School keeps getting in the way and just like the weather, these studies of mine are preventing me getting from this place to that.   But it’s not so cold down here on Main Street  and Terminal.  Nothing like the top of the hill I just came down.  “Tops and bottoms,” I think, and I force myself to not write something ridiculous…

I can’t help but anticipate the changing of neighborhoods this evening, although, a part of me didn’t think I would make it out of the house tonight.  Yet, still, with head phones as little earmuffs, I make it aboard the train and I think how differently songs can sound from this day to that.   How in one moment, in one state of mind we are lucky enough to hear the way a song sounded the first time that we heard it, and then how quickly that changes too. I guess there’s always room to become burdened and bored with another magical thing in life.

How differently things can sound if we just listen to them.

Meeting up with old boyfriends on school nights is a  past-time I haven’t indulged myself in for quite awhile.  Tonight I allow for it and I wonder as I’m rounding the corner onto Davie just how fucked it is to have to think about “school nights” again.  I shudder and shake that one right off of me as I approach the one who waits on fences in the cold for me.

The things boys will do…

At this show hosted by Miss Cotton, I take my eyes across the room and up the wall to where Starlen Gold carries a pole between his legs and moves from the corners of the little stage.  A fellow makes a proposition about me dancing on the little platform and I’m not sure if it’s just my insecurities, but all I can do is laugh.

“This whole thing reminds me of a twisted retelling of Rapunzel,” I think, “Only there’s no hair to be seen…  and I’m pretty sure the real Rapunzel had more chest hair than Starlen.”

The show begins and instantly these boys and men all look more grown up.  There is something different about the way that they walk and they’ve really cleaned up.  Dressed in whites from head to toe, they make their way to the platform and back again.  It becomes instantly apparent that layers have been shed.  The nervous one with the phone has left the accessory behind to become the most scantily clad one of the bunch.  I wonder about the multitude of snaps on his knickers, and I wonder if there was some greater plan to put the one with all the nerves in the most compromising of uniforms.

There’s something to be said about being pushed to our limits.

The race car driver is clad in fur and the gymnast makes jokes about bronzer and booze.  There’s hair and skin galore and the ruddy one is celebrating a birthday.  I get a little lost amongst the questions and the running back and forth between the bar and the sidelines.  The tall one looks taller and the hairy one look hairier, the muscles start to look bigger and Marty Funkhauser makes the music a little louder.

Somehow everything tonight is a little broader and bigger than last time: the lights, the music… and I can feel it building.

The event raps up as the hungry audience is fed its first victims.  I don’t think this whole thing excited me as much as just this moment, when the first ones were cut from the competition.  All of a sudden I’m a child of a generation that’s waiting for the fallen to walk away with tears in their eyes.  And my belly is growling for more.

Perhaps I’ve lost some of my heart over the years.

Perhaps I haven’t yet discovered just how I’m supposed to write about all these boys.  I keep trying to make it about them but I’m just too selfish yet.  Give me time, you’re all beginning to grow on me, I’m just waiting to see who’s here for the long haul.  Ha…

Perhaps I’m all dried up and my eggs have already washed away.  And to think that I thought puberty was still upon me.  Perhaps in the absence of a microwave all these years, I’ve ironically irradiated my fertility.  All this time and  it was actually the microwave that protected our fragile sex drives, not a healthy lifestyle or a goodnight’s sleep like we thought.  And just like the one who died from lung cancer and never knew a cigarette to sit between lips and teeth, I am something of an anomaly.  I’m the one who never knew the gently puffing, and yet, I’m still a poofter.

I suppose I’m envious of this life.

But I’m still waiting for a go-go dancer to actually turn me on, a way to write about all these models,  and a gay bar to really feel like home…

All in good time, Trevor.

Vancouver’s Next Gay Top Model

We start with an introduction to gymnasts and race car drivers, those that market and those that stretch, and I’m beginning to think that I am witness to some high-tech thriller or some twisted erotica.  The latter perhaps is true, but only in waylaid fantasies; dreams that sit and wait before ambush, jumping out of nowhere, reminding me of my sexuality.  We get bits and pieces of occupations and struggles, successes and victories, but snippets is all.  For we just skim the surface.  So I’ll try to dig deeper, to find out what lies behind the facade, and see what each of these characters is really like….

It was hard to decipher the words that actually escaped his lips, or to conclude by the tone of his voice, that jesting was his true intention.  Because I could swear that I heard the words, “sports are gay,” slip out from between those lips of his.  So in the nature of mistakes and slip-ups, I suppose that we’ll let this one slide.  I suppose that by letting it roll off of our crooked backs as it has rolled out of your lips, that you will somehow ponder the words that those lips are creating.  Because we all let things slip once in a while, from this place to that, words, glances, and fingers between fingers, atop thighs and through buttons and zippers.  Although these slips are just instinct, they are the beginnings and ends of friendship and courtships.  One might argue that it is these slips that lead us out one door and into another.

So, we’ll see where they lead you…

And this guy on his cellphone makes me wonder how ridiculous I look when I tote the silly thing around with me.  I’ve come to walk into intersections without looking for lights that would tell me to stop.  This thing, this toy poodle, that I’ve come to rely on so unnaturally is my newest accessory.  I find no need to speak, because I’ve got everything I need, right here in my hand.  I wonder how many chance encounters are missed?  How many wandering eyes I was intended to meet have been totally disregarded by this silly little device of mine?  Hmph?

Security blankets…

And then the dancing begins, and the men now, they move.  Some are ridden with smiles, others ridden with shame.  Some have felt what it’s like to give all the bull shit up or perhaps they never had any to begin with.  These ones move with a confidence that is lacking in the others.  Who ever said that gay men had more rhythm than others was sadly mistaken. Listen to me, I’m one to talk, I can’t do much for dancing and I’m still full up on the shit, all the anguish and worry that would have me blushing as I struggled to move my hips from side to side.  The shit that tries to tell me that every little thing I do is utterly ridiculous.  The shit that would have me throw my arms up and surrender.

But I can drop it enough to know that, for today at least, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me looking like the fool I am.

It was tricky to sift through the men and the boys, and even harder to filter out those who were  indeed there for the right reasons.  And that has me asking myself: what are the right reasons?  What brings you to this place?  The prizes are not understated, no, they are copious, desired, and admirable, but what got you here?  Some have crossed boundaries that at home seemed unbreakable.  Others traveled through mountains to get to Vancouver and then mere city blocks to Celebrities.  And all of these journeys I would like to believe, are backed with honest intention.  So perhaps rather than ask you my questions, I take a turn at myself and ask, why have you, said blogger, said writer of things, said eyes, and said hands, why have you parted your sheets and come to this place?

And I think to myself as my fingers keep dancing the can-can, their knees making ninety degree angles to the dance floor, I think to myself, what would I be like in a situation such as this?  Surely I would be the one with the cell phone in tow, and surely I would make slips of the lips, surely I would say something absurd.  Surely I would feel as though the moving of my hips wasn’t nearly as gracious as his, or that my body looked different, turned different, walked different.  Surely I would think that I would be last to be picked, but know deep down that I was something greater.

But I am none of these things.  I am cynical and trite.  I am a writer.  I am someone more content with the desk across the room and the shots from the camera that have my eyes facing the ground.  And, there is my answer, this is why I’ve come across the city this week.  I’ve come for the sake of my eyes, so that they may play across the room at all the bare backs and deep slipping lips, and I’ve come so that I may write of the struggles of finding just who we are, and just where we’re headed.

I’m here for all the grief that I can find.  I’m here to see just how human you all are, what you’re lacking and what is billowing over.  I’ve come for all the character that’s been already taken and all the character that’s left to gain…

….

Vancouver’s Next Gay Top Model

To me, Davie Street at 12:30 Sunday afternoon looks more like Davie Street at 7:30 Monday morning.  Patrons wander the streets with their eyes glazed over searching for their first cup of coffee; their weary faces leave nothing of the apparent jubilation they held at two in the morning.  Making my way to Celebrities from the train station is more like walking through a mine field of hangovers, but having been invited to observe the auditions for Vancouver’s Next Gay Top Model, I manage the mine field and take my spot in the well-lit room.

It can be a frightening  thing for the sun to rise or the house lights to go up at the end of an amazing night.  The faces of those around us take on a grim and pale expression that does nothing for the sexual attraction that only moments before was glaringly real and explosive.  Seeing Celebrities in this state brings some of these same feelings for me, though the room has been cleaned, the floor retains traces of the Saturday night mayhem.  A broken shard of glass in the corner that was missed by the brooms and the shine of light as it bounces off a lonely speck of glitter give my mind a sense of what went on in these walls last night.  I realize as I sit and wait for the proceedings to begin, that everything really does change in the light.

As many of you may already know, I wrote a little piece on this here Stinky Stanky StinkWallet a little over a month ago regarding my feelings about Vancouver’s Gay Top Model, Mr. Gay Canada, Peter Breeze, and the whole concept of what it means to be a gay sensation.  I must say that with a very critical eye I wrote the piece in question and it could be seen to be colored by my distaste for a world that I’ve feared at times is overly saturated with superficiality.  Terry Costa, Director/Producer of VNTGM was brave enough to invite me to be a part of this whole venture, and with this opportunity I am hoping to see a different side of these events and how they relate to the queer Vancouver environment, and the environment of Vancouver in general.

So for the handful of potential top gay models the day has begun and as dreary as their little eyes may be, there is no longer time for beauty sleep.  The group is much smaller this year and as with most sequels there is a skepticism that was more than likely not apparent in the last round.  Thinking beyond the scope of a show of this potential, I reflect on what it means to be a part of the second round, to be the second child, or the second movie or book in a series.  An often highly criticized position, it will be intriguing to see how the event will pan out this year.  It will be a test to the attention span of an audience who some might say is in fact completely attention deficient.

Terry’s attitude is indeed a respectful one, and displays his capabilities as a director and professional.  He makes it known that no matter the amount of people who show up to an event like this, it is the numbers and contestants themselves that shape and create it.  These events are organic beings, dynamic works in an almost fictional world where the characters create the story.

The afternoon continues with an opportunity for the contestants to introduce themselves and do a whole lot of walking.  The confidence of some shines through instantly and for others it becomes instantly apparent that their nerves may best them before the day is through.  I can’t help but think about my own nerves and the opportunities that I’ve passed up over the years.  It takes a lot of balls to enter into an environment that is ripe with judgment.  Although I’ve happily lived on the outskirts of the community for most of my adult life, in confusion about some of the attitudes and behaviors of my gay brothers, I’ve always given credit where it is due, and to audition for anything is always a trying experience.

So like the brave contestants in the room, I set out on a journey myself.  I hope that by watching these men learn something about themselves, I too can learn more about the community that surrounds me.  By indulging in the workings of an event that is fueled by generosity and a genuine desire to raise money for charity (Friends for Life), I too may learn something about myself.  We reveal a little more of ourselves every time the house lights go up, and like Celebrities on a Sunday afternoon or the pavement outside of the shops along Davie Street, there is always going to be someone judging us on the other side of the room.  It is our composure and confidence that prevents these prying eyes from taking us apart piece by piece.