I Woke Up this Mornin' and I Got Myself a Beer

Well, I woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer-
I woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer-
The future’s uncertain and the end is always near…

-- J. Morrison, with The Doors


I’m sick of listening to people blame addiction for their lack of accomplishment. In my field (which is art, whether that be visual, performative, musical, or literary), addiction has only served to SERVE the most famous artists/writers of the 20th century.

Let’s take pop music, as an example, and from that let's take Jim Morrison -- the first to be quoted herein -- and examine exactly what I’m saying. Jim Morrison. One of the sexiest, shortest-lived pop musicians of the ‘60s. Heavily into drugs and equally into 19th-Century Romantic poetry (or vice-versa), Morrison has gone down in American Top 40 history as one of the saddest icons since Elvis. But despite the fact that he died before (and younger than) The King, he had more to say. We can chalk that up to his fascination with Rimbaud and Verlaine, who managed, in between their volatile attempts at defining homosexual male love, to etch out some pretty raunchy-yet-perfect odes to the nitty-gritty physical aspects of homo-sapiel [sic] existence. Am I saying Morrison was queer? Hell, no. But did he learn about love from homosexuals? Indeed, he did. You figure out what the difference is; I’m too tired of having to draw such distinctions. Funny thing about Morrison, though – despite his reputation for indulging in mescalin, acid and other hallucinogens – his real Jones was for booze, as described by the previously enscribed quote. I mean, of all things to reach for early in the a.m. during the mid-1960's... a BEER?!?



Tired of lying in the sunshine,
Staying home to watch the rain –
But you were young and life was long,
And there was time to kill today…

-- Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon


There’s only time to kill, regardless of how despondent one’s adolescent nature might be, when there are drugs around. Otherwise, the adolescent grows bored. Once s/he tires of contemplation and its sister – masturbation – the adolescent needs some chemical compound in order to retain his/her complacency. For early 20th Century generations that drug was alcohol. But as the industrial revolution evolved into the technological revolution, the urge to expand consciousness evolved, relatively. Relativity, even though having been around since way before Morrison's day, caught up with the majority sometime during Floyd's day. In so doing, it relegated the booze buzz to an almost insignificant status. Sure, getting drunk was always a safe option (after all, isn’t that what Mom and Dad did?), but it didn’t exactly provide one with "options." It had become merely a steam valve.

So in order to effectively contemplate post-cocktail generation existence, one needed – at the very least – marijuana. Marijuana led entire generations into the lifestyle of complacency. Pot made “nothing happen.” Heck, it still does… But the pot mindest not only put Pink Floyd on the map, it also put them in the same league as the literary and filmatic masterpiece as The Wizard of Oz. And that was no easy feat. Just try to compare “All you touch and all you see/Is all your life will ever be” with “There’s no place like home.” That’s a pretty deep equation. But to this day, stoners will commence the Oz video with the Dark Side album, in order to compare how precisely each introduces its introduction, conflicts its conflict, and then struggles to resolve its respective resolutions -- simultaneously, if one's audio/visual cueing is right. I don't know about you, but I can't envision any member of the cocktail generation going to such extremes to prove a point that's ultimately not a point at all, but just a buzz. (Nah, that's the kind of thing only a stoner would do...)



She don’t lie,
She don’t lie,
She don’t lie –
Cocaine.

-- Eric Clapton

How much more explicit could he have made our entry into the ‘80’s? As much as his rock fans wanted to proclaim that “Disco was for fags,” they couldn’t help but pick up on the fad Studio 54 made so popular. And it wasn't just popular with the pop artists. It was popular with everyone in search of a higher high. Didn’t coke provide it? (Doesn’t it still, wherever it’s still available?) ‘Nough said ‘bout that... 'Cept that, of course, She still don't lie...



Clean shirt, new shoes
And I don't know where I'm goin' to
Silk suit, black tie
I don't need a reason why
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
'Coz every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

-- ZZ Top

And so came the ‘80s. So what if this song, just like Clapton’s, came out in the late ‘70’s? There’s no difference. All that matters to our present argument is that, somewhere in the late ‘70s, substance left and superficiality entered the scene. How ironic, in an argument about substances. But it's true. Somewhere during the late '70s, between when Led Zeppelin was contemplating "Houses of the Holy" and when Liza was spreading Herpes at '54, the fashionable "substance" became an utter lack of substance. It became superficiality. And it has been ever since, no matter which drugs we've subsequently ingested. (Ecstacy? Speed? -- they only help us stay "in the moment," which, unfortunately, consistently turns out not to be much of a moment at all).

What does this have to do with addiction? Not much, if we’re referring to dependence on some chemical compound. But if we’re talking about the re-direction of more than two entire generations onto the feel-good Jones of Consumerism, then there’s our Hard Rock Genesis. Oh, what a coincidence. (And you thought it was all Calvin Kein’s fault…) It was around the time ZZ came out with their hits that the Hard Rock Café chain became infamous as a hot spot for tourists traveling from just about anywhere in the Western world to anywhere else within. That whole conglomerate happened for the sake of a "sharp-dressed man." Or, in lieu of that, for the sake of "a pair of cheap sunglasses…"

So what am I getting at? I’m getting at the heart of late 20th-Century/early 21st Century American existence, as foretold and described within the confines of its pop musical culture. I’m getting at how we’ve been obsessed – if "we" describes us as one of the many who’ve been living in the first of the “three worlds” circa 1965 – with one substance or another. And even though the substances of fashion have changed slightly as the decades have progressed, the truth is, pop culture has wanted nothing less than to get us hooked on something. Pop culture has led us, as far back as we can trace, to favor one mood-altering path or another. In the long run, that path has proven to be nothing less than pop culture itself.



Well, it’s bungle in the jungle
And that’s all right by me.

-- Jethro Tull



Which eventually leads us to:



This is not my beautiful house!

-- David Byrne and The Talking Heads



So just where have YOU been living? If your domicile is absolutely free of alcohol, pot, mescalin/acid, cocaine/speed, or consumerist label-lust, then by all means, I want to hear from you. If you honestly think your lifestyle doesn’t serve some addiction to something, then I really want to hear from you. ‘Cuz I think that, in the end, we’re all addicted to something. Lately, I’ve witnessed a bunch of folks addicted to addiction. They all sit around in circles made up of other people addicted to their same addictions and talk abaout how they’re no longer going to succumb to their addictions. All the while, they drink coffee and smoke cigarettes – not only like both chemicals are going out of style – but as if neither chemical was indeed addictive. So where do you stand? What are you hooked on?

If you consider yourself “not hooked,” then, like I said, I really want to hear from you. Because I’m willing to toss this entire hypothesis out the window. I really am. Show me a person who's not hooked on something and bam! -- out goes this entire mental trajectory. But in the meantime, as the personal ads say, "ISO addicted individuals. Please be into any sort of chemical dependency and/or be admittedly hooked on commerce. Or in lieu of those things, be hooked on getting unhooked."

Life; addiction. Addiction; life. Would Darwin have defined either without the other?

Personally, I don't blame my addiction(s) for my lack of accomplishment. I just blame fate. If I'd have had Morrison's photogenics, or Pink Floyd's orchestrations, or ZZ Top's long beards, or even David Byrne's RISD pedigree (all at the right time in the right place, you see), I imagine I'd still have been just as much an addict -- only more famous.

Like they are.



[Ed's Note: This was composed, in exact sequence, while listening to New York's "only classic rock station." The author had no idea which songs would be played or within what order; he was merely responding to the stimulus.]

The Matter of Closets

A blog thing is a weird thing. It brings up many issues. Mainly, “How honest to be?” Or, “How much to recount?” Or if the answer to that question is, “Everything,” then, “How detailed is ‘Everything?’” Sooner or later, every attempt at coming out leads to another closet door.

I’ve been analyzing my own closet structure over the past 10 years, and I’ve come to two main conclusions about it:

1) The more I “out-ed” myself, the more I threw myself back into some closet;
2) The more I tried to eliminate closets from my own life, the more I
created them for those around me (e.g.: those whom I professed to love).

I certainly don’t mean to use these statements as a defense for remaining closeted, despite how it might appear. But the law of opposites, as it would appear, applies just as much to matters of coming out as it does to any other action/reaction. It’s simply a matter of physics.

What do I mean when I say that “The more I ‘out-ed’ myself, the more I threw myself back into some closet?” It’s pretty simple, really. I refer you to Portland, Maine in 1987. The already “out” Greg (that is, “out” to everyone from his lover to his college friends – his parents suspect but will not allow themselves to believe), surrenders the bulk of his worldly possessions and packs what little remains into a 1985 VW Jetta. His sole intent? To move to San Francisco. San Francisco, even to this day, reeks of homosexual innuendo. But in 1987, especially to the New English, it equated to “screaming.”

Was I, at that point in 1987, “out” to my parents? No. But what with having lived with a male lover for the previous three years and taking the $5,000 graduation gift they’d given me (in hopes I’d find a bride and settle down somewhere in Massachusetts) in order to transplant myself in Gay Mecca, it would be safe to say that the writing was on the wall. In other words, I took a gay situation and made it gay-er. Ergo, one closet opened into another. In essence, I “outed” myself onto a higher “out” plane, without ever bothering to actually “come out.” Even if I had told my folks the basics, the mere fact that I was moving to SF upped the ante, to the point where just being “out” wouldn’t have been enough. I could, after all, have remained in New England and pursued an assimilationist gay existence. (The lover. The brownstone. The labradors and the flannel…) But nooooooo,,,

I had to be gay-er than gay. I had to move to Gay Mecca. And would that THAT had been enough, but still it wasn’t.

I never intended – consciously, that is – for my SF karma to result in such extremes. All I remember is knowing I had to be surrounded by my own kind. And by “my own kind” I don’t just mean those who prefer to fuck members of the same sex. No, what – or should I say “whom” – I needed to be around were not only other gays, but other homosexuals who fought for their civil rights and, at that time in particular, their right to self-test experimental AIDS treatments. I suppose the whole AIDS factor was ultimately random, but its randomness never bore out over its reality in the eyes of my generation. Random or not, it was real, and it had to be dealt with. Hence, I was welcomed to my next closet: that of the AIDS activist.

It was around the time I commenced my activism that the dike (pardon the pun) between myself and my family finally cracked. And nowhere around was there a butch with a big enough finger to stop the flow. In 1988, at the dawn of the Larry Kramer/ACT-UP era, I “came out” to my parents.

They didn’t take it well. Dad withdrew into denial and Mom asserted that I could be converted, “If only [I] cared enough to…”

Despite my parents’ reactions, breaking open the preliminary closet door didn’t serve to be very satisfying to me. I had by then already crossed deep into the heart of SF counter-culture. Not only was I an activist, but I was also discovering my artistic sensibility. Sure, I had been creative all through high school and college, but this time, I was declaring my creativity/bohemianism as a lifestyle and not just an adolescent phase. I surrounded myself with other artists who actually made their living as artists. Up until then, that concept had been unimaginable to me. It was utterly liberating to be immersed in the subculture. But on the other hand, the subculture became yet another closet to confront.

My parents knew I was gay. So what? What did that mean, in their tiny little suburban world? The “gay” they envisioned from what they were able to pick up via mainstream media not only didn’t equate with the kind of “gay” I had become, it was downright sugar-coated compared to my reality. And even though it only served to hurt them more, I made damn sure my parents knew what a Radical Leftist Queer I had become. I was trying to make sure one closet phase wouldn’t lead to another. (Heck, being an activist was chic in those days, so it was the least I could do.)

But as fate would have it, one closet phase did lead to another. It wasn’t a mandatory evolution, by any means. In fact, it was pretty extreme, even when compared to the extremism with which I had surrounded myself. To this day, I don’t know which came first – my extremism or my extreme desire to live extremely. Regardless, have I ever “come out” to my parents as a prostitute? Oh, come now. There’s only so much a parent can handle, and believe me you, they haven’t been able to handle what I’ve dished out so far – so why would I dish out any more?

At the time of this writing, I’m 41. That makes my parents 71 each. 71 friggin’ years old, each with their own respective version of reproductive/genital cancer: prostate for Dad, and breast/cervical/uterine for Dear ol’ Mom. Now, would YOU want to tell the proud recipients of such diagnoses that their only son is not only a homosexual, but a homosexual whore? If indeed you possess that cruel a streak in your spine, then God help you. As cruel a streak as I have, and as much as the adolescent in me would like to hurt them, I simply can’t imagine wanting to hurt them that much. I mean, Enough already!

Would they – could they – ever understand that I consider my practice to be a vocation? Could they ever comprehend that some of us view sex for pay as a necessary component to human society? Would they ever be able to wrap their brains around the idea that I am content in my status? Probably not.

I had seen how tough it had been on my lovers, my boyfriends and even my friends to admit freely that I was a whore. No matter how much they wanted to be OK with it (and even though they really were OK with it), I saw how my baggage became their baggage, strictly by association. My justifications became their justifications, and suddenly, by the mere desire of my being “out” as a whore, my lovers, boyfriends and friends were placed in a defensive position. I didn’t like that. I was OK whenever I had to do the defending, but I didn’t wish having to be so defensive on anyone in my social circle.

That’s when it hit me, for sure. As “out” as I proclaimed to be, there was one closet I would have to retain.

And despite over 15 years of struggling to prevent closets, I still remain in one. I suppose there are always secrets we need to keep from our parents. I love the metaphor that is “growing gray.” It’s nature’s way of making us see the grays, after an entire adolescence and young adulthood of fighting to make things black and white. That was the story of my young adulthood. The struggle to live closet-free was nothing less than an attempt to live life either totally black or totally white. It doesn’t matter which, because they’re both extremes, and everyday life doesn’t exist along the extremes. Sooner or later life (like water, or air, or anything in the physical realm) seeks equilibrium.

When I look back on my young adulthood, now that I’m middle-aged, I can see how black and white I made everything out to be. But as much as I hated closets, I never opened to my parents the closet of my sexual extremism. Why bother? As the grays began to emerge in my hair, I learned to see the grays of coping with parents. They’d struggled enough just to come to terms with my homosexuality. As much as I’d rather they’d have come a lot further into acceptance (PS: they didn’t; it was awful), I had to accept that they could only come as far as they could come. There was no pushing them.

After realizing that, I finally realized all I was fighting was MY journey. And I came to realize that just living it is enough. I don’t need to throw it in my parents’ faces to justify it. All I have to do is live it.

That’s not being “closeted,” it’s being wise. Or at the very least, it’s being compassionate.

So Why the Sudden Slip into th' Brogue???

All I know is this (and I know I’ve said it before): Writing’s hard.

Writing’s as hard as painting. It’s as hard as sculpting. It’s as hard as any language, inculding – if I might say so – mathematics. Sure, all those practices are difficult. But tell me, is there anything more difficult than jottin' down exactly what we’re tryin' t'say’?

Math has something to fall back on. So do painting and sculpting. It’s not that they’re not difficult, but they’re easier in that, if one ha'n’t executed 'em precisely, a flaw shows right then and there.

With writing, even if one hasn’t executed it precisely, well, it can slip past you. It can slip past you ‘til you figure out to back up and not let it slip past you again. Writing’ll slip past you, my friend, ‘lest ‘yer well aware what it’s up to…

And just what is it up to? Well, quite honestly, writing’s up to no good. It’s up to no good a‘tal. Writing, my dear friend, wants t’convince ya. It wants t’convince ya it’s a solid line of reasoning – Nay – the ONLY line of reasoning. At least, the only line of reasoning that matters, at that time, at that place, when and where you’re readin’ it.

Poem, novel, dialogue or historical account – they’re all propoganda in the end. Don’t let the artists tell ya they’re reaching for something higher. Lord knows they want to. They want to picture themselves as something different from the historians, but they’re not. Truth be known, they’re lesser-than. ‘Cuz they’re the ones who wanna trick whole generations into thinkin’ their stories are acutal history. At least the historians attempt such a haughty claim from the start. The writers (God bless ‘em and Satan curse ‘em), attempt it blindly, not recognizing their own guilt. Christ help ‘em, but they don’t see their own sins.

Writers, Lord God have pity on their souls, think they’re speakin’ the truth. But if there’s anyone the lot o' ya should be wary of, it h’aint the historians. It’d be the writers. Writers are evil. Writers want nothing less than your souls. That’s what makes ‘em so sure they’re speakin’ the truth. ‘Cuz the truth, we’ve all been told, is s’posed t’set ya free.

Free y’er mind up to a writer and lose y’er soul. It’s that simple.

Thanks f’er readin'.

A Minor Slip-Up

Well, I’ve done something I didn’t think – post-SF consciousness-raising, that is – I’d ever do again. I pulled a regular “bitch fest” in front of, and directed toward, one of the boys I “dated” during my recent six months of escapist endeavors…

This one is 27. A vegetarian hippy with parents from Santa Cruz or some such Berkeley-esque Northern CA environment. We spent exactly one passionate, coke-inspired night (and subsequent day) together two months ago, during which time we professed our uncanny mutual attraction. I can’t speak for him, but I meant everything I said, even if the coke did make it easier to say. Not only was I genuinely attracted to him, but I was also relieved to run into somebody else with Northern CA consciousness. I thought I’d found a new friend. But he never called me, even after I went through the trouble of looking him up at his trendy Manhattan restaurant job one Saturday night so that I might slip him my number. (He had left me his, but it had been disconnected. Should that have been my first warning? I remember thinking so. So I got busy with my life, and forgot about him.)

But then I saw him tonight on the way home from the Met, quite unexpectedly, as I was walking along Lorimer on my way toward Grand and beyond. Saw him dead-on, with no potential for looking away as if I hadn’t noticed him. Ditto for him. I saw it in his eyes. I saw him, and he saw me, plain and simple. It was startling for both of us. For me, because I’d just shaken off some other boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him, and for him, well, just because, I guess. We weren’t passing each other, we were walking in the same direction. I had felt his presence and turned around. That’s how I saw him. I wonder if I’d have turned around if it had been anyone else?

“How ya doin’?” he asked as he approached me. He didn’t take the time to stop, and I didn’t take the time to stand still. Suddenly we were walking together. He was on his way to get cigarettes.

“Me?,” I asked, “I’m doin’ fine. Always have, always will.” I waited a few beats. We kept walking. The store was still a few yards away. I felt no need to hold back. I blurted, “Sorry I didn’t return your calls, but I DIDN’T GET ANY.”

He looked at me sheepishly. “I just got a new phone,” he said. “I haven’t had one all this time.”

“Mmm,” I grunted. And I stepped in front of him, and turned to face him – stopping him in his tracks.

I lifted my middle finger to my nose and sniffed it. Then I stuck it under his nose. He didn’t know what to make of the gesture, but he took a whiff anyway.

“Smell it?,” I asked.

“Smell what?”

“That’s someone else’s ass,” I assured him. It was no lie. I had been fingering the boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him for close to an hour before I worked up the excuse of needing to walk the dog.

He became visibly disgusted. He resumed walking.

I followed him into the corner store. He bought some cigs, quite uncomfortable all the while. When he had completed his transaction he tried to brush me off with a “Well, it was good to see you,” but I confronted him once more.

“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “I wasn’t faking when I said I wanted to see you again. How come no call? I went out of my way to give you my number. The ball was in your court. You knew it.”

“I told you, I didn’t have a phone, and I’ve been real busy…”

“Bullshit. I’ve been busy, too. But if it’d been up to me to call you, then you could’ve been sure I’d a’ found a pay phone. Or something. I don’t mean to come across as some needy faggot whining, ‘Why did’t you call?,’ but I need you to know – I wanted to see you again. And I rarely feel that way. I told you that.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but when we parted I felt like you left it as ‘just friends’ and I thought we’d talked extensively about how I’m the marrying kind.”

“You mentioned it,” I told him, “but there was hardly anything extensive about it.”

He disagreed.

“So THAT’s why you did’t call,” I said.

“Well, yeah.”

“Then that’s what you should’ve had the balls to say a few minutes ago.”

I saw the whites of his eyes. He had no way out, and he knew it.

“Look,” he said, “I adore you. But there’s obviously not gonna be any way we can make it work.”

I asked, “Because you want monogamy?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s all I was trying to get you to say. That’s fine with me. I’ll be alright. Always have been.”

And with that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him, never once looking back. I walked home, thinking the entire time about how weird it had been to see him, right out of the blue, after I’d mentally put the entire scenario regarding him to rest. I couldn’t help but repeat – over and over – my mantra, “Gay male monogamy is not only impossible, it’s superfluous,” but at the same time, part of me was wishing him luck. Christ knows he’ll need it.

Poem for a Commercial Website

Fuck This!

All I did was t’click on t’some link,
But Lo! an' Behold, said link is a FINK.

If all I'd a' wanted was t' spend my eve'
Clickin' more links an' spreadin' 'net seed,
Then I'd a' gone right fer it – right from th' start,
And click'd ont'a some por-no-graphic web's heart!

-- G. O’Neill

Me an' Billy Joe

{Editor’s Note: Hey, Kids! For a multi-dimensional experience available to you only through this fabulous medium called the Internet, you can click on any of these following links to accompany the prose you’re about to read! (Or not… Or not…)}

[Accopmaniment only: (Best to click it into another window altogether, to start the music before you start reading. If you can get the music to play while you read, you've accomplished the mission. Windows users, right click the link. When music begins, click onto previous window with blog text and let the games begin! Mac users, you should be smart enough to figure this out yourselves...)

And PS, PS: This one's 'sposed 'ta be in an American Southern Accent, not the Brogue of subsequent posts.]

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9G5NO9c-BmsJ:users.cis.net/sammy/billyjoe.htm++%22Tallahatchie+%22&hl=en

Lyrics only:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:11qft-jvmMEJ:www.swopnet.com/music/ode_to_bj.html++%22ode+to+billy+joe%22&hl=en

More Lyrics:

http://www.geocities.com/odetobobbiegentry/lyric/lotbj.htm]


06/03/05:

Seems like me an’ Billly Joe McAllister’s got a lot in common. Mainly, that’d be today’s date.

See, June’s a funny time f’er me. Not funny Ha-Ha!, but funny strange. Funny strange ‘cuz it’s the time a’ year when I was born. Or should I say, done born… An’ there ain’t no time stranger than the time y’er bein’ born… Save, maybe, f’er the time y’er ‘bout ‘ta die…

But me an’ Billy Joe, y’see, we done both, th’ same time.

No, y’er right: I wa’n’t born June 3rd. But guess’d I did do that day? That’d be the very day in June, 2003, that I done touched down ‘n JFK – t’ start a new life in New York City. Now whaddya thinka that?

That Bill Joe, y’know – he w’an’t jus’ coverin’ up a pregnancy. He was coverin’ up his own self. His own damn bisexual, pregnancy-inducing self…

There’s so much more to pop culture than we can ever imagine. But why imagine? We’re too busy living it. When the music alarm went off this morning at 6:00am, and I heard the Classic Rock DJ announcing that today was, in fact, the anniversary of Billy Joe’s infamous transcendance, well – I jus’ couldn’t help but wonder why I felt such a connection. But now I wonder no more. Birth, death. Rebirth, redeath. Ain’t it all the same in th’ long run?

But y’all don’t need to worry ‘bout me throwing myself off no Tallahatchie Bridge. Jus’ bear’n mind: June’s a prime time f’er folks like me an’ good ol’ Billy Joe. It’s a prime time – f’er either makin’ it or losin’ it alt'gether…

An’ I done chose t’ make it.