Marine Attack and the Eyeball Incident

Finally I had a NY weekend in Sydney. Not a SydneyisNewYork weekend but one filled with an Aussie rollercoaster of unexpected highs and lows. It was anything but tepid and might have been worth losing my wallet, cash, keys, wigs, heels and makeup somewhere between Darlinghurst and home. That did actually happen, but so did experiences, which are what, let's face it, this hour upon the stage is all about.

FRIDAY:

I had a pre-Mardi Gras Party at the office where I dressed in galactic drag and won $50 in the costume contest! That would soon disappear, along with all my other belongings after high-tailing it to Oxford Street for more dancing and shots until I changed back into a boy and that's where it all ends - at least for my bag of belongings. And let me tell you how much Bam likes being woken up in the middle to me "screaming and yelling" (it's never just the one, apparently).

SATURDAY:

I wake without my belongings to discover my eye, which has been hurting for several days, is worse. It's starting to look and feel like that angry red vagina from Lord of the Rings.

So I march to an optometrist who begins by flipping my eyelid inside-out... an ewwwww-inducing maneuver which was the least of my revulsion after he tells me I have a "foreign object" embedded into my eyeball. It gets all very sci-fi (syfy?) as he explains (did you know?) that corneas regenerate and because I left it for days, there were layers (of slimy cornea?) over said object, and unlike an oyster, my eyeball was not planning on turning it into a pearl I could retire off of. So he sent me direct to the eye hospital ER, explaining the foreign object would have to be removed using a "little spoon".

The idea of a little spoon coming for my eyeball sent me to the pub for a couple beers before hitting the hospital where the doctor said mister optometrist was just being kind. "It's not a little spoon," he explained. "It's a needle that I'm going to use as a spoon." No doubt next up is a fork-feeding of the antibacterial eye drops.

After the good doc spooneedles my eyeball, it's discovered the foreign object is a tiny shiny fleck. It appears to be a fleck of glitter! Uh-huh. Let it be known: glitter - it's not just hard to get out of your sheets anymore!

Eyeball much less angry, my friend Jack gets Bam and I tickets into the fabulous Harbour Party...

This kickoff party to Mardi Gras which is perennial fun minus the swarms of police and sniffer dogs surrounding it. The police don't have much else to do, certainly not track down my missing drag bag! Let's prioritize.. and arrest partiers for club drugs!

It's a summer evening with the best views in Sydney, right on the harbour and I unexpectedly bump into people I haven't seen in ages... from around the world. And I see my friend Gerald who's supposed to compete in an ocean swim with me in the morning. He just stares in my eye (the good one) and says, "jesseeeeee" when I remind him. Jessseeeee... I think you're on your own.

So besides the gestapo, the party was perfect.

And I'm busy on both dance floors, sweating, totally off my tits and suddenly the alarm goes off.

SUNDAY:

It's 7am. I haul my bones out of bed when the alarm goes off because I knew I wouldn't want to wake up for the 2.5km Tamarama to Clovelly "cliffside odyssey" ocean swim. So I plotted against myself. I paid the entrance fee online and told all my friends I was doing it. Because if Jesse can't party his ass off and still keep his commitments he will have to reconsider giving carte blanche permission to the prior. Survival is a wobbling tightrope between molten combustion and self-preservation. In other words, growing up is a terribly dreary last ditch option.

So I get up and walk to the bus stop thinking, hoping, even praying...that the bus doesn't come. I can't be blamed for a failure of public transportation. But the bus does arrive and at Bronte, I get out and walk along the cliff toward Tamarama Beach when I see clusters of people in the sand and hear voices over a loudspeaker: "Good news, swimmers. We haven't sighted any sharks along the course yet!"

Swimming off the Aussie coast naturally carries this danger, and yes I did sign a waiver stating that a) I might drown, b) I was responsible for my own physical fitness and c) I might be taken in a "marine attack".

A shark attack would be a pretty awesome ride from top to bottom of the food chain and definitely the way I want to go. I just don't want to see prehistoric gnashers lurching for me from out of the deep. Visualizing this has me considering doing backstroke for 2.5km, but even with your back to danger, even with your eyes closed, you still imagine terror and isn't that all fears and phobias really are? Only something the mind consciously allows to enter and to linger; an all-consuming tenant who vanishes the second he's confronted. That spoonneedle didn't hurt, just the idea of it. I won't do the backstroke.
More importantly, wouldn't Marine Attack make a sensational drag name?

There are hundreds of swimmers milling about the beach in bright neon caps, to be easily spotted in case of drowning, distress or marine attack. I'm given a anklet with a chip to calculate my race time. Affixed with velcro, I picture as Jonah, beeping deep within the guts of a nondescript leviathan.

Groups of swimmers plunge into the water en masse. The way they crash into the surf recalls The Last Unicorn, at the end when all the unicorns surge forth, released from the ocean, saved, sparkling, free.

 Only now the swimmers tumble forward, right into the churning water, making one with the waves.

There are many more boys than girls, their speedo'd asses emblazoned with the names of their swim clubs: "Bondi Icebergs" "Coogee" "Hammerheads". These are stunning surf gods - tawny, brawny, beautiful. James is here, he's the only person I know or recognize. He told me about the race, knows it's my first. We both wear neon green caps. He's heat 16. I am heat 18. The water is 21 celcius. Jocular voices on the speakers announce, "It's an easy course to follow," they say. "Just one right turn!" They also mention that the cliffside odyssey (around "shark point"!) has been rated the most beautiful ocean swim in the world.

But how far down the coast is 2.5km? How far out? James asks, "Do you see the boys?" How could I miss them? His wife is here supporting him, I'm all alone so maybe he's trying to provide a measure of comfort, a distraction to calm the fear in my fuzzy hungover head. "Follow the pink boys," he says to me and I now understand he's referring to the big pink buoy out in at sea - the right turn. That's how to pronounce buoy here, it's "boy". Just exactly like that.

Once in the water, there is no more fear. There is only one thought: let's finish this fucker! Well that's not entirely true. I do briefly envision how I might dress Miss Marine Attack (scales of shimmering sequin pallettes with a Busby Berkeley-esque acquacade cap outfitted with a prominent dorsal) but for the most part I'm present, in the moment, bobbling about the open ocean. I've never swam close to 2.5km. I've never swam in the ocean before today, not like this. And the ocean, unlike a pool, is uncontained, moving, heaving. Mighty. I struggle to move forward, eating seawater like a shipwreck as swells hit and pull and twist me round like a single sock in an overfilled washing machine on stir.

I can't enjoy the scenery of the most beautiful swim in the world because I breathe to the left, toward New Zealand. I don't worry about spotting a white-tipped dorsal fin in the big blue beyond; not even when smacked in the leg or rib because it's just another swimmer, all of us trying to finish this - stroke by splashing stroke. At times we swim alongside one another and I get the impression I've made a new friend even though it is only a pair of goggles and a gaping mouth. Occasionally, I pop up to see if I'm on track, to gauge how much further (I can never tell), to look for a buoy. Lifeguards sit on surfboards at intervals, pointing me which way. There is a large cemetery atop a lonely cliff.

I have no idea how long I'm actually in the ocean. The next day I'll discover I was clocked in at :51 minutes. Back on land I suck on some orange slices and down a banana, but I'm queasy. It's not dead tired or sore but I can't string together sentences and I realize it's residual motion sickness. Kinda like when you hop off the treadmill, but feel you're still on it. 

In the afternoon, I introduce the Aussie premiere of Half-Share for the Mardi Gras Film Festival. It's fun to see this funny film we shot on Fire Island, half a world away, now a historical document because after a devastating fire this winter, some of its locations no longer exist. The audience is great, and I'm with friends old and new, including Sydney drag star Roma Therapy, a vision in powder pink.

The weekend is almost over, but not quite. I'll have dinner with Bam (he's forced to pay, I've got no $!) and think to myself that a shard of glitter in the eye isn't a tragedy; losing cash and credit cards is not a cause for rueful regret and that perhaps it's all wrapped up in the price of admission. Without epic ups and downs, without a few spills and thrills, just what kind of ride are we on?

Star Observer

Huge thanks to Jesse Matheson and the Star Observer for last week's cover story and interview. Here I chat about my roles (and more - is art elevated theft?) in the upcoming Australian premieres of two of my films at the Mardi Gras Film Festival, which just kicked off.

Photo is totally UNRETOUCHED (!!)

If you're in Sydney, I'll be introducing two screenings at Fox Studios. Tonight is Going Down in La La Land, and next Sunday the 26th is Half-Share. I hope to see you there.

Melbourne, you're next!

Didn't She Almost Have It All?

If there was one artist, one icon, who provided the soundtrack to my childhood, it would be Whitney Houston. And now her ethereal voice is gone, dead at 48. Though unconfirmed, it will probably be revealed that Whitney took too much Xanax and drowned alone in her hotel bathtub. Tragedy: What becomes a legend most?

I had this poster in my room as a boy. I grew up admiring Whitney: her beauty, her crystal clear voice, that hair.

My very first concert was her "I'm Your Baby Tonight" tour, in Portland. My high school Spanish teacher, Mrs Nikzi, was sitting two rows behind me - that's how universal Whitney's appeal was. It's almost as if that magical instrument of hers didn't belong just to her, but to all of humanity. So when she began to squander her gift, as that magic began to lose its lustre, the overwhelming feeling was one of profound heartbreak.

I watched her play a free concert in Central Park in 2009. She was beautiful, but breathless; and we all wanted her to win. For that crystalline voice to rise as it always did, forever. Because on some level, when it didn't, Whitney was a startling reminder that all our powers, superlative and small, are destined to abandon us. 

On the playground as a kid, I'd sing along to "The Greatest Love of All" and feel both hopeful and empowered: "I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows/If I fail, If I succeed/at least I live as I believe".

And though I knew I was only a child, Whitney made me feel I mattered as I sang with her those lyrics (for which I'll always be nostalgically grateful): "I believe the children are the future/treat them well and let them lead the way/show them all the beauty they possess inside..."

Thank you for sharing your talent with the world, Whitney Houston. It was epic. Rest in Peace

In The Weeds

There are some scenic places to perfect your plank.

And then there is Bam Bam...

Safety Third! Carrie Bradshaw Visits the Playground

I was hanging out with Bam and his 3-year old daughter at the playground - a new experience not least because I'm unfamiliar with modern playground features. Everything to climb is low to the ground - a landing pad made of spongy rubber. There wasn't a tire swing or see-saw, not even a swingset. It's as if all elements of potential danger were carefully excised.

"Back in my day", the playground was full of swings, jungle gyms, high bars. I used to hang from my knees upside-down and fly off in cherry drops to the ground - concrete. Kids got rowdy and there were sometimes bruises or goose eggs or you got your head cracked open like Duane Emery did once after a series of spinners on the tire swing.  That's how lessons are learned: trial and error.

Today as more and more we assume the trial and remove the error from the playground of life, how do you learn, judge or gauge, based on your personal experience? "Safety First" is a terribly antiseptic, and I'll argue corrupt, way to exist. It's not just helicopter parents, but helicopter society that nannies with its seatbelt laws and multi-million dollar rewards for being stupid enough to spill scalding coffee onto your vagina. Not your fault! Blame McDonalds!

Is it a massive leap to suggest that such a preciously pampered population might lack accountability for its actions? Perhaps the flagrant behavior of, say, Wall Street lenders, is not your garden-variety "greed" but rather the result of myopic human beings unable to differentiate between opportunity and fucking everything up.

Even a beast with eyes on the opposite sides of its head can see the big picture, but do we cover one eye so securely that the other is allowed to selfishly do all the seeing?

As we buffer and baffle consequence, is the bed we're making not looking a lot like the jungle gym?

Going Home to Black Rock City!

Just found out we were lucky enough to survive a confusing lottery tier system to purchase tickets to Burning Man 2012! This year's theme is Fertility 2.0 and I'm gagging for a re-boot. With confetti.

The poster rather resembles the clusterfuck of their lottery ticket system - or a metastasizing cell, or maybe Charlotte's Web when she released all her baby spiders in the air? In any case, it's a very cool take on the layout of Black Rock City - and its expansive growth.

From the website: Theme camps cling in fertile clusters to its latticework of streets, artworks tumble out of it, like pollen on the air. These nodes of interaction mutate, grow and reproduce their kind. Burning Man communities have now escaped this capsule world: our culture in a Petri dish has effloresced - it spreads across five continents. 

This fertility theme reminds me of the book I'm reading by Stephen Jay Gould, Full House, which postulates we human beings are not the apotheosis of evolution, as most would like to believe. So we have consciousness, but is the fact that our brains excrete thoughts any better than the camouflage excreted by an octopus; the speed exerted by a cheetah?

If we're the be all end all of evolution, how is it a microscopic bacteria can take us down? How the mighty fall! Yet you don't see bacteria or viruses celebrating their own fabulousness; creating gods that only allow them into their exclusive heavens. 

Gould suggests, as did Darwin (sometimes), that natural selection produces local adaptation - and not overall progress. We humans are but a flourishing bough on the arborescent tree of life. We all go forth together. And yet it's interesting to me how we think not only that we're the best - but we're the only! How has our consciousness helped; how has it hindered? I would wager that it's more a curse, and that humanity's greatest gift is not consciousness but rather our conscience, which ought be more evolved.

Planned Parenthood lost their funding from the Susan G Komen Foundation, which caved to radical right wing pressure to drop Planned Parenthood because they provide legal abortion as an options to women. Let's punish women at Planned Parenthood by politically denying them cancer screenings and mammograms!*

A succinct sum up:

It's not entirely surprising they have politicized health care yet again. Certainly they sure as hell politicized AIDS (lack of) funding, so cancer's rather late in the game no? Or is it just another case of the gays being way ahead of the trend?

In any case, it makes  me wonder what kind of bough our species really is on that arborescent tree of life? And when I re-read that amazing short story, 'Big Blonde', by Dorothy Parker - about a bubbly woman's slow descent into boozy despair, and the words Parker uses resonated: "She was beginning to feel toward alcohol a little puzzled distrust, as toward an old friend who has refused a simple favor...." I may feel this way toward the world in general. Like maybe it'll do me in. And/or that maybe that alcohol is the old friend I actually can trust?

Burning Man - get me hence, far from the maddening default world!

*Donate to Planned Parenthood here.

Australiana!

We took a road trip up New South Wales and it's always like a nostalgic trip back in time.

Santa looks out of place

Produce section of a 1950's film set or Forster, NSW circa 2012?

idyllic subtropical sands

Greetings from the Mercantile

Off With Their Red Noses!

The Republican Presidential candidates represent Republican values - if you squint hard enough! Abortion = SIN! Homosexuality = SIN! Adultery = HOW DARE YOU ASK ME ABOUT THAT! (followed by a Christian standing ovation). 


While Newt Gingrich was having an affair on his ex-wife with his now third-wife, he was leading the charge to impeach President Clinton for an extramarital blow job. Of course, now he declares it despicable to question him about his own infidelities. The good ol' boys club (and a few crosshair-wielding women) always resort to crying victim of the "malicious media" when exposed for their glaring hypocrisy. 

How interesting to find you have to make a choice between a thrice married, cheating lobbyist fat cat and a multi-millionaire Mormon. And so the party base looks up to see that, on the political stage, it's not like looking in the mirror anymore. Why, that's exactly the way I felt growing up! 

What's it like to experience that disconnect as a fully grown adult? And so, the Republican Party is revolting. As Kevin Sessum notes, that last sentence can be read two ways - bless homonymy - and both reads are correct. This lesser-of-two-evils schism resulted in a South Carolina primary win for Newt Gingrich, and so we see multiple marriages still beat a cult based upon polygamy! Both choices, in their minds, beat a black muslim socialist! 

I'm inclined to agree with Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay, "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" which argues that the current POTUS' long game will outsmart everyone. Except, of course, as he mentions, that startling (nasty) bit about being able to indefinitely hold US citizens without charges (WTF is with that?) and perhaps the policies that 


Even so, as the overpowering stench of grease paint wafts off the circus clowns masquerading as Presidential hopefuls, Obama looks primed to coast through November, laughing all the way at such farce. He may not be perfect, but unlike these half-cocked hypocrital hopefuls and the bumbling half-wit who went before him, this President of the United States remains an elegant leader of men. 

For Your Edification: Gifting (Lack of) Etiquette

Giving and receiving is a special time meant to involve surprises - just probably not these ones!

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: Much like Chlamydia, a brain or a billion dollar bank account, you can't tell by looking who may be in possession of a gift.

On the set of A Four Letter Word, I was in Central Park with my co-star Charlie David. Our director, Casper was nearby wearing a tank top with little hot dogs emblazoned all over it. I turn to Charlie to scornfully ridicule ("hot dogs?!) such a ridiculous shirt, and I remember ending with "You'd think, being Swedish, he'd have some sense of fashion!" Moments later, Casper comes over and I say, "What the hell is that shirt?" Casper smiles brightly and says, "Charlie gave it to me!"

RE-GIFTING: It's pro-environment and I'm all for it. And, much like theft, it's totally cool until you get caught.

Like the time I re-gifted a gorgeous journal to a girlfriend. I wrapped the thing up, and as she opened it she began to read what she thought was an inscription. It was, to our mutual horror and later hilarity, a diary entry I had once written and forgot about...

SAFE RECEIVING: Unwrap before you speak - it could ruin the mood.

At a birthday party, my friends Chad and Scott handed me a wrapped gift that resembled, in size and weight, a brick. So I launch into a story, laughing hysterically, about how my brother once sent me a brick. For my birthday. A brick! Could you believe it? He found it in "historical" Boston and sent it in the mail, and have you ever had more of a stinker for a gift? Moments later I unwrap, to the mortification of all assembled, a brick. Granted, this one had my name on it, but it was, unmistakably, still a brick.

Poor Unfortunate Souls!

Depression is such a western luxury, as you never seem to see brown people in huts with five children and no food struggling with depression, or a crippling case of anorexia. Maybe it’s because we have so much time to think about existence, so much time to ponder why we’re here and not be distracted by daily survival, that we can claim depression, but tell me if you’re really thinking – isn’t existence the most marvellous thing?

I mean, maybe your life sucks, but (cue Liza)... it's marvelous!

Recently a girlfriend told me the reason her family is in Australia is that long ago a female ancestor had stolen some jewels from her boss in England and, stupidly, wore them down to the local pub to show them off! The lady-thief was sentenced…to death. But before she was to hang, her sentence was commuted to: banishment! And off she went on a convict ship to Australia. Fascinating story, and not only would my girlfriend not be in Australia had her relative not stolen those jewels, but if that sentence had not been commuted, she wouldn’t be here at all. Simple as that. 

How lucky we are to have benefited despite the mistakes of each ancestor; the beneficence of some judges, twists of fate; counting on them to have survived scurvy, the plague, poverty, even an unappealing face long enough to successfully breed in successive generations that ultimately led to you. As if this miraculous accomplishment alone isn’t enough to boggle the mind, think of your luck in the biology department.

You conquered impossible odds to become the one sperm out of millions to successfully penetrate that one egg. That one particular egg out of how many eggs bleeding out for how many months, not to mention that one sperm from that one load of how many loads (and potential lives lost) found in crunchy handkerchiefs? 

The sheer incredibility of your existence is too remarkable to not comprehend. The most amazing thing by far is that you're here at all. Depressing, isn’t it?

Sydney's a Superficial Bitch...

and trust her love ain't Platonic! Check out this hilarious piece on Sydney by Joe Hildebrand in The Telegraph. He satirizes the place so perfectly, as shallow insipid and vacuous. I've been saying this for a long while - Sydney is a supermodel, absolutely drop dead stunning but what does she have to tell you? And would you wanna listen? I mean, Capetown is just as much a stunner but at least she's dangereuse.

Isn't she a knockout?!

Imagine my surprise when the piece concludes that yes Sydney is shallow and vacuous; she's stupid and sucks but... she rocks! He's never been prouder to live here! Too stupid too understand why, I'm left wondering if I should move to Melbourne? He says that if Sydney were a person it would be Paris Hilton. What's NOT to love? Seriously. And if Melbourne were a person it would be Jean-Paul Sartre...

On the topic of philosophers, and resting my (his?) case, I went to Sydney library yesterday to check out writings by Plato. I wanted to read some of his work, any of it really: Symposium, Republic, I didn't really care. I found the philosophy section at Custom House library contained on a shelf the length of my arm, but I couldn't find anything there, or in the system, for Plato.

So I asked a librarian to help me, see if there was something from another Sydney library to transfer, but there wasn't. Zilch. Not one work by Plato could be located in all of Sydney's library system. PLATO! The librarian herself seemed stymied and keen to oblige when I asked, "Can you maybe... buy some Plato for your collection?"

Imagine how much easier it all would have been if I asked to check out a volume of that great philosopher and scholar, Paris Hilton! 

Envisioning 3012: Future Predictions

Check out the Gen-Yers with their vague sense of entitlement and suave assurance (having been thus led to believe) they’ll found a billion dollar start-up or, if not, at least become (in)famous via youtube or (why not?) Xtube, without working too hard because they’ve all been raised by helicopter parents who hovered over their every move, not letting them out of sight, and if they did manage to make it to the backyard, a liberal application of 70SPF sunscreen shall have without exception (even on cloudy days) been required. 

What could the Gen Y offer us. we the older wiser and better mannered? The natural tendency to characterize succeeding generations as sloppier than our own is itself a perilous mistake, because if you do look around, things are improving and always have – in areas where civilization is permitted to persist.

So let’s look around and imagine – what things are improving, at least in my opinion, and imagine the loftiness subsequent generations, who will no doubt be always maligned and discredited by their elders, may lift us.

Herewith, my predictions for 3012 (feel free to offer your own):

• Euthanasia will be humane, legal and a popular end-of-life care option.
• Most illicit drugs will be legal, taxed and responsibly sold – a governmental cash flow, draining drug warlord power, and lessening futile wars on drugs with their inherent bloodshed.
• A lessening of violence in general, and its acceptance in entertainment. It will be less appalling in 3012 to see two men naked and kissing on-screen than it will be to watch 200 men being gruesomely murdered.
• Vegetarians will no longer be mocked by meat-eaters as unbearable party poopers. The conscious disconnect between eating meat and slaughtering live animals will be exposed and vegetarian food will taste as good as it is popular.
• Circumcision will be seen and discouraged for the mutilation it is. 
• Monogamy will not be seen as an undeniable symbol of fidelity.
• Organized religion will be, on a large scale, abandoned in favor of individual spirituality.
• A new fuel source will end dependence on barbaric nations and the rape of the planet’s resources. Back 2 the Future’s garbage alternative, perhaps?
• Genetic modification of your child to weed out handicaps, disease. And though this tool may be used to weed out red-heads or gays, it will be used just as much to create a red-head or a gay.
• Death of the circus, but rise of the zoos (traveling zoos?) with the exciting return of the Dodo Bird and the Woolly Mammoth. 
• The 9-5 work week will be an archaic joke as work is handled remotely, for the most part, and around the 24/7 clock.
• Less borders, less walls. Nations will be run less like rival football teams, and more like enthusiasts of the same sport.
• The use of non-biodegradable plastic, especially single-use plastic drink containers and disposable plastic bags for groceries, will be looked upon as insidiously wasteful, crude and sooo last century. Much like today  we watch horrified as Betty Draper, in an episode of Mad Men, non-chalantly shakes out her 1950’s picnic blanket littering all its garbage onto the park’s grass.
• Gender roles and designations will be more fluid. Colours, pink and blue in particular, will have no sexual assignation. We will think: why did they ever?

What else; what are your predictions? Future doesn’t look all bad, eh? Of course I left out the bad news: We’ll all be dead! 

My Latest Film Now On DVD

My first foray in Grand Guignol, the thriller Into the Lion's Den is now for sale, you can buy it at this link: Breaking Glass Pictures! With a stellar/disturbing script by Philip Malaczewski, the film takes all sorts of unexpected twists and turns as I head on a road trip through Amish country with co-stars Ronnie Kroell and Kristen Alexzander Griffith who are getting some great praise for their performances.

Here's a sample of the great buzz online (some below) to help entice you to pick up the DVD!

In this review from the Horror Fan, Into the Lion's Den is a hatchet-fest worse than a dozen American Idol wanna-bes with their claws out! And I play a ne'er do well who "reminds you of all the messed up, slightly charming bar boys with a destructive streak you've crossed path with." Wait, only slightly!? I'm losing it!

Christian Cintron at Edge says the film is sexy, startling and provocative - going beyond its B-list gore-fest to address deep topics, such as the gay community's flirtation with thanatos. Ronnie is captivating and "Jesse Archer shines as a washed up party boy with the perfect blend of sexy mischief and pensive introspection".

The Independent Critic calls it a relentless thriller, hailing Michael McFadden and Jodie Shultz as terrific villains and saying I have tremendous screen presence as the free-spirited Johnny. Awww. It was worth all the dungeons and electroshocks and slobber... oh my!

Check out more reviews, film stills and behind-the-scenes stuff when you like the fan page here on Facebook!

Along Came a Leader

Governor Gregoire of Washington State held a press conference to articulate succinctly what equality advocates have been saying for years: it's not the business of government to discriminate.


Echoing Hillary Clinton's speech in Geneva that gay rights are human rights, Gov. Gregoire's speech here is enhanced at the end, when she mentions the battle with her religion. I know of nothing else, no rational reason, to deny equality besides religion. Religion consistently pits brother against brother, and not just my own brother, his wife and sundry relatives ('family' for me is a suspicious thing not to be trusted, for I never know who's with me and who's against me - thank you, "god") but it insidiously divides the brotherhood of humanity. Look around - not even the Presbyterians can support each other!

Yet this religious Governor has gone on a journey and discovered religion is a personal thing, not to be influenced by - or to influence - government as it relates to civil rights. Sadly, most don't get to this place because organized religions have a mandate to infect others with the "word" (as if those "called", most of whom knowing nothing of the world, let alone the inner workings of themselves they have sublimated - are qualified to minister to anyone) and whenever this gets me furious - people being bigots, immune beneath a veil of piety as they hypocritically speak for their chosen deity, I simply look to the past and remind myself: foolishness ain't nothing new.

In the words of philosopher Bertrand Russell:

People choose the book considered sacred by the community in which they are born and out of that book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others. At one point in time, the most influential text in the Bible was: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Nowadays, people pass over this text, in silence if possible; if not, with an apology.

Yet how many "witches" had to suffer, burned at the stake before this particular piece of ancient text was passed over? How I would like to live to the day where Governor Gregoire's speech above is as archaic, as much a statement-of-the-obvious as the day there surely must have been when a press conference was held to declare that witch-hunting would no longer be the business of the government. 

New Years Tribe - Glamping in Lismore!!

Totally wretched after a New Years spent at the Tropical Fruits Festival. I blew a fuse, or maybe a total short circuit. It all began with a crude mood board. You see, the theme was: "Tribe"

the mood board: we were particularly taken with the slutty squaw at right

After senseless hours and dollars at the crafting store, Bam and I set out on our journey north. On the second day we stopped at our artist friend Carmel's in Red Rock. She enlisted her lovely lady friends to help, whipped out a sewing machine, and it was like a fag hag sweatshop! They began constructing our Indian costumes as we watched in awe.

Thanks Kelly and Carm! At right, Carm slices and sews my hedgehog beanie baby into a purse.

We left them the next day and get up to Lismore and set up camp. Tropical Fruits is a NYE dance party on the local country showgrounds, kinda like a farm. You camp out in tents with all locals, lesbians, transfolk and boys. Some of them really go all out.. in fact they couldn't stop comparing outposts: "my, that's the best erection I've seen yet!" 

The Shirley Temple erection nearly killed me.

this is what you call GLAMPING

Decidedly more downtrodden, this was our home - after hours

and happy hours!

It was hilarious to hear the queens setting up camp - making sexual moans while hammering stakes, their friends commenting, "I don't care what they say - you can give a good pounding!" Or another claiming he needed to stretch before such heavy lifting (the esky cooler) when another said dryly, "C'mon - if you were any looser you'd be inside-out!"

The whole event really is as camp as a row of tents. The first drag queens even made their appearance in the campgrounds before noon.

We met all sorts of colorful creatures. Including this older man (sewing Bam Bam's feather headband). His name is Ivo and he's Belgian. When his flemish family rejected him for being gay, he sailed for Australia at 18, in the early 1960's, and he never spoke to them again. It amazes and inspires me what some people will do for freedom. Thankfully we had enough burlap and finger paint to make him an Indian, too.

heather numberone, clark, nick and denton: "all the ex-pats that Lismore allows!"

When I put the eyeliner on Bam he complained when he looked in the mirror, "What have you done? I don't want the flick at the end... it's too feminine!!" -- and he instantly became the laughing stock of the campground, known as the guy who thought his eyeliner was not masculine enough.

they're playing our favorite song

The dancing is in what's essentially a massive barn. The grounds also have an art exhibit, several chill out tents...

and a cabaret where my pal Heather NumberOne performed her famous glow in the dark routine. 

Outside, I'm on a warpath without a tomahawk. 

You know she's debating using my head as an ashtray.

The fireworks were so flash and explosive, my face felt dirty just watching them. 

And then all the activity became too much for Haiawatha's burlap loincloth to handle:

My teepee for a safety pin. Thanks, Wade!

I pretty much got shot out of a cannon. So a New Year begins much as the one before! Happy 2012!

Happy New Year ~

You survived! 2011 you're ending... thank heaven. We'll shelve the (Mayan) rapture 'til '12!

Top 3 Responses

It takes a lot to get me to STFU, but these responses pretty well stopped me in my tracks. 

1. I'm shout at Bam, "Stop SNORING!" when he wakes up to deadpan. "I wasn't snoring, it was a light purr."

2. Out with my friend Yvette, where I meet her 8 year old daughter Belle. "Are you named Belle after the pretty girl from Beauty and the Beast?" I lean down to ask her. "No," Yvette interjects. "I named her for the hooker in Gone With the Wind."

3. Chatting with a certain 85 year old man and asking him the secret to living a long and healthy life. "There's no secret there," he answered. "Choose your parents wisely."

Season's Greetings!

Pricked by the Violet Quill

‘I don’t belong here, I shouted at them silently’ intones the young narrator of Edmund White’s 1982 classic A Boy’s Own Story. What a hauntingly beautiful story it is, not just in the way its written (superbly) but in its emotional honesty. It could be any boy’s own story, but it so happens to be the story of a boy on the outside, a fledgling gay, coming of age in a world that doesn’t fit the worlds inside of him.

It’s not a book I should have read until now, because it wouldn’t have had the same impact without the benefit of the intervening years. It brought back feelings I had forgotten, or now (deliberately? Subconsciously?) deny or conceal. A time when innocence was not a contemptible weakness but rather wondrous, and lovely.

This is not my story, but much of it could have been - and much of it certainly informs the adult I've become.

Longing

I hypothesised a lover who’d take me away. He’d climb the fir tree outside my window, step into my room and gather me into his arms…
…His delay in coming went on so long that soon I’d passed from anticipation to nostalgia. One night I sat at my window and stared at the moon, toasting it with a champagne glass filled with grape juice.  I knew that immense light was falling on him as well, far away and just as lonely in a distant room. I expected him to be able to divine my existence and my need, to intuit that in this darkened room in this country house a fourteen-year-old was waiting for him.

Bitterness

The solace of the condemned is scorn, especially scorn of an aesthetic stripe.

Hope

No matter how despairing I might be I was implicitly counting on my eventual happiness.

The constant coupling of fear and desire

Would I become queer and never, never be like other people? To overcome my scruples, Ralph hypnotized me. He didn’t have to intone the words long to send me into a deep trance. Once I was under his spell he told me I’d obey him, and I did. He also said that when I awakened I’d remember nothing, but he was wrong there. I have remembered everything.

Religious doubt

When they’d talk of Original Sin or the Creation or the Devil they’d become agitated, their cheeks would flush and their eyes would sparkle, as though they were hypnotizing themselves into espousing this obvious nonsense. And the more vague and absurd the things they discussed (angels, the resurrection of the body), the more they used such words as precisely, undoubtedly, clearly and naturally.

But I also felt surging within me a fierce need to be independent. Of course I responded to the appeal of divine hydraulics, this system of souls damned or crowned or destroyed or held in suspense, these pulleys and platforms sinking and lifting on the great stage, and I recognized that my view of things seemed by contrast impoverished, lacking in degree and incident. But the charming intricacy of myth is not sufficient to compel belief. I found no good reason to assume that the ultimate nature of reality happens to resemble the backstage of an opera house.

At one point, the teenage hero goes on a date with a pretty, popular girl at school: Helen Paper. He was set up by his best friend, Tommy, who he's secretly head over heels in love with. He goes on this date with Helen and at the end of the date, walks her home and nearly kisses her in the street – he knows she prepared for it, “Had I not seen her a moment ago covertly pop some scented thing into her mouth to prepare for such an inevitability?” They hold hands, but… kissing Helen Paper doesn’t materialize:

Dating

This moment with Helen – our tallness on the moon-lashed porch, the cool winds that sent black clouds (lit by gold from within) caravelling past a pirate moon, a coolness that glided through opening fingers that now touched, linked, squeezed, slowly drew apart – this moment made me happy, hopeful. An oppression had been lifted. A long apprenticeship to danger had abruptly ended.
            After I left her I raced home through the deserted streets laughing and leaping.

I thought, reading, he was laughing and leaping – because he didn’t have to kiss her. I was so happy for him, having escaped this pressure to "perform" and be someone he wasn't. The oppression that had been lifted was his need to fit in, he had escaped unscathed!

On the following page I was jolted back to bitter truth - reading that the “apprenticeship to danger” that abruptly ended was… his own homosexual feelings. He was happy, leaping in the streets, at the possibility of now loving a girl, not of escaping her. He was not damned. He now had real hope to believe his attraction to Tommy would turn fraternal.

Of course, yes of course, sigh: that’s exactly what it’s like. 

You exalt in the hope of fitting in. How I had forgotten; how I'm painfully reminded. And how pathetic it is when I look around to see how many adults are still willing to do anything, frantically, fanatically, hypocritically, politically just to "fit in".

White effortlessly gets to the heart of the human matter, and though set in the 50's, I never read about Howdy Doody. How much more affecting and wise writing is, always, when banishing pop culture, pervasive as it is. Notice in the quote above with Helen Paper - she pops “a scented thing” into her mouth, not Wrigley’s spearmint or a Certs, it’s something bigger, universal and forever. Timelessness is a quality shared by all great works of art.

And a great book, like a great person, strives to make others feel less alone. There is no more worthwhile an accomplishment.

A Xmas Whiff of Roma Therapy!

Marking the first time a drag queen proudly display balls, this Christmas Tree was caught waltzing (Matilda?) down Oxford Street.

Roma Therapy's evergreen extravagance drew lots of attention. As I walked her to her shift at Stonewall amid stares and iphone snaps, she proclaimed: "It's as if nobody's seen a Christmas tree with massive tits before!"

Who wore it better? 

Cuban Boob Job for Your Cock

I write copy for the web’s top nude male objectification site Paragon Men!  Each month, hunky XXX beefcakes flood my inbox and it's my job to make them sound interesting and engaging. So I make up a lot of shit. Who else will describe a hot naked muscle stud with both occupy politics and a nod to Tallulah Bankhead?

oh fuck, I misspelled Tallulah

That unlikely triple is a scalene triangle, all emphasis on its compelling hypotenuse. And that’s precisely how the copy gets carried away…

How many ways can you describe cocks, muscles and sperm? It tends to go back to basics like botany (sequoia trunks), geology (granite), and smutty metaphors (DNA pudding) that also weave in the likes of Carmen Miranda, Rhett Butler or being offered hard candy in the back of daddy’s sedan. The fact is, my copy better be unexpectedly captivating if it’s going to be read at all, seeing as it lives beside all those attention-grabbing, phenomenal physiques.

As I scrape the depths of horny euphemism and worshipful hyperbole - I discover. For example, I got the hot loaded line up for January which includes one stud who team Paragon thought had a wart at the base of his cock. When they asked him, he told them it was a “pearl” –

My only question was: “Is he Cuban?” and Paragon HQ responded, “How did you know?” 

Behold: La perla, in repose (at cock base) - in one of the un-airbrushed photos 

Let me just reveal all I know right here because there is scant info about this freaky Perla genital beading cock amplification online. It’s not pumping, not pills, not collagen – it’s PERLA! And it’s not uncommon in Cuba to cut open your cock (on purpose!), place a hard object (or two or more) known as a pearl (perla) inside, then – sew it back up and go on your merry way. Why? Oh why! Apparently, this rise or bump hits the clitoris when fucking – making sex more pleasurable to women. Or imaginably more pleasurable, which is the exact same thing.

This genital mutilation (Carribean circumcision?) is, from what I hear, not a big deal. And it's not a surgical procedure done at a licensed, sanitary doctor’s office, btw: this an at-home, get your anaesthetic from a pal, stick it in a syringe and shoot your dick before you slice it open like a papaya kind of surgery) solely to enhance sexual pleasure. So honestly, Perla is more like a boob job for cocks. A back alley, DIY boob job.

You can put anything you want in there. A pebble, a homing device, your mother-in-law – it’s not necessarily a pearl, or even pearl-like (who can afford a pearl in Cuba?) Anything hard or durable works. In fact, I met someone who inserted the broken end of a plastic toothbrush.Who knows - perhaps when in there long enough it will crust over and give birth to an actual pearl? Just add sand? 

A profitable new industry may now be gestating inside the male members of this island nation. But tell me – can you (or your clitoris) get into this fetish? Is this gonna go global? Does the perla turn. You. On?