Big Chris is all sprawled out in the next room, beckoning, like Mrs. Roper. His availability is alarming sometimes–as well as my readiness. We just fold into each other so easily. But first we play this little game. “Chri-is, what are you doing?” “Chri-is, I want to show you something.” “Chri-is, can you help me with this?” He’s so cute. He even has names for all of our “huggely” positions (developed with Little Dave, I believe)–full frontal, full backal, caliper, half-caliper, helpless-victim-child, special huggely, etc… Sometimes we have so much fun I just start laughing, giddy from the pleasure that we create, two squeaky toys squeezing and being squeezed. Okay, there he goes again–I’d better finish my laundry before Mrs. Roper falls asleep…
Blah Blah Blah
Blah, blah, blah, blah, moon,
Blah, blah, blah, above;
Blah, blah, blah, blah, croon,
Blah, blah, blah, love.
Tra la la la tra la la la la, merry month of May;
Tra la la la tra la la la la, ‘neath the clouds of gray.
Blah, blah, blah, your hair
Blah, blah, blah, your eyes
Blah, blah, blah, blah, care,
Blah, blah, blah, blah, skies.
Tra la la la, tra la la la la cottage for two
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, darling, with you!
From the Archive
It’s 1980, Birmingham, Alabama. I’m on my princess phone chatting with Robin, my best friend and disco partner. I just got my learner’s permit. This is just a few weeks before I got rid of the Shaun Cassidy haircut and went New Wave. The mural on my bedroom wall is a copy of a Peter Max poster. I locked myself in my room one day and painted it. My parents didn’t seem to mind, although my sudden interest in psychedelia led my dad into my closet the following week where he found my brother, Mark’s pot stash, and I had to sit through this lecture about my hippie sisters, with Mark stoned and giggling in the next room. I loved my little room. I had sex with James, Sam, Donna, Robert, and Richard in that room, listened to DEVO’s Uncontrollable Urge and the B-52s’ Give Me Back My Man, dreamed of living in California, fantasized about Parker Stevenson, read Raymond Chandler and Yukio Mishima, took my first picture, experienced my first broken heart, and had mononucleosis.
My 20th high school reunion is coming up next month, and I’ll get to stay in my room again. My dad painted over the mural a while ago, when he threw out my Hardy Boys books and transformed my cool teen pad into “the guest room.”
Bastille Day Party at the Mansion
My Pommes Anna was a knockout–how could one go wrong with butter, potatoes, salt and pepper? It was like a 12 inch potato chip. Davide and I hauled our creation to John’s Bastille Day dinner, hot from the oven. John made a coq au vin that was out of this world, and garlicky escargot, someone else made a sad potato thingy that paled in comparison to my grand galette, and there were green beans, then tarte tatin, a chocolate torte, a berry tarte, and lots of wine, including several 20 year old wines, limoncello (from France?), and stimulating drunken conversation and song.
The guys at the party were arch queens, half wore ascots, and several had matching English accents. Bryan, “with a ‘Y’,” the monarchist, and I discussed our mutual friend and his neighbor, the heir to all the Russias, and Henry II’s children; Lacoste-Sweater-Queen asked if what I did for a living had anything to do with my looking smart–I said, “No, I’m an artist;” Philip wore a lavender ensemble (the colors of the French flag put in a blender); Ted called Davide alternately “David-oo” and “David-ah;” Another guy called him “Doris-day;” John made a brilliant toast tying the defeat of the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the storming of the Bastille, rallying us to matrimonial arms; and Recent-Bike-Wreck-Boy, a member of the SF Opera Chorus, led us through the Marseillaise. At one point we all wore silly French hats, and everybody swooned when Davide tried on the feathered velvet one and instantly transformed into a della Francesca youth.
A lovely evening.
Tippi
The Hitchcock blonde that I am channeling today is TIPPI HEDREN; cool, my blonde conch of a hairdo glistening and radiant despite the stormy weather, one high-heeled foot in front of the other in my form-fitting pale chartreuse Chanel suit as I cross the street amid the whistles, winks, and woofs… cool… sexy… Tippi… Coco.
Tonight I’m introducing Davide to some north-of-the-slot culture; a Bastille Day dinner party at John’s mansion. I’m making Pommes Anna, a galette of potatoes and butter, and will be dressed as a Genet thug (and not as Tippi).
More later…
Workout Report
Accoding to the calorie meter on my stationary bike, I burned 10% more calories this morning switching from Pimsleur’s Speak and Read Essential French II to Donna Summer’s I Feel Love in the last 8 minutes of my workout.
Conclusion:
I need The Dance Remix of Pimsleur’s Speak and Read Essential French II by Donna Summer to be smarter and prettier.
It Was 20 Years Ago Today
Bob and I just had a near-fatal encounter, but I kept it together, didn’t get upset, and calmly asked that he consider both of our feelings during this transition. The countdown to moveout day continues… I’ve offered to donate frequent flier miles to fly out his buddy Elin to help with the move. Hence the discussion–he feels that I owe him the miles, I wanted to feel that I was helping–the half-full, half-empty dichotomy fully realized yet again. Saturday we divide our things. Stay tuned for details.
So today is the anniversary of my move to San Francisco. 20 years ago, 3 days after my high school graduation,
…okay, hold on, now I get an email from Bob saying …In our talk I actually didn’t say anything about your character, and you got two digs in that really rankle. Typically, typically, typically, then, you go away congratulating yourself as Mr. Nice Guy. If indeed I looked after myself only during our relationship, I certainly did not do a very good job of it!… I had to run back upstairs and explain again that I needed each of us to consider the other’s feelings during the transition, that I was the one feeling not taken care of, and to apologize for anything that I said that hurt his feelings. There’s just no coming together here. He’s going to be angry and resentful, no matter what I do or say. Help!
So anyway, 20 years ago I came to San Francisco with flowers in my hair, and pink chandelier earrings, landed a job at Marcello’s Pizza on Castro, where I delivered slices to such luminaries as Richard Locke, Peter Berlin, and Al Parker, and put myself through the San Francisco Art Institute on pizza tips, met and fell in love with Manny, started a non-profit gallery-without-walls, Secession Gallery, had my first solo show, enjoyed a productive relationship with Patricia Sweetow Gallery, ran the LAB Gallery’s Board for five years, became a landscaper, photographed my porn-heroes, Jack & Mack, met and fell in love with Bill, Ron, Garry, Alfonso, Bob, Dean, and Big Chrissy, travelled to Europe, China, Japan, and Australia, gained 35 pounds, grew a beard, foreskin, planted my garden, had my car stolen, my house burglarized, had a stalker for a while, raised a gay love-child with Bob, and a cat, had an affair, received communion from the Pope, was shaken by countless earthquakes, had 2 runaway-trucks flatten everything in my side-garden on two separate occasions, my roof cave in… well, a lot of disasters, huh?
So what to do for the next 20 years? I want to focus on growing as an artist and get some work out of this town! (and Boston). My life seems less driven by hormones, for the moment, I have a comfy place to live steady work, so perhaps now’s a good time to really hunker down with my art.
Inebriated
I love alcohol. When I’m just slightly on the other side of lucid, I love everybody and everything’s funny and colorful and fuzzy. If I ever went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I’d go drunk and tell them all how happy alcohol has made me, and invite them over to my house for a tiny ‘tini. “Hello, Chris!” Without alchohol, we wouldn’t have the Wiffenpoof song, or, or, okay, countless senseless road deaths, liver transplants and abused spouses, souses, but today I sing the glories of drinking. In moderation. Plus a little bit more. In celebration of the merry month of May, and my last month living with Bob, I offer you this toast, with a Gary Farrell 2001 Starr Ridge Pinot–to love’s illusion: long may it cloud my vision and drive the rest of you to near insanity, and may none of us ever be without it.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and blah blah blah blah BLAH…
Anxious
My next door neighbors have put their house on the market: $959,000 for a 3-bedroom single-family home with no garage. Today they’re having an open house. My house is surrounded by SUVs. Groan. Whovever can afford to move in can definitely afford to put in a garage and I am so not looking forward to a year of digging into the bedrock of Collingwood Hill (which happened two doors down a few years ago. The neighborhood was covered with fine dust the entire year). Hopefully they’ll undermine my foundation in some way, and I’ll get a new foundation out of this. I remember the days when people I knew could afford to live next to me. I can’t afford to live next to me.
Estonia Estonia
Last night BC and I went to a cocktail party at John’s mansion on Gough Street. John’s now the Honorary Consul to Estonia (in addtion to being my former mistress and brother to Catwoman Julie Newmar). The guests were an ecclectic mix of artists and filmmakers, and a few patrons–one lawyer dressed in black with a big nose and little feet, and another guy dressed in black with a big Gucci belt and a little companion in a Chanel suit and a little “CC” bag. Eigar and Ain showed exerpts from a film that they’re making, about an incident at the Berlin Wall in 1962. The sound design and framing were exceptional. One exerpt we got to see involved several young German conscripts with dropped drawers at their fitness evaluation. After a pan of their exposed-ness, the doctor says, “You’re all fit for duty.” BC and I agreed. Aigar told us that the scene was based on his own experience being evaluated for the Soviet Army. The entire group then collectively checked out his basket, heads darting from tv screen to crotch like heads at a tennis match. John ended the evening by enlisting my aid in a trash survey of the Castro. He issued me a picker-upper, and a chart to record the number of items I pick up in the ‘hood over the next 7 weeks. (This is what epidemiologists do in their spare time.)