turning the body without organs (pt i): organic discussion and body shopping

sat'dee arvo, i was shopping in smith street for tracksuit pants. yeah, i know. weird.

smith st, when i first lived in fitzroy, was junkie heaven. the only people wearing tracksuit pants were the same ones who 'really need five bucks for food.' it sucked, but you'd watch as they got cash off someone and walk the two metres to the closest dealer for their next hit. the most disgusting displays were where you'd see some junkie parent totally ignore the hungry cries of their children for a little balloon full of horse.

anyway, the police muscled in, and now the heroin trade happily progresses in the undercover areas of council flats in fitzroy, northcote and collingwood - right next to kids' playgrounds, and clearly fucking up the lives of clean, but poor, residents in these blocks. all for the sake of latte-drinking vegan enviro wannabes and pretentious fitzroyalty like i (used to) be.

ain't life grand.

i digress. i was shopping for gym clothes, cos i've promised my best friend GGB that i'd buy him and myself an outfit or two so we can train together when i head back to sin city. knowing that he would never want to be seen in public slightly unkempt, this is no easy task - and the cost of cute sweatware being what it is, i had to head to the factory outlets down the end of smith st.

on my way between a bonds outlet (two pairs of trackies for bads33d, none for GGB) and the adidas outlet, i bumped into an ex-housemate of mine, the fabulous Miss M. Miss M was having a lazy luncheon, and i joined her for a round of discussion around her masters thesis topic.

Discussing sado-masochism, deleuzian bodies without organs, and kathy acker is all fun and games, and it rammed home to me that i really miss the research and learning aspect of humanities study. i want to do my phd quicker!


anyway, sex and the city is on in a minute. this discussion must continue.

frustration

rachel stevens some girls

typical. i'm obviously interested in someone, cause i'm waiting for the phone call that never comes.

and i have no wheels on a friday night. could go out, but everyone else seems too busy or too exhausted or in need of a lift for us to head out.

and all i can think is, why won't the fucker call?

Good Cover, Bad Cover

I have had this desperate need to hear a particular cover version Tori Amos did of Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat. I only found it today, hidden in a pile of Tori compilations some friends have burnt for me over the years.

For some reason, this somewhat melancholic tune always makes me feel better when I hear it, and especially this particular version. It also makes me wonder what the rules are for a decent cover version. I reckon they go something like this:

• Be respectful enough to pay proper tribute to the mood of the original
• Take enough license to make the song your own: fit it to your voice, your genre, your stylings
• Don't forget to keep an ear out for the story of the song

Some covers I like

• Beck - Diamond Dogs (Bowie)
• Cyndi Lauper - La vie en rose
• kd Lang - Theme from the valley of the dolls
• Natacha Atlas - From Russia with Love
• Chrissie Hynd - Live and Let Die
• Bjork - Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine

There are probably more, but I can't think of them now, probably many of them done by men.

My Brother the Pimp (Pt II): My Lover the Lost Case

song of the moment: Debbie Harry's I want that man

So i did end up going to the whole setup scenario.

Scarily enough, the guy was cute, articulate, and interested in me. This was not meant to happen.

So he invites me along to a night out on the town, telling me he'll be at the market at 1 on Saturday night, and that it'll be a great chance to meet some of his friends. K, fair nuff, I'll turn up.

Course, being the good gay boy i am, i turn up half an hour late. Next thing, I have a decent bump of k in my nose and half a pill down my throat, am snogging him up on the mezzanine, and we're organising to head back to mine. Funny, it's been a while since I could write something like that: my parents were at the holiday house for the weekend so it was nice to host for a change.

Obviously my sis had the same idea, cos she turned up with her boy about twenty mins later.

Anyway, after however many abortive attempts at drugfucked sex, we headed back to the club. I mention this, because he'd deliberately asked me what I was doing for the rest of the day, and asked that we spend it together.

When we get to the club, though, he basically disappears on me. And it's been a long time since I've done this, but, well, I was seriously drugfucked and I waited on him to head back toward me. Which didn't happen. Again and again.

After three hours of this shit, I finally managed to pin him down. He tells me his friends are po'd he hasn't spent any time with them for a while, and this is the last weekend for a while he can do it, blah blah blah.

Fair enough. I totally understand wanting to spend quality time with your buddies, am a huge fan of it myself. But why ask me to come along, when I'd clearly get in the way?!?

So frustrated and confused. Don't kno what to do with this boy, not even sure if I want to see him again. On the other hand, he's cute, interesting and interested in me. I just don't know what to do with this boy.

Admittedly, that may be making my life a bit too Bacharach for my liking.

MTC v Sweet FA

I went to an MTC play with my friend/fuckbuddy B on Thursday night. It was a production of Take me Out, a baseball drama about a professional player who comes out. B's boyf/husband is a set designer for MTC (sorry, i forget there are non-Melburnians reading: Melbourne Theatre Company) so B gets free tix for all their shows.

By the way, who says queer isn't the new black?

Now, i confess: I hate MTC productions. I always walk away from them disappointed, with a good idea of how I could fix up lighting, set design, performances, direction - mise en scene in general, i suppose. So, typically, B and I discussed faults with the production during the interval.

Watching the first act, I came up with a theory of breathing in drama. I think that any theatre production needs to occasionally give the audience a chance to digest what has happened in the previous scene(s) . I don't mean something like the interval - it's more in the pauses when set changes occur, when the stage is dark and uninhabited, when there is silence; then the audience can catch their breath.

The problem with this production, I argued, was that the set design was so tech-savvy (items came on stage via a pulley system of some sort) and fast-paced that the audience didn't get to breathe. B had seen this particular production a few weeks earlier, and pointed out that the very sort of breaks I had been talking about had happened were included in the earlier night, but the play was just as shit.

In the second half, it hit me: the performances were overdone, granted, but it was the pacing of the play that was fucked. B agreed. It ended up coming off as a piece still being workshopped, with no one quite sure how to bring it together.

After the show, I told B about my Monday night. My friend FA had brought together an ensemble of friends and fellow-performance-students at Bar Open in Fitzroy to create a symphony of vignette-y performance pieces. And it worked: he started off with this satirical spoken word performance of a diatribe against the metrosexual, had all sorts of different pieces then finished with a quasi-drag performance of Aretha Franklin's Dr Feelgood, which I'd never heard before. It was breathtaking.

Here was this ridiculously studenty production which actually worked: it flowed nicely (despite having one stupidly useless skit-ish performance in the middle) , (most of) the actors seemed to find the right style of performance for their respective moments, and the upstairs performance space of Bar Open seemed to be utilised well. Which goes to show even the very sweet FA is better than MTC.

my brother the pimp (pt i)

song of the moment: stuck in a moment you can't get out of by u2

so i have this thing against being set up. by anyone.

my brother left this message on my phone just before work yesterday, saying he needed to speak to me ASAP. it sounded kinda urgent.

so i ring him, to see what's happening.

for the last coupla months, every so often he's been telling me how i need to meet this guy from his work. my response, as usual, has been to tell him to bring him round.

The big emergency, it turns out, is that this guy from work is finishing tonight. and he really wants to meet me at his work drinks. let me think about this:

This is wrong because

1) I'm sick of str8 ppl presuming that because i'm gay and single, and the other guy is gay & single we'll click immediately. i mean, there is a limit to my slut status...

2) what has my bro been telling this guy?

3) why on earth would i even consider this under normal conditions?

4) what on earth are normal conditions for me??

i said ok. now what?

so long, farewell, auf wedessehn

this email was just posted on one of the egroups i'm on. i thought it was brilliant. sides, i love chicago and cabaret:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Apparently Fred Ebb, lyricist of "Cabaret" and Chicago" has died. I am
reminded me of something that happened to me in New York.
Once I was waiting for a light on Sheridan Square behind two punk
kids--one
with chartreuse hair and a pink T shirt, the other with pink hair and a
chartreuse shirt--and one was comforting the other--saying, "Remember,
life is a
cabaret"--and the other stopped sniveling and said, "Yeah. Yeah" and
smiled
bravely--and then asked, "By the way, what IS a cabaret?"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Dream Life

I've flown up to Brisbane for the first time, to visit my family's new home. They've bought another house in the city, which for some reason resembles a giant sandstone pier, with Movieworld jostling against the city on the shoreline.

The house is gigantic, as you'd expect in Brisvegas. The foyer is like the one in The Nanny. I walk up this excessively vast staircase, to find three bedrooms and a tiny little door, which I presume goes off to the bathroom. I know immediately that they've completely forgotten I exist, and haven't even bothered to set aside some room for me.

I walk up to my brother, who has installed the door from his bedroom back in Melbourne. He's trying to get rid of the stickers on his door with a fork or something. I point out to him that he should use the steam feature on the iron, and proceed to show him how.

The iron works a lot better than i expected - it gets rid of the paint on the door, to reveal beautiful redwood panelling underneath. He's shocked, and I'm happy.

Then I wake up, feeling fucking fantastic for the first time in months. Don't ask why.

Cleaning up elephant shit

track of the moment: theme from the valley of the dolls

There's a running joke in my family, and it's not that funny. My dad is like a big elephant, who clumsily stumbles around, and we're like the little guys at the circus/zoo who follow him around, sweeping up his shit.

Except that lately, it feels like i'm the whole family's elephant shit-sweeper. it ain't pretty.

To add insult, despite all the stuff i do for the fam, i'm the one who's accused of being the egotistical one. The funny thing is, the way the individual members of my family work, I end up looking like the meek wallflower in comparison to their bloated heads. Sometimes, i feel like walking around with a nice big pin to prick them with.

Oh, the joys of living with famiglia...

unwanted limbs and remote control cars

i've been having the weirdest dreams lately.

i walk into work one day, and one of my coworkers points out to me that I have mismatching shoes. I look down, and realise i have one pair of shoes on, but because i don't own two pairs of the same kind, i'm wearing another shoe on my third leg, which has a second left foot.

in the other, which i had last night, i'm having to drive my mum's dinky little accord back home. but i'm also driving, via remote control, my dad's mitsubishi. anyway, a cop pulls me over, because i'm using the wheel on the passenger side (a la driving schools' cars).

feel like organising everyone else's life, anyone? why do i feel like a third wheel?

Mini-er Mes and Friendly Fruits

track of the moment: the crystal method - born too slow (Eric Morillo Mix)

forgive the self-indulgence of this entry - it's been a while since i sat down to type. it's gonna take a while to get back in the swing.

i guess this would be my first blog entry. i used to have something similar a few years ago when i lived in syd. to bring you up to speed, life's a bit weird having been back in melbourne for a year and a half.

i'm still living with my family, which i swore i would never do beyond a couple of months.

i'm working a boring admin job for a finance company, in which I get to file or make excel spreadsheets all day.

oh and i'm in this weird space *yet again* where every guy i meet is either in an open relationship or else screwed up royally or just plain stupid.

and now i've released some pent up aggression about the whole sitch, there are some good things going on in my life.

i can actually afford to save, and still have money set aside to buy a few things here and there. which also means that i can get back to sydney by the end of the year.

i have really cool friends who, tho i may not see them as often as i'd like, are there for each other.

i dunno, it's all a bit confusing at the mo.

like last night.

i went to M's birthday drinks. and well M is not exactly a close friend. really nice guy when you can pin him down, but has this insane need to put people down. his gf P is like that too, so i wasn't expecting much from the two of them.

but it was cool. it turns out all their friends who turned up know how to keep them in check, mellow them enough for a good night out.

so we ended up barhopping through the city, before i headed over to meccanoid@public office. the theme was 'corporate whores' so i slipped into a nasty shirt and tie combo (lilac pinstripe shirt, bright red tie) and continued on to find myself being accosted by the best friend of an ex-housemate. turns out the ex-h had sent him over to tell me not to speak to him. i mean, that was lame.

anyway, the party gave me a chance to catch up with S & A, two good friends i lurve. and they pulled up to the task, making sure i was fine for drugs, drinks and dance. oh and the occasional good convo.

A and i have the same name, so he keeps trying to call me 'mini me.' cept, he's like 5 foot nothing, and i point that out to him every time we see each other (being 6'3 has its advantages i guess). so we end up having this stupid routine, like 'no, you're the mini-me.' you get the drift - it's not funny to anyone else but us.

whatever else, i ended up having a good time nonetheless, and that was cool.

fuck that was a lame entry.

note to self:
write when i'm not coming down or feeling uninspired. or all three.