Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Technology is NOT my friend ...

I am beginning to doubt that technology is here for me. I am this close to believing that technology is not my friend. My beloved Apple laptop - the basic black PowerBook a la Carrie Bradshaw - is no longer working. My netbook is infected with some sort of Trojan Horse, one which seems to particularly dislike Google Chrome.

My cheap but attractive Sprint cell phone occasionally misplaces the who, and even the what, of my text messages, and neither adam4adam nor gay.com seem willing or able to deliver eligible men to my eager inbox.

And while I am an avid devotee of texting and email, even those handy forms of expression occasionally betray me. Mount Gay - when he grew a pair and decided to assert himself, against me and out of our relationship - did so via a text. It was not as succinct as the Post-It note break-up on "Sex & the City," but it got the job done.

So, yesterday, having applied for food stamps and keeping the Frenemy company, I came home with a new crop of library books and turned on my netbook. My email client loaded, and I felt the same anticipation one feels as a child receiving his first pieces of mail.

My optimism is alive and well; every day I look at my email - expecting a job offer, new messages via facebook, or something cheery from one of the law schools or graduate programs to which I applied. So, yesterday, when I saw something from the University of North Dakota (UND), I was halfway to giddy before I started reading. It was a no, for the record.

My fear that if the first letter was a rejection, the rest might be as well is silly, but a fear or concern echoed by pretty much anyone embroiled in the application process. I don't know what the other letters will say, or when they might come. It is true, though, that UND was the only school I could actually afford to attend - so, whatever the answer, I will probably not be a lawyer anytime soon.

Maybe the world has too many lawyers.

Back-up plans include accounting and renting myself out as a gay man with taste (a.k.a. a hair-dresser). Part of me wants to play it safe - continue along the course of academia and stable jobs. The other part wants to have a Bravo reality show - to operate within a series of cliches ... fabulous fag with shears, bedazzled jeans, and an amazing ability to sound deep about shallow things.

Mark

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Gay Pimp Daddy

While it is so often said that some things never change ... and while many of us are exceedingly glad that that is not the case ... it is true that some people, by sheer happenstance of living longer than expected, approach life in a whole new way over 80. My father is among those very interesting souls, and at 85, he's adapted to a life of crime.

I would say that it was my bad influence, having been a drug dealer and gone to jail a time or two (before the photo-shoot), but I have had family in jail or prison for generations. Given the number of unregistered guns, the rounds of ammo in the antique trunk, and the small flask of Seagram's "cold medicine" in the cereal cabinet in the kitchen, I somehow doubt that anything I could contribute would even raise an eyebrow.

the Old Black Man's been around the block ...

And I say this because I just took delivery of an HVAC unit - new, in a box, with no serial number. While the average household HVAC unit costs somewhere around $3,000, my father paid $800. A black man with no last name - using someone else's (broken) Cricket phone, in a late-model Suburban, pulled into the driveway, rolled it into the den, and told me to call him back when we were ready to install the unit. He has a friend who "can make somethin' happen ..."

I was this close to asking him if he happened to have some groceries that also happened to fall off the back of a truck. The black man with no last name showed up 8 hours late to deliver the unit, and - owing to there being no food in the house - I was hungry and otherwise not having the best day. We exchanged no more than 5 words. Then again, these sorts of deals do not typically involve a lot of small talk.

I have fond memories, or memories at least, of a time when I was not hungry, was not lonely (or alone), and when I was engaged in my own shady dealings, not facilitating my father's. I am reminded as well of high school, when the Old Black Man had four girlfriends, and I was sitting home alone on any given night - answering the phone and making excuses. It is not good for one's ego when your septuagenarian father is getting WAY more play than you ... and then again, he still is.

Perhaps that makes him a pimp - the big man with the money and the name for whom I am attache; I thought this as I was cutting his hair last night, and trimming the strands in his ears. This, mind you was shortly after Project Monday - wherein I planted the entire front yard, installed a door, and moved a dining room table.

It is a colossal let-down that I own so very much polyester and yet cannot make it past the lackey stage.

Mark


On the DL in the DMZ

As it happens, boredom and great heaping lots of time on my hands, coupled with the Internet(s) and the inability to leave the house, inspired some virtual globe-trotting. This started as a simple social experiment; as I cannot seem to either get laid, or even engage in conversation, in local chat rooms, I started visiting the rooms of the two places I hope to live while attending law school - Grand Forks, ND and South Royalton, VT.

Each has its own unique charm, its own, different sort of hellacious winter, and a gay population smaller than my blog readership. Frequent forays into the actual city chat room yield only four chatters at a given time, and upon expanding my net to include the entire state of North Dakota (or Vermont), the figures leaped to 17 or so. I have never seen more than 22 people at any given time chatting in either state. This contrasts slightly with 500+ chatting (or cruising) presently in San Antonio.

Not to be deterred from my mission to meet and greet, I messaged the 34 (total) gay men available across two states, and four of them responded. One warned me that there are no gay bars ("...but there is a 'gay-friendly' bar in town ... I even kissed a guy I was on a date with once ..."); note, there are no gay bars in the entire state of North Dakota. The nearest is in the perhaps very aptly named Moorehead, MN., 90 miles away. And Winnipeg, Manitoba is just around the corner.

The gay student alliance at UND (the "Ten Percent Society") hosts a gay dance once-monthly, which incorporates a drag show and a DJ - or so I was told by another gay man from ND. Vermont has thus far declined comment, which leads me to believe that either everyone in South Royalton is absurdly busy with law school, or there are simply no gays in that cold, bedroom community of only 2,300 souls. That they are still thawing under layers of snow and maple syrup hardened into an impenetrable crust is simply too grievous (and funny) to consider.

But, as I am wont to do, I digress ... exploring Vermont and North Dakota, which I did in the course of four emails and a day of passing time got me, as we say in the South, "to thinkin' " about all the cities and towns and continents I have yet to visit. And so I visited - via the Internet(s) - Greece, Paris, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, the UAE, Afghanistan, Iraq, and both Koreas.

That I found black men there - and that they appeared to be doing well, getting laid, and could speak without using "nigga ..." or "holla" in sentences intrigued me no end. That there were gays there at all, and a room full of them with whom I could interact surprised me still more (at least in the case of Iraq and the two Koreas). It is not so much that I did not appreciate that my race extends all over the world, or that black men (especially in other parts of the world) do not all labor under some pre-established cultural or even aesthetic bias.

the Frenemy suggests it is merely about the look ... and the smell of black men that makes them ... us ... uh, me ... undesirable. I argue that a bias established by cultural perception, among other things a result of 250 - 400 years of slavery has a great deal to do with it. I argue that there is a reason why the charming black man I met in Dubai, raised in Italy, is accomplished, educated, and has neither social qualms nor an affinity for the ghetto, and yet every man in the Jackson, MS room has gold teeth and Fubu.

The effects of Apartheid on young black men in South Africa might serve to aid my argument(s), but I find that country - if only in the digital environment of adam4adam.com to be creepy, and its men - of various sizes, shapes, and races, to be something 'other' and off-putting. It's like "Children of the Corn," if Spike Lee directed.

And, as I said, the bigger shock, bigger than that a chunky black man not much different than me told me he was dating five men at present - two of whom were doctors (this was in Paris) - was the very open cruising among soldiers of various stripe in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were more gay men looking in Baghdad than there are in North Dakota and Vermont combined.

Is it the 'other' interpretation of Enduring Freedom, or just that - after 22 months in a war-zone no one cares who sucks whom so long as there is a smile and an occasional friendly embrace? The number of men whose web cams capture a tent and a helmet and a shirt-less comrade in the background is either funny or very sad.

the Frenemy is banging two or three men, if not more, who used to do me for free drugs. One of them said as much just last night, that the only reason he ever did anything with me was for the coke - something which, though suspected ... or understood ... still hurts to hear aloud. the Frenemy seemed only too happy to pass along that information just this morning.

I suppose as I am processing that particular kernel of truth, I think about the experience I gained just from a little late-night, Internet(s) globe-trotting. I am alone in San Antonio - apparently too black to merit a simple 'hello' in response to my message, too invisible to even get a thank you when I buy a round of drinks at a bar ... but I imagine there is still light in my eyes, that there is a still anticipation and hope and something stirring that believes the adage, "This too shall pass ..."

I have been saying that for a long, long time ... and it still ain't passing, which makes me think that either somebody lied, or I am meant to be a REAL late bloomer. I am channeling my mother as I type this, thinking about the light in her eyes.

I messaged a few guys in Kandahar, sent a simple 'hello' to a pale, white, blue-eyed American boy named "Al-Asad." He didn't respond, but I imagine that at that point - perhaps much like mine, for different reasons, he just needs someone to be nearby, and he needs to know he's not alone.

Mark

Pulling It Off ...

It is a beautiful day - one of the most beautiful I've seen in ages. We are comfortably in Spring. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and something that sounds strangely like an owl is hooting or cooing near my open front door. I am not near my open front door, mind you ... I am not wireless here at home, so I am tethered to an Ethernet cable in a room with no windows, and a small antique bed. That there is a TV, a stack of library books, and the sounds of these lovely, natural scenes ... well, it is enough for me for now. It feels as though I haven't left the house in days.

Come to think of it, I haven't.

Knob Bob
picked me up Friday, for what was to be if not a romantic weekend, certainly a horny one. I met Bob at a Valentine's Day threesome - an event in which I engaged, against my better judgment, in order to forget about being dumped 6 days earlier - via text message. The apartment smelled of gym socks, sex, and the Warm Vanilla Sugar lotion the host - the naked Negro - was using as lube, but I digress ...

So, Knob Bob came to collect me Friday afternoon - and there was a half-smile on his face, and a certain gleam in his eye. I gave him the tour of my family home, and off we went in his American car, for sex and something.

The something was the kicker.

Now, Knob Bob is the affable and diminutive fellow (5'2," 130 lbs.) who happens to doze off at inopportune moments. It isn't just that he nearly burns me with lit cigarettes every time he starts to drift and I am in the room. It is not the fear of dying in a burning bed. And, given how lacking my sex life, I can even deal with him referring to sex as "pokey-pokey" ... If anything, I can even deal with him dozing off during during blow-jobs - although deep-throat and snoring should never mix. It would be hard to explain that to the paramedics.

And speaking of things difficult to explain to medical professionals, we got back to Bob's and promptly had to leave again, to buy ice. Although I was having a margarita, the ice was not for my drink but rather his crotch. Apparently, in getting off the couch to come pick me up, Bob pulled something ... He was in tremendous pain, and I spent the rest of Friday, most of the night, and Saturday morning icing down my fuck buddy's privates. Needless to say, a good time was not had by all ... or any.

I wish that I could say I spent the rest of Saturday and at least part of Sunday in a drunken stupor ... the better by which to pass the interminable hours. But I was sober. Hiding in my room, reading, and exploring my chances of getting laid in Iraq.

Mark

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Some days ... Really?!? ... Why even get out of bed?

The 50-something, black man next door, the one with the Jheri Curl and 6 teeth, with the oddly tight body and pierced nipple, came at me today - with a knife in his hand and a look of pride upon his face. It was daylight, and I had enough library books in my man-purse to lay out a prize-fighter, so rather than jump back in terror I smiled and nodded as he spoke at me.

It was a full minute before my ear adjusted to the particular patois he spoke, a Louisiana drawl coupled with the failures of the Mississippi school system, it sounded like - with the appropriate hacking of a pack a day smoker (or a crack habit - either way, all-too-familiar) - "Purt good now fa a ftty yar ol' mn, neh?" That is to say, "Pretty good for a fifty-year old man, huh?" He was talking, beaming proudly, and scratching his balls - with a steak knife in the hand raised toward me - about having finally done something about his yard.

This particular fifty-something black man is my neighbor, a man with three small, starving dogs, a son or nephew who walks up and down the street with clothes in his hands, piles of them, attempting to sell them to the neighbors or passing school-children. The fifty-year old rents the house next door, and more's the pity for its owner.

In the months he's occupied the house, the garage door was kicked in, driven through, and then removed altogether - leaving in its place - a gaping hole in the front facade of a pale pink '50s ranch house, and the view of a garage that has surely seen better days - what with the oil slick on the floor, the wall into which someone obviously drove once or twice, and (until last week's emergency repair) the smell of escaping gas.

It seems this proud, pierced man with Activator in his hair got, in his words, "the right mood swing ..." and decided to mow his lawn. The weeds were up to my knees - and crying out for raw meat - when I walked by earlier, so this was no small feat. Evidently in one hell of a manic state, the fifty-something not only mowed the lawn but edged it, too ... with a steak knife. A steak knife - one of those cheap things you pick up at Wal-Mart with a cheap black plastic hilt and a paper-thin, serrated blade.
It was covered in grass and mud and dirt, as well as the sweat, drool, tears, and curl activator of a half century old black man breathing heavily, wild-eyed, and scratching his nuts ...

I was on way back from a short day downtown when I came upon my neighbor in all his sweaty, knife-wielding glory.

On the bus ride back from downtown, I sat behind an unwed mother with a very loudly crying baby, and in front of a couple - one very black and the other somewhere between Halle Berry's color and the texture of a K-Mart weave - all of whom, save the baby - of course - were engaged in a conversation about the advantages of going to jail rather than be homeless; the words, "three hots and a cot ..." were bandied about, and I was on the verge of saying something - though I have no idea what that something might have been. Just then, the baby set off another ear-piercing shriek and I contemplated offering to breast-feed the damned thing myself.

Around that time, the familiar VIA robot voice announced my street coming up, and I dutifully rang the bell - considering whether to spend my last dollar on a can of soup at the 99 Cents store across the way. Perhaps, if I had, I would have somehow missed the knife-wielding black man - but then ... where's the fun in that?

Mark

Friday, March 12, 2010

I dreamed a dream ...

I dreamed a dream today... hellacious may it seem; everyone around me got beheaded. Quite extreme.  I was on my college campus. My high school friends were there. The Quarterback of the football team, my friend 'Miko, and the
choir. My father showed up with watermelon. My guidance counselor was first to die. 'Miko went out to save the Japanese, exchange students, by the way.

The Dean of Student Life was fat and happy, which seemed odd and yet okay. I don't where that came from, but the infomercial probably had some sway. I was never scared, but wondering how it'd play.

Out in old SA. There was a gay backlash, which also seemed to say fuck you very much my friend.

Kill, kill away.

In my dream, the gays held a block party, called "Kill, Kill Bang, Bang" ... I was impressed. I think.

The campus looked amazing, and there was a ballroom where the Joyce Building should be. The logic of gathering the entire campus in a glass atrium seems flawed in retrospect. That may have been what the four headless corpses were thinking when beheaded late at night. We awoke to the sounds of too quiet, menace, and someone snoring soundly. My father?

I woke up to four beheaded corpses - hanging from the chandelier.

Mark