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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.
lunes 06/07/2004
Big things squash little things which in turn squash right back:
No, I am not going to comment on Reagan’s death. As a liberal gay man of color who survived the eighties, my stance on the hombre should be blatantly obvious. Instead, this entry is nothing more than a recap of the past weekend. At the time it seemed overly hectic and busy, although now after a day spent at work, and the prospect of several more to come, the weekend feels calm and blissful.
John and I started off by seeing Stones in his Pocket at the Mark Taper. It is an amusing two-man play where an Irish village and its inhabitants get squashed by a huge overblown Hollywood movie production, except that it would be career suicide for a playwright to allow this to happen, so they don’t actually get devoured, only sort of.
Having only two actors portray the entire cast is not as confusing as it first sounds, although from some of the noise during intermission, I think some of the audience didn’t initially realize that an assistant director/something or another was a woman and not an extremely effeminate man.
I enjoyed the play, even though I was more than a bit tired when I saw it. My yawning, drowsy state of mind and the Irish accents may explain why John’s mythical replacement, the Irish Doctor, made a return appearance in my dreams that night. Except that this time ‘round, we were fighting.
Oddly, I was still injured, missing part of a limb, but instead of my hand, it was the lower half of right leg which had been lost to injury, accident, or fate. The details changed, yet I was still less than whole. Written that way it seems significant, though I am sure it is not.
I don’t really remember too much of the dream, but I do recall something about us having somewhat exhibitionist make-up sex on a not entirely secluded balcony in a house somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. Sadly I don’t recall any details. Not that I would share even if I did.
That was Thursday. Friday night I decided that I wanted to see a movie. Either The Mother, or the original Japanese version of Godzilla that’s been making it’s way through the art house circuit. I ended up watching Tokyo and its inhabitants get squashed by a giant radioactive beast.
It turned out to be a better movie than I was expecting. I only vaguely remember seeing Godzilla before on TV one Saturday afternoon, so I’m not sure if it really wasn’t that bad of a monster flick in the first place, or if the improvement was solely due to the excision of all the scenes featuring Raymond Burr (which had been added to the American release ‘cause we presumably wouldn’t care about the destruction of Tokyo if there wasn’t a white face around for us to root for).
The Godzilla as metaphor for Atom bomb imagery was fairly heavy handed, but no more so than most Nature strikes back at Man flicks.
There is a scene were some random Tokyo citizens are discussing Godzilla and a woman states that she survived Nagasaki. I’m really curious if that bit was left in the American release version. As it is, I remembered a few fairly surprising images and scenes that hadn’t been removed from the American version which put our use of Atomic weapons in the Second World War in a negative light, such as a repeated image of a devastated Tokyo, destroyed in flame, with only smoldering rubble remaining; a scientist desperate and morose because his creation (the infamous oxygen destroyer) could save the day, but it could also doom the world; and a scene where doctors wave Geiger counters over young children, sadly shaking their heads because there is nothing they can do as the machines noisily react to the threat of radiation.
Saturday was spent being more social, first at a college graduation party, then at diner with some friends. The graduation party was one of two parties for Eliza. The first one was a daytime thing for family, sedate and calm. The second one was to take place that night, for friends and was to be more, um energetic, with DJ’s, freely flowing alcohol, and her mom staying home, inside and away from the party, yet close enough to squash the carnage should her presence prove necessary.
Our friend Chrissie offered her services that night as a tequila girl, to walk around pouring shots down peoples throats like in Tijuana. Even though we knew several of the people attending and a short controlled exposure to a gang of raucous drunk dykes and their straight boy hanger’oners has a certain appeal, John and I went to the old fogie party instead.
The official reason was not that we are boring, but that we had dinner plans with a couple of old college friends of Johns, although there is a certain amount of truth the boring concept.
Dinner that night was at a Thai place over on the west side. Although everyone else loved the meal, I thought the food was only adequate to good. It’s not a bad place, but I prefer my food with more flavor, i.e. hotter. I was the only person seriously contemplating food marked off on the menu with small red chilie peppers to indicate spiciness, but I acquiesced to the rest of the party’s (blander) palate preferences.
Most of the talk was the usual catch up topics, mixed with discussions of mutual friends, colored by the fact that we were the only “unmarried” and childless folks within the larger group of John’s college friends. There was also talk of high school reunions. Twenty-year reunions to be exact. D is tempted to go to his, even though he suspects he won’t enjoy himself. Despite being a lawyer, he’s single, never been married, never owned a house, never had kids. To most potential classmates attending, he’d be considered a sort of failure and he’s not sure he wants to deal with that merely to satisfy curiosity about what happened to a few old buddies.
C knows she won’t go to hers. After looking over the material sent to her hyping the event, she’s realized that the only people going were all part of the popular crowd, and if she wasn’t friends with them then, why would two decades of no interaction change anything? Instead, she phoned and caught up with the only person she would have wanted to meet in the first place. John has no desire to go to his, because he has no interest in repeating the boredom that was his tenth year reunion.
My twentieth reunion will be next year, dios I feel old now. I’ve only managed to retain one ongoing friendship from back then, but it probably has more to do with our having attending the same college and having similar interests in movies, comics, and geekdom than anything else.
As a couple of us noted that night, there are two kinds of people, folks who when asked about fun times as a teenager fondly think of high school, and folks who think of college. I’m a University remember’backer’er. Not that I’ve ever bothered to attend a college reunion.
There are a couple of folks from high school I’d like to have an opportunity to met again, but in truth I don’t care enough to attend. Not that I’d be invited anyway. The people in charge of these things have forgotten I existed, and I’ve never bothered to fix that. Eh, no big loss.
nico
oyendo: Yello Of course I’m lying