Oh Stevie, you’re such a fox!

This had my heart all warm and fuzzy and had me asking: “why, again, am I not going to see Fleetwood Mac?”

Oh Yeah, I’m broke as hell.  For now I’ll just have to blame this whole ‘going back to school’ thing on my little old wild heart.

Or at least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

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

Having grown up Catholic, I gained an early appreciation for ritualistic baths and ceremonial cleansing.  The act of baptism was something sacred to me, and I suppose for those who are devout believers, it still is.  As a child I would peer my eyes above the pews in front of me and stare in wonder at the priest, who I deemed had magical powers, as he splashed the holy water on the head of some unsuspecting babe.  But although the ritual and the priest as magician intrigued me, it was the water that took on the most alien and unusual quality of all.  The magic was in the water and it fascinated and frightened me.

These thoughts came rushing over me while watching Milk, and like the water itself, I was filled with a sense of something greater than myself.  I was filled with a reverence for something spiritual, but it was no God that pulled at me, it was the aged and crooked hands of a time that came before.  It was the reenactment of Harvey Milk’s story that baptized me into an entirely new church of mankind, and it came out of nowhere.  A movie I attended more on the desires of a friend of mine than the desires of myself, had managed to help me realize what gay pride was really about.

So let me start at the beginning.  I’ve always struggled to understand all the gay pride hysteria.  As a angry youth I marched for environmental, political, and human rights concerns.  Not once though have I marched for my own rights, the rights I merely adopted and took on, the rights that have actually seemed a chore to bear at times.  I’ve struggled to understand how my fellow members of the queer community could devote so much time and energy to something that I feel has been quenched.  I’ve grown up in a world and have felt, for the most part, completely free of discrimination,  I’m privileged to be who I am, and would have it no other way.  In fact, I’ve even found myself pitying straight people.  So, why should I, of all people devote my time and energy to a cause that I feel has been dealt with?

Well, my friends, Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn have finally given me a reason, and this movie, out of nowhere, put it for me in bold brassy typeface: PRIDE ISN’T ALWAYS ABOUT YOURSELF.  It’s ridiculously cliche to even go there in such a public domain, but dammit! here I go.

Pride is about the state of the world and how quickly things change.

It is about the people who make the change happen and the rest of us that ride the wave.

It’s about being thicker and richer in character, and knowing somehow that things can, and will be better.  I’ve not once, even thought that I deserved more, because I thought I had everything all along.  And maybe I do, maybe all the fights that were fought before I was born were done with self-serving intentions, but I have everything because of them.  And perhaps, I will never understand the oppression that those who came before me have dealt with, but my misconception has been, until now, that I should move on.  My misconception has helped me to realize how recently all this oppression happened.

If each and everyone of us just reached into history’s bag of bones we’d quickly realize that 60 years ago is nothing, and 30, is even less.

So in essence perhaps there is something magic in the water.  Perhaps the fountain pop machine at the Scotia Bank Cinema downtown is being fueled by holy water and I, in fact have been baptized again.  I’ve been invited into a whole new church of thought regarding everything that I am and everything that I’ve come from.  I am entitled to this life as much as the next one, but I should not presume so quickly that all I have is the road in front of me.  I will never forget that 30 in the past is nothing, and 30 years in the future is even less.  And I will never forget that there is always a brighter and better world to look forward to.

I have just this very minute, returned home from Victoria and I can’t help but wonder, does it ever change? Victoria, that is. On buses, I’ve traveled back through hair and fashion history, and reversibly so, have taken another trip forward to return to this bleak, weary home of mine off of Main Street.

Staying at a friend of mine’s home in Esquimalt last night, I learned that you can travel even further back in hair and fashion history if you take another short bus ride across the bridge west of downtown Vic. I’m simply exhausted, as though all the mullets and ripped and torn track jackets have somehow, by powers unknown, drained me of what little energy I had left. Is it possible that a city nestled in such a beautiful natural setting can harbor such ugliness? Apparently so.

I was a resident of the quaint city for nearly five years and I remember leaving the place nearly two years ago for a jaunt in Asia. I distinctly remember signs advertising new construction for The Falls and Dockside Green. Returning nearly two years later I observe that very little has changed. A few floors may have been built or the holes in the ground a little deeper, but still, very very little has transpired.

I wonder if, traveling Asia and living in Vancouver, has tainted my expectations of speed. If, by spending more time in environments that are dense with people, my inner clock has sped to a place that Victoria can no longer match. But I also wonder if I ever felt any different. My time in Victoria was a time of impatience and expectation. I was constantly waiting for something to happen, something to change.

I guess, with each returning visit to the island, I realize more and more what a stale and pathetic city it is. The lack of diversity, the lack of change, the slow pace, is all much too slow to please this energy-drained freak that I’ve become.

So I’m pulling the cat out of the bag, not that it was ever really in the bag, but I’m making it public: I am officially obsessed with Paris Hilton’s new show. As Paris continues to attempt to satisfy her hunger for a new bff, she has managed to thoroughly entertain me, and dare I say it? She’s kind of starting to win me over. So, maybe that’s the real cat that is out of the bag–my new found appreciation and empathy (did I really just say empathy?) for her.

Dear God, I never thought this day would come, but as previous television shows have changed my opinion about what I thought were shallow, pathetic individuals, this one seems to be doing the very same thing. Perhaps, I’m the shallow, pathetic individual, being so easily swayed and addicted by such trash. Perhaps, but watching this gaggle of girls and a faggy Asian disaster, fight for her affection, has me hooked.

Once again I am indebted to Mtv. Thanks again for the good times, and like a generation before me, I can confidently say that I lost a whole hell of my life to music television.

I’ve come a long way from my box of pencil crayons and the glue stick I would use to decorate the jackets of mix tapes passed onto friends and lovers. And, it’s been with excitement and a heavy heart that I’ve come to adopt new technology these past ten years. My so-called need for music that plays faster, smoother, and smaller sits anxious and caffeinated beside my yearnings for a time when things were simpler. It was a time for me when a home-made mix tape from a crush was enough to make me swoon. I would trace my fingers over their hand-written playlist and the pictures cut from magazines that were collaged on the front of the case. I would listen to every word; allowing the words to come to me as if they were floating from his bedroom to mine.

Granted, over the years I’ve tried to make mix-cds and pass them on. There was even a time when I would go so far as to design a cover on the computer, print it out, and send it to someone special across the ocean. But, there was always something so cold and impersonal in its design and delivery. Maybe, over the years, technology has helped music to become entirely purified. Maybe, in the re-defining and filtering of all the notes and sounds, we somehow eliminated all the imperfections that lingered in the shadows between beats. Perhaps it was these imperfections that made my heart flutter, or maybe it was just my innocence

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