The Transporter Couch

It’s been a long, dry week, as far as this venue is concerned. Been busy with cats, for starters. My sister’s cats are staying with me for a couple of weeks while she completes a move. It’s been challenging. For one thing, they have to stay INSIDE which means they have to employ a litter box and that’s not appealing. I have to clean it but also it’s just a LIE that a litter box doesn’t have to stink. My own cat, Aretha, goes out. She has a litter box but she never uses it. I should check in there for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.

Busy, too, with the tortilla factory. They were short-handed all week and I did a little bit of everything. Hilda had a meeting Friday for which I happened to be present, though I wasn’t part of it, and she was reading beads left and right. Good for her. People take her for granted and get away with all kinds of shit.

I went out Friday night and met Deborah. Beautiful beautiful woman and she knows it. Youngish, in her …. 40s I’d say, and very well put together. I didn’t MEET her as in an introduction. I ran into her, I should say. For our own peculiar reasons neither one of us drinks and so we sit around and flirt endlessly and uselessly. She’s way too beautiful for me to say we make a match, especially not for a camera, but everyone thinks we look good together and assumes we’re a couple and we play it. Anyway, that was fun.

And I went to my niece’s dance recital yesterday and was absolutely utterly completely wonderfully delighted. There were 19 routines (BEFORE imtermission) and I was never bored and frequently amused and constantly delighted. This dance academy is top notch. Some of the older girls did serious ballet routines. I wanted to stay for part 2 but it wasn’t feasible, on several fronts. I just loved it. And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Well, there wasn’t any food to speak of but there was a feast of entertainment. Beautiful costumes, carefully choreographed dance routines, running the gamut from ballet to modern to Broadway. And the staging was outstanding!! When I learned I had to go to my niece’s dance recital I thought, “OK” but I expected it to be a pedestrian experience. I was absolutely mesmerized.

See, the lesson here is, these girls don’t go to dance school just because their parents don’t want to deal with them on cloudy days. Rather, they have a passion for the art…. They WANT to TRAIN and they HOPE to LEARN and perhaps they even hope to go on someday to be professionals. And they outdid themselves.

It takes a LOT for me to say something is “top notch” but I readily assert it now, the Fusion Dance Company in Austin, Texas is top notch.

Congratulations to all the dancers! You did well.

All in all, I thought the President’s remarks were well presented, measured, and sensible. One comment I have is that he says these guard troops he’s sending to the border will not be “militarization.” I bet you they will be carrying guns, though, and that certainly smacks of military to me. I suppose he’s equating “militarization” with “declaring war.” And of course we’re not at war with Mexico, though we are in a “War on Drugs” which is in theory one reason we already protect that particular border. A war we’re losing, as well. And a “War on Terror” which is in theory why we protect all borders. Another war we’re losing, by the way. IMHO.

The ID card thing confuses me. It isn’t just the “wetbacks” who have to complete the I-9 form when they apply for employment. Everyone does. Does that mean we all have to have these I-9 ID cards? One more piece of identification to mess with. Of course I have a US Passport which is perhaps not impossible to forge but would be very expensive to forge, if the spy novels are to be believed as accurate. So expensive that anyone who could afford to do it probably isn’t looking for a job. But who is to say that the ID card documentation isn’t forged in the first place. So why not just modify the existing “green card” to reflect that documentation has been satisfactorily examined? And what’s up with the fingerprint on an ID card? What does that accomplish?

Next, the business about making people learn to speak Enlgish ignores the fact that English is not the “official” language of America. There have long been advocates of making it so, and opponents as well. But until Congress votes to make it so and President Bush signs it into law, you can’t MAKE anyone learn English. Personally, I think it’s just bad manners to live abroad (and I don’t mean just go on vacation for two weeks, but actually LIVE there) and NOT strive to learn the language. And since I live in a heavily latin-populated part of the world I’ve taken it upon myself to learn Spanish. But I have a facility with languages in general and some people do NOT, so isn’t it really my duty as a good person who appreciates his environment to do some of that work? I mean, for instance, if my friend gets nervous driving on the highway and really isn’t very good at driving in traffic, and I don’t really like it either but I’m better at it than he is, don’t I have some duty to do the driving when we go somewhere? The alternative of course is just not to drive on the highway with my friend. But I digress. The point is that Enlgish is not the official language of the USA.

And finally, I KNEW it was coming because it always does, but MUST HE end his addresses with “God bless?” It panders to his base. I’m not offended, but annoyed because it’s presumptuous. Other people might in fact be offended and the President’s handlers should know that and just leave it out of his speeches. (On the plus side, we can take comfort in the dwindling of that base. We’ve organized a pool as to exactly how low the ratings will go. My own bet is that it will bottom out at 26%. Not that it matters really since he’s not going to need a base for too much longer, and I rather doubt Cheney will run for that office. Anyway … …)

I like being nice to people. I have moments of specific anger and I have to act on that but I’m not an angry person. I’m a sweet, kind, polite, giving, thoughtful person. Why would someone want to be mean, rude, stingy unkind and selfish? Why? WHY? Why would someone WANT that to be the way their life is? Why would someone allow himeself to live like that?

Maybe that’s why so many people are on Prozac and shit.

I should credit my parents…. I know this is an afterthought and that’s tacky but I live in the moment. When I was a kid all my friends’ parents got divorced. Well no not all of them but it was the 70s and 80s and some part of me thought “it’s only a matter of time.” But they didn’t. And while they were far from perfect as parents, I’m sure I was far from perfect as a child, but we all turned out ok and I was lucky to have what I had.

Marriage is not for me. For specific reasons but philosophically because I have no faith in it. But someone else’s marriage isn’t about me, just as their love isn’t about me and their bond isn’t about me. If I get invited to the wedding them I’m delighted for the invitation, honored by the invitation, and pleased by the experience. And often the food is good. And sometimes they serve drinks.

Kidding.

But more and more I get wedding invitations and I step back and look at the couple and think, Brian, this is so wrong. Couples who get married out of frantic desire to stabilize their lives. I don’t think marriage should be about stability, or rectifying the past. It should be aout the future, if it should be about anything, if it has to even happen. And “the future” isn’t a metaphor for making babies. Little annoys me more than hearing about people who have babies to “save their marriage.” Hmm, come to think about it, little annoys me more than people having babies period. (OK I just said that for effect.)

This has turned into a mean post and that’s not where I wanted it to go. But you know what, I’ll let it stand as it is. Mom, Dad, congratulations on 43 years.

The thing about drag queens is, once you start talking about them, however tangentially, you can’t stop. And that’s because they’re larger than life. And it’s because they’re beautiful creations and we all love beauty and we all love creation. We can’t all IDENTIFY with the life of a drag queen but we never fail to stop and gaze.

I was Miss Sophrosune. I was the St. John’s Drag Queen of 1987. And it was a drunken, silly event but I WON! And my drag name was “Plethora Fairygrove.” Which apparently was such a ridiculous name that Scott Nickerson, the MC, had to take a moment to collect himself before he could announce it.

But I won because it wasn’t a serious competition and was not a serious endeavour and I got drunk and put on a skirt. REAL drag queens are fuckin SERIOUS. I mean SERIOUS. First there are the look alike queens. Oh wow there goes Barbra Streisand! Wow there’s Tina Turner! Oh hell there’s Rosie O’Donnell!

My best drag queen story is about “Misty Valdez,” who was performing at the now defunct Robert’s LaFitte in Galveston. I was there with my friend Sherri for beer bust, which meant you pay a buck for your beer glass and they will refill it all day long. Cheapest beer in town, if you can stand the company. And about 6 the drag show started and Here came Misty. Hefty latino (latina?), not particularly attractive or talented, and in the middle of the routine (and mind you I was drunk), I just started laughing. Misty didn’t like that and came over to me and grabbed me by the hair and said, “you don’t EVER laugh at me when I’m on stage!” She lost a nail in the transaction so it was all good.

My other best drag show story is one time when I was in Albuquerque I went to a show at ……where? Pulse. And it was a contest and relatively early on a Sunday afternoon, and I pretended to be a reporter covering the event. This afforded me the opportunity to actually SPEAK to the performers. Who were nice! I loved talking to them in a setting where they weren’t feeling like they had to be working me. Of course I had to *create* that setting so I guess I lied to them. And maybe there’s a psychological facet to it all. But for what it’s worth I did eventually write a long essay on drag queens so maybe I’m not so deceitful.

People love to look at beautiful people. We disparage glamour but we are fascinated by it. I wouldn’t like to go OUT in PUBLIC with Madonna or anyone else who is wearing a pink satin gown and elbow gloves. But the visual experience is captivating. And of course glamour is an industry. But I admire people who can take themselves seriously enough to just GO AHEAD and wear what they want and say “check me out.”

Not since Miss Sophrosune 1987 have I dressed up in transgender clothing. But I dress up. I am almost always the best dressed man at a party. My attire is always carefully planned and, I would say, carefully studied. I won’t leave the house if I don’t feel like grabbing attention. I don’t go out to drink and smoke. I go out because I want people to notice me.

OK suddenly this became a little more about me than I wanted it to be. What’s the detached peroration? Well, I remember the scene in Angels in America when Prior says, “I was applying the face; I thought it might make me feel better.” Applying the face. The face as an appliance. The face as a machine that works for you. Like a telephone or a dishwasher. But it’s really just a reference to how women don’t leave the house without makeup. How makeup makes them feel better. But better about what?

I can see that if I dive into this one, I will have to dive deep. Maybe I’ll just back off.

Oh My God

First off, I just have to say that Dark Eyes was (is?) vodka, not gin, but gin is where it’s at. I just looked in the dictionary to make sure I spelled “addendum” correctly, and just OPENED the book to the page at the top of which was listed “Drag Queen.” Well I’ve certainly known some drag queens over the years and didn’t need the dictionary to supply definition, but I allowed myself to be curious. The Websters New World Dictionary defines a drag queen as “a male homosexual who dresses in women’s clothing.”

Well that’s not entirely wrong but it’s like defining a car as “a thing with a motor in it.”

This post isn’t about drag queens it is, in fact, an addendum to my previous post. But if my beloved dictionary can get one thing so wrong wrong wrong, how else might it misguide me?

I was told that when cats “clean their ears,” in other words paw at them, that the weather was going to change. That they have pockets, perhaps, or chambers or something that harbor air or fluid (I guess air is a fluid, actually) that responds to the changes in barometric pressure and annoys them, which is why they are the mythical indicators of the change in weather. If this is true, and there’s no reason for me to utterly doubt it though I do question the source just a twinkle, then my poor cat must be in hell. The pressure rises and falls 19 times a day here (in central Texas) and lately it’s been humid atop all that so not only is Aretha in hell, she’s in hell and moist. Go with that where you will. In all events it’s a dangerous combination.

I ate a Wonder-Roast chicken last night. Not the whole entire thing but MOST of it. It just looked and smelled so good in that little display thingy. It isn’t a Wonder Roast for real, but the local supermarket’s knock-off. And they do a pretty good job but the skin isn’t as crisp as I’d like it. It was good! I ate that and some leftover rice and a pineapple. Eclectic! Yay! What remains of the chicken is a carcass and it will make good soup. But last time I used a fowl carcass to make soup, …… well actually I made a good stock that served me well. Turkey. But this chicken probably doesn’t deserve to be made a part of anything spectacular.

I remember reading a story, possibly in Larousse Gastronomique but I don’t recall, about a cook who had a dozen men show up at his door demanding food and all he had was ONE cow and maybe some carrots or something and he made them a regal meal from soup to dessert. (No nuts) I don’t know if it was a true story or just a tale, but it’s been my beacon when I have a fridge full of leftovers.

Maybe now is as good a time as any to discuss Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken. Not every Friday, but many Fridays, Art and I would get our weekend off to a great start by drinking too much and a component to the kickoff was “Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken.” It wasn’t, as you might think, leftover chicken reheated in an adventurous way. It was always fresh (or freshly purchased) chicken breasts that got cooked in an adventurous way, and twice to afford us more time to drink.

And by “adventurous” I mean that the seasonings were always changing and the coatings were always changing and the experience wasn’t one of cooking to perfection but more like cooking as an opportunity to bond. And as we all know, bonding can be dicey. But it can be beautiful.

We’re grown up and respectable now and we use credit cards and dine out and drink better gin and travel the world and have in-laws in addition to our out-laws and the days of Dark Eyes and Twice Cooked Adventure Chicken are but charming, foggy memories. Is there a lesson here? Probably. But I’m just going to make do with the memory.

Now there’s a charming disorder! It springs to mind because a friend of mine …. I guess he’s a friend …. operates a cat rescue organization or, something like that. I mean, when the SPCA or other facilities get overrun he takes in cats. And he eventually gets rid of them but at any given moment he will have 25 cats in his house. And it’s WORK! All the litter needs cleaning, and they need feeding, and they’re not allowed outside (it’s a miracle the place doesn’t reek but remarkably, it doesn’t).

Just now I was playing with my own cat, Aretha, my one and only cat, and I was encouraging her to play rough and she was responding to the challenge. She’s working out her frustration at being left outside last night but she insisted on it and out she went. You have to know, we had a GORGEOUS thunderstorm last night, lasting hours, lightning and thunder and, high winds and hail and tornado threats and all that good stuff. Aretha was antsy through it all. She’s relatively young (one year old basically) and this was new to her. So she paced and made noises and generally generally didn’t know what to do with herself, but she would stand at the door and yowl from time to time as if to say “I want to go out there.” And I would say, “No.” At last the storm subsided and she was absolutely, positively, completely and utterly ready to go outside so I let her out. I myself was absolutely, positively, completely and utterly ready to go to bed. So I did.

So she came in this morning looking a liiiiiiiiittle bit the worse for wear. She’d managed to get sopping wet and I saw two dead birds on the porch and I haven’t seen a fish in the pond for a week! Anyway, I toweled her off and left her to her own devices and she napped for a little while and then she initiated her attack on me. Systematic, unwavering and ruthless. So at last I engaged her and she took me to the cleaners! I’ll spare you the grizzly details but just know I actually have a band-aid … a big-ass fuckin’ band-aid on my left hand. And I used up half a tube of Neosporin over various parts of my body. Now she lies beneath the bookcase, supine, “les jambs en l’air comme une femme lubrique.” She’s happy.

I like playing rough with the cat. I never would actually BEAT her or HARM her but it’s just kind of fun to mess around. And it’s 5% of the time. The rest of the time she just lies around the house or goes outside and does what she does. Aretha is very affectionate and will sleep cuddled up with me if I let her, though I don’t like to because I move around a lot and she has to be displaced and I worry that in the middle of the night I’ll squash her or something. I do worry that she might not limit her intensity to just me but will take on a relative stranger. She’s very friendly and affectionate and readily approaches people. My fear is that one day she’ll just go to town on a visitor. We’ll just be sitting here having tea and crumpets and talking about the vicissitudes of life and the tribulations of the unwashed masses and suddenly Mrs. Uppington-Smythe’s stockings are in shreds and she’s reaching for her digitalis! Or, knowing Mrs. Uppington-Smythe, her pistol. “What IS in that handbag, my dear?”