The Howling, Part 12

It's the end of the year and she's back at it again, big time. I think I should get out now.

a day at the museum

Yesterday, bright and early in the morning, the phone rang. I didn't really want to, but I answered it, only to hear from a friend of mine, Joan, whom I hadn't heard from in a few months.

I didn't know why, but I was sure it wasn't good.

"Hey, do you want to go to the Museum today?" she asked.
"Umm...sure." I said, still half asleep.
"How've you been?" she asked.
"All right, I guess. How've *you* been?" I asked.

"Oh.....I have a lot to tell you," she says.

It's never a good sign when someone tells you this, for future reference.

"Ummm...Good stuff to tell me, or bad?" I ask sheepishly.

"I've been in the facility since November," she says matter of factly.
"They're letting me out now for the nights now."

Oh kay.


So it seems that she tried to commit suicide back in November, and has been in "the facility" since then.
In the early days she was there 24 hours a day, under suicide watch. Now, she's progressed.

In the past few weeks she's been allowed out. She still has to go there every day from 8 till 6, but they are letting her sleep at home now.
As she says they're trying to keep her "from isolating herself."

They're encouraging her to get out and socialize now, which is where I come in, I guess.

So we went to the museum and breakfast: she, her husband and daughter...and me.


From what she says, it's a little mensa group in there. They're all very well educated. It's actually remarkable.

Now, I've been privy to her problems for more than 10 years now so I can't say I was shocked by what I heard, but it was still not something I fully expected.

The three of us went to the Museum and had a nice enough time, though you could tell everyone was a bit on edge. It was nice enough, but that's not to say she didn't have her moments of triggering, as she called it. Something about the porcelain room nearly made her break down. She's still a bit fragile.

All in all, if I'm honest, it was a bit exhausting for me, however.

Joan and her husband have what I consider one of the best marriages of anyone I know. I admire and envy their marriage so much. I have to feel for her husband especially, since his mother is literally on her deathbed right now too. I'm, in a way, more concerned about him than her.
For the most part we were all in pretty good spirits.

As Mark, her husband says, it was like "MST 3000 goes to the museum."
Everyone was just so serious in there, I had to make some jokes, you know.
We got a few disapproving looks, but who cares, right?

There's nothing that making fun of others can't do. Sarcasm therapy, I like to call it.

It's remarkable healing.

Papa don't take no mess

I drove by the post office yesterday to see the firemen putting the flag at half staff. I know why, but I'd rather think in my mind it was in tribute to the greatness that is Mr. James Brown.
That's the way it *should* be.

I'm sitting here listening to "Popcorn" right now, thinking when it's my time to go, wouldn't it be great to have a show-out like his....horse drawn hearse to the Apollo Theater. Yes indeed.

I'm sure there's an Iraqi dictator swinging from the gallows by the time I finish typing this, but as far as I'm concerned, there's only one real death that matters in these past few days.

Tahiti 80

because I'm feeling Francophile...tonight:

rive gauche?

Last night, on a cold wintery night, my friend Sylvie decided to throw a party....outdoors. Since she lives in a tiny apartment, as do I and our mutual friend Velinda, she invited us to the bridge across the bayou (pictured above).
She brought quiches and baguettes, and her friends brought wine. Her son, who was in town for the holiday, lit little torches.
It was like having a little campfire on the bridge.
Velinda and I brought whatever portable chairs and tables we had.
Velinda also brought Jack and Naomi, two children she was baby sitting that night. Jack is in second grade and Naomi is his younger sister. They were adorable and amazingly intelligent.
I spent much of the night playing with them, feeding the ducks and a horde of menacing geese.
Of course Sylvie closed shop abruptly. By the time things were getting rolling, it was over. But that was to be expected. I can't say we were surprised. The party started at 6 and was over by 8.
I don't think I've ever seen her that late. Come 7 pm, Sylvie inevitably disappears, like some sort of vampire in reverse. Don't even think about asking her to do anything past 7pm. It was remarkable that she lasted that long.

The bridge is really pretty at night. On it, to the east you can hear the church bells, above you can see the stars, in the south you can see the skyline of the city in the distance, hear the fish jumping.

For a brief while Velinda and I found ourselves a bit away from the rest of the guests, looking at each other and listening to the voices in the distance, smiling at the incongruity of it all.
She, I, little Jack and Naomi were the only ones there speaking English. It was like we had been suddenly transported to France....well, at least until 8 pm.

and a partridge in a pear tree?

Up here every morning I'm greeted with a fascinating array of birds.
Nearly every day lately I seem to see a few swans who've made their way down from what must be a nest a little way up the bayou. They're just beautiful.



Among the other birds are mallards, geese, seagulls and the occasional wild parrot, though I used to see more of those where I lived before.


The past week I saw a pelican diving into the water like a kamikaze. Beautiful!

Backlot

I came home yesterday after work, in the miserable drizzling rain, the day after a deluge.

In a rush to get home and out of my wet clothes, to begin my long awaited Xmas holiday, I found myself frustrated, blocked on my own street by obnoxious orange cones. I have to take a very short detour to get home, but long enough to be irritated.

I see a herd of film trucks blocking the street about a hundred feet from my apartment. People are scurrying everywhere, unloading film equipment.

A little research yields up the answer. Seems they were filming part of that Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett movie in my neighborhood. They'd been camped uptown earlier, but for at least one day they moved up here. The movie is an adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, my research tells me. It guess it makes sense to film up here then after all, since my neighborhood is predominately from the teens and twenties.

Stangely enough, it's not the first time.
Last year, before
You-Know-What, in my pre-deluge neighborhood, Jude Law, Sean Penn et al. actually camped out for a few weeks near my old apartment. I never did see them however. I did see Sean Penn one day in the line to see a movie at Canal Place one lonely Sunday, but that's beside the point.

I didn't see Brad or Cate yesterday, not even sure they were there, but they might very well have been. I wouldn't doubt it.

Funny world in which we live, isn't it..where you can come home from work and find a celebrity in your neighborhood.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it doesn't seem right somehow.

Deja Vu

Last weekend, my friend Dennis asked me to go third wheeling with him again
His ex-boyfriend had invited him to a housewarming party in the deepest darkest wasteland of the Upper Bywater. We both were a bit afraid to venture up there, but we did. We found it. It was creepy up there. We drove off.
Being early, he asked if I wouldn't mind going with him to another party, in a somewhat safer section of the Garden District.
I said, "sure." We drove up to a large building set like an island between two intersecting streets and I instantly recognized the place.
Twelve or so years ago, I had been brought to a party in the exact same place.
My friend Desiree had lured me there with the old carrot trick of saying there "might be some gay men there"
She knew she was lying. I half-knew she was lying. But it worked every time.
It probably, sadly, still would.

As Dennis and I were ascending the steps, I was in a weird haze of deja vu. We finally got up to the apartment and went in.
In the intervening decade or so it had been beautifully redone. When I had first been there it was like a flop house, old shag carpet, peeling paint, thrift store furniture.
Now, however, the hardwood floors were stripped and gleaming. It looked like Pier One show room.
The hosts this night were a married couple, friends of Dennis' from his former job. The guests were all stylish and hip young thirtysomethings with few springlings of younger and older here and there.
It was all very nice and polite...and dull.
The hostess and her (ambiguously gay) husband offered me a champagne cocktail on the (now enclosed) porch.
He had a higher voice than she did.

"You know," I told the hostess, still dazedly looking around. "I was here exactly on this spot about 12 years ago."
"Oh," she replied, a bit taken aback by my excitement over this fact.
"Yes, exactly here, this very spot," I went on. "I was talking this Tulane girl out of committing suicide. She had done too much coke in your bedroom right there. She wanted to jump."

Silence.

"The porch wasn't enclosed then," I went on. "It looks really nice now, though. I like what you've done with it."


"Thanks, but it's riddled with termites..." she finally responded....and on she went with a long detailed description of the termite problem.

But who cares. I spent the rest of the party remembering. That night 12 years ago I was still fairly young, but felt old. I was surrounded by college freshmen from Tulane. The party that night had been thrown by a friend of Desiree's ex boyfriend, Ross.
The only people that night there my own age, I rememeber, were Ross...and a couple much like the host and hostess of the place now.

That night 12 years ago, I met a bona fide gigilo. My first.
He, much like the host last Saturday, was ambigously gay, but his clientele was older uptown women, I was told. He was not particularly good looking, but as a ballet dancer, I suppose he was flexible. Who knows.
He and his "girl friend," a buxon woman in some arcane graduate program at Tulane. I can't remember which, took a strange liking to me.

In the kitchen, I remember some very tall preppy boy named St. John (pronounced Sinjin) obnoxiously drunk, guarding the door. He was the first one everyone met upon entering.

Every other guest who stumbled up to the party, told the same story. They had each been robbed at gunpoint downstairs that night, they said. No one, however, seemed very alarmed.

I spent that night 12 years ago, much like I did last Saturday, surrounded by strangers whom I will most likely never meet again. In the decade that has followed, the topics of conversation have graduated ....or degraded (again I'm not sure which). Once it was an endless droning about music and sex and drugs....now it's an endless droning on real estate and jobs.
That seems to be life in a nutshell sometimes.

Pretty

More of her lovely artwork here

A sweet Norwegian breeze

I'm here tonight listening to, as my friend Michael puts it, (quoting Erlend's newest band's name), "the whitest boy ever,"
Erlend Oye,
or as one of the interviewer I've read perfectly describes him, "the extravagantly bespectacled Erlend Oye."

I'm still too computer-skills illiterate to be able to post any of his music here. I wish I could.

But it's worth seeking out.

He's so soothing and innocently seductive.
I really can't see how anyone could listen to him and not fall a little bit in love with him.

Erlend Oye's official website

Wikipedia's bio

Before/After

Not quite a decade ago, my friend Danni invited me to a funeral of the father of a cute girl she kind of had a crush on. I didn't know any of these people, of course, but I went.

(I know, I know, but hey, I went anyway...why not, I figured.)

It was at Dillard (the university, not the department store. It was quite the extravaganza too. We're talking multimedia.
But I digress.

Flash forward. Danni's been in San Francisco for more than 5 years now. I saw the girl once, at the Circle Bar, with a group of white girl lesbian punks one night.
Suddenly, one night about a year ago, I'm browsing aimlessly on Friendster and see someone that jogs my memory. It's the cute high school girl....except, well, she's ...ummm...changed a bit.

She's become a man.

There, right front and center is...umm... his...picture, shirtless on the beach.



Ummm...can't deny it, it's damn good work, don't you think?

Damn good.

Random Slightly Obscure 80's Musical Crushes

Back in the day, I never did care much for Curiosity Killed the Cat's music, but how could one not swoon over pretty boys dancing about in berets?

And a name like (lead singer's) "Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot" ? I mean really.

I recently found out that I shared a crush with none other than Andy Warhol. He was an admirer too (and I'm sure for exactly the same reasons).

It was white boy "soul" as performed by British male models, I believe....and not really all that bad actually.




In the mid eighties, I was enthralled, I'm embarrassed to admit, with Spandau Ballet.
Yes.
Now to my credit I always hated the lead singer Tony Hadley and his...umm...vaguely Vegas-style stylings, if you know what I mean.

But the Kemp brothers, well...they were what a teen aged me dreamed of being: suave... British....nattily dressed.
It didn't happen, alas.



What can one say, Adam Ant was one of the prettiest men around, wasn't he?



I had a crush on Sade's band members....but most especially Stuart Matthewman (on the far right). He's still pretty cute, but back then, all pork pie hats askew...
Swoon.
He was Jewish...cute....and talented.
(Miss Adu herself was another crush, but we'll save that for another day)

Just because...

I remember falling in love with her, from this alone...
sigh

Life in the trenches

A week or so ago, someone responded to my match.com ad. I was excited, despite the decade or more of disappointment with which the internet has provided me.
Why don't I ever learn?

Anyway...

He wrote to me all eagerness. I responded all eagerness back. It was all good for the first exchange. I asked a few simple getting to know you questions...basic pleasantries (i.e. "how are you?" "how long have you lived here?" "How was the dinner with your friends you mentioned?")
You get the gist.

To this, I get this response:
"Hey, how are you? It's great here. Just finished washing the car. Great day, isn't it? So, there's something I didn't mention. I'm HIV poz. Hope this isn't a deal breaker."

Ummm...ok.
What does one say to this? I didn't know. Now aside from the whole "HIV poz" thing, can't he answer a freaking question? I mean not so much that I really cared what he said, it's just the fact that he seemed to completely ignore what I'd written. That irritates the hell out of me.
But anyway, enough of my ranting.

I respond...as gently as I can. I'm tempted to just stop emailing....because frankly even if the "HIV poz" isn't a "deal breaker" then the ignoring of my questions is.
But I don't. I wouldn't do that.
I write back asking him a few more questions...all very carefully worded as to be gentle.
He writes back...again with an inane recap of his day....no mention of anything that I'd asked.
I write back, just as inanely (hey, I can play that too)....and ask about the trip he mentioned. "Are you going to Houston to visit family then?"
Finally he responds to a question.
"I'm going out there to visit my AA friends. We're really close."

I think I laughed out loud at that. I mean really....could it get any more comic?

So, to recap:

He's an HIV "poz" "recovering alcoholic" GWM who wants a "LTR" in which there is only talk about the weather and washing the car.

Now if *only* his ad had just said so much and saved us all a lot of time.
But no.

Now, chalk this up with some of my more recent comic miscarriages of "romance"

and one gets a pretty sad picture.

Martha Stewart's Holiday Guide to Infantile Cannibalism

Like the White House turkey, I've been granted a pardon....well, for a few hours at least.
It won't last long however.
I've been trapped on the WB for the past 3 days straight. It's been one long exhausting, mentally and spiritually draining few days alone with Mom.
She's had me driving her non stop.
She's insane....I'm insane..... but no one, but no one... is as insane as Martha Stewart and her minions, I think.

I caught a bit of her show the other day, only to see this horrific sight (above). This one is less freaky than the baby pies she also features, however.

That scary bitch needs to be back in prison as soon as possible, I'm telling you.

Her Gentleman Caller

Yesterday was a little prelude to the holidays...a gathering of "family" of sorts.

Velinda and I went to our mutual friend, Sylvie's, little apartment across the bayou. We went to help her decorate it with christmas lights. We had lunch at Cafe Degas. We took an impromptu side trip to Home Depot for nails, and spent the rest of the afternoon putting up lights in her little apartment.

Sylvie is French and, well, how do I say?...a bit "manique"

Someone said later that night "Oh, she's just French. You know. That's how they are."

Maybe.

But she was pretty "French" when we first started lunch, if you know what I mean. A brisk walk, a double espresso and an empty stomach can do that I guess.
But we love Sylvie. What's not to love?

The more exciting part of the light-hanging, however, was that I finally got to meet Velinda's new beau.
They have been "courting" (I have to use the archaicism here. It's the only word that works, I think) for a few months now.
They met at church. They've even been talking marriage. They're taking things very methodically and carefully. They're even in a pre-marital sort of counseling.

It's all very proper and old fashioned. They hold hands. They go to church together.

Now, of course, he's about a decade younger than she is, is from rural Mississippi, has a number of tattoos and a mohawk and...well....how do we put it...a bit of a history.

But, hey, who doesn't?

In his heart, however, I think he's straight out of the Chivalrous South.

The most charming part of this 19th century romance is that it's being played out by the two most unlikely actors.

You just don't have any idea.
Any.

I knew a lot about him from what she's told me, and I already approved. I already was an advocate for the boy, even before meeting him, but I have to say he completely charmed me.

We can't put the cart before the horse, but I'm quite excited for her.
Later that night, he, Velinda and I went to dinner at her friend's house, and met up with Velinda's sister. She's easing him into meeting the family. She's already met his family.

She seems nervous, as one can only expect one to be. But I have to hand it to her; she handles this sort of thing, the craziness that comes with a potenital serious relationship, more rationally than just about anyone I know.
I admire that. I don't understand it, but I admire it.

Unrequested reviews of the last few movies I've seen:

Marie Antoinette-- Beautiful, but plotless. Much like Lost in Translation, it didn't seem to go anywhere. I think that was the point however.
I took my mother, she and I will see anything with costumes. She hated it (she expected something). I liked it ( I expected it to be worse). More Bow Wow Wow would have helped, however. But then what would it not help?

Borat---I took myself to see this alone. I love stupid comedies. This one was not quite as stupid as I expected. It was oddly like Farhenheit 911.
I know that sounds peculiar, but that's what kept coming to my mind while watching it. It shows America at its worst I guess. There are parts that are pretty stupid.
It's vile, disgusting, offensive and pretty damn wonderful. Yes, it lives up to the hype.


Running with Scissors---I'd read bad reviews of this too, much like with Marie Antoinette. That's always a good way to go into a movie. It was ok, nothing great. I really don't like Annette Benning. She was the worst part of one of my all time worst movies, "American Beauty." Ugh. But the lead actor is good. It's got a light tone, despite the depressing subject matter, and great set decoration. I'm a sucker for set decoration. I know everyone keeps going on about what a terrible life young Augusten had (never did finish his book by the way, zzzzzzzz) but it didn't look that bad to me. I mean come on, sex with Joseph Fiennes?! I'd take a bit of homemade electroshock for a little of that, wouldn't you?

Freedom Writers---this one has not even been released yet. My friend Velinda invited me to it. She had gotten free, advanced screening tickets to see it. She didn't know anything about it either. We both walked into it completely ignorant.
It turned out to be a Dangerous Minds type real life drama starring Hilary Swank and that guy from Grey's Anatomy. Hilary Swank plays a young first time teacher in L.A. who is all earnestness and wants to change the world. As you can imagine she runs into hell in the classroom. She is teaching a class of gang members Freshman English. They chew her up, they spit her out....she grows some balls...and it turns into a Rocky of teaching. The best part of the movie I think were the young actors playing her students. They were completely unaffected and natural, not a false note. She motivates them with Anne Frank into telling their own stories. It has its weepy moments, but it was pretty good. It's based on a real life story.

Bathrooms of the World

Just found a site that is doing what I've long thought would be a good idea, namely a review of random public bathrooms.
Where's Robin Leach when you need him?

Bathrooms of the World
Enjoy!

"I love your paper flower"

Saw this (below) tonight on craigslist's missed connections and thought it was the best piece of (inadvertent ?) poetry I've read in a while...in a sick demented 21 year old E. A. Poe-ish kind of way.
(except that whole "vegan pastries" line...ruins the whole tone...but anyway...)

It still charmed me. (And to think, he's too young to even understand the genius of his own O.N. John allusion...) Too cute:

i love your paper flower - 21

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2006-11-05, 8:46PM CST

you were sitting, reading beat poetry, at the rue on oak last tuesday. you were with some weird girl with short black hair wearing sweater boots.

later i saw you buying vegan pastries at wholefoods.

i seem to always be running into you. i think it's fate. we are meant for each other.

I am tall with black hair. it is short. i cut it myself. i will cut yours too.

i don't get paid very much, but i would like you to take all my money.

i honestly love you.

The Howling

Tonight, walking into my darkened apartment building, I can hear the unearthly howlings of an unhappy creature above.
She shrieks in horrible muffled pain. I can hear sudden clattering and frantic, random clapping and snapping of fingers, interrupted by gasps and screams of pain. Occasionally I hear sobs of pain that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The sounds echo up the darkened stairs. The sounds get louder and more distinct with every footstep. It's going to be a scary Halloween night.

Unfortunately, it is Halloween here every other week or so.

You see, I have a neighbor who has some sort of psychosis. I don't know exactly what kind. But she's got it. I'm not sure what the diagnosis is, but it's bad.

Periodically, often ironically coinciding with the full moon (I'm not making this up, I swear) she goes into a frenzy of screaming and clapping. She has not left her apartment for the past three days.

She's been in there for the past 70 or so hours, clapping and screaming and moaning like a person possessed all day and all night.
Once, during a full moon, I stayed up, all night listening to her, for two nights in a row. She didn't let up for 48 straight hours.

I've seen her occasionally. She looks like a perfectly (well not quite, but almost...you know...) normal 50 something, spinsterish schoolteacher (much like me?). She's rather skittish, but for the most part, from 50 yards away, she seems normal enough. Every so often, however, she turns into a middle aged version of Linda Blair (redundant?)

When I first came to see this place, I chatted with the landlord. I asked him naively about the neighbors. He rattled off a bit of a biography about each. I didn't really pay much mind. It all seemed pretty innocuous what he told me.

In retrospect, however, his mention of the across the hall neighbor was telling
"Oh, you'll know________. She takes care of the yard. She's ummm....kind of eccentric."

Little did I know.

He told me that the couple who had been in my apartment before, wanted to move to another apartment in the same building "for more room." Again, at the time I didn't think much of it. It seemed to make sense. Looking now at their new apartment, however, I realize they don't have any more room.
Now I know why they really wanted to move.

My mother insists I need to move. She's afraid the woman will take a knife to us all. My friend Velinda (who got a tiny taste of The Howling one night...in a very abbreviated form...has offered her blow up mattress and floor of her apartment across the street).


As I type this right now, I can hear her across the hall slapping herself and making incoherent sounds, sometimes what sounds like sobbing. It's very disconcerting, I have to say.

She'll be doing this all night again, I guess.
Up here, it's always Halloween

Shortbus

Yesterday Carlos and I went to see "Shortbus."
I'd been wanting to see it, despite the so so reviews. (Thank you Carlos again, for keeping from looking like a total perv there.)

My friend Dennis had told me that it was good. It's "very New York," he added.
(he was right)
He'd also told me that the first few minutes are the most graphic....so be sure to not miss them. (he was even more right)

He'd liked it a lot, and my friend Mark in Toronto had written me the following a few days ago:

"Oh, and on Friday I went to see Shortbus, the new John
Cameron Mitchell film (I never did see Hedwig).
Despite being about depressed and unhappy people, I
thought it was unrelentingly positive and upbeat and
hopeful. So I liked it, as it lifted my spirits
momentarily. There is some explicit sex, and the acting isn't
all that great, but it has a kind of naive optimism
that people could have a brighter future."

That sounded like recommendation enough.


Besides the fact that it seems like I'd been hearing about this film for years. I remember my friend Ben telling me that his roommate had been up for a part in it.

He didn't get the part, I'm afraid.

I can't say that the film is a complete success.
There's everything you could hope for, full frontal nudity....money shots...hetero-homo-ambi-sex...attractive, interesting actors....absolutely beautiful scenes of a cardboard New York city....lovely score....
but no identifiable plot really.

It seemed like it was written on a whim, and you could almost hear them saying in the background:
"You know what would be cool? If, like, when she has her orgasm, the whole city....."

There's a lot of emoting and a distant feeling that something "important" is being related, but you're never quite sure what it is.
Still, I have to agree with my friend Mark's point about it being about depressing subject matter, but not depressing. It's really kind of happy. And a movie about sex that's happy is pretty rare, isn't it?

It made me kind of hope for a 1960s kind of naivite. That was worth the ticket price right there, I guess.

A Voodoo Awakening

The weather being cool, I went to bed without the roar of both 1970's vintage window units...just one. I awakened this morning to a dull rumbling sound over the ac. Half asleep still, I couldn't quite figure it out.
Now I'm fully awake and fully aware. The roar of music is the Voodoo Fest. I'm sitting here in my living room typing away, but I'd might as well be right there.
No need for a ticket, I can hear everything. Even the announcers.

Although the music is pretty good... I think it's time to see if I can get my car out of here somehow... and perhaps head off to the peace and quiet of Target.

Nice day for a wipe wedding....

Let's see those Project Runway prima donnas do *this*
More toilet paper masterpieces here

Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike two!

Wow, that sure was quick.


I just got off of the phone with bachelor number 150 (?)
(see just below)
After a long round about, he tells me that he's "reconciled with his ex."

So, I guess the good news is at least I won't have to disappoint him with meeting him in person any time soon.

I think this is the 3rd time in my life that such a thing has happened....someone getting back together with an ex before my even getting to meet them.

So, in the past month, I've snagged two potential dates, only to lose them before they manifested. Used to be I had to wait till I met them for that.
ahem

too (good?) to be true

So, a few weeks ago, someone responded to my (now defunct) match.com ad.
It said:
-------------------------------
OK, SO HEAR IT GOES. THIS IS A LITTLE , WELL ALOT UNUSUAL FOR ME. I HAVE NEVER CONSIDERED ON LINE DATING OR ANYTHING OF THE KIND. BUT, MY FRIEND DORE AND I ARE SURFING AROUND JUST FOR FUN TODAY AND UP POPS YOUR FACE. FINDING IT HARD TO SCROLL PAST IT, I DECIDE, AFTER A LONG CONSULTATION WITH DORE, TO MAKE CONTACT. IN ORDER TO THIS I HAVE TO JOIN THE SITE. SO I AM HERE AND AM ONLY HERE TO SAY HI TO YOU. I HAVE NOT MADE A PROFILE SHEET YET, MOSTLY BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING.
YES I KNOW, NOT HAVING A PROFILE SHEET MEANS YOU HAVE NO PHOTOS TO LOOK AT, SO I WILL BE ON THAT AS SOON AS I FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO IT. BUT IN THE MEAN TIME. .....I AM ATHLETIC AND HAVE PLAYED FOOTBALL MY WHOLE LIFE. I AM 37 NOW AND ONLY PLAY ON A FLAG TEAM ON THE WEEKENDS. I HIKE COMPETITIVELY(SP) (AND AM NOT A GOOD SPELLER).
I HAVE TRAVELED THE WORLD HIKING, JUMPED OUT OF PLANES AND AM READY TO HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE WHO VALUE THE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE LIKE FRIENDS AND GOOD RELATIONSHIPS. I AM VERY CLOSE TO MY FAMILY AND MY NEPHEW AND NIECE ARE THE CENTER OF MY WORLD. I SPEND ALOT OF TIME WITH THEM.
I AM NOT INTO THE CLUB SCENE AT ALL AND IN FACT HAVE NOT BEEN NEAR IT FOR A LONG LONG TIME. I STAY INSHAPE AND LIKE TO DO OUTDOOR THINGS. THE SOFA IS NICE, BUT ONLY FOR CUDDLING AND KISSING AND NOT FOR LIVING. I RUN SEVERAL ART GALLERIES ON ROYAL STREET AND ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND AM VERY HAPPY WITH MY LIFE.

OK , I REALIZE THIS IS LONG, BUT THE GOAL IS TO GET YOU TO EMAIL ME BACK, WHEN THE COMPETITION SEEM TO HAVE THIS PROFILE THING FIGURED OUT. SO I AM COMPETING AT HALF MAST HERE.

WELL, THERE IT IS, ALOT OF WORK FROM A GOOD GUY, JUST TO TALK TO YOU. SEEMS HARD TO PASS UP DOESN,T IT.
I,LL TRY TO HAVE THIS PROFILE THING DONE AS SOON AS I CAN. HOPE TO HEAR BACK FROM YOU MY PERSONAL EMAIL IS-------- IF YOU WANT TO TRY THAT IN CASE I GET LOST IN PROFILE LAND AND HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO GET OUT. MAYBE I WILL TAKE SOME DRIED BREAD WITH ME JUST IN CASE .

---------------------------
Ok, so I didn't fully read it because it was all in caps.
(I mean really. )

But eventually curiousity (boredom?) (frustration?) (all of the above?) got the best of me and I did read it....and eventually I did write back.

I didn't quite know what to say to this, of course, I mean what can *any*one say to all this???
But we've been corresponding off and on back and forth for a little while now...not quite a month or so.

About a week or so I gave him a call.
I was actually pleasantly surprised, in that he didn't seem to be as much as conceited as I imagined him to be. Of course, I could be wrong. He had a strong masculine voice which, I have to admit, was attractive.
I caught him in the midst of a America's Next Top Model-a-thon. He was laid up in bed because he had fractured his foot (just like I had in July!...but unlike me, it was while playing football, and not coming down the steps in flip flops.

Now, in case I weren't intimidated enough already, here are some quotes (paraphrased) from the conversation we had that night:

In response to jobs:

"I'm the guy who tore the projects down. I was ____________(insert official title here, which I forget) and spearheaded the tearing down and redevolopment of the projects."

"I got tired of the rat race. I was making lots and lots of money. I had the whole lifestyle."

"I ended up going to Cambodia. I joined the Buddhist monestary there for a few months. I came back with a different perspective...."

uh...ok.

"I went out to California. I was slated to be a contestant for Survivor Pearl Islands. I was in the final selection process, but didn't make it."

uh...ok.
So in between competitive hiking (wtf?), football playing, auditioning for Survivor, teaching art, running, owning galleries, he finds time to tear down the projects *and* join a Buddhist Monestary?

I made the mistake of telling him that I hate reality television....by the way...and the quarter, where he lives. He seemed to come around to my point on the Quarter, and we met somewhere in the middle on at least Project Runway.

Despite my mixture of intimidation, sneeringness, insecurity and horror....I'm attracted, I have to admit.

Early on, he sent me a photo of himself wearing a sweater I myself own. When asked about it, he said, "Oh, I guess so. I don't know, my mother buys most of my clothes. I'm hopeless about that"

*That* was enough to attract me to him there.

To sum it all up, I'm very conflicted about it all. And very nervous about my impending meeting with him.

I can only imagine that I will disappoint him horribly in person ....and he will rejoin the Buddhist monastery in Cambodia...and soon the projects will return too. And it'll all be my fault.

God help me.

Frances, the website.

I happened upon this site from a journal which I read every now and then.

Posted there was a clip from Frances's webjournal, chronicalling her dazzling life as a high priced transexual call "girl" in London.

I must say, it's something else.

Let's just start with the charming conceit of a call girl named "Frances" and go from there....I mean really...

Prepare yourself to be charmed:

Fransexual

Frances's weblog

the bayou

After work today, I decided to go again for a walk in my (fairly new) neighborhood. It's just beautiful today, so, despite the pain in my feet, I figured I'd take a walk. I was not alone. All along the bayou were people walking dogs, a few boats in the water.


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I particularly love the view from the bridge near my apartment (above).
If one walks about a hundred feet down, however, you can get an equally pretty picture of the skyline of downtown New Orleans rising over the water, with a line of old houses in the foreground. It's especially pretty at night.

I'm beginning to like my new neighborhood. It's not where I wanted to be. It seems so far from everything (namely uptown), but I'm beginning to think that that's not such a bad thing. It's like a whole undiscovered little world up here.



I've been here before of course, many times...but it's not until you're out and about on foot that you really start to see things.

the mystery of the disappearing cute boy with kitten

A while back, I posted about a guy who had responded to an ad of mine.
He's a decorator, cute, with an even cuter cat
The last I heard of him was after his suggestion that we meet. In the interim
I finally got a phone line, and I gave him my number. I called him a day or so later and left a message. I emailed him with my number too, just to be sure he got it.
Of course, I haven't heard anything from him still.
Nada.
Not sure what to make of that, but I can't say that it's never happened before.
Anyway, I'd have liked to have met him...and maybe he might contact me still, right?....despite my fear.

Doesn't this just say it all?

Interests Collage (with thanks to Julie, from whose blog I stole this)

My Interests Collage!

Create your own! Originally Written By ga_woo for LJ, Hosted and ReWritten for MySpace by darkman424