Category: Gay

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A Few Questions, from AllanH:

Who was your first male crush? (Public figure or private figure)

My first serious crush was on Parker Stevenson, who played Frank Hardy in the television series of The Hardy Boys, with his feathered brown hair and beady eyes. It was more a crush on the character he played, as portrayed by him. I read all of the Hardy Boy adventures to extend my fantasies of us exploring and spelunking together. The big brother figure loomed large in a lot of my teen fantasies, with Wally Cleaver, and Bud, from Father Knows Best also figuring into my dream Boy Scout Troupe. The idea of exploring together is something that still has great meaning in my romantic life.

Why does body hair fascinate you enough to explore it in your art?

To see the world in a grain of sand… A local curator, looking at my work years ago, which I had described as being the result of obsession, claimed that he didn’t see any obsession. He encouraged me to stop talking about being obsessed and to show it. Body hair triggers my salivary glands and makes my diaphragm contract. While my relation to body hair is a bit intense, my work isn’t about obsession, for I try to channel my obsession into works that are experiential, conceptual, critical, as well as obsessive. Simply put, I photograph what I like to look at. Intimately.

What is your favorite museum in the whole world?

I have many, but certainly one of my favorites is the Museo della Specola, in Florence, for their life-sized wax models of the various systems of the body. The figures were made in the late 19th century and feature subjects reclining on pillows and with a hand drawn across a forehead, or eyes looking off into the distance, while their bodies are splayed open and peeled apart. It’s a fascinating mix of the beauty and horror of the body.

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IBR, iSpQ Udon’tSpQ, BC/LC

The height of International Bear Rendezvous was watching Grizzly Man with ÜberBears BC and Philip. The movie is a prophetic film about a man who wants to be a bear but ends up getting eaten by them. We also watched Barbarella and ooohed and aaahed over Jane Fonda’s countless and bizarrely convenient costume changes, and experienced extreme Spaceship envy after viewing her fur-lined transport. 

Is there an online venue for chatting with bears who say more than, “Hi,” “Yeah,” and “Woof?” I get dumped as soon as I start chatting about Georges Batailles, Titian, or Maggie Cheung. I yearn for an intellectually stimulating bear chat community, where, in addition to bellies and hair, we can talk about the exhibitions we just saw, the counter-tenor we just heard, the dish on Shelley Winters, raw-milk cheese… I do indeed get a lot of stimulation from my friends here on Live Journal–you’re all so interesting, and engaged with so many diverse topics! I’m talking about the Instant Message, Quick Message, etc. communities. I started talking with an Italian guy the other night (there are like, a million of them on iSpQ), named after an obscure Orson Welles film character. I thought “cool,” and following the mutual introductions, started blabbing about Welles’ self-destructive genius, the last film that’s been held up in litigation for decades, etc… and then, nothing. Click. Hairy bodies that are attached to interesting minds are far more appealing to me than plain old physical perfection, but I don’t seem to meet any Jewish intellectual truck drivers online.

Where are they? If you have a lead, please let me know.

So Big Chris and I are in transition again, still, but we both feel it best to work things out on our end rather than dragging you all into it, and driving you all crazy in the process, too. Now don’t you worry your little heads off, we’ll be fine. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy this brief break from the The Big Chris/Little Chris Show. And now a word from our sponsor…

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Davide and Mack

I met Davide at StarBears this afternoon, to get caught up on the latest in the worlds of academia, love, and Asian cinema. Mack stopped by and gave me a big hug and chatted a bit. He had a filthy red ribbon dangling from his neck, which he explained matter-of-factly to someone was a “ball tie,” like we all have one. I told him that a few weeks ago I checked my website statistics and noticed that my site visitors jumped by about 1,000/day and traced the link to his site, where he had posted a book cover that included two of my photos of him and Jack Radcliffe as well as a link to my website. He called me “buddy,” totally melting my butter, right there in front of everybody. No one else exudes such aromatic musky über-friendliness than that Mack truck of a manly man Mack. Ow-ow-ow…ah-oooooooOOOOOOOOO!

And Davide’s doing really well.

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Monte Rio, High Anxiety

BC and I went up to the Russian River this weekend, holing up in Monte Rio, Vacation Wonderland. The river was all swollen and muddy, the Rio Theater played Rent all weekend, and a new wine shoppe opened up right across the street. BC was a total wuss about hiking after the rain, but the weather was so beautiful and the scenery so breathtaking that I forced him to march up a hill near Goat Rock and enjoy the scenery. He seemed very relieved that the hill had a top, and was much more pleasant for the 20 foot descent back to the CocoMobile.

Big Chrissy contemplates the Little Chrissy… or is that him, too?

At lunch, there was a totally cute couple, one considerably older and heavier than his muscly young companion. They both wore wedding rings, had matching shoes inappropriate for Sonoma County, and moved through the restaurant without speaking. One ordered lunch and carried it to the table, and the other grabbed the flatware and poured milk and sugar into each of their coffees. Their roles were highly organized and developed with no verbal communication. It was so entertaining just watching them and their deep, calm connectedness. The older dude would occasionally throw his arms around his young mate, completely adoring him, while the younger dude continued with his lunch, acknowledging the embrace as a tolerable inconvenience, seemingly uncomfortable with the public display of affection, but obviously happy to be adored.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of my best friends in Alabama. She had inadvertently sent an earlier e-mail about seeing Brokeback Mountain, intended for me, to her sister. Her sister is a fundamentalist Christian who takes the Bible seriously. In the e-mail she described her longing for the kind of desire and intensity shared by Jack and Ennis. (She’s married with kids, but is openly, if not practically, bisexual.) Her sister, who is a lovely person, replied that she had never heard of the movie, was sad that the film made my friend feel so unsatisfied, and that she dislikes Hollywood for making films that are so unrealistic. It struck me that my friend was describing the exact same kind of longing experienced by Jack and Ennis, and how constrained each was by the desire to conform–well, or by the fear of the consequences of not conforming. The sister’s Biblical version of reality couldn’t allow her to even see my friend’s pained reality, which is right up there on the big screen. It’s her story. Just without a Jack(lyn) Twist.

The past few days have been a little rough. I haven’t been sleeping. I woke up early Saturday morning and looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person looking at me, frightened by the weary visage of someone I didn’t know. The person was so needy, anxious and fragile. And 40.

Sunday I was up all night. I lost 7 pounds. I should really start a fad diet, “Loco Coco’s High Anxiety Weight Loss Plan.” I spent last night alone again, and came to a few conclusions: I don’t like feeling so anxious about things that I have no control over; I can be more in control of what I need to be happy. Details to come, but I’m feeling much better today, and happy to see the clouds parting. My mid-life crisis seems to be less a single event than a series of inter-connected mini-crises, kind of like a cold you can’t shake. A-CHOO!

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From Out of the Past, and an RGB Update

So yesterday I get a call. It’s Henry, a friend of mine from Amsterdam, who says he’s at the corner of 18th and Castro can he come up and say hi.

Henry is a cute Dutch truck driver who first appeared on my doorstep about 20 years ago, asking as I opened the door, “Are you Hans VdH’s friend, Chris? He said I can stay here…” Well, he was awfully sweet, so I let him stay a few nights and then asked my friend Augustine if he could stay with him for a while. Augustine replied, “Only if he fucks me,” which I didn’t relay to Henry but sent him off to Augustine’s where they ended up having a steamy affair and I got to focus on whatever it was that was preventing me from wanting the same from our 6’5″ friend. Yesterday we spent a nice afternoon reminiscing about Augustine and talking about his recent trip to Iran, where he had interesting experiences with Iranian men who have intimate relations with other men (Henry says they don’t call themselves gay–“only transvestites are gay”).

It sounded SO HOT!

A few days earlier the teenage daughter of my first true love and the very first to break my little heart, Sarah, stumbled across my blog! In kindergarten I kissed Sarah in the parking lot of Saint James Elementary School and declared my love for her in front of all the nervous Catholic parents. A few years later she announced that she was dumping me for her dog, setting the stage for complicated dramas to come. Sarah’s daughter has a blog of her own with all the requisite themes of an Alabama teen–music, boys and alienation. Sarah and I were supposed to be artists and move to Paris. Her daughter told me that Sarah did indeed become an artist–and a photographer to boot! Get that!

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D, Chris, Chris, Chris, Brett, and two more Chrisses

D and three of his Chrisses–me, BC, and a super sweet lumberjack-y dude friend of D’s–went to see Brokeback Mountain yesterday. I had already written my LiveJournal entry about the film, in my head, prior to seeing it, but mentally tore it up as I shlepped my weeping Chrissy from the Embaracadero over to the Ferry Building for lunch. Yes, I would love for love between men to be repesented as incidental one day, and for the phrase “but I’m not queer” to be something that filmmakers would find way too regressive to have their characters actually say, but until then, I’m content to be moved to tears by the frustrated longing and epic one-night stand of these two sheep-boys.

Another surprise, and Davide, you’re going to be thrilled to hear me say this, was Spielberg’s Munich, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, which, although still presenting the nuclear family as the core of the universe, was an utterly absorbing and fascinating film. The point of the film is that violence only begets more violence, and in an extreme deviation from Spielberg’s typical point of view, there aren’t just good guys and bad guys. This point is demonstrated elegantly through the transformation of the central character from idealist patriot to shattered exile. At the end of the film, his wife watches him as he makes passionate and detached love to her, his mind focused on the brutal deaths of the hostages and kidnappers, observing his dual and conflicting roles as murdering patriot son and life-giving father.

D wanted ham last week, so for the next month or so I’ll be making hammy things. I baked a ham like my mom and dad make for New Year’s, with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. It’s like meat candy. My daphne odora “rubra” opened today, and its scent is filling my house with an intoxicating lushness–a contrasting high note to the smell of the ham and split pea soup simmering in the kitchen. The winter is my favorite time of year for sniffing. There’s the smell of wet leaves, Presto logs, and moist bark, daphne in January, sarcacoca… I imagine that the few pollinating insects left in town are lured like little buzzing zombies to these intensely fragrant blooms. The smells of winter are like a musty armpit, upstaging the stimuli of the other senses.

If I were the type who made New Year’s resolutions, and I’m not, so I won’t, but if I did, it’d have something to do with being more like the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions.

After meeting two more Chrisses, I bumped into cutie pie Brett Reichman at a party last night, one of my favorite artists, forever pixie-like. He’s finally left Rena, who sold his work but rarely showed it, and will be showing at Paula Anglim in April. Mark your calendars, lads and lassies–Brett’s work is a technical and conceptual tour-de-force, stimulating to both eye and mind.

I really wanted to tie all of these disparate thoughts together, but there’s a bear in the bed.

I’ll be a-gallerying on Thursday with Emily, if anyone would like to tag along…

Quote of the day:

Why can’t we shoot a few counterrevolutionary elements? After all, dictatorship is not like embroidering flowers.
–Yao Wenyaun

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A Merry Little Christmas

Christmas eve was spent with my siblings at my sister June’s place. She and hubby Kebby-Chan made perogies and borscht, which has become a tradition honoring Kevin’s Ukranian roots, along with tearing through countless packages, bad jokes, and good bottles of wine. Dean & Doug, Dean W, Davide and Philip joined me and Big Chrissy for an all-male homosexual Christmas day repast. Philip brought over an incredible minced meat pie and a salad of crispy organic red and green leafy things to accompany my duck gams and tarte tatin. The top of my tarte didn’t caramelize, as I rushed through Julia’s instructions without reading the final paragraph, plus Bob got the blowtorch in the divorce anyway, but the crust was perfect, the apples were a little overdone and lost some character, though, which the sheer joy of butter made almost immaterial. Next time: pre-caramelize and don’t cook as long.

I started my Week with Busby at the Castro yesterday, for Babes of Broadway and For Me and My Gal. Dean W. joined me, cruising every single person sitting within a 5 seat radius, and abandoned me during the second film. Babes would seem like a parody of the “let’s put on a show!” movie if it weren’t what the parodies are based on. There are so many obstacles on the way to Broadway stardom for these kids, and at every point the solution is to put on a show and get the big producer to come see it.

This afternoon it’s lunch with Nick and then the fabulous Golddigger movies. I’ll see you at the Castro Theater at 3:00!

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Brief Interactions

So Emily, BC and I went to see Good Night and Good Luck tonight. Eh. It didn’t seem to have much to say that was new or even pertinent–historically or artistically–but it was nicely shot, just ultimately forgettable. Unlike the interesting film by Sokurov that I saw earlier, Moloch, about a dreamy weekend in the alpine retreat with Adolph and Eva, and friends. Presented as a straightforward linear narrative, no one seems to really communicate. Instead, the film is a series of brief fragmented interactions. In one amazing scene, Adolph lectures Eva like a madman, a truly terrifying figure, and she responds by playfully kicking him in the butt as he bends over. He then chases her around the room in his undies. His madness remains something that she sees directed at the world, and she just ignores it, the Final Solution just an impediment to intimacy with her führer. The interview with Sokurov on the dvd was just silly, though. Some artists, especially artists who make such powerful works, should keep quiet. Mark Twain said that keeping one’s mouth shut and being thought of as stupid was preferable to opening one’s mouth and confirming it. Well, Sokurov spent the first 20 minutes talking about why he couldn’t tell us what his movie was about, and the remainder of the interview discussing why the soundtrack and dialogue had nothing to do with the film. Nyet, Sokurov, nyet!

So anyway, at the restaurant after the movie with Em and BC, this guy walks by, kind of a big hunky older biker type with a long beard, very handsome, and I smiled and said hi, not because I knew him, but he reminded me of a plus-sized version of my friend Eric, whom I like and don’t get to see enough of. He smiled, walked by and then turned around and said, “You seem really familiar, do I know you? What’s your name?” I told him I was Chris and shook his hand and told him no, I didn’t know him and he went on his way, perhaps perplexed by all the warm familiarity that I was projecting his way. I don’t know why I’m writing about such a stupid mundane encounter, but our brief interaction seemed framed by a potential for intensity that we grappled clumsily and hastily to acknowledge and understand. “Who are you?” I wanted to answer, “Someone who could love you,” but realized that being there with my boyfriend necessarily precluded such a response, and off he went, forever.

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Judy, Already?

I know you’re all going to hate me for this. But whenver I hear Judy Garland sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from Meet Me in Saint Louis, I want to weep hysterically. I have absolutely no defense against holiday sentiment, and despite the endless complaints and articulate denunciations of the crass commercialization of Christmas, it’s like I’ve been waiting all year long for Judy’s velvety voice to assure me that from now on our troubles will be miles away while we make the yule-tide gay.

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Sam o’ My Heart

My exes just keep dropping. Sam died. My first, my most hysterical high school heartthrob, the most Mick Jagger-like. Redder than rubies and bigger than Texas were his lips. The last I heard from him, he was working with Amazon, early in 1999, said he’d be in Oakland soon visiting his brother, and then never called. Someone said he retired early and squandered his pre-internet bursting-bubble fortune up his arm or nose, I can’t remember which–or was it both? He died of renal failure, at 42. Manny, Michael, Geraldo, and now Sam. What a fabulous bunch of queens to share an afterlife.