My Favorite Subject Line From An Unsolicited E-mail
1. National Teenage Blowjob Champions

Gina Gershon (Show Girls, Cocktail, Bound) is hauling around the late Ted Demme’s (Blow, Life, Monument Ave. nephew to Johnathan Demme) ashes while plugging her new project Prey For Rock and Roll. Apparently she asks various talk show hosts and celebrities to converse with the ashes. Odd segment for ‘In Search of Ted Demme’, a tribute to late director, which is in production at The Independent Film Channel and is slated for release late next year.

Whoa, before anymore hackles go up, before anymore panties get bunched, I should clarify a few things about yesterday’s post. My intent was to illustrate my anger at losing people and not ever getting to hear their stories, or to benefit from their contributions. The lack of continuity in gay history and the role of Aids and survivors. I was painting with broad strokes on purpose to illustrate a prejudice between younger gay men and older gay men. Merely stating my discomfort with the concept of writing off an entire generation, aging and how easy it is to just see or be complacent. Don’t be silly, I treasure all my ‘goombah’s’ regardless of age. Now get on with your bad selves.

In Rome along at first, you are full or regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.”…Mark Twain from Pudd’nhead Wilson.

I may be the errant observer, the misguided traveler, accidental tourist, eavesdropping on a group of older gay gentlemen. The men, all friends, look not unlike their more generic, less conspicuous heterosexual counterparts minus the appearance of their blue blocker’d babooshka’d back combed bubble haired keeper of pocket books and pensions, otherwise known as their wife. The accessory, the missing component of the older gay gentleman’s social club.

Oh indeed, it is quite rare to see ‘senior’ men relaxing together, except perhaps on a golf course or at a bowling alley. (I know I am painting this picture with broad strokes but allow me to stretch a bit to get to the deeper truth.) So, eavesdropping on conversations is a very rude but fascinating pastime, it’s a morbid fascination, like observing a rare exotic species in it’s native habitat.

The older gay men’s social club, stands sucking in their stomach’s under leather jackets, exchanging niceties, ladies who lunch, older gay men who dine. I pop and cringe in my seat simultaneously enjoying and disliking the banality of the exchange, wondering if the future holds more excitement, worried, desperate, wanting to be hopeful.

I’m afraid I’m not making myself very clear, but I’m fascinated for some odd reason, and I secretly wonder about their past, one many years before being a senior gay male. Were there magic moments, mistakes and otherwise, those items worth remembering from their youth. Had they formed a group that danced together, shared a love of the same sort of beauty and longing, music and style? Or as Andrew Holleran writes in ‘Dancer From The Dance’

“All the things one shouldn’t throw away an ounce of energy pursuing, and sometimes throw away a life pursuing”

Or were there nights when their face blossomed full of beauty, and delirium. Dance floors and dangerous angels rocking back and forth with another beautiful boy, and then another? Perhaps littered and drunk around an upper suburban dinner table sipping dry martini’s and being bitches?
I would hope they stepped up once or twice to swing the hammer. To rub their palms together setting the iron in motion, bringing the hammer around their head and striking the cold hard steel to make a few sparks. To make fire, smoke and ash? Or was it all continuity, and progression, was it all ease without story?

Am I staring at the product of a sick bit of natural selection, where data, dna, chromosomes and the like have allowed some to pass and some to stay. But where is the past, the story of what was when you’re a gay man? Am I stuck with the mark of youth thinking, I am the first to have loved and danced and fucked until morning? I think not, but perhaps it’s more about recording and digging deeper. Sticking your ummm err high heels or boots or Prada whatevers into the mud to sort it out. But, damn it, falling and jumping, it so often feels like the same leap.

In closing, I think I’ll read more Flannery O’Connor this coming winter. I’ve finished off all the Carson McCuller’s books, does this make me a lesbian? Regardless, who knew there was a project anyway?

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook’s
Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein
Awwoooo…..Werewolves of London

Portrait of a thaw