Thursday, March 09, 2006
my vacuum bag is barking at a matador
I have often wondered how to describe the smell of a puppy when it first wakes up. In Arkansas, I remember, during the early romantic stages of a new relationship, drinking coffee in boxers and a robe on David's front porch, with friends or neighbors stopping for a friendly word, I caught a whiff of it."It smells like puppies waking!" I enthused to dumbstruck silence.
"Well...... I just farted," David said.
I listed it as my favorite smell for Claire, when she sent me (amongst others) a form of fifty or so questions, the purpose of which was to better know her friends. She might not have believed me. For "What or where would you describe as your second home?" I said Narnia. But I love the smell. Buddy emits it, with others. I cant tell where it comes from. His mouth? His head? His butt?
If there is one talent that the homosexual possesses ina greater degree than his opposite, it is the ability to describe things. Kyle assked me last night,"Does your dog smell like a vacuum cleaner bag?"
I nearly shat. That is precisely what the smell is. Well, almost.The vacuum cleaner bag suffused with hot air and deeply colored with the friction against the rubber belt that spins the brushes. No wonder I am galvanised by vacuuming, and could pair off vacuuming and puppy sniffing until I was in Nirvana.
Kyle was also very acute on the subject of Barbra Streisand, whose early television specials PBS is rerunning. There is something compelling about them. The most bizarre songlists presented over a nearly sociopathically narcissistic tableau of Barbra as infant, an Ur-Edith-Ann. Old pianola numbers et al. Mae West was incensed ( I read) that B.S had stolen her entire persona, something which West herself had scraped together from Gibson Girl engravings and odd bits of Jersey Burlesque, one supposes. They were, each in their way, utter freaks. J Garland did the same thing. Sung Stephen Foster like she was Piaf begging for her lover to fuck her consumptive body to death. Yes, in Minstrelsy. What in the fuck?
Clive James says it best when he says that these divas have an almost total inability to judge how they are going over.
Kyle has been calling quite a bit or I have been calling him, mornings AND evenings, and I have to say that I look forward to it more than I should. A healthy person should not rely so heavily on the companionship of a long-distance friend. I am almost addicted to his peculiar blend of hilarious and accurate analysis, celebrity gossip, flirtation and fond abuse. He, of course is famously addicted to rummaging in the minds of others. One's tacit understanding of oneself is like catnip to him. Of course when he does visit Seattle I suppose we will just sit awkwardly in the same room and wait for a crisis of hunger or boredom to motivate us. Still, all the hours we have spent communicating, it is a bit unfair to continually castigate him for the few thin moments we have had together. I have to say, all in all, I haven't craved anyone's whole self- flaws included, as much as his, since of course the moving away of Eric M. and the figurative death of the lamented ex, the Barista Don. Kyle could dissolve into weeping and babbling and biblical prophephies before me and I would think it was the cutest thing since Cheney shot Dick Whittington. Of course, he is the only one of three or four friends that read this (each of whom I equally admire) so I have to say that it is difficult to be entirely frank about him. It is easier to be more critical than complimentary. But isn't it always? and shouldn't Reese Witherspoon be traded to terrorists for something more valuable, um...... like.....a bandanna. I do a better June Carter.
I am reading Hollinghurst again, after resting up for ten years, almost enough time. The novel, The Line of Beauty is like the less interesting exchanges in... say Alison Lurie, arranged according to a rough template lifted from Angus Wilson. Set in 1983, when the English discovered blacks and tried to assess them with a lack of hauteur, hauteur sadly being the only quality that distinguishes the English from Koi, it follows a young homosexual man who is obsessed with tonguing the sphincter of a working class East Indian 'mo,whilst staying in the house of a conservative parliamentarian. It is most awful. Most.
It is the sort of thing described as hilarious satire because it mentions Margaret Thatcher. There are lines of beauty in the damn thing but not the ones intended, I don't think. The first section, called The Love Chord tries to synchronise a remembered musical note with the joy of black buttocks. There is, however, a wonderful comparison of an awkward social moment in the air to the tingling before an allergic reaction, and some telling social observation. The hero of the awful thing decides that his manner to his hosts is one of "tremendous agreement". There are a few more of those and the rest is silence. I will give it 200 pages. A.N. Wilson didn't come easy either.
Buddy is now barking incessantly at my matador bust. He has barked at every bust in my house, no matter the size. He has also barked at coats and toast.
"Well...... I just farted," David said.
I listed it as my favorite smell for Claire, when she sent me (amongst others) a form of fifty or so questions, the purpose of which was to better know her friends. She might not have believed me. For "What or where would you describe as your second home?" I said Narnia. But I love the smell. Buddy emits it, with others. I cant tell where it comes from. His mouth? His head? His butt?
If there is one talent that the homosexual possesses ina greater degree than his opposite, it is the ability to describe things. Kyle assked me last night,"Does your dog smell like a vacuum cleaner bag?"
I nearly shat. That is precisely what the smell is. Well, almost.The vacuum cleaner bag suffused with hot air and deeply colored with the friction against the rubber belt that spins the brushes. No wonder I am galvanised by vacuuming, and could pair off vacuuming and puppy sniffing until I was in Nirvana.
Kyle was also very acute on the subject of Barbra Streisand, whose early television specials PBS is rerunning. There is something compelling about them. The most bizarre songlists presented over a nearly sociopathically narcissistic tableau of Barbra as infant, an Ur-Edith-Ann. Old pianola numbers et al. Mae West was incensed ( I read) that B.S had stolen her entire persona, something which West herself had scraped together from Gibson Girl engravings and odd bits of Jersey Burlesque, one supposes. They were, each in their way, utter freaks. J Garland did the same thing. Sung Stephen Foster like she was Piaf begging for her lover to fuck her consumptive body to death. Yes, in Minstrelsy. What in the fuck?
Clive James says it best when he says that these divas have an almost total inability to judge how they are going over.
Kyle has been calling quite a bit or I have been calling him, mornings AND evenings, and I have to say that I look forward to it more than I should. A healthy person should not rely so heavily on the companionship of a long-distance friend. I am almost addicted to his peculiar blend of hilarious and accurate analysis, celebrity gossip, flirtation and fond abuse. He, of course is famously addicted to rummaging in the minds of others. One's tacit understanding of oneself is like catnip to him. Of course when he does visit Seattle I suppose we will just sit awkwardly in the same room and wait for a crisis of hunger or boredom to motivate us. Still, all the hours we have spent communicating, it is a bit unfair to continually castigate him for the few thin moments we have had together. I have to say, all in all, I haven't craved anyone's whole self- flaws included, as much as his, since of course the moving away of Eric M. and the figurative death of the lamented ex, the Barista Don. Kyle could dissolve into weeping and babbling and biblical prophephies before me and I would think it was the cutest thing since Cheney shot Dick Whittington. Of course, he is the only one of three or four friends that read this (each of whom I equally admire) so I have to say that it is difficult to be entirely frank about him. It is easier to be more critical than complimentary. But isn't it always? and shouldn't Reese Witherspoon be traded to terrorists for something more valuable, um...... like.....a bandanna. I do a better June Carter.
I am reading Hollinghurst again, after resting up for ten years, almost enough time. The novel, The Line of Beauty is like the less interesting exchanges in... say Alison Lurie, arranged according to a rough template lifted from Angus Wilson. Set in 1983, when the English discovered blacks and tried to assess them with a lack of hauteur, hauteur sadly being the only quality that distinguishes the English from Koi, it follows a young homosexual man who is obsessed with tonguing the sphincter of a working class East Indian 'mo,whilst staying in the house of a conservative parliamentarian. It is most awful. Most.
It is the sort of thing described as hilarious satire because it mentions Margaret Thatcher. There are lines of beauty in the damn thing but not the ones intended, I don't think. The first section, called The Love Chord tries to synchronise a remembered musical note with the joy of black buttocks. There is, however, a wonderful comparison of an awkward social moment in the air to the tingling before an allergic reaction, and some telling social observation. The hero of the awful thing decides that his manner to his hosts is one of "tremendous agreement". There are a few more of those and the rest is silence. I will give it 200 pages. A.N. Wilson didn't come easy either.
Buddy is now barking incessantly at my matador bust. He has barked at every bust in my house, no matter the size. He has also barked at coats and toast.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Illness and Portland and worse
What I have had, since New Year's or thereabouts is pertussis. Whooping Cough. It has lasted for many, many weeks and faithfully passed through each of the stages as described in the various websites to which I was just recently referred. The worst was the whooping, which sound celebratory. It is not a whoop. It is a whistle, and a backwards one at that, air being pulled, first with great force and then with lessening force through a small hole and then a much smaller one, until ...as the websites recount... one passes out, one becomes brain damaged, retarded and dies.... one dies retarded.
It would happen during the night and I would sit up, unable to breathe, pulling harder and harder, beginning to panic, as my chest began not allowing full expansion, and the mucus that blocked my windpipe not seeming to waver, just plugging it. I would clamber out of bed and crash into the bathroom and bend over. The violence of my heaving would make me vomit, which sometimes would help a little more air get through, (but not often) and I would crash through the house and sometimes, starved for air, crawl out onto the front porch, in just my briefs, towards the street and help or retardation and death.
Buddy would be up and panicing himself. The last time this happened I noticed that Buddy was swollen up like a pufferfish. He was having an allergic reaction. The two of us lay there staring at the other's pathetic faces. Mine blue... his puffy.
Another horrible stage was something like pleurisy, during which I was paralyzed by pain from all the coughing. By paralyzed, I mean I could not move. I would collapse onto the floor after two coughs, and just lay there, feeling like I had been shot. The first few times I was there for twenty or thirty minutes. tears running sideways off my face, Buddy jumping over me like a hurdle.
Lastly I had diarrhea, unceasing, relentless and unplacatable. Ten days of it, and on the road trip to Portland, in every unfamiliar shop and restaurant, ordering food I couldn't eat and browsing in shops we didnt like, for the facilities.
Portland was alternately hellish and terrific. Arn and I had some tense moments. He acted the injured party, saying that I had explicitly given him permission to have sex with men who would take it in ways I would not have it. He said that although he didnt need permission as we were not acting as exclusive and monogamous partners, he nevertheless understood that I understood he would be bouncing off others' buttocks.
When one of them came from Portland and stayed in Arn's apartment for five days straight and Arn brought him to the auction house where I was working and the two of them appeared very comfortable with each other, very proximate, even affectionate I had some problems with it. When additionally, the guy was physically unattractive: short, bearded, nebbishy, with peculiar arty wire framed glasses, it somehow made it worse. Like Bob Balaban in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That is what my sexual partner was having sex with.
After a long drunken discussion, we somehow passed over it and had a great day on Saturday and Sunday, shopping punctuated by fantastic sex. The vintage market in Portland is thriving. Mostly junk, but it makes up in volume what it lacks in character. We filled the van within a few minutes. The good items were priced at about the Seattle level: the Danish, the classic modern. Two thirds what we would charge.
Portland seems more aggressively fun-loving than Seattle. It is walkable, freindly. It is sloppy and ebullient. It is pretty and unkempt. It woo-hoo-s, like a college town at three in the morning, but it lacks a significant homeless or street kid population. No panhandlers. Not one. It is hippyish, and homely. It could be very lovable. Inexplicably, there were few attractive gays in the bars. Even in the midst of their raucous Mardi Gras. Few. Very few. One killingly hot stripper at Silverado's. Shaved head, thick and lean. One fey gym rat, also with a shaved head. This was it. The gays seemed more of a desparate, nerdish, homely underclass. To give Arn some credit, his Bob Balaban might have been the best looking guy he could find in the city.
It would happen during the night and I would sit up, unable to breathe, pulling harder and harder, beginning to panic, as my chest began not allowing full expansion, and the mucus that blocked my windpipe not seeming to waver, just plugging it. I would clamber out of bed and crash into the bathroom and bend over. The violence of my heaving would make me vomit, which sometimes would help a little more air get through, (but not often) and I would crash through the house and sometimes, starved for air, crawl out onto the front porch, in just my briefs, towards the street and help or retardation and death.
Buddy would be up and panicing himself. The last time this happened I noticed that Buddy was swollen up like a pufferfish. He was having an allergic reaction. The two of us lay there staring at the other's pathetic faces. Mine blue... his puffy.
Another horrible stage was something like pleurisy, during which I was paralyzed by pain from all the coughing. By paralyzed, I mean I could not move. I would collapse onto the floor after two coughs, and just lay there, feeling like I had been shot. The first few times I was there for twenty or thirty minutes. tears running sideways off my face, Buddy jumping over me like a hurdle.
Lastly I had diarrhea, unceasing, relentless and unplacatable. Ten days of it, and on the road trip to Portland, in every unfamiliar shop and restaurant, ordering food I couldn't eat and browsing in shops we didnt like, for the facilities.
Portland was alternately hellish and terrific. Arn and I had some tense moments. He acted the injured party, saying that I had explicitly given him permission to have sex with men who would take it in ways I would not have it. He said that although he didnt need permission as we were not acting as exclusive and monogamous partners, he nevertheless understood that I understood he would be bouncing off others' buttocks.
When one of them came from Portland and stayed in Arn's apartment for five days straight and Arn brought him to the auction house where I was working and the two of them appeared very comfortable with each other, very proximate, even affectionate I had some problems with it. When additionally, the guy was physically unattractive: short, bearded, nebbishy, with peculiar arty wire framed glasses, it somehow made it worse. Like Bob Balaban in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That is what my sexual partner was having sex with.
After a long drunken discussion, we somehow passed over it and had a great day on Saturday and Sunday, shopping punctuated by fantastic sex. The vintage market in Portland is thriving. Mostly junk, but it makes up in volume what it lacks in character. We filled the van within a few minutes. The good items were priced at about the Seattle level: the Danish, the classic modern. Two thirds what we would charge.
Portland seems more aggressively fun-loving than Seattle. It is walkable, freindly. It is sloppy and ebullient. It is pretty and unkempt. It woo-hoo-s, like a college town at three in the morning, but it lacks a significant homeless or street kid population. No panhandlers. Not one. It is hippyish, and homely. It could be very lovable. Inexplicably, there were few attractive gays in the bars. Even in the midst of their raucous Mardi Gras. Few. Very few. One killingly hot stripper at Silverado's. Shaved head, thick and lean. One fey gym rat, also with a shaved head. This was it. The gays seemed more of a desparate, nerdish, homely underclass. To give Arn some credit, his Bob Balaban might have been the best looking guy he could find in the city.
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