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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Lunes 07/07/2003
Last night I dreamt
Last night I dreamt that having a couple of hours to waste before an appointment of some sort, I decided to wander a bit through a decrepit mall.
Now, my mind, being a feeble and weak thing, limited in scope and ability, is incapable of too much by way of creativity, so while sleeping I have over the years occasionally revisited certain specific locations and landmarks of a contrary dream version of Los Angeles.
In my sleep, the city is not so much distorted, as magnified, or perhaps exaggerated may be a better choice of word. When I dream, instead of a hill by the ocean, Palos Verdes is a small mountain, resulting in vaguely Rio�esque views; instead of dry concrete flood controlling walls, the Los Angeles river flows strongly throughout it�s length; double and triple decker freeways overflowing with commuters (both in cars and running on foot) snake their way through diverse widespread communities; and in the distance, a huge downtown, filled with bizarre theme skyscrapers topped by ships, glass mausoleums, and waterfalls, works its way slowly towards the Westside where it will eventually meet the ocean and be forced to give up it�s goal of expanding ever westward.
The decrepit mall lies somewhere in that dream landscape. I�ve no idea if it has a real name or not, I guess it doesn�t really matter. It is an aging 70�s indoor mall laid out in a simple line, anchored by two large, and long vacant chain stores on either end. The place was ugly and unpopular even when it first opened and had been going downhill ever since.
It�s been a while since I have been �there.� As I walked through it, the majority of the stores were still closed, but at least in one corner of the place there was some activity. A grey, economy defying, fabric store which dated back to the opening of the mall and has so far survived while everything else around it failed, was now sided by an angrily earnest anarchist bookstore and a neon dazed head shop. Across the way, a long vacant BDaltons had reopened as a sedate Spanish bookstore, and a loud, hash, yellow and orange hot dog stand was now a loud, harsh, yellow and orange boba stand.
Dusty and dingy, or clean and freshly repainted, the only commonality among the new stores was that they couldn�t afford the rents anywhere else and so had started a strange little revival of the mall. The space that was the most crowded, and which oddly enough I went into, was an erotic art gallery. By dream coincidence, it was the opening night party, held at lunchtime since the mall closes fairly early.
Tattooed and pierced people wandered around drinking cheap wine dutifully ignoring the paintings of leather clad men and women ignoring each other. The crowd also ignored large signs explaining that the artist had created these works as homage to Tom of Finland, but that in a �post modernistic comment on irony� had made all the subjects straight. Even larger signs explained the difference between pornography and erotica, and how while one was art, the other was base and heartless, but these signs were ignored as well.
The tattooed and pierced crowd was having far too much fun cruising each other to bother much with the art or the explanations of art. After a surprisingly short time, both the art and the crowd became tedious, so I started to make my way out of the gallery to head to one of the bookstores before I had to leave for my appointment.
This was when someone bumped into me and pushed a crumpled up piece of paper into my hand. I stopped, realizing that somebody had just given me his phone number. I looked up at him, and taking that as an invitation to talk, the culprit introduced himself.
Even in a crowd of heavily body-decorated folks this guy was scary looking. Not because he looked dangerous, but because it was impossible to tell if he was a clueless heavy metal refugee, or a postmodern ironic comment version of one. He wore red leather pants, a worn black leather jacket, and a dirty white t-shirt proclaiming his love for Metalica. If that weren�t enough, his long hair had been permed and teased to take up as much room as possible. As he talked to me, I decided that he could make a career as a Howard Stern impersonator.
He told me that he had hoped that giving me his number would be an adequate excuse to talk to me. He then told me how handsome I was, and how he just had to do something to met me on the off chance that I was gay. I thanked him for the compliments, told him that while I was gay, I was also in a committed relationship.
He looked disappointed, but gave me a half smile and told me to keep his number anyway, just in case. I said that I had to leave, and a handshake goodbye somehow turned into an awkward hug and quick kiss. He walked away towards his friends (also dressed in metal gear) grinning like mad, and I left the gallery wondering how much practice it took to get so skilled that you could turn a handshake into a kiss before the other person could even object.
As I was leaving, I decided that I was dreaming. The tip off was not the strangeness of the gallery or other stores, but the oddity of having someone giving me his phone number.
This never happens in real life. Well, at least nearly never. It�s happened twice. Once in college, and another time about ten or so years ago at some random bar somewhere in L.A, or maybe Long Beach. I was leaving the place with John and another couple, when a white guy rushed out, handed me his number, muttered something so quickly that I didn�t quite under stand it (hereiwantutohavthis!), then rushed back inside. This did not amuse John, and our friends didn�t get what the problem was, because this sort of thing was always happening to them.
I looked critically at our friends, Arturo a somewhat vain, part time gogo dancer who felt he could get any man he wanted, and Alonzo, the kind of man who could get a somewhat vain, part time gogo dancer who felt he could get any man he wanted, to settle down. I decided that they needed to get a life.
More later,
nico
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