This just in...

My editor, Ariel Gore, tells me Just Out has a nice little write-up on the book "Portland Queer," which I contributed to, and which has now been released. If you're in Portland, attend the readings! (Wish I could.) Go here for info, or to order your copy!

Now, Just Out, please take this in the loving spirit in which it's intended...and I know you know this already...but you really need to get a better website and get away from the PDF file versions of the paper. That shit is laborious and antiquated.

kiss meow

glam

dim sum / daddies and twinks / Rick and Steve / print media (in trouble)

Yesterday I woke from a dream in which I was chased by a mob of angry, humorless lesbian feminists with baseball bats. I think I caught a glimpse of Valerie Solanas amongst the throng. Unnerving, to say the least.

Had dim sum with Kirk and Melanie at Wong's King - old times revisited. This time I didn't bring a flask of whiskey and pour it into my teacup like I did years ago, last time I was there. The server girls get to wear cute violet colored uniforms. While waiting to be seated we stepped next door to an Asian video store and made ourselves Obnoxious White People by laughing at the poorly translated English titles of the films. I didn't mean to be rude, but let's face it, that shit is funny. My favorite movie title: "Grapeplantation the Man" (photo above, in case you don't believe me). "Grapeplantation" being one word.

Later I introduced Kirk to the majestic cathedral of booze, juicy burgers, redneck rock and free wifi that is Sam's Billiard's in the Hollywood District. When I had my own apartment (the Melcliff, kitty-corner from Holocene) my bar of choice was My Father's Place, within easy walking distance. Ditto the Florida Room when I lived in the QuArtHouse. Now it's Sam's, two easy MAX stops from my house on scenic 82nd Ave. It was Ms. Su'ad who introduced ME to that place years ago, when I was a blonde knave doing data entry for a corporate litigation firm on the outskirts of Lake Oswego.

Got the new issue of OUT. More blather about Sam Adams and his immensely overanalyzed sex life, featuring quotes by Ms. Davis and Mr. Beck, the leading mouthpieces of our queer community. (Note to self: START BEING OLD, so people will pay attention to you.) Also a good article on the new movie about Federico Lorca and his relationship with Salvador Dali, featuring an interview with cover boy Javier Beltran.

I was stunned to hear that Jaymee and Jim, respectively the news and A&C editors of Just Out, have left the paper. What does this mean? Is this the end of Just Out as we know it? A harbinger of the end of print media in general as we know it? I'm glad I have so many different irons in the fire. It's one more sign to me that I've picked the right time to leave Portland, though. It feels like the end of a cycle.

When a door closes, a window of opportunity opens.

I was able to fix much of the Hat Party footage using 3-way Color Corrector in the Video Effects menu of Final Cut Pro. 3-way Color Corrector, I salute thee from the bottom of mine empty goblet.

Years ago during the QuArt days Sam Adams came to a couple of our art shows and behaved flirtatiously towards me, and people asked me why I didn't respond, and I said even though he's an attractive man and it was certainly flattering, the fact is I just don't have the Daddy Complex that many gay guys have. I don't want the bigger, older, hairy man to wrap his lovin' arms around me. I go for the skinny pretty boys myself. I told Dylan last time we hung out, "I'm like a twink-daddy or something. A combination of the two." (His new metal band, Cull, goes on tour next week - he gave me a beautiful copy of their new CD with an awesome lyric book.) I have more than one type, and am attracted to guys both younger and older than me at times, but based on my experience so far I'd have to say my LEADING type is the skinny, pretty boy with dark hair and pale skin. (Ben W. of course being the prime example.)

It's amazing that it's taken me so long to figure all this out, but that's what happens when you spend a decade associating with chemical substances rather than people.

My cousin just told me about Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple, a show on the Logo channel that's done entirely with Legos and Lego people. He's taking me to see Cheech and Chong's live appearance a couple nights after I arrive!

I borrowed Kirk's scale to weigh my bags for the airport, and was elated when I stepped on it myself this morning and found that I weigh 185 lbs. Before I left for Glacier last summer I tipped the scale at a beefy 200 lbs. It's hard to believe that I've lost 15 POUNDS since then, but as they say, numbers don't lie. It's all the more impressive since muscle weighs more than fat, and I have gained muscle just this month, since I started pilates. All that sweat is paying off.

Maybe when I get to San Francisco I'll just start having a lot of (safe) sex, and that can take the place of exercise.

This Just In!

I got one last cover story in Just Out, cover above! You can read all the articles online here. My articles start on pages 16, 17 and 23.

I feel better about my performance in "Art Police" after watching it several times and hearing some feedback. I really kinda look like a thug. My friend Kirk, who came over last night to watch a hilariously bad film called "Zombie Strippers," said that his girlfriend after watching AP said, "Not only does he not look gay, he looks macho." Another friend said he thought I did a good job but that Justin didn't do so well as the other art police officer. I think it's funny the way Justin overplayed the role, though. I told him he should play it over-the-top and be the crazy emotional counterpart to my cool, clipped, deadpan. I think that contrast is funny.

Off to the media center to burn DVDs of Art Police, and then it's Hat Party time, baby!

Onwards and upwards / Loins of Punjab

Walking down MLK yesterday afternoon a girl in the passenger's seat of a big white pickup stopped at a red light yelled to me, "Aren't you a tall drink of water?" I kind of smiled but didn't say anything and she said, "Don't you recognize me?" It was MS. SU'AD! I haven't seen her forever and to be honest, didn't recognize her. Her hair was kind of magenta colored. She said, "SMILE!" as the truck sped away. The funny thing is I think that "tall drink o' water" comment was the first thing she ever said to me years ago when we both slaved away in front of the keyboard at Bates Private Capital in Lake Oswego. Ahhh, how I miss those days.

NOT REALLY.

One problem with living in a town so superabounding with ultra-creative people is that no one has enough time to enjoy or appreciate everyone else's artworks and projects. I'm as guilty as anyone. I try to support other peoples' work - I'm volunteering again at the Love Show closing party on the 20th - but to get things done I find I have to devote the majority of my time and energy to my own goals. Another thing that bugs me about Portland is the low motivation rate or general slow pace of life here. I sort of don't fit in that way. Except when I'm flailing in a despondent rut, I am a high-energy, fast-paced, goal-oriented person, and sometimes - especially lately, with the new health regimen - I exist in a state bordering on mania. The sluggish response rate of other people, their failure to communicate, really bugs me. Of course, I haven't been working lately, but the truth is when I work (like, at a real job) I get even more driven and focused; my energy only ramps up when I'm in full-throttle getting-shit-done mode. Maybe I will have to move to a fast-paced city like New York eventually. My slacker days are ending. I'm actually looking forward to having a job again, if I can find one I like, but it doesn't make sense to start that hunt until I get to San Francisco. I'd love to work for a community media center there.

Speaking of community media, when I was at PCM yesterday telling Pam about my goal of starting an art collective in San Fran, she asked, "Why can't you do it in Portland?" Well, my love affair with Portland has been long and lurid (going back to 1990, if you count junior high/high school in Hillsboro, when I would occasionally escape to Portland and long to ditch the suburbs for good and live in this enchanted metropolis), but I'm not ready to give my life to one town just yet. There's a lot more of the world I need to see. And as great as Portland is, it starts to feel kind of small and suffocating after a while. I don't even see or speak with most of the people I used to be friends with here. It just feels kind of over to me.

Onwards and upwards!

I've moved past the basic pilates exercises now and have reached the intermediate section, and it's getting harder! But the beneficial impact on my body is already visible when I look in the mirror in the morning. Pretty soon I'll have the sort of belly you can eat cake off of.

I got my name on the cover of Just Out one last time, thanks to my awesome editor, Jim Radosta, to whom I will be eternally grateful. Mike, Kevin and Pat ALL thanked me for my articles the day the paper came out. That's always gratifying.

I went hat-shopping at Bearly Worn yesterday, but strayed to the T-shirt section and found this funny "Drama Queen" shirt, it even says San Francisco underneath, but I didn't buy it, just snapped the photo above.

Anthony called to ask if I remembered Viola, the crazy woman who lived across the river from us back in our Minnesota youth, who ended up driving her car into the river. We're certainly going to have a lot of fun recalling the highlights of our tragic, trashy, hilarious childhood. There is rich material there, to be sure. He also said he's recruited a friend of his to be the "bear" for our comedy sketch show, so we have three men, now we need some fabulous ladies to join the troupe! I picture us getting high on the beach and brainstorming ideas for comedy sketches.

I can't wait to be in the water again.

I'm watching "Loins of Punjab Presents" which I'm reviewing for Just Out. It's really funny, sort of the Bollywood equivalent of a Christopher Guest mockumentary.

snobs / angels / megalomania

New issue of Just Out comes out today and I have three articles in it: one on a book called "The Best Nonreligious Quotes Ever" (Kevin Reedy), one on another book called "How To Be A Gay Porn Star" (Mike Donner), and one on the 12th Annual Hat Party at Chameleon this Sunday (where I will see each and every one of you, right?) I stopped by Chameleon yesterday and talked over both the Hat Party and my party, and left just as a health inspector with a clipboard arrived (Health Police!) Pat said we should be able to project "Art Police" on the wall for my party, but we need speakers; the movies he usually projects during business hours are silent. He told me about the Salon Q that Chameleon hosted a few weeks back. Sounds like it drew a good crowd (he estimated almost 200 people), but based on other things he told me I'm glad I didn't go. He said there were uppity attitudes and when a stripper Pat had hired showed up to perform, some of the gays got snooty, asking "What is a stripper doing here?" and Pat's attitude in response was "You aren't at a business meeting, this is a party." I said, "There are lots of snobby gay guys that are just no fun."

Funny how hearing a little thing like that sets me off. I think back to that cocktail hour for queer journalists that I attended a while back, where someone, I think it was that Zuckerman person (apparently Sam Adams' boyfriend du jour), when introduced to me played the snob card and was like "Where do you come from? Who do you know?" I guess I was supposed to prove my right to be amongst such lofty company by ticking off a list of names of my connections to important and powerful people. Like Byron Beck, maybe? (He was there. We didn't talk.) I don't know which was more unpleasant: the snobbery oozing from him like cobra venom or the fact that the venue selected for our little social status contest served eight-dollar drinks at happy hour. (Let's live in the real world: if we're journalists, most of us aren't exactly raking in money. Let me pick the venue next time. Actually, let me pick the people, too.) I kind of felt bad for him, though, because I sort of know what he was getting at: he didn't know what box to put me in, because I don't fit in any box. And even though I greatly enjoy journalism and the opportunities it affords me to network and meet great people, it is hardly the extent of my ambition to be a freelance journalist for the rest of my life. I am not just going to write about people, I'm going to be someone who is written about. I have visions of being the center of a cult of personality. I've had them for a long time.

Maybe I AM a megalomaniac. I have certainly been afflicted with delusions of wealth, power, fame, etc. for almost as long as I can remember. Except, to paraphrase John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp in "The Naked Civil Servant," (above, with Greenwich Village drag queen) I would question the word "afflicted." I think I would have to ask whether "delusions" are really all that bad. What it really boils down to is that I have long had - maybe ALWAYS had - a strange certainty that I am on course to something great, that at some point I will have some measure of wealth or fame or success (or all three!), almost as if I'm guided by some sort of angelic spirit. I would say that I feel "blessed" if that word wasn't so tinged with religion. That's why snubs by snobs just can't hurt me. I like people who are just NICE. It's the easiest thing in the world to be and takes much less energy than copping attitude and it's so much more pleasant to be around. Of course, there is a time and a place for attitude - and don't I know it! - but there's no reason to be rude and snobby simply for the sake of it. People who are obsessed with proving and maintaining their social status are a sad, desperate lot, and I will happily pass right by them on my way to endless treasure that will never be theirs and has always been mine, without even an effort, since the very beginning! Social snobs are insecure and afraid to be themselves deep down.

I am neither. And actually, I never have been...even going back to elementary school! I dress how I want, do what I want, say what I really think. Boys who wear brand name clothing don't impress me. Boys who make their own clothes do. I'm not in it for money or social status or any of those things, really, although I'll accept them if they come, and I have a feeling they will, eventually, if I just keep going in the direction I'm headed. Maybe I'll find out fame and artistic recognition and material comfort aren't important to me after all. Maybe I'll fall in love and it'll be mutual (whoa nelly!) and I'll learn how to fully love another human being, the one major aspect of human existence that I'm still in the dark about. Regardless, my life is rich and full already and now that I've finally made a serious commitment to take better care of myself and really go for the gold, the good times are really only starting. I have something that most people don't have. It's a sort of invincibility that comes from my calm and unyielding conviction that wherever I'm going, it's somewhere great, and no matter what happens when I get there - even if it's not exactly what I expected in my starry-eyed youth - it will be OK.

Temporal dissolution and gold styrofoam

Man alive, what a beautiful day. I sold my bike! Guy came over this morning, examined it, took it for a little spin up the road (he asked if I wanted to hold his wallet, but some people you just trust immediately), and said he’d take it! (One thing I’m going to miss about Portland: cute, skinny cycle boys.) He was only the second one to look at it, too. Now I’m trying to unload my computer but I don’t know if it’ll happen since the day of the desktop is over. Its selling point is that it comes with lots of expensive software (InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) pre-installed.

It was beautiful today in more than one way: the weather, for sure – an encouraging glimmer of spring. And also I was more active than I’ve been in awhile, fully emerged from my recent spell of winter doldrums. I spraypainted a mannequin head gold (for reasons known only to myself). It looks oddly beautiful, like a crumbled Egyptian statue. Afterwards I went out and about and had myself a productive day. Stopped by Justin & Emie’s to talk Art Police and get a new blue cloth bandage on my recent knife wound, which has healed very well. Then went to Goodwill in search of props for the film: a badge and bad art. Didn’t find either – well, there was plenty of bad art, but nothing that quite grabbed me the right way. (The perfect thing would be a painting of a cop hanging from a tree or being shot, then you’d have the art police in the film objecting to art depicting their death, it would make it kinda darkly funny.) Jean called to say she’d found the coolest vintage book on Lou Reed and the V.U. at Goodwill (which I had just left!) and asking if I wanted it but I stood firm by my policy of NO MORE STUFF. (I’m going to sell some of my books at Powell’s this week, except the precious few I just can’t live without.) Then to PSU where I took advantage of my dwindling student privileges to print out free copies of the finalized Art Police script. We are having a cast meeting I believe on Saturday then filming (at long last) next weekend.

After PSU I road the streetcar into Northwest, on a mission to find the house on the corner of 25th & Kearney where my cousin used to live. He can’t remember the house number and needs it for the book. I found it all right (photo above), a massive many-windowed dark old house with a gnarly witch tree in the hill-shaped front yard. There I felt an eerie sense of what I might call “temporal dissolution” – the sense of time being unreal, and of the lingering presence of another person who once stood right where you stand now. In other words, I tried to imagine my cousin walking out the front door as I stood on the steps. I didn’t bring a pen to write the house number down, just memorized it, then walked away and started thinking of other things and like a moron had forgotten it within ten blocks, so had to walk back and get the number again! (Memory isn’t what it used to be.) Nice day for walking, though, I didn’t much mind. Finally I picked up a few groceries at Trader Joe’s and checked to see if they had any boxes I could take for moving, and the stocker girl was very sweet to stop what she was doing and check for me, but they didn’t have any usable ones. (Where does one find cardboard boxes? Aside from buying them, which seems silly.)

Yesterday cousin Ant called from Bora Bora where he & J. are vacationing, he said there’s a place that opens into a hole in the ocean, so apparently there was a big round glass window IN THEIR HOTEL ROOM that opened directly into the sea – underwater! – and as we were talking a manta ray swam up and was playing right outside their window! Ant was yelling for J. to get the camera. The life they lead is the kind we used to watch on television shows about rich people. But I’m happy for my cousin. He and I both know what it’s like to live in evil welfare apartments in the small-town Midwest, where dreams are crushed and people cut off one another’s legs with lawn mowers for sport. He deserves his happiness. And he works hard, too. And I’m going to work while I’m there. It’ll be a vacation to be sure, and I’m sure as hell going to enjoy six months on Maui, but it’ll be an active enjoyment, not idle.

Now, let’s see, what do I have to get done before I leave? I’ve been stacking the deck heavily of late. I have three articles due to J.O. on the 23rd, including a substantial one on a gay porn star who has written a book about how to be a gay porn star (he just offered to put me in front of the camera after our interview!), plus three films I’m reviewing from PIFF; I’m volunteering at the Loveshow next Friday as an alcohol monitor (lizard?); shooting and editing a short film; publishing my book; hosting a going-away gathering on March 18th (with friends from Glacier visiting – Lisa who shares my birthday!), plus school stuff and everything I have to do to be ready to move. Hot damn, it’s a good thing I like being busy!

And on that note, I think I better go do some work. Kiss meow, glam

An open letter to the Willamette Week

I am so furious over this bullshit. And now the paper I freelance for has written a similar editorial calling for Adams' resignation. I just wrote this letter to WW's editor.


Dear Mr. Zusman,

Honestly, I rarely read WW any more - I figured out a long time ago that it's written for (and by?) people who don't really live in Portland. But this Sam Adams thing is really a new low. You sent your reporters to his office because it was important for you to prove that he had a sexual relationship with Beau Breedlove? Did it never occur to you that even politicians deserve to have a private life and that the whole thing was maybe none of your fucking business? And now his career as mayor may be over before it even began, over THIS? And this is some kind of accomplishment that you'll go home and feel good about tonight? Hey, I think I know what's really going on here. Nigel Jaquiss scored with the Neil Goldschmidt story, so let's repeat the formula with someone currently in office, right? Press that "sexual panic" button and watch everyone jump. I'm not really surprised that someone in Sam Adams' position would lie to protect their privacy, and I see all the outrage over ethics as a thin veil over peoples' discomfort with the sexuality involved. Well, 18 may be young, but it's not child molestation. If Nigel Jaquiss wins a Pulitzer for this story, it'll be two more than he deserves. I think I'm going to assemble a group of citizens to come to YOUR offices. We will present the evidence we've collected that WW is an invidious muckraking waste of ink and time. Hopefully the Oregonian will then issue an editorial calling for you to resign from the world of publishing.

Anthony L. LeTigre

Portland, OR

Hair as white as snow

Monday 12/22/08

It is STILL SNOWING! In fact I heard 5-6 more inches expected today. I’ve never seen anything like it in all the time I’ve lived in the PDX metro area. It really is almost Minnesotan now. We should invite the drowning polar bears down to hang out and hunt seals. Kirk is downstairs right now opening his bottle of champagne and squeezing juice out of his little oranges to make fresh mimosas. We’ve patched things up although he continues to annoy me, and I him, all the time with almost every conversation we have. He’s been here three days now, using the blizzard as an excuse to escape his house and Cori, who I gather he’s a bit burnt out on. It’s been fun, like an extended slumber party. It’s a little hard to stay motivated, but all I have to do today is type up the Poison/Austin piece for Just Out and interview Kelli Dunham (lesbicomedienne) over the phone for another piece – stuff that doesn’t require leaving the house. Last night Kirk, Scott & I went for a walk around 11 p.m. after being locked in the house all day and going a bit stir crazy. Kirk turned back when we got to Glisan, but Scott & I walked all the way to Biddy McGraws – only to find it just closed! – and back, probably about 2.5 miles. It was nice to get some exercise, and it’s not that bad out when the wind doesn’t blow. Back at the house I finally persuaded them to watch 30 Rock and I think Kirk & Scott saw that it really is a great show. Kirk also made peanut butter cookies last night using a recipe from the Seventh-Day Adventist cookbook I got ages ago from Dave & Ann Reed! I found a copy of an old photo in it I’d forgotten about: me and young DeeDee playing on the tire swing back on the Reed farm, myself about 4 years old, and with a snow-white mullet! That hair would be so ironically cool in Portland right now.