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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.
lunes12/29/2003
This is where the title would be if I had bothered to think of one (part three):
Assorted midwinter/solstice associated holidays are nearly over and yet another year is poised to begin. So, the past few weeks have been dominated by family get-togethers, food, parties, food, gifts, food, and massive quantities of food all seemingly designed to wear me down with good cheer, leaving me feeling tired, cranky, and fat. The sense of deja vu, or rather, the sense of repetition is overwhelming.
What little self-control I posses has washed away with the winter rains; this added to truckloads of food (tamales de polo, chile reyenos, tamales dulces, chocolate, various quesos, tamales de vegetables, more chocolate, various salsas, all topped off with thick gallops of Mexican style sour cream) has left me a rotund beast, capable of movement solely through rolling from place to place. Put more mildly, I�ve been guilty of overdoing it with the food this holiday season.
Eh, whatever. Anyway, what we have here is yet another in a long series of catch up entries. As mentioned above, the past few weeks have included several parties and get togethers, including the inevitable day of multiple commitments. For John and me, this was Saturday, December 13th, which involved a day of driving, trekking from the wilds of suburban Orange County to the mania of traversing San Fernando Valley. All in all, too much driving was the theme for that day.
So once again, in vaguely convenient chewable sized portions, here�s yet another example of an overly long catch up entry:
The first party in a Saturday of parties: The mixed race lesbian couple I tend to mention here at least once each summer and winter because they are fun people who throw fun parties, but who for the life of me I cannot remember the pseudonyms I came up with for them, invited John and me to their annual tamale making party. As soon as we arrived, we were put to work, assembling tamales for our supper. Except that since we had other things to go to that day, we left before dinner was served. Not that it mattered that much, since John wasn�t going to eat any of the food he was making. My vegetarian hubby had no problem with being put to work, with touching masa, or assembling chile filled tamales, but John did draw the line at touching dead meat, and he certainly wasn�t to eat any of the lardy things.
Every time he told someone that he wasn�t going to eat any of the tamales, they looked at him funny and with more than a little bit of pity. Even after telling them that he wasn�t going to do without, because my mother makes him a full freezer�s worth of lard free veggie tamales every Christmas, people still looked at him funny, because being lard free, they assumed my ma�s tamales must be terribly dry and tasteless. They�re not. They�re good even without the dead pork fat.
Anyway, my tamale making skills were judged to be somewhat above average this year, which I guess is better than last years barely marginal.
There was no karaoke this year, or more accurately, we left before any singing had started. Which was a small bit of a shame perhaps, because last years patsy cline fest was pretty good.
One of these days I�ll get around to explaining that my current favorite manga of the minute is Gravitation: I went to the Pasadena/West San Gabriel valley potluck a few weeks ago and spent the usual time eating and catching up with friends I hadn�t seen in a while. During one of these conversations, I was trying to explain that I had started following various Yaoi and Shonen Ai Manga titles. This required explaining manga as Japanese comics, and Yaoi and Shonen Ai as genres involving male/male romances aimed at a Japanese female audience. I�ve explained my odd reading habits before, and can usually do it without too much confusion, but not this time. That night, I somehow ended up stating that I�ve gotten interested in Japanese girlie magazines.
It took awhile for the porno jokes to end.
The third party in a Saturday of parties: After a quick stop home, we finally ended our long day of forced marched fun at a birthday party for a former employee of John�s in Huntington Park. It was late by that point, and we declined the kind offer of pozole, cake, or beer, and instead spent our time standing in the cool night air of the back yard talking with the birthday boy and some of John�s coworkers, as birthday boy�s family sat near the fire pit putting back cervesa after cervesa remembering when the newly twenty-five year old was just a little squinkl�, even smaller and more annoying then his nephews and nieces, who spent the entire time running and running through the yard.
The thing about getting smudged with sage is that you reek of it for the rest of the night: ChrisX had a get together at her house the night of the winter solstice. Her beau, the chef, had invited some of his foodie friends, so the spread was much more elaborate than normal, ranging from the expected plates of home made cookies, to pat� and a deal of Japanese imported red caviar. It was all good.
In addition to the food, there was also some wica-ish stuff, were ChrisX had her guests ritually cast off the bitterness from our lives and embrace the sweetness of possibilities that the New Year had in store for us. Despite the ritual, I remain a crusty, grumpy curmudgeon.
Feather boas and strands of fake pearls constitutes drag: The Thursday the week before Christmas was a night for tacky Christmas tree ornament parties; well at least for one that is. Max had several purposely tacky holiday trees; two normal sized spinning and �clapper� controlled silver aluminum fake trees, and couple small tabletop theme things (one was automobile, the other, a tree in drag). My contribution of an open/abierto-closed/cerado sign, while appreciated by a few people, was quickly lost among the other decorations ranging from naughty Santa toys exposing themselves to fresh pine scent car deodorizers.
I chatted with another guest for a while and mentioned that my partner John had stayed home instead of coming to the party. Our conversation sputtered out after that and the guy wandered away fairly quickly. I didn�t think much of it at the time, but in hindsight, I am now wondering if more was going on with our talk than I realized. It wouldn�t be the first time.
I was sort of exhausted, so I left relatively early, but I did have enough energy to head in the wrong direction and drive through Christmas tree lane instead of heading directly home like a good boy. It was pleasant going down a street of tall light filled trees.
The second party in a Saturday of parties: John told me that one of his clients had invited him to a holiday party so that we would probably head out to Hollywood to make a brief appearance at the get together. We didn�t, because actor/head shots guy actually lived in North Hollywood (NoHo to certain folks), and not Hollywood proper. Then again, considering the people there, it was close enough I guess.
Guests included a few struggling actor/whatevers, some low end film production/behind the scene folks, people with more mundane (and normal) professions, and a couple of guys with less mundane, more um, �ill defined� professions (of the clothing optional/pay by the hour sort). Except for a lone het woman, and one token straight male, everyone there was a gay man, and tended towards being white and professionally good looking.
It was not exactly a normal nico situation. I don�t usually get to hear people talk about casting calls, or joke about how while their mothers know that they are masseurs, mom doesn�t know that they do it naked.
John had a �vegetarian incident� at the party. One of the guests had brought diet jello vodka shots (diet?), and just could not grasp John�s turning one down because they were made from gelatin. Even after an explanation that gelatin=animal product, he still seemed confused by the idea of someone declining liquor.
John barely avoided another one on the way out. When we eventually left the party, John went off to gather our jackets, and I stood by the front door, next to some men having a conversation involving two guys attempting to reassure a third that he wouldn�t get ill due to protein deprivation if he gave up eating red meat. I was polite and did not start laughing out loud.
Continuing the theme of folks yelling at me during sleep: I had a strange mangled dream last week, where during the course of an otherwise normal day, eyeless dead people wandered up to me and started telling me bizarre things. One pale dead white guy in a rumpled and moldy business suit could barely keep from laughing as he told me that I�d eventually be able to marry another man, assuming I was still alive in 2050. He snickered as he said that something as frivolous as equal rights for homosexuals would be put on the back burner for a while because of pesky little things such as the upcoming Second American Revolution and a Third North American war.
Another waxy shaded man said that I had better learn how to think, while an ashen woman yelled at me that it was extremely important that I go to the bookstore basement. I�d had enough by this point and started yelling back that the bookstore had no basement. What that meant exactly, I�ve no idea.
Part of the oddity of the dream was that I knew I was dreaming. Before being harassed by the dead, my friend Kristen told me that she was going to cancel out on lunch with me because she was going to go skiing instead. This struck me as weird because Kristen doesn�t do cold, which clued me in that none of what was happening was real.
I doubt that the American public is on the verge of mass revolt over lost employment, lost benefits, lost health, lost environment, and lost hope. Instead, I have a suspicion that the dreams were a result of a section of my mind warning me that I am past ready for a major change in my life. We�ll see what that means, if anything.
OK, that�s more than enough of this. Next time I�ll more than likely mention seeing and liking Big Fish, and the possibility of a quick trip to Las Vegas in a few weeks.
Finally, regardless of whatever winter type holidays you may or may not have had to celebrate, or endure, I hope you had a good time. I also hope for best for all of you in this upcoming New Year. Be well, be safe, and be happy.
More later,
nico
<<this is where the title would be if I had bothered (part 2)::::random memories, or something like that>>