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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.
wednesday 08/06/2003
Two-dollar discount cute and other stories of hustling.
Life has been hectic with projects, works, shows, family obligations, movies, dinners, and such. Put more simply, I�ve been overwhelmed with loads of crap lately, which made my decision to post poorly written fiction here on a daily basis for a week, a strange one. It did allow me to blow off some steam so to speak, so perhaps it wasn�t a totally bad decision.
However, one result of the liar spree has been that once again I have been ignoring my life in the journal. Normally not a problem, but it has become a slight one now, because I feel the need to play catch up.
Starting with the house. The exterior painting is nearly complete and to my surprise (and relief), it�s looking good. John�s and the painter�s scheme of turning our sad white house with its depressed blue trim into a happy, light putty, �dovecoat� color home with dark green, burgundy, and white color trim, highlights, and accents, has actually worked.
Neighbors, joggers, power walkers, and random strangers have stopped and told us that the house looks great. Part of the complement has been because we removed the two large bougainvilleas that covered and shaded the front porch. People seemed surprised that there was an actual house behind the bougies.
Next up in our mad spending spree will be a new driveway and front walkway, and once those have been installed, new landscaping for our now barren postage stamp sized front yard. The �liar� entry with the sod obsession was partially truthful in that except for a young tree (a protocarpus), we have removed nearly all the plants from in front of the house. The timing of this was amusing since we, along with all the other property owners on the hill, received notices from city code enforcement that we were violation for overgrown plants. Supposedly the notices went out because city vehicles (trash, fire, and such) were having problems maneuvering through our tiny windy streets because of all the overgrown plants and overhanging tree branches. The rosemarys I removed did overhang the curb by a few inches, so I guess technically we were in noncompliance, but since the front is mostly all dirt now, it�s a moot point.
We still haven�t quite decided on what plants are going to go in, but I�m imagining things with a reddish hue to pickup/reinforce the burgundy bits of the house. I�ve even gone so far as to buy some dark red flowered daylilies I saw on sale. We�ll see what the rest of the planting turns out to be.
So that�s home and hearth, as for the rest of my life, here�s merely the past weekend:
Two-dollar discount cute:
John and I went to an eighties theme party last Saturday. One that required dressing up. Not having hung on to my teenage or college clothes (not that they would have fit if I had), we found ourselves in need of hitting a local thrift store. Ignoring my sister�s suggestion of dressing up as that new Menudo member Ricky Martin, I limited my purchases to a so ugly it was cool, 100% polyester, water repelling, short sleeve shirt. Combined with some thrashed shorts and an old pair of fake Doc Martins, I was a reasonable imitation of an early eighties punk hanging out on a hot August night, as long as you ignored my long hair that is.
John went another route, finding a button down shirt of different pastel hues, a skinny woven tie, and white jeans. He ended up looking like a preppy trying to dress �cool.�
Back at the house, John realized that the sales clerk had undercharged him by two dollars. I told him this was because he wasn�t just cute; he was two-dollar discount cute. After getting the expected stare, I told John that I had noticed the sales clerk, a young 18 or 19-year-old Mexican kid, checking him out. I smiled and told him that the while young man had good taste in older men, it was too bad he didn�t think my husband was worth a three or four-dollar break.
John glared at me, assuming that I was joking about the clerk looking at him like a hungry dog looks at a bone, but then again, John always denies it when guys are interested in him. Just last month, a man who came out to give us a quote on redoing the driveway ended up offering to model for John, and after fixing a small problem at the house, another guy from a local utility agency offered to come back out do more work for free. This bears repeating: FOR FREE. According to John, they were not trying to live out cheap porno plot lines, but were rather just being nice. Despite his denials, my Johnny is hot stuff.
Ducky hustlers:
In the past I�ve mentioned being friends of friends of some people with money. They are the ones who threw the eighties party, giving me an opportunity to check out their multimillion dollar fixer-upper home. I�ve being feeing queasy at the amounts of money John and I have spending on redoing parts of our house. Were I responsible for the sums they have spent in an extensive remodel of the house, and landscaping, I would have been put into a coma.
Their home is very nice. Their home is also very huge, although now with fewer rooms than when originally built. In order to get large modern sized rooms, they have had to do things like remove interior walls and convert two old sitting rooms into one rather large master bedroom. Even with the loss in overall number of rooms, the house has more space and more rooms than I would know what to so with.
In our house, I was pleased and happy when John and I bought a skinny little Ikea chair and ottoman to squeeze into our bedroom so that we could have a sitting/reading area. They also have a sitting area, consisting of a few massive couches and chairs. Realizing that our entire bedroom was the size of their bedroom�s sitting area, I decided that the place was depressing.
Our friend Kady did as well, so being childish, we made up stories about how the house was haunted, which amused us to no end.
The party was mostly fun for a very loud thing full of straight couples I didn�t know. I wasn�t as outgoing and sociable as I could have been, partially because of mood, but mainly because the New Wave music was being blasted so loud, that combined with my weak and gravely voice, conversation was a bit difficult.
While it made conversation near impossible, the loud music was fun. John and I were sort of old farts, in that we didn�t spend a lot of time on the dance floor, but we weren�t too bad. We did spend some time dancing. We were even part of the crowd of badly dressed people wriggling spastically on the floor during the �down, down� section of Rock Lobster. It�s been a mighty long time since I�ve gone that low, and while I didn�t whip right back up as fast as I used to when I was young, I was a least able to get back up. If any of you yung�uns out there have no idea of what any of that meant, don�t worry, just ignore me as you would any long winded, ancient, decrepit, disliked, elderly relative.
Most folks weren�t dancing the night away; instead they were congregated outside on one of the patios. The full bar and the bartender making �eighties drinks� stationed there probably had something to do with that. Had this been a gay boy party, embarrassing drinks of the Reagan years would mean fuzzy navels and cocksuckers, but this wasn�t, so instead we were being offered Long Island ice teas, multihued jello shots, and �I know what boys like� (i.e.Sex on the Beach). I think it�s been at least 15 years since I�ve had a Long Island ice tea, and unlike those long ago watered down bar drinks, these were way strong. So strong that I�m thinking I kinda preferred the cola heavy drinks from my youth.
The majority of guests did not appear to have needed to go to a thrift store for their outfits. Instead it looked as if they were wearing clothes they had stashed in the back of their closets, which would explain how natural and nonchalant all those middle aged men looked in their pastel Miami Vice suits. It would also explain the ease other men had in maintaining the perfectly upright collars of their multiple polo shirts.
Besides the �naturals,� there were a couple of punks, many early Madonna wannabe�s, flashdancers in leg warmers, a few Cyndi Lauper look a-likes, and large big hair everywhere. Nobody got my punk in summer anti-fashion look, so I started telling people that I was dressed as Duckie after he got dumped by Molly Ringwald and hitchhiked to L.A. where he spent most of his time hanging out on Melrose occasionally turning tricks for petty cash. I got a few polite chuckles, but most folks just looked confused. Needless to say, but I�m used to having people look at me with puzzled looks on their faces.
There was a moment that night, right before we left, when hanging out by the food, I noticed a young man across the room with his back turned towards me. He wore a white t-shirt, had a plaid long sleeve shirt wrapped around his waist, and wore jeans and boots. With his clothes and haircut, I suddenly saw Vince. The resemblance was lost the second he turned to talk to his girlfriend. They did not really resemble each other, but for that moment, my heart stopped and I remembered nights spent with Vince at other less purposely ironic parties. It was a melancholy way to end the night, but perhaps an appropriate one.
The joy of decorating your home in a turn of the (previous) century French whore motif:
The night before the party, John and I had dinner with Alex & Don, and saw Ennio perform at the Geffen in Westwood. I had assumed that Alex and Don were dating, but nope, they aren�t. They are in just friends territory. A situation not likely to change since Don has started dating some movie producer/agent/hot shot/somebody or another. Ehh, too bad, they would have made a cute couple.
Anyway, having time before the show, and being a group of gay men, we did the only thing possible when in Westwood and walked through Design Expo making fun of everything. Walking through the bath area, we joked about decorating Alex�s condo as one giant shower room, and when that joke wore thin we made cracks about decorating his place in a French turn of the century whore motif, inspired in part by the feathered lamps and over done crystal chandeliers in the lighting area. For a store selling the idea of taste and design, it was rather surprising how easy it would be to go there and end up with a home that could look as if a crazed harlot decorated it.
Afterwards, we had dinner, then made our way to the theater for the show. Ennio was hilarious. John and I saw him the last time he performed in Los Angeles, but enough of the act had been changed and updated that I couldn�t tell what was going to happen next, or who was going to be lampooned. My attempts at describing the show as satire with pop culture references with clown with paper costumes always fail, so just check out the site. He explains himself far better than I can.
One button good, three button prostitute:
The night after the party, John and I had tickets for 42nd Street at the Alhmanson. It was fun; though little more than an excuse to watch people tap dance en masse. Even though John described the songs as being standards, I was surprised that I had recognized so many of them, but thinking about it I should not have been. I did spend many a weekend afternoon as a kid watching old musical movies on TV regardless if it was the Marx Brothers singing nonsensical songs, or a Busby Berkley overhead shot extravaganza, not that I can recall any of them. It wasn�t until the end of the 42nd Street number that I even remembered that I had even seen the original movie.
We were hanging out in front of the theater before the show, when I noticed an older gentleman giving me the eye. I was about to mention to John that he had some competition when he told me to button my shirt up because I looked like a hustler on the make. I started to make a smart-ass comment, but then decided not to. Some conversations just aren�t worth it, so I buttoned up and faced away from the older man.
So, that was my last weekend. I�d include the previous weekend and other rambly bits, but I�ve just about run out of steam, so I�ll save that part of my catching up for next time.
More later,
nico
<<a weeks worth of lies, day seven::::nico lives in Southern California