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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Things I have and have not mentioned before and bits, both surreal and funny.

aka: "Questions are a burden to others; Answers a prison for oneself."

The highlight of my work week was when a man reeking of alcohol came into the office and started yelling at me that he had beer poisoning. When I asked him what it was exactly that he needed, he responded that he needed an antidote and was I going to give it to him or not. When I advised him that if he was ill, perhaps he needed to see a doctor, he snorted, said I was useless, then stormed out of the office.

I could not have made up anything that surreal if I tried.

Thursday 10/04/01:

I have mentioned John's cousin Jake in past entries. The only reason I am mentioning him now is that there was a going away get together for him at John's parents that night. Jake is heading off to Austin Texas to be the new regional, something or another, head honcho guy for a well known hoity toity, clothing retail chain. It's a label that I never wear, so while It is a big deal in real life, when it comes to milking him for presents, it's a big yawn.

So, if any of you all are in that part of Texas, give him a big ol' welcome. If you also happen to be a cute, single, gay guy into blond, thirty-something Californian men, then go ahead and give him a reallllly, big ol' welcome. You can tell Jake that I set ya.

Friday 10/05/01:

I've have also mentioned in past entries that there is a large bougainvillea in front of the house. Actually, there are two and they cover most of the front porch. Lately, they have grown so large, that several canes had succeeded in reaching the roof.

Which is a sign that I have again neglected trimming them for far too long. So, pretty much the entire day was spent trimming them back and cleaning up the havoc that I created. For some bizarre reason, I got it in my head to clean out all of the dead wood and the weakest of the branches.

In other words, I massacred the things and they fought back. Despite wearing long pants and sleeves, I look as if several small animals with sharp claws had a field day jumping up and down on my arms and legs. However, despite their attempts at self defense, they are trimmed now. There's barely anything left of 'em, but they are trimmed.

Of course, in a few months time, It'll be impossible to tell that I did anything to them at all.

Interestingly, trimming back thorny, overgrown, beasts of plants is a very good conversation starter. Several people taking constitutional walks up and down the hill stopped and told me I was doing a good job, or offered advise, or simply told me to be careful.

A funny bit happened while I was talking to a neighbor who had been out walking her dog. She was telling me about the problems that she had trimming back her bougainvillea the day before, when a car stopped between us. The driver was a fourty-somethingish, father type guy and he was taking his kids to school that morning. He asked the woman in quick succession if her dog was female and if so, would it be possible to make arrangements for her dog to meet his male, because " he was hurting real bad" and if she was purebred that would be even better.

The woman responded that her dog was not a purebred and anyway, he was a boy and fixed at that. He thanked her, then drove off.

During this conversation, the teenage girl that I'm assuming was his daughter, sat in the back seat looking embarrassed by the conversation her dad was having. I'm assuming they were related, because you can only be that mortified by your parents.

Of course, she made the mistake of looking at me, which set me off laughing, which only made her cringe even more. Poor kid, I wish I could have apologized. Although, apologizing would still not have changed the fact that that was the most hysterical conversation that I have heard in ages.

Saturday 10/06/01:

I spent the afternoon with Kristen trawling through different anime stores around town. I felt soooo freaking old. In one of the stores I was at least twice as old as the average customer. Discounting Kristen that is.

I am among the older customers at my usual comic book store, but that doesn't bother me. Maybe because the owner who is a little older than me, is usually sitting at the front counter having some bizarre, comic geek conversation with another thirtyish man. Last time I was there, they were debating whether Sinestro was the best (ie: most powerful) DC villain ever. If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry, it means you're normal. Well, relatively speaking that is, you are reading this after all, possibly not the best measure of normality there is.

Anyhow, Kristen had objectives and specific goals and products that she was after. Me, I just browsed aimlessly. I looked at little statues of young women dressed up as cats and other statues of women barely dressed at all. There were also the usual posters of ninjas and robot warriors and tough fighting teens. Including one of a girl hugging a stuffed squid doll. Of course, the artist drew it so that you could only see the top of the doll, so it actually looked like she was hugging an enormous, engorged, well you know. No freudian subtext there I'm sure.

If I were a teen, I have no doubt that I would be all over this stuff, blatant and not so blatant misogynistic images aside. I'm not however and I'm content in experiencing this world second hand through Kristen. Letting her filter everything and showing me the occasional series or episode that she suspects I would find interesting is more than plenty enough for me.

The biggest bit that afternoon was that Kristen gave me two boxed, dvd sets of the Prisoner as a belated birthday/early Christmas present. I've never mentioned it here before, but I'm a huge Prisoner fan. Well, not so big a fan that I went out and bought the dvd's for myself, but a big enough fan that I know more about the show than a normal person would. Actually, a normal person would most likely have never even heard of the show, so that probably isn't saying very much.

I will no doubt be spending all my free time obsessively watching assorted episodes over and over again, so that'll be my latest excuse for not working on this site '-)

Sunday 10/07/01:

Sunday was a strange day. John and I were spending a lazy morning reading the paper, when there was an earthquake. It was fairly small and there was no damage, but being curious, I turned on the TV to get the news. That's when we found out that the U.S. was attacking Afghanistan, or rather, that we were retaliating against the Taliban, while not taking aggressive measures against the Afghani people, or whatever the appropriate Orwellian phrase would be.

I sat there for a while watching "the rockets red glare" of anti-aircraft fire, or at least the greenish night vision version of it. It turned into a this is all we know and we are going to repeat it over and over again fairly quickly. That's when I decided to go ahead and start watching Prisoner episodes.

Interestingly, there's an episode where Number 2 tells Patrick McGoohan's character (number 6), that it doesn't matter which side runs the Village, because both sides (the "democratic" West vs. the communist East) are turning into each other. That there will come a time when both sides will look at each other and will realize that they are looking into a mirror and be forced to cooperate. He goes on to say something to the effect that the Village represented that future.

It was an unsettling line. I don't know what the writers had in mind back in the late sixties when they wrote it, but in a real way that future is here.

I guess there is something to be said for not watching a surreal, paranoid, determinedly individualistic television show that has the side effect of making you think. I was in a strange mood before and after rereading what I just typed, I am obviously in an even stranger one now.

Monday 10/08/01:

I had the day off for Columbus day, although that didn't keep me from working, sort of. The professional organization I belong to is going to have an Educational Symposium this week and I volunteered to help.

So instead of spending the day watching movies, or wandering around online, I spent a lot of it putting together handout packets and stuff for the event. Big time fun.

Anyhow, enough of this.

More later

nico

[By the way, the second title is a quote from, you guessed it, the Prisoner, thus proving that I really do know far to much about the show. Be seeing you -nico]

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