2005-11-23 - 11:37 p.m.
Well, I guess I am going to Venice after Thanksgiving. No, my dear Big Blue Blog-a-roo, I am not talking Venice, California. My going to Venice, California would be such an everyday peregrination that it would scarcely merit mention comment in this blog. In fact, I have been passing through Venice, California this week three times en route to Megalith, where I have had a gig for the last two weeks. That is why, of course, I have been so desultory in writing to you, dear blog-a-licious blog: I simply haven’t had any free time.
But back to Venice. After Thanksgiving, I shall be going to Venice, Italy, NOT Venice, California. Do you think I would make such a fuss about hobbling down to Venice Circle to chat with Jingles, the crazy Meat Is Murder guy, in front of the long line of booths where sunglasses are sold? No, I am talking about the land of the Doges, center of the Accademia, port of many canals. The day after Thanksgiving, I shall be heading to Manhattan for 5 days, and then onto Venice for another week.
Isn’t that odd? Can you imagine anything that is more absolutely not like me? Johnny Darling: Jet Setter. Johnny Darling – World Traveller! Johnny Darling – he, who grabs his shoulder bag and flees for Olde Europa!
The mere idea is deranged! Bizarre! What could be more foolish, what with my finances in utter disarray and everything in my career being as up in the air as a platoon of balloons? Oh, don’t get me wrong: I had always planned on going to New York after Thanksgiving to see the Elderly Grandfolks, the visit to whom has been too long deferred. I meant to do that a year ago September, but time just got out of my control and I kept putting off the visit so long that I am surprised my grandmothers are still alive. They must be keeping themselves alive so they can see me one more time before they die. Originally, after the post-Thanksgiving trip to Manhattan, I was slated to return right to LA, while my mother went onto Venice to hang out with her prune-faced lesbian academic pal who has a flat overlooking a canal or something.
Unfortunately, though – or maybe fortunately, depending on the point of view – I fell prey to my mother’s inveterate scheming, which far outstrips my ability to withstand it. You see, she is going to Venice to celebrate her 60th birthday and she was desperate to have me with her. This is for reasons past understanding – I will not add anything to her good time in Venice, I feel certain. If anything, I am a perfectly horrible person to travel with. I am whiny, I am peevish, I get car sick. I get airsick. I get canal-sick. On top of that, I am almost certifiably paranoid about visiting some place where I do not speak the native language. It is a phobia of mine.
Yet, my mother relentlessly twisted my arm, this way and that way, endlessly begging and pleading with me to join her on the Venice leg of the journey. I good naturedly tried to dissuade her, citing the fact I was as poor as a church mouse, but it was to little avail. How she wheedled!
“Oh, you MUST join me in Venice! We shall stroll along the canals and visit the Bridge of Sighs! I want to show you the Doge’s Palace! And we can have pastries at Florians! It shall be heavenly! Come: Join your mother on this tremendous excursion!” I mildly riposted that I had barely enough money to take the bus to the Novel, but she would hear none of it.
Then I cleverly made a deal with her: I would go on the trip to Venice if she could convince my stepfather to join us. My stepfather, you see, had also adamantly refused to go on the trip. His reasons were a little more ephemeral than mine: He disliked the idea of two flights of 10 hours or more, staying five days, and then flying back. In addition, he finds it unbearably depressing to have to spend time with his parents, who live in Peter Cooper. And he also happens, he claims, to be at a delicate phase of organizing his book of poetry, which he wants to finish within a few months. So I knew that by linking my going on the trip to my stepdad’s I had fundamentally managed to ensure that I also would not be going on the costly, absurd journey.
But then, my mother got all clever and scheme-y. She enlisted this pal of mine, a former journalist for one of the movie trade papers, who knows Europe well and is always running around covering various film festivals. He’s a nice guy, fairly good looking, though he must have been ASTONISHING looking when he was a younger man, at which time I am told he was the courtesan for a whole slew of gay male artists and writers.
Now the chap is in his mid to late 40s, and his face has the slightly oily, unwholesomely ruddy, slightly collapsed, pinched look of the party boy who time has passed over. He was VERY good looking as a young man, and, as a graduate of Harvard, he could also talk the talk that could seduce any gay man of culture. And so he did. I believe he parleyed his looks and his brain as far as he could, briefly getting an editorial gig at one of the trades. But then it all collapsed some how – and his wild youth still shows in his face.
I met him at the Novel once, when I was with my mother, who also took to him. The joke is, my mother and I have very different conversations with the fellow, whom we shall call Raphael for ease’s sake. It is, to put it breezily, an example of the gulf of comprehension that exists between the straight and gay worlds. With my mother, Raphael has all these elegant “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” like conversations, talking about such and such an artist or choreography, or perhaps the perfect time and place to read Auden or Yeats.
And then, with me, he talks about his jaw-dropping sexual feats – his numerous cheesy sleazy pick ups, and the endless crystal meth-inspired orgies he’s had at his Mar Vista condo, which overlooks the sea. He talks to me about how he was arrested in Toronto for having sex with a male hooker in the park. And he brags about his Czech immigrant boyfriend, who doesn’t speak English (Raphael can’t speak Czech, either) but with whom he bonds using the language of the hose.
Anyway, it was about a week ago that Raphael ambushed me at the Coffee Bean. He came right up to me, and told me that he had come at my mother’s behest to convince me to go to Venice with her.
“You are a FOOL if you do not go!” Raphael intoned. “What CAN you be thinking? This is an opportunity that you must not pass up! My GOODNESS, if ever there was a city for YOU, Johnny Darling, it is Venice! You MUST go. You MUST. I shall give you tips on just the right restaurants to go to – and I shall direct you with tips on how to find the very best museums and sites. Oh you MUST go.”
So florid was Raphael with his descriptions, that I must admit I weakened. And later that night, when my mother again asked, I told her that, all right, I guess I had better go with her to Venice. She almost instantly picked up the phone and booked the non-refundable plane tickets, so that, by the next morning, when I had sobered up and come to my senses, it was too late. And so, after Thanksgiving, it is to Venice we go. Ah well! I shall be spending all next week reading the guide books and trying to learn what I can about the place, so that the experience will not be totally wasted on such as I.
Ehhh. I was just at the Novel Café, and I swear to god someone was smoking a disgusting filthy reefer outside. The smoke from the joint went everywhere! It drifted inside the café, and all around the room. I hate that nasty sour smell. And now, it might be my imagination, but I have the stench of it all over my clothes. Perhaps I even have a contact high. Lord knows I am certainly hungry enough – and paranoid enough – right now to be oh-so-slightly buzzed.
Meanwhile, and here’s a strange thing, at one of the outside tables, there sat a fellow whose photo I recognized from the cheesy-sleazy hook up site Manhunt.net. I am cursed with a good memory for faces, and it is an easy thing for me to recognize someone after I have seen his photo someplace. And so it was with this fellow: He was tall and thin, in his mid-40s, with a hook nose and a chiseled chin that stuck out like a tree branch, as though he were the hideous, bastard love child of the crescent moon and Witchypoo. Of course, he looked just like his photo – but he was also much more HIDEOUS than his photo, if you know what I mean.
In his Manhunt.net photo, all his appurtenances, if that’s the right word, are in place to almost make him seem alluring (albeit not to me – he is not my type, whatsoever). In the real world, though, everything just looked WRONG. All those same features came together in a way that made him look utterly monstrous. His eyes, vaguely blue in his photo, bug out in person, like fried eggs on a stick. His hair – and, my dears, his hair – in his photo, it is nicely combed down, looking eminently respectable. Yet, in person, his hair is huge, long, and shaggy, bristling in all directions like a madman professor from the 19th century. I pity the poor trick who is fooled by the man’s Manhunt photo! A trick indeed – almost of the Halloween variety.
Needless to say, while I recognized the fellow from his Manhunt profile, he did not recognize me. People never recognize me. I could not be more anonymous. I wish I were not such a mean old curmudgeon. It’s most unpleasant, you see, to hate people as much as I do. I mean, there are people who SAY they are misanthropes, but, really, they are just kidding themselves. They are like those people whom you see on the bus wearing T-shirts with cartoon pictures of Eeyore on them. They are not Eeyores, they just sort of identify with a cute cartoon donkey.
Eeyore was a true curmudgeon. If the Wind in the Willows were written today, for sure the story would have ended with Eeyore having been shipped off to some mental home to get lots of Zoloft. Or he would have undergone a lobotomy and electro shock therapy to turn him more “functional.” There is no question that, in this latter age in which everyone is expected to be Happy As Clowns that Eeyore would be allowed to be a gloomy, pessimistic gus. We are supposed to be a nation and a culture of positive, upbeat people. No room for negatives. Into the ovens with negative people!
Just now, I was walking past the Tavern on Main, a revolting bar on Main Street, where you often see the most appalling behavior on the patio. And I suppose, when push comes to shove, the behavior isn’t THAT bad really. Certainly, it doesn’t amount to much more than the usual drunken chit chat that you’d see at any singles bar – and is a good sight less awful than anything you see at a gay bar, really. The difference here is that you are not drunk when you walk by and see it, so the people partaking in the debauch just seem more horrible than anything else you’ve ever seen.
A woman, leaning on the bar that overlooks the street, was squawking at a man who was leaning into her.
“I’m Swedish,” the girl shrieked, waving her drink about.
The man, clearly motivated by booze and lechery, leered back at her, “Swedish, eh? Cool! Then this is the language you speak – blurgablurgablurgashlur!” The woman just howled with laughter, back at him. The bit of the conversation was just about the stupidest thing that I had ever heard. I was wondering just what the guy at the bar might have been thinking: Did he imagine he was being sly and intelligent, making a funny ethnic-y joke that would impress the girl with its sophistication and elegance? Well, who’s to say that it didn’t impress her. Maybe she was legs in the air an hour later -- who knows?
I have to admit that I have been feeling unusually crabby lately in ways that I find it rather difficult to quantify. On a basic level, I find myself loathing just about everyone I find myself coming into contact with – and that includes the various insubstantial on line buddies who usually delight and amuse me. What on earth is the matter with me? I am far crankier and irritable than almost anyone I have ever met, short of the Mean Old Man who lives on Nasty Street and who kicks his dog and beats the little kids who sneak into his backyard to eat his apples. And, we must note, the Mean Old Man is a mythical creature who doesn’t actually exist. I, on the other hand, am as irritable as him, and am only too real. And I promise that I shall continue to be real, and be real irritable, for as long as you can stand to read me.
