Cinco de Mayonnaise

Today is the celebration of the miraculous victory of Mexican forces against the French (not Spanish!) infantry at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. I celebrated by making island-style fish tacos with ono (a type of mackerel; means "tasty" or "delicious" in Hawaiian) for the whole household, thus tying in Hawaiian cuisine with an observation of the Mexican holiday. Despite the fact that none of us is remotely Mexican (well, unless you count me and Cuz's smidgeons of Native American blood...which I do like to count). I'm sure this means we are misappropriating numerous cultures, and duly apologize to anyone offended. But I'm still going to finish my margarita.

Also, I had a job interview today - my first real interview in the month or so I've been job-hunting here - and it went really well. We talked for a full 45 minutes, longer than any interview I ever had in Portland. I'd say it's 50/50. I'll know by Friday.

We go to Hana tomorrow for a few nights. I'm excited. We'll be working, but there will be relaxation time, too, and I know from my brief taste before that Hana is the most enchanting place on Maui. Probably one of the most sensuously enchanting places in the world.

Aloha y feliz Cinco de Mayo


glam aka tony

Hana

This may be a rather desultory post as I have many chronologically-scrambled impressions to record. It is actually kind of cold here right now, but that may be partly due to coming back to Haiku after spending the night in Hana, where humidity hangs like a muggy curtain of vapor in the air all the time. It’s definitely rain-forest climate. The house there, on Maia (means “banana”) Road, the one that used to be the bed and breakfast, is a little less well kept than the Hohani Place house – most notably, the pool and hot tub are dry, except for gross algae-infused rain water at the bottom, which Cousin and I spent some time pumping and scooping out – but it is BEAUTIFUL, and I can imagine how great the parties they used to throw there were. David Lachapelle, the photographer whose twisted, bad-acid-trip work I’m a fan of (his subjects include Courtney Love and the repugnantly fascinating tranny Amanda Lepore), came to one of their pool parties. The backyard/pool area is completely private and enclosed by the house and trees; what you see from the front/driveway doesn’t give any inkling of how gorgeous it is in back. They have several acres of land and it’s like a maze with walls of lush green growth and bamboo, palm trees, shower trees, and African tulips (an invasive, destructive, yet pretty exotic species) that have been sculpted with the landscaper’s hands in such a way that it creates a labyrinth of interconnected trails with walls, floor and ceiling of verdant, pungent foliage. I went for a walk through the green maze after smoking some of D’s hash and felt so strongly the green Alice in Wonderland earth magic of the place. Hana exudes a potent and sensuous enchantment. It made me wish I wasn’t single. You can see why so many people take their honeymoons there. But I didn’t get to enjoy it much; I did a lot of weed-whacking (fun, compared to machete work or indoor cleaning, but still draining in the hot sun), cleaning, vacuuming, mopping the wood floors with Orange Glo (a scam like Riddex: doesn’t really work: the floors don’t look much better, and we still have mice and cockroaches), not much else, really. J. and I went into town to get dinner at the restaurant (maybe the only one in Hana) and a redneck guy at the bar while we were waiting for the food razzed J. about his man-purse. Back at the house we found J. and Cousin’s friend Marlena and her husband/boyfriend visiting, but after eating my “saimin” (name for a ramen-noodle type soup they have here, sort of the Hawaiian equivalent of pho, but not as good) I completely fell into a sleep coma: it was like someone put a spell on me; just went to bed and couldn’t even think about getting up for hours, although I wasn’t fully asleep, and heard it when the rain started falling, INCREDIBLY hard, like a SOLID WALL of tropical rain just deluging everything, and the windows were all open so I could hear it so loud all around me, and it was like being outside, but it was nice, having a roof overhead and yet feeling like I was in the middle of it, and of course that’s what rain forests do, baby....they rain. A lot. It stopped and started a few times. I could have slept straight through until morning, but I had enough wits about me to realize I’d wake up at 4 a.m. and be in limbo, so I made myself get up around 9 or 10 and watched TV for an hour or two (including a movie called “Boys Over Flowers” on KBS which I think must stand for Korean Broadcasting System or something like that, and a Discovery Channel show on the hunt for an elusive nearly-extinct ancient fish called a goblin shark that could also be called the Pinocchio shark because it has a grotesquely elongated nose), then went back to bed, woke up this morning and we finished cleaning (Cousin in one of his stormy angry moods where I just need to get away from him until he calms down) and drove home. The road to Hana, though dangerous indeed (I was tense the whole way, especially on the way back, with the road slippery from rain and the truck occasionally fish-tailing across the road), was gorgeous beyond belief, even with vog (volcanic fog) obscuring the view: breathtaking ocean vistas, waterfalls, a place called Rolling Pig Park (I forget the actual Hawaiian name), and vegetation so dense and vibrant I can’t imagine the rain forests of Brazil being any more lush. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the other day when I went to the nude beach with J. (Cousin stayed home, stressed about the dogs) a big sea turtle swam right by me in the shallow water, between me and the shore, close enough I could have touched it. It was such a peaceful lovely animal (and so cool knowing something like 1 in 10,000 of them actually make it to adulthood) and I want to think it was attracted by the mellow non-threatening energy emanating from me into the water: it recognized me as a fellow aquaphile. Really made my day, and I called Mom to tell her, since she’s always loved turtles, but I woke her up from a nap and she sounded confused and didn’t know whether it was morning or night, or even what day it was. (Poor woman. It has to end soon.) So now we’re back in Haiku and J. and Cousin are watching silly reality TV shows downstairs and I made fruit salad for breakfast tomorrow and I changed my Ben W. portrait (HER BEAUTIFUL SON) a couple more times since the photos I took and I’m happy with it at last, actually it kind of lights me up with love and affection when I walked into the studio this afternoon and looked at it for the first time in a couple days after getting back, so yes, I love my painting. I was going to say a couple other things about Grey Gardens, too: something about the line between fantasy and mental illness (you've got to be a little loose in the wiring to live in such filth for so long) and also about the poetic beauty of the fact that Little Edie finally got to have her movie-star moment because of the documentary made about how tragic it was that she never got her movie-star moment (!) And I came up with a great new working title for Cousin’s book that I think may be THE ONE, and I wish I could tell you it, but I’d better not, because I said I wouldn’t, and we don’t want people stealing our ideas, but suffice to say it is fabulous, and it IS Cousin, it is one of his catchphrases and it encapsulates him to a T and I can see it written in lipsticky flowing script over a hilarious photo of him with a lipstick kiss mark over it – oh lord, yes, let it be, it’s purrr-fect, this book is going to be a whole lotta fun.

Happiness: not so alarming as it seems

To think that today I am a fiery eagle of soaring energy and limitless strength, and only a few days ago I was a bloated toad hiding in a murky pond. The vicissitudes of being human!

Went to my capstone course for the first time today – “Aiding Unwanted Pets Through Grantwriting” is the full course name. I am one of two male humans in the class of 15-20. (The rest are female; no trannies, at least none visible to the naked eye.) I absolutely love it, although we have to present an “individual skill assessment” on Thursday – basically selling ourselves to our fellow classmates for the purpose of forming grantwriting groups – which is a little nerve-wracking – a job interview is hard enough in front of just one or two people! – but then again I felt pretty much immediately comfortable with this class – partly because of how warm and likable and open the instructor (Becky Boesch) was right off the bat; she’s one of those people you can tell instantly that they KNOW what they’re talking about AND it genuinely exhilarates them – and partly because I usually feel more comfortable with women for whatever reason – with men I feel more like they’re judging me (so nauseatingly self-psychoanalytical, sorry). I’m really just a big ol’ girl, but we already knew that, I suppose. (But no, Mom, I’m not going to be getting a sex change, nor am I going to become the next Pregnant Man like that Beattie guy.) Well, sometimes I feel more female, other times I definitely feel male. I’m just an in-betweener, such is my curse and blessing. ANYHOW. We talked about Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic who writes books, designed a “hugging machine” for herself and crusaded to make slaughterhouses more pleasant for animals, so that they feel at peace. One girl unwittingly instigated a debate by saying the supreme court is considering the lethal injection of prisoners right now and relating it to euthanizing animals, but another girl, who has experience in this area, said what they do to animals is painless, they’re supposed to put them under with morphine or painkillers first (although some don’t), and in any case the lethal injection itself is an overdose of anesthetic, it makes you just relax, just relax, just go to sleep.

Walking home after class I saw an accident on Broadway: an old lady in a little compact car fought a big white pickup, and the pickup won. I thought of snapping a photo but decided that was just too tabloid. (I’m the kid who always AVOIDED fights in the hallways of junior high, while others gathered around to gape at them.) On the Max I saw a guy who really looked like Igor from Young Frankenstein, wearing a hoodie. He had that bulging lopsided eye. Spoke with darling Lisa this morning, the one lifelong friend (intuition tells me) that I took from my semi-disastrous summer in Glacier. She swears she is coming to spend our mutual birthday together on March 18th before I leave Portland; I hope so, she could really help me rock this town inside-out one last time before I leave on the greatest adventure yet of my adult life. She said she is finally straightening out her financial situation, which in Lisa-speak I think means she got a job? (Lisa, if you read this, just kidding, love ya babe!) Went to Edelweiss and the Yellow Toad (my disparaging nickname) confirmed what I already knew about how lame he is by saying he doesn’t like German beer because it’s not hoppy enough (!!!), which is so hilarious, because Kirk & I both go there as our oasis away from hoppy Portland beers and IPAs, and we both think German beer is so greatly superior. Different strokes I guess! But they have further reduced their holdings of good import hefeweizens which the paranoid part of me thinks is a nefarious plan of the Toad’s to keep us away, because of that time I was rude to him AFTER HE WAS RUDE TO US. Anyhow. Came home and found the new RAM card and installed it, so now my laptop runs at least 3 x faster, it’s beautiful. (Last week my roommate Scott helped me figure out where the memory card was on my laptop – took us forever but we finally found it under the palm rest to the left of the mousepad.) Also just received Kentucky Fried Movie and Little Britain: Season Three from Netflix. Life is grand!

I've actually been in a splendid mood since talking with my cousin last night and coming away from that conversation feeling that all is grand with the world and with my future, thanks largely to him. He’s excited about me coming out, which makes me even more excited about coming out, and he even said I can take the train down to San Fran instead of the plane, and he’ll meet me there and we can fly to Maui together at the end of March (since he knows I hate and fear flying). He told me about the vintage furs from the turn of the century that he scored off ebay, including a black bear coat, which we discussed in light of PETA protesters in Portland and elsewhere, and I came away feeling really good and pumped up about getting through these last few months and moving onwards and upwards. Speaking of which, Kirk said something about how I was “dissing” Portland, and I just want to clarify that in no way am I talking shit about Portland as a city, and a place, and a magical happening incubator of art and creativity and freedom of expression of every kind imaginable – Portland is a great, great city and has been my (over)indulgent mother for years now (since 1990, off and on, if you count junior high/high school in Hillsboro), and I will miss it forever, and may return some day, but this is the biggest opportunity of my life so far, or that’s how I’m looking at it, and I’ve got to make one big leap at the prime time while I’m still young enough and ambitious enough and full of piss and vinegar enough to do so, and that’s what I’m going to do, to go and get tan and lean and toned and healthy on Maui and then have my way with San Francisco, where I may be a small fish in a big pond, and it may be harder to make an impression and swim ahead of the school the way I have in PDX, but I’ll survive, as always, finding a way to make ends meet, meeting the people I’m meant to learn from, making twisted demented brilliant art with colorful zany indelible characters, and finding beauty where others scarcely thought to look for it.

The fish who drowned in moonshine

Somebody left this Care Bear outside the Taco Bell by my house. That's kind of sad, right? I guess that makes it a Nobody Cares Bear.

I just got off the phone after about an hour with dear mum, wishing her a happy birthday – FOUR TIMES, since my cell still drops calls continuously when I’m at home and it’s using the wifi connection. She sounded in great spirits, although she’s afraid she’s going to have to move to a smaller room since her rent went up $40, but when I asked how much her income also went up (it does every January) the figure she gave me came out to $39, so I don’t get how it really makes a difference. I told her to crunch the numbers and talk to her people and get back to me and if she needs me to I’ll send her a check each month to cover the difference so she can keep her big beautiful room that she loves. I called and left Anthony a message about how much I love Little Britain and there’s a sketch in it where the queen or some other aristocratic fat bewigged lady is lying on a couch dictating a memoir to her assistant who sits there typing it, and every so often she stops and asks, “How many pages is that?” and the assistant checks and says, “Twelve,” and the silver haired lady utters an exclamation of disappointment and goes back to recounting more anecdotes. I watched it with my roommates the other day and said, “That’s me and my cousin writing his memoir on Hana!”

A friend of mine (I'm not sure whether to use peoples' names in a public forum, some people are shy and sensitive about that, while others are like me and don't care) said the original title of my book made her think I sounded like a trustafarian. If she meant "Live Through Me" it is (intentionally) a bit grandiose sounding, yes, but it also references the fact that people who absorb other peoples' journals and diaries are in a way living vicariously through them, just as I used to absorb Virginia Woolf's life through her diary back in my freshman-in-college days (I'm with the Indigo Girls on that one). It also relates to my mother, who is disabled and living in a nursing home in Minnesota, telling me every time I talk with her on the phone that she nows lives vicariously through me and my sister. (Naturally, she's excited about me going to Maui in the spring.) And lastly, it is (also intentionally) a reference to Hole's album "Live Through This," which although I don't really listen to it any more (just as I don't read Marvel comics any more), defined a certain era of my life and is probably one of my 10 favorite albums of all time.

If she meant the title "Como me llamo" made me sound trustafarian, I'm not sure why, unless just because I'm a white American using a Spanish title - but I'm studying Spanish in school, I genuinely find it to be a beautiful language, and learning a second language is good! Maybe she meant the translation of that title, "What is My Name," but I'm not sure why that would be either. It certainly has a personal resonance for me, since I've been changing my name to one thing or another practically my entire life, as my family can well attest. I was born with the first name Joseph, called "Joe" throughout my childhood (my sister, mother and cousin still have that name in their phones and address books for me). At one point I was toying with the first name Simon, at another J.D. At another (now highly embarrassing) point when I was a teenager, it was going to be Gary Glamdring! (Good God.) So when I legally changed it to Anthony LeTigre in May 07 it was only the culmination of a long history of wondering, more or less, "What is my name?" I still have a poem with that title in the booklet I'm publishing in January and I'm going to work this whole question of names into it as a theme.

Nonetheless, the final title I'm going with is "The Fish Who Drowned." Unless I think of a REALLY KILLER new one within the next week or two.

What are you doing for New Years? I get invited to parties (of course!), but I'm really kind of over getting drunk, and how much fun will a New Year's Eve party be without booze? I guess I'll find out.

I'm meeting with my three cast members tomorrow afternoon to discuss a script I wrote called "The Art Police" which they're going to help me film in January! And the neo-noir reimagining of Sunset Boulevard that I'm conceiving with Kirk and Melanie is starting to look really promising, and I've bestowed upon it a working title - "Moonshine Boulevard."