Happy Monday – Embrace the Cheese

Some months ago I had almost stopped writing on this blog, but I faithfully posted photos of smiling guys every Monday without fail. One or two of the subjects may have been shirtless. (Hey, it happens.) And then one day looking back at all the recent entries, I realized that all I had were men, men, men for weeks at a time. I thought to myself that I had somehow become another homo with a beefcake site. How cheesy!

So I stopped for a while, or at least cut back dramatically. Now, months later, guys keep telling me they miss the smiling men. Really, they insist, bring them back. So, okay, I am.

This week, it’s all shirtless smiling guys once again. I’ve decided to go with the flow. I’ve decided to embrace the cheese.

Phew! Glad that’s over.

East Side, West Side

East Side

We’ve finally — Finally! — settled into the daily sunshine and pleasantly warm temperatures of a Portland summer. It’s an old joke here that the end of winter is the 4th of July, which was pretty much true this year. Now I’ve got to cram three seasons worth of activity into the next two months.

The 4th itself was one of those infinitely long days, the kind that, at the end if it, when you look back at what happened in the morning, it seems like days ago. I started with tennis with a friend, Skip, then took no fewer than four seperate bike rides over the course of the day. My roommate Will and I had a cookout in the backyard, then watched fireworks on the Hawthorne Bridge, then went out to some bars and then ended up dancing on the steamy, crowded dance floor at Holocene until closing time. It was all great summer fun.

This past Wednesday, I was supposed to play tennis with a buddy, Elby, but he decided to bail and drive to the coast. Instead, I hung out with my friend Richard in his little garden at the Kailash Ecovillage. Despite the aspirational name, which refers to a sacred Tibetan mountain, the center of the Buddhist world mandala, home of the Hindu destroyer of evil and sorrow, it is in fact a generic apartment building in Southeast Portland, and if it were just a little bit neater and cleaner, it would pass quite easily for a cheap motel. Nonetheless, his garden is lovely, and I sat in a broken Adirondack chair, drinking locally-brewed (of course) beers while he watered. When it came time to gossip in earnest, we retired to his living room, and he played piano for me while we talked proper trash.

 Kailash Ecovillage, now renting

 Our own sacred mountain community

Eventually, when the beers had done their inevitable work, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Richard asked me, if I didn’t mind, would I piss in the white jug?

Uhhhh….

It’s for the garden, he said, and I obliged. It was a little weird, I will admit. But then, what the hey, I was visiting the Kailash Ecovillage after all. When in Rome…

Not five minutes after I returned to the sofa, there was somebody at the screen door asking if we had any bottles. Great, I thought, a homeless person begging for recyclables — at the door, for goodness sake. But no, instead, it was Richard’s landlord. He was coming around to collect jugs of pee.

[And now, dear reader, I will pause to allow adequate time for you to absorb this quintessential Portland moment. The landlord collected his tennants' pee. ... ... ... Okay.]

The jug was handed off quite unselfconsciously. Some time later it was returned empty. Richard’s only comment was that he would prefer something with a larger opening.

West Side

Yesterday, I had some errands to run and buzzed over to Patagonia just before closing. I naturally ran into a friend at the farmer’s market in the parking lot there. She was with her gay best friend, with whom I have, of course, had sex. (Oh, the gays.) It’s something that is never ever mentioned, though it’s always there in our eyes. (Again, sigh, the gays.) My friend and I somehow fell into that seemingly inevitable I’m-getting-older, I-suddenly-have-all-this-gray-hair conversation. The guy and I just as inevitably fell into a long discussion about the cute fixie rider who works at the pizza shop and how well you can see his dick through his jeans. Is he massively hung? Or does he just display well? We both had many well-developed theories on this subject. (Yeah, again, gay guys.)

 Numbers. Trucking company. Northwest Portland.

Eschewing a beer on the roof garden, I headed for Food Front, the co-op on that side of the river, which seems to be patronized and staffed mostly by neat Yippies, as opposed to the dingy Trustafarians at People’s in Southeast. (It make me wonder: If you ultimately inherit your parents’ money, do you have to switch co-ops?) After buying my four bars of natural soap — a two year supply — I continued on to Forest Park.

 Thurman Street winding up up up into Forest Park

I was going to hike a trail out to the Audubon bird sanctuary, but I missed my turn and ended up cranking in low gears up up up Thurman Street to Leif Ericson Drive. I rode out the gravel path for a while with the passels of lycra-clad, pot-bellied, retirement-age coots on pricey mountain bikes, trying to prove to themselves that they’re not old. There was also an infinity of joggers, each and every one of them with at least one unleashed Labrador mix, running ahead, pissing on everything. Ah, nature.

 The gently curving Leif Ericson Drive. BIG

I will admit that, unlike the mountain bikers, the joggers were, to a man, incredibly fit and uniformly handsome. It was like they had all just come from a Navy Seals beefcake calendar shoot. Running shorts come right up to here, ya know, and all those iron thighs were in full view. I became distracted.

 Ivy-covered garages on Thurman Street

One tall, handsome Viking of a man in little red shorty shorts caught my eye in particular. Since I stopped to take pictures from time to time, he would pass me. Then back on my bike, I would pass him. It happened all the way up the gravel road, then down again, and then even down the street into town. He paid me absolutely no attention whatsoever, which must certainly be true love, right? I wanted to say, Dude, stop following me! Just ask me for my number already! But I guess he was just too intimidated. I have that effect on exceptionally good-looking men.

 Bike path under the I-405 / Fremont Bridge on ramps

On my way back through town, I passed under the ramps for the Fremont Bridge and took some photos. Yeah, it’s a total cliche, but with their dramatic swoops, taking a picture of them is practically a rite of passage for anybody with a camera in this town. I think there’s even a law.

 Requiste arty shots of highway overpasses

I went home to the east side of the river for a while, but wound up back in Old Town to go to a “queer night” and stroll between some gay bars, which, despite my six years in Portland now, I have never done before. I went out alone, but my (straight) roommate Joel got roped into being the designated driver for two gay pals. We all showed up in the same place then decided to make a night of it. First the Eagle Underground, then Boxxes, then Silverado, which has male strippers, another first for me and maybe a last. Not a fan of the shaved butts, thankyouverymuch.

It was all mildly creepy — all these places I never go (with good reason) filled with stereotypical gay guys. It’s a side of Portland I never see and have long imagined extinct. You’d think by this point that absolutely everyone would realize that that gelled swoop of hair in the front looks ridiculous, or that Abercrombie is now right up there with Old Navy in terms of quality, style, and social cachet. It’s like 1996 all over again. With all of the thousands of examples of male hotness in this town, all of the utterly sexy oddballs, all of the incandescently beautiful freaks, even all of the simply natural hunks, why would anyone want to be a generic mall-store clone?

The evening wound down in the same way they all do downtown, with a trip to Voodoo Doughnuts. I got my usual maple cruller. Sometimes I try something different but always regret it. Let this be a lesson, kids: change is bad.

 3 men, 1 nervous doughnut. Billy, Graham, Joel & a sweet little peach fritter.

It had cooled into the 50s; I put on a sweater. (And this is July, folks.) Billy, one of us gays, kindly offered me a ride and put my bike in the back of his mini-van (mini-van!), leaning well away from his own shiny, orange, vintage frame fixie. They dropped me off at home with slightly inappropriate hugs. Strings of Christmas lights cast the backyard in a timeless glow. I parked my bike in its place, turned off the lights, poured another drink and settled down, at last, for the night.

This

It was an unbelievable 78 degrees yesterday, and my two new roomies and I went down to the river for a ride.

 Kansas vs South Carolina. Joel & Will on the Esplanade.

You can tell a lot from their pictures. Joel, left, is a folk singer from Kansas. He loves this girl’s bike and wears oversized eye glasses and snug check shirts. He couldn’t be more Midwest… or more Portland.

Will, right, is a recent college grad from South Carolina with a vintage hand-made road bike in mint condition. Everything he is wearing, with the possible exception of his bandana, was chosen for its label. Seriously.

Joel peeled off early to go to a show; musicians have to network constantly. Will and I continued along the river, heads spinning around at all the cute guys out in the sun. Since it was all new to Will, we stopped whenever he wanted to look at the view, and he marvelled frequently at how amazing the path system is and at Portland for building it. “I hate to say, ‘wow, Oregon’ but….”

 Teen fixie rats nest their bikes and play along the Springwater Corridor

As we sat on a bluff with a view of the city, late afternoon sun blazing in our eyes, soft warm air drying our sweat, I said, “This is why people stay here. Just think, three days ago, everybody in town was thinking about moving, but now… this.”

Umbrella Thief

I’ve been waiting for this. It was kind of inevitable. I’ve had the same big beautiful umbrella for fourteen years now — fourteen! — and this week it was stolen off of our front porch. Somebody came inside our gate, walked up our front stairs and made off with it. What an asshole.

 Mt Tabor resevoir from under my umbrella the last time I used it

I got it in Savannah in 1993. It was burgundy and black, with a wooden handle and bamboo shaft. I’ve lovingly repaired it twice when it has broken, and I was aways careful to set it down where I couldn’t possibly forget it. I managed to hang onto it all these years.

A few days ago, I took a walk up Mount Tabor in a pouring rain; I was really restless. When I got home, I left the umbrella leaning against the door frame on the porch to dry. When I left the house the next afternoon, I looked back and thought to myself how inviting it looked, so visible, like it was asking to get taken. That’s the last time I saw it.

We know most of the neighbors on our quiet street, but live next door to a notorious lesbian bar, The Egyptian. Loud whooping and high-volume drunken arguments after closing time are an almost daily occurance. God only knows how many people have peed in the middle of the sidewalk in front of our house. Plus other stuff has been stolen before too: There was my roommate’s stadium blanket off the porch sofa, and there was the cool cut out of the state of Texas sitting under the cherry tree. (Keep in mind we have a fence and a gate.)

Those women who go to the “E Room” as it’s called, they don’t make you ashamed of being gay so much as they make you ashamed of your species. You kinda get the feeling that crack cocaine, molestation, and DFACS were integral parts of their childhoods, which is actually giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because otherwise, you see, they’re just plain trash.

Happy Monday – Birthday Party

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling. This week, they’re actually people I know. I had a little birthday party on Saturday night, and here are some of the guys who were there.

 Zaq brought me flowers, the only ones I’ve ever gotten.

 Lin & Mike were stuck together like glue all night.

 Mark & Andy. They couldn’t stop smiling.

 Christopher, Zaq, Scott, Brian, Raul, & Tim.

Boys, boys, boys — happy birthday to me! There were plenty of women there too, but somehow I didn’t get any pictures of them.

I got 99 problems, but…

Falling in love with your best friend — your straight best friend — is practically a rite of passage for gay guys. While other teens are plumbing the depths of their hormone-addled passion with a high school honey or, for late bloomers, a college sweetheart, gay boys are jealously watching from the sidelines, burning with a secret longing they know would change everything if anybody found out.

But there is one person, one guy, giving a tender hearted homo the attention he needs — his best buddy. Naturally, the two have a lot in common. They enjoy each other’s company, spend all their time together, prefer each other to anyone else. They get drunk together then pass out in the same bed, knees and elbows and sholders brushing together all night. They share their secrets. Talk about sex. Talk about love.

Sigh. Love.

It’s all tragically inevitable: the infatuation, the declaration of love, the rejection, the despair. Everyone’s been through it, but not everybody loses everything the way gay boys do. Best friend, social network, the esteem of others, personal identity, hope — all gone. And worst of all, nobody cares because he’s straight and you should have known better (as though knowing better has anything to do with falling in love).

Usually that painful episode happens (the first time) during the emotional turbulence of early adulthood, but last week I was hanging out with a friend who needed to talk. We went to a coffee shop where he gradually revealed the real reason he was upset. For the first time in his life he had fallen for a stright guy, his best bud. At almost forty, he should have known better. As an experienced adult, he did know better, but, you know, it just happens.

The guy was a carpenter. A total hunk. They spent the summer building stuff together in the backyard. They played guitars together. Got drunk together, crashed in the same bed, fell asleep curled up in each other’s arms. A crush was unavoidable. Shit, I was falling in love with him myself after that story.

So I sat there on a comfy sofa in a cosy coffee shop, listening to my friend as he politely spilled his guts. People at nearby tables cast us sidelong glances after especially scandalous confessions, but neither of us cared. (After decades of urban gay life, the things that shock other people inevitably seem rather quaint.) I assured him repeatedly that I understood what he was going through — all too well, in fact.

Daisy Chain
And that would have been that, except for one very fortunate digression. During the middle of our conversation, he looked up and commented on the song playing, one of the most beautiful ever written he thought. Forgetting his probelms for a moment, he launched into a thorough and knowledgeable history of “The White Album” by the Beatles, where the song came from. He was so eloquent and informed that I had to find out more, and I looked up the album when I got home.

For the first time ever, I took an interest in the Beatles. (Verdict: They’ve got potential.) I downloaded a bunch of songs and thoroughly explored a part of our popular culture that had always been there, looming in the background of my life. I always find that satisfying; it’s nice to fill in the blanks.

Better still is when it leads to new discoveries, when one thing leads to another, and to another, and so on. I like to think of it as a cultural daisy chain, each thing linking to the next until it brings you back around again, full circle. It’s like getting lost on back roads then suddenly coming to a familiar place and realizing where you are and how you got there. Or maybe you could think of it as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, hold the bacon.

The Grey Album
For example, I read that The White Album has inspired innumerable tributes, and one of them is especially infamous. I’ve known of it for years but never actually heard any songs since you can’t buy it. It’s the work of a then little-known DJ called Danger Mouse who laid down vocals by rap zillionaire Jay-Z on top of samples from White Album songs. Jay-z is so rich he can afford to release his work directly into the public domain to foster the creative endeavors of others, which he did with an a cappella version of his Black Album. The name of the Danger Mouse mix compilation was therefore something of a foregone conclusion. It’s called, of course, The Grey Album.

Problem is, this Danger Mouse guy did it all for fun, made it for his friends, and he didn’t bother to get legal clearance for all those Beatles samples. When the mixes went viral on the internet, he was promptly sued. Now, the only way to get the music is to download it illegally, which, I hardly need to mention, is not much of an obstacle.

The first song I listened to, 99 Problems, was so good that I downloaded all the rest, and I have to say that The Grey Album does indeed deserve the universal acclaim. If you like any rap at all (and thirty years into it, there’s got to be something), you need to hear it.

Aside from the musical discoveries, I also learned a lot about Jay-Z (He’s dating Beyoncé! Wooh!), and about Danger Mouse, who lived in Athens, Georgia and did remixes for one of my favorite bands, Neutral Milk Hotel. (You’ve really got to listen to their album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.) Clicking through one connection after another, I chose NMH but could have followed Beyoncé if I’d cared to and seen where that would lead, or really, I could have turned off in any direction. That’s what’s so interesting about the daisy chain: You get to pick your own daisies. The possibilities are endless, but they all eventually lead back again.

This chain started, as they usually do, by chance, with a song playing in a coffee shop. It ended a few hours later with a song playing in my headphones, me thinking about my friend’s man troubles, being so glad that wasn’t happening to me again. Jay-Z was rapping, “I got ninety-nine problems, but a bitch ain’t one.” And I thought to myself, amen, brother.