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.

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Dancing Nonfeminist Attractive Cars

This has been a week of stress with some diversions. The work week was spent packing up the office. We aren't moving, but we are getting new furniture and work stations (not quite full on cubicles). It's really sad that this has me excited, but after years of second hand furniture, it's understandable. Nothing in the office currently matches and a few too many of our chairs and desks were "liberated" from stock that was meant to be thrown out.

More importantly, I'm going to finally get an office. Actual walls. Walls. Walls I tell you! I soon won't have to borrow other peoples offices when doing unfortunate supervisor stuff like reviewing work with people.

Anyway, here's the past week:

Thursday (02/08/01) is only worth mentioning because my car died during the commute home. Again. This time I was stranded in a fairly deserted part of downtown. No obnoxious mad homeless people or police sweeps this time though. Just major aggravation and a chatty, kinda cute but straight and married Latino tow truck driver.

I didn't do anything about my car the next day (Friday 02/09/01). What I did do was waste most of the day in front of the TV. I went on a movie binge of sorts. I finished watching the rest of the Brothers Quay collection (decidedly odd), then watched most of Happy Texas (directors commentary), Run Lola Run (more director talk) and Get Real (video, so no extras). Due to a fairly liberal use of the fast forward button it didn't really take that long to get through the films, hence the "most of" qualifier. All in all, friday was a brain dead get nothing accomplished day, which was a good thing. I needed a break from stress.

Most of Saturday (02/10/01) was spent dealing with all the things I had avoided the day before, like dealing with getting a new car. Yup, I finally broke down (could that be a joke?) and bought a new car. Of course they didn't actually have it on the lot, so I had to wait a day to actually get it.

John and I went to dinner and saw Pilobolus (a dance troupe) perform at the Alex ( a theater in Glendale) with Alex (one of Johns' co-workers) and Omar (Alex's Beau) that night. Dinner was CPK (California Pizza Kitchen). As usual, the meal was just ok. Not bad, but not really all that great either. Acceptable. I had only met Omar briefly once before and this was the first time that we had an actual conversation. He's an interesting person and definitely not shy at all.

The performance was really good. I'm far more the the modern dance person than John is, but even he enjoyed the program. We saw them about two years ago and were very impressed. Of course, we also somehow ended up with seats in the first row off to one side. We were so close to the stage that we could see sweat flying off the dancers. It was very, um, "stimulating." This time around we were further back, but also more centered. Good seats, but making for a definitely different experience. It was easier to enjoy the choreography, or maybe I should say that all those straining, bulgy muscles weren't as visible and therefor not as distracting.

As with other modern dance that I've seen, there was allot of emphasis on physical strength. Men and women throwing each other around the stage. There were also some "!!Argh!! bodies weren't designed to move like that!" moments. I have a feeling that when they get older, the dancers bodies are going to rebel big time.

I find it interesting how overtly political a nonverbal medium like dance can be. Comments, ideas, narrative, even humor all conveyed just through movement of the body. Of course, it can be a confusing way to communicate. The final piece performed (Davenen) had been commissioned by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and dealt with tradition and conflict in Jewish spiritual and secular life. Twice during the piece, women drew men away from prayer and faith through both seduction and violence. I'm not entirely sure if the women were meant to be specific women, or all of womankind, or if they were meant to be symbols of the temptations and dangers of the physical world. The first two ideas bother me a little and if was meant to be the third, then I was far to distracted by the genders of the performers to get it. Of course I could just be reading to much into it, or missing the point entirely.

My main problem with the performance wasn't the performance itself, but rather with the audience. Specifically with the man seated next to me. I'm guessing that he was only there because of his wife. He was so obviously overwhelmingly bored that it was hard at times to concentrate on the dancers instead of all the not subtle nonverbal ways he was telling his wife that he wanted out of there. Now. I wanted him out of there as well.

Alex told Omar that the night was an early Valentines day present. When I told John the same thing a minute later, John calmly said that he was the one who paid for the tickets. Dang, why did I end up with a guy who remembers things like that?

Now, John and I are what I would consider maybe average, neither ugly, nor drop dead turn your head handsome. This may seem an odd intro, but it is fairly relevant to that evening. Both Alex and Omar are that handsome. Omar could model if he wanted and in fact, Alex is a former model.

Side story: Before Alex started working with John, a woman there had a poster of an underwear ad featuring a nearly naked Alex. Apparently she was quite pleased when he started working there. More so than when she had to take the poster down for policy reasons.

Anyway, the reason I mention how attractive they both are is because the entire evening people were STARING at the two of them. Not glancing, not subtly checking 'em out, but slack jawed staring. It wasn't just the attention that was starting to bother me, but also the way people were acting. Waitstaff were being extra helpful, crowds were parting for us to pass through, people were being unusually nice and helpful the entire evening. Well, except for one cranky coffee house clerk, but since that contradicts my story, let's just ignore her. I'm not normally insecure about my appearance and I'm kinda embarrassed that it even bothered me. Alex and Omar a nice guys and didn't even notice all the heads of both genders that were turning our way. I'm not sure what my point is other than I guess it is true that the truly attractive have it easier than the rest of us.

My car was ready on Sunday (02/11/01), so after more paperwork and more money than I was comfortable spending, I am now the owner of a quick little silver saturn. It only took me until I was was thirty-three to get an actual new car and leave the world of used cars behind me. Knock on proverbial wood. Now I just have to deal with the corpse of my poor little sad storm coupe.

This was supposed to have been posted a few days ago, but due to busy life and the thunderstorms mentioned in the last entry it got put up late. so what.

More later, nico.

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