We’re all just fumbling in the dark — for a heart of hearts
September 2008
The Archives
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09.30.08We are really rich Italian satanists, we do whatever we want
(Crash, you might want to wait to read this until we’re hanging out, it’s some racy stuff)
Sam and I at Folsom StreetThe longer I live, the more life seems like a forgotten pile of Polaroids. I don’t understand memory. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work. That’s the reason I keep this journal.
I can think about the past two days intellectually. I can play it backwards and forwards, zero in on this or that. Biting into a hamburger, an orgasm, a moment of levity. I want to say that I’m not glorifying what I did this weekend. The platitude is to write what really happened and let the readers judge for themselves, but that’s never true. Objectivity is impossible. Once you touch pen to paper, sound waves to voice recognition software, an inexorable process begins. Objective truth (if it ever existed) is lost, and everything is novelized, stylized, edited, adapted.
Once you start writing, everything becomes fiction.
Saturday.
Mario and I pound down an overpriced bottle of Absolut in a Midtown alley, and walk to Anthem. Dancing, smoking, dancing, they play Daft Punk, and Sam arrives from Reno.
Drive back to Mario’s house, and we all try to sleep for the fair tomorrow. Sam and I can’t sleep, so at about 4 a.m. we get breakfast at the Denny’s across the street from Mario’s house. It’s dark when we get there, and light when we leave. We go back to the house and watch The Devil’s Rejects on my MacBook until Mario wakes up.
Sunday.
Contacts inserted, teeth brushed, we head to the car. The sunlight streams down as we cross the strip mall desert of the I- 80 corridor. Snacks at the gas station, lunch at the In-N-Out we always go to outside of Richmond, over the Bay Bridge, and we’re parking on Folsom Street.
We follow the first people in leather or latex that we find, and enter the fair. It’s pretty much a ghost town by San Francisco standards at this point, so we walk down the length of the fair and take in our first dose of half-naked people you wish would be naked and completely naked people you wish were clothed.
Sam presiding over the stage before semi-naked Twister erupted on it.The Presets weren’t playing for another three hours, so Sam and I followed Mario shopping. Urban Outfitters and H & M later, we returned to find a formidable crowd at the fair.
There were so many people dressed so many different ways. Men dressed as every sexual fantasy imaginable.
I wanted to meet Taylor there, but he was busy. Mario ended up meeting his Amy Winehouse stand-in friend Gilbert, who was a spun out mess. Sam met his friend that he usually meets when in the city, but the guy was busy. The crowd thickened to a point where it was nearly impossible to move.
My expert crowd negotiation, developed over the years on the streets of Manhattan, aided us getting back to the stage in time for the Presets show.
I put my N95 on continuous photo mode once Julian and Kim got onstage.
The show was so fucking hot. Afterwards, they were hanging out behind the stage talking to people and taking pictures with them. I could have done it, but I was too starstruck. I would have probably embarrassed myself as I was kind of talking about my dream of a Kim/Julian sandwich all month.
Julian in his “come hither” pose.
Right at the end, he thanked us for everything and smiled…it’s blurry but he was just so damn cute, I didn’t think I got it on film.
The Presets mingling with fans.They were so nice and affable. I MUST bring my copy of Beams and get them to sign it. Everyone was doing that and I felt like the dumbest fan ever. What I have to do is get Beams on LP and then get them to sign it. That I would splooge over.
That picture of the guys was the last picture I took of the night. Think I need to invest in some kind of hidden camera… but then again I’m not sure if I would want to re-watch the rest of the night without the Disaronno lens through which I remember it.
I met up with Megan after the show, she got much of the show on her HD camcorder, which should be incredible to watch.
Mario and I braved the crowds back to where Sam was, at the Powerhouse. There was still a huge line to get in, so we walked around, he got some souvenirs, and I checked the Treasure Island Media booth to see if Damon was there. He had AIDSface in his last video and I wanted to confirm if he had it in real life. I visited the booth twice during the day and he wasn’t there either time, although Christian was there (who looked really gross compared to in his videos) and I barely recognized Dawson…he looked like a burned-out investment banker.
So I was stood up by Damon and Jesse O’Toole, but they are awesome for showing up on the first night Sam and I visited the Powerhouse. That was way better than glimpsing them in some booth.
The fair was this beautiful tableau of everyone doing anything that turned them on and owning it. Sam told me that he’d seen two guys making out while they choked each other, I thought it would be a cool idea. We saw a woman completely covered in rope, suspended from this big contraption and being spun around. It was definitely a renaissance of pleasure.
We waited in line for a little bit to get into the Powerhouse, then got some drinks. The crowd was more mixed than I thought it was going to be, there were some people that were fully clothed. As the night wore on, that became less and less true.
1 shot of apple pucker
3 amaretto sours
1 large black tea (the stimulants with depressants feeling was in full force, I have a low caffiene tolerance)
sips off of whatever Sam was drinkingAnd I was officially fucked up. The place was packed all night. I mean, so packed. You think you’ve been packed into, say, a commercial airliner? We were so packed you couldn’t move. Like, at all. As in, it took 20 minutes to cross the back room.
While we were packed in, hands were roving. We were squeezed through the cramped sea of shirtless men in harnesses and occasional hipsters (Mario noticed our Last.fm friend Eggis in the crowd). Under the too-red glow of the heat lamps on the ceiling, we stared at the ceiling-mounted TVs with Colt porn playing on them.
A blue hand was preparing to fist a red ass. The color was all burned out. Stuck at the threshold of the back room, we finally inched our way into the smoking area. Sam and I lit up cigarettes, conscious every moment of the people pressed against us. I would look down to ash my cigarette and hope it didn’t land on anyone’s foot. Miraculously, we got a seat near the entrance to the smoking area, and watched the scene unfold. Sex was happening all over, someone was getting fucked up the ass a yard or so away, someone else was vigorously sucking a dick somewhere else near us.
With the pleasant glow of my libations, and the even-more pleasant glow of my cigarette, I was immersed in sex, continuing my own private ritual. Inhale smoke, exhale smoke, ash on the ledge. The universe had been reduced to only one goal, increasing one’s pleasure. My hands were around Sam’s neck, and his around mine. Mirroring the couple he had seen hours earlier, I was lost in the intoxicating feeling of being without air. Making out was the antidote to roving hands, and I could feel them. Two, three, four hands under my shirt…someone pulling on my tie.
Hazily, my attention shifted…Sam wasn’t using enough pressure on my neck. I glanced down to see a strange man on his knees unzipping my fly.
Unlike our last trip, there was now nowhere to run. Nothing to insulate us from the seething and boiling-over heat of pure, unmitigated sex. The throbbing of the now-unrecognizable beat and the unbearable heat and closeness washed over my asphyxia and nicotine-induced daze.
I had foreseen this moment months before. You can’t just flirt with filth, you can’t be surrounded by hundreds of half-naked HIV positive men reveling in their sexuality, without some of it becoming you. You can’t be a tourist in your own life. The man on his knees smiled. I noticed he was asian.
I zipped my fly, tried to fasten my belt, grabbed Mario’s arm, and dragged him through the human flotsam. Through the back room, the front room, past the bar, and onto the bracing autumn cold of a San Francisco night.
It was pitch-dark, but a veritable army was cleaning up and disassembling the stalls for the fair. I couldn’t believe it, but it was only 8 p.m.
We stayed outside for a while until Sam called. He came outside, and we went over to the much tamer Hole in the Wall (which, incidentally, had moved so it was right next to the Powerhouse). We had this oddly cute for his age waiter who served us amaretto sours with actual Disaronno, which made the nearly $8 drinks seem actually worth it. We found somewhere to sit and observed the crowd. I watched an attractive middle-aged couple decked out in leather make out for about 30 minutes, and Mario looked up the meaning of everyone’s colored handkerchiefs. The guy in front of us was apparently a cop, and the one next to him was into safe sex and bottoming.
I was very hesitant to return to the Powerhouse, but we figured that after about an hour it would clear out to the point where we could actually walk around without being stuck in the sex sardine can. We went back to look, and most of the sardine people had cleared out. There was still sex, but it seemed more casual. There were a lot of couples doing cute leather couple things, and even a few dancing in the back. As we ascended the stairs from the bar to the back room, we came upon this guy licking the fuck out of this guy’s boot. I don’t have a foot fetish, but this guy was so turned on by that it was catching. He ripped the guy’s boot off and started licking the fuck out of the guy’s foot. The expression on his face was pure passion. It’s just hot to see people living out their sexual fantasies.
So we returned to our previous haunt by the door, and smoked while these two incredibly sexy guys (the one nearest me beautifully coiffed in Patrick-like chin-length hair) violently sucked each other’s dicks and made out. I have to say, it was way better than TV. As a child of the Internet, I am first and foremost a voyeur. I was getting turned on, and felt a hand massaging my groin. I looked the guy straight in his eye, the smoke from my cigarette billowing towards him. I never broke eye contact with him as I smoked and he massaged. But by the time he reached for my belt, it was time to go again.
Mario and I talked to this really cool guy outside of the bar about the fair and everything. He struck up a conversation with me because I was in a suit too. He was old, possibly in his early 60s, but everything in his demeanor echoed someone intelligent who knows how to have fun. I want to be him someday. I deal with such needy and stupid old people on a daily basis, it’s nice to know that some of them aren’t assholes.
After he took his leave, Sam burst out of the bar channeling Bill Moseley, but looking naked without a shotgun. “Let’s go,” he said.
We quickened our pace and caught up with him as he briskly continued down Folsom Street. While Sam was in the Powerhouse, someone tried to steal his phone, and he didn’t take it very well. So the Powerhouse was out for the rest of the night. We hung out in the car for a few hours listening to the Presets and talking about everything.
So let me say, for the record, in bold, I MISS SAM. And I always will.
We drove home and I fell asleep on Mario’s couch. Sam left when it was still dark. I had work, drove home, watched South Park, ignored my family, and here I sit in the back of my nonworking car. It smells like too much Febreeze in here and it’s a little too cold.
I can’t try and apply moral judgments to anything anymore. However, since that was probably one of the hottest experiences of my life, how is one to put something like that in perspective? I often view my life is a battle between the forces of living a long, safe life versus the part of me that wants to explore sexuality in every way possible (and, necessarily, end up a corpse by the time I’m 27). The boring part always wins out because there’s always another novel I want to read before I die (Future Shock, after GEB) and another smartphone to play with (currently I’m waiting for the T-Mobile G1).
I guess I just haven’t really met somebody other than Sam that I feel so comfortable with. It’s weird, Sam and I have this kind of synergy where we will just break into Marilyn Manson or Dirty Sanchez songs, Rob Zombie movie lines, etc. I’m going to miss him. One of my favorite moments during the fair was this one time where we were stuck in the middle of one of the streets jammed in with people and no one moving, and we just broke into Veruca Salt’s “I want it now” song from Willy Wonka. I really wanted to sing it when we were in the backroom of the Powerhouse, but I think the line “don’t care how / I want it now” would have had an…interesting interpretion in that context.
It’s 5 a.m. My whole sleep schedule has been destroyed by this weekend of partying, but it was worth it. I know for a fact that whatever social outing I go to next will suck. I was talking with Sam about this today. It’s going to suck balls, and I am okay with that, because nothing could ever possibly get close to the night we had.
ANTONIO SAYS I SHOULD KILL YOU
HE SAYS YOU’VE SEEN TOO MUCH
BUT I’M NOT GOING TO
I’LL MAKE YOU A DEAL
YOU START RUNNING NOW
AND I’LL PRETEND LIKE YOU GOT AWAYHAHAHAHA
DID YOU REALLY THINK WE WERE GOING TO LET YOU GET AWAY?
I WAS KIDDING STUPID
YOU DIDN’T RUN FAST ENOUGH
YOU DIDN’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY DID YOU
WHY?
BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL?
YOU THINK I CAN’T KILL BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL?
WELL GUESS WHAT
YOU’RE GOING TO FIND OUT THE HARD WAY WHETHER I CAN KILL OR NOT. -
09.26.08ice cream is going to save the day
Had a nice Wednesday…yerba mate got me through the work day yet again. Then I hit up Arden Fair with Mario, and picked up a book that I have decided to just bite the bullet on and buy. It’s huge, and it’s expensive, but I think it’s going to be very interesting.
It’s 777 pages and I haven’t even gotten through the preface yet, but I think it’s going to be edifying.
Class was okay…I solved this challenging averages problem and my teacher had to chime in that with a graphing calculator it does it all for you. Once again, no it fucking doesn’t. That teacher is such a fuckhead. I used it for multiplication and division. It’s like we’re on fucking trial. What a douche.
This is what he looks like, minus about ten years.
Anyway, Crash came over tonight and I made tacos (the first time I had in a while, being non-poor means I can eat other things than pasta, woo!) and we watched Michael Moore’s Sicko.
See that movie. You will be disgusted by the sheer inhumanity of the things our government and private sector allow. And I love how good Michael Moore is at making scenes.
We watched the Imaginationland episodes of South Park (they won an Emmy, so I thought it would be good to revisit them).
After that, Crash and I had ice cream and played my Star Trek TNG board game, which is always funny and incredibly 80s. We found out that there’s a VHS tape-based Star Trek TNG board game which I guess has this Klingon guy taunting you the whole time. I really want to get it on eBay but it’s like $20 and my entertainment budget for this pay period is already maxed out with GEB (the book).
Well, it’s time for sleep. I’m hoping to get to work early so I can get off early, go to True Love and dive into GEB (maybe I’ll get past the preface!)
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09.24.08laughter and forgetting
I finished The Book of Laughter and Forgetting yesterday. It was incredible…a must-read.
Went to Lipstick, they had a ton of great music, they played “The Girl and the Sea”, a song by Royksopp, and a bunch of other great stuff.
I have to go to work now. Didn’t get home until 4 a.m. and I’m fucking exhausted.
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09.23.08A ce jeu excitant
I’ve had a pretty fun couple of days… sometimes it’s just hard to find that hour a day to sit down and pound out a post.
The weekend went pretty quickly… on Friday, I met Mario and Valerie for sushi, then we went downtown for a drink or two. Went back to his place, I made couscous, and we hung out with his roomate.
Saturday was more epic. I met Mario at Tupelo (this coffee shop on Elvas), got some coffee (which was incredibly delicious) and then we went down to Gunther’s for ice cream. One thing is, it my body doesn’t really get along with coffee… and it really doesn’t get along with ice cream (I’m lactose intolerant), so I felt kind of nauseous. To remedy that, we had dinner at Plum Blossom (mmm…steamed vegetables on rice), and then met two of Mario’s friends. I thought they were going to have dinner, but it turned out they were going straight into Faces. The cover was $10… and I’m sorry, they would have had to pay us to go there.
A text-messaged excuse later, we were at the Kasbah munching on fries and staring awkwardly at this painfully Caucasian belly dancer. I have to admit, she was pretty good, doing the whole balancing the scimitar on her head thing, but she lacked conviction.
I looked at my phone and it was 10:54… we were supposed to meet Crash at 11. Whoops. I also had a standing invitation from Taggart to come down to this place he was working at. Crash called and said they were all walking to the party, so we had some time.
It was really funny visiting him… he talked about cheap beer at the Depot, while we watched the tableau of straight girl and straight guy drama take place outside the bar next to his work.
At around 1:30, Crash was done with the partying so he went over to pick him up and Mario dropped us off at my scooter. I drove back to Crash’s place and we ended up sleeping in until 5 p.m. All in all, a very fun night.
I worked on my various projects on Sunday night, then met Christen after work on Monday.
She was going to introduce me to the Estonian people, who I had seen perform at HorseCow like a year ago, but had never really met sans costumes. They were actually really awesome. Steve was also there, we all talked about our trips (he’s going to Korea, Christen’s leaving for New York tomorrow, and the Estonians were going home in a few days).
After they left, Christen invited me over to her apartment where she cooked a delicious stir-fry and we talked about incredibly depressing things. She says that people tell her that she needs to cheer up or something when she talks about incredibly depressing things. I, however, will never say that. Because shitty things are just the circle of life. To deny shitty, mind-numbingly depressing things would be to make successes empty and without meaning.
We watched a few episodes of South Park and then I took my leave because we both had to get up early. Unwilling or unable to go home, I ended up at True Love instead. I read until I was about 20 pages from finishing The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It’s such an incredible work. Mario met me there and we walked all around downtown Sacramento, deserted on a Sunday night.
We stopped for a while at Cantina del Rio, this conspicuously straight bar in Old Sacramento (football was playing on no less than five big-screen TVs).
I took videos throughout the night, I would edit and post them, but I am always like two minutes late for my class so I have to pack it up and go to the college at least a half-hour early. They have WiFi there now so maybe I can actually create that movie on campus.
I have to be nice to my teacher today. And never, never, never ask him when he started getting Botox.
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09.18.08
