Monthly Archives: December 2002

N.B.: This is my second post today. See, I can be a man of my word.

My body is in mortal agony. This is not, as one might hope, from the ecstasies of physical love, but from exercise. In my determination to be a flyer come hell or high water, I went to a gymnastics class at Chelsea Piers on Wednesday, another on Thursday, and a dance class at the Broadway Dance Center yesterday. At first I was terrified that my legs were going to be in screaming pain forever, but now it’s clear that they’re going to fall off, so I won’t have to worry about it.

The Chelsea Piers web site lists several different gymnastics classes: Beginner, Beginner/Intermediate, Intermediate, Advanced, and Elite. Since the Beginner/Intermediate class claims to teach students rolls, cartwheels, round-offs, and handsprings, all of which I remember how to do from summer camp at the Jewish Community Center when I was six, I figured that the Intermediate Class was the way to go.

(A tangent here: at JCC summer camp, we each signed up for two activities of the twenty or so that were offered. I, nascent homosexual that I was, signed up for Flower Arranging and Needlepoint. I was not permitted to take either one of these activities. So I ended up in Gymnastics and something else that escapes me at the moment. I suppose I’m glad now, given that I can still do rolls, cartwheels, round-offs, and handsprings, but at the time I was extraordinarily bitter.)

Unfortunately, when I showed up for the gymnastics class I realized that there had been a misprint on the Chelsea Piers web site and that “Intermediate Class” should actually have read “Olympic-Level Gymnasts Who Will Scare the Shit Out of You Class.” There were two teachers: the main one and one who said, “If anybody needs any help, I’m in this lane.” After about three seconds, he came over to me and my cheerleader friend who’d come with me and said, “Why don’t the three of us work together over here?”

I felt as if I had shown up to summer camp wearing all my clothes backwards thinking it was Backwards Day, when actually Backwards Day had been scheduled for the following week, but then one of the counselors put all his clothes on backwards and said, “Let’s have Backwards Day together, just the two of us.” Both totally retarded and yet cherished and special.

(This actually happened to me, by the way. Except for the part about one of the counselors putting his clothes on backwards. So I just felt totally retarded and neither cherished nor special.)

By the end of the evening at Chelsea Piers, I was doing a round-off followed by a back handspring. Admittedly, this was on the tumble track (a long trampoline) and not the mat, but still. At the end of the class, the teachers very gently suggested that my friend and I try the Beginner/Intermediate Class, which met the next night. I went back, and once again I had to go in the remedial corner, but the people who were in the regular class weren’t nearly as intimidating as the people the night before had been. By the end of this class I was doing a round-off followed by a layout back flip. On the trampoline, but still. And my feet were bleeding. But still. All the triumph with half the mortification.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quit while I was ahead, so the next day I went to a Beginner Jazz dance class, which was none of the triumph and all the mortification. Once again, the brochure had a misprint and instead of “Beginner” should have read “People Who Will Obviously Be Dancing on a Broadway Stage Very Soon.” This class was made doubly terrifying by the fact that the teacher looked exactly like James Earl Jones. Imagine taking a class in which you are by far the suckiest person there and James Earl Jones keeps staring at you and shaking his head impatiently. And there was no remedial corner—I had to suck in the middle of everybody for the whole hour and a half. [Insert group sex joke here.]

But there was one time when I did something right and James Earl Jones nodded and I just about exploded from joy.

So I spent three days in a strange combination of ecstasy and humiliation. At first I wasn’t sure whether the one was worth the other, especially with the bleeding feet thrown into the mix.

But then all doubt was removed from my mind when I weighed myself and saw that I’ve lost two pounds since Wednesday morning.

A year or two ago I wanted to get business cards but then I couldn’t decide what to put after my name. I came up with a long list: “cad,” “ne’er-do-well,” “bounder,” “boor,” “blackguard,” “bad influence,” “roustabout,” “malefactor,” “evil genius,” “reprobate,” “miscreant,” “varlet,” “rapscallion,” “rake,” “libertine,” “debauché,” “roué,” “voluptuary,” and “serpent of sin” topped the list. Somehow none of them seemed quite right.

However, in light of my promise yesterday to post twice and my subsequent failure to do so, it’s clear that “black-hearted fiend” is the only appropriate choice.

In hopes that you can forgive me for not being a man of my word, I will post twice today.

Okay, this is getting annoying. My archives have disappeared, and no matter how many times I republish them they will not come back. Have I said or done something to offend them deeply?

If you have any ideas about how to fix this, please let me know.

N.B.: This will be my first post of two today. (Finally, a way to make up for the fact that I didn’t post on Sunday!) So if you read this but there isn’t yet another post from today, check back later.

The best thing I have discovered in my lackadaisical Christmas shopping is this, a solid gold replica of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.

I think they’re missing out on some marketing possibilities: “You, too, can own the source of all evil in the world for five easy payments of just $59.99!”

So of course I bought five.

Not being able to afford the solid gold kind, I got the cheap kind that turns your finger green if you actually put it on. But presumably if the people I give them to as gifts put them on, they will become invisible and therefore discolored fingers will not be an issue.

Can you imagine the thank you notes I’ll get?

“Dear Faustus,

“Thank you very much for the Ring of Power. As you may know, I am finding it very helpful in my quest to dominate the world. My favorite use for it so far has been to find the three rings for elven kings, the seven for the dwarf lords, and the nine for mortal men, and in the darkness bind them. I look forward to hours of fun creating Ringwraiths of men foolish enough to believe my deceitful promises.

“Wishing you a joyous holiday season, I am sincerely yours, etc., etc.”

Maybe I should have knitted people socks instead. Or given them lube.

I don’t quite know how this happened, but yesterday’s post showed up as being written by David Buscher, who writes Upside-down Hippopotamus and who has guest blogged for me in the past. Lest you impute my feelings about my colon to David, let me hasten to assure you that it was I and not David who got the colonic irrigation.

In other news, today has so far been a day full of disappointment and embarrassment. Which means it must be Wednesday.

Standing in the 0 Kelvin cold outside of the movie theater where my friends D.R., B.N., and I had tickets to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, I got into a fascinating conversation with the very handsome man standing in front of me (fascinating not least because he was so handsome) and was within seconds of asking him if he wanted to get hot chocolate some time when he said something about his wife.

I instantly stopped talking to him.

Then I got to work, where my crush asked me if I wanted to go to Starbucks. Heart a-flutter, I agreed; I started trembling when, after we got outside, he revealed that he didn’t really want to go to Starbucks but had something he wanted to talk to me about.

Then he told me all about the date he had last night with this guy he’s now totally in love with.

When I got back to the office from our hope-crushing nonvisit to Starbucks, I saw that some very considerate soul had placed the bottle of lube that I carry with me (and that must have fallen out of my bag) neatly in the center of my desk. I’m terrified that it was my boss, but I can’t very well go around asking, “hey, were you the one who picked up the bottle of lube that fell out of my bag and so considerately put it on my desk? If so, thanks a million!”

I want to die.

Today I got a colonic irrigation.

It was both repulsive and absolutely fascinating.

Certain aspects of it were, of course, familiar to me, while other aspects were new and different. I am used to having phallic objects (and sometimes phalluses themselves) inserted in my body, for example, but usually it’s men who do the inserting. If you had told me even this morning—this was a spur of the moment decision—that I would be paying a woman to shove what was essentially a dildo up my ass, I would have mocked you mercilessly.

But you would have gotten the last laugh.

I asked her how long she had been doing this. “Two years,” she said. “Before that I was a corrections officer.”

I can’t even begin to frame all the scenarios one might envision.

She said that colon hydrotherapy was her destiny. I think—my rational mind doubts that she actually said this, because what sane person could, but it’s what I’m remembering—that she said she had been called to be a colon hydrotherapist.

On my way out, she gave me a badly photocopied handout about colon health. It contained things like blurry photographs of unhealthy colons and (annotated) essays by people writing in the Snake Handler Style—you know, commas missing, eccentric capitalizations, that sort of thing. I quote:

“Our greatest enemy to health is constipation! I have No Cure For Constipation! . . . I think the toilet is the most abominable device ever invented in our civilization. We find that the Indians never had any rectal troubles; they had no hemorrhoid troubles whatsoever. Why? They squatted to defecate.” Portions of the text were underlined. Next to the underlined portions, someone had written things like “EVERY YEAR AMERICANS SPEND OVER 800 MILLION DOLLARS ON LAXATIVES. WOW! FRIENDS, THAT IS A LOT OF CONSTIPATION!”

But she had a really fabulous hat, so I’m going back.

I went to my first cheerleading practice tonight. They taught the new squad members some basic stunts, and since the ratio of bases to flyers was off, I learned the flyer parts.

And I was really good at it.

One of the assistant captains even said so.

I don’t want to jinx anything, but my “mid base flyer” status may not last for too long.

If I could go to cheerleading practice every day I would never be depressed again.

I have a zit on my nose. This is the first zit I have had in fifteen years. When I was an adolescent, I had terrible, terrible skin, far worse than your standard adolescent skin. I eventually went to a dermatologist, who prescribed an acne medication that, though it evidently put me at risk for damage to my liver, intestines, eyes, ears, and skeletal system, as well as serious psychiatric problems up to and including suicide (none of which anybody told me at the time), had the virtue of banishing my acne once and for all.

Or so I thought.

Now I have a zit on my nose, and I’m terrified that, if my acne is coming back, the rest of my adolescent miseries can’t be far behind. Soon I will be having dozens of conversations every day that mirror this one:

W.E.: “Hey, Faustus, where’d you get your pants?”

FAUSTUS (smiling proudly at his bright green pants with white piping on the side): “J.C. Penney.”

W.E.: “They’re really . . . spiffy.”

(W.E. bursts into poorly muffled laughter and immediately starts talking to his friends, pointing at FAUSTUS. FAUSTUS looks down at pants and knows people hate him but doesn’t understand why.)

Dear God, do they have Accutane for the soul?

Today someone found my blog by doing a google search for “my first orgy.”

Is this some kind of Fisher Price toy for really precocious homosexual children?

I can just see the commercials now:

DAD (returning from work): “Hey, hon, where’s Christopher?”

MOM (wiping hands on apron): “Oh, he just can’t get enough of that My First Orgy!”

CHRISTOPHER (from behind closed door): “Let me see if I can get them both in at the same time! Mphblphmphblphmph.”

DAD: “Do you think he’ll ever let me play with it?”

(MOM rolls her eyes and smiles at DAD, who grins sheepishly back.)

CHRISTOPHER: “I promise it won’t hurt.”

(MOM and DAD burst into peals of laughter. MUSIC. FADE OUT.)

I have had an extraordinary 24 hours.

Last night, I went to Modell’s Sporting Goods and bought a punching bag. I did this because my therapist has been after me to find a form of exercise that was “metaphorically appropriate” to the emotional issues I’m dealing with; namely, my vast stores of suppressed rage. He thinks that “moving the energy” in a “metaphorically appropriate way” will do me no end of good.

I have to say that the idea of having something in my home whose sole purpose is for me to beat it up makes me very excited.

Then tonight I went to Our Name Is Mud, a pottery painting store, with my friend D.R. D.R. painted a beautiful vase for his brother and his brother’s fiancèe; I painted a mug for a friend of mine whose husband was recently diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She told me at one point that she was glad she didn’t have to do her Little Mary Sunshine act with me, and I told her Little Mary Sunshine could rot in hell. She loved this image. So I painted a mug with the following (illustrated) text:

“Little Mary Sunshine went out for a walk one day. A safe fell on her and crushed her stupid head. She suffered terrible agonies before she died. Now Little Mary Sunshine is rotting in Hell forever.”

My Little Mary Sunshine was a pathetic stick figure (as is, in fact, any human being I try to draw) but she had the distinction of having repulsively curly blonde hair and a blue dress. To depict her rotting in hell, I turned her smile into a jagged line and added green and red dots to her face. The illustrations will certainly require explanation when I give my friend her mug, but I think the impact of the gift will be undiminished.

After I finished the mug, I went to join the cheerleading squad at an LGBT sports team mixer at XL, a bar in Chelsea. Now, I hate bars. They always make me desperately unhappy. They’re loud, so I can’t talk to people that I know, and smoky, so I can’t breathe, and intimidating, so I’m terrified to approach anybody. I went to this mixer fully prepared to spend a miserable hour not mixing with anybody before hightailing it out of there.

Instead, I had a totally great time.

From the instant I walked in, the cheerleaders were so supportive and welcoming that I felt like I was at a party with good friends where the music just happened to be too loud. I got a “Cheer Loud, Cheer Proud” t-shirt, which I immediately put on and then tied very tightly so as to expose some bare midriff, and a really gay silver sparkly Santa hat. The cheerleaders were the most touchy-feely group I’ve ever been a part of, and within moments I was leaning all over people, hugging them, putting my hands in their pockets, and generally being swishier than I’ve allowed myself to be in fifteen years, sucking my teeth and saying things like, “she’s such a bitch!” while pointing dramatically at a big, burly cheerleader.

I’ve said this before: it felt like home.

The only even mildly unpleasant element in all this was that I had to sell raffle tickets to people at the bar. Now, I am a reasonably attractive man; I know this. But settings like this deflate my self-confidence to such an extent that asking me to approach strangers and even engage them in conversation, much less get them to buy raffle tickets, is like asking Calista Flockheart to eat a 30-scoop Earthquake sundae from Swenson’s. It’s just not within my power to do.

So I just bought ten tickets myself and wrote the names and numbers of my friends D.R., B.N., N.M., and Y.E. on them.

But then it turned out that we hadn’t sold enough tickets, so I had to go and actually attempt to sell some.

And I succeeded. I hung out by the bathrooms and swooped down on unthreatening-looking guys, gave them a winning smile, and said, “can I sell you a raffle ticket?” And two or three of them, after some sweet-talking and eyelash-batting on my part, said yes.

I was actually able to charm men into buying raffle tickets.

I have never felt more desirable in my entire life.

So I finally left XL–having been there for over two hours and having enjoyed myself for virtually the whole time—and checked my messages on my way to the subway, and a guy I have a crush on had called me for no reason at all, just to say hi and he hoped I had a good time at the mixer.

Plus, I haven’t weighed myself in TWO DAYS.

I should probably burn myself as a heretic for saying this, but I am beginning to wonder if perhaps there aren’t some small happinesses to be found in this world.