If you live in San Francisco and want to attend a rollicking fundraiser for Carol Queen's Center for Sex and Culture, then check out the info below!!

        

What I'm reading: Paradiso , in English translation. Written by Jose Lezama Lima in Cuba while under Castro's regime. B/c he was a writer as well as a homosexual, Lezama Lima had a very, very hard life in Cuba. He starved much of the time and most of his work under Castro was censored and kept from publication. Lezama Lima has been dead for a long time now. But in the photo below, he is pictured in his home office  which looks remarkably like mine when I'm in one of my deadline-induced artistic frenzies!! Anyway, Paradiso is a beautiful book written about turn-of-the-century Havana and it is considered a bold book b/c of its open stance on the beauty of homosexuality.

(Honestly, gang, if you're still living and writing in a free-ish world, be as bold as you can be! It might not count today but someday it will find its voice. It's all about perspective & the power of love.) See ya, gang!!

        

And mostly b/c the cats looked so FUCKING cute on the new quilt that I had to share!!!



Yes, the king-sized bed is gone, the boyfriend/life partner is gone, the future is all jumbled up and re-arranged and kind of "ectch-a-sketch" looking, but at least we still have CATS!! YAY!

        

Naturally, my astounding skill as a photographer cannot capture what is really going on here, gang, but this USED to be one area of my arbor, by the garden gate that leads to the kitchen. This summer it is positively overrun with honeysuckle that has at last begun to bloom, which means every variety of bee you can possibly imagine is hanging out here. (Actually, I had to get rid of a ton of honeysuckle that was growing in my front garden simply b/c it was taking over everything. It was just too much. But boy does it smell incredible, gang.)

        

Of course when Frankie, who went to Hollywood , sang that song he meant "don't fuck right there on the dance floor, gang; wait until you can get a condom on so that you don't get AIDS."

When I sing it, it's for a couple of different reasons. One being when, yesterday, the big black hairy jumping spider re-appeared, this time in Fluffy's room. And he was just really on the go, trying to figure out what he wanted to do, or maybe how he got into that crazy room in the first place and, more importantly, how to get out of it.

That little guy has incredible eyesight, gang. You get anywhere in his many fields of vision and he just stops and looks right at you and raises his two front hairy legs that look like dangerous little lobster claws or something, and then, for instance, if he's on the back of the closet door and you're suddenly sort of face-to-face with him, you can actually see him thinking. And he's thinking about jumping right into your face. So that is when I start to sing as soothingly as possible, "Relax, don't do it, when you want to go to it; relax, don't do it..." but I leave out the part about having sex b/c no way in hell am I having any kind of sex with that guy, condom or no condom.

The other time I sing it is when I'm like, surfing the Internet for "easy" and "best" ways to kill one's self. (It's out there, gang. Anything you want, it's on the Internet.) But then what I also find are pleas from 13 year-olds who really, really, really want to die & they want advice about how to do it. And I've been there and I've tried that and it was a really long and arduous road back, so wouldn't it be better to try to stay on the side of the whole equation that gives some sort of relief to the world instead of just "getting the fuck out of it" b/c life "so fucking sucks?"

Relax, don't do it.

It's all about perspective, gang. Yes, I'm going to be alone again, probably starting tomorrow. And no, I don't want to be in all that emptiness that I know by heart. And no, I don't want a whole lot of other things that I have somehow manifested for myself anyhow. (I will not attempt to list them b/c that will only reinforce their hold on me.)

But I do have many writing deadlines staring me in the face, which is always a good thing. I know I will somehow manage to steer my focus to those, put my soul down in those words in some way, find a reason to live (and maybe even live on -- past the actual living part). Plus I have those wonderful cats... We'll get by.

And it's likely to be a toastier winter since the inspectors from the weatherization place are on their way here this very morning to begin the whole process of getting my ASTRONOMICAL utility bills down to a more realistic level.

So on we go, gang. The next chapter awaits... (it might even be the best one, you just never can tell.)

        

Holy cow! I know it's crass to be sort of, you know, besotted by someone's gorgeousness when lives are seriously in the balance, but, wow. Gorgeousness personified Saturday night in Little Rock...

photo and article here. .

        

Today was the anniversary of the death of my first beloved. He died 36 years ago. I brought him an amazing bunch of yellow & white flowers early today, but to preserve the privacy of his family, I never take photos of his grave. The photo below will have to suffice. And if you have a few minutes, and you have someone you're missing today, too, click the little media player below for Try to Remember and then do just that, gang. Peace. 

Download | Duration: 00:03:23

(click on the media player tab -- or download the song)

Try to remember the kind of September

When life was slow and oh, so mellow.

Try to remember the kind of September

When grass was green and grain was yellow.

Try to remember the kind of September

When you were a tender and callow fellow.

Try to remember, and if you remember,

Then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That no one wept except the willow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That dreams were kept beside your pillow.

Try to remember when life was so tender

That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember,

Then follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

Although you know the snow will follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

Without a hurt the heart is hollow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,

The fire of September that made us mellow.

Deep in December, our hearts should remember

And follow.

        

From my very first exposure to Baudelaire's poetry, I have loved him. 

I "discovered" him (yes! that was me who discovered him!) the same way I discovered all the other poets I loved: When I was a teenager I hung out endlessly in the Little Professor bookstore in the mall. 99.7% of the time, I actually bought the books I fell in love with. The first book I ever stole was A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I stole it because I fell so intensely in love with it so instantaneously and I had absolutely no money to my name whatsoever, so I stuck the book in my pocket and left the store. I was about 14. (I should probably clarify and explain that I stole tons of other things; I had no qualms about stealing pretty much anything and everything, until I got arrested and taken off to jail in a police cruiser and got 2 months of house arrest -- also, when I was 14 (14 was sort of a banner year for me in the worst ways you can possibly imagine). It's just that for some reason, I never stole books. I loved and really valued books.)

Then when I was 16, I stole a hard-bound copy of the screenplay of Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) by Francois Truffaut from the public library and forever after, of course, could never go back to the library. But the book was so cool. It had over 100 stills from the film included in it and at that point in my life the 400 Blows was my most favorite film ever. (Yes, I also wore black all the time and had really long, straight hair & wore glasses.) And you know what? The 400 Blows is still a pretty incredible film, and I still have that book I stole 34 years ago. (Here's hoping the statute of limitations has run out for stealing library books and that the library police don't come knocking on my door now, wanting their property back.)

The other book I stole was a very beat-up copy of Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms . (Apparently, I try only to steal classics.) I was 24 when I stole that book. It was the only book in Capote's oeuvre that I had yet to read. I was with a friend and we were visiting some older person she knew out in Queens. This person had literally thousands of books in his collection. One of those typical New York City apartments that's just nothing but bookshelves and stacks of books everywhere, etc. I figured, no way in the world is this guy going to notice that this thin little old beat-up paperback is no longer among the thousands of books in his collection. But you know what, now that I am 50 and have both an unbelievable amount of hindsight as well as having owned an unbelievable amount of books, I can tell you that in reality, that guy probably walked into his living room later that day and INSTANTANEOUSLY noticed that his beat-up old paperback copy of Other Voices, Other Rooms was missing!

Okay, so maybe I exaggerate, but we book lovers do indeed notice these things and then feel like screaming. I can't tell you how many times people have stolen my paperback copies of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas over the decades that I lived in New York. They probably just figured I had so many fucking books, I'd never notice. Au contraire! I always noticed; it was one of my all-time favorite books. And the first copy that was stolen from me was a first edition of the paperback that I'd had since high school (that's how old I am, gang!). I guess that was the karma wheel coming back at me for stealing that guy's copy of Other Voices, Other Rooms. But I think I had Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas stolen from me 3 times. (Hey, maybe it was one copy for every book I'd stolen over the course of my entire life? I should steal another book and see if my current copy of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas then disappears, as well.)

Anyway. I love Baudelaire . I first encountered his work in a paperback collection of French poetry that I bought when I was 15. (It was a really well-made book, too. I still have it and it almost looks brand new.) From there, I read Fleurs du Mal, Paris Spleen, some of his collected letters, some journals, etc.  I also absolutely love Jean Genet -- his novels more than his plays, however.

So, I mean, looking at that list, wouldn't you just naturally think that I would also love Rimbaud ? Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? It would be a great trick question on the final tier of Who Wants to be A Millionaire? because I absolutely do not like Rimbaud. Although I have read all of his works (not that there were many) and I have really, really tried to love Rimbaud. So, yesterday, after watching Total Eclipse for the third or fourth time (which, obviously, I love or I wouldn't keep watching it), I decided that maybe I should try reading Rimbaud in French. Perhaps it is the English translation that's fucking me up. So I am currently reading both Fleurs du Mal and Une Saison en Enfer "en francais" and we'll see what I think then.

So far, I've read up to "Bad Blood" in Une Saison en Enfer and it's at least interesting. But then, for me, even Frère Jacques is more interesting en francais... If this doesn't work, I might try reading Rimbaud both in French and while drinking absinthe; something's bound to work, right gang? I can't go through life not loving Rimbaud, can I? If nothing else works, then perhaps singing Frère Jacques while drinking absinthe will at least help me to understand Rimbaud better as a man. ha ha. We shall see, gang; we shall see!

        

It's that time again, gang!! Lest we forget!

"A big sprawling read with heart and smarts and a near-limitless erotic imagination--Freak Parade's gritty, glittery New York will get under your fingernails. And your skin too." -- Molly Weatherfield, author of Carrie's Story

Ebook (all formats)
Amazon.com 
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble.com 
Limited Collector's Edition (hardcover)
In Germany
In France
In Japan

        

What could be more spellbinding, gang? I, personally, have absolutely no idea.

Yet rumor has it that Patti Smith & Johnny Depp (two of my most magnificent muses -- who are still living, that is) will be speaking (or perhaps even glowing) at the "Voices for Justice" rally in Little Rock, Arkansas this Saturday night in support of freeing the West Memphis 3 ... I guess we shall see.