Jetlagged and Cranky

Pretty much sums it up.

My international P-W (potential, prospective, or possible - wife) meeting didn't go as plan, but was nevertheless delightful, except for both of our sneezing and coughing and my snoring. We ended up only having one night to meet, the limbo of my trip when I arrived back in Berlin from Paris only to leave for the States in the morning. I arrived as a kind-of pathetic bride/groom; voice half there, burdened with baggage, running low on Euro. I came bearing a droopy wilted rose and a real Parisian croissant.....totally forgot she was vegan. But she took care of me and let me relax from my capable, independent traveller mode into a happily ignorant follower. The sick leading the sick. Each of us, independently was hoping to convince the other to go to the new Holocaust Memorial for our one-night, International date. I introduced her, in concept and image only, to Pee-wee. She translated everything and explained why Sweden may need my pleasure activist gospel. There's strange, mostly solo, soft-core porn on free Berlin TV late at night. She bought me octopus, and ate the croissant anyway.


Back up weeks ago to Berlin when I'm really there, there for more than the great, snotty, between flights date. I find and ad with a compelling photo on the artists section of Berlin Craigs List. I email the artist, telling her that while I realize she is not posting in the personals, I think her work and name are hot. Then I check out her site. She seems to be in the states, and holy shit, I think this may be my wife. The themes, the images, the my-typeness of it all....we are cut from similar conceptual cloth. I almost write her again just to say " And I think you may be my wife..." but refrain for the sake of appearances of sanity. Surprisingly, I get a reply, and quickly.
Even more surprisingly, she seems to have addressed my unspoken, unwritten lunge towards connection...well, ok, betrothal:

"Haha...well, thanks but I am happily hitched. Glad you liked the work.
~Kalliope"


Beautiful, talented....psychic!? But alas, apparently not for me.
It's cool though, I think the practice lunges keep me in shape.


I encourage you all to check out her site and give her money and shows.

Berlin is Changing My Body

I'm back from a quick and delightful sojourn in Prague. That city is so hot. I've decided the next time I fall in love, we are going as quickly as possibly to Prague together.

Berlin is lovely and cold and it even snowed last night! My first experience with snow in years. The bad news is today is the beginning of a 10 day public transportation strike, yikes! Getting around town will be totally different from now on.

The city is changing my body some, already, while my ass is getting tighter, my belly is getting larger. Mmmm.....spaetzle mit kaise.....I found Czech food less charming, the dumplings do not live up to their title in my opinion. But they do have this wonderful pastry that is like a cheese danish except the filling is a stripe of poppyseed paste, a stripe of cheese and a stripe of fruit jam.
Heaven for a Polish girl!

"The Mushroom"

I have seen the future of American bad-queer hair, and I dub it "the mushroom".

In Berlin I've noticed quite a few queers with this new, just as hard to take, anti-mullet. It consists of a severly lined bowl cut about a third to half way down the head (above ears) with the sides and back shaved to skin. While it does look better on some than others, mostly it looks like Moe of the three stooges with good politics and a pocket full of latex gloves. I predict that Valencia St. will be popping up with mushrooms within six months.

Goddess help us.


P.S.
Two days after I originally posted about the Mushroom I saw this picture hanging in the window of a hair salon, which I first mistook for a theater or bar, in Berlin. Mushrooms for the whole family! Just please, please, spare me.

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.

Happy Valentine's Day

I have been totally swamped with a project for the last couple of weeks, and though I am a master procrastinator, it got to the point I knew taking the time and energy to blog would just make me feel more guilty. So that's why I've been M.I.A.

I mostly was just dropping in to announce that despite my lack of Catholic faith, I have given up Craigs List W4W for Lent.

But since I'm here, I would also love to wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day.
I just wrote this about the good ol' VD, which historically has done me mostly wrong:

Hello fine folks. I know you all are very cool and forward minded and are completely impervious to the throes and passions and consumerism of the manipulative construction known as Valentine's Day, but me, I'm susceptible as shit. I love an excuse for an occasion, a date with a ritual,(hell when I'm dating I celebrate monthiverssaries), and plus, I'm a sucker for all of these things: chocolate, flowers, the color red, and love.

But whether you have a care about Valentine's Day or not, I want to thank you for your unique love: for making your love the way you envision it; with and for the people who speak to your individual heart, regardless if they do or do not look like the deserveds or beloveds on TV; which you make on any or every day that may be best for the inimitable recipe of love that you formulate; to be cooked in just the right way; with courage and sweetness and vulnerability, even (or especially!) when everything else is going absolutely batshit and loving seems like the silliest and most impossible thing to do. Thank you for doing it anyway, your way.





So go out and love some today, if you can in the way that works for you. I suggest starting with yourself and working outwards. I'll be spinning that spiral myself. Good luck and good love to us.

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.

844-WIFE

A few weeks ago I watched a movie I hadn't seen in many many years: True Stories.
I had been wanting to re-see it for a long time, ever since David Byrne became a regular part of my household via my aforementioned practically daily listening of Sand in the Vaseline. The film is a weirdo-vision look at a small (fictional) town in Texas in the late eighties, but also very much a examination of post-modern consumerist culture through an ironically naive perspective. David Byrne narrates as the outsider he tends to be, touring different parts of town in a giant 10 gallon hat as the people prepare for their big festival for the state's sesquicentennial. Of note is the speed-lip synch scene where people of all demographics jump onstage sequentially to dance and lip synch to a few seconds of the Talking Head's "Wild, Wild Life", the "Puzzling Evidence" musical sequence about TV, conspiracy, and religion, and named after my friend Doug Wellman's long-running radio show, as well as the incredibly Burning Man-esque fashion show scene that takes place in the new mall.

But the thing that was most interesting to me in this strange little movie is that the plot, as much as there is one, follows John Goodman, who plays Lewis Fyne; a man vainly in search of a bride. He has a lit-up sign like the kind in front of cheap movie theaters or liquor stores that advertises his search and he runs a commercial on TV with the number 844-WIFE for interested prospective brides. He dates many of the local women, and even plans to perform a song he's written at the big sesquicentennial festival as self-promotion, but can never quite find what he is looking for...well until the end of the movie, of course.

I had TOTALLY forgotten that this was the major sub-plot of this movie, since I hadn't seen it since I was a child, and it was so bizarre to see myself reflected in the 'traditional yet modern', good-natured Texan, Louis Fyne. Is my repetitive exposure to David Byrne's music somehow influencing and shaping my actions in Byrneian patterns? Does this explain at all the fact that before moving to California I was staunchly anti-Texas and yet have mystifyingly dated at least five (5!) Texans since 2004?

Just what the hell is going on here?

When I think of posting a personal ad, I often think of just posting the lyrics to "This Must Be the Place". As I told my friend on Friday night, its one of those songs that feels likes it crawled right out of the center of my heart and then into the brain and out of the mouth of some other guy. (Have I mentioned my very ambivalent feelings about Senor Byrne? Based on what I've heard about his narcissistic and assholic personality? And how I can't fucking stand that artists who are deemed to be geniuses are often then excused from being decent human beings? And how maybe, that's actually how you get to be an artist deemed to be genius? And how much I fucking love his music despite it all!?)

I was talking about how my big job, my main goal for this next year of my life, is to really get the self-love shit figured out and firmly down, and the retreat I went to in Oregon (Heart of Now) where I made that realization. We're driving in the rain, looking for parking in his maroon station wagon, and right as I'm explaining the theory that if I can just fully open the channel to my deep internal well of self-love, everything else will be fine, "This Must Be the Place" comes on the radio. And part of my practice of concrete self-loving actions is singing that song to myself as I walk down the street; it always fulfills me and makes me serene. And then at the end of the song the DJ comes on and tells a story that he read about how David Byrne wrote that song in the early art-punk days of the Talking Heads, but kept it from the band for years, always fearing that it was too normal, and not weird or cutting edge enough.
What a perfect story!
And then I got to go to a Girl Pile orgy. Which just goes to show you.

So here are the lyrics to my little heart song, for anyone who may not be familiar, and just think of sadiewantsawife@gmail.com as my 844-WIFE.
(Oh, and I know it's "burn with a weak heart" but I always sing "born with a weak heart"...)

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - burn with a weak heart
(So I) guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing

Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo you got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up + say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - -she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time Before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be

Hi yo We drift in and out
Hi yo sing into my mouth
Out of all tose kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I'm just an animal looking for a home
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I'm dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head Ah ooh