Category: Work

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Bored

I’ve been bored. I’m at the office right now, bored. The boss is at the “doctor’s.” Is it time for a new botox injection already? We’ll have to wait until he gets back to find out what part of his body is being granted a temporary reprieve from the effects of gravity this month. I’m one hour into my big three-hour work week, and I’ve already finished all the work for the week and am now looking over the Boss’ rent boy expenses for the month and trying to enjoy porno on dialup. I need a change. Another big sale. Roma. A real job. Roma…

More later. I’m growing my beard back.

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Two Saints, Godard, Work and a New Haircut

Überbearpornstar Jack Radcliffe gave me a big sweaty hug at the Castro Street Street fair on Sunday last. The crowd parted and the sun revealed his dazzling smile and outstretched arms. He’ll always be a Bellini saint to me. I spent the following Thursday evening with a less-hairy and more-than-likely less-hung saint, Messaien’s Saint Francois d’Assise at the SF Opera, which aside from being melodically challenging and brilliantly staged, Neue Sachlichkeit meets the Franciscans, and five hours long, introduced me to the ondes martenot, an electronic instrument dating from 1928 similar to the theremin, but with fixed notes and a keyboard, which Stravinsky described as “the musical equivalent of a colonoscopy.” I’m not sure that I would agree with Stravinsky, unless he thought colonoscopies were stimulating fabulous experiences. Seeing the opera in San Francisco is so much more comfortable than what I imagine the experience to be like in other big cities. First of all, you could wear a t-shirt, or khakis after Labor Day, or a pink tuxedo and nobody notices, not even the society people, who all wore black, as they don’t deviate from what’s expected of them seasonally, and would anything they say about me get back to me anyway? Their little world is very closed and their behavior very apelike–all posturing and preening and feral. I was very hot, as in sweating like a pig, in my Dolce & Gabbana chartreuse velvet suit. (80% off at Wilkes Bashford.) I am definitely dressing like the little dude in line at the bar downstairs next time and going for the t-shirt and gap khakis look. I’m sure that all of us non-society people who saw him thought the same thing–forget this velvet designer crap, I’m wearing my underwear next time! The opera was pretty stunning, with a rotating stage consisting mainly of an S-shaped ramp with a detachable snow-covering which hovered a few feet over it in the winter scene. On either side of the stage was a 3-level open tower, out of the second floor of one a blue angel with one wing appeared cantilevered over the stage below.

Last night I saw Godard’s new film, In Praise of Love, which I can’t honestly say I liked or not. I and the audience (all 5 of us) slept through half of it. I think I’d like to see it again, for what I did see seemed intriguing–a film about a director making a film about the four stages of love, and the obstacles that frustrate creativity. The first half was black and white, and looked exactly like a new wave film from the early 60’s, but not self-consciously. The second half was filmed in digital video, but that’s where I got lost in slumberland, so not much else to say about it. There did seem to be no joy, and a lot of anti-American sentiment which, while a necessary plot device, left me feeling slightly battered.

His Contempt is still one of my favorite films.

Today at work I set up an e-mail account for my boss’ friend, who is traveling to Bali next week for a month. She runs a travel service offering scuba tours of Indonesia. She’s currently her only client. She and the boss have property in Panama and are planning on building a house together. Their joint ventures remind me of Bob’s parents’ 2 big investments; Israeli oil and California City. After his parents’ Israeli oil stock became worthless, it was discovered that their property in California City couldn’t be developed because of the desert tortoise.

Yesterday I got my hair cut by the same barber who sexually harassed me a few haircuts ago. (Little Dave calls him “Big Red.”) He’s purchased the shop down the street from me and is going to make it into the haircutting equivalent of the Starbucks on 18th Street. A bear barbershop. His demeanor was disappointingly subdued, but he did shave my neck with a straight razor. Hot!

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Work News Flash

My boss informed me at work today that his botox treatment was fading, lines already re-appearing after only a few weeks, and that the reason his face was peeling, cracked, and red was because he’s initiated an emergency 6-week chemical peel. For the next month and a half I will be working with the picture of Dorian Gray, and then Dorian himself, hopefully.

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Curator visits, A Call From D

The chief photo curator at a local museum, is coming next Wednesday to see selections from my new Thundercrack! series. Maybe s/he’ll go for the Jack Radcliffe pics–wouldn’t it be great to see that shlong in a museum? I bought a Paul McCobb coffee table on eBay, that I really can’t afford right now. But it’s so beautiful. Boss at work got a botox treatment that eliminated all of the lines on his face. He looks 20 years younger. And like Frankenstein’s monster. A friend of his talked him into it. The friend also ordered some foreskin stretching device on the internet that bossman seemed very curious about. I was very quiet. Anyway, when are they going to create a drug that makes chest hair? I talked with D. tonight. Remember the guy who told me 6 months ago that he never wanted to hear from me again? Well, he’s baaaaaaaak. And only a month after the last phone call announcing that he never wanted to see me again. Well, this time he called to tell me that he’s discovered that he’s bipolar. Like, duh. I didn’t bother to remind him that he had already announced this to me 2 years ago, shortly after announcing that he had borderline personality disorder. Anyway, he’s on drugs now. Whether prescribed or self-medicated was a little unclear. I accepted his good will and wished him well. One less person to worry about spitting on me in the gutter.

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Frenzy

Another hectic day at work. Boss just dashed out of the office to meet a client down south. I’m still here, going into overtime, taking my boss’s advice to get as much as possible of my own stuff done (I’m using the Australian verb here) on company time. He forgot about the quarterly taxes due next week and was not happy when I told him that he had to deposit, rather than cash, his consultation checks this month.

Well, that’s it for work this week–I’ll round up the last 10 minutes. Really, any prospective employers, don’t ever hire me. I’ll arrive 15 minutes late, leave 10 minutes early, goof off on the internet, and eat everything in the refrigerator–all on your time.

I want to be in that big warm bathtub of a Gulf again, floating around on my inner tube, roasting away…

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My Work Week, Mademoiselle

Another tough day at the office today–I had to work until 12:30 this afternoon, 30 minutes overtime. I don’t see how people work more than 3 hours a week. I said to my boss on leaving, “Have a nice weekend,” which caused him to stop for a moment to consider if it weren’t indeed Tuesday afternoon. My weekend starts on Tuesday afternoon and ends Monday evening. (My work schedule is like Edina Monsoon’s.) I work for a landscape designer, who is also one of my oldest and dearest friends. He’s from a long line of California gardeners, so his connection to the landscape is very deep. We worked together as gardeners for a while, but then he got to be an überdesigner and turned the maintenance route over to me. I missed our gossiping/philosophizing/girltalk sessions so much that I decided to run his office and put the farmer tan behind me. So we get to spend 3 hours together on Tuesday, for which I get paid a ridiculous amount of money, talking about his rent boys, my boyfriend, Thom Gunn, my boyfriend, his getting older, my getting older, Hedy Lamarr, etc. I love my job. It also allows me to spend the rest of the week being an artist.

Last night I watched the sumptuously photographed modernist masterpiece Mademoiselle, directed by Tony Richardson(!), with a screenplay by Margueritte Duras(!!) from a story by Jean Genet(!!!). Jeanne Moreau(!!!!) stars as a schoolteacher/spinster in a small French village who lusts for an Italian lumberjack and so, because this is Genet, has to destroy him. She accidentally starts a fire by dropping her cigarette into a haystack that she’s hiding behind. After witnessing the shirtless lumberjack’s bravery in the ensuing inferno, she starts more fires–she even wears special attire (stiletto heels and fishnet gloves) to the burnings. Everything is fetishised, and because this is Genet, it’s not subtle. Sometimes a pipe IS a penis, and in this case it’s a snake(!) that the Italian wears under his shirt. It slithers out from around his waist and up Moreau’s arm… “It won’t hurt you,” he assures here. Well, she eventualy gets to find out for herself when he introduces her to his other snake as they do finally get to it, spending a passion-filled night in the woods, where she kisses his boots, barks like a dog, and has the time of her life before returning to the village, where the villagers don’t know what to make of her tattered clothes. They assume she’s been raped, and when asked “Did he do this to you?” she replies “Yes…” and rushes off into her house as the villagers rush off to beat him to death.

Beautiful.