Never Look Back, Never Look Away

Well, firstly, sorry it's been a month since I've been here, and secondly, I met my Bronzino man. He's at the Met, so I must have seen him a half a dozen times, but I didn't know until last year I wanted to meet meet him... Oh, and thirdly, I saw What We Do Is Secret: not bad.





A story from 1984:
Charles always kind of scared me. He was the very definition of extrovert, from his over-sized smile anchoring his over-sized forehead, to his ever expanding arms. He wanted to scoop up as much of everything as he could with those arms; he was aways in outward motion. He lived out loud; he never down played for one second his big queeny ways. But what attracted me to him was his intelligence; the mind of a PHD lurked under all that fake tan and hyper stylish clothing.
I met him while I was in beauty school, and he was the manager of a chain salon in my hometown, in charge of a staff of twenty. We rarely talked shop, for I told him I was leaving Appleton when I finished school, and he believed me, and left it at that.
Charles liked to have fun. He liked to go out. He liked to drink. I know he liked me in that way, but never forced the issue. Everything flowed around us when we were together: the liquor, the laughter, the good times, he had a way of making you feel special and important and wanted. He encouraged outlandishness in everyone around him- it was the Eighties after all, and because of him my hair got bigger and purpler and more mohican. (Grant also had a lot to do with my style, but I'm saving that story for my book...)
I had recently found a great, deep blue 60's blazer, that went perfectly with my shade of purple hair, which was so expertly structured and fit me so well, no amount of brooches or rosaries or even a Mohican could distract from it's perfection. I wore that thing for years. I can't believe I ever got rid of it.
Charles encouraged outlandishness, but his enthusiasm for your style tended to turn into battles. Who could be the wildest? He always won: his clothes were the craziest and his hair was checker boarded six ways to Sunday in a new rainbow of colors every week.
But he was fiftysomething, and I was eighteen, so he decided after a few months of our little 'contest', to settle down in styleland somewhere between weird and freaky. To the untrained eye, he probably just looked 'gay'.

One night, early on in our friendship, he took me to the bar in a restaurant I had won a gift certificate for, to show me I had nothing to be afraid of.
I was afraid to eat there, because it was Appleton's nicest restaurant at the time, and I was afraid I didn't know what to do or how to act. Even though I was in the room before it was finished, on an early tour while they were constructing the hotel, it was still intimidating to me.
I first saw the huge boxes of books, and then the floor to ceiling book shelves that would be their home. Our buyer found these books all over England, my guide said, to create in the restaurant the feeling of and old English manor library. "Old English manor library restaurant"? What does that even mean?! I thought to myself.
I used to see the maitre d at our small town gay bar, always in his black dinner jacket and bow tie, standing off to the side, getting drunk, and looking like someone who was 'in attendance' to our (local gay soap) opera. He was from Green Bay.
I talked to the maitre d a few times, and he assured me I would enjoy myself, and said he looked forward to seeing me there.
So I was finally going to the bar at Christie's, with Charles. I of course wore my blue vintage blazer, and made my hair as big as I could, because I was going to the bar in Christie's, and that I knew how to do. Charles was waiting there for me, excited, because he wanted to show me something!, he said on the phone.
After a few sips, he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal to me and the entire place his new gold nipple rings, connected by a gold necklace. Oh Charles, button your shirt. I said. I never did use that gift certificate.




In 1989, while I was living with Scot, I was a slut. I can count on more than one hand (I think) the guys I slept with while living on Sheridan and Broadway, and to me, that's pretty slutty.
The first on this list was Brian (Scottish last name). I saw him last year sitting in a car with his mother right in front of my salon. I pretended to be engrossed with something on my desk, and occasionally stole peeks at him while he sat in his car pretending not to see me. I seriously thought about talking to him, but didn't. He still looked good, almost twenty years later, and I did enjoy our time we had together, but you know...
Back then, he lived on that street that runs parallel and south of Belmont, between Sheffield and Clark. I work near there now, and often walk down his old street, and what I remember most about him was his smell. It was great and unlike anything I've experienced since. I had a weird dream in his place, and turned it into a short movie when my friend Chad asked me to write a short for him for one of his classes, a year later. You may get to see it some day on Youtube, if Greg ever puts it up. I lost my copy of it years ago. It's especially special, because it was filmed entirely in the old Medusa's.
I made Brian dinner for his birthday that year, even though I was sick as a dog, and got mad at him for wanting to 'do it' later that night. No! I'm sick! I said. He left before morning, and I never saw him again.
Then there's this kid. (Don't ask me what's going on with my face. I don't know.) I can't for the life of me remember his name, but he lived with that queen who did the perfect, and do I mean perfect impersonation of crazy Faye from Mommy... in the scene where she goes nuts in the bathroom, for Berlin's old Sunday Night Drag Race. He didn't have his own room, and slept on the couch, so that's where we did it.
Who did I wake up to find passed out on my living room floor some ten years later but the Drag Race queen- he picked up a house guest of mine, who had the nerve to trick with him back at my place. The bitch stole from me, too. Shit turned up missin.
Then there's Steven. A cute guy with cute underwear who said would call but didn't. Steven was also, unbeknownst to me, a guy my friend Bea wanted me to meet. She kept talking about 'this guy', and I just had a feeling it was him. Sure enough, who walks in the door on the night I meet Bea's friend but Steven, who pretends he is meeting me for the first time. I just smiled and said hello, and told Bea the whole story later.
Oh then, there's the DJ, who I liked most of all. A gorgeous red head who picked me up one night in Vortex. (Ha ha. Vortex. That's funny.) It was one of those rare nights for me when more than one guy was after me. Kevin. He was charming and nice and great in bed, and actually called me the next day and we went to a movie, Home Alone, at the Water Tower, but that's as far as it went. I got the distinct impression I 'talked too much'.
The one that takes the prize is my New Year's fling, 1989. There was a party held at an old bank on the west side, and before I knew it, lips were locked and zippers descended in a stall in the men's room. I was wearing one of those chrome belt buckles you can customize the letters for, and mine said 'lipstick'. It clunked to the floor, and before I could pick it up, some skank snatched it away, like they were sitting there looking a their watch waiting for it. Well, I was too other-wise involved to hunt the bitch down, and chalked it up to the perils of toilet sex.
Now that I think of it, that is my last memory of the Eighties.
My first memory of the eighties was very nice: in the living room of our house in Connecticut on chilly December night, my younger brothers dozing on the couch, when I was fourteen, watching the ball in Times Square drop, on TV.
So I ended the eighties losing a valued accessory, and started the nineties with anonymous sex, and ended the nineties with....well, you'll have to read all about that later....

Common Labourer by Night

The two guys stood in line together, in the drugstore side of the grocery store, on Broadway, by Addison, waiting to buy an enema. They were holding hands, so one could only assume they were boyfriends. They weren't particularly attractive, to me, but were cute in their own way. One of the guys looked like the kid I saw at the urinal in Cairo, an old disco on Wells, in what looked like his grandmother's Chanel boucle blazer. I was so jealous he was able to pull it off the way he did. I wonder what would spin Gabrielle faster in her grave: that us gays boys stuck her brooches on our motorcycle jackets back in the late 80's, or the chubby women with pantie lines and bratty kids sporting double 'C' sunglasses, today? Where will you go from there, Karl?
No one in the store seemed to notice the two guys, and what they were buying but me, and my only thought was when oh when will it be my turn?

I got into the habit of going to the Jewel down the street from my apartment on Mondays, my day off, in 1989, relishing my new healthy habits. My last apartment had no cooking gas, and I didn't really much care for food then, so I rarely shopped for it. It felt good to something good for myself for a change. I was doing a lot of things I had asked myself to do. I was saving money. I was making travel plans. I was letting go of my I can't attitude, and accomplishing things. I guess I came to an end to another self-destructive phase in my life, and was starting to rebuild. This was a place I knew all too well. I kept waking up alive, so I may a well go on living.
I went on with a sense of being another step further to being a grown up. I tried to do somethings with my life and failed, and that really hurt, but I didn't feel the need to wallow in my misery, and just kept on going. I failed pretty miserably, because I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life in a relationship with Brad, and now I didn't think he would ever speak to me again.
I enjoyed and needed to be living again with Scot, and we spent most every night going out. Berlin, Cairo, Vortex, Christopher Street, and sometimes Medusa's, because Scot worked there during the day, 'fixing the repairs'. He found many interesting things on the floor the morning after, and one time it was a Cartier bracelet, which he gave to me, which I managed to keep for a year til I hocked it.
I didn't socialize too much when I went out; I would bury myself on the dance floor, with Scot, who would run on and off the dance floor when he saw someone he knew, and got lost in the music for hours at a time. Except at Vortex. The main dance floor was really not my scene music-wise back then, but they had a fun video room in the back, like C Street did, and I would request Gaultier's song over and over, along with Deep in Vogue, it's the Virgina Slims girl! (man, was it ever fun seeing Paris is Burning in the theater when it came out. It brought the house down!) and the Soul 2 Soul hits. And, of course, the most famous song of all, the beautiful Whisper. Scot would put this video on to get me to stop putting on make-up, and finally walk out our front door. It got me to go because I knew they would play it for me at Vortex, which was usually our first stop.
My 'during the day activity' was wearing thinner and thinner, but I kept myself distracted studying for my trip to London. I did want to go with my boss Concita, having heard the stories of the glories of her boozy, glamorous trips over the years, and I didn't want to take my first trip over seas entirely alone. I read up on what to expect and what I wanted to do in London for weeks, in my Let's Go and i-D. But soon after Scot and I moved in to our new place on Sheridan and Broadway, in 1989, we were to have a slew of house guests...

Some Girls are Bigger than Others

OK, here it is, the moment you've been waiting for...
This what I did last week for Miss Serenity. It came down to a choice between M.I.A. Sunshowers and Moz's All You Need is Me (his most drag-queeny song to date. A compliment!). Although I did think long and hard about This Charming Man, but decided I was venturing too far into Sandie Shaw territory, and I wanted to do something original. I do love love love her version, so I stole her hair-do.
Either song would have had the dancing American junk food, and the food would have taken on an entirely different meaning. I can't say what the dancing food means in context to the M.I.A. song- you have to decide that for yourselves- but it is pretty fuckin hilarious.
Thanks to Anthony and Ed for performing with me, and to Richard for posting my vid and making me look, through his amazing editing skills, like I have any degree of talent.

The Step and The Walk

Today I walked over to Chicago's Pride Parade, with Scot, and took some videos of the locations you've read about here. I know! How cool!
First, welcome to my art deco dump. Such a lovely day. Next, we're off to Somewhere in Time, on Pinegrove and Waveland, where I lived with Jody in 1987. I was about to tell the kids who had the sad task of moving today, while thousands walked past their apartment, all about my life there in 1987, so we could compare and contrast our experiences, but decided against it.
Lastly, it's the darkly sad apartment on Pinegrove and Patterson I had recently told you about moving out of, in 1989, in Shot by Both Sides. The gate was locked, but mine was the lowest balcony on the left.
As an added bonus, here's some pictures from earlier this week, from a dinner party in the art deco dump: Ambiance, and Guests.
Happy Pride!
(Thanks to Scot for The Duke Spirit. Play it loud!)

Mean To Me

It was a warm, perfect summer day in Wisconsin. It took my eyes weeks to get used to sunshine, and I precariously rode around on my un-cool, banana seat-less bike, when the sun finally came out. In the mid seventies, if you didn't have a banana seat on your bike, you had a seat that looked like a pair of cement filled under wear. Very un-cool.
Brad lived to do the wrong thing, even back then, and we would ride around our neighborhood looking for 10-speeds for him wreck. He was so matter of fact with the passing of his knowledge to me, like he was teaching me how to roller skate.
This is how you strip a 10-speed's gears...
Oh. Ok. Should you be doing this?
We hung out by our school a lot, because it was a few blocks away from our homes. One day, in the ditch in front of the school, I noticed something shiny.
Now, I've always been a lover of all things shiny, so that was nothing new. Every chance I got I was into my mother's jewelry box, and I was constantly putting dimes in the plastic crap machines at the grocery store, to try to get a tin engagement ring with a pink rhinestone.
Earlier that year, our school held a carnival, with games, and the prizes were all that stuff I loved and coveted, but held as my own little secret: boys don't like pink rhinestones, or any rhinestones, as a matter of fact, so I dejectedly took the 'boy' prize whenever I won a game. Don't get me wrong, I did love getting a little plastic gun or dog, but I wanted the jewelry more, which brings us to a flash forward...
Sitting in the darken theater in my Connecticut high school in 1980, I learned a little something about myself: The movie we were watching featured Bette Davis (I think The Virgin Queen, but probably not) as the Queen of England, and, as a sub-plot, a gay couple got caught 'doing it' while wearing the expensive jewels they had stolen. I wasn't sure if the jewels made them horny, or the sense of security their value created, or the fact they were stolen from the Queen, but they did seem to play a major part of their amorous actions.
"Oh. Hmm. Gay and diamonds and rubies. Hmm. Whatta ya know..." I thought to myself.
Anyway, back to that summer day in 1977 with Brad, I saw a bunch of those plastic bracelets and rings and necklaces lying in the ditch, mouldering away. They were also lying with the 'boy' toys, but there were just too many toys there for me to think any one or two kids had put them there. There were dozens! I started picking them out of the muck as fast as I could, then slowly stopped.
I knew none of my classmates did this; we all wanted as much of the prizes as we could get. So either the teachers threw them here, or the people who ran the carnival did. Someone threw the things I had wanted so badly a few months ago into the ditch like it was garbage. Right in front of the school! They didn't even try to hide it!
I began to see the there was a difference between the true value things possessed, and the value I placed on them. It still doesn't stop me from buying things like this on Ebay, though.

In 1989, I moved out of my apartment on Pinegrove, and found a place with Scot. It wasn't too hard to find a place, for the moment we stepped into the courtyard on Sheridan by Broadway, we knew this was the place for us. It was big and light and in great shape for a vintage building, and very affordable.
I was happy Scot wanted to live with me, cause I really didn't want to be alone. And with Jody leaving Chicago, Scot was glad I asked.
My Floridian landlord was happy to see me go, and I walked my things down the street everyday for a week, and needed only one trip to move the rest of it, with a friend's car. This was my fourth year in Chicago, but it felt like my thirtieth.
For some reason, I played Crowded House's first two tapes over and over on my stereo, in the bedroom of my new place. Neil Finn therapy sessions. To this day, I am on Sheridan and Broadway if I hear a song of theirs. Those two tapes gave me such a complete feeling of utter failure, I'm not sure why I played them so much; maybe to spur me on to make some more changes in my life? I felt that way because theirs was boyfriend music; it was music I would make-out to, it was music you talked about the meaning of over dinner. It was music that could bring two people closer together. You don't have that, you don't have that...
I would come home from work and run to my room and shut the door and put on their music, for the first few months, but eventually I ventured out of my room, to begin getting to know my new world.

Found Found Found

A little jump forward, then back...

Well, I have to admit, in 1991, when I saw Morrissey at The World, near Chicago, I was more into Boy George. The Martyr Mantras came out the year before, and to me it was a return to the sound that I came to love about him, and I could not take it out of my CD boom box for an entire year. I tracked down every single and remix I could find. Though KLF's The White Room did battle with ...Mantras for equal time.
So when my friend Chad asked me to see Morrissey with him that summer, I flinched a little. I thought I had broken up with Morrissey. I had seen The Smiths a few years back, at the Aragon Ballroom, but in The Queen Is Dead there lurked too many memories of my awkward and failed relationship with my boyfriend Jeff, and not to even mention the junkies and acid trips and unrequited loves that breathed a painful existence into Hatful of Hollow for me. So no, no Smiths for me any more, s.v.p.
Next came Strangeways and Viva Hate, two albums wrapped around my savior, destroyer, love of my life, and childhood best friend, Brad, where for two years in the late eighties, they were the soundtrack, to borrow a phrase (and mangle it), to the resignation of the ending our lives.
Morrissey has that wonderful way, for anyone the least bit introspective, of really getting to the core of something painful and human, an turning it into an art form that curls around you, and can influence who you are as a person, and create definition. I think all art, enduring or not, does that.
I could not divorce myself, in 1991, of the pain of my life in the late eighties I associated with Viva Hate, so Morrissey solo became off limits too, and he fell off my radar. But Chad's offer to see Morrissey got a whole lot sweeter, when he mentioned he could get us close to the stage, because of his boyfriend's connection: a doorman at The Plaza Hotel. Well, how could I say no to that!
I never did understand Chad and his boyfriend. I refused to understand, would be a better way to describe my feelings. Their thirty year age gap left me judgemental and doubtful of any real relationship, mainly because I wanted Chad for myself. He did manage to convince me, after many long talks, their relationship started how most relationships do: sexual attraction. The clincher, though, was when I saw Chad's collection of 'girlie' magazines. My I-finally-give-up-you-do-like-older-men sigh sent him into gales of laughter.
I wore my wonderful faux vintage 1940's Girbaud suit that I bought the year before at the downtown Manhattan Century 21, with a Sex Pistols t-shirt, and in the car on the way to the show, I made Chad promise a hundred times he wouldn't try to rush the stage and get arrested, leaving me to walk home from Tinley Park.
Now, of course, I wish would have kept my mouth shut.
He refused any money from me for the ticket, because the price for third row was pretty high, even by today's standards.



The giant Edith Sitwell back drop was an unexpected surprise, and the star of the show. As a child I spent way too much time making up stories about her, and the other dramatic pictures in Life magazine's best-of photo book. Her picture, giant, exposed, and frail, sleepily gazing down upon our adulation of our British pop idol, kind of made me fall in love with Morrissey all over again.
He looked wonderful and sexy, in his now famous gold lame v-neck, and writhed on stage in a way that told me he had moved way beyond his fey eighties ways. The most memorable songs for me that night were Our Frank, because of the storm of cigarettes that erupted over us, and ...Sunday, because of the passion he inspired in the audience. But the most memorable experience for me that night was asking what song is this! over and over to Chad, because I seemed to recognize so few songs of the man who, just a few short years ago, I thought I had known inside out.
I vowed then and there to catch up with Bona Drag (a pillow for my weary head) and Kill Uncle (a box of candy), but I ended up spending the rest of the summer with Salinger and Louder than Bombs.


I wanted to call this post Jesus Loves You, but I'm afraid my gay melodrama would be little sustenance to a Christian desperate enough to Google that phrase...

I'm Going Back to 505

Gedney


I know, I've been talking about telling you about Delhi (not her real name) for some time now, but I still can't find that picture of us. So no Delhi story. I also can't find the snake brooch Jody gave me, which really upsets me. The weird thing is, Delhi recently emailed me, just when I was getting ready to write about her. I haven't heard from her in at least 15 years. Strange.
As stories go, hers is an interesting one to tell, because of her obsession with Johnathan. I used to get so frustrated with her about this, because he, at first, would pull me aside and whisper his confusion and discomfort to me about Delhi.
"Why is she acting like this, Brian?! Why is she so in love with me? You gotta do something!" He begged, his face dripping with desperation.
I say at first, because the look of dismay that clouded his face when we rounded the corner and approached his bar eventually was replaced with a look of acceptance, or maybe even a little bit of joy. Delhi could be a very persuasive gal, as well as a generous one. I know his pockets were never as full when he went home, as when she came around.
I was annoyed by her behavior, because I saw her advances toward him as unwelcome, so seemingly obviously unwelcome, and I found my experiences with that very extreme, in a scary way. When I was younger, I seemed to attract people who grew intensely found of me; who's dams would eventually burst into floods of emotion over me, that I guess I always secretly wanted, and expected.
Mainly, I saw way too much of myself in Delhi's behavior. I was blind to the fact that I acted toward Brad and Doug as she did toward Johnathan, but internally, on the inside, in my guts, in Fantasyland. I'd pay my admission and enter the gates and wander the grounds of If Only and What Could Have Been. I could spend hours there. And I did. I spent years there.
I could do it anywhere: laying in bed staring at the ceiling, while wandering the streets of Chicago, at work, in a bar, etc, etc. I knew it was expensive, in an emotional way, but it took me a long time to see it for what it really was- it's true cost was staggering.
But that was yet to come. As spring turned to summer, in 1989, I made many promises to myself, and I kept them as long as I could. The main promise I made was I would be happy, and if I wasn't, I faked it. I met a lot of fun new people, went to a lot of parties, taking care to not over do my imbibing, and lived my life as someone who loved them self would. I had to make up those rules for myself back then, I'm sure borrowing from my literary and musical heroes, because any sort of 'loving existence' was a dusty old thing, rolling around some forgotten corner in my head.
I was surprised at how easy it was for me to make those changes. I connected with people quickly, and my focus became talking with them and knowing them, instead of getting wasted or 'scoring' (anything and everything). I had my group at Berlin I danced with, and my group who I would wander the streets with til all hours, talking up a storm, and a group I would go with to parties and late night diners.
I used to think these were tenuous connections I had with these people, til I ran into one last year, and we picked up where we left off in 1990.
I would sit back in my mind, from time to time, while I was with them, and mull over how different they were from some of the people I had surrounded myself with of late: they had plans for their life that stretched past what was happening tonight, and looked at me like I had the same thoughts; they looked at me like they were excited for my future, because they knew it was going to be great.
So I made some plans for my life: I would save up and go to London and New York, and write more, and make more art.
I divorced myself of any physical intimate relationships, though, because the ones I was having in my head already took up all my energy. Though the relationships I'd had over the past couple years had ended in real life, I could not end them. Why? Did I need them to end differently? Was I looking for some loop hole, some sort of self-esteem loop hole? I'm sure I could write a list a mile long of whys.

I started to hang around my old friend Scot more, and we talked about getting an apartment together again. We were both experiencing major changes in our lives, and thought each other's daily company would be helpful. My apartment on Patterson held so many ghosts, and ghosts of a time in my life I needed to forget, I couldn't bear to spend any time there. In every corner lay a failure, and in every shadow hid a heartache. It was time to go.

Welcome to My Art Deco Dump

I hate reality. It's so fucking real. It's so easy to dig yourself into a happy little rut of non-reality that takes years to perfect and develop, only to do something stupid like stop using a tool that helps you do it. Be in denial, that is.
As much as I like to think I live my life with an awareness of who I really am, I just found out nothing can be further from the truth.
I stopped smoking about a month ago, and it shattered the illusion of thinking I have a pretty good understanding, as it's happening, of how I can use 'things' or 'activities' to disguise aspects about myself or my life I don't like, or can't deal with.
I don't know where I learned to do that, white-wash reality, self-medicate, hide from the truth, be afraid of the truth, or whatever the hell you want to call it, but for me it started at an early age, with sugar consumption.
My friends, Cathy, Sue and I would shoplift dozens of candy bars at a time each after school, in our neighborhood gas station/convenience store, and sit in the parking lot and eat every last one before heading home to face our dreaded realities, sugar-coating the lumps and bumps of our horrid junior high lives nicely. If we could have been doing shots of whiskey, we would have. But that didn't come til the next year.
We did this every day, the girls getting plumper, til the tough, greasy-haired Wisconsin-style cashier woman caught on to our little scam, and busted us.
I guess writing these posts dredges up things I had forgotten I can only deal with when I smoke. But ya gotta fight through it, right? Like Saint George and the dragon? Whatevs. Ricolas help.

If you saw my apartment, you'd think it was a dump. I've got nothing...but good taste. Oh, it's designed to perfection; 1920 meets 1950 meets 1970 in a 2000's kind of way, in White Stripes red, black and white, but it's a dump. Little has changed since my place was built, before G.D. electricity was invented, and it shows.
I am writing to you from LA, and, now that I think about it, the last time I wrote a post out of town, in NY, I wrote about the deco era as well.
I often wonder about the folks who lived through that time. It was a boon time for American, and many buildings were built in that style that seemed to define the 20th century. Was thew average person 'over it'? Did they roll their eyes at seeing yet another Art Deco building going up in their neighborhood?
I know I roll my eyes and spit in disgust when I see something new in my neighborhood that tries to look modern. It always seems to come across as cheap, or worse yet, derivative. I guess what really can annoy me about new constructions is that it usually destroys something old and interesting.
Though sometimes, they do get it right, like the house built on Wrightwood, just off Clark. It took them years to create it, and I watched it grow daily, inch by inch, for it was on my walk to work at the time. There is an ugliness to it, but the right kind of ugly.
"Ooo, that place is the right kind of ugly" I thought to myself when I heard President Clinton had dinner there. He wouldn't eat in any old dump. Even the years old pine trees were imported, and placed to look like their seeds just happen to land there, fifty years ago.

I'm guessing the people of the twenties marveled at being surrounded by so much new modernity, and felt they had an active hand in creating the twentieth century, by brushing off the excess design and darkness of the previous century, leaving the fruits of the desire to create a clean balance.
What inspires me, in the dawn of this new century, are homes donated and built by volunteers for people who need them, and how the younger generations in my family desire to be apart of that world, like I was drawn to be apart of the creative world.
And the ultra-hyper modern public spaces created in Chicago over the past few years remind me of a quote by Joan Miro: My art work is an invation for the youth of today to invent the future.

A Chain of Flowers

I am trying to find this picture I have of Delhi, this hilarious picture, so I can tell you about her obsession with Johnathan. The picture is perfect, because we're at Limelight, where Johnathan worked, and we're all glammed out in wigs and ugly, late 80's clothes. But I can't find it anywhere. Don't fret, I know I have it.
I did find some pictures I have been thinking about recently, though. I guess because I am a visual person, I think about pictures for days and hours, until they become a part of me.
First is one of me in Prague, about ten years ago. I've been thinking about his picture because I wore the vest this past winter, and because I've started working back in the salon where I worked with the woman who snapped it. She's not there anymore, at the salon, that is, but this is the second major event in my life I've revisited. The first was doing the play The Birds again, and I am just wondering what the Universe is trying to tell me. I think everything happens for a reason.
The second is me in London, in 1990, at The Tower. I like this picture because I think it's funny, me standing in the guard box, wearing a purse. Halt! Who gays there!

The Tower of London is really incredible, and everyone should go, and today I watched the BBC 4's eight-part series, a series I didn't know I was obsessed with til I saw the episode I saw on one of my many trips there. (The episode about the archaeologists at low tide) But today while I watched the show, I had this song in my head.
The next is of my brothers and my mom, in 1980, on a ferry, on our way to Liberty Island, to see the Statue. It's sad and dramatic, and to me, very American. Whenever I see the color blue that I imagine is in this picture, I have to stop and stare and ask myself, how do I know this color?
Next is of my brothers again, Christmas morning, 1977. I took the picture with my newly opened camera. The colors have faded over the years, but the mood is still captured. This was our first Christmas in our own house, for my dad lived with his father for a while after my parent's divorce. I've been thinking about this picture because I've recently been spending time at my grandfather's house, and all the emotions it's been bringing up has been a little startling. I had many nice moments there, but also a lot of bad ones, and I guess I had forgotten them. It's always good to have a clear picture of what really happened, of the good and the bad.
Here's one of my brothers Jeff and James, me, and Eighties Erin, in 1988. My brother Chris must have taken it. I also think this picture is hilarious, and I am going to Yaz this summer with Erin.
The lead picture is of Thelma Todd, because I'm reading a book about her murder. They say there is no proof the man 'responsible' for her death was ever in LA, but the building where her restaurant was is still there, and I'm going to check it out when I go there next month.
I hope you enjoyed this little digression from my story, but I can't tell you about Delhi til I find the picture.

I'm Leaving with an Astronaut

Ugh. My first post without a cigarette...oh yea, and with glasses.
And if you want to know what the eighties smelled like, check out this cologne. I love, love it, but they should change the name from Dusk to Gay Bar, 1982.



I have always been jealous of people who ride the train to work. To me, they were successful. They wore suits. It meant you were 'somebody'. It meant you made it.
Back in the early eighties, when I moved to Chicago, my college educated friends and clients would, in my eyes, glamorously complain about their arduous daily treks to the loop, highlighting the monotony, and the element of danger.
Oh, it's just the daily grind and lack of options that start getting to you after a while. I mean, you can't drive and park downtown everyday!
In the eighties, train riders looked contented, well fed, and well shod. They wore the knowledge of their consistent routines snugly, next to their hearts, never to let them go. I made a commitment to myself back then, to get the kind of life they had, those train riders. Or was it their paychecks?
I worked on a commission, and for years I took home, well, let's just say I didn't take much home at all. If my friends hadn't paid the bills in those early days, I wouldn't be here.
Happily, those days were short lived, and when the time came that I took the train everyday to work, I wore suits and blazers, only not 'square' ones, and I rode with a sense of security, taking my place among the chosen ones.


After B left, in early '89, I wandered the streets of Chicago for hours, everyday, and every night, blasting my headphones.
I forewent public transportation and walked to work, then walked home, always taking the long way.
I took the Sugarcubes, Big Thing, Terrence D'arby, Strangeways, or High Hat with me to keep me company on those cold walks, the rainy walks; the sunny walks and hot walks.
Even though I knew I did the right thing, and asked B to move out, I was so sad about not being strong enough to change us both. I was sad about a lot of things between us. I knew I needed to make a lot of changes, but I thought I could do it for him, too.
The day he left, I decided to be a new person. I stopped listening to those negative voices that I heard all my life, those negatives voices that became negative thoughts about myself, and justified a hell of a lot of drinking and drug use. I just stopped. Stopped listening. I pretended I had never heard anything negative about myself. Never. Never heard it. I turned myself into the person I always wished I could be. Even though it wasn't real, I didn't care. I was going to see how long I could get away with it.
For the rest of 1989, I was a normal, well adjusted 23 year old, who didn't grow up the way I did, and who never touched a drink or a drug. I just wasn't. I liked it, and it felt good to be that person. It felt good to go out and come home and remember what had happened the night before, and not be embarrassed or ashamed. It felt good to be around new people, because I didn't have to worry about what would happen if I drank too much, because I didn't drink too much.
Around this time I started spending day light hours and many nights with my latest crush, Richard. Rumor had it he was one part of a motorcycle name, but I didn't ask or care, he was a beauty. (Though I did see his balance one night before Limelight, at an ATM, and there were a couple digits in front of that comma.)
I remember him having tons of gum in his car, and it felt great to spend time with someone who's company I enjoyed, and to feel present with him.
I was shocked when he asked if he could come over one night; shocked because I realised I had somehow started to believe that I was someone no one wanted to date. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was scary. I really believed it! But then I remembered I was someone new.
Because I was spending more time with Dehli, or because Erin was spending more time with Donnie and his gang, she and I spent less time together. Erin and Dehli didn't get along, and I didn't try to fight it.
Dehli would fly into town every weekend for Limelight and shopping sprees. She bought up every dress Lane Bryant on Wells, after I watched her try every single one on, and she bought up every single stitch of Baronni make-up at Carson's. Literally. She said her parents kept thousands of dollars in their safe, and didn't seem to mind that she 'helped herself'.
I would train down to the Holiday Inn, when it was still on the lake, every Saturday night, and we'd cab over to Limelight. Even though I was off the pills and the booze, I was still very much on the freak train when it came to my late night get-ups, and we loved freaking out the hotel's other guests.



100% nicotine-free post. I'll finish this later!

You Were a Photograph

Last Thursday:
He stood tall, and proud, while he waited for the traffic light to change, to cross the street, and he crossed the insanely busy intersection of Irving Park, Damen, and Lincoln with not nearly the same amount of foreboding I do. His eyes darted a bit, but his face portrayed that of a man who has calmly looked into the eyes of death and said not today, but if I have to tomorrow, I'm ready.
I fucking hate crossing that intersection.
I know when I cross the street there, I tend to convey a look, to the drivers coming toward me, of someone who would undoubtly use the last of their strength, if I were to be hit, to drag them out of their car and erase their face with the pavement. I know I would scare myself if I were to ever see that picture of my face, so I make a conscious effort to minimize the daggers shooting out of my eyes.
The death of the traffic-disobeying bicyclist a few weeks ago, at that same intersection, doesn't help matters much.
The tall and proud guy walked to the bus stop where I was waiting, to catch the same bus I wanted. He reminded me a bit of the Daniel Day Lewis character in In the Name of the Father, who, while decked out in the hottest 1970's duds, pathetically exposed his involvement in a crime he got paid well to do, by walking down the gloomy, dirt poor street he lived on, in said duds.
This guy's clothing was as close as you could get to a 2008 version of a super-cool 1973 outfit, right down to his perfect Bay City Rollers haircut. He looked adorable.
I read no irony on his face, no pride, nor contempt to the less fashionable around him, just a sense that he enjoyed this role he played on the bus this day.
Being a lover of fashion, I try my best to keep up on the trends, but I realised, looking at this guy, I hadn't been paying attention to the fashion world very much lately, because he was that convinced his outfit was right.
I decided there could be no irony on his face, because he wasn't born til the mid eighties, and he hadn't lived the 70's fashion like I had, and I was looking at him now how I'm sure people my age did when I was 20, when I wore my 1960's duds.
We both rose at the same time, to get off at Sheridan Road, and then I saw his hand.
Wow, he has white skin. I thought to myself. There is a rash of doughy looking guys on the bus today. This is the third guy I've seen with skin that looks like it's just been kneaded and floured and is waiting for the oven.
Wait, no, that's not skin. He has an artificial arm.
I saw nothing in his bearing or expression that broadcast his artificial limb. I was dumbfounded. Could I ever move about the world the way this guy did? Minus one arm, but with total confidence and humility? I doubted it. I doubted it because I was getting ready to have a long and dragged out pity party for myself, because of finding out that morning I have to wear glasses, because I'm middle aged.
Now I have to cancel the party.






In early 1989, I lost it. I mean really lost it. I went with B to Jim and Christine's new apartment on Sheridan, by the El stop, to hang one Saturday night. I've been seeing that stop a lot lately, because I've been taking the train to work again. I wonder, how many times I will have to pass that stop without traveling through a time tunnel?
I always found it odd that Sheffield becomes Sheridan Road by the train stop. Right by that other strange street, Alta Vista Terrace, which looks like a little piece of London dropped into Lakeview. That part of Chicago holds many ghosts for me, and I cannot think of that area without picturing it cold and rainy. In those dark and gloomy little apartment buildings, I spent many nights wasting time til the sun came up, with friends and enemies, often times, but not always, hating every moment.

I spent a lot of time in that neighborhood back then, but I was afraid to take the train from that stop. I still did it, Look at me! I'm tough! but I was sure I would be murdered before the train arrived.
B and I spent many nights with Jim and Christine, at their various apartments, but this night I couldn't take it any more. I couldn't take their stupid drug talk. Someone brought up H, wishing they had some, or just wanting some, and someone else chimed in agreement, and this went back and forth for a few minutes, til I flipped out.
"Are you fucking nuts! Bob just died! B is still a wreck because of it! He fucking ODed! And you idiots want some? You're assholes!" I screamed at them til B dragged me out of the room.
"What are you doing here?" I screamed at him, as I tore myself away from him and stormed out the back door. I waited for him to come after me, which he did, and I told him if he didn't leave with me, not to come home. He didn't.

"B, let's go to NA. Or AA, or whatever A there is. I know they can help us. We can't stop this, B. Drugs have taken over our lives. Bob's dead, and look at us! We're worse off than we were before. We have to try and do something!" I said to B.
I couldn't believe the words that had started coming out of my mouth lately. I never talked about anything; I never told B or anyone how I really felt, but here I was doing it. Something took over me. Maybe it was my love for B, and wanting to stop his downward spiral. My subconscious knew I had to break out of my silence, and try to save his life.
I couldn't convince him to go to NA or AA for his problem. His. I didn't have a drug and alcohol problem. I was just broken. Fucked up. I wished I was an addict or alcoholic. Those seemed like an easy problems to solve. Mine were much more complicated than that. But I must say, it did feel right to ask him to go to NA or CA or AA with me, and I felt this feeling of 'exposing a truth' about myself to B. I told him I would go for him, hoping it would help me, too.
I couldn't convince him to go, because he heard the meetings were about God, and God forbid our lives became about God, because that is so much worse than what it was really about.
I did understand the heart of his argument: the homophobia that wears a 'God' mask, but I was used to seeing that mask, and felt I could go on pretending it wasn't there, if it meant I could be shown a way to live my life without drugs and alcohol.
But we didn't go. We never went. I did make a secret promise to myself, in 1989, that if I did any drugs ever again, I would get some help. I made that promise because I told Brad let's go to NA or CA or AA, not you need to go.


A few weeks later, I had to ask B to move out. I hated asking him to leave. I know he was at Jim and Christine's because of drugs, and I couldn't handle it any more. I knew if he didn't leave, neither of us would live to see 1990. He didn't put up much of a fight; he knew it would end badly if he didn't. He didn't even move into Jim and Chris's place; he moved to Milwaukee, with someone there he still kept in touch with. I asked him why he didn't move in with Jim, and he just looked at me with a look that said I'll die there, without saying a word.
This is about life and death. I said to him, without saying anything to him.





A playlist for those grey, gloomy days on the Northside, for the class of '84...

Sex and Dying in High Society

Some strories, and some crimestories, from 1988 and 1989, in honor of the movie Public Enemies, which has recently begun filming here in Chicago, and for X performing at Metro...

1988:
Click on the radio, The Beth and Tim Show, a conversation:
The Rapture is happening tonight. By midnight tonight, you will either disappear, or you will be left behind to fight WWIII. What? Disappear? Yes disappear. That's what the Rapture is: the good Christians will disappear, taken by God up to heaven in an instant. It doesn't matter what you're doing; you could be driving or flying a plane or performing an operation, you will cease to exist on this planet. Where is this coming from? Who said it? It's from a book I recently found, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Happen in 1988. Remember I told you about that book? I was saving talking about it til tonight. Thanks for the warning! You could've let me prepare. Well, the author gives a window of this week in September when this will happen, and this is the last day of his prediction.

Will I disappear to heaven? I thought to myself. Am I a good Christian? Hell no! I don't even clean my cat box enough. I'm not a good anything. Could I get a special dispensation for all the crap I had to endure in my life? A sort of get out of jail free card?

Get ready! If someone comes for you tonight, go with them! You don't want to be stuck here with all us sinners! The second coming of the lord means the rise of the anti-christ! We will be left to do his bidding. I'm sure that won't be fun. Oh yea, no, that would be bad. I hope I get to go to heaven. Do you think I will go to heaven, Tim? Am I a good person? I don't think the Rapture has anything to do with being a good person or not. It's about being a good Christian. I think we both fail that. Maybe, I guess. So following the Rapture, there will be seven years of tribulation, where millions of people will die, and we will see the worthy dead rising from their graves, to go up to heaven, too. Wow. Reanimation. Wow. I'd like too see that. Really? I wouldn't. The world will be thrown into chaos as all these people disappear, and the dead come back to life.
There is some good news, though. Those of us left will get a second chance to go to heaven, if we become good Christians, you know, do good things: sacrifice yourself for others, etc. Wow. Seems we might have our work cut out for us, starting tomorrow. I hope you're ready! I hope someone comes for us, Beth! I hope we get to leave tonight...

God, is this real? Do people really think this? Is WWIII starting? Will I disappear tonight? Ding-dong! My door bell! My door bell is ringing! What do I do? Should I answer it? I'll peek out the window to my door...no one's there! I'll go downstairs and see...no one! I'm freaking out! I'll walk out my front door...
As I leave my courtyard, I see Dehli walking up the sidewalk.
"Yes, it was me! I forgot something in my car."
"Oh. Hi. I thought it may have been Jesus Christ..."

1989,I:
I hadn't worn these in a while. I thought as I put on my running shorts from my teenage days. I should actually use them some time. I wonder how I look in them. Probably not as good as I did back then. Oh well, everything else is dirty, so I have to wear them to do my laundry. Who knows, maybe some cute guy will like what he sees...
I had a lot of laundry to do, and I was in and out of my apartment via the back courtyard into the basement many times that day. It was a little too cold for short shorts, but what can you do. After the second or third trip, I felt eyes on me, and after the fourth or fifth trip, I stood on my back porch, scanning every square inch, because something felt wrong. Someone was out there. The courtyard wasn't that big, so after my long scan, and seeing nothing, I felt it was just my imagination. In the laundry room, I kept one eye on the door, just in case.
Mid way through my chores, Dehli came by for a visit. She lived a few blocks away, and liked to come over spur of the moment a lot. After a few minutes of chitchat with Dehli, a loud scream blares from across the hall, from my neighbor's place, and I fling open my front door, because I happened to be standing by it, and in an impossibly short amount of time, she is out her front door, and in the courtyard yelling for someone to call the police.
"Are you OK? What's wrong?" I call to her from my balcony.
"Call the police! There is a man in my apartment! She yells back.
During this time, in early '89, there was an unfortunate rash of rapes occurring in Chicago that had gone unsolved, and my neighbor was his next intended victim. I tried to invite her into my apartment to wait for the police, but she was too afraid to go back inside. She was, in fact, too afraid to even stay in her apartment, and moved out a few days later. Dehli ran home, so I called Erin and asked if she could pick me up to see a movie; I needed to get out of there, too.
I came home a few hours later to find the police still at her apartment, dissecting the clues he had left behind, and questioning her. They never questioned me.
The next day, I knocked on her door to check on her, and she gave me the story:
She came home to find her cat running around her apartment, freaking out, and opened her closet to put her coat away, when a man jumped out and tried to attack her. She was able to evade him, as I witnessed. I never saw someone move so fast my whole life, I told her. And the police found things under her bed that weren't hers: lengths of rope and rolls of tape.
"They dusted everything of mine for prints, trying to find out who he was. They said he came in the back door. Did you see anything? I just can't think about what he might have done. I can't live here anymore. I'm moving back home." She said.
I told her I had been home all day, and in the back courtyard a lot, but hadn't seen anything. I tried to assure her by saying I was sure I would have heard something wrong coming from her place, if she hadn't gotten out when she did. Maybe I was trying to assure myself.

1989, II:
"Come on Brandon, let's make-out in the closet. Let's have sex in the closet. It's a big closet!"
I said to my old high school classmate, whom I drug home with me one night from B's bar.
"I aways had a crush on you." I confessed. He might have had a passing interest in me that night, but he ran out of my walk-in closet after a minute or two, each time I pushed him in there.
"Aww, come on Brian, let's hang out with B in the living room." He said. B had brought a guy home with him, too, and a big stash, assuring a long night of partying was imminent. I tried to coax Brandon in one more time:
"Alright, just for a little while." He said. But after a minute, he said "No. This is weird." And went home.
A little later, B started to get hot and heavy with his guy, and I didn't want to watch, so I spent the night passed out in my closet, alone.

Photographic Pictures

Go over to my friend Johnny's blog, A Hole in the Head, to read a story I wrote for him.

The Curtain Falls to No Applause

In the first week after moving into my current apartment, I went grocery shopping at the store conveniently located across the alley. Grocery stores forever hold a special place in my heart, for my life seems at times to revolve around them. When I think back on my life, I always start with where I grocery shopped. My mother once told me she went into labor with me while she was at one, so that may have something to do with it.
Anyway, one night in the early stages of my relationship with my new store, I noticed two boys walking up to the self-check out lane. They must have been 14 or 15, and tall for their age. Their clothes were dirty, weeks dirty, and hung loosely on their thin frames, and their shoes were old and worn out, and also too big for them. They knew they were dirty. They knew they weren't dressed like other people. They knew people thought little of them, and they kept their eyes on the floor and slouched as they walked. They wore the weight of their dysfunctional family, which can feel like the weight of the world when you're that age, palpably on their shoulders, and deep within them. But they also had an aura of humility and sweetness to them, that seemed to fill the room. At that moment while I stood trying not to stare too much at them, as they ripped my heart out, they allowed themselves the briefest moment of quiet glee over the bottle of soda and candy bar they were buying. They had spent some time carefully figuring out how far their money would go, for they slowly scanned the items, and checked the monitor to make sure they didn't go over budget.
Again, a brief smile crossed their lips when they realized they could leave the store with what they wanted.
I remembered when I was a boy, and a can of soda was something special. I remembered when a small, happy moment shared with a brother or friend was a welcome oasis during the trials of childhood.
I wanted to give them every cent in my pocket. I wanted to cook them a big dinner. But what I wanted most was to set them free. I wanted them to know no matter what was going on in their lives now, they had the power within themselves to create any kind of life they wanted.
I didn't talk to them that evening at the grocery store, mainly in fear I was projecting something of my own life onto their situation that may or may not have been there, but I look for them and think of them every time I go back.


It's Up to You


I thought B moved out of my apartment on Pinegrove after Christmas of 1988, but I found the Valentine cards we gave to each other, in 1989, so now I don't remember when the hell he moved out. But I do remember that Christmas of '88...
Christmas. I don't know what it is with me and that holiday, but there is something.
That year it was especially cold, and now, as I write this, I remembered B was still tending bar at Windy City, and had to work Christmas Eve, and I didn't want to leave him home alone for the holiday, especially since the last time I did that, someone died.
Erin and I went Christmas shopping together at Oakbrook Mall, where she worked, and I bought Brad some under ware and cologne, and she gave me my present there, at her work. It was a brooch with a built-in perfume bottle, which I, of course, still have.
How I managed to spend any money on gifts and not drugs and alcohol, is a mystery to me, especially since my landlord had to call me every month to remind me to pay him. I always did, but always late. Thank God he lived in Florida, and probably wouldn't be knocking on my door any time soon.
I spent Christmas Eve with B, at his bar, til 4 am, and when it came time to leave, he didn't want to stop the party. We went home to get the money I had purposely left there, for fear of spending it on blow, to go buy some blow.
We walked to Halsted, to his connection's house, in the bitter cold. B rang his bell, and told him what we wanted, and heard But it's Christmas, B. over the intercom. Yea, I know what day it is. You have any or not? B answered back. A pause, then the buzzer let us in.

I sat on the stairs, trying to squeeze some warmth back into myself after the long, cold walk to this apartment, while B knocked on the door. When the over-weight, middle aged, bleached blond man opened his door, I could just see a sliver inside his place. It was a Christmas shrine. Every square inch was decorated, and all of it glowed on fire from the post dawn sun streaming in his east facing windows. Dozens of presents sat under the opulent tree, as he sarcastically said Merry Christmas, and handed B an envelope. A waif-like Asian guy, clad only in bikini briefs, gingerly tip-toed up behind his benefactor, to see just who was making such an early Christmas Day purchase. He quietly said Hi B with a smile, as the blond shut the door.
For someone who peddles such shit, he's sure full of the holiday spirit. I said, as we walked for a cab. B said nothing.
I noticed in the car on the way home, it somehow got colder. Everything was covered in a thin layer of white ice. Nothing moved, nor seemed able to move, and the newly risen sun burned an acid yellow glow into everything. Everything looked dead.
The end. This is it. It's over. This is never happening to me again. I thought to myself.

I awoke Christmas Day at around 5pm, and quickly ran out the door to buy a holiday feast at White Hen I didn't have to cook, (no stove, remember?) and a log for the fire place. I had to beg B to get out of bed to eat something, and to share some sort of Christmas together. Give me another hour or so: Bob. He said. All he would have to say to me was 'Bob', and I understood.
I spent the time in the kitchen, making the meal look nice, and sat and waited for B to get up, to give him a nice Christmas.
He eventually did, and we ate our meal in the dark, save for the glows of the fireplace and the TV, as we watched a movie neither of us had seen before, It's a Wonderful Life, choking down cheese and crackers and swigs of beer through our tears.


Thinking of You



Links: The Colourfield, The Specials

Why Do You Come Here?

Did you ever love an album so much you prayed you could will yourself into your stereo, in live in it's world? You close your eyes an pour yourself into the spinning vinyl to awaken into an auricularly born land. Every word creates a life and every note a breath. Each lyric is a meal, every song a home. And you don't care if you don't ever leave. Did you ever have such a need to do that?

Sunday

In December of '88, B and I were failing miserably in our attempt to move on with our lives after Bob's death. That December of '88 felt like it lasted a year. B wasn't working, and spent all day sleeping, and would wake up after I got home from work. I decided to let him do whatever he needed to do to grieve for Bob. I would not judge or condemn his actions; I would partake in them. We spent all my money going out. We went were the booze was cheap or free, sometimes spending more on the bus fare there and back than on the alcohol itself, and we would drink, inhale, and snort every cent, not talking, with an occasional quarter in a jukebox. I tried to find songs that triggered memories of happier times from our boyhood.

"Remember when we would drive around with Crazy David blasting this cassette? What a mess she was! What do you think he's doing now? Still screaming at his parents?! Oh God, this song. Mike and Todd never went a second without this album on back then, remember?!"

He would smile a moment or two, but B was like a champion chess player when it came to drinking: his concentration lay in planning ahead as to how he was getting his seventh and eighth drinks of the night.
Even in the state he was in, a slight smile in any guy's direction would buy whatever he wanted. Whenever I saw him do that, I was reminded of the day a few years back when I met him downtown after he got his GED results. The man who gave him his grades told him he had the highest score he'd seen in a while, and he should go to school.
He can do whatever he wants, and he chooses this. I would think to myself.
This was the time I first attempted to read Neuromancer. (A book I still read once a year.)
"B, can you try to read this book for me? I get fifty pages into it and I don't understand what's happening." I asked him one night.
I couldn't 'get' how one character was able, via computer implants, to experience the world through another character's body. Then I didn't understand the concept of AI, and how, in that book, it was created with the memories of a dead man, and how the main character talked to him in a virtual reality situation.
"I can't read much any more, Brian. I just can't concentrate."
After hearing that, I would buy him comic books and magazines, and leave them laying about in hopes he would pick one up. One night I got out all the high school notes he had ever written me, for I saved them all, and we read each one. We got into the habit back then of writing each other on Sunday nights, during American Top 40, to fill each other in on what had happened over the weekends we weren't together. I was usually at Bodyshop, in Green Bay, an amazing, ahead of it's time, new wave gem of a gay bar, when I was in high school, and he was usually with Sean, his ex-football player, ex-hetero boyfriend.
Reminding each other of the recalcitrant times in our lives, when we rose above our problems, steeled us. Once upon a time, we could laugh at the invading armies hell-bent on our destruction, that lived in our homes and hometowns back then, because we knew something they didn't; we listened to our hearts and souls and embraced them; we instinctively trusted them. I guess somewhere along the way we forgot how to do that. I guess somewhere along the way we became our own enemies.

Hypnotize (over and over)

Those long nights of pollution wouldn't end when we came home. B couldn't really handle the things he snorted, and the extreme paranoia it created in him would make him position mirrors from his side of the futon, so he could see the front and back doors, because he 'knew' the police were going to crash in at any second. Coke heads are a nightmare to live with, especially bad ones. He would try to drag me into his paranoid fantasies, but I would make matters worse by conspiratorially whispering to the 'people' outside the apartment, or by shouting Drugs! or Illegal! out the back door as loud as I could. I would wake up the next morning to find him still awake, playing the stereo, or worse yet, ripping the closet apart to find the stash 'he knew he left somewhere...'

Angel

B's self-destruction, and Bob's death, reminded me of the destiny I was headed for, and my inability to stop it. That December I gave myself many pushes in that direction, to speed the process along, because the tedium of the second hand was maddening.
"What are you doing to yourself! What is all this blood!" B would scream at me. "Do you want to die that badly?"
I thought about it for a minute, and said "No. But I can't live like this."
I thought I was empty. I thought I couldn't take another step. But there was something inside of me I was barely aware of; an insatiable curiosity, an untapped vein of creativity, an unseen spring of love, building a momentum of energy, keeping me going, and I finally heard it's voice, and decided to listen to it for a while.





Links: Morrissey, Human League, Grace Jones, Scritti Politti

Paler than the Moonlight

halahala

I talked to B everyday while I was away in Arkansas, that Thanksgiving of '88. He was indescribably upset. His friend was gone, and I know he blamed himself. I know he felt, as I did, Bob had nowhere to turn, and he saw no hope in the eyes in the two people left in his life.
"The hospital was so mean to me when I called to ask about him." B told me one day on the phone. "They just said: 'Oh, he's dead. O.D.' and hung up. The police were just as bad. I guess if you're an addict, you're worthless to them. When they saw his only possession was a backpack full of clothes and condoms, they dismissed him as a hustler, and left."
"Do you think they'll be back?" I asked. I had no idea what I'd be walking into once I got home.
"No, they won't be back." He said.

Paper Float

I talked to Erin everyday while I was away, too. She empathized with Bob, and told me some of the terrible things he experienced growing up, and really didn't know how anyone could survive what he did, without intense therapy, which Bob hadn't got. Then she started to bring up the idea of me telling B to move out.

"He's a bad influence on you, and he knows it. B told me himself. He does love you, but you can't have him in your life and expect it to go anywhere." She said.

Part of me knew she was right, but part of me couldn't accept this person, who had saved my life so many ways and so many times, and on so many levels, could turn into a destructive force to me. I couldn't change me perspective of B over night.

"Spend time with him, talk to him, keep loving him, but just don't live with him. I'm afraid what will happen if you do."

I made up my mind I would try to help him. I would try to get him to go to NA or AA or where ever I could. I saw him heading down the same path as Bob, and I wanted to do my best to try and stop that. I would quit doing drugs. I would drink less. I would spend more time painting and drawing and making clothes.

Delivery.

I bought Erin a tiny blue sapphire ring, at the JC Penny in Little Rock, for Christmas, as a way of showing her how much I valued her in my life.
I told my family what had happened, but kept it vague: B's friend died. They didn't press me for more details, I'm sure out of fear, but had they, I probably would have spilled my guts; I was so at the end of my rope.
Erin picked me up at the airport, and went to my apartment with me. I talked to B the night before, and we promised each other we would get through Bob's death together, get through everything together, make some changes, and find some happiness; find something other than what we were finding. I thought we were on the same page. I thought he understood...
I walked into the apartment to find him in bed with a trick, drugs everywhere.
I lost it. I freaked out.
"How could you do this, with Bob death just a week ago? What are you on? How much have you taken? Why do you want to die like he did!!" I went on and on, to the point the guy in my bed ran out the door naked. I was crying in the kitchen after my outburst, and Erin came in to console me.
"Do you want him to leave now?" She asked.
"No. Just talk to him, Erin. Get him to understand. I don't know what to do." I said.
After a while, to lighten the mood, I gave Erin her gift early.
We talked through the night about everything: what had happened to Bob, our futures together, and what we would do next to make our lives better. I didn't believe a word B said, nor a word that came out of my mouth.

In a Manner of Speaking


Links: Duran Duran, Cassetes Won't Listen, Babyshambles, Nouvelle Vague

Shot by Both Sides

In 1988, I wrote a silly story about a memory I had about watching my parent's lives before I was born, and my excitement about my future adventures with them. I also wrote a story about what would happen if I fainted while turning up the volume on the TV, and how my neighbors would react. B read them, and liked them, and thought I should write more.
Even though my life was crumbling around my ears, I heeded my creative muses, and painted, drew, designed and made clothes, and wrote. (Being able to do this drawing of Boy, in early 89, gave me a reason to keep fighting the good fight.) Sometimes it's good to spend some time on the right side of the brain, and forget, for a while, logic, and the pain and illogic of drug and alcohol abuse.
Some of us get lucky, or blessed, or helped, or whatever the hell it is, at the right time, and find a way to make it to the other side of our addiction; to make a life with some moments of serenity and self production, versus self destruction. I am happy to say I am one of those people.
Some of us make it. Some of us...

"Brian! Bad Brad's here to see you! Hi Bad Brad!" My boss's nickname for B was Bad Brad. He came by the salon to pick me up, the night before I left to visit my family
"Brian, I'm worried about Bob. He's taken 8 of those green pills. Eight. Those things stay in your system for days. If I had taken that many, I'd be dead now. I don't know what to do." He said.
"If you can't make him stop, who can? Besides, Bob knows what he's doing. He knows what he can take. He's a big guy, too. I'm sure everything will be fine." I said, and believed.

Bob was a big guy, about 75 pounds over weight, and a junkie, so I didn't think he would be affected by some pills, no matter how strong. Bob had bought a bunch for income while I was home for the holidays, because by this time B had lost his job, and I (barely) paid all the bills. They would need some money while I was gone. He didn't sell them, though. He took them all.

For a month, B worked tending bar, and quickly developed a little fan base of patrons, of which I was one. We were a close group, letting the tanned, be-quiffed, sparkly thin queens (it was the 80's, after all) rule the dance floor, while we and huddled in our rumpled, unwashed all black, in our dark corner, every weekend. Watching videos, while B gave me shots, the irony of The Way that You Love Me, was not lost to me. (The video bar in front, where B worked, had a very limited selection of songs us music snobs could stomach. We each had one, and that was mine.)
I had a crush on one of our group, Jim, and would I pray to someday to have what it took to be with him. He had dark brown hair, big brown eyes, perfect white skin, and a beautiful shadow of pathos. I can still see him there, in the run down bar, in his thrifted black mole hair sweater, and Doc Martins:
"Why are you throwing your life away here?" I thought as I looked at Jim that night. "You could be anywhere with anyone you wanted..."
B had been with Jim for a while, but Jim still wanted to be with B, so he was around a lot.
(Jim made it to the other side; I ran into him one night in the late nineties, looking older and wiser, but still good.)
Oh god, the things we did in the Windy City bathroom. It was endless. Steve, one of the group who had a crush on me, started kidnapping me to the suburbs, to Hunters, and I happily complied, to escape the black hole that was Windy City. The first night this happened was after seeing a revival of Hair, down the street at the Vic, where my salon went for an early Christmas outing.
I had seen quite a lot of theater during this time, and experienced the odd phenomenon of the fourth wall being broken down in my face, most every show. To the point of teasing by the friends I went with. Just when I thought could relax, and an actor wouldn't talk to me, they did. Maybe they knew something I didn't: if you would have told me back then I would one day in the future have more than 10 years of stage acting experience in Chicago, I never could've believed it. Yet I do.
Steve always had way too much to drink before we drove back to the city, and by some miracle, I'm still here.

Bob, I was to find out later, was hitting bottom. He hadn't a real job, but sold himself at Man's Country, where he lived. If you call a room with a bed, rented by the night, living.
Whenever B and I talked about Bob, which always ended in a shouting match and me begging him to cut him out of his life, he would tell me Bob had a rough life growing up, a life I could never imagine, and he was the only one he had left. I felt for Bob, but I only saw his destructive influence on B.
I flew to Arkansas for Thanksgiving, letting Bob stay at my place while I was gone, making them promise not to do H, or burn the place down.
My mom woke me early my first morning home, saying B was on the phone:
"Bob's gone, Brian. Bob's dead." He said, crying.
"What! What happened?" I said.
"We got some, and after he shot up, blood came gushing from his nose. I called an ambulance, but I was too late; the hospital just told me he died."

B.L.O.: july 10, 1958. november 30, 1988.




p.s. I uploaded a picture of that Doug I was pining over, complete with Steve Diet's hand written nickname.

Links: Magazine, Paula Abdul

You Be Me for a While

I just never get sick of listening to that (arrow pointing upward) song...


B moved in to my apartment on Pinegrove on Halloween, 1988.
There is something depressing about the telling of tragic love affairs that precludes my ability to write out a full name, even in an ancient tragic love affair, like this one. You know who B is. I wrote about him before.
But what makes a tragedy? Let's find out...

It was odd that B moved in with me on Halloween that year, for on a Halloween, ten years prior, is when I fell in love with him.
It's seems a little silly saying that I 'fell in love' when I was 13, but I knew. You know when you know. The way you see the world is altered forever, because of the way you feel for someone. It doesn't seem to matter how old you are.
I had a slight understanding as to what it meant to be gay, in 1979, but I hadn't an ability to put a label on how I felt for B. I loved him. Period. I loved the soul that occupied that person that was B.
I ask myself now (because I have a long standing bad habit of over-analyzing the sea of minutia in my life) what, exactly, did I fall in love with? Was it the way he looked, and how he perfectly fit the part, of a 50's greaser, in his slicked-back, black hair, and the black leather motorcycle jacket, blue jeans and white t-shirt he wore for our Junior High's costume day? Or was I in love with him for the fact he refused to 'hide' from our classmates any more, classmates who, for the most part, labeled us 'fags' and ostracized us. I would never have dared to dress up that day, for when you already get way too much negative attention for how you look, you tend to try to not look any weirder.

hmm.
and, hmm.

I've found living in a material world, while wishing to be immaterial, can create problems. Even though I had found a way to embrace what made me different from my peers, it didn't change how they perceived me. Growing up in that intense of an environment can create an addiction to an intense life. You just get used to it. So used to it, it becomes the norm. B and I found anything and everything to fit that bill.
I can honestly say that now I don't care how I'm perceived by the people around me, because I refuse to ever judge people by how they look. Through my experiences with people from all over the world, my perceptions have been proven wrong too many times.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen when B moved in with me. The first couple weeks were great, but I soon found out he didn't move in to be my boyfriend. I guess I thought that would happen? Maybe it would have helped had I mentioned that. But all I ever wanted to do was to possess him completely every minute I was ever with him, and that scared me. And I didn't want to scare him off. I saw him as deer in the woods sometimes: any little thing could send him flying away. I thought if I inched out my true feelings a little at a time, over a couple months, we could both handle it. It doesn't work that way.

hmm.
and, hmm, again.

I was to also learn when B moved in, he brought his H habit with him. I knew this because his friend Bob was back in the picture, and H was the only reason he would be around. B embraced his craving for a life of intensity, and let it rule him back then. He acted on the immediacy of his emotions, and fed them whatever they wanted. I hated Bob and what his presence meant, but he did save B and I a few times by shoplifting food for us at the White Hen, because we constantly spent every cent on drugs. No one could shoplift like him. Give him 3 minutes in a store, and you could eat for a week.
After a few days, B found a job for a while tending bar, at Windy City, where DSW on Halsted is now. It was a crummy old building that had a long staircase leading up to it's den of blow, and I climbed it every weekend. By this time B and I had had a talk about our future together, and while he loved me, we couldn't be boyfriends, but we could still sleep together sometimes. Friends with benefits, as the kids call it nowadays.
I drowned my sorrows in Billie Holiday, the future promises of Viva Hate, and scotch. For hours at a time. I can't imagine behaving like that today, so that's a good thing, I guess. I still can't bear to listen to her though, and tonight, while writing this, is the first time in 20 years I've deliberately played any of Billie's music. Which is too bad. It's good.

mmm.
mmm.
and, mmm.

As November drew to a close, I was spending more nights with Bob at B's bar, where B was getting dangerously close to losing his job. Little did I know one of us wouldn't live to see 1989...


Links, in order of appearance: Replacements, Kate Bush, Radiohead, Joni Mitchell, Morrissey, Billie Holiday

Uncharted Wrecks of Wonder

I was thinking about clothes last week, because of my last post, mainly thinking about how much money I spend on them, way too much money, when I remembered I decided to become 'classy' sometime during 1987, not '88.
Jody bought me a beautiful shirt, in tune with my new aesthetic, from Cignal in the Century Mall, in '87, for my 21st birthday. A Le Garage shirt, I believe, and while watching TV yesterday, (PBS, the Jane Austin marathon) I was reminded of the stunning silver silk brocade vest Terry, a roommate from 1985, gave me for Christmas that year. I hadn't thought of that vest in years. I was shocked he gave me a present so lovely and thoughtful, for I had assumed he didn't like me very much. Maybe he was trying to make up for keeping dozens of his unpacked moving boxes in our hallway...


I found my new apartment with the help of an apartment finder, because I had good luck with one a few years ago. I played the part of a young man with his shit together fairly well, but I don't think the 'finder' really gave a crap. As long as I passed the credit check, I was the apartment owner's problem (or blessing) from then on.
It was pleasant and sunny the day I walked into the condo building on the corner of Pinegrove and Patterson, in May of 1988. From the outside, the building looked scaled down and smallish, but inside, the studio had tall ceilings, and large rooms; even a walk-in closet. It was wonderfully vintage, with great art-deco lines, and had a working fireplace. It also had an air of gloom and moodiness, despite it's crisp lines, so I thought it was perfect:
Wandering around the rooms I was soon to be occupying, I could feel the distance presence of dignified desperation during the depression, a mourning WW II secret lover, the tense dinners and sleepless nights of a failing marriage of the 1950's, an octogenarian shut-in longing for the 1920's while bearing witness to the free love of the '60's, and the beer can littered, protest poster walled life of a matriculating interracial couple; and all of it being swept away to set the stage for me to find my life of self invention and success and fame and fortune in the 1980's.
That was the plan, anyway...


I remember we also looked at an apartment in the building my friend Patrick used to live in, and a few others, but the the price wasn't right, and the current renters of all the other places were very dirty and sloppy, which destroyed any enthusiasm one may have possessed prior to the key turning in the lock.
I moved in with the feeling that this was going to be a great place to live, and I could get my life on track and find some happiness. My scary New Year's Eve experience earlier that year 'shook me awake', and sent me on a path of change. I partied a little less, and consumed less intoxicants, and even though I had been in this same place a few times before, meaning a glaring awareness of my destructive habits, and the short lived, monk-like life I would lead as a result, I was determined to change and stay changed.
I bought an exercise bicycle one hung over morning with my roommate Stephanie, prior to moving out, and used it every other day. Stephanie yelled at me while putting the bike in her car, because I was mean to the salesman at the store.
"Steph, I'm tired and hung over. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could." I said.
"Well, you could've been more polite. You didn't have to say 'Shut up and get me the damn bike' mid sales pitch." She answered back.
"Yea, well... "
I was making better money at my new salon, with my old boss, who helped me move with her little Mustang. I didn't have much to move, and looked forward to buying things for the new place. Looking back, I don't remember buying much. The large kitchen was empty, I kept my little black and white TV on my record player, which sat on the floor, and I had a futon couch and a butterfly chair in the main room. No coffee table, but there was a torchiere Consita had given me. I put some money down to buy a large colorful framed poster to put over the fireplace, but never finished paying for it.
Maybe because this was my first apartment on my own, I remember so many details:
Terracotta tiles in the kitchen, a built in dry bar in the main room, and the haunting glow cast into it's mirror from the recessed lighting, the minuscule, useless balcony, and the middle aged neighbor who sunned herself on it on sunny weekends, the way the apartment smelled when it rained, and the way my closet smelled of Obsession, and my medicine cabinet, crammed with hundreds of beauty products.
That summer, I spent every Saturday night watching Saturday Night Live, and Showtime at the Appollo, while waiting for Erin to pick me up so we could go to Limelight and Berlin, and our new favorite, Bistro Too.
Bistro Too was a trashy, drinks-crazy disco in the then somewhat rough area known as Andersonville, which we ran to from our parking spot by the hospital. (If we got beat up, we thought, it would be a short crawl to the ER.)
I hated the music at Bistro, and I always felt like a high school senior crashing a junior high prom, but the long islands were big, and the frenzy at the bar was very entertaining. There was a large evil blond bartender at the main bar who liked to have annoying patrons thrown out for the tiniest of infractions, and watching that was worth the price of admission.
The DJ could usually be bribed to play Buffalo Stance, my new anthem, a couple times a night, and that was all I would dance to there. OK, that and I Gotta CD by Disco 2000. (A song that is still great and really hard to find. If you have it, please send it to me! It went: I gotta Ceee-Deee! I gotta M-T-P! , or something like that. Another brill song/video from Neneh, from a few years later. I was to try and turn myself into one of the boys in white.)
Try as I might, I could never get the gas man to turn on my stove. I gave up after three attempts, and ate sandwiches, ordered pizza, and warmed soup on my Mr. Coffee for the year I lived there.
As summer turned to fall, the nights I wasn't out with Erin and her gang, I was out with Dehli, my friend from Wisconsin, who got tired of flying down every weekend, and moved into an apartment down the street from me. I can still see her brown, dilapidated, 1970's Mercedes sedan tooling down Pinegrove to pick me up for our nightly visit to Limelight, so she could fawn over, and occasionally bribe, her bartender crush, Jimmy.
My self discipline and abstinence were starting to slip away, and with Brad's recent request for a place to live, I knew it wouldn't be long before I threw it all out the window...


Links: Adverts, Neneh Cherry

Someone a Bit Like You

Tranay and Chris used to call drag queens 'Larries': Hey Chris! Get a load of that Larry at 3 o'clock!
I think it came about because of the transvestite prostitutes that used to hang around Lawrence and Broadway in the late eighties, not far from where Tranay used to live back then. You know, Larry is short for Lawrence...
I call anything that starts with the letter L, Larry. Lost is Larry. Law and Order is Larry Order, Larry is a Pigsty, Little Red Larry, well, you get the idea.
Tranay also coined a good description for the mood created while walking around having to go to the bathroom, when you know you can't: poo stress. I have the worst poo-stress right now! Tranay would say. Just go! Chris would yell back. I can't! The bar's too crowded I'll sneak out to the restaurant across the street later! Chris and Tranay used to work at Neo together, back in the 80's, and being there a few weeks ago brought back their memories...
Speaking of Larries, I call Madonna, Eadozza, because of a poster of hers I had on my kitchen wall in 1990; her name ran down along the side: EADOZZA; the M turned into an E. It's pronounced ee-doe-za. Just something I thought you should know...

Sometime during the summer of 1988, I decided to become classy. Going to work as a goth or a hipster started to become tiring and time consuming, and I needed to sleep off the previous night's debauchery for as long as possible. I was inspired by one of my new co-workers, Patty. She was a legendary beauty, party girl, and trend setter. She could pull off any look, and all clothes looked great on her. On the eve of her first day of working at my salon, we all went out to celebrate and welcome her. The boozing went late into the night, and I barely got a few hours sleep, and the next day Patty confessed to me she got a ride home to change and came to work without any sleep at all. She looked fabulous. Her outfit from the night before was scandalous and futuristic; her style could best be described as Dale Bozzio meets a WWII fighter pilot, but her outfit that day was all about clean lines and order, aside from her huge, multi-colored, spiked hair, and her slight, yet still becoming, hang-over grimace.
What a great idea! Save the kooky clothes for the clubs!
My boss back then always dragged us to hair cutting classes around town, and a few times to Minnesota to the Aveda school. The well paid stylists who taught these classes all had the Hairdresser on Fire look, and cut hair like they were doing Tai Chi. They were taken seriously, and took themselves seriously. I've found when you're feeling crappy or hung over, a perfectly cut and designed outfit enters the room before everything else. You stand up straighter; you have more poise.
My ex-boyfriend Doug was a master at dressing that way. When we went out, I would stare at him from across the room as he chatted and giggled with his equally poised friends, praying to someday posses their unaffected nonchalance. His clothes were simple and modern and timeless, but always with a dash of Excalibur-like eccentricity thrown in: only he would think of wearing, and could pull off, a double strand of pearls with his brown vintage blazer.
But the secret is to don that perfect outfit, and forget about it as you walk out the door. You must have faith in it's power, for if you don't, your clothes wear you.
The wild girl Patty never dressed at work how she did in the clubs, the short time we worked together, and her taste rubbed off on me.
I bought my 'classy' clothes from Le Chateau, Flashy Trash, Xanadu, or Russo, if there was a sale. Once a month, I would shoo away the crazy teenagers who worked at Le Chateau, and looked at everything they had, and tried it all on, and did the fashion algebra (as coined by the great Anna Piaggi) in my head: What all in my closet will this go with? Can I make this look cooler somehow?
Russo was like dying and going to heaven, only to find the gates locked. Richard, the buyer and manager, had the most perfect taste, and called me (thank god!) the second things went on sale. (I creamed my jeans every time he complimented my ensemble: his approval meant I got it 'right') We both loved fashion, and I would hang out at his store and talk for hours about it, as we studied the clothes as if they were paintings by old masters. He and his boss, Mrs. Russo, were the perfect example of how to wear and not wear clothes: she wore a Gaultier jacket, he wore a great jacket. She wore Moschino pumps, he wore great shoes. They had on the same designers, but she was all too aware of the price tag.
One week, in 1988, I contemplated buying a 250.00 Gaultier t-shirt for hours. I visited it everyday. I loved it; it was black, with a cartoon of a 1940's teenage girl and a 1940's older businessman, dancing by a little portable record player, with 45's strewn about, and if you looked closely, you noticed they were wearing weird punk accessories in odd places, and the 45's were punk classics. It was brilliant. I settled for the not quite as pricey, but still pricey 100 dollar Moschino one. I still have it.
I still shopped at thrift stores to find clothes, but I usually only could wear them out to clubs. I had better luck thrifting in the early 90's, jumping on the 70's revival bandwagon before it was all snapped up. Shockingly, in thrift stores, I occasionally run across some of the clothes I studied at Russo and other expensive stores, and buy them, regardless of the fit, just to finally be able to put them in my closet.


Link: Gary Numan, Morrissey