THE MOTHER’S RECOMPENSE
Can’t wait to start digging into this new book called The Age of Desire by Jennie Field that is about writer Edith Wharton’s love affair with journalist Morton Fullerton.

Distracted by a curly haired dark blondine boy tourist with his familie while walking to the American Bibliotech at Hallesches Tor to do a little research. This kid is quite yummy and in a few short years he will ripen into a gorgonzolan.

Sitting outside of a Turkish bakery on Akazien Strasse when who should walk by wearing odd plastic sunglasses, a SuperFly chartreuse trench coat,dusky cowboy boots and tight animal print pants but a former colleague from my CHEAP Jewelry days Berlin-circa 2001. This person is much younger then I am and use to be cute in a goofy kind of way. Over the last few years he’s become insufferable. Everytime I see him I want to run far away. Maybe he is going through some odd change of life as he drifts into middle age that is making him repugnant to me. I thought it was just me and my particular prejudices but I am not the only one who has expressed this feeling towards him.

Berlin is not known as a fashion mecca. Wealthy people either dress conservatively in expensive dull clothes or the standard all-black uniform playing it safe. Then there are those who wear the most outlandish outfits without grace or elan. I’ve been known to dress outrageously, but I’ve always had good taste. Yes there is a level of taste involved with being an outrageous dresser. Many fail to recognize this.

On the underground I saw an androgynous person with what looked like 100 wigs carefully stitched together into a giant mop on their head that seemed to wear 50 lbs. While they looked a little uncomfortable as the wig tilted them to one side it was definitely a highly stylized look that worked on someone with a thin frame and whose clothing was rather simple and muted. If you’re going to do crazy hair everything else can’t be crazy and this person understood that. They chose to make a statement with very big hair and that was fine.

If you have ruddy skin it’s not wise to dye ones hair bright red. Also bleaching your hair platinum blonde or jet black isn’t always the best thing to do if your complexion is craggy as it calls more attention to the face.

The current trend of gay men wearing bushy beards and other forms of unkept facial hair is very unfortunate. Not everyone can pull off a beard. Most just wind up looking like a derelict.

What is it with libation loving Teutonic crusties in Berlin who are attached at the hip to their equally crusty animal companions? Seven am Pilsner in hand an unfortunate woman on the Hauptstrasse ---Kafkaesque, but in reverse--- morphing from a mangey canine/bug into some unrecognizeable humanoid shape,complete with a long dredlocked tendrell.

Wonderful time the other night with my Saarbruecken scientist. Dinner at an Indian boite off the Ufer--- scrumptious, and very private. Served by an arresting dark skinned Southeast Asian young man. Was he Malyasian or Cambodian? Couldn’t tell, he just wasn’t Indian or Pakistani. Was the gaysian flirting with me while I was on my dinner date or was it just my imagination? I am so deluded. I think everyone is wrapped up in the Haus of Ms. Vaginal Davis. Well if they aren’t they should be.

I had an odd encounter Tuesday. An inbred looking man in his early 30s came up to me on the street and froze glassy eyed staring at me with mouth agape. Instinctively my big sister to the world mojo kicked in and I held him in a mama grizzly hug. The poor and unloved creature melted in my arms literally purring as I patted his shaved Nosferatu shaped head. After 40 minutes he broke free crying and mumbling thank you in Deutsch, and went on his way. Sometimes its necessary to avail yourself to complete strangers.

For the last three weeks my Saarbrucken scientist has been enjoying a holiday here in Berlin at a giant loft flat on Paul-Lincke Ufer. I guess our little late summer love affair is opening up my reedy sex chakras as I have had many encounters lately with boys sniffing at me when walking on the street. On one moonlit evening a 26 six year old from Hamburg was professing his undying love.

I was asked if I was on Gay Romeo by a Swiss/Italo actor coming out of the post office. Of course I am not on any gay dating sites as I don’t believe in them. And just the other day a Humboldt University student who saw me give a performative lecture a month ago at the school sent my webmaster an email and wanted to meet for coffee to interview me for a project on performance that he is working on. We met and it became apparent that the 19 year old had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on me. He was a cute ginger/blondine with thick legs and huge feet in Birkenstock sandles. He was very adoreable like a big baby, but when you’re that young your body should be rock hard, not doughy from the three B’s of too much bread, bier and bratwurst.

Just today at the Xerox place a tall lanky Norweigan started a chittle chat while a bubble butt Turkish youth was giving me Ankara kitten mixed with raggle taggle Barney Google eyes trying to get my attentions. He was pretty but I don’t like men with little hands, little feet and no shoulders.

Even some muscular Afro-Cuban top model looking boy came up to me and boldly asked if I was a top. I think he was Afro Cuban, though he could have also been Brazilian with his honey colored braeun skin. He was very handsome with quite a sizeable rack on him, but I could tell he was a crystal meth queen because he was acting very tweaky and couldn’t focus while he talked to me which isn’t very flattering. I think his booty hole was dialating from the drugs and it was turning him into a jennyanykind.

Luckily I got a phone call from Love Camel and was able to excuse myself. When I finished the call I noticed he had trotted down the street with an aging sex lizard in leather pants who must be in town for the Fulsom Street Festival.

Will be in a group show called Bloodyminded that opens Sept 15th here in Berlin put on by the wonderful art children from New York who represent me at the Invisble Exports Gallery. This show will be at someplace I have never heard of called The Wye. Below is the link.

http://invisible-exports.com/exhibitions/44a_bloody/bloodyminded.html

HEITER BIS WOLKIG

Lately I have been overcome with thoughts of a group of girls I use to hang out with back in the early and mid 1980s in Los Angeles. They were a closely knit gaggle of middle class gals from the Valley and Hollywood Hills and I believe we first met at hardcore punk rock venues like Godzillas in North Hollywood, which was run by the Better Youth Organization of the Valley hardcore band Youth Brigade featuring the Stern Bros who are featured in the punk documentary Another State of Mind. At one time I had a crush on Sean Stern who went to Taft High School with Jane Wiedlin of the GoGo’s. Ok now I am moving in Finnigan’s Wake territory so please be patient with me and my island of the stream of conscienceness.

I could have also met this group of girls at The ON Klub in Echo Park on Sunset Blvd which was a mod hangout for the early two-tone scene in Los Angeles which was a spinoff of the British mod revival but with Southern California charm and personality instead of English angst. Some of the girls were in relationships with members of the mod band The Untouchables or their hangers on. The cutest member of the Untouchables was Clyde Grimes a very stylish black boy who I believe was gay and had a relationship with a young graphic artist named Rick Newsome who use to work with Robert Fusfield. I met Rick and Robert through my connection to the Mod Magazine Twist that was published by Dave Lumian. I started as a writer on Twist and later became a Features Editor and even tried my hand at selling advertising which I was lousy at. Some of the other people at Twist Magazine: the sweet cougar Tina Silvey who became quite a successful video and commercial advertising producer. I adored Tina, she had great taste in men and I believe married one of her youthful blondine angels. Then there was Maris Sofar also a cougar but who preferred urban black boys. She went out with one of the guys in The Untouchables for quite sometime till he dumped her for someone his own age. Oh and then there was Miri Day who later moved to New Jersey, got married and I lost touch with her. Dave Lumian was not only the manager of the Untouchables at the height of their popularity but also some other post punk bands like Downey Mildew. Anyone remember them? Dave was also involved in a lot of liberal causes an occasionally wrote for the LA Weekly. I liked Dave, but he was a bit nebbishy, he later married an Asian woman and had children with her and moved to boring Venice Beach. I’ll never forget that Dave Lumian when he saw the Afro Sisters perform felt that we weren’t political enough. Of course that’s something that a tired well meaning white liberal would say to a black person. Dave felt that because The Afro Sisters used humour in our approach that it lacked substance. That’s something I have been battling for many years with tired clueless critics of my work. I wonder what happened to Dave Lumian and his Twist Management Company. The girl who ran his business was this cutie pie named Laurel Stearns. Laurel was still working for Dave in the 1990s because one of their bands played at my Club Sucker at the Garage in Silverlake and that was most likely the last time I saw both Dave and Laurel.

Getting back to the middle class girl gang that I use to hang with----- Su Ming who later became a makeup artist at MAC Cosmetics. Su Ming was a party girl extroidinaire, and all around good time Sally. She could be very catty and dismissive but usually done in a playful mode. Her sense of style was impeccable and very sophisticated. I think she became a lipstick lesbian. One of her best girlfriends was another striking beauty named Dina who had the gait and poise of a ballet dancer, which made sense because her aunt was Miss Denice of the Stanley Holden Dance Studios in Westwood on Pico Blvd. Miss Denice had worked with Gene Kelly in the 1940s and 50s at MGM. I took ballet clases briefly from Miss Denice along with Dina and her beautiful blond cousin Michelle Karlich and my friend from UCLA Rachel Diaz. Michelle Karlich was a pure sweatheart and was not a ferocious partygoer, but she didn’t shy away from the party scene either and had a nice subdued style that wasn’t as trendy as the other girls in this clicka. One of whom was Kelli Stahlings who looked just like a young Judy Garland with the most ravishing pale skin and reddish brown hair. Kelli lived on Mulholland Drive and came from a very wealthy family. Her handsome older brother was a sexy skier. Kelli had such personality and could make a Doberman pinscher laugh out loud with the incredible comic expressions she wore on her face, and her style was that of an actress from the late 1930s and early 1940s. She didn’t look like someone from the modern era of that time in the 1980s. I really loved Kelli, she and Michelle Karlich could dig really deep with you but in a playful way. Did Kelli wind up married with children? Michelle Karlich and I stayed in touch for a much longer period of time. She even came to Bricktops at the Parlour Club and brought a gorg of her film industry gay workmates and drinking buds and they were having a hoot of a time. I forgot exactly what Michelle did for a living but I believe it was something within the administrative end of film production. She owned a lovely small house in Studio City and Fertile La Toyah Jackson and I went to one of her houseparties around the turn of the century. I hardly ever go to houseparties so that tells you how much I liked Michele. The other girls in this group were Jenny Klein who I met when she worked on Melrose Avenue at the store Graue that was run my Claudia Graue. I worked across the street at Retail Slut. Jenny looked like a more statuesque version of Molly Ringwald. At one time Jenny became part of the entourage of Cee Farrow and April La Rue, which was not a good thing. I will have to go into that at another rememberance. Laura who was a bit on the portly side, was Jewish like Jenny and worked at one time as a makeup artist at a makeup studio in the Beverly Center beore MAC cosmetics began its cosmetics reign. Laura later lost quite a bit of weight. Then there was Sherry who was very tall and use to act a bit ditsy, Valerie who was a model,Cynthia a Beverly Hills girl whose rich aunt supported her. This aunt must have been quite wealthy indeed as she owned a Faberge Egg. Cynthia started an underground club in the mid 80s called Social Lies which I always thought was a good name for a club. This was around the time I did a club called Barefoot Boy Club in a 1920s storage facility on Western Avenue at 8th Street. Cynthia now lives in New York. Back in the day she was diagnosed with Lupis. I hope she has that disease under control. There were many dance clubs at that time that we all went to with names like Power Tools, Nairobi Room, Dirtbox, Rhythm Lounge at the Grandia Room and Rhythm Louge SoHo on North Spring Street near the Woman’s Building, Larry Lazar’s many club nights and later Plastic Passion, The Apartment hosted by the notorious Cee Farrow&April LaRue and Tommy Gear from the Screamers, and a host of other clubs the names I forget. Also on the periphery of these girls was Peacefrog aka Steve who worked at Vinyl Fetish record store and was one of the first people to champion The Afro Sisters by playing our cassette tapes in the store during the day. Peacefrog was in a popular post Paisley Underground band called The Clay Idols and was a gifted poet. I think he now lives in Portland, Oregon. Through Peacefrog I met a girl named Andi and her boyfriend Dave Cunningham who would become an integral part of some early Afro Sisters performance pieces like The Inter- Racial Dating Game and Fertile’s Last Dance. Later Dave became boyfriends with Edith “Head” Gonzales who was rooommates for many years with Fertile La Toyah Jackson when Fertile rented a large Victorian house in Pasadena. I think Dave Cunningham still works at Amoeba Records in Hollywood being one of those middle class white boys who has talent—he was quite good in our stage productions, and he plays my boyfriend in one Afro Sisters early video shot on film, but unfortunately Dave didn’t have any ambition or drive. Maybe he’s a pothead, that would make sense. I know he graduated from UCLA in Film. He showed me one of the movies he made with Edith “Head” Gonzalez as the star. It wasn’t very good. For many years I had a bit of a crush on Dave. He was the ultimate dorky blondine white boy. I always go for the same type. One time when he was drunk we got a bit frisky with each other in his car, I think that freaked him out so after that he remained nice to me but kept me at a regal distance. Though he did call me one time during my reign at Bricktops at the Parlour Club. One of his gay friends was looking for a bartender job and had applied to The Parlour Club, and Dave wanted me to put in a good word for him with the owner Lenny---but I didn’t.

Through Leslie Beatty who was my first Clitoris Turner in the Afro Sisters and who worked at Cowboys & Poodles on Melrose Avenue I met Tim Hensley who achieved quite a local cult following in the late 80s with his band The Victor Banana. Tim Hensley and Dave Cunningham were classmates Grant High School in the Valley. Tim had another earlier band called Carousel of Death with Patrick McGuinn whose famous father Roger McGuinn was leader of the 60s pop group The Byrds. Tim also had another side music project called The InsideOut which featured my future PME bass player Dean Opseth who was in Peacefrogs band Clay Idols. Oh and Big Dicque Sneaky Pete Tomlinson my drummer with PME he use to work at CowPoo’s and would fuck Leslie Beatty while they were working behind the counter at the store. I’d walk into the boutique to visit with them and Pete would be giving it to her from behind. Ah those were the salad days on Melrose Avenue.

*

Was sitting in the park enjoying one of the last warm days of the season when a man came jogging past me and I swear he looked like a fusion of Don Knotts from the film The Incredible Mr. Limpett and 60s TV personality Wally Cox.

Did I mention that I saw Woody Allen’s newest film To Rome with Love at a press screening and its quite an unusual offering. I liked it better then his box office hit Midnight in Paris, but that doesn’t say much.

Judy Davis is amazing, but not given much to do but be the straight man for Allen’s set up to his jokes. Poor young Jesse Eisenberg he’ll never become a leading man when he holds the hand of a woman he’s suppose to have just boinked like it’s a soiled dish rag. It would have been far more interesting if Mr. Eisenberg and Mr. Baldwin were having an affair with each other. I think that was most likely the initial idea, but Mr. Allen balked on it as he has a hard time dealing with homosexuality. So instead we wind up with some two bit naturalistic magical realism.

Did I forget to mention I hate Roberto Benigni and all the other two feet tall Italian men in this picture. And isn’t it about time someone else started to portray Penelope Cruz in the Penelope Cruz role? Oh and please bring back Ann Roth as costume designer for Woody Allen films. And get a good hairstylist. Did the stars have to do their own hair and wardrobe? Ellen Page could have used some Dippity Doo or even Wet Lubricant on that raggedy mop on her head. I’ve never seen an ingénue looking so unkept in a major film property. Even though a lot of people walked out on this one I stayed valiantly to the end.