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.