Caroline's First Turn

So, last week, on Tuesday we inaugurated Obama and on Friday Caroline took her first turn on stage. Obama declaimed a sober and sobering speech, which didn’t stop any of us from getting giddy about, for example, Aretha’s hat, weepy at what it means when Aretha sings “Land where my fathers died,” cranky about how over-determined – my word, like you say, although it is borrowed – is this handsome and potentially great man’s load and how little margin for maneuver it would seem he’s going to claim for him- and ourselves, and happy at the reality of people dancing in the streets, singing with each other to praise him. Caroline – you know this, as no doubt do many of any people who read this site – is me in a dress. Her turn on stage was a brazen attempt at “La Javanaise,” one of the most well loved songs in the popular French repertoire, at a little self-labeled “boite des frissons” in the capital for a night in honor of the quintessential dirty old man with incredibly chiseled lyrics, Serge Gainsbourg. The audience knew the chorus, and they are the kind of audience who can’t help themselves from singing along. This might have been a good thing, because apparently, they were having trouble hearing the incredibly chiseled lyrics of which I miraculously did not flub a one. (It may be one of the most well loved songs in the repertoire, but nobody I’ve run across yet knows the lyrics to the stanzas, just the chorus.) Which is a good thing that’s also too bad considering nobody could hear them. This is a technical problem that may find solutions. The other queens have been known to complain about the insufficiency of the microphone set-up at said “boite des frissons.” But I think it was, as Mistress of the house Madame Hervé said right after the show, “that you didn’t sing loud enough! Nobody could hear you!”

Madame Hervé is a notoriously hard nut. My girlfriend Julie Guirlande told me afterwards as we were jiggling in our boy drag on the dancefloor that you just have to let whatever she says flow over you like water, but certainly not to let on that she might be getting to you. It took all Saturday for it to become water. Before she told me I hadn’t sung loud enough, Madame Hervé had already called me to order because I’d been out of the dressing room before the show. This is in large part because the dressing room measures all of about 15 square feet and involves no more than a curtain that sections off a sliver of dancefloor space right next to the stage. Iow, you want to get out of there. But apparently, staying in the dressing room before the show is a house rule that nobody had told me about. My girlfriend Melissa sheepishly apologized for not having said something. The other girls who’ve had a little more experience know that you can go out of the dressing room without incurring Madame Hervé’s wrath, but only if you’ve brought another dress to wear. Preferably with another wig. That’s what Jacqueline Genoux did. And then she had to come back to the tiny dressing room to put the elaborate feather-construction down the back of her second dress. Melissa had the same elaborate feather-construction to put on because they were doing a really funny duo together. The elaborate feather-construction involved a stick from which sprouted three feathered prongs. Which meant that wherever you were in the tiny dressing-room space, there were feathers under your nose. So there I was sitting in my dress waiting my turn on stage fighting with the feathers, trying to remember the terribly chiseled lyrics that I sometimes forget, vaguely hearing Taillefine do “Elisa,” Julie Guirlande do “La Madrague,” Lady Zoa do an incredibly vigorous “Pull Marine;” before it was my turn.

In her boy drag after the show, Julie Guirlande also underlined how nice Madame Hervé’s introduction of the “petite nouvelle” who would be me was. She asked everybody to give the “petite nouvelle” who would be me a warm round of applause. Which they did. And I haven’t mentioned it yet, but, in case you can't tell in the above picture, I was really pretty. And, like a big girl, I had done almost all of my makeup myself. But the whole thing really felt like a catastrophe. Madame Hervé did get to me. People couldn’t hear what I was saying. I had a whole bevy of supporters, like, among the most important, B, who had canceled a night out elsewhere to come be adorable and supportive with his adorable new “petit” P and with E, B’s office mate and fellow Thursday afternoon cake-partaker. While I was out working the crowd in restricted pre-show territory, B saw me and put up his fingers like I was a vampire. I think he has issues with the whole gender trouble thing. Or at least with my whole gender trouble. After all, he did fall for me as a topping boy in leather with a beard. And that is actually one of the things I’m having trouble getting my head around. I mean, myself in make-up really tends to fuck with people’s minds, and there is a whole elaborate distance that settles in between me in makeup and, for example, the people with whom I had just a couple of hours earlier been drinking wine while trying to find a bimbo’s song that I could sing for the next Folle Académie night at the Tango. There is a whole choreography of how to negotiate that distance and make it work for me and for them that I’m only just now becoming aware of. And apparently people really don’t recognize me. Which seems very strange to me, because, strangely enough, I do. I mean, when I look in the mirror while I’m doing the make-up, it’s just as strange as when I look at myself in the mirror without make-up. It’s all strange when you’re staring at yourself in a mirror.

My friend N was there. Once I’d taken off my makeup and dress, I went out for a cigarette with Lady Zoa and N came out, too. N has this idea that I don’t give enough of myself away, and he saw what felt to me like Caroline’s catastrophe as yet another incidence of that. And he said I had something of Romy Schneider about me. Which is a useful reference. N rattles on a lot. And as he was rattling on, Lady Zoa turned to me and said, “If this is a friend, you need to get some new ones.” She was wrong. Because N was more or less right, even if it didn’t sound exactly like he was being supportive. Because like I said to my shrink yesterday on the couch, I felt like it was a catastophe because it wasn’t. Because Caroline doesn’t yet know how to let the catastophe that is her mother and father rolled into one show through her yet. (The height of my outrageous ambition here is Antony singing through his fear of the middle place.) I thought it would be enough to put on a dress for that catastophe to be obvious. It’s not. I have to learn how to spend myself in a dress so that people can hear the catastophe that is breaking me up and giving my body (its hands, its legs, its voice) its rhythm.

We had long, raucous, rhythmic, sex the night after that. In our leather drag. At some point, I told T that his was the name of my expenditure. Which is a little differently intense than being married. It calls up other things to be named.

no i meant like nina simone's 8:46 fantastic "west wind" that her friend miriam makeba asked her to sing. i mean, whoa. holy fuck. so don't be worried.
the sun is coming up right now.

Breathing in the New Year

So you said I need to breathe a little bit more. Or at least to try to a little bit. To see what happens. So that’s what I’m going to do today. While I get some of my shit together, vaccum the apartment, figure out where my work is for the next several weeks, months. Some things just are not going to take the whole year. Which is nice to have. Some projects to make good on right at the start of the year of the ox. Ox. You.

You said, I think, that my stacatto was a little too intense. Or hard to take. I forget your exact wording because I was on my way to the Boileroom bar for water. Like I told my shrink, it was nice to have the distraction of the need for water because I had trouble taking the comment head on. It’s funny because way back when I was just starting to get set up writing you, I worried about the stacatto. That it was too much. Too hard to read. At some point I quit worrying about it and called it “my style.” Your comment made me start worrying again. Which, so long as I can keep writing to you, is no doubt just as well. If it crippled me into silence it would be a problem. But let’s not let that worry cripple us. It can just make us aware. Because, really, here I am writing you again. And I’ll keep coming back. I think we’ve established that by now. Let’s keep coming back.

It’s a question of pace. And also of walking around with someone. Which is one way of saying what we do here. Where there is no path except the one we make by walking. On your side of the ocean, the Animal Collective’s new album is out. There’s a song on it I’ve quoted here before. They’re not calling it “Bearhug” anymore. If I’m not mistaken it must be called “Brother Sport.” Pitchfork says it’s one of the centerpieces of their new album, but that those “obvious peaks would have less resonance if not for the more subtle moments.” Can’t wait to hear those more subtle moments. The album supposedly drops at the beginning of next week here in Euroland. And then T and I are going to go hear them that Friday. In “Brother Sport” they scream out about how “I want to walk around with you.” It’s funny because there was a series of three of four sessions of analysis where I kept citing songs. And that was one of them that came up. Most of them were Antony. But “Brother Sport,” too. And I said I guessed it moved me because there were so many people around in my life that I wanted to walk around with. Which is so much better than what I imagine the opposite would be like. Not wanting to walk around with anyone. But which brings its own amount of pain with it. People you know you want to walk around with but can’t. I was working too much when it came up. So there was that problem. And then so many of you are so far away. So there was that pain of wanting what I couldn’t have. “Jesus,” I said during that session, or another. “All this music that keeps coming up.”

Your entry helps, but can we get a playlist for the Patti show? So much of it is a happy blur to me. I spent most of the concert bobbing along ever so happily with my arms over T’s shoulders pinching his tits and singing the words to the songs I knew. Happy to be there alongside you and the others hearing Patti sing and say what we needed to hear. That is at least a little bit of her undoubtable magic. She says what you need to hear.

Like, I really needed to hear her say, and to hear you repeat in my ear, do not be afraid. Especially when, as my mother has repeated to me several times when we talk about financial news, “This is just the kind of thing that your father was so afraid of.”

I think that for the new year and now that I’m back in Paris and was around people who helped me think, I have two questions that I’m not going to be afraid of asking here and now. The first is: What child? Which I like in particular today because, as I was getting around to letting it formulate into a question, trying to figure out which question exactly it would be, the effort had me singing that Christmas song, “What Child Is This.” Hearing its distorted syntax that would play with my mind as a child. Hearing some of that childhood come back. Asking about the child. I like it, too, because if you insert a comma, it becomes a different and perhaps even more apropos question: “What, Child?” And of course because Kiki’s covered it, caught on that album that was playing on Huron street this last time around.

The second question has to do with the pacing I started off with for this entry. I told you I’m translating some Berlin bits to be published sometime soon here. And there are a couple of translating projects in the wings. The question is related to translation. But it’s also related to what I need to figure out how to say to the world. What bears repeating? By which I mean, what to I need to say again, with more breaths? What haven’t you and lots of others incomparably like you and me heard? What do we need to hear?

And this by way of B. A little gentleness in a world of brutes indeed. Savage and tender. You know the score. Now let’s make sure everyone does. We've got work to do. Remember.

the lady in the bumblebee suit

we stopped in at the bodega to get some beers for dinner.

"hey," a dude, mid-thirties, husky, looked like a longshoreman with his black watch cap, was saying to the owner, who was holding court behind his little glass partition. "HEY." rap rap rap on the thick plastic, "you know those diapers you sold me last week? 1999, man." Dude paused incredulously. "nineteeeeeen-ninety....niiine.." He shook his head, wide-eyed. Way in the back, deep and busy in the liquor freezer case, I almost dropped the beer. S. had dissolved into silent, helpless giggles. Both men laughed, and we paid for our drinks.

***

Finally we made an attempt, "What are you really talking about? What do you mean by 'eradicating craving'?" Aachan Chaa looked down and smiled faintly. He picked up the glass of drinking water to his left. Holding it up to us.

***

Later, after dinner, (fried chicken! beer! fries! side salad. The waitress was really proud of me. She said, "perfect cold rainy night, warm booth, cold beer and fried chicken," she said with an air of approval.) We'd been talking about a wide range of things.

The Iranian executions some months ago "International controversy erupted after Iranian officials executed two gay teenagers who were originally reported to be convicted of homosexuality, however later reports released by the Iranian government after international furor claimed the conviction was for the rape of a 13-year-old boy. The two were hanged July 19."

The photos of the hangings were fucking medieval, devastating, had been viscerally awful and terrifying. you just wanted to throw up. i had to get up and go for a walk and have 8 cigarettes. i wanted to scream. the photos of the two released read as if they were lovers, but later official reports stated they had actually raped another, younger boy, and weren't themselves lovers, and again it's not clear. so the charge wasn't homosexuality, per se.

And the photos, the two teenagers standing on the scaffold crying, were read as lovers, and the heartbroken response was yes. that could happen here, to us. to people i love. However the gay press and blog discussions (which were not about the overwhelming unreliability of what the actual charges were or if they were trumped up or not after the international uproar), and how the whole mess might be initially reported irresponsibly by the gay press here, somehow became for a moment, again, a grand over-reaching irreconcilable clash of civilizations war between cultures and religions (one barbaric, the other vaguely tolerant, east versus west. discussions devolved into incoherent rage against Muslims, Iran, the war in Iraq, god bless America, and fuck ALL of the middle east and there was the very real, awful stench of this could happen to us.

Both teens were convicted by Court No. 19 under sharia law. The teens are identified only as "M.A." and "A.M." Those found having homosexual sex in Iran may face death by either hanging, stoning, cutting in half by a sword, or dropping from a tall building or cliff.

An ISNA report said the couple acknowledged having sexual relations with each other but said they were unaware of laws against homosexuality. wiki

(s. added: "also, there is no anti-gay and lesbian sharia law, at least not exactly. male homosexual sex is illegal according to a hadith or supposed saying of the prophet, but not to my knowledge according to the qur'an, which would be a much stronger law. and i've never heard of anyone in Iran being cut in half with a sword or dropped from a building.")

S mentioned Matthew Limon. in terms of the non-coverage, or muted and sporadic outrage by Gay Rights Groups, no one wanted to go anywhere near the whiff of pedophilia. consensual or otherwise, even though the facts of the case were textbook in terms of how homosexuals are treated as opposed to heterosexuals, and examples that need to be set and so on. maybe i'm wrong about this, but the coverage an attention prior and after the overturn was next to nothing. from the ACLU

***

As an aside, because somehow we ranged into transexuality... (full disclosure: i'm vaguely discomfited by it. i have ishes, based on the one or two FTM's i know, on almost a purely aesthetic level. i.e. unbelievably hot, androgynous girls who transformed themselves into lumpy football players with male pattern baldness. also, it costs a hell of a lot of money to transition. whatever, i'm a judgey asshole. S., however, is completely not. her feeling is wow, i kind of applaud and am fascinated by the total faith in identity... i'll check back with her but i think that's her general feeling. much more expansive and well thought out then mine, certainly.)

Anyway! the point is, "In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wrote a book in which he stated that there is no religious restriction on corrective surgery....The new religious government that came to be established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution classed transsexuals and transvestites with gays and lesbians, who were condemned by Islam and faced the punishment of lashing and death under Iran's penal code." Right before Khomeini died his original fatwa, that no one had initially paid attention to, was re-established. In other words, there is nothing in the Qur'an specifically against transexuality, so they are tolerated, or more than just tolerated by the government, since the government pays for the surgery.

(s. went on to say: "and i certainly don't think they're persecuted by the government. (wiki says they are stigmatized by society, but duh. where are they not? the different, and therefore interesting, thing is that the government supports transexuality and pays for the surgery.)
also, as i understand it there is some disagreement/ambiguity, at least in some areas of Iran, about whether you need to get the surgery or can just get the official gender change certificate without the operation. which of course would make all the difference to homosexuals, since you could then marry your lover, if you're into that kind of thing."

"hey did you watch the footage of the "gay on mormon violence" in the castro? what did you think?"

"uhm. pointless."

"well, that's the thing, right? they (mormons) come right out of high school and go straight into 2 years of missionary work. and then they go home and they are RM's. Returning Missionaries. And then they can get married."

"baby, the last time The Lord asked me to do something specifically He wanted me to go out naked in the street and experience aura exchanging hugs and lulz with everyone lucky enough to run in to me. and what do you think i did? true story. He and I had to renegotiate a couple of things after that."

Jennie,
From the heartland comes an interesting take on marriage. The Register has run several editorials more recently along these lines. At a minimum this would help to separate the church from the state and increase momentum for a variety of kinship options - some more elaborate than others. Those options which have been created in the last two decades are now going down the drain as marriage is installed, in Massachusetts large employers told workers to either get married or lose their domestic partner benefits. That's the beauty of equality uber alles - it really means 'more of the same' and cuts off larger vision.
-B.

read Des Moines Register, July 16, 2006, EDITORIAL "Recognize equality through civil unions"

***

Then, because everything is really about me, and The Lord and I still have congress, we were walking home with a little doggie bag for malcolm and i started babbling about coming off meds. i am in total shock how ridiculously hard it's been. Not only has the physical ramp-down been awful, time consuming and violent, but the simultaneous re-acquaintance with the full, rich and really stunning canvas of all emotions all the time, coupled with (plus! bonus) this incredible almost comically kaleidoscope reemergence of my "life-force", overlayed (le sigh) with a kind of uneasy and toddler like confusion and utter personality ego-globalizing of "who am i? what is real about me? what is pervasive? who is i? blah blah blah" i mean, really, it would be hilarious if it weren't so fascinating and scary, i learned a lot on the medication and i wouldn't describe my feelings about it as negative or alienating, it's just been a little difficult. it's like being on a dive in open water and looking up and not seeing the boat for a second. pure panic. and S. said, "oh it's like the broken bowl. all is gone. gone, gone, gone beyond."

WHAT.

“You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Aachan Chaa was not just talking about the glass, of course, nor was he speaking merely of the phenomenal world, the forest monastery, the body, or the inevitability of death. He was also speaking to each of us about the self. This self that you take to be so real, he was saying, is already broken.

- Mark Epstein
Thoughts Without a Thinker


oh, that just calmed my shit right down.

“I hate incorrect syntax as if it were a person to beat, incorrect spelling as if it were phlegm spit at me, independently of the person who spit it.

Yes, because spelling is people. Words are complete when both seen and heard. And the splendor of Greco-Roman transliteration dresses language in its severe, regal mantle, through which it becomes a lady, a queen.”

Fernando Pessoa, “The Book Of Disquiet,” translated by Alfred MacAdam, pages 9 and 10 (Exact Change, Boston, 1998).

(via sasha

Bumblebees

So. A while ago on the couch. I was complaining. Sorta. Saying I didn’t know what it was I was looking for in backrooms these days. That I wanted more affect. More relations. Thinking of Foucault. Which I do every once in a while. “Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, ‘What relations, through homosexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied, and modulated?’ The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but, rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships.” My complaints must have been. Oh. Say. A year and a half. Two years ago. Something like that. Definitely before Berlin. Which was a turning point. As you’re all too aware. And as I think you’re aware. It was a turning point because of B. Or at least one way of naming the turning point is to call it B. It’s his fault. Which is also his grace. I’m so happy he’s still around. We have cakes now. On Thursdays. It’s become a little ritual between his office mate E, B and me. Late Thursday afternoon/ early evening. One of us buys cakes. We’re in Paris. So they’re yummy. It’s kinda the end of the week. Definitely the end from my end of things. We eat cake. Drink coffee or tea. At their office close by mine. And chat. About what we’ve seen. At the movies. On stage. In bed. On a screen. In our childhood. And at some point I tap my hands on my legs. And from his swivel chair across the room. B’s head rolls a little bit. And he takes a head-lolling step or two to collapse on the sofa into my lap. And I give him a head massage. Which in general makes him purr. And moan when it’s over. Once he said. “Wow. Can’t wait for next Thursday.” At the end of the massage. Which made me happy. That he was happy. That we ache a little bit. Because the happy moment is over. Until next week. I love B. And I love that I can love and care for B. A little bit. Given the situation. It’s some of the affect I was looking for and not finding in brothels. He still wants somebody to put a foot to his ass to get things done. Someone at night time. Someone he calls a husband when he imagines him. I hope he finds him. If that’s what he wants and needs. And if he figures out how to need and want his husband all at once. Well. I’ll be happy for him. Even if I'll probably have a fit or two getting to that happiness. I’m lucky enough to have a husband. Of a kind. That’s not on a marriage certificate. That’s at least partly why I can see B. And give him a head massage. Purr.

So since that moment complaining on the couch. About the lack of affect in backrooms. I kinda quit going to them. Not on principle. Mind you. Just because. There was a lot going on in bed at home. Actually? T and I never fuck in bed. Or hardly ever. Only when we have guests and the desire arises. Otherwise we fuck on the couch. We spread out this huge white towel that has my father’s initials on it. It was a gift to him from a Saudi prince. Don’t ask. He handed it over to me at some point because it was just too big for him and my mother to know what to do with it. And it sure is handy. Because it covers the couch. Mostly. From wet things that do nonetheless soak through from time to time. Because good sex does that. Makes you. And your sofa. If that’s where you're having it. Wet. Lately we’ve also been fucking on my desk chair. Access to pictures. And? I think it eroticizes writing in kinda cool ways. Though you wouldn’t know it here. Sorry about that. Hopefully this one will be a doozy and we can make up and get on with all this.

Jesus. B is everywhere I try and tell a narrative. Because at the beginning of the month. November 1 to be precise. We went back to a brothel. The Full Metal. Our local standard. Though not the one that’s so practical on a Sunday afternoon because it’s a ten-minute walk away. That one’s called The Bunker. And it’s great for boys who went out for it on a Saturday and didn’t get enough and want to wile away Sunday hours looking for more. That reminds me. Of my main internets sex profile. The headline on it reads. “Ready for more.” I’m serious about that. Though nobody much has noticed yet. B has. In his own way. A week or two before we headed back to the Full Metal. We’d gone shopping with B. After lunch. And somewhere in the margins of a trip to see Wolfgang Tillmans’s recent exhibit in Paris. It was a lovely day. Made B fluctuate in his categorical statement about not fucking with us. That Saturday. He came over for our weekly rotisserie chicken. And then the exhibit. And then shopping. I think it was in that order. And when we went shopping. We went to the local leather store. Because they sell Fred Perry. And B wanted to get a Fred Perry shirt for P’s birthday present. Which he did. And we flirted with the shopkeepers. And various other sundry there for their Saturday shopping. And one of the shopkeepers gave us each passes for a night they sponsor at the Full Metal. Like something like twice a year. And we held onto them. The passes. Saying to our various tricks that we were going.

Like to S. Yes, same S we saw walking down the street with T² and W². A while back now. We like to have S over for dinner. This time around. On November 1. He wanted to have us over for dinner. But we have our market on Saturday mornings. If there’s anything sacred for us. Saturday morning market might really be it. So we had food. A really yummy big fish. And we’re closer to the club than S is. So we conceded that he could make desert. Which he did. Yummy apple cake. Which we ate after our dinner. We still have his cake mould. And I just this second left a message in the chatroom saying we still have it and that it would be a good excuse for us to see each other again. If we do just more of the same. That’s just fine with me. More of the same would be dinner. And then sex. This was the first time the three of us went out for it. Usually we just do it at home. T and S and me. Actually. I’ll anticipate my narrative a little bit. The Monday just after this November 1 dinner and outing. I went to hear S sing. He’s a singer. In an a capella choir. That’s sorta hot shit. Like Orange developed special technology for them to be able to hit the right notes. That kinda hot shit. They were singing a program of contemporary music by a composer named Gérard Pesson. And some of his students. And Ravel. It was pretty great. Even though I had been a bit in a state. All day long. Until I stretched out on the couch again. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Before I do. I wanted to finish off this strand. After the concert. My friend M and I went out for dinner with S. (T was in Denmark for work, so he had to miss out. On the Monday cultural activities at least). M is a music person. Much more so than I am. So he and S had a lot of lovely things to talk about. Which I listened to and learned from. And at some point. I forget exactly how it came up. I think we were complaining about how so much of the sex we’ve been having was disconnected from affect. Or some such. And S said. To the literary people M and I pretend to be. “Isn’t there any literature about innovative ways of linking sexuality and emotion?” And I said. “Yeah, Foucault. And the novel I’m going to write someday.” Which made all three of us smile.

And I cited our little trip to the Full Metal that November 1 as an example. Because as we were heading out. I got an SMS from B. Saying he was still at dinner. But were we already there? I said. No. But we’re on our way with S. Who B finds sexy. T would say it’s because B finds anyone we find sexy sexy. And he’s probably right. To a certain extent. I’d also chatted with G, of G and J-M. Their letters have come up before. In Berlin. T and I chatted with them at the bar. So I had been chatting on-line with G and told him I was going to the Full Metal. And he let me know that he and J-M were going to be there, too. So when S, T and I walked into the Full Metal, I knew that G and J-M were going to be there, that B was coming. Which means. Jesus. That bar was stuffed full of people I have tons of affection for. Different world. Not paradise. Far from it. Not hell either. Probably a kind of purgatory. If we had to get theological about it. Or a labyrinth. If we wanted to follow your suggestion and think it through Greek myth. I mean the space of the backroom is already its own other world. And that night at the Full Metal that other world was itself being othered by the configuration of all these singularities. Like I said on the couch. If a while back I was complaining about the lack of affect in my backroom encounters. Jesus. Given this configuration I was served.

Because of course there were other people around, too. Like V. And N. And then this new fixture on the scene named F. Which also happens to be B’s name. T had been chatting with him on line. And cruising him the one other time we’d seen him out. He’s intimidatingly beautiful. Tattoos all over his body. And tending to prove T’s hypothesis. That B finds whoever we find sexy sexy. They ended up fooling around. Which. As the French say. Put me into all of my states. M’a mis dans tous mes états. For lots of very complicated reasons. As a matter of fact. When I was recounting all this on the couch. I said. Something to the effect of. “Jesus. All of this is so complicated.” Which. A week later? Became. “Jesus. This is so rich.”

I pined all day long the next day. For the fact that B had no doubt found in this F his husband. T found me overwrought. And this is all mixed up, too. As it has been on this site. With grieving for my father. Which makes things really complicated. So all Sunday. I was pining. For lots of things. We went to the movies. And saw a really good but very difficult film. A kind of allegory about a boss who runs a construction site where they make platforms for shipping things and who gives his workers a mosque apparently to allow them to pray on site but also to harness religion for the purposes of his capital. The boss is sexy. And ends up dead. It was a doozy. Turns out. At the movie theater just across the canal. B and F were seeing a murder mystery. I left a message. Saying we could have drinks afterwards if they wanted. They didn’t want. Because they were tired from fucking all night the night before. Which was fine. But didn’t settle the butterflies in my stomach. Do you know Joanna Newsome’s music? She has this song. That I love. Called “Clams, Crabs, Cockles, Cowries.” And there’s an image in it. That I love. Where she sings. “And some bellies ache with many bumblebees./ (and they sting so terribly).” That’s the state my stomach was in. This was actually the night I wrote you about recently. The night when T and I had a conversation that went like this:

T: I just feel like there's so much you feel like you can't tell me.
I:: But right now, there's so much I just can't quite tell myself.
T approaches me and holds me.

So to bring this all back into some kind of full circle. I went with all these bumblebees in my stomach to my shrink that week. And let out a little bit of anger that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel. Because really? The ecstasy I’ve been occasionally writing you about? A lot of it. I’ve learned on the couch. Has to do with the fact that before my father died. I was able to remind him of the child I was for him. The child he had forgotten I was for him. The anger was about his having forgotten. Which means I’ve spent a lot of time looking for that child elsewhere. “That child” gets mixed up. In confusing ways. With the child I will not have. Because I’m too busy doing other things. In a world. And in a country. Where it ain’t easy for a faggot like me to adopt a child. And really that’s just fine. But it demands a lot of tears. And it’s complicated.

I started crying some of those tears that day on the couch. Tears over the course of which it was suddenly clear to me. That the only tears worth their salt are ones shed when sadness is mixed with joy.

BTW. We're going over to S's for dinner on Saturday night. Plans were made in the margins of writing this entry.

Historic Day

OK. I know it's a historic day. But I, too, am tired of seeing me listening to Antony on (my birthday) here. Maybe the aphorism I'm about to emit will apply.

The only tears worth their salt are ones shed when sadness is mixed with joy.