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>

Nico the Perv

aka: Pride and Traffic Circles.

There is a feeling in the air that summer will be ending soon. It's still summer. It's still hot and bright and sunny, but fall is also there in the background. The way that it has been really cool in the early mornings when dawn breaks. It is also there when the wind suddenly changes direction and the leaves rustle oddly. A few of the leaves on the walnut and the "not-a-liliac" tree have started to dry out and turn yellow, changing the way they sound.

There is still some summer left, but not much. Anyway, the entry proper:

Friday 08/17/01:

John and I saw All over the Guy at the Pasadena Lemlie that night. Our original plans were to see a different movie, but that didn't quite work out. We saw the trailer for it a while back and it made the movie seem dull and tired, so I was surprised when it wasn't bad and I actually enjoyed it. Now, why we would decide to see a movie that we both were not looking forward is a very good question that I do not have a good answer to. We just do funky stuff sometimes is all.

The plot was concerned with two couples, one het, one gay and the assorted problems they had in getting together. I was more concerned with the fact that Christina Richie and Lisa Kudrow only had teeny weeny little parts in the flick, than I was with the relationship problems the gay guys were having. But I did like the movie, even if they only had little bitty roles and deserved more screen time '-)

Continuing my theme of suddenly noticing that an actor is very attractive, I had never realized that the guy from Two Guys and a Girl or whatever it's called is way cute. He does that five o'clock shadow thing very well. ~chuckle~

Saturday 08/18/01:

My morning was spent tearing out weeds from the mound area in the back yard. Actually, it was spent tearing out almost everything. For some bizzaro reason, I have decided to redo all of the plantings out there. It's way too hot right now to put out new plants and expect them to do well, but at least the prep work will be done for when it has cooled down some.

That afternoon I went to my not quite so lame comic book store in Pasadena. While there, I noticed a guy checking out different horror genre titles. He was a stocky, shortish, Chinese guy in a dark blue sleeveless shirt, tan shorts and a pair of ugly leather mules. The guy was a sex stud. Just looking at him made you want to go over to him and well, I think you can figure out the rest. Mr. sex stud was also really young.

He was probably in his early twenties, so I was least ten/eleven years older then he was. I felt like a dirty, old man checking out a hot, young twinkie. hehe.

I'm not a saint and I have been known to check other guys out, (Duh, obviously, since I keep writing about it), but they are usually "Men." On the rare occasions that I do notice a nice, studly, young man, I inevitably end up feeling like an old perv. Doesn't stop me from looking at 'em though. hehe.

On a different subject, Tom P has been after me to read From Hell for ages now. It's an amazing comic. It's well written. It's intelligent. It's Alan Moore. It's Eddie Cambel. It's gonna be made into a movie. Blah, blah, blah. All of his reasons to read the book are good reasons, but I still had a "whatever" response reaction to the idea of a Jack the Ripper story. Even one that is supposed to be this good.

Well, I finally bought the collected volume and I guess I'll see for myself just how good it is. I have to admit that the idea of an annotated comic is odd to me, but we'll see.

Sunday 08//01:

I went down to Orange County and had lunch with Kristen at the little food court in the Mitsura market in Costa Mesa. Miso Ramen for me that I corrupted by poring in lots n' lots of Chile sauce. I'm sure the cook would have been appalled at the idea of a hot and spicy miso soup, but then again, it was my lunch, so who cares.

After lunch we did something I haven't done in years. We went to the Orange County Pride festival. I guess I can't write that I missed all of the pride events this year anymore.

O.C. Pride is held in Aldrich park in the middle of campus at U.C.I. and well, is it a bad thing that we spent more time walking around campus looking at the new buildings and having "remember when" conversations, then we did walking around the festival?

Pride was OK, but there really wasn't much there that was interesting to me. The food booths were the same, the organization booths were the same, the merchandise booths were the same, the dance areas were the same... It was all rather not unusual and not new.

It was a smaller event this year, than it has been in the past though, which I'm thinking is not a good thing. Some people were wondering out loud that day if would be the last year that the event was held. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It is true that there are a lot of Pride festivals in Southern California and that three of them are fairly large (Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego). It is also true that they are almost all the same, as I have already mentioned, but the idea of losing one of the festivals is kind of odd.

I remember being there the first year that O.C. pride was held. It was nearly closed down by the police because of a near riot, excuse me an "incident" that involved the folks who had gathered outside the grounds to protest the event. The protesters had gotten a bit out of control and there was a lot of yelling going on.

JonR and I got there after the incident, but before the decision not to shut the event down. I remember standing in the middle of the crowd gathered outside of the park (not Aldrich park, this was before the event moved to Irvile, er, Irvine). There was an older Latino man standing near me who was yelling that the event was an affront to the local community, to him and to God as well. I remember looking at him thinking that he looked a little like one of my Tios (uncles) and I remember feeling amazed that people were furious that "we" had the audacity to have an event in the suburbs were we didn't belong. To bad that we had been there all along.

As I mentioned earlier, once Kristen and I felt that we had "done pride" and had contributed enough money to the community, we walked around campus. In many ways it's the same school that I left eleven years ago, but in other more important ways it's not. When I went to Irvine it was a middle sized school with a good academic reputation. The reputation is the same, but in the time I have been gone, the student body has more than doubled and new buildings have sprung up everywhere.

The old UCI=Under Construction Indefinitely joke has a large amount of truth to it. About the only thing that was the same where the trailers scattered through some of the parking lots. That's one thing I have never understood, why is it exactly that once a "temporary" building is put up, it will outlast everything around it? Parking lots had been built over, buildings where gone, others remodeled, once empty fields and hills now sported student housing, but all the ugly, dang trailers were still there.

While walking, we started joking that we should give a queer history tour of the campus. Show the young folks the trailer where the old Gay & Lesbian Student union was stuck in, point out which windows were broken by vandals, talk about the huge arguments that broke out between the "old world Dykes" and the "new queer" kids when the decision was made to add bisexual to the student union title and other random bits of our past.

It was a very nostalgic day.

Thursday 08/23/01:

John and I diid the South Pas farmers market that evening when I got home from work. Fugi apples, onions, strawberries, pluots and white peaches. In other words, yum.

Friday 08/24/01:

Kristen came up after work and we did the old town Pasadena thing. Dinner was at Wok and Roll (yes, I know), stir fried snow peas, veggie tempura and veggie rolls. Afterwards, we had some decadent sorbet from the gellato place, watermelon and honeydew melon. Way cool.

I don't believe that we scared any of the other customers at either establishment with our conversations that night. Just boring work talk. Very exciting.

Saturday 08/24/01:

John and I ran errands, then did some shopping, where too much money was spent on clothing. Actually, the majority of the day was spent doing super fun stuff like laundry and cleaning house. Boy, were we partying that day.

Sunday 08/25/01

We were going to a party/BBQ at Barb & Laurie's that evening, so I spent part of the morning making a tomato salad. The plants are doing well and we have lots and lots of tomaters, so this seemed a good way to use 'em up.

I stuck in the huge pineapple variety, the green and red streaked zebras and the yellow cherries which according to their label are actually large dark red beefsteaks, but aren't. I also threw in some of the leggy basil, assorted mints, some rosemary, the last of the parsley and some random bit's and stuff. Despite this description, it tasted good ;-)

We went down to Long Beach, dropped the salad and some other stuff off at Barb & Laurie's, then drove through the traffic circle to get to Marcos & Augustin's place. Marcos used to work for John, but now he has a real job and is getting paid real money. He's also juggling school with all that, so good for him. We had lunch at the Hoff's Hut on 2nd st. Not brilliant food, but more than acceptable.

After lunch and a couple hours of catching up, they headed home and we went to pick Tony up. We then went back through the traffic circle to Barb & Laurie's for the party. Tony was having car problems, hence the ride.

The party was for Tomas, a now former co-worker of Barb and John's, to celebrate his leaving to work at an all girl's school. An interesting place apparently, with more than a few "Family" in the faculty. The crowd there that afternoon included Alex & Omar, Brit & Sakura and several people I'm not likely to ever see again, so I won't bother wasting time 'n effort on thinking up suitable pseudonyms for them.

Conversations included lots and lots of (boring!) work gossip, the multitudes of reasons why John and I need to get cable and the multitudes of reasons why being single sucks. This was mainly from Tony after he realized that he was surrounded by couples that evening.

After his short diatribe, Tony and I talked about some new guy that he was interested in. A Laotian, long distance runner or something. The guy is handsome and nice and handsome and unfortunately very straight. Kind of a relationship killer that last one. So Tony has given me a homework assignment, find him a man. Of the queer variety. We'll see if have any luck in finding one lying around somewhere.

I didn't tell Tony about my dream (last entry). I guess that I worry about him more than I ever realized. I want him to be happy. (Preferably with a nonstraight guy '-)

Once the party wound down, we all helped clean up, then I loaded Tony and John up into the car, went through the traffic circle again to drop 'em off at Marcos& Augustin's for the second party of the evening. This one for the Madonna concert on cable that night. They stayed, but since I had to et up early the next day, I drove through the traffic circle for one last time (finally) and headed back home. My Johnny made arrangements to get a ride back from another guest/friend so we didn't have to bother with two cars that day.

More later

nico

p.s. There are fireworks going off right now. Doger Stadium or maybe the Rose Bowl, I can't really see or tell from the way it's echoing. Was there even a game on tonight? Can you tell that I'm muy Macho when it comes to sports?

p.p.s. Kristen has definitely had a corrupting influence on me as can verified by the fact that I'm listening to dance remixes of various anime shows as I write this. I think I lost more machismo points for admitting that. You can be honest with me '-P

<prior or next>

� 2000-2007