2006-07-27 - 12:35 a.m.
Did you see the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant this year? My favorite part was the swim suit number, in which all the girls came out in their bikinis, while behind them this Latino rocker and several of his back up “home boy” break dancers warbled some gangster-y anthem, their jeans a-sagging and their thug bandana’s a-flappin’. What I liked about it was that it looked almost exactly like the bathing beauties were being serenaded by the men who were just about to rape them.
“It’s the rapist back up singers!” I giggled to my mother, who slapped me on the arm and said, “Oh, now that’s not nice.”
Well, it had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it? The heat has finally done it: I have been driven totally insane! It has been 10 straight days of something like 90 degree heat here in Santa Monica, where, as you know, the heat rarely rises above 70. I have snapped, and that’s all there is to it. If you were to look upon me now, I resemble a rabid dog. My eyes are bugging from my head, my tongue is slithering like a window blind blowing in the breeze, and I am shrieking and howling as foam spurts from the side of my mouth.
What’s that you say? You say, “How can I GO psycho when I have been psycho pretty much since 2002?” Well how kind of you to remind me. I can only riposte that lunacy is a matter of degree. Normally I am a fairly low key deranged fellow, who manages to keep his particular lacunae of freakishnesses tightly under control. However, in this heat, I swear I am THIS close to grabbing a rifle and taking out whole neighborhoods.
When a cell phone-using driver cut me off in his Mercedes while I was crossing the street right now, I swear I wanted to grab a meat hook, plunge it into his belly, and keel haul him from his bumper, so he would moan and leave a bloody trail of intestines down Santa Monica Boulevard.
When the fat she-walrus stupidly cut in front of me on line just now at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, I wanted to grab the back of her hair and pull her backwards until her neck snapped. Snap! And then I would have ripped off her hair, exposing her bloody scalp while she howled and howled. Oh, so much pleasure that would have given me to be sure. It might almost have been worth the twin life sentences or the double death penalty I would have received. I believe that prisons are air conditioned these days.
Speaking of air conditioning, my bedroom air conditioner, meanwhile, has become the proverbial hunk of junk. It’s a source of great rage, really. I mean, it still sort of works, does my bedroom air conditioner. If you turn it up to its highest, tippy toppiest, most gas-guzzliest degree, it seems to cool the bedroom down about five degrees. Half the Middle East oil supply is being used to lower the temperature from 87 to 85. It’s like using the power of a supernova to light the closet.
I’ll take it, since the alternative is to not have it at all. But that’s still not good. You see, I have one of those absurd and ridiculous little air conditioners that wheels around the room on little castors, and which has a tube that you put outside the window to blow out the hot air it creates. This is opposed to the much cheaper and better working air conditioners that you merely hang outside the window.
I would have bought one of those air conditioners some years ago, but the landlord at the time told me in no uncertain terms that a window air conditioner would be steadfastly against the terms of my lease. She told me that they make so much noise, none of the neighbors would ever be able to sleep again. Given that some of the neighbors in the building opposite to mine had big ole air conditioners dangling from their bedroom windows, I was aware that the landlord was simply being obstructionist, making trouble for a tenant, who, living under Rent Control, was not paying market value for the apartment. But I got around the problem by buying myself a DeLonghi Penguino Air Conditioner from Italy.
The air conditioner comes with this water tank, which you fill with water to cool the machine’s innards. However, over the years, a certain amount of spooky detritus has filled up the little feeding vent at the bottom of the Penguino. It is not immediately visable to the eye. Indeed, to look for it, you must open up one little door and lift up a movable compartment.
But when you lift up the little compartment, there it is – a hideous, stagnant pool of muckish brackish filth that never dries up. And, when the machine actually heats up, the pool turns boiling hot – perhaps like the volcanic pools from which life arose many millennia ago. It is rather disturbing to me and I cannot bear to look at the inside of my air conditioner, even though it is obvious that I should clean it out.
I am fearful that the moment I touch the pool, I shall become infected with some disgusting plague of hideous alien virus, which has parthenogenically evolved in the air conditioner tank. And thus I replace the little plastic movable compartment, then quietly close the metal door, so as not to wake up the microbes. And then the air conditioner doesn’t work right.
I prefer, you see, to think of other things. The other evening, for instance, I found myself at this funky dance club in Hollywood, of all places. You see, much to my amazement, the Big Paper called me in out of nowhere for a theater reviewing assignment. I was much surprised, as I had feared and suspected that there was some kind of an organized campaign around town to put me out of work. But the kindly and decent editor of the Big Paper assured me that there was no citywide conspiracy to prevent me from plying my trade at all. He hadn’t heard anything. Rather, he noted, papers are all generally shrinking – with theater coverage in LA particularly being de-emphasized. Now the only editor I need to hear from is the editor of the Little Paper, whom the editor of the Big Paper referred to as, and I quote, “rather kooky.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, the play I reviewed was dreadful. It was stiffly acted, dully written, and clunkily directed. But it represented that I was still employable, which I think is rather nice. After the show, I found myself across the street from Dragonfly, where this famous weekly club “Miss Kitty’s Lounge” was taking place. Miss Kitty’s is famous around LA, I am told. It has been going on for a couple of years and I have always wanted to go – it is supposedly delightfully debaucherous, with an atmosphere catering to all vices, base and subtle. I was just pleased that the bouncer let me past the front door with my huge dopey shoulder bag.
To be honest, Miss Kitty’s turned out to be rather tame. Believe me, I was happy to discover that I was not the oldest nor the most hideous person in the place! There were plenty of grizzled veterans all gaping and leering at the sundry go go boys and girls. But it was far less kinky and raunchy than I thought it would be.
In fact, it was a room full of silly secretaries and accountants, all poured awkwardly into spandex and expensive leather skirts and pants. You almost had to gape at the sight of some of the ridiculous people, who resembled nothing so much as a big bowl of Philadelphia Cottage Cheese, wrapped in duct tape. Mickeys on a Tuesday is far more vile, really. And let’s not even talk about a place that’s REALLY raunchy, such as the Zone or the Melrose Spa. This was raunch for the sweet and innocent. It made me laugh just a tad, as I complacently congratulated myself on being a truly filthy dirty old man.
The music was nice, but I must say I was quite startled to see go go girls, as well as go go boys. Let’s put aside the fact that I am one hundred percent queer. Even taking that aside I could not understand just why the go go girls at this club were so amazingly hideous. I mean, they looked like refugees from the Big Beautiful Woman Weight Watchers meeting! By mistake, at one point I found myself leaning against the bar as this heifer of a girl was wiggling around, scary white tentacle-legs flipping and flopping and belly jiggling like Santa Claus’s does after a jolly good joke. The male go go dancers were more conventionally attractive, with their hot briefs and jockstraps.
If anything, though, the club’s mood and atmosphere was nostaligic. It reminded me of my heady younger days in the mid-80s – and, my goodness, I can hardly remember them at this point really – when I used to hang out at this fabulous club in Chicago called Berlin.
Oh my: Do you remember? Berlin had just that same combo of Midwestern wholesomeness and jaunty clubbiness. Both Berlin and Miss Kitty’s are MILDLY dirty, with great music, and oh-so-expensive drinks. A gin and tonic for seven bucks! And that’s after paying a seven buck cover charge. Quite amazing what they can get away with. But what was amusing was that impenetrable gulf that clearly existed between the Heterosexual World and the Homosexual One. Child, fags are just that much more filthy than the hets.
For instance, I simply had to giggle at the goofy “dirty” burlesques that the club’s producer’s tried to tempt us with. There were two silly girls who pranced onto the stage, dressed like Betty and Wilma from The Flintstones. And they did this little goofy dance using a fake bone as a fake dildo. They did flash their boobies and perhaps they lifted their skirts up just a tad. But it was flirty, not dirty, as I think they’d say.
There was also this bizarre mock- police station set constructed in one corner. Inside the “police cage” there were these two plump dominatrices, dressed in police outfits. Members of the audience would step onto the stage and the dominatrices would pull down their jeans and spank them in their briefs with paddles and gloved hands. It was, frankly, a gape-worthy spectacle.
At the police station, though, the members of the audience where these totally goofy looking guys – all marshmallow-y and white and hairy-backed, resembling the college football team or your frat brothers, ten years on. It was astonishing to see the plump dominatrices pull down these guys slacks and paddle their briefs.
I dunno: I don’t think that I need to go to Miss Kitty’s again, even though I sort of found the atmosphere of acceptance enjoyable. It was, in fact, quite laid back and attitude-free, which is totally not what I was expecting. And I was delighted that I didn’t come away feeling like I had no right to be there, which is often how one feels at gay places like The Abbey or Mickeys or Rage. Next time, though, I want to try out Chi Chi LaRue’s new club, Dirty Deeds.
