If I had a gun, I’d pull it out and shoot them: euthanasia. Back at home, I’m jetlag soup—more radiation please, pass the sea salt. There’s another anti-war demo on Saturday and I’m feeling the new P’n’P: powerless and paranoid. Benjamin says she went to the Stud and she felt like that scene in Stand By Me with the leeches crawling all over her. The bus driver says to me: I haven’t seen mittens in a long time. This trick comes over for a blow job—when we’re done, he says it’s 25, right? Huh? He says that’s what it says on the Internet. I say I charge 200, it must have said 250. He says no, shows me a listing on cruisingforsex that sort of sounds like me, some guy who literally charges 25 for a blow job, supposedly he gave the trick my number.
The trick only brought 25 dollars—I just want him out of my sight. I go back to the listing that’s supposedly me, there’s a picture of someone’s dick and it looks like Jeremy’s. I’m probably just paranoid, but it really does look like Jeremy’s dick. Someone’s playing weird games. I email the guy in the listing: what’s going on? He emails me back, his name’s Jeremy Lapolla. Jeremy La-pole-ah. I’m freaked out.
Jenna comes over and we talk about the war protest, the splinter demo of anarchists and freaks—how disorganized it was, how much potential but no planning, so of course it wasn’t realized. I get Thai food across the street, they’re showing a video where four Asian women jump into a pool to fight like goldfish for a piece of food; a blond woman with huge breasts in an insane gold ’80s sequined dress fights a Don Johnson impresario for her life, leaves on a motorcycle with a Volvo and a Mercedes in extra-hot pursuit.
Jeremy gets back from Europe, he says Paris is great, but don’t go to Amsterdam, everyone is so aggressive—they get right in your face asking for change, and all you can do is smoke pot and sit on wooden benches eating meatballs. This trick calls, he says I talked to you the other day, and you sounded really nice—I just got authorization from my cat that if you do dishes, it’s an extra 40 dollars. Rue and I see a movie where they’re dancing in Ibiza to just about the hardest techno I’ve ever heard. I’m confused, whatever happened to bad Baleiric happy-house?
Is there a cure for waiting for the bus? I just want to have sex with someone I want to have sex with. Jetlag jetlag jetlag jetlag. I’m looking at CDs at Amoeba, and my wrists start to burn so much, I jump into a cab and race home to soak my hands in ice water. Now what am I going to eat? The beat, we got the beat!
The roaches are just living it up in the electric toothbrush—home, sweet home. I wonder how effective it is to tell them they don’t belong. I hate getting so tired that I don’t want to go to bed, ever—just turn the music up and dance! But I haven’t seen piranhas since the ’80s. Aaron says are you taking street drugs again? I don’t need street drugs—I am street drugs! What’s manic plus manique? Manishamba! My new strategy for trying to get some sleep: when I wake up thinking yayayayayayayyayayayyayahhhhhh, I just repeat the same sentence over and over again, to try and stop my brain from moving moving moving. How to structure a novel: eviction, conviction, nurse!
Jock itch itch itch itch itch ITCH! I go to Frenchy’s at 4 a.m. There’s no one there, the security guard kicks me out because I’m not in a booth. Outside, there’s the drug dealer who always grabs my hand and says hey honey, I like your colors. Tonight he says: you’re out late, something’s gonna happen. I’m delirious and calm, walking downtown on Geary, looking for what’s going to happen. All the pimps are out, Thai Noodle House is still open, there’s a tweaker who asks me for a leaf. A leaf? Yeah, isn’t it fall? I walk home.
Rue says he keeps buying things on eBay, selling things on eBay—so many ways to explore the American dream. But he drank absinthe at Balazo: expatriotism! Andee calls me on my cellphone while I’m at Rainbow—your answering machine says you’re paranoid, and you haven’t answered the phone all week.
At Benjamin’s show, she pulls apart the top half of the mike stand and wields it like a hot poker. Zan and I are supposed to watch the sunset; she’s coming over at 4. I call her at 5—she says oh, were we supposed to get together? She says you know I’m crazy. I say honey, we’re all crazy. There’s crazy, and then there’s crazy flakes.
Back to Benjamin’s show, it all comes together when Benjamin gets audience members to scream STRANGULATION, and Eliott’s keyboards are making spooky tinny sounds. The next band keeps going to the bathroom to chew gum. Valentine’s Day is only two weeks away, and I’ve got pink rock salt, I’m gonna pour it on the counter in little heart shapes, no girl that’s not cocaine! It’s 4:50 a.m., is that cop car outside—five floors down and half a block away—waiting for me? No, really—I don’t need a ride—thanks!
Here’s how I’m feeling today: I step up onto the toilet seat to brush the dust off the plants in the bathroom, and I have this image of falling in, first one foot and then my whole body sucked into the abyss. Does sleeping cause cancer? ’Cause I think I got some last night. A rubber band in my toaster: will that increase my chances of survival? Andee says: after seeing Belle and Sebastian at the Royal Albert Hall, everything else is just whipped cream—when I die, if I can’t be reassigned to some other dimension, I want to be a tree that gives cover for gay men having sex. She’s drunk. I go out on my fire escape for the first sun of the season, it doesn’t reach me during the winter.
I give Benjamin a pair of my contacts, because she’s been wearing the same pair of disposables for a couple years. Later, she calls me to say: your gift has changed my life and you will be rewarded for your Christian generosity. Rue says I can hear hypoglycemia in your laughter, the bravado is abbreviated. Someone from the phone sex line swallows my come and then tells me about mortgages: fifty-five percent of all U.S. mortgages are in California.
Now I know why people feed pigeons—just seeing them fly down to eat that kale makes me so happy! What does it mean when a taxi driver waits for you to go in your front door? Does it mean he loves me? Does it mean you love me? Rhania calls: how long do you soak your adzuki beans? A long time, considering that when the cops throw me facedown into the middle of the street and someone catches my fall, it’s Zan, he kisses me, I’m crying. Then there’s a pile of people on top of us until we’re handcuffed and dragged into a police van. At 850 Bryant, the guard says: you respect me and I’ll respect you. How original. I ask him to loosen my handcuffs, because my wrists hurt. He tightens his grip.
We were protesting Gavin Newsom’s Hot Pink fundraiser at the beautiful new LGBT Center, dressed in our own color-coordinated finery. The Center called the cops to prevent us from going inside. When Gavin arrived, the cops escorted him in and immediately started bashing us. Devon got clubbed in the face by a police baton, tooth shattered, blood dripping down her face. Matt ended up in a police chokehold. Center staff just stood there and watched. They kept saying: it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it.
What’s not worth it? I wake up crying in the middle of the night. Picturing the blood dripping down Devon’s face even though I didn’t see it because I was already in a police van—I just saw the photos afterwards. All because of the Center, our center, the fucking Center!
At the Nob Hill Theatre, it’s all about this guy with a pink-and-white-checkered shirt, that’s what makes me go into his booth. Okay, there’s this girl Mattilda, right? She always leaves the most amazing phone messages. They’re kind of a cross between complete insanity and absolute clarity—and what’s the difference, anyway? Well, I’ll tell you the difference. Complete insanity is when you just talk talk talk talk—and you don’t even know what you’re doing. Absolute clarity is when you just talk talk talk talk—and you know exactly what you’re doing. Well, maybe not exactly, but you know what you’re doing.
I eat a fortune cookie and then there’s this rotten taste in my mouth, I guess that’s my fortune. Alex isn’t sure polyamory’s a good idea. Zero’s still waiting for her records to arrive in Mo’s cross-country caravan. Chrissie calls to tell me about the mainstream anti-war demo, do I want to go to a plan
ning meeting? To plan what—I have something to plan—did I tell you about my three counts of battery on a police officer? ’Cause they threw me into oncoming traffic, Zan caught me, I was crying in his arms because what else was there to do? The cops pulling my arms back, I was worried about my hands, my wrists, my link to the world of doing things. My hands hurt, honey my hands fucking hurt!
At a Valentine’s party, did someone really say: investment in anti-capitalism? Benjamin’s been crying all week, she says if someone harasses me on the way home, I’m gonna ask them to kill me. Because I want to die.
Call me crazy, but this fucking Richard Hinge CD is making my eyes tear. I call Zero so she can listen to the builds. Three-thirty a.m. and—ladies and gentlemen, it’s Ms. Mattilda Sycamore, stretch, shake, take and take and take! Wow, there’s the scratch and the echo twisted cymbal sound building up and up and up, always in threes, it’s always in threes is three still my lucky number?
Okay, so what’s the difference between good insomnia and bad insomnia? I can’t believe I get up at 6 a.m. to visit Ralowe in jail, she’s been there since the last anti-war demo, the one I didn’t bother describing because they’re all the same. This time a few windows got shattered and the cops went crazy. Arrested something like a hundred people, most of them got out but Ralowe and a few others are stuck. So I get up in the morning, it’s all about Richard Hinge on my Walkman, glitter in streaks on my face and a plaid polyester skirt, out the door and into a cab. Outside, I’m asking everyone if they’re on the guest list. Inside, I can’t breathe.
Everyone keeps asking how Ralowe was, I just couldn’t tell. She said the new jail’s set up like a food court, with the cops in the middle. Still trying to entertain us. It made me so sad. At the whore social, I’m so tired I can’t be social. Or a whore. Just as I’m leaving, Zan asks me to do runway and I’m self-conscious at first, but then I’m living it, loving it—finally I feel human!
An anonymous donor bails Ralowe out—and we were just getting to know the County Jail, our home away from home. Ralowe exits in flip-flops because they confiscated her shoes as evidence. Well, at least she’s out—eight days in that place and I’d be over with. On the radio, Ward Churchill’s talking about how Wall Street got its name from the wall of the slave market. Talking about U.S. nuclear tests on the Marshall Islands, he says: have you ever seen a baby born without a skeleton?
Aaron’s report: at the hospital, someone shoved a tube down his throat for forty-five minutes, shouting BLOW HARDER! I thought I’d solved the lice problem by cultivating jock itch for six months, but now I’ve got both. So many pets in the house, and not a thing to feed them except me, poor me—will I ever be able to exercise? Learning to hate my body again is so easy, but at least Jeremy finally calls, after I dream that he still thinks I want to have sex with him.
Rue and I are in the magazine store, and the cashier says: sorry, guys, but there’s no camping here—that’s the second camping comment, first one was at 850 Bryant, waiting for people to get out of jail and this cop said: there’s no camping out in the Hall of Justice. Did I mention the worst Gay Shame meeting ever? People talking about not wanting to critique the community. I mean, we started Gay Shame to challenge the hypocrisy of gay spaces, and now people embrace the new hipster hot spot like it’s salvation. I’ve done my time getting smashed in terrible gay bars, but I’ve never thought that was community. Benjamin and Ralowe have been talking about leaving the group for a while, but it’s the first time I think about it too.
Finally, a trick: two guys from Alabama, one of them’s mad at the other one for not getting hard. We watch porn with subtitles. It’s supposedly this Czech guy’s first time getting a hand job, but somehow his asshole swallows cock effortlessly. He keeps getting pumped even after coming three times, face twisted into a lifetime grimace: this was fun when it started, but now all I can do is act.
The perils of doing anything before I put on my contacts: I just picked a roach up off the floor—I thought it was a grain of wild rice, I swear I thought it was rice. Luckily this guy comes over to pump a load down my throat, the cure for hypoglycemia.
Outside, I’m kind of laughing. Even the post office is fun. Later, on the Geary bus, I crash. I can’t stop yawning; one yawn’s so big I almost fall into some guy’s lap. What do you mean I’m just depressed? Have you ever been depressed? Is there anything just about it? Jeremy and I get an MSG surprise, I’m talking through a tunnel, but somehow it doesn’t get too bad. I’m so calm—I can’t tell if it’s because I’m with Jeremy or because I’m okay with losing him and maybe still having something that might really be nothing.
But I miss Herb Ritts! With all those photos of neutered, muscle-bound gym queens, he really changed the face of photography. Richard Gere writes about his dear friend Herb in Vogue. No, I’m serious. They shot big in the desert, Perry Como on board, too bad the car broke down and they had to spend the whole trip in the service station. It was the Tour de France, and all they wanted was to dance! Zan calls from the Betty Ford Clinic—they cover that on SSI? Or are you on the work-study program? She says my crystal just kicked in—but sweetheart, everyone knows that crystal doesn’t take time to kick in!
Sugar gives Benjamin a pair of glasses, he says with Sugar’s glasses and Mattilda’s contacts, I can see pretty well. This trick bargains me down over the phone, then when he arrives he’s covered in so much sweat it’s like he forgot to dry off after the shower, which is maybe what happened because at least he doesn’t smell. He wants me to sit on his ass, literally, bouncing up and down, which is kind of fun. Then he wants me to suck his dick. I’m rubbing his thighs; all these red zits and I get paranoid that it’s the drug-resistant staph infection. No sucking this afternoon. He comes through the sheet that’s covering my sheets. He’s wearing a bracelet of glass beads, and I compliment him on it, just to say something nice, because I couldn’t be present enough. Afterwards, I feel so depressed.
I can’t believe that just carrying a small bag of groceries home from Cala destroys me—the muscles by my collarbone are burning, shoulders of rocks. Next day is a hard day; I don’t leave the house until 9:40 p.m. I rush onto the bus to make it to horrible Whole Foods before they close, and believe it or not, I’ve shopped and I’m back home by 10:10—sometimes public transportation can save your life!
New allergy alert: I wake up and my legs are burning, like so many pinpricks. Court at 8 a.m. because the cops threw us into the street and now we’re being charged. People show up for us and that makes me feel better, we go to Ananda Fuara for lunch and look at the book Sri Chimnoy wrote about Princess Di—there are songs in it. After my nap, I’m so strung out that I spill my food all over Kirk’s car. Headache in the middle of my forehead that threatens to conquer everyone and everything—talk about empire.
This allergy again, a burning underneath my skin. Is there really a review of the Buzzcocks and the Jam on NPR? When are they going to review my book? News from Serbia: politics and crime are very closely intertwined. All these bills on my table, do I really have to pay them? In the cafeteria at the Capitol, they’ve removed French fries from the menu, due to France’s opposition to the war on Iraq.
Remember when a halogen torchière was an amazing luxury? I look in the mirror; I look like the kind of person who goes out a lot. So I figure I should go out. I go to the Powerhouse and there’s a cover, I pay it, everything’s awful, I leave. Outside, there are so many kinds of horrible people walking around. Ralowe’s on the internet trying to get people to say racist things, so he can write about it. A range of eventualities on the phone sex line: a nice tight hole that needs to be stretched, three big mushroom heads, two work-outfive-days-a-week, two pig bottoms, three raw bottoms, two aggressive tops, two two-guys-partying-and-playing, one virgin ass that needs to get plowed, one guy who gets off on other guys’ dicks. Before, I was hopeless, but now that I know there’s so much creativity out there, the possibilities for world peace have just increased.
My trick is staying in the upscale side of Beck’s Motor Lodge—who knew there was an upscale side? On my way in, this hot guy asks me if I’m Jonah, and the whole time I’m having sex with the trick, I’m thinking about Jonah, I mean the guy looking for Jonah, who even followed me around the corner but I had to work. On the way out, I want to look into all the open doors to see if the guy’s there, but I don’t want to see everyone else who’s there. The Thai restaurant across the street from me hits me with an MSG bomb—I was already depressed, now I’m possessed!
Why do I try to cruise craigslist? All it does is destroy my fingers, hands, forearms, shoulders, neck and everything that’s above, including what’s in my head. I keep cruising. I guess I just want to be horny so I can have some energy. I even try gay.com, which is kind of lucky because this trick catches me there; I say you wanna hire me? And then I’m out of my darkness and over to his house by Buena Vista Park, I figure it’s time to come—with him—even though the park is right out there. Afterwards, I lie in his arms and stare at the ceiling, inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Trying to approximate romance. Or even hot sex, lying exhausted and transformed afterwards.
I can’t believe the trick only has some crappy grocery store white bar soap, and Pantene, which is water and twenty different chemicals. Really twenty—I count them—starting with ammonium lauryl sulfate and then sodium lauryl sulfate. Every fancy trick should have fancy bath supplies, isn’t it written in the contract? I mean, this is the guy who throws the come-towel into the closet and says: the laundress will do that, the laundress does everything. Outside, the trees are so beautiful, everything’s beautiful, it’s my first energized and calm mood in days or weeks. Why can’t I always feel—like this?
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly Page 13