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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Punker Tourists go: "Yeah, Uh huh Yup!"

aka: a long one.

Tuesday 05/01/01:

So, I stop at Trader Joes on the way home from work to get some staples like bread and rice milk. As I pulled in to the parking lot, there was a commercial on the radio trying to sell something or another. In the commercial, a man with an exaggerated New York accent is ridiculing Californians for walking around in board shorts and flip flops while constantly yaking away on their cell phones.

Of course, most of the people in the parking lot were on cell phones talking away, myself included. Just about the only ones not doing this was a group of aggressively tan, young, twenty something, white guys in flip flops and board shorts heading into the store.

I ended up standing behind them in the checkout line. Turns out they were tourists from New York.

Wednesday 05/02/01:

ChrisC, thrower of many a great party, had a party to celebrate turning fifty. Due to conflicting work schedules, John and I didn't get down to the hotel that the fiesta was held in until fairly late. The intention was to show up, make an appearance, then leave. We ended up staying late. So late, that we were some of the last people to leave. Unfortunately we also had the farthest to drive to get back home. Why the heck does Orange County have to be so far away? I was thoroughly and totally exhausted the next day at work.

I am definitely not as young as I used to be. When I was twenty-one, I could go out dancing/partying/whatevering till two or so, eat a post dancing meal at Dennys or Yoshinoya around three or so, get back to JonR's place around four, where JonR and I would then, um, "amuse" ourselves for awhile, get to sleep around five or so and be up in time for my eight o'clock class. Now just remembering those nights makes me feel tired. I am an old fart. Know what? Forget that, I'm not an old fart, I am just wiser and smarter, yeah, that's the ticket ;-)

Those Denny's Southern Slams. Dios, I have no idea how I used to be able to digest those things. Ugh.

ChrisC's party was fun with lots of music, drink and food. Although, nonmeat containing food items were few, so John was reduced to making a couple of cheese sandwiches for dinner. The music they played wandered across several decades and styles and I ended up on the dance floor with some friends doing everything from the hustle to a passable twist. I got off the floor before I had to do the pogo. John didn't dance that night. Most of his night was spent talking work talk with his colleagues. Who was good, who sucked, which administrator was an idiot. The usual work talk.

Thursday 05/03/01:

I spent my entire ten hour work day telling myself "YOU'RE AWAKE" over and over and over again. UH no, not out loud. At least I don't think I did.

Friday 05/04/01:

I was not farmer nico and I did not work outside. I did not clean house, nor did I work on any of the assorted projects that needed to get done that day. What I did do was waste a few hours wandering about online, watching mindless TV and reading a little. I'm about half way through Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu and I'm enjoying it so far. I'll save any analysis or comments until I'm done.

I forgot to mention it here, but John bought the original English Queer as Folk awhile back. I haven't bothered to write about watching the episodes, but we finally finished watching it all that night. I may write my opinion's 'bout it later, but I can say now that I love the way Stuart says "arse."

Saturday 04/28/01:

In order to make up for being a lazy bum the day before, I got a ton of of house work done. Of course, that's a lie. Actually, I got up late, puttered around the house a bit, then headed over to Homo Despot to buy stuff. I left the shopping cart alone for about five or ten minutes and well yes, it's obvious where I'm headed with this story. I wasn't in the greatest of moods to begin with and having someone steal the idiotic cart and dump my purchases all over the ground was very aggravating.

I was in a foul mood and got back home just in time for a phone call from Kristen. She misheard me when I vented to her and thought that I had said that my car had been stolen. After that, my mood improved considerably. Who cared about a cart, worse things could have happened.

I ended up driving down to Kristen's for a late lunch and movie thing. Lunch was veggie lettuce wraps, pin noodle soup and preserved green beans with brown rice at the PF Changs down at the Irvine Spectrum. The flick was Amazing Caves at the Imax. It was interesting, although I could tell that both Kristen and I thought that the documentary would have been better had the two lead female Caving scientists been lovers. We are corrupt that way. Hehe.

Despite being about caving to find and collect microorganisms for possible medical use, they still managed to fit in the patented vertigo inducing Imax fly by the mountain shot. Heck, these folks could make a documentary about hemorrhoids and it some how end up with a fly over the mountain at really high speeds shot.

After the movie, we wandered around the Spectrum for a bit. Not surprisingly we stopped at the Anime store there. While Kristen wandered about looking at stuff, I stood with the crowd that was watching two teenage girls playing one of those dancing video game things. They were good and extremely energetic. Their jumping around and stomping nearly drowned out the overly loud music blasting off the machine.

After a quick Jamba Juice stop, we called it a day.

Sunday 04/29/01:

Oddly enough, I woke up before John did. I love lying in bed looking at him while he sleeps. I think I've admitted my fondness for these "quite" times before. Unfortunately, we didn't spend the entire day in bed. John got up and did some dark room stuff and I did the P.C.C. (Pasadena City college) Flea market thing.

I tempted myself with more globes, but I didn't buy any this time around. There is still the problem of where the heck would I put them all if I went whole hog with this globe collecting urge of mine.

Unusual things at the swapmeet that day included:

-The sudden appearance of several vendors selling very, very, very large convex mirrors.

-An odd, so hip they're square straight couple, or is that so square they're hip? Actually, nerdy/ hipster couples of both orientations are a dime a dozen here. What made these two unusual was they apparently had a very strange running joke. One would point at something, make some sort of comment about it and the other would answer fairly loudly back: "Yeah, Uh huh Yup!"

-A sex god. An explanation is needed I guess. At one point during the day I ended up walking by a very thin, lanky, shortish, very early twenties something guy with hair so totally black that I'm assuming it was dyed. In other words, not my type at all. Despite that, there was something very GRRRR!!! about him. I was a good boy and just kept on walking. Didn't even do the rubber neck thing. LOL

-Some tattooed, mohawked, torn anarchy sloganed t-shirted, vintage jeaned, red booted thirty something Japanese punker tourists who were very heavly into hawaiian shirts. Thinking about it now, that actually isn't all that unusual.

More unusual were the many Xena and Gabriel t-shirted women at the convenience store I stopped at on the way home. Except that wasn't unusual either, considering that there was a Xena convention going on at the Pasadena Convention center that weekend. My spies tell me that there were several thousand Xenaphiles in attendance and that people of both genders dressed as Xena was not an uncommon sight. OK, I don't have spies so much as I had a quick friendly waiting for the checkout line to move chat with the two women in front of me.

Monday 05/07/01:

John and I were, um, "busy " the night before, as evidenced by the big freaking hickey I now have on my neck. Luckily, my work shirt and tie just about manage to cover most of it. I haven't had a hickey in years and all John could do laugh. I'm feeling very juvenile now and thinking that I should something to my Johnny in return. We'll see what happens later ;-D

More later,

nico

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