Turnabout

Turnabout is fair play.

I love being interviewed. It’s a forum for me to talk about myself without appearing really egotistic.

I fantasize about Barbara Walters interviewing me. I would be dressed in Armani and she would be dressed in a gorilla suit. We would be bathed in glow of diffused light; the Vaseline-smeared lens would blend away all my imperfections like my large pores, my blackheads, my chinky eyes. Once, I tried doing the Vaseline trick in a home video, but there was too much pubic hair in the jar. I ended up looking like Chewbacca.

I am also ready for those wacky questions Barbara likes to spring on her guests like “‘If You Were a Color, what would you be?” (blue); “If You Were a Tree...?” (willow tree); “If You Were a Fruit...?” (Liberace).

A reader, Harriette, wrote me an e-mail asking if I would like to be interviewed for an article she’s writing:

"Dear Paul, I've been an avid reader of your blog for more than a year. I am currently writing an article on the gay rights movement in Chicago. Would you like to participate in an interview?"

Do birds fly? Do dogs lick their balls? Does privatizing Social Security bridge the gap between the projected shortfall and enable high income individuals who normally wouldn't benefit direct these funds to private accounts that are eligible for their heirs to inherit? I was only happy to comply.

The questions were tougher than I thought, but once I had a couple of shots of tequila, I was able to loosen up my sphincter and the bullshit started to flow.

And because I’m an extremely modest mouse, and in the spirit of Gay Pride Month, I thought I’d share it with you all.



Start Interview: Hairdressers turn to the Dark Side

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Here's an older interview I did way back when...

Pride

(c) copyright 2004 The New Yorker

Thank U, Alanis

I can’t even remember what I was doing ten years ago. Oh, I remember now, my best friend was fucking my boyfriend of three months. Yeah, that was bad.

I was so angry I saw red. I was green with jealousy. And then I saw yellow--a yellow discharge oozing out of my dick. They had given me the clap.

I felt terrible. In one fell swoop, I had lost a lover and friend. In the following weeks, I searched my soul even as I searched for a good urologist. I pondered my exes and I pondered the whys. I still am not sure how it all happened, even though the signs were plain as a zebra’s stripes.

I had even told them I was happy they were getting along so well. I thought it was a sign that the relationship was going very well. I guess it was, just not mine. Hindsight would’ve been on 20/20 if I had gotten to the knife drawer before they ran out of my apartment, dragging along whatever clothing they were able to grab. I would’ve filed a lawsuit, but I didn’t know their last names.

Ever since then, I have made a decision never to introduce a new guy to my friends until I got to know them first. I want to make sure that I found the craziest homo I could find so I wouldn’t feel so bad if they slept with him.

That’s what’s bad about gay people. It’s hard to trust anybody. Good men are so rare that everybody’s always trying to steal your boyfriend. I can’t say I blame them. I’ve knowingly slept with guys who were already in relationships. Karma, right? It comes back to bite you. You just hope it has had its rabies shots.

Eventually, I got over my anger and disconsolation. It all evens out in the end. Or at least that’s what it says on the box of my medication. In any case, I got over it.


And after ten years, Alanis Morissette also got over it.

In the ten year anniversary of her groundbreaking CD Jagged Little Pill, she has released an all-acoustic version of the CD. You can buy the CD now at Starbucks, six weeks ahead of the record stores. Alanis observed that the calm, relaxing atmosphere of the coffee chain is the perfect place to access her latest album. I agree, it gives me something to listen to while I am sitting in Starbucks’ bathroom--coffee just makes me shit, y’know?

This move is not without its conflicts. Record store chain HMV retaliated by pulling all Alanis titles off their shelves, which in my mind, probably won’t hurt Alanis that much since her last CDs So Called Chaos and Under Rug Swept didn’t exactly fire up the charts.

Last Saturday, in her concert at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Alanis mocked her own image of an angry, spurned woman. She noted how a couple of songs (“Forgiven” and “You Oughta Know”) on Jagged Little Pill made her the poster girl for a whole movement of riot grrlz.

If you’ve listened past “You Oughta Know,” you’d know that the song is really quite uncharacteristic of her. “Ironic” and “You Learn” are very gentle and introspective songs which are more in tune with her onstage persona: shy and very self-deprecating. She is not Avril Lavigne or Lindsay Lohan partying it up with Paris Hilton, dancing on top of tables.

The set looked like a very comfortable den: it had a grandfather clock, a couple of couches with throw pillows and blankets. All it needs is cat hair all over the place and it could be my living room. The persian rugs, the small buddha gave it a slightly eastern flavor (whereas I only have to stand in the middle of my own living room to give it some eastern flava). A little end table with a small lamp sat on the front of the stage next to the mic.

The whole vibe of the concert was as if the band were spending an evening at home, playing music together. It felt very intimate, very tight. A fart would’ve been disastrous.

The concert wasn’t strictly acoustic. The bass and drums gave the songs a fuller sound and the organ created a gospel undertone. There are no surprises here, no radical re-imaginings of the songs. But I think that these arrangements brought out how personal and touching some of the songs were.

My wussy friend Joe cried during “Perfect,” a song about trying to live up to someone's expectations: “how long before you screw it up / how many times do I have to tell you / to hurry up?” I loved the way she captured the awkwardness of falling in love in “Head Over Feet.”

Alanis also throws in some choice cuts in between JLP songs. I loved the conversational tone of “Hands Clean” and the stark “Uninvited.” She updates “Ironic” to reflect the new freedoms in her country, Canada: “It’s meeting the man of my dreams and I’m meeting his beautiful...husband.” The crowd cheered.

She closes the show with an exuberant “Thank U,” thanking providence for letting her get this far.

And if I stopped to think about it, I’ve a lot to be thankful for as well. Losing a lover, losing a friend was necessary to bring me where I am today. If those things didn’t happen, I still might have been wondering how I got the clap.


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Buy the CD:

Extraordinary Machine

As I listened to Fiona Apple's unreleased album Extraordinary Machine, I pictured Fiona, face heavily painted, alternately banging on trashcan lids, playing an accordion and the armpit fart, while a monkey scampered about her feet, dressed in a marching band suit, playing an organ grinder.

It's Fiona gone vaudeville. Or a western saloon.

Extraordinary Machine was reportedly shelved by Fiona's record label Sony since late 2003 because it had been deemed 'uncommercial.' I guess when they were thinking 'surefire hit,' they were thinking Mariah Carey's Charmbracelet. I think this proves that you can't predict what the public will like, because the only thing different about Charmbracelet and any of its predecessors is Mariah's increasingly trampy outfits.

A fan, desperate to get Extraordinary Machine released, started the Free Fiona campaign, hoping to pressure Sony to release it. It's an uphill battle of biblical proportions, like the David vs Liza Minnelli-Gest divorce proceedings.

Fortunately, the whole album was leaked to the internet in March, purportedly by Fiona's camp. Fans had been buzzing about how amazing it was.

Like everyone else, I started trying to find sources where I could download it, but Sony had shut down many sites which had provided it. It was just by luck that I happened upon a site which had posted a high quality rip of the album for a very short time.

I wasn’t really sure what to think about the album. The only other time I’ve heard anything like this was when Barbra Streisand sang "The World Is a Concerto/Make Your Own Kind of Music," accompanied by an orchestra made up of strings, horns and household appliances. Barbra, in a long satin white gown with long sleeves and a bouffant, sang her heart out while typewriters, vacuum cleaners and blenders all clacked and whirred along. Yes, it was that gay. Throw a Pucci apron on her and she’s your average domestic goddess.

Many of the fan-created CD cover artwork had been very literal: robotic Fiona, Franken-Fiona, Fiona-and-a-rotisserie-oven (appliances again). But no, the album isn’t electronica or Nine Inch Nails; it’s more like Fiona meets Tin Pan Alley, emphasis on the tin pans.

At first listen, the album is all dissonant chords and jangling percussion, very difficult to listen to, very distracting. Remind me never to play this in a BD classroom or within twenty-five feet of Robin Williams. I thought it was terrible, I don't think you can blame me.

"Red, Red, Red" was Fiona channeling Yoko Ono. She played jarring, fat-fingered chords on the piano in "Oh Sailor." "Better Version of Me" had me looking around to see if Christopher Walken was going to suddenly burst in and yell, "More cowbell! I need more cowbell!"

But, the album did get better as I listened to it more. The pot had nothing to do with it at all.

I would say it took about eight tries before I was able to get past producer Jon Brion’s extravagant flourishes and the Fiona we all know and loved emerged: the broodiness and melancholia, the sudden tempo changes, the crazy ex-girlfriend who gave you herpes--on purpose.

This album is very similar in spirit to When The Pawn, but nowhere near it’s accomplishment and artistry. I think a lot of folks prefer Tidal, which was more mainstream. For these folks, Extraordinary Machine will probably not suit.

The title track, "Not About Love" and "Better Version of Me" are very good songs, but there is no "Criminal" or "Limp" here, but that shouldn't be a reason why this album should be held hostage. I think it deserves to be heard. I mean, we had to listen to Hillary Duff sing for chrissakes, the suits owe us this one.

I turned to my boyfriend Brian and asked him what he thought about the album. He said, "It makes me angry. Shut it off."


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Note: This post is about the unreleased version of this album. Subsequently, upon the official release, I had a chance to listen to this CD again, with producer Mike Elizondo's polish. I've grown to truly love this album.

Listen to Music Critic Ken Tucker's interesting review of the CD at NPR.
Listen to NPR's story of the release of Fiona's CD

Watch Christopher Walken's SNL Cowbell Skit (wmv)

My First Time

by Annie

When first approached by Paul to write a guest blog I was flattered.¹ Alright, maybe I wasn’t “approached” in the Angelina-Jolie’s-been-approached-by-producers-to-reprise-the-role-
first-made-famous-by-Phoebe-Cates-in-'Lace' sense so much as I was barraged with the usual flurry of Saturday morning at the laundromat questions (What are you doing after this? Do you want TBP? Did you watch Best Week Ever? Do you want to write a guest blog? Are you going to Gap?). And maybe I wasn’t flattered in the If-I-can't-have-the-girl-I-really-want-you-know-you're-my-number-two sense so much as I wasn’t really listening. I thought he'd asked to borrow a color catcher or if the venti latte made him look fat – laundry day stuff. Paul stuff.

Then he began using strange words – flatulence, butt-plugs and boobies were replaced by deadline, moniker and bitch better not fuck this up. Luckily I recognized his ulterior motive – one crap guest post will only make his public’s love and adoration multiply. I can see him adding to his wish list now. Thinking otherwise made me nervous.

Picking a topic? Easier than I am on a Tuesday!² I mean, what is NMP about if not the everyday, sometimes mundane events treated with humor, irreverence, and the occasional meat tenderizer ("Yes, exactly -- IRREVERENT!!" Paul seemed shocked but pleased that I’d decoded his secret Filipino recipe)? Seeing as my life is nothing but a series of everyday, mundane events treated in the above manner, the hardest part would be choosing what not to write about.

Television was too obvious yet so close to my sad black heart that it assumed frontrunner topic status. The season's end has been weighing heavily on me. Although it has made room for Dancing With The Stars! If the marketing geniuses could please remove their collective monster heads from their collective monster asses for two minutes, maybe they'd see this as the opportunity to sell America what it's been waiting for: the potential for Trista Rehn to get Gillooly’d on live television.^3,4,5

Then came the helpful hints, beginning with, "hey, just so you won't be pressured..." which is basically shorthand for "hey you with the astigmatism and small bladder, you need to do an emergency tracheotomy on this sick little girl's puppy – STAT!"

On cue, I started feeling all this...pressure. I mean, I'm no blogster or blogstar or any other kind of –er. Truth be told I'm a big ol' blog virgin. Not that I'm not proud of who I am; it's one of the last spaz frontiers I haven’t conquered and now what? Not only am I getting screwed by Paul but am sure I owe someone upwards of $6000 for having been so sure I'd never need that sentence.

And did you read the last entry? Apparently there are people who read this thing ON PURPOSE. People who don't do laundry with the author. And Paul's become some sort of blog guru (note to self: trademark "bloguru"), and actually...has answers and like, rules (Dear No Milk Please, Is it possible for a blog virgin to get blog burnout just from thinking about it too much? P.S. When does the itching stop?), rules that might have helped my current situation had I known about them sooner.

I would've put more blog-thought into that last cock-sucking session and been done with it already (second note to self: cannot pull off self-referential mentions of cock-sucking on world wide web without envisioning shame on mother's face. Third note to self: do not let mother get computer).

And then there’s the whole comments issue. Topic schmopic, let's worry about something else! The concerns, I think, are obvious – people are going to make comments. I will not like these comments as they will be mean and hurtful. Fortunately, I can anticipate and avoid a comment like nobody’s business. I’m the freaking ________ of comment avoidance.

Okay so I can’t think of a famous comment avoider right now but you know what I mean. Orrrrrrrrrrrr...no one will make any comments. Why isn't anybody making any comments?????? And what the hell is a moniker anyway and why do I have to have one for his blog? I know it's something bad that he’s trying to hide in a word that sounds like musical simians.^3,4

Only the first time is this uncomfortable, right? Next time I'll know: more lube.

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Here's No Milk's Blogging for Dummies, or as he likes to call it, "helpful hints." The numbers in my text refer to what rule(s) has/have been compromised. In my defense, there is a clear implication to rule #6 in the very first sentence. It really went to shit after that.

1. start out with your strongest line - it needs to bring in the reader into continuing.
2. exaggerate, stretch the truth, to get your zingers in. it's irreverent and humorous, not autobiography.
3. make sure to not make the paragraphs too long, put in lots of white space. i personally zone out when there's too much wordiness going on. cut it into several paragraphs.
4. the "story" is important. i know i am guilty of digressing. but it helps when you're editing your post to think about this.
5. Don’t write about what happened on a TV show unless you have a point of view
6. write about poop, farting and puking--people seem to like that a lot.

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Annie is the first official NMP guest blogger. On Saturdays, she and Paul meet for coffee, laundry and crosswords. These are her boobs.

Blog Advice

Hey Paul,

Have I told you how much I love what you write and how you write lately? How do you do it? Sometimes I feel as though I don't have the inspiration to blog. I've been feeling a lot of mixed emotions.

It's been a while since I've had the time to read anyone's blogs and I've stopped caring about who reads my site. And then I read other peoples' blogs and wonder how they get all those comments. Sometimes I just want to be these other people, just to see how it's like to be a blogstar. Am I contradictory? I'm trying to figure this all out, like what am I blogging for? Has this happened to you? How do you deal with it?

xo,
Jase*

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Hi Jase,

I am happy to hear from you and I am even happier to hear that you enjoy reading my little blog.

What it sounds like to me is that you're experiencing a Blog Burnout. It's a very normal thing to happen.

I think that people view "blogging" as writing an online journal, which may be the case for many people. But I think that for many others, like you and me, blogging is more than that: it's artistic, it's feedback through comments, it's interaction, it's a social network, it's a goddamn popularity contest.

I think this happens because we become wrapped up so much in our blogs that it takes over our lives. Then blogging starts becoming a chore and a job instead of being fun. You are constantly trying to find material such that you can't enjoy just doing the things you love, like sucking cock, without thinking about how to blog it.

And comments, whew! they can be very tyrannical. I know that feeling, the anticipation, the dread, when you open up your site to see if the number of comments increased. And then you find yourself, refreshing refreshing refreshing to see if it changes.

For awhile, I have considered turning it off because I've always felt that my posts speak for themselves. But then, I realized that people wanted, needed, to have a way to interact with me. So I left it on, but made a rule to only comment back if there is a question that is directed towards me specifically.

Don't worry about who reads your site, as author John McNally said in my interview with him, you don't choose your audience, they choose you. Therefore, you cannot make them like what you write. You can make them like your pictures of shirtless celebrities, but that's another matter.

Write what moves you. Write about your feelings and opinions. If you write about what you had for breakfast or what you and your friends did over the weekend, you've got to say why it was so important for you to do so. And don't write about what happened on a TV show unless you have a point of view.

If you write what moves you, hopefully it will move others, or at the very least, move their bowels. And speaking of that, write about poop, farting and puking--people seem to like that a lot.

As for being a BlogStar, we're only stars in our own minds. The truth is, we're a dime a dozen. If you truly want to be a star, like DailyKos or Wonkette, then you have to have a real point of view about matters outside your own daily life such as the war in Iraq, activist judges, or why Tom Cruise couldn't stop calling Katie Holmes "Kate" on Oprah. And then, I would take out a $5,000 banner ad to promote your site.

We've missed the bus on early days of blogging where just having a blog made you famous. But if you write well, you stand a better chance of being "successful," whatever that means to you.

Yes, it does happen to me. Every week, I wonder, why am I doing this? Why am I spending so much of my time writing this bullshit? Shouldn't I be spending more time doing important things like getting a pedicure? My cuticles need help really BAD. I don't know the answer to this, but if I do, I'll write a book about it and you can buy it at Amazon.

Chill out, man. Step back. Cut down on the number of posts. Quality, not quantity. If you write 3 posts, consider publishing them over 2-3 weeks to give yourself some breathing room. Get your life back. Here, I'll even give you a head start, you should post this letter on your blog, coz I am.

Good luck,

Paul a.k.a. "No Milk"


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*Jase's e-mail was edited for content and brevity. See the original version. Please show him some comment love, let him know I sent you!

Need some (dairy) free advice? Send me an e-mail!

Wicked

If Ann Coulter had a button to press that would instantly kill all the homosexuals from the face of the earth, I bet she wouldn’t hesitate to do it. Ok, maybe that was too harsh. Maybe she’ll do what every compassionate conservative would do: she’ll consider just where and when to hold the press conference first. Theeen, she’ll press the button.

I think that for the ultra-right wing conservatives, gays are not human. We’re just deviant animals, not worthy of living, let alone in fabulously furnished high-rises with a sunset view. Sometimes I think that if we had the Holocaust all over again, the URWCs wouldn’t find it too hard to herd the gays into the gas chambers--all they have to do is stage a musical in it and we’d all line up and buy tickets.

(But seriously, if these URWCs want to do this homo-slaughter properly, they should disguise the gas chamber as a Prada store with a sale of unbelievable magnitude. The sale has to be to-die-for or else don’t bother thinking that gays are going to die. Sure, maybe a few heteros, some metrosexuals will get caught in the carnage, but that’s just the price of morality isn’t it?)

I mean, take my best friend Joe. He didn’t find it hard at all to get group discount tickets to Wicked. He needed 20 people. He got 35 without even trying. All he had to do was go to that gayest of gay places: the Gym.

There were more muscled gym bunnies there than a gay Easter parade. It was funny to see the flurry of excitement as gays hopped over barbells, skipped past the pec deck, and jumped over the hairy, sweaty fat mound doing sit-ups to get discount tickets. And twenty minutes later, Joe was done.

Yeah, it was quick and painless, plus we got discounted tickets to the hottest show in town. God knows what would’ve happened if he went to a leather bar and yelled “Ballet tickets!” instead. People would’ve gotten hurt in the stampede for sure--not to worry, that's just foreplay to them.

Wicked is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire about the life of the Wicked Witch of the West before Dorothy came to Oz.

The Oriental Theatre in Chicago, with its baroque décor featuring gargoyles and semi-nude Roman figures seemed perfect for this show. There was an enormous animated dragon with fiery red eyes mounted above the stage and extended over the orchestra. The sets had the inner workings of a old clock, gears and hardware, interspersed with more cartoonish elements. It was cool, but I had expected it to be more outlandish, more Cheesecake Factory, so I was a tad disappointed.

The story follows the story of Elphaba, a green baby girl born to the Mayor of Munchkinland and his unfaithful wife. Elphaba grew up being taunted and jeered by people because of the color of her skin. She also had to control the great magickal power growing within her. She grew up to be an outspoken, yet shy girl, with a pure and tender heart.

When she goes to college, she meets the bubbly, air-head society girl Galinda, the future Glinda the Good. After some initial girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks / haughty-rich-girl conflict, they become very close friends.

Then, Elphaba blossoms into a beautiful, yet still green, woman. All is wondrous and fair until she learns out about the terrible secret of the Wizard of Oz, then the story spirals into its dark third act.

The show invents the origins of many of the characters from the original story: the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Flying Monkeys, which for the most part was very entertaining, although somewhat forced.

I loved wonderful, powerful performances of the lead characters of Stephanie J Block (Elphaba) and Kendra Kassebaum (Galinda) which thankfully, overcame the show's weak songs. I did love the song “I’m Not That Girl.” The participation of Carol Kane as Madame Morrible was an added bonus.

I loved the story of this infamously Wicked woman. It fleshes out this one-dimensional character by giving her a touching backstory and a push-up bra.

I think that many queers can relate to this story. We all understand being viewed as one-dimensional and evil--except SpongeBob--he's two-dimensional. But even he must feel awful, being labeled as the cause of the decline of civilization in Bikini Bottom and everything else above the Pacific Ocean.

To many of the so-called “conservatives,” gays are indeed a wicked bunch. We are lumped together with pedophiles, murderers, tourists, which wouldn’t be so horrible if they didn’t wear so much polyester. It just makes us look bad, you know?

Anyway, I hear there is a direct correlation to crime and the amount of synthetic fibers in your clothing, which only proves that the gays and Simon Cowell are innocent. Duh, everybody knows that we like our spandex clothing to be as tiny as possible. All the spandex thongs in the world would fit into Elton John’s suitcases.

For here are the lessons of Wicked: If you knew what it was like to be gay, if you walked a mile in our ruby slippers, without Dr. Scholl’s inserts, would you still hate us?

Interview with Author John McNally

John McNally, author of the novel, “The Book of Ralph,” in a bit of self-indulgent googling, found a post on a blog about his book.

In the post, the blogger debated on which book to read next. John, ignoring his instincts and courting danger, decides to write to the owner of said blog and presented the case for why his book should be next.

After a flurry of e-mails, a request for an interview emerged. This is the result of that interview.

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No Milk: I have never heard of you or your book before. I bought the book for very superficial reasons: One, I liked the name Ralph because it is one of the names I would've picked for myself if I had more than three personalities; Two, I liked the artwork on the cover of your book because it showed a kid biting the ear off another kid and I was hungry at the time; and Three, because the first chapter was called "The Vomitorium." Man, you had me at "Vomit." I shelled out the full price of $12.00 for your book, cheapskate that I am. What do you think of that?

John McNally: I think this is the best purchase of your life, Ralph. May I call you Ralph? You may still decide to legally change your name to Ralph -- there’s nothing stopping you -- but this book may inspire you to make that final plunge. As for the book’s cover, it’s not just artwork; it truly is a work of art. Ralph biting another kid’s ear? Priceless. When you’re done reading the book, slice off the cover with an X-acto knife and then frame it.

The title of chapter one – “The Vomitorium” – is, of course, the clincher. Keep that page open when you’re on a bus or train, and see how many people talk to you. Your social network will grow in ways you can’t even fathom. “What are you reading?” they’ll ask, and then, a few weeks later, you’ll be trying to squeeze in a movie with them, much to the annoyance of all your other new friends.

And how much did all of this cost you? Twelve bucks? A large pizza costs more than twelve bucks. This book is worth at least three or four times that much. Let’s face it. For twelve bucks, you stole the frickin’ book.

NM: This interview came about because you wrote an e-mail to me. You said that you were "doing a totally self-indulgent google search" on your book. Are you in the habit of finding out what people are saying about you? You must have a cast-iron stomach. Once, some guy wrote this completely humiliating post about how stupid my blog was and it made me throw up for days. The good news is I lost 10 lbs and now I can fit into my pants again. What have you found people saying?

JM: I almost never write to people who’ve written, for better or worse, anything about any of my books, but since you wrote in your blog that you had already bought my book but weren’t sure when you were going to read it, I felt that it was my obligation – my duty – to get you to read it.

Actually, I did write to one person who posted a negative review of the book on Amazon. She wrote, “i gave this book two stars instead of one because, while it was really bad, it did make me giggle... and i suppose i did enjoy reading it, if only to scoff at it.” Her only other Amazon review was for the movie “Legally Blonde” and begins, “i am a youth director at a small church, and let me tell you how impressed i was by this movie.”

So I sent her an email, thanking her for taking the time to write a review of the book, that it had taken a few years of my life to write it, and that I was grateful for her thoughtful feedback. My real wish, however, was for a church bus to flatten her early one Sunday morning. Otherwise, I take criticism well.

CONTINUED: "You are very sexy, I MUST MEET YOU"


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John McNally is currently on tour promoting The Book of Ralph, check out his website for locations and dates

Self-Googling is Masturbation

Self-googling is masturbation. For me, it often comes late at night, when I am feeling lonely and a little depressed, a sweaty, cold beer bottle in hand.

It’s that dark time when you start googling all your old exes to see if you can find a hint of where they are now. Did they move to a different city? Do they regret breaking up with you? Do they think about the time when you slashed their tires? And when you have exhausted the list of 43 names, you start googling your own to see if anybody is talking about you.

If you’re unlucky to have a common name like me, it will be harder to sift through the morass that is the World Wide Web. If you’re lucky, your name is unique, like Fartogus Ishmael, and you can easily find that the people you used to go to high school with, who still refer to you as “Ishmelly Farts.”

Author John McNally must’ve been doing quite a bit of ‘masturbation’ when he found my site. He had been looking for notices for the paperback release of his novel, The Book of Ralph. I had written a brief post about buying his book along with a photo of the growing stack of unread books on my nightstand.

The post was the result of a problem that plagues some normally verbose bloggers: opinionus interruptus – the temporary exhaustion of opinions. When this happens, there is suddenly a spate of photos of their pets instead of a post. You get photos of cats doing cute tricks; photos of dogs in goofy sweaters; photos of gerbils in anal cavities.

I don’t know how some people are able to write post after post, some almost daily. I admire how committed they are. I hope they will be released very soon from their mental institutions.

I had debated whether I should get started on The Book of Ralph or try to dig through that stack. Upon reading this, John felt that he had to make a pitch on why I should start with his:

"Hey. John McNally here. Now, listen: I know you have a shit-load of books on your nightstand -- I saw the photo -- but you really should read my book next, and I'll tell you why. It's funny, it's moving, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. Actually, it just came out in paperback, and now's the time to get some groundswell of grass-roots support going for the book, so my reasons for getting you to read it soon are completely selfish."

This was a start of an exchange of e-mails that resulted in my first Author Interview, which will be in my next post.

Even though I am only in the third chapter as of this writing, I laughed out loud when the titular Ralph tries to make money as an eighth-grade hitman. I hope the rest of the book is good, it is very promising.

Funny what happens when somebody who self-googles acts upon something they find.

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Even though I am happily in a relationship now, every so often, I will turn on the computer and start googling those names again. I don’t know what I am looking for. I don’t know why I do it. It’s spontaneous and impulsive, you know, like winking or burping or giving your mother-in-law the finger.

I don’t know what I would do if I found anything.

I don’t know what I would feel if I were an ex of mine, and I found this site, this post, these words.

Yeah, I still think about you sometimes.



NEXT: An interview with author John McNally

Nightstand

I cannot stop by a bookstore without spending a few minutes going through the New Releases stack. I don't know what it is, but the sight of rows of books makes my heart flutter. Maybe it's because I am always on the lookout for the next About A Boy or Perks of Being A Wallflower--that amazing book that takes you completely into the character's head, into another world. I don't think there's anything else as satisfying as reading a good book, except maybe stealing it.

I bought The Book of Ralph by John McNally today, which given the number of books on my nightstand waiting to be read, may have been a bad idea. I don't know when I am going to be reading it, although reading the blurb, I can't wait to get started.

I am currently reading Dan Chaon's You Remind Me of Me. It's written well, but a tad slow--it doesn't rock my world. I am already looking forward to the next book.

I thought it may be fun to take a photo of the books on my nightstand. I haven't read any of these books, except the hardcover copy of Perks, which I got as a gift on my birthday last month from Annie, so read them at your own risk. :)

Just a little glimpse into my bedroom, my side of the bed.

What's on your nightstand?



a closer look:



For a complete list of all the books on the nightstand, look here

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Other books in my bookshelf
A post about my love affair with books

So Jealous

What happened? My brother and I are music-loving, identical gay twins. Why didn’t we start a band, go to a studio and record a CD like identical lesbian twins Tegan and Sara? It makes me so fucking jealous.

I mean, I am jealous enough of lesbians as it is, with their outsider status, their political awareness, their righteously comfortable shoes--so different from the exhausting gay culture of men, muscle and maxing out credit cards.

Many people think that gay men want to be heterosexual women. Uh-uh, not me. If I was a woman, I would want to be a lesbian, preferably one of the hot ones on “The L Word”. However, if I somehow fail to get cast in that show, I would want to be my lesbian friend Sarah Kressler, who I’ve lost touch with.

(Sarah, if you googled your own name and found it here in my blog, I want you to know that I admired you, your edgy look; your cool, cool clothes; your gawky dance with the fingers waving as guns, shooting invisible bullets in every direction. I really really wished I was the male version of you, but without the long years of therapy. And if you decide to pay me the $104.75 you owe me, we can be friends again.)

For some reason, I have always had an affinity for lesbian music: the Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, Clay Aiken. I can’t really explain it.

While lesbian music runs the gamut from folk to country, rock to pop, there’s always this organic quality to it, like fresh, warm, dog shit that I stepped on this morning. It’s like every note came straight from the blood, tears and sweat of hitching a U-Haul by yourself, while the stripper you met last week--now your girlfriend--sits on the curb, buffing her long, red fingernails.

There’s certainly plenty of heartsickness in So Jealous, the fourth disc from the Canadian duo. But it’s not totally despondent or morose. It’s more like a wry, I’ve-been-here-before kinda thing, which for the most part, helps cut down some of the potential corniness from their earnest lyrics, which sound like they could have been lifted directly from their diaries.

The bright production, upbeat tempos and quirky harmonizing really make this CD a lot of fun. “Speak Slow” rocks out, a totally headbanging song about co-dependency: 'when your love lets you go / you only want love more / even when love wasn't what you were looking for.' Yeah, you could pretend those bruises are from slamdancing to this song, I'll totally believe you.

My other favorite song is “I Know I Know I Know,” which is about negotiating a break-up after an infidelity. Just because you’re breaking up doesn’t mean you don’t still love each other, that even packing 'box after box and you're still by my side.' This is the best break-up song I’ve heard this year. I hope they never find true love.

The rest of the album is packed with great tracks like “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” “Walking With a Ghost” and “Wake Up Exhausted.” It’s a great pop/rock album with a bit of punk thrown in. This album is so catchy, it’ll be on heavy rotation at my house for a long, long time.

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Get the CD:

Cookout

(c) 2004 The New Yorker Magazine

Comfort Zone

One can’t really go against one’s nature, I think, especially with sports.

Maybe you can pretend that you are a top, and maybe you can get away with it through a dinner date. But as soon as you get into bed, your helium heels inevitably rise up in the air.

When it comes to sports, I think you either have it or you don’t. Either your wrists are built for a bat or they are built for a hairbrush. I don’t think there’s a happy medium. And Patricia Arquette just proves that I think; she doesn’t look very happy in those awful cardigans she wears in her TV show, “Medium.”

Look, I don’t hate playing sports. I just hate wearing shorts, the sun and basically anything that causes sweating. I mean, I think that I wouldn’t enjoy sex that much either if I wasn’t able to help myself to my tricks’ wallets as they dozed off.

And I don’t mean this in a gay or straight kind of thing. There are certainly many gay folk who are excellent in sports: Martina Navratilova, Billy Bean, everybody in Pro-wrestling. I think that gay people have proven that we can do anything we set our minds to. I mean, if we can elevate decoupage to an art, some little thing like gay marriage couldn’t be too far behind.

I think that ultra-right wing conservatives are really going at it the wrong way. If they want us not to marry, then they should pass a constitutional amendment to ban divorce. I think it would scare off all but the few gay men who live in Long Island that truly want to spend the rest of their lives together. And if they pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex bridal registries, I think that would take care of everyone else.

So maybe it was watching a bunch of naked actors, 'bats' swinging, playing baseball on a stage that made me sign up for softball with the local gay sports league.

Yeah, I was skeptical too. I wasn’t really sure what to expect; the locker room would either be a balls-out orgy or a royal tea party with a centerpiece made out of jockstraps and peonies, I don’t know. They would all be stretching and flexing for the speed-knitting event.

Either way, I think I’d be very uncomfortable. I’ve never been that good in group settings. The idea of a locker room orgy really scares me. Come stains are sooo hard to get out. Come would be shooting everywhere, like a warzone. You have to duck or you might get some in your eye. It would be kinda like Iraq except with designer jockstraps.

Besides, I’m really really shy, which is why I have a blog instead of a life. My idea of a three-way is when I use both hands to masturbate. An orgy would be if I also used a dildo.

But that’s why I decided to do softball. I needed to get out of my comfort zone. I needed to get out there and take some risks, but not the kind of risk where you pair an argyle sweater with plaid pants and a mohawk, which might seem like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect was really not what one should wear to a frat party, unless one wanted to be ridiculed by the object of one’s secret crush and his friends.

Last Saturday was the first practice day. I made it all the way to park where I got a hotdog, ate it and went back home.

I wrote an e-mail to the team captain and told him things had come up and my weekend schedule had drastically changed, and I was now too busy to play on the team.

E-mail sent, I sat at my desk and stared at the screen for a long time. Then, I settled in and started typing.

“One can’t really go against one’s nature...”

Honeymoon's Over

There was a time when everywhere we went was an adventure. When a drive around the block was something to look forward to and a mundane activity like going to the grocery store was such fun.

Well, the honeymoon’s over. With the car, I mean, the one we call “Pretty.”

I thought it would last longer, but I guess six months was about how long it took before the new car smell dissipated and was replaced by one that smelled slightly of used leather and sweaty ass--two-thirds of the essential aromas of a leather bar (the third being that of human piss).

You can put in an air freshener called “new car smell,” but it’s not the same. It’s like a stuffed bra. You worry all night about when it has to come off. You hope he won’t look down and notice your penis.

I remember the day I drove home the car, my brand new VW Jetta, my little pet. I was intoxicated by that new car smell, a chemical cocktail of fresh paint, hard plastic and oily rubber. All it needs is a splash of vermouth and it’s perfect.

The smell reminded me of the freedom, the liberation of my youth, but mostly it reminded me of the glue I sniffed in our garage. With the windows rolled up, I could almost get high, but the salesman kept tapping on the glass.

They say the millisecond you drive out of the dealership, your car depreciates $3,000. I wondered if car manufacturers did anything to intensify this smell because they know it makes people irrational. It’s like a drug. Someone should make a PSA about it. At least crystal meth only makes you have unprotected sex.

But little by little, things chipped away at the euphoria.

The battery in the car key remote died, so I had to open the door the old-fashioned way--uuh--by sticking the key in the lock, like, how lame. Yeah, I know, it’s not the car’s fault, so I can’t really argue with that. Opening the door manually is quaint, but ultimately annoying and frustrating.

Batteries are so essential in modern day living. You know the five basic elements, right? Air, Water, Fire, Earth and Batteries.

I mean, one time, in the midst of a tornado warning, I saw two women in a fierce tug-of-war over the last pack of batteries at a store. The eventual winner gingerly put the battery in her cart next to the Jeff Stryker Realistic vibrator. I guess I shoulda known she would win, she looked more desperate, with her wild hair, disheveled clothes and the fat boyfriend carrying a twelve-pack of Coors.

And what do you do when you find a piece of moulding on the driver’s side door sticking out, possibly the result of some clandestine act? Do you hide out to see if you can catch the perpetrator en flagrante delicto? The evidence sickens me; it is in my face every time, like an engorged pimple on your nose, unavoidable. You wish it was on the other side, like on your ass, where you can’t see it.

Apparently, I can’t replace the battery in the key remote myself. It has to be synchronized with internal computer. It would’ve cost me $65 (I know, a scam), but fortunately the car is still on warranty. All I have to do is spend the time to get it fixed.

I guess a honeymoon is like a warranty period, right? It don’t cost you anything to get your little foibles fixed.

But unlike the warranty on a car, you don’t know when the honeymoon will be over. One day, the car will unexpectedly come to a dead stop, right in middle of the road, and you just hope to God that with the right repairs you can get it started again.

Take Me Out

When my friend asked me if I wanted to go see naked men parade onstage at Madrigal’s, the premier local strip club, I was aghast that he would even ask me to go. Why would I go to a strip club for naked men, I asked him, that’s what theatre is for.

Besides, the guys that frequent strip clubs belong to the lower rung of the gay population, you know, the guys who are looking for relationships. I mean, you wouldn’t think so, but strip clubs are where you can find guys who are rich, horny and desperately lonely--all the qualities that nurture successful relationships.

After perfecting musicals, the gays have moved on to the next brave frontier in theatre, the artful presentation of gratuitous male nudity, or as I call it, “nudicals.”

I think it’s very sophisticated to go to nudicals. You get a very cultured boner and you get a souvenir Playbill. And being a proponent of efficiency, this makes me all warm inside, when you can handle two stones and one bird.

And what’s with the spelling of “theatre”? What’s with the “-tre” in the end instead of “-ter”?

Well to begin with, thea-tre is pronounced theeatuh, preferably in a British accent--Cockney if you can manage it, coz I like the sound of "cock."

Theatre is a night on the town, of love and romance. Theatre is art, glamour and wonder. Theatre is what women drag their husbands and boyfriends kicking and screaming to, a night of intense, emotional blackmail.

How about thea-ter? Three words: Blue Man Group.

"Theatre schmeatre," you might say, "what’s the difference? It’s ALL gay. Straight theatre, that’s an oxymoron."

You know what’s an oxymoron? President Bush.

So off we go to a night of theatre.

My friend John S. scored us tickets to a preview of Take Me Out. A preview is basically a full dress performance to iron various kinks out in front of an audience.

Ironing the kinks out. Hmmnn, this kinda brings to mind laundry day for an S&M couple. It also brings up the question of whether there should be a crease in a pair of leather chaps or not, but I digress.

The story is about a popular and well-loved pro baseball player, Darren Lemming (Derrick Nelson) who is at the top of his game. Darren believes that he was put on Earth by God to play baseball. The fact that he was bi-racial and homosexual was beside the point. Darren was not in the closet, he just didn’t feel his homosexuality was relevant to the game or is anyone's business.

But after a conversation with his best friend (who didn’t know of Darren’s homosexuality) about being true to oneself, Darren, without hesitation, decides to come out during a TV press conference. Darren, naively or arrogantly, believed that his mythic prowess would overshadow this teensy revelation.

The play then goes on and examines how the fans, his teammates and friends react to this outing. Some are supportive, some are shocked, still others are resentful and hostile, but not necessarily to Darren’s homosexuality, but for this “lie” of his true nature.

One stand-out performance was that of Tom Aulino, playing Mason Marzac, Darren’s geeky gay accountant and new fan. “Marz” was a veritable mass of tics and nerves, like a Woody Allen unencumbered by the confusion between step-daughter and Korean sex slave, providing comedic relief in just the right places.

Take Me Out blends the various hot topics of our day: race relations, homophobia, circumcision and parades them in front of you, sometimes producing a very uncomfortable feeling inside of my pants. I had to place my Playbill on my lap to cover my 'rising embarrassment,' especially when redneck Shane Mungitt (played by an intense and sexy Kyle Hatley) was being wrestled by Darren in the shower. Also, I found out uncircumcised penises were more prevalent than I thought.

Take Me Out is about baseball, the love of it, the magic of the game, the magic of the fans, but most of all, the magic that happens when hard buns are encased in skintight pants.

I went to see the play because of its merits: a Tony award, glowing reviews, nine sets of ‘twigs and berries’ and I was not disappointed. The play lived up to its reputation and even if it didn’t, the nudity certainly did.

Take Me Out is showing March 24 to May 1st at Steppenwolf Theatre. Chicagoans, go get tickets, it's worth it.

Girl, Interrupted

The last thing I remember was lying on the bathroom floor, my stomach feeling satisfyingly empty. The taste of bile in my mouth felt familiar, comforting, even as it burned my throat. My therapist had said the bile could damage my vocal cords.

Then as the light blue tile, the chipped white ceramic bathtub, the floral shower curtain all blurred together, rushing into the void, the darkness descending upon my eyes, a stray thought floated into my ebbing consciousness: I wondered if Harvey Fierstein was bulimic too. I didn’t want my voice to sound like him.

Then blackness, darker than the stroke of midnight, Pluto or a David Lynch movie.

When I woke up, I found myself lying in a dark hospital room. My mouth felt arid and scratchy. The light from doorway caught on the tube that was attached to my throat.

My throat! There’s a tube in my throat!

I panicked. I couldn’t move. My limbs were heavy, prickly, as if they fell asleep for a hundred years or from taking an extra long crap. Am I paralyzed? I didn’t know. What happened to me? Just as I thought my heart was going to burst from my chest, my mother, my father and Mike rushed into the room.

I didn’t recognize them at first. They looked older, their faces lined with worry, their bodies fleshy and full. They scared me.

Mike’s face was flushed, as if he had been in a heated argument. I know that look of my husband. It’s the same look he had the last time I suggested we go Cosmic Bowling. And he’s keeping something from me, something important, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Over the next few days, my parents told me what happened. I had been in a coma for fifteen years. My mom filled me in on all the events that happened while I was asleep. I tried to listen, but all I could think about was whether or not stirrup pants were still in fashion. I had just bought a very sassy pair a week ago.

No, that was before. This time shift is very strange and confusing. Time has passed and I was left behind. Now I know what Rip Van Winkle must’ve felt like. Or Ed McMahon.

As the story unfolded, I became distressed at who--no--what I had become, a poster girl for the Right, the Left, and everyone in between. This is not what I wanted. I just wanted to look at the mirror without despairing. I just wished that people would leave me alone. I just wished they picked a better picture than the one that showed at the evening news. God, it makes me look like such a mouth-breather.

And fat.

They say that all this commotion, this ruckus, was for me. I don’t believe that. I don’t know these people outside the hospital lawn, with their signs and singing, their politics. Who are they? No, it was all them. All for them.

If this was for me, they would have thought about how I would feel waking up like this. If it was for me, they wouldn’t parade me on TV. If it was for me, they would have chosen the low-calorie option for my feeding tube.

I feel violated. There’s a hole in my throat. I feel like such a porpoise. I am dying for a Diet Coke, but I am afraid it would dribble out.

My life was hell. My life is hell.

I feel so humiliated, I could just die.

Those Who Help Themselves

A drowning man should ask God for the strength to swim for safety, not to be plucked out of the ocean by a helicopter.

That is a direct quote from the great armchair philosopher and quiche-maker extraordinaire of our time, my brother Peter.

He also goes on to say that a housewife should not pray for her husband to be faithful, but to have the courage to cut off his balls when the bastard comes home, but I think he was being just a little melodramatic.

He said that as a response to an e-mail forward he and I received from our sister about how God had saved 400 Christians from tsunamis that wiped out the city of Meulaboh. The Christians had gathered in a nearby hill after they were forbidden by the city's Muslims from celebrating Christmas and were thus spared.

My sister, in the past few years, has become more and more religious. In her zeal to spread the word of God, she sends me e-mails that are meant to be inspirational and faith-affirming. I should have told her that she should send me a backstage pass to an Indigo Girls concert, only in the music of folky lesbians with hairy armpits do I see God. Or in a grilled cheese sandwich.

E-mail forwards are a sub-genre of spam that I believe are more dangerous than the Viagra-pushin’, pyramid scheme-solicitin’, Christian-singles-in-your-area-pimpin’ variety. At least those are filtered by your spam blockers into a ‘bulk folder’ where you can go through them leisurely while you are waiting for your boyfriend’s response to your e-mail that you’ve got gonorrhea.

Nope, e-mail forwards are insidious because they are sent by erstwhile well-meaning people like your co-workers, your friends, your lil ole grandma, who think that they are taking advantage of technology to keep in touch. Well, they are mistaken. In terms of keeping in touch, these e-mail forwards cannot take the place of real, handwritten, personal checks of $50 or more.

If you send enough of these e-mail forwards, your friends may start disregarding your e-mails or worse, mark them as spam.

My friend Rooster was a well-known abuser of e-mail forwards. He used to send jokes everyday until one day, he accidentally sent his naked chatroom pic to his entire mailing list. Now, we call him Chicken Little. I wondered if I should also send him a note of congratulation, since I spied two eggs nestled underneath his hairy nest.

You could learn a lesson from this too. Your gonorrheal e-mail could be sitting in your boyfriend’s bulk mail folder, along with the other e-mails for CHEAP$$$ CaNaDiAn pen1cillin!!! How ironic.

I guess a lot of people misunderstand the purpose of prayer. People think that every time they need something, they can put their palms together and ask, you know, like it’s a 1-800 number to the heavenly Sears catalog. That's just stupid. God would never have anything else but a Barney’s catalog. He's not that cheap.

Look, I am not saying that in times of extreme desperation, I have not prayed to God that he send me that pair of Gucci suede loafers, overnight delivery please. But for me, it was more like a way to express my frustrations, my fears of not having the right shoes for my outfit. I don’t really expect that God would give me something that I didn’t work hard for.

And to be honest, I was really offended that people are out there attributing these things to God, putting words into God’s mouth. I don’t believe that God would kill thousands of people just to prove a point, that would just be plain evil.

I think there should be a rule that miracles can only be attributed to God after they have been researched and verified, the facts beyond a shadow of a doubt. There should be a governing body, sort of a Good Housekeeping “Seal of Approval” on it, but by Calvin Klein or something--but please not the Pope, he's done enough damage this century. Otherwise, I feel that we have cheapened the True Miracles.

Peter wrote back to our sister:

I think that people put a lot of meaning into things that are just random or natural. My problem with these forwarded religious emails is that people read them and think they are true without any critical thinking whatsoever. I believe that faith should not be bolstered by untruths, and that faith should not take the place of rational thought or personal action. A drowning person should pray to God for the strength to swim for safety, not to be plucked out of the water by helicopters. God helps those who help themselves.

Amen, brother. Amen.


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Put your own holy face on a grilled cheese sandwich

The Assassin, Part 2

Continued from The Assassin, Part 1

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Comedian Margaret Cho, whose show, “The Assassin Tour” I went to see last week at the Chicago Theatre, has become a gay cultural icon in recent years. This means that she has either transcended stand-up comedy or she wears way too much make-up.

Also, I think that if you have followed Margaret’s career, you would have seen her comedy incorporate more and more gay cultural references and trivia, which run to things like off-off-Broadway shows, highly specialized cookware and slang for unusual sex acts. Tea-bagging, comes to mind.

Trivia, particularly useless trivia, is essential. It supplies all the dialogue you need until closing time at the gay bars with your friends whom you only know by their first names. Useless trivia is the glue that hardens every gay friendship, just like Colin Farrell is what hardens every gay penis.

Ultra-right wing conservatives think sex with the same gender is what makes someone gay. But they’re wrong. That’s what makes someone homosexual. What makes someone gay is knowing Madonna’s entire discography, including obscure imports and extended remixes. If you’re the local Trivial Pursuit champion or can guess the title of a song from a one-second charades clue, guess what? You’re GAY.

Sometimes, I get really paranoid when going to an event that’s so obviously gay, like college Rush Week. They don’t call it “greek week” for nothing.

(Ok, if you didn’t get that one, you’re probably not gay. Go look it up; the Greeks basically invented anal sex)

I get paranoid that crazy terrorists like the Al-Qaeda, the Unabomber or Carrot Top will barge into the Chicago Theatre and start gunning down everybody. They would shoot at those in FCUK t-shirts first because they think those are the gay dyslexics and should be put out of their misery. I can't say I blame them, they've suffered enough from their fashion faux pas. FCUK, please. That's just so fucking DMUB.

Of course, at the first sign of violence, all the gays would scream and grab the nearest person with a fanny pack and use them as human shields.

I thought about how little respect terrorists have for human life and haute couture. Gay terrorists would use less destructive methods, like maybe Sarin gas or lethal-grade botox, so that they can pick out the best shoes from the casualties.

The show was probably one of the best of Margaret's career. Quite possibly, better than “I’m The One That I Want.” “Assassin” finds her confused about living in an America, post-Bush reelection, post-Condoleeza Secretary of State appointment, post-prison Martha Stewart. She ruminated about ways we can all get together and beat the shit out of gay Republicans. She rallied the 'troupes' with her comedy and sent us all out into the night, exhilarated and energized, ready to kick some ass with our tap shoes.

As the rowdy crowd loaded into the CTA buses, gays and lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered folk, all giddy and chattering, I spied a woman who was looking at the crowd in contempt, skittering away as if we were diseased.

I felt an urge to yell at her:

"Our marriages won’t make yours less valid!"

"Our families won’t make yours less loving!"

"You can’t catch gay from breathing the air!"

I wish I did yell at her. I wish I did.

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The Reader Appreciation Award is hereby awarded to Ro's Musings!

Mini-Blog

Have you been checking out the Mini-Blog (see top right of this site)? I decided I wanted a place to post my short notes, announcements and brain farts. Let me know what you think of it. Thanks y'all for your visits! You are the reason I am up late at night and obsessively checking my site counters. Give me some sugar!!!

The Assassin, Part 1

I had a feeling of déjà vu when I was waiting in line to get into the Chicago Theatre to see Margaret Cho’s “The Assassin Tour” last Friday. Maybe it was because I bumped into four ex-boyfriends, the most I’d ever run into at the same place outside of a gay bathhouse.

You can always count on running into a few exes in a gay bathhouse. Anonymity in there is like Beyonce and good taste, two things that never go together.

Going to a bathhouse is like going to church, you spend a lot of time on your knees and calling out to God, "oh God...oh God...oh my Goddddd!!!" But unlike in church, you don’t call the stalls “confessionals,” unless you're really kinky, a priest or both.

That’s not even counting the tricks and one night stands I ran into at the show. There were so many of my tricks that if I pulled a bunch of fake flowers out of my ass, I could charge a cover and a two-drink minimum.

Of course, it’s awkward. These people can expose your deep, dark secrets in the bedroom, like when you sewed on that Ralph Lauren label to that comforter from Target. I can imagine the viciousness of the queens at the local gay bar:

Gurl, didja hear about hur and hur comforter? I knew it! I. Just. Knew. It! I knew that bitch could not possibly afford all that shit working retail. And I just knew those curtains were not from Restoration Hardware! Mm-mm-mm. Nobody can pass off that shit on this queen!

But the worst was when I ran into “The One.” The one who broke my tender, young heart.

Everyone has one of those, you know, when you were young and full of trust, and you didn’t know how another person could break your heart or hurt your dick with their teeth.

It was at the merch counter. I was second in line when I saw Fabrice walking towards me. Yeah, I know, how can a guy named “Fabrice” break my heart, right? It’s ridiculous. A “Fabrice” would likely be someone who would freshen up your clothes after a night at a smoky bar, not wreak havoc on your emotions.

I looked around frantically for some big and tall guy to hide behind or, pretend to be my boyfriend in case Fabrice saw me.

No such luck.

How I wished Brian wasn’t already at our seats. The last thing you want an ex-boyfriend to do is to find you standing by yourself, like that one time he found you in the middle of his bedroom with the spare key that you never returned and the “present” you left in the middle of his bed. Doing number two had never been so gratifying.

Just as I approached the counter, Fabrice caught up with me and introduced his Asian-of-the-month. When meeting a fellow gay Asian, I followed the traditional Asian custom of greeting where we check out each others’ outfits, give a combination smile/sneer, and turn away.

I didn’t know what he wanted, but I wanted to get away as fast as I can. So I paid for the first thing I saw. That’s how I ended up with a t-shirt in XXL, three letters that never appear together in my closet’s plane of existence. I thought the only letter that went along with “XX” was another “X”. I don’t know what “L” could possibly mean. “Lesbian,” perhaps?

I made my excuses and hurried away. The crowds were a blur; their bulk, a tide slowing my progress. I prayed my ex-boyfriend’s seats were not anywhere near my line of sight.

I found Brian just a couple of minutes before the light dimmed. I slumped into my seat and held on to his hand just as the applause rose, roaring like waves in my ears.


Next: More Assassin