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.

<prior or next>

It's too hot to do that!

aka- three drunks, two arrests and Mother's days, both of them.

Yep, I really did witness some arrests this week. My problem is that I am not entirely sure how to write about them. Forgetting any possible questions of legality, there is also an important question of privacy. The second incident involved people I know. I do not feel comfortable exposing too much about something that involves friends of mine and could potentially involve court in some manner. In this case, It's not my life that I am exposing here, but theirs.

The easiest thing would just be not to mention the incidents, except (and there is always an except) that this journal has replaced my old handwritten one and amazingly enough, I'm documenting my life for myself as well as anyone else who would be interested in reading this. My solution (brevity and vagueness) to this problem is not original, but will have to do.

Anyway, the week:

Monday 05/07/01:

Tonight was the first "It's too hot to do that " complaint from John this year. Um, he was talking about snuggling, not full on sexcapades. LOL

For some bizarre reason John thinks that I am hot. Literally that is. To hear him go on about it, I'm just a oversized space heater. Apparently, having a very warm lover is great during winter, not so great during the heat of summer. Thing is, it's not even summer yet. Argh!

John's gonna kill me when he realizes that I wrote about this. Too bad ;-)

Tuesday 05/08/01:

I was cutting through Skid Row on my commute home when I passed an obviously drunk man. He was a middle-aged looking Latino guy and was staggering along the sidewalk pointing emphatically at random directions. He probably would have fallen over, except that an older African American gentleman held him up when necessary. I found this strange because while I drive through there a lot, I have never actually seen someone drunk on Skid Row before.

Wednesday 05/09/01:

I spent several aggravating hours working with folks from different government offices and agencies today. The day was tedious and very, very, very long.

Towards the end of the day, I was in a van stuck in traffic because a car was double parked in the middle of the street. Not only had the driver stopped traffic, but he had also blocked in a police car as well. The police officers spent a looong talking to him, presumably requesting, if not outright demanding that he move his vehicle. He refused. From what we could see from our trapped van, the guy was given several opportunities to just accept a ticket and leave. He refused each opportunity. After much yelling on the mans part, he was arrested and his passenger dealt with moving the car.

I realize that I do not know all the details involved, but I do not understand the logic that getting arrested was preferable to getting a ticket.

At the very end of the day, I drove by my second drunk guy of the week. He was passed out on someone's front yard surrounded by cans of beer. By this point, I regretted going into work today. I know that there are stereotypes and expectations for poor neighborhoods, but this was just overkill.

After a very stressful work day, I had been hoping for some quiet time at home. Unfortunately, I was supposed to go a dinner party tonight. I almost decided to skip it, but it was supposed to be very low key thing, just some food and conversation, so I went. I was also feeling a little guilty since I had been kind of ignoring this group of friends.

It was fun at first. People just hanging around the kitchen talking talk. Unfortunately, that part didn't last long. There was some banging around and noise from upstairs and some people went up there to find out what was going on. It turned out that the upstairs tenant was drunk or high or something. The organizer of the night and a couple of other people went back up to talk to him and the rest of us stayed in the kitchen.

We were starting to dish out dinner when I heard someone say "What the hell?"

Mr. Intoxicated was now chasing people across the complex. Not "this is a fun game" chasing, but "I'm going to f-ing hurt you" chasing. I thought it was a joke or some bizarre prank at first, but it wasn't. Next thing I knew, the police were in the parking lot arresting Mr. intoxicated. The organizer was shaken, but thankfully not seriously hurt.

We all stayed for a while to make sure that everything was OK, then being ever practical and very hungry by that point, we ate dinner.

I'm still not sure if I've written too much or too little about this day.

Thursday 05/10/01:

After yesterday, I had hoped for a quiet slow day at work, so of course the entire day was ridiculously busy. Normally, I'll get some projects finished, look up at the clock and it'll be nine or nine thirty. Time for an apple or a banana, since I'm not much of a coffee drinker. Today, I looked up and it was already past two. I didn't even eat lunch till well after four and most of it was spent helping people fill out forms.

Instead of staying late like I should have, I left on time and stopped at the South Pasadena Farmers market on my way home. It was great to be able to just walk around calmly with no deadlines looming over me, no people yelling at me and best of all, no chemically altered people running around taunting police officers into arresting them.

Today was Dia de Los Madres in Mexico, so I was good son and spent time on the phone with my mom when I finally managed to make it home.

Friday 05/11/01:

I wasn't feeling that great and spent most of the day in bed, so let's just skip to the next day.

Saturday 05/12/01:

I was feeling much better today and spent a lot of it doing life maintenance stuff like getting a hair cut, getting cat food and buying a funky mutant looking orchid to give to my mom for Mothers days (both of them!).

Dinner tonight was at a Benihanas to celebrate John's younger brother's girlfriend's daughter's first communion. These modern romances, nothing but additives. LOL

I had never been to one of these places before and while the "show" was fun, I was amazed at the huge amounts of butter that went into all the food. I never really equated butter with Japanese cooking before.

It's prom season now and the restaurant was overflowing with teenagers dressed to the nines. Teens were hanging about, showing off their clothes, showing off their dates and depending on the gender, either laughing a bit too loudly or hanging out in the parking lot smoking.

I didn't bother to go to my prom. Way too much money. Instead I spent the night wandering about the city getting into trouble and having laughs with a decidedly odd mix of my too cool for prom friends, my would have gone but couldn't get a date geek friends and my kind of sexually confused friends. Whenever we came across prom people that night, we would laugh at 'em and make fun of their clothes. It was the mid eighties, so that wasn't too hard to do.

These kids tonight had made some odd fashion decisions as well. I'm not sure who decided that it was derigueur to wear sweat bands with tuxedos, but the look just doesn't work. The tried and true sneakers with tux look doesn't work either.

One thing that did work was a guy dressed in a powder blue 70's cut tux, with a frosty pink ruffled shirt, a large lily "corsage" and even larger fake silver chains. The only problem that I could see was that he had majorly outstaged his date. She got cool marks for dressing vintage, but even with her hair dyed an odd shade of yellow, she didn't quite match the boy for shear outrageousness.

Sunday 05/13/01:

Lunch today was Trout, arroz y frijoles at my parents house. The food was good, my mom liked her funky orchid and the ghost only acted up once. Nope, I'm not elaborating, remember, brevity and vagueness. Well, considering how long this entry is turning out to be, maybe not brevity.

The afternoon was spent at John's parents eating even more food and watching the assorted moms present open gifts. An enjoyable low key day.

More later,

nico

<prior or next>

� 2000-2007