mark Wolfe Contemporary, 49 Geary, 2nd Floor. Mark your calendars! It’s my most ambitious project yet, and it’s going to take me about 8 more months to get it all shot, printed, and framed. The show seeks to expand the current bear stereotype of the Carhart-clad he-man: “tee-hee-heee” instead of “yeaaaaah.” Stay tuned for more details!

Oh. I forgot to mention one of the most memorable things about my recent rendezvous with Married Man #1. Well, it turns out that he’s a bear porn star! I made him turn on one of his movies while we were defiling his marriage bed. Every so often I’d see through a jumble of legs and arms and thises and thatses and see our positions mirrored by what was happening on the screen, like one of those mirrors that replicate their reflections to infinity. He said the same kinds of things that porn stars say, too, like, “Yeah,” and those instructive comments that always crack me up, and of course the astute “you like that blankety-blank, yeah” observations. His star quality was apparent, and with a smoldering kind of warmth and understatement that had me believing everything he said–and clapping!

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Dolls, the Dating Game: #13, MM#1

It’s my yard so I will try hard To welcome friends I’ve yet to know! Oh, I’ll plant my own tree!
My!
Own!
Tree!
And I!
(pause)
Will!
(pause)
Make!
(pause)
It!
(pause)
Grow!

Dean and Doug and Big Chrissy came over for dinner and The Valley of the Dolls Saturday night. Earlier Dean received a favorable but unsurprisingly not-cogent review in Our City’s Paper by Our Big Art Critic. Mr. Critic wrote that, for Dean, “Thinking seems entirely subsidiary to process.” In reality, Dean’s mastery of technique allows him to articulate his ideas through a labor-intensive process that mirrors the complexity of his thinking. Our Critic is smart enough–I should say, learned enough–but he lacks an ability to connect with, or even see, what artists are doing or saying. He consistently compares art to work that’s already been written about–ideas that have already been developed by other writers. If he can’t think of a comparison, he writes stupid shit like that. I love Peter Schjeldahl, who writes for the New Yorker. Not only is he incredibly smart, but he consistently brings his personal experience and biases to everything he writes about.

Anyway, I want my dolls!!!! What a fun movie. I’ve been humming the theme song for days and twirling around my house in a technicolor-infused holiday spirit.

Bachelor #13 has made a few more guest appearances at Casa Coco. I showed him Uncut, not the John Greyson movie, but the stupid Italian penis exploitation-fest. For the entire film, our headless hero tries to get laid, while the camera stays trained on his pee-pee. It’s a nice enough peep to watch, especially his balls going up and down with his changes in vocal intonation. He’s stuck in bed following an accident in which he mangles his leg–his girlfriend is presumed dead, and the police are suspicious–yet his thoughts are solely on getting laid, and every attempt is waylaid in often hilarious situations–and that’s the joy of the film. Unfortunately, it takes a few silly turns that make it one of the dumbest movies I’ve seen. Plus he’s a muff trimmer, and you all know how I feel about that.

Speaking of muff-trimming, #13 spoke favorably of the film’s star’s “haircut,” much to my dismay. Clip your hair below the neck and suffer the consequences, bachelors.

Oddly, I seem to have most in common with Married Man #1. I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow night. He quotes Pinter, reads, knows stuff…

When did I get, where did I
Why am I lost as a lamb
When will I know, where will I
How will I learn who I am
Is this a dream, am I here, where are you
Tell me, when will I know, how will I know
When will I know why?
When will I know why…

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The Dating Game, Maybe, and Anselm Kiefer

So I’m not too sure if last night was a date, but I had a great time a’dining and a’movie-ing with a great fellow. I even got a great kiss at the end of the night, which, for me anyway, was enough to qualify the evening as a bona fide Dating Game episode. We watched Brick, a contemporary noir film set in a southern California high school. The narrative, dialogue, and plot development were straight from Cain and Chandler, and played out in a very straightforward way, with no mannerist or stylistic flourishes, or Shyamalan-esque twists of the genre, other than kids enacting a classic noir tale. A very smart and fun movie.

This morning I woke to an amusing note from a fellow on Bear411: “Let’s keep in touch. We have some similar interests!” I took a gander at his profile… “Sleazy top bear pig into watersports, smokesex, three-ways, groups…” Smokesex? I can’t even imagine what that could be.

A few days ago Dean Smith and I, along with husbear Doug, and niece Jamie, visited the Anselm Kiefer show at SFMoMA. It’s a very powerful show, very beautifully installed, with lots of room to take in these very large works. They’re not just large physically, each is endowed with a heaviness of mood and content. The compositions are fairly uncomplicated, filled with magnificent brush work and dynamic materials. Despite the historical themes, Kiefer is always present as an artist, interpreter, and participant. They’re both grand and personal—like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing in your shower. We had an amazing dinner afterwards at Cafe Claude, which has become our little restaurant. I had a salad of greens, potatoes, bacon, and fois gras. Clothespin on aorta! This was followed by a seared tuna chunk swimming in a fabulous sauce of mushroom, cream, bacon again, and something else that overwhelmed the fish but was so delicious I forgot about the fish and just enjoyed it as a medium for carrying the sauce to my mouth. Liquid chocolate cake for dessert. This week’s food theme will be cruciferous and high-fiber.

Tonight I have a date with a gardener bear dude. Oh wait, I forgot to tell you about the little dude at Tower Market yesterday morning. He walked past me as I was making my cheese selection, and stared at me so intensely that I blushed and giggled, embarrassed that I could be the object of such a gaze. He was somehow in all the aisles that I ended up in, that same hungry look, the same blush and giggle, until I finally just walked up to him,

“Hi, I’m Chris.”

“Hey, I’m Chris, too! Are you single?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“—-.”

“—-.”

I’m frankly not sure what would have been different if I had responded that I was also unavailable, but I gave him my card, anyway. He’s so cute! The kind of cute that hurts. And topples presidencies.

**Brring**

**Brring**

So that was Gardener Bear Dude, canceling. He’s sick. What to do tonight?

The adventure continues…

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41. It’s the new 40!

The birthday season opened last night with Sankai Juku at the Center for the Arts with Su-Chen-I-mean-Hong-Xi. I’ve yet to get used to her name change. I always wanted to change my name to Barabas. Or Bunny, like Sargeant Carter’s girlfriend. Anyway, Sankai Juku is this Japanese butoh group that I’ve been following for years, and it’s been five years since they were last in town. Butoh is a dance form that evoloved out of post-war Japan, involving sometimes dark and grotesque imagery and jerking contorted bodies dusted in rice flour. Sankai Juku is probably the best known practitioners of the form, and certainly the most elegant.

Their piece last night was called Kagemi, or “Mirror.” It opened with a single performer on a circle at the edge of a square platform. The platform was filled with giant lotus leaves, which rose to the ceiling, revealing more dancers, writhing around and mirroring each other’s actions, like a performance in some kind of lovely primordial soup. At one point a single dancer was left on the rectangle, in a very refined and almost sentimental dance, the music bringing tears to my eyes, and then suddenly, as if to blast the sentiment to kingdom come, out popped several dancers in post-apocalyptic tattered clothing, dipping their hands in their bloody sides and smearing little stripes on each other to the drone of a blaring cacophony of sounds. Their rice powder makeup forms a little cloud around them when they move around more aggressively. They remind me of the guy in Munch’s The Scream cross-pollinated with Charles Schultz’s Pigpen in the dream of Nijinski undergoing electro-convulsive therapy in a Japanese internment camp. What an incredible evening. Oh, when they come out to take a bow, they just stand there, in a sculptural row, one guy moving his hand a teeny bit, the choreographer in the center slowly curtsying (this takes about 5 minutes) while extending his arm outward in a circular gesture of touched affection. The bow alone is worth the price of admission.

More birthday adventures to follow…