Absolutely f***ing fabulous

This will come up online as being posted on Wednesday, the day of my departure, since it’s after midnight, but I’m writing it right AT midnight on Tuesday night, actually – the eve of the end of my time in Portland. I don’t think I’ll ever live here again, although I’ll surely be back to visit. But I want to see the world, and I have a strong hunch I’m going to end up in some part of Europe eventually. Or many parts of Europe. There are many I want to experience – London (J is there right now, and my cousin may be flying there for a couple weeks not long after I arrive), Berlin, Paris, Belgium, Amsterdam, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland...the mind reels. I feel romantic and adventurous. I want to be in love and filled with inspiration and history and romance and fantasy and beautiful boys who will love me back, and old books in dusty shops written by undiscovered geniuses from the 17th century. My last meeting tonight was with Justin and his friend Sarah and her other friend at Mudai, the Ethiopian place on NE 9th and Broadway where I went years ago with Emily and her friends when I lived in the Hammer & Sickle House on NE 11th and Alberta. We were the unique WHITE PEOPLE TABLE in the joint. Justin and his bassist and another friend had been over at my house the night before, and at a certain point I put “Otto; or, Up with Dead People” on to watch, and that’s when Justin’s other friend left – a gay softcore porn zombie movie isn’t for everyone, but I think it’s fantastic! Yesterday I met Joel at Slabtown for happy hour and then at his place he introduced me to the funniest show I've seen in literally YEARS, "Garth Meringue's Dark Place." It was really inspiring, and that's the direction I want to go in with comedy. Watching it, you really wonder how he got all these people to work with him, how it was funded, how he came up with such intense motivation for getting such a bizarre, surreal, utterly unearthly project off the ground. But, like I said, INSPIRING, above all. Said goodbye to Vicky tonight when I brought my last box over to her house, and she reminded me that I’d forgotten to give her a copy of my zinebook (“What I Really Want Is”), and said, “Your writing has gotten me through some really tough moments in my life over the last few years...it’s been uncanny.” Can you imagine a higher compliment than that? I hugged her and said we’d surely meet again. She is a truly wonderful person, just one of the best I’ve ever known in this city full of wonderful people. I need to stop writing now and go put the finishing touches to my packing and cleaning...since I need to get up in eight hours and hop on a plane. Yeah baby, I’m leavin’. On a jet plane. For Maui. First thing in the morning. My cousin called tonight to ask what size shoes I wear, in both men’s and women’s. I said I can do an 11 or 12 in mens, and for women’s I think you’re just supposed to add two, so that would be 13 or 14 on the drag queen scale. He needed to know because there’s a Victor/Victoria party coming up that I’m invited to, courtesy of him.

Absolutely Fabulous!

Joseph Pilates / U.S. of Ant / copies of my book finally!

Finally got the printed copies of my book today! Apparently they had been sitting at the printshop for weeks now without me ever receiving notice – go figger. If you would like to buy one, they’re $5! If I sell just 20 copies at that price I can make back my printing costs. The book is called “What I Really Want Is.” It is a diverse collection of writing, some of it more than a decade old, most of it newer. Email anthonyletigre@gmail.com to order.

Did pilates today for the first time, a DIY session, just following the instructions in the book I checked out yesterday called Pilates For Men. After just one session I have a really good feeling about this. I learned that Joseph Pilates (photo above) invented these postures and exercises to help soldiers wounded in World War I recover. I plan to do pilates every day from now on, plus I’m still doing my regular exercises – 120 pushups a day (and I’m doing them RIGHT now, which means they’re harder, but I’m also starting to have a chest for the first time, in a skinnyboy way), yoga postures, various other stretches. My body is going through an adjustment period that will be a little rough. I abruptly quit drinking, stepped up my exercise regimen in a big way, started taking a heavy barrage of detox vitamins AND eating healthier all at the same time. It’s gonna pay off, though. I predict by the time I leave for Maui I’ll already look and feel trimmer and healthier.

Treated myself to some new underwear from Ross today. I hardly ever buy underwear.

Just watched an episode of The U.S. of Ant on Netflix, where Ant discovers that there are homosexuals living apparently contented lives in Montana. Wonder of wonders! I gather Ant is something like the Byron Beck of the Logo network: glib, makes every hackneyed joke you can think of, can’t think outside the gay box, but that’s what they’re paying him for, I suppose. He is good at talking to people, making them loosen up, getting them to laugh. Can’t stop thinking about sex even for 30 seconds, of course; that’s what his identity is based on. I’m sure he’s a decent enough guy, though, and it was nice that he didn’t just profile gays in the Castro or something overwhelmingly obvious like that.

Art Police Revisited

I woke up the other night with two funny little fragments in my head, 1) "Gayness and alcoholism both run in my family. But alcoholism runs faster." 2) "Like a crackwhore without her crackpipe." The first one is almost good enough for a bumper sticker, but I don't have a car.

The image above was borrowed off the internet, I believe the title is Flyff Art Police by Artoki.

My laptop is back up after suddenly shutting down a couple weeks ago. Thank goodness it was just the power cord, and I've got the new one now. I had a momentary panic that the hard drive crashed, which would be devastating as my entire book that I've been working on for months, and many other things, could be wiped out in an instant. Now I can finally bring it in for printing! And then there's my little movie, "The Art Police," which has suffered from a lot of recent emotional turbulence and problems that have gotten in the way of being successfully creative for a while now. But something wonderful and unexpected has happened, and it turns out now that the recent delays and flake-outs on my part and changes of cast were for the best, possibly. What I mean is that I woke up this morning, after conjuring ideas for several hours, and wrote an entirely new and vastly better draft of the film. I now see that the first version was a rough draft and I hadn't held it in my mind long enough to really clearly envision it all. After finishing writing it in one burst (it's only about a 10-minute film anyhow!) I read it over and got excited, and became fully committed to it for the first time. Every single thing is better now, more fully fleshed, detailed stage directions, I THINK I finally have the perfect cast (if Audra agrees to take the part of the gallery owner, which I've totally written with an in-joke just for her), and most of all, the ending is actually....almost amazing. Much better than the others. And it makes a kind of intentionally ambiguous point, on the one hand condoning the need for self-love when you're an artist, and at the same time commenting on narcissism as well. So. I'd despaired of making this film several times recently, and thought how low I'd fallen if I couldn't even make one more short film before I leave Portland. And now I know it still IS going to happen, and better than before. I have to have it all edited and copied by March 1st so we can win the top prize at the Golden Coyote!

All righty then. I need to stop self-analyzing and go live my life now. My next post will be about politics or economics or rare imported China or something relevant like that.

The prologue of my book - final version

I posted this a while back but I'm putting it back up because it's changed so much. (Another example of how the second or third or fifth draft is almost always much better than the first - don't let me forget that!)

Table of Contents of my book!

I have been madly working on perfecting my book so I can finally print some copies this week, and it's really down to the nittygritty now. This is the finalized table of contents! Showing everything "What I Really Want Is" will include. I plan to give copies to friends but it'd be nice to at least make printing costs back so I'm going to sell some for $5 (not bad for 100 pages). If you're interested in a copy message me, I'll have them soon.

xo

glam aka tony