Last night was nuts. C.S. and I went out and saw him again at the same place as last time, but for this concert afterward we were invited out to a bar in the West Village with him and his roadies. The bar where he played had a two drink minimum, so ofcourse I had four, and the waitress was determined to get me shit-faced. Granted I was drinking them relatively quickly, but Casey's performance was precipitated by a godawful poetry reading that made me want to die. One guy in particular spent his time going on and on at length about how Keith Haring was a pedophile who gave children AIDS and that Jean Michel Basquiat was just a "puppet nigger artist" who knew he was shit and thrived on creating junk art to sell to white people at ridiculous prices.

Needless to say, his oration drew lots of groans and "oh my god"s of shock and horror. I was offended beyond measure. So by the time we sat down I needed some alcohol, and clearly the waitress had missed the readings, or she wouldn't have kept making comments like "Gracious, you drank that one pretty fast."

I realized it's not so much an alcohol problem that I have, because I have no trouble turning it down or going a long time without it. I get no cravings, and I only ever drink socially. My problem is that, at these social events, I tend to drink until I'm shit faced. So it's not an alcohol problem as much as a moderation problem.

Casey was pretty good; vocally better because he was sick as hell last year. Afterward we went out to the bar and I proceeded to drink more, so I was relatively out of sorts when at 1:30 AM my phone began vibrating urgently with a phone call from my father. Instinct told me to ignore it and instinct was right, because the story I picked up to hear made me just want to disown all of them.

As my father tells it, the past few weeks at night he's been getting weird feelings as he passed my sister's door when she was supposedly asleep. Typically she sleeps with the door open, because it's hot as fuck in New Orleans no matter what time of year and air conditioning is never something we've had in our house. But suddenly she'd close the door and lock it, sparking my father's suspicions. So he went by last night and something was bugging him enough that he tried to open it and found it locked. He knocked on the door and got no response, so he started banging. Eventually he heard a scuffle and then yelled, "I know you're up, I just heard that." So my sister finally opened the door, pretending to be asleep and as if she'd just been woken up.

My dad went in, looking around, then went to the closet, expecting to find a lit joint or cigarette or something that she'd been hiding. Instead he found a shirtless nineteen year old cowering behind her clothes. Ofcourse, making it all the worse in my dad's head was the fact that he was a black nineteen year old. If you need me to put this in perspective, my sister's not even yet sixteen.

So the drama that ensued was my father beat the shit out of this guy and then drug him out at gunpoint and held him there until the police showed up to take him away.

Standing outside a lesbian bar called the Cubby Hole at 1:30 AM in 39 degrees was not the time I wanted to hear my father go on and on at length about it.

To make it worse, while my dad was dealing with this guy, my sister apparently called up a friend of hers and she snuck out of the house and went over to this girl's place, where she apparently remains because my mom doesn't want her to come back home.

Like I said. Ready to disown them all.

28 March 2006 at 4:12 pm | No Comments »
the daily things

• Indigo Girls
  ("1200 Curfews")
  You need to download Flash if you see this message.

there's a letter on the desktop
that I dug out of a drawer
the last truce we ever came to
in our adolescent war
and I start to feel the fever
from the warm air through the screen
you come regular like seasons
shadowing my dreams

and the Mississippi's mighty
but it starts in Minnesota
at a place that you could walk across
with five steps down
and I guess that's how you started
like a pinprick to my heart
but at this point you rush right through me
and I start to drown

and there's not enough room
in this world for my pain
signals cross and love gets lost
and time passed makes it plain
of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
I'm in love with your ghost

dark and dangerous like a secret
that gets whispered in a hush
(don't tell a soul)
when I wake the things I dreamt about you
last night make me blush
and you kiss me like a lover
then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
play your memory like a piper

and I feel it like a sickness
how this love is killing me
I'd walk into the fingers
of your fire willingly
and dance the edge of sanity
I've never been this close
I'm in love with your ghost

unknowing captor
you never know how much you
pierce my spirit
but I can't touch you
can you hear it
a cry to be free
oh I'm forever under lock and key
as you pass through me

now I see your face before me
I would launch a thousand ships
to bring your heart back to my island
as the sand beneath me slips
as I burn up in your presence
and I know now how it feels
to be weakened like Achilles
with you always at my heels

this bitter pill I swallow
is the silence that I keep
it poisons me I can't swim free
the river is too deep
though I'm baptized by your touch
I am no worse than most
in love with your ghost

you are shadowing my dreams

27 March 2006 at 7:28 pm | No Comments »
soundtrack

So I started formulating this entry Tuesday on the way to rehearsal, and I was going to write about how lately I've been feeling like I could reach out and mold the world if I wanted to, how this is the first time I've really felt so good and in control and like I was capable of accomplishing things in the world.

And then I went to rehearsal and the events of the evening put my self-esteem in a plummeting tail-spin. I don't really feel like getting into it, mostly because it's still a pretty fresh wound and I'm still pretty hurt about it, but the basic story is after me being back for several weeks, there's apparently a core group of individuals who don't want me in the choir for reasons I'm completely unaware of, because I was under the impression that everyone was more or less family to me and I was great friends with most of them and good acquaintances with the rest. So it was obviously pretty shocking to find out otherwise.

It might not end up being as bad as it sounds like it is, because I haven't yet had anything explained to me, but nevertheless, finding out a group of people you had such high thoughts and respect for don't return the sentiment is pretty demolishing when they were as close to me as they were.

I dunno. I don't feel like writing right now.

24 March 2006 at 10:02 pm | No Comments »
the daily things

19 March 2006 at 12:21 am | No Comments »
shutterbugs

I saw V for Vendetta today. So if you know the subject matter, and you know me, you know what kind of a mood I'm in.

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the pickled rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth….

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay woman here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X

18 March 2006 at 3:47 am | No Comments »
the daily things

mixvio: so. I'm reading this thing. it's a review of a gay japanese video game.
Liz: lmao.
Liz: I can already tell this is going to be good.

17 March 2006 at 1:35 am | No Comments »
chatlogs

And I accidentally found this yesterday. It's a photograph of me from when I lived in Slidell. I was about 15/16 when it was taken. I look exactly the same now… sigh. Click on it for a bigger version.

16 March 2006 at 2:37 pm | No Comments »
shutterbugs

So as I imagine has now become apparent, C.S. and I started talking again.

I guess he's someone I'll never really cut out of my life, no matter the circumstance. We're doing okay now, both walking on eggshells to try and not fall into the same patterns that have made us fight in the past.

I think we're doing better with it. Also we're both really too busy to spend a lot of time arguing.

My new job starts in about two weeks. I'm very, very excited about it and that's actually a first. I'm sure once I start that will melt away, but so far I'm hopeful that maybe I have lucked into a job that will make me happy and not want to set my own skin on fire.

I've also been doing a lot more writing and relatively soon I'll be ready to repost the complete revision of the first chapter that I've been working on diligently.

Overall, I am a happy little boy.

16 March 2006 at 1:53 pm | No Comments »
the daily things

Since we're on the subject of celebrities, I just want to take the time to say that Jay McCarroll never should have won the first Project Runway; he is a fat, irritating queen who designs ugly clothes and I would've picked even freakish Austin Scarlett over him, though they're both so gay they make even my outspoken ass squirm.

Having Jay back as a guest judge in season two was insulting, he spent the entire segment complaining and crying and just basically acting like an egomaniacal asshole as he talked about how great he was.

I did not watch Project Jay because I've never been a fan of throwing up. And it's great that they cut it down from a series to a one-hour special. Nyah.

Not to mention the fact that he's uglier than dog balls.

13 March 2006 at 4:58 pm | No Comments »
bitching

I've gotten myself in a war and I'm surprised who my allies are.

The latest proof that I've too much time on my hands comes in the form of the edit-war I'm involved in regarding the Clay Aiken page on Wikipedia and whether or not a tiny, reasonable blurb about the John Paulus allegations deserves to be included in the entry.

John Paulus, most of you are no doubt aware of, is the ex-army boy claiming to have had a racy sexual encounter with Mr. Aiken in the beginning of the year and kept the dress (or rag) to prove it.

Do I think this story's true? Yes, completely. I mean really. I've been saying for years that he's an uber homo. However that's completely beside the point. The point is the story belongs on the article, as someone clearly deemed it necessary to create a John Paulus article (which survived attempted deletion by the "Claymates"), so there's obviously some relevancy. But anytime the issue of his gayness comes up in any mild capacity the page is violently filled with rants about how there's no place for that drivel. You would've thought I was trying to include allegations that Clay Aiken was involved in a sordid affair with Pope John Paul involving baby-fucking.

Anyway, Paulus took advantage of his pseudo-celebrity status to move into gay porn with Michael Lucas, who some of you will remember as the man who told me my penis was too small for a similar career path.

Lucas posted a long entry on his porn-blog that oddly resembled a conversation I had with C.S. yesterday. Though my experience with Lucas was less than pleasant and I've only had time to refine my disdain of him, I was a little surprised at the eloquency of his argument; further shocked was I that I agreed with it completely.

C.S. expressed his unhappiness that, were Paulus' story true, it would be a horrible way for Aiken to be outed. I disagreed and told him that it was my opinion that those who choose to become celebrities shouldn't feel like they've a right to privacy.

Michelangelo Signorile was one of the first people to practice "outing" of those in the public spotlight and his stance is to respect the privacy of those gay politicians/celebrities who choose to remain in the closet quietly, but out those who choose to stay in the closet while publicly undermining gay rights. While I can agree with this in a sense, I also feel that those gay celebrities who choose to be in the closet should do a better job of using their stature for the benefit of all of us.

The Dixie Chicks were destroyed following their comments at a concert re: George Bush because people apparently felt celebrities should do nothing more than play music or make movies and take no political stance whatsoever. Screw that.

I'm tired of people like Paris Hilton becoming famous and iconic of my generation because she can deepthroat a really big cock. DO something with your popularity.

I say if people like Clay Aiken choose to stay in the closet, as I fully believe he has, they'd better not do so to the detriment of other gay people. If he wanted to be "straight," he could reply to all those reporters who ask him the gay question with a polite denial while still expressing his support of gay rights. It's not asking a lot and it would go a long way towards making those who grew up and live in an environment such as he did that being gay isn't the hellfire and brimstone existence the midwest and parts of upstate Louisiana want you to believe it is.

10 March 2006 at 7:36 am | No Comments »
bitching