Monthly Archives: November 2002

Straight people can be so funny sometimes.

I mean funny weird, not funny ha-ha.

Tonight, as I was walking my dog A., I passed two women walking together and overheard one saying very loudly and earnestly to the other, “I need to trust my higher power, y’know? I just need to trust my journey.”

I’m all in favor of people self-actualizating through whatever means work for them. I just don’t want to be subjected to it when I’m walking my dog.

If I have a higher power, I don’t trust it further than I can throw it.

Yesterday I got my hair cut by Jazz at Dramatics, NYC. I have had my hair cut at Dramatics, NYC four times, by a different person each time: Sunshine, Eagle, Justice, and Jazz. I think it’s the worst thing ever that they don’t even let these people have their own names.

But the reason I go to Dramatics, NYC—a serviceable but by no means excellent salon—is because I am terrified to go back to the place I used to get my hair cut.

When I lived on the Upper East Side, I went to Eve’s Hair and Nails, on 92nd and 1st. Eve was an East German post-operative male to female transsexual. She was the only one who cut hair there and she took forever. A simple cut took at least two hours—she would cut a little bit, talk on the phone, cut a little bit more, do some crystal meth, cut a little bit more. My friend N.C. and I went there together once—he to get his hair highlighted and I to get mine relaxed—and it took her four hours. I don’t know how she kept the place open; I assume it was a front for a lucrative drug-dealing business.

After I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a show about another East German post-operative male to female transsexual, I went to get my hair cut and asked her what she had thought of it. “Ach, I hated zat show,” she sneered. “It vass not an accurate representation off my life.”

She gave me the best hair cuts I’ve ever gotten. But she was so glamorous and cool that whenever I went, I was so keenly aware of my own inadequacy as a gay man it was almost unbearable. Next to her, I felt about as interesting and compelling as a Necco Wafer or a plastic-covered living room couch. This feeling would persist for hours, sometimes days, after a haircut.

It was a cruel dilemma I faced yesterday: have fabulous hair and lose my already tentative grasp on my sense of self-worth, or maintain some shred of self-esteem but have boring hair?

I think I made the coward’s choice.

Ever since I moved into my building four months ago, I have lived in fear of my hostile doorman. No matter what I do—smile, thank him, salute, try to strike up a conversation—the most I can hope for from him is a resentful grunt. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make him like me, all to no avail.

This morning my dog A. won his heart.

As A. and I left the building, A. straining at her leash because she knew there were too many things to sniff and too little time, the doorman looked down at her and smiled. He then barked at her, and she barked back. They repeated this exchange a few times and then A. ran off, dragging me after her, in search of new experiences.

Upon our return to the building, the hostile doorman actually struck up a conversation with me about how many dogs lived on the second floor. It turns out that A. is the only one. I suggested that I could get five or six more dogs. The hostile doorman asked why. I said, “to keep her company.” For some reason the hostile doorman thought this was the funniest thing anyone had ever said and laughed a big, unhostile guffaw.

I am in shock. I dare not hope that this is the beginning of a thaw.

But A. will be eating steak tonight.

My contractor has ripped my kitchen out. Now, where there used to be a kitchen, there is an empty, gaping void.

I’m worried that my soul is next.

I’m also worried that I’ll have to give up forever my fantasy of being ravished on the kitchen counter by the UPS guy. Because when I have a kitchen counter again, it will be marble, which seems like a terrible surface on which to be ravished.

Being a good friend, and also one who knows how to return a favor, I agreed to guest blog on Upside-down Hippopotamus while its usual writers are otherwise occupied.

Today was my inaugural post, and now I am in a state of panic, because I realized I have to maintain my own blog, too.

Coming up with one interesting thing a day to say is hard enough. Two is Herculean.

So tomorrow I will be Herculean, I promise. For today, just check out my guest blogging.

Because of a glitch in my increasingly complicated AV system, I was unable to watch or Tivo tonight’s remake on NBC of Stephen King’s Carrie. This would fill me with despair and bitterness except for the fact that my friend D.R. has Tivoed it for me.

I fantasize pretty much every day about having supernatural powers. Before I moved to New York, it was pretty much always telekinesis, though back then I wasn’t full enough of rage to add in the pyrokinetic destruction of my enemies. Or, rather, I was full enough of rage, but I had no easy access to it because I had repressed it all. Now I split my fantasy time pretty evenly between the pyrokinetic destruction of my enemies and teleportation, which would mean I would never have to take the subway again.

I hope to see the remake of Carrie very soon. In the meantime, though, I found a not particularly favorable but hysterically funny review of it in The Toronto Star by a man named Rob Salem. Apparently, at the end of the remake, instead of dying, Carrie lives and drives off with Sue Snell. This is what Mr. Salem has to say:

“This isn’t just a lame TV-movie remake. This is in fact a lame ‘back-door pilot.’ Stay tuned, I’m very afraid, for Carrie: The Series. Now, I’ve actually given this some thought, and I’ve come up with several plot suggestions for the series’ first season. Consider them a gift. Or a warning.

“Episode #1: ‘Dressed For Success’—Carrie and Sue pull into a mid-western town where they both get jobs at The Gap. Tempers flare when Carrie is accused of hoarding sale items for herself. Sue then discovers the clothes in question stashed in an empty change room, but it is already too late, because Carrie has already killed everyone in the store and set the mall on fire.

“Episode #2: ‘Do You Want Fries With That?’—The girls are working the late shift at an all-night diner when a couple of small-time hoods try to hold the place up. Carrie telekinetically suspends one of them upside down in mid-air, dunking him head-first into a tub of boiling fat. The other escapes, running right into the arms of the awaiting cops, who arrive just in time to see an enraged Carrie kill everyone in the place and then set it on fire.

“Episode #3: ‘Homeless Is Where The Heart Is’—A very special episode of Carrie: The Series, with Sue signing both of them up as volunteers to serve Christmas dinner at a shelter. Everything goes fine until Carrie accidentally undercooks the turkey. The starving homeless people turn on them, advancing slowly, forks and knives in hand. Carrie has no choice but to kill them all and burn the shelter to the ground.

“Episode #4: ‘The Sincerest Form Of Flattery’—Carrie and Sue narrowly escape a police roadblock just outside Florida, and end up laying low in a motel. The police eventually track them down by following the trail of blackened, smoking corpses. Surrounding the motel, they call in two experts, a has-been film director (a cameo by Brian De Palma) and a recently retired horror novelist (Stephen King), who try to talk the girls into surrendering themselves. Carrie is clearly moved by their entreaties. And then she kills them both and sets the motel on fire.”

I would become addicted to this series in a heartbeat.

Tonight, I was scheduled to sing in a concert of the songs of my friend Y.E. When I showed up for the sound check and took my glasses off in preparation for putting my contacts in, I realized that I had brought two right-eye lenses. My left eye takes a much stronger prescription than my right eye, so I spent the entire concert in a bizarre state of half-blurry half-clear vision. Luckily I knew all the music very well, so reading it wasn’t an issue.

But it made me think: when I meet a new person I want to fall in love with, maybe I should wear two right-eye lenses. That way I’ll be able to see clearly enough to interact like a normal human being, but he will appear blurry enough to seem handsome, whether he is or not. Then I can get to know him as a person instead of deciding instantaneously that he’s not physically attractive enough.

On second thought, however, this would require that I get to know him as a person, which is, if experience is any guide, a big mistake.

Today I had another undate. Really, this is getting to be ridiculous.

I answered the planet out ad of a guy who seemed to possess both a sense of humor and a social conscience, as well as the ability to spell and a cute photo. He wrote back and said he liked my ad, too, but added, “in the interest of full disclosure, though, I’m also more of a catcher.” (For those of you unfamiliar with gayspeak, this means he too is a bottom.) But he suggested that we could always get together for a friendly cup of coffee.

So I said, sure, why not, and we arranged to meet.

Please don’t ask me why I felt like I was going on a date even though we’d expressly said it wasn’t a date. Maybe it was that “more of a catcher” left at least some room for him to be a pitcher, or maybe the capacity of the human mind for denial—or at least the capacity of my human mind for denial—is even greater than I realized. In any event, I arrived for our meeting dressed in something form-fitting, and far more nervous than a friendly cup of coffee warranted.

So he showed up and had terrible teeth.

It seems to me that, if one has a job that comes with health and dental insurance (which he did), then having terrible teeth is a clear sign of misplaced priorities.

Plus he knew far too much about the differences between the Star Wars special edition and the original version.

Again, the fact that there is NO WAY HE AND I COULD BE A COUPLE because we are SEXUALLY INCOMPATIBLE should have made me not care in the slightest.

But instead, I spent all afternoon resenting him and his teeth.

Don’t ask me to explain myself, because I can’t.

Thanks to everybody for the emergency hair advice. I ended up going to the 24-hour Duane Reade at 5:00 a.m., getting another bleach kit, and doing it again.

Now my hair is a gorgeous shade of blond never seen before on this planet. It is also so fried from the bleach that if anybody touches it it will crumble to dust.

It’s okay, since it’s falling out anyway.