Gorgeous Art from a Gorgeous Admirer

Before? During? It's all such a blur, but sometime closer to the beginning of my month away than now, one of the lovelies who have shown interest in me thanks to blogger sent me this. With some alterations it may have to be a tattoo. Tentacles and a trapeze....? Come, on.

Ah, Malamor, when will you be done having your way with me? Sorry about that, I think I just stumbled into the little goth club in my heart for a second. All better now.

Malamor by Chiara Bautista, aka Milk

Kisses from Berlin

I have been neglecting the wife-search in the interest of getting the hell out of dodge. Now I'm writing from a grey-green velvet settee from a lovely little apartment in Berlin. My snowglobe needed some shaking, for sure, and luckily for me I had resources enough to skeedaddle for a month.

This is my first trip to Germany and is mostly the responsibility of my dear friend Tara who is Dominating and loving her way around Europe. I'm taking advantage of her trend-setting and hoping to find some queers to love on and some men to beat on. Or vice versa, if it comes to that :)

Also, I am excited to be meeting a prospective wife on this trip; as fas as I know this woman is the only person interested from outside of the U.S. Long distance love seems to be all the rage in my friend circle these days, but I doubt I have the stomach for it. I like to be all up in love's grill. Regardless I am thrilled that a Swede is curious enough about me to make a trip to Germany to meet, and she sounds like a wonderful person. Plus, I saw a picture of her in a sailor suit. Hello, sailor!

So far I have remembered why everyone seems so crazy about packing light (a skill I have yet to grasp) and why traveling alone can be a drag. I also met some sweet and generous, legally married fags on the plane who helped me get started on the bus and U-bahn. So while I already know I couldn't hack the weather/sunlight ratio/land-lockedness of Berlin, it's great to know that if I do happen to meet my wife here I could get my romance with a side of health care benefits.

On the trip into the city from the airport I felt a lot like I remember feeling on my way into Amsterdam, years ago, the air has a similar quality, a potent greyness.

Here are some of the first things I noticed about Berlin:

-White birch trees

-A restaurant called: Piraten Restauranten, all done up in Arrrrghhh!

-Dark, cold canals

-Beautiful brickwork, hyper modern glass building in a row of ancient brick row houses

-Giant cheesey-looking sex stores: I passed at least four on the bus, the first one with a giant neon sign reading "LSD"- Love Sex Dreams

-Quite a few Thai massage parlors

-An old man with his hound on the bus

-The U-bahn is cute an cozy, almost kitschy. Everyone sits on a long bench, no seat segregation, which is covered with patterned vinyl that reminds me of a granmother's shelf lining

-In Kreuzberg there is graffitti *everywhere*. I love it!

-A four story brick building with a giant astronaut stencil on it

-Few non-white people

-Punk buying a beer at 11am outisde the U-Bahn station

-Tiny washing machine aptly called: Privileg

-Many of the younger people in Kreuzberg have dreads

-There doesn't seem to be many German restaurants around here, mostly Turkish, Middle Eastern, Asian, Mexican-influenced cafe food

-A small Kurdish demonstration was flanked by about 30 Polizei in drab green uniforms with lopsided little black berets. Just standing around looking fierce and unnecessary.

-Not many people where bright colors, mostly black and dark brown, red, blue and grey

-Something about the bricks and the climate and the vibe makes me guess that heroin is a popular drug here

-Most people speak some English

-Hipster stores are easily identifiable regardless of language or cultural differences

-I always feel unsure of my queerdar in other countries

-Long chartreuse budding willow whips streaming over the canal

-Lots of creaky bikes, bike lanes on everywhere on the sidewalk, demarked by a different texture and pattern of cobblestone

-Lots of vegetarian options (even some vegan!)

-Lots of piegeon and dog shit

-Milk coffee with Malt!

One of the German fags on the plane told me that Germans never smile at each other and everything is very constrained. I've been smiling extra hard. Whenever I'm in an atmosphere of constraint I get intense urges to act out and be extra crazy. Kreuzberg doesn't feel very tight, but we'll just see if it gets to me running amok.
I hope to go to Prague for a day or two as well, I've never been and feel like it would be a shame to miss it since I'm so close. If you have any must-experience ideas for me in Berlin or Paris, please email me. Generally for a long trip I do a couple of months of research and planning, whereas this time I bought my ticket a week ago and feel like I am flying by my seat-less pants!

As always, my main interests are: art (especially weird/underground), sex culture, queer culture, food, nature, and maybe some "lefty" (as Tara's German friend calls it), politics.

Enjoy yourself, no matter where in the world you are.

And many many thanks to those who helped me errand and pack, it made all the difference.

Crazy Love

Could you Love This Person?



(warning: spoiler, especially in the links)

Crazy Love: The marriage I will do anything to avoid.

One of the craziest love-abuse-marriage stories ever. Seriously. A reminder that at this point, falling off the 'crazy' wagon for me is a neutral-friendly email, and all those thoughts about flat tires and spray-painted windows and bottles full of piss and disemboweled abdomens stay in my active little head, while this world is really full of genuine wackos passing themselves off as human beings, and in this case, more than getting away with it. I feel like I'm crazy when I get to feeling like Mr. Tehn but actually I don't hurt people except for mutual consensual pleasure and money and have never once contracted anyone to throw acid at any of the people who get new shiny girlfriends. Not once. This movie may elicit some hatred of men, I must warn you, especially if you are susceptible to that anyway. Or it may just boggle your gender-neutral mind, completely.

Regardless, when Irene and I left the video store today I showed her the cover and she said: "Looks like you. Both of them."
And I don't deny it. In fact I feel like the above picture is an accurate portrayal of about 70% of my personality and internal image. I've got many little people living in this Mer-cat (including a beautiful and demanding Princess that hasn't held court in far too long; a nurturing Mommy who cooks, cuddles, and reads aloud; a dapper vintage cad with a foppish hat and roguish cane; and a little hobbling naked imp covered in snake skins and dried glue) but this double image of femme glamour and intense wacky creep makes up the lion's share. The Burt Pugach part of the picture reminds me a lot of R. Crumb, a figure I have taken to relating to more and more over the last year (but only mostly because I am a notorious pervert with similar taste in women). Note the -weeesque bow tie. The Linda Riss side is the fancy lady from my photo shoots, though in fact she was a very nice girl and a virgin until her 30's. We have similar eyebrows.

Though the resemblance goes a bit deeper than appearances, or more accurately, self-image.
So while the story of these people horrifies me, as components of the psyche, I am fascinated with them. More than that, I recognize them as my own. I relate to both the drastic obsession and the appeal of being loved fanatically. I understand the dark barbed lure of insanity, the seductiveness of passion untempered by reason. These days I channel that urge mostly into art and BDSM and also the occasional harmless rant in my living room. Not as romantic as a heroin addiction, but easier to recover from and probably more sustainable. This is a picture of boundlessness, in wanter and wanted. Rumi always puts it in terms of the lover and the beloved.

As usual I am, and want, both.

Comic Art Zeal and my Slowly Slipping Face

Could You Love This Person?
This weekend I have turned into the crazy reclusive artist fiend I hopefully prophesied in the wake of my breakup a few months ago. It kind of always happens at crunch time, the deadline (which generally means second or third deadline) for my comic which is published in the quarterly $pread magazine.

This time was especially fun though, and it felt really good to get into the place I had seen as the best-case scenario in the depths of my heartbreak: I would retreat from society, and finally spend tons of time locked away in my house doing art. I have a hard time focusing on any one thing, and I'm sure I've mentioned that finishings and endings are not my strong point. Additionally I have a hell of a lot of guilt and blockages around art. I won't even start with my feelings about my relationship to the word "artist", that is rain-soaked paperback of its own. So it feels like a real accomplishment to get into that zone, and really enjoy being there (starting every comic takes at least a month of procrastination and then a couple of days of making the template and the initial pencil drawings which always feels like I'm trying to gnaw off one of my own feet and pass it off as my prom dress.) This time, once I started it was easier to get in the happy place, I think because the comic came mentally to me organically almost fully formed a couple of weeks ago, and I had new style ideas I was excited about. I think slacking around, reading a bunch of other people's comics, aka "research", is finally paying off.

Generally, if there is any chance I can wile away the hours talking or engaging with other humies, I have a really hard time helping myself from doing that. This is possibly one of the reasons my therapist thinks I might make a good therapist. I hope that "switch" of being able to focus on and practice art is finally getting flipped.

The circumstances that really helped this time were: a big storm made leaving the house even less appealing than usual, as well as completely unnecessary (I actually did make sure to leave the house with a friend for greens or chocolate, but after nightfall, once every day), all of my current dates, hook-ups, and mojo subscribers are either out of town or sick, many of my close friends are out of town or very busy, and one of my copious new years resolutions is to try to get better at making deadlines. Also the previously mentioned excitement about this particular idea, part of which was that it seemed like it would be easier to draw than usual. Every time I draw a comic I think "I need to develop a simpler style, something recognizable, but really easy to draw" (which always comes in the voice of one of my comic mentors and companions, Dr. Hal), but every time I am totally stressed out and kind of just spit out whatever comes because that's all I got and every time it seems more complicated and time-consuming and difficult and crazier than the last. Except this time. Let this be the first movement of a trend for me.

Anyway, I wasn't really trying to write about me and art and comics. I was trying to just set the scene for this horrible picture: me, up at 4:30 a.m., eyes twisted and strained, alone and half-crazy and covered in ink stains, talking about Marcel Duchamp's idea, infrathin, my intense love/hate of David Byrne, and the genius of Rev. Dr. Splashy-Pants over g-chat with Aundi in England. Aundi left to get some coffee, and in my desperation for stimulation I took these super-unflattering photos of myself with my personal archival mirror; photobooth. They confirmed the recent realization that I am starting to look my age. As I described it to her:

me: i am starting to "look my age" especially when tired, which is most of the time

me: my face gets simultaneously puffy and saggy, like its been out in the rain and is sodden and is slipping from its moorings


I will talk all about my revised position on vanity in the future. And no need to tell me I'm good-looking, I mostly know that, but I'm also noticing the changes with interest. Recent ex used to tease me with prognostications of my eventual Bea Arthur-dom; I'm still hoping for a chance at a mix between Blanche and Dorothy.

So for Aundi, I post the above picture. He described me as "an angry old Russian woman who shopped at Trader Joe's in West Hollywood."
May I never turn into that woman.
Worry not-spousettes, I look much, much better today. Much better. I'm going to go take some vitamins and drink a big glass of water.


Much, much, much, much better.