2007-08-21 - 10:53 p.m.
Oh my goodness: I was so sorry to hear that Mickys, the delightful sleaze pit gay club which I have been going to since I was 21 or so, burnt to the ground today. Flames were seen blazing through the skies of West Hollywood, and black black smoke billowed upwards, like the souls of the go go boys roasting on their way to Hell.
Can you imagine what it was like at the scene? How the go go boys were running screeching down the boulevard, trying to use their jockstraps to put out the flames? How the old ghouls started fondling the firemen as they stormed into the place with their axes and hose?
No, stop laughing. It’s very sad. Say what you will about the place, it is one of the only great welcoming epicenters of gay life in Los Angeles. People say that they feel like Hell being gay in LA if they are not beautiful and young – but anyone was welcome at Mickys. All you needed was a dollar to tip a go go boy and some money for a drink. Yes, it was bottom of the barrel some times – but sometimes bottom of the barrel is rather nice.
The bartenders were always shirtless and didn’t mind if you reached over the bar to tweak their nipples. And the go go boys were always a pleasure. Why, sometimes watching the go go boys, and molesting one or another of them for the cheap price of a dollar per pat, was better than actually having sex! And now it is gone, and there is one less reason to enjoy life in this hellish city of exiles.
I do suppose they will rebuild, because Mickys pulls in a LOT of money. But it will probably be years and years – and then who knows what kind of license nonsense the city will force the Algerian mafiosa owners to perform to get the right to have go go boys and booze in the same place. And when the club reopens, it will almost certainly be “upscaled” to the point that normal sleazes will feel uncomfortable going there.
Isn’t that sad? Well, I think so. I am listening to endless numbers of folks on gay.com making nasty japes about the place, about how pleased they are it’s burned – “Ohh, talk about flamers!” some laugh. “I hate that place so much I wish I could just go there and laugh and throw all the go go boys back into the fire!” laugh some others.
But for me, LA now has one less reason to be pleasant. I admit, I am a bit of a goofball and a dope – but one of my true pleasures is to go out to Mickys, have a little gin and tonic, and leer at the dancing boys, slipping one or two of them a dollar and fondling their bottoms.
-- jd--
First the good news: For the next two weeks, I am working at Megalith, with its enormous union paycheck and fast-paced, exciting life in the movie biz! Oh, the scripts that I am reading, each with attached A-list movie stars and budgets of sixty million dollars. Oh, the joy and the rapture – the excitement of earning a middle class living again! It is quite delightful.
When the story editor called me up, she was so kind and sweet. How she welcomed me! And there was my name, stenciled on my little cubby hole, just like it always was. So pleasant and nice. It was like I had never left! There is a new story department assistant who is cute as a button, too: He is a sweet Midwestern 22 year old puppy with dimples who is really to die for. So adorable!
And, in the years since I have worked at Megalith, they have moved into the modern ages: All scripts are now sent out via e-mail on PDF file so I only needed to actually go into the office to fill out one form or two. It was quite enjoyable.
Why, I am not even needing to ditch my shifts at the library, even. I just work around them. And it’s extremely relaxing, I must say, to give myself in to five hours of library stuff and then have my swim (and my blow job with the janitor boy) and then go home and read a script or two. It’s lovely.
But now the bad news: Because I haven’t worked a union job for something like three years, I have let my union membership lapse, so I had to pull out my long hard credit card and pay off my long past due dues. And that means, even though I shall be extremely well paid for my story analysis efforts this week, every penny of it is going to pay off the union dues. So essentially I am working for nothing. Like a dog, I am working – for nothing. And that’s how it works around here. You might have noticed. One step forward, but it turns out not to be a step forward after all – indeed, it’s rather a step back.
In my spare time, what’s left of it, I have just been finishing up the Harry Potter book. And, do you know, the ending was really very nice! I had no problems with the finale whatsoever. I thought it was rather jolly. Mind you, the book sagged like an old mattress in the middle, when the characters really didn’t seem to have anything to do for about, oh, four hundred pages or so. I mean, what was all that wasted time shlubbing about in the countryside all for?
At least the story finally took off when the characters were back at dear old Hogwarts. And it’s clear that author JK Rowling has left the door open for other books, if she so chooses. We now have a “second generation” of Potter family people to write for, it seems – or she can go back in time to write about Dumbledore’s family.
Given that Harry Potter is such an industry, I was fearful that Rowling would just shut the whole thing down. It would be like someone just saying, capriciously, “Oh, I’m just going to shut down Toyota or General Motors. I’m just going to finish it up and close it down!” It doesn’t make sense.
Even if you’re tired of being the President of General Motors, you have sort of a responsibility for the folks who make money from you. And I have a feeling that Rowling will continue churning out Harry Potter-like books, albeit probably not with him as the main character. And why not? That’s what CS Lewis did with Narnia, after all. And those were never the marketing juggernaut that dear old Harry Potter is.
