The Babbitt and the Bromide
The other day i was cruised bya young boyof 18 with pouty lips and heavy dark eye lids. Of course it took me a while to realize the kid was actually cruising me. I was sitting on a bench writing, in a part of the Tiergarten that isn´t the gay section. At first i thought the youth had gotten lost from his sightseeing party. I swear i am sometimes not the brightest cookie in the porceline jar. His head twitching in my direction didn´t indicate he had some severe form OCD.
I followed him into a loosely covered grove. His clothes came off like they were stitched together with velcro. I got on my knock knees and began servicing his immense rocket shaped thrombone. I was chug-a-lugging with abandon on his perfect mushroom shaped knob, when he lifted my face up to his and began passionately kissing me. With young boys i am more then content to just worship them, not expecting any reciprocal action, let alone a makeout session.
His heavy ejaculate coated my face like a mud mask . Suddenly i was transported to my school days in Los Angeles. It is funny how a certain trick can trigger memory. Dominic Harvey was the younger brother of Parrish Harvey a girl who went to my highschool. The Harvey´s were very light skinned blacks, the same color as Vanessa Williams and with similar blue eyes and blondish brown hair.
Dominic was a 15 year old prostitute who worked off the Hollywood Blvd strip of Selma Avenue, which was made famous in the John Rechy novels. He also picked up tricks at the legendary punk rock hangouts The Gold Cup, Arthur J´s and the parking lot of teen disco Ginos II at Santa Monica Blvd and Vine. Back in those days the parking lot was divided into a girl and boy section with chicken hawks on either side depending on their preference. I don’t remember Dominic ever wearing a shirt. He had broad shoulders like a surfer dude that tapered down to a narrow waist. His stomach muscles knotted, buttocks plump yet firm squeezed into hustler white straight leg Lee Jean´s or Levi Daisy Dukes. Large rabbit feet in either Vans or shower thong flipflops. Even in winter he would roam the streets topless ---hairless torso with bullet nipples gleaming from the cold. Southern California can get chilly. I did see Dominic wearing an unzipped leather jacket, but still without a shirt.
The Harvey´s lived in an old 10-story apartment complex in Koreatown on Serrano Blvd. It was a grand old building now in total disrepair, but still possessing considerable charm. I lived on Hobart Blvd and Pico a few blocks south on the border of South Central and Mid City or Wilshire Center as it became known later.
Parrish Harvey and I weren´t friends, but we were acquainted with each other as she hung out with Linda Wong, a baby dyke who I had known since 2nd grade, who also lived on Hobart Blvd. Linda´s parents owned the neighborhood Chinese laundry and dry cleaners. Parrish, Linda and a girl named Lucy Swink were constant companions. Lucy Swink was a Hapa with a bad reputation since Junior High. In 8th grade a popular Chicano girl named Lisa Montalegre confronted Lucy with the question, “Why can´t you keep your legs closed?”
I always go for the underdog, so i befriended Lucy back in middleschool. I introduced her to Rosie Salazar and Silvia Ortiz two other girls who were outcasts.
I´ve never understood why i was popular in school. I never tried to be. I was friends with all the most admired girls like the aforementioned Lisa Montalegre, who could be a monster and ruled a clique that consisted of Dinah Bides, Elva Navarez, Estela Lara, Leticia Corral and their boy equivalents Gustava “Goose” Garcia, who had a huge penis and green eyes, Alberto Menchaca, a German-Mexican-Jew with a background similar to my own, Michael Mutsunaga.a black acting Japanese boy who was a great dancer, Herman Candejas and Alex “Abbie”Morales who turned into quite the handsome hunk by the time we started college together at UCLA.
My immediate social circle was small. My two best friends were Paul Lee, a Chinese boy with a wicked sense of gallows humour who was into David Bowie, and Roxy Music. I stole Paul away from Luis Alfaro, who later became a celebrated local performance artist and a winner of an undeserved MacArthur award, the genius grant. Yes I am still bitter about him winning a quarter of a million dollars. Guiermo Gomez-Pena was a good choice for the prize, but Luis Alfaro and Alison Anders ?
Paul and Luis had been tight since kindergarden. I met Luis first in Theatre class. Luis was already a dullard theatre queen. I quit Theatre not wanting to be in yet another holiday adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and started hanging out with Paul and Gregorio Estefano Hernandez who later i would turn into the queer punk icon Fertile LaToyah Jackson.
I remember in the mid 80s Luis coming up to me at the Outfest Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and told me that he had been following my career in the press. At that time i hadn´t seen or thought of him since Junior High. He looked pretty much the same,but cuter and boyish. Soon afterwards i would start hearing more about him as he became part of the Highways Performance Space scene in Santa Monica. Luis worked the system to the hilt, becoming a darling of the California Arts Council, more so then Tim Miller who ruled that scene. From the gossip i have heard Tim Miller is still stuck in the gay identity politics circuit. Back in the 90s there was a brilliant piece of grafitti around town that said Tim Miller = Death. Poor Luis Alfaro hasn´t aged very well. The last time i saw him he looked like my abuelita from mexico, and he wasn´t even in drag. I don´t think he does performance art anymore. Somene told me is an arts administrator.
The last time i talked to Paul Lee was perhaps in the early 90s when i lived on Sunset Blvd at the La Villa Rosa apartment building which i also used as my Hag Gallery. Paul was still living at home in the Pico Union district, and hadn´t changed one bit. His telephone number hadn´t changed either, i probably hadn´t talked to him since we were freshmen at UCLA, but i had a copy of an old At-a-Glance date book from the early 80s. And for some reason i just decided to call him on a lark, and his older brother answered and put him on the phone. He didn´t even question the fact that it had been over a decade since we last spoke. He acted like we had been keeping in touch for years.. He even knew of my exploits in the art and performance art scene. Back in the 80s i even took Paul with me to the old Theoretic Club at the One Way Leather Bar in Silverlake. This was a club that started in the afternoon and mixed hard core leather daddies with punk &post punk art damaged scenesters. I´ll always remember the look on Paul´s face when he saw some leather daddy casually fucking his lover at the bar. That was pretty much the last time i saw Paul. I figured he was too freaked out by my punk life, so i just stopped calling him. One person from my junior high school days who kept tabs on me from a far was this weird guy who was actually two grades ahead of me named James Nolan. James was half caucasion and Mexican and lived in a tiny little cardboard looking house with his white trash grandmother. In the early 80s i was a guest DJ on a public radio show, and James called me and talked about how he had seen me in Rolling Stone and Interview Magazines, had read my articles in the LA Weekly and LA Reader. I was a little freaked out. Through-out the years in LA whenever i would appear on Stella´s Stray Pop radio show James Nolan would call up to chat with me. I even noticed that he would write very verbose letters-to-the-editor in all the alternative weeklies. I got the feeling that he still lived in that same house that belonged to his grandmother and was pretty much a shut in. I can see him in that little clap house near MacArthur Park filled with cats and LPs. James Nolan was one of the first people other then Paul Lee who knew about the New York Dolls, and the Glam Rock scene, though his particular taste leaned more to Elton John. This reminds me also of this strange black kid with a jheri curl named Busby Baloys. What a name. How wonder i have never forgotten it. Busby not only went to Berendo junior high with me but also Los Angeles High School. This guy was a complete character and pathological liar, who was always telling grand tales about his family weath and fortune. Our paths crossed again in the early 90s. He started going to Jeffrey Hilberts club Hai Karate at this Japanese gay bar called Mugi on the east end of Hollywood Blvd. He hadn´t changed one bit, and was still wearing his hair in a jheri curl and telling outlandish lies. This time he was going under the name of Christian, using a fake British accent and was saying he was adopted into the family that owns the Jaguar luxury automobile. One thing that also didnt change was that he was still a faggot. He started hanging out with one of my club Sucker regulars named Chris Ganzer, who is one of the most goofiest white boys in the world. Chris really liked Busby and was a true friend to him. I asked him didn´t his constant lying get on his nerves. He just shrugged his shoulder and said that he was amused by all the tall tales. I guess Busby was living on skid row at a Single Room Occupancy hotel, as he would never let Chris drop him off directly at home after an evening out.
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Billy Miller of STH, the Manhattan Journal of Unnatural Acts in now in Berlin for his monthly residency at the new gallery Exile that is run by artist Christian Siekmieir. Billy is one of my favorite New York personalities, and is a pure genius. We spent a lovely day in Neukölln oogling Turkish and Arab men, and i showed him the gay cancer shelf in Hasenheide Park. The weather was nice and warm, and we both had bikes and rode about blissfully. Bill relayed to me a lot of the latest New York gossip, and even some stories about people from Los Angeles like Jason El Norte, who i gather finally got fired from his day job as a law clerk , and is now working full time as a highprice male concubine. One of his steady clients is pop singer and songwriter Neil Sedaka who flies him out to the east coast for regular hump therapy sessions. I like Jason, he is a true libertine, and not only does he have sex with men but also with women. Jason has a cock that would make a donkey blush. I think he is in his early 30s now, but still gives off a boyish imprint because of his lean frame. I even diddled with Jason years ago when i met him on tour with Margaret Cho back in 2001, when performing in Minneapolis/St.Paul. When Jason moved to LA i hired him as a spastic taxi dancer for my club Bricktops
Was treated to drinks at Frankenstein 5000, aka: Ficken 3000 in Neu Kölln by Tim Blue, and ran into hot buttery lovers Travis Jeppeson and Mario Dzurila along with the Mormen Courtesan Brian, who use to be lovers with Hollywood directors Gus Van Sant and Bryan Singer. They were meeting with the salty dog owner of the bar, and are going to do a weekly party at this space which is in dire need of youthful rejuvenation. Their club will debut on Sunday Nov 2nd and goes by the name of Porky´s. Their gogo boys will all wear pig snouts.
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Had to rush home from the HAU2 where i saw La Pesca by Sportivo Teatral from Buenos Aires. The set was nice, but the piece was very much the kind of theatre that America made famous in the 30s through 50s. I can understand Spanish, but Argentine Spanish with it´s Italian cadence is a bit difficult, but it didnt matter.
Nice seeing Anna Muelter, Alessio of bbooks, Senol Senturk who is building the Guilt House installation for Susanne Sachsee and Karen Cyter, Katrin Dodd, and Mijke Harmsen Got home and my hot German boyfriend was waiting for me naked and sprawled out. We got into an argument a few days ago over the fact that he doesnt have a key to my flat. So to keep the proverbial peace i gave him a key. It was something so simple but it sure made him happy, the young fool.
I must be exuding some weird theremones lately. I was sitting outside of the American Library on a bench, when a beautiful, well built young blondine boy started cruising me quite provacatively. I was aghast. In broad daylight he started to grab at my crotch. I´m a grower not a shower, so when he didnt feel anything of substance he lost interest and walked away.